BRIEF REPLY TO THE DETRACTORS OF SPIRITISM.

The right to examine and to criticize is inalienable, and Spiritism does not entertain the pretension of withdrawing itself from examination and criticism, just as it does not have that of satisfying everyone. Each one is therefore free to approve or reject it; but, in order to do so, it is necessary to discuss it with knowledge of the matter. Now, criticism has all too well proved that it is ignorant of its most elementary principles, making it say precisely the opposite of what it says, attributing to it what it disapproves, confusing it with the coarse and burlesque imitations of charlatanism, in short, presenting, as the rule of all, the eccentricities of a few individuals. Malignity has also all too much wished to make it responsible for reprehensible or ridiculous acts in which its name was incidentally involved, and it takes advantage of this as a weapon against it. Before imputing to a doctrine the blame for inciting any condemnable act, reason and equity require that it be examined whether that doctrine contains maxims that justify such an act.

To know the share of responsibility that, in a given circumstance, may fall to Spiritism, there is a very simple means: to proceed in good faith to an inquiry, not among its adversaries, but at the very source, into what it approves and what it condemns. This is all the easier in that it has no secrets; its teachings are open, and whoever it may be can verify them.

Thus, if the books of the Spiritist Doctrine explicitly and formally condemn a justly reprovable act; if, on the contrary, they contain only instructions of a nature to guide toward the good, it follows that it was not in them that an individual guilty of misdeeds drew his inspiration, even if he possesses them.

Spiritism is not in solidarity with those who please to call themselves Spiritists, just as Medicine is not so with those who exploit it, nor sound religion with the abuses and even crimes that are committed in its name. It recognizes as its adherents only those who practice its teachings, that is, who work to improve themselves morally, striving to overcome their evil inclinations, to be less selfish and less proud, gentler, more humble, more charitable toward their neighbor, more moderate in all things, because that is the characteristic of the true Spiritist. This brief note does not have for its object to refute all the false allegations that are hurled against Spiritism, nor to develop and prove all its principles, nor, still less, to attempt to convert to those principles those who profess contrary opinions; but only to say, in a few words, what it is and what it is not, what it admits and what it disapproves.

The beliefs it advocates, the tendencies it manifests, and the end at which it aims are summed up in the following propositions:

The spiritual element and the material element are the two principles, the two living forces of Nature, which complete one another and react incessantly upon one another, both indispensable to the working of the mechanism of the Universe.

From the reciprocal action of these two principles arise phenomena that each of them, in isolation, has no possibility of explaining.

To Science, properly speaking, belongs the special mission of studying the laws of matter.

Spiritism has for its object the study of the spiritual element in its relations with the material element, and points out in the union of these two principles the reason for an immensity of facts hitherto unexplained.

Spiritism walks alongside Science, in the field of matter; it admits all the truths that Science verifies; but it does not stop where the latter stops: it pursues its researches into the field of spirituality.

The spiritual element being an active state of Nature, the phenomena in which it intervenes are submitted to laws and are for that very reason as natural as those that derive from neutral matter.

Some of such phenomena were reputed supernatural, merely through ignorance of the laws that govern them. By virtue of this principle, Spiritism does not admit the character of the marvelous attributed to certain facts, although it recognizes their reality or possibility. There are, for it, no miracles, in the sense of a derogation of natural laws, whence it follows that Spiritists do not perform miracles and that the qualifier of thaumaturges that a number of people give them is improper.

The knowledge of the laws that govern the spiritual principle is directly connected to the question of man's past and future. Is his life confined to the present existence? On entering this world, does he come from nothing and return to nothing on leaving it? Has he already lived and will he live again? How will he live and under what conditions? In a word: whence does he come and whither does he go? Why is he on Earth and why does he suffer there? Such are the questions that each one puts to himself, because they are of capital interest to everyone and to which no doctrine has yet given a rational solution. The one that Spiritism gives them, based on facts, by satisfying the demands of logic and of the most rigorous justice, constitutes one of the principal causes of the rapidity of its propagation. Spiritism is not a personal conception, nor the result of a preconceived system. It is the resultant of thousands of observations made over all points of the globe and which converged toward a center that collected and coordinated them. All its constitutive principles, without exception of any, are deduced from experience. Experience always preceded theory.

Thus, from the beginning, Spiritism took root everywhere. History offers no example of a philosophical or religious doctrine that, in ten years, has won so great a number of adherents. Yet it employed, to make itself known, none of the means commonly in use; it propagated itself by itself, through the sympathies it inspired.

Another no less constant fact is that, in no country, did its doctrine arise from the lowest social strata; everywhere it propagated itself from the top downward on the scale of society, and it is still among the enlightened classes that it is found almost exclusively spread, illiterate persons constituting an insignificant minority within the body of its adherents.

It is also verified that the dissemination of Spiritism followed, from its beginnings, a march always ascending, in spite of all that its adversaries did to hinder it and to disfigure its character, with the aim of discrediting it in public opinion. It is even to be noted that everything they have attempted with that purpose favored its diffusion; the clamor they provoked on the occasion of its advent caused many persons to come to know it who had never before heard it spoken of; the more they sought to denigrate or ridicule it, the more they aroused the general curiosity, and, since all examination can only be profitable to it, the result was that its opponents constituted themselves, without wishing to, its ardent propagandists. If the diatribes brought it no harm, it is because those who studied it in its legitimate sources recognized it as very different from what they had pictured. In the struggles it had to sustain, the impartial bore witness to its moderation; it never used reprisals against its adversaries, nor answered injuries with injuries.

Spiritism is a philosophical doctrine of religious effects, like any spiritualist philosophy, by which it necessarily comes to the fundamental bases of all religions: God, the soul, and the future life. But it is not a constituted religion, since it has neither cult, nor rite, nor temples, and since, among its adherents, none has taken or received the title of priest or high priest. These qualifiers are pure invention of criticism.

One is a Spiritist by the mere fact of sympathizing with the principles of the doctrine and of conforming one's conduct to those principles. It is a matter of an opinion like any other, which everyone has the right to profess, just as they have the right to be Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Saint-Simonians, Voltairians, Cartesians, deists, and even materialists.

Spiritism proclaims liberty of conscience as a natural right; it claims it for its adherents in the same way as for everyone. It respects all sincere convictions and insists on reciprocity.

From liberty of conscience derives the right of free examination in matters of faith. Spiritism combats blind faith, because it imposes on man that he abdicate his own reason; it considers without root all imposed faith, whence its inscribing among its maxims: Unshakable is only the faith that can look reason in the face in all epochs of Humanity.

Consistent with its principles, Spiritism does not impose itself on whomever it may be; it wishes to be accepted freely and through the effect of conviction. It expounds its doctrines and welcomes those who voluntarily seek it.

It does not take care to turn anyone away from their religious convictions; it does not address itself to those who possess a faith and for whom that faith suffices; it addresses itself to those who, unsatisfied with what is given them, ask for something better.