ELEMENTARY NOTIONS OF SPIRITISM - Items 1-6.

(Summary)

Preliminary observations.

Of the Spirits.

Communication with the invisible world.

Providential purpose of the spirit manifestations.

Of the mediums.

Pitfalls of the mediums.

Quality of the mediums.

Charlatanism.

Identity of the Spirits.

Contradictions.

Consequences of Spiritism.

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

— It is an error to believe that it suffices for certain unbelievers to witness extraordinary phenomena for them to become convinced. Whoever does not admit the existence of the soul or Spirit in man cannot accept it outside of him either; consequently, denying the cause, he denies the effect. The contradictors almost always present themselves with a preconceived idea of negation, which prevents them from observing with seriousness and impartiality; they raise questions and objections that cannot be answered promptly and completely, because for each one it would be necessary to give a sort of course and take things up again from the beginning. Only prior study can avoid these objections, which for the most part arise from ignorance of the causes of the phenomena and of the conditions under which they are produced.

— Whoever does not know Spiritism supposes that spirit phenomena can be produced as one does experiments in Physics and Chemistry. Hence the pretension of subjecting them to one's will and the refusal to place oneself in the conditions necessary to be able to observe them. Not admitting, as a principle, the existence and intervention of the Spirits, or at least not knowing their nature nor their mode of action, these individuals act as if they were operating upon brute matter; and, since they do not obtain what they ask for, they conclude that there are no Spirits. Placing oneself at a different point of view, one will understand that, the Spirits being nothing more than the souls of men, all of us, after death, will be Spirits, and that, under these conditions, we too would be little disposed to serve as a plaything for the satisfaction of the whims of the curious.

— Although certain phenomena may be provoked, they, by the fact of coming from free intelligences, are absolutely not at the disposal of just anyone, so that whoever claims to be capable of obtaining them at will proves, by that alone, ignorance or bad faith. We must await them, catch them in their passage, for it is often when we least expect it that the most interesting and conclusive facts present themselves. Whoever seriously wishes to instruct himself must therefore, in this as in all things, have patience, perseverance, and place himself in the indispensable conditions, without which it will be useless to occupy himself with spirit phenomenology.

— The gatherings whose purpose is to deal with spirit manifestations are not always held under good conditions, whether to obtain satisfactory results or to convince the persons present. There is no denying that, from some of them, unbelievers leave less convinced than they were upon entering, leading them to complain of the unserious character of Spiritism, in view of the often ridiculous things they witnessed. On this point, they are no more logical than those who would presume to judge an art by the first attempts of an apprentice, a person by his caricature, or a tragedy by its parody. Spiritism also has its apprentices, so that whoever wishes to enlighten himself must not gather teachings from a single source. Only by examination and comparison can a judgment be established.

— Frivolous gatherings have the grave inconvenience of giving the novices who attend them a false idea of the character of Spiritism. Those who have only frequented gatherings of that kind cannot take seriously a thing that they see treated with levity by those very ones who call themselves adepts. A prior study will teach them to judge the scope of what they see, to separate the good from the bad.

— The same reasoning applies to those who judge Spiritism by what certain eccentric works say, which give of it only an incomplete and ridiculous idea. Serious Spiritism is as little responsible for those who understand it poorly or practice it in an inadequate manner as poetry is for those who produce bad verses. It is deplorable, they say, that such works exist, harming the true science. Without doubt, it would be preferable that only the good ones existed; the greater evil, however, consists in not taking the trouble to study them all. All the arts, all the sciences, are in the same case. Have we not seen, concerning the most serious matters, absurd treatises full of errors appear? Why would Spiritism be privileged in this respect, especially at its beginning? If those who criticize it did not judge it by appearances, they would know what it admits and what it rejects, and would not attribute to it what it repels in the name of reason and experience.