BRIEF SPIRITIST CONFERENCE - Part 1.

A first visitor. — I tell you, sir, that I have never believed in supernatural things; because my reason refuses to admit the reality of the strange phenomena attributed to the Spirits, which, I am persuaded, exist only in the imagination. Nevertheless, in the face of evidence, it would be necessary to yield, and that is what I would do if I could have incontestable proofs. I come, therefore, to request the favor of your permission to attend just one or two experiments, so as not to be indiscreet, in order to convince myself, if it be possible.

Allan Kardec. — From the moment, sir, that your reason refuses to admit what we regard as proven facts, it is because you believe it superior to that of all the persons who do not share your opinions. I do not doubt your merit, and I do not have the pretension of placing my intelligence above yours; admit, then, that I am mistaken, since it is reason that speaks to you, and all is said.

The visitor. — Nevertheless, if I could be convinced, I, who am known as an antagonist of your ideas, it would be a miracle eminently favorable to your cause.

A. K. — I am sorry, sir, but I do not have the gift of miracles. Do you think that one or two sessions will be sufficient to convince you? It would, in effect, be truly admirable; I expended more than a year of work to convince myself; which proves to you that I did not do so lightly; besides, sir, I do not give public sessions.

The visitor. — You do not, then, make proselytes?

A. K. — When I meet persons sincerely desirous of instructing themselves and who do me the honor of asking me for clarifications, it is for me a pleasure and a duty to answer them within the limit of my knowledge; but as for the antagonists, those who, like you, have formed convictions, I make no effort to dissuade them, since I find many well-disposed persons without needing to waste my time with those who are not. I know that conviction will come sooner or later by the force of things, and that the most incredulous will be swept along by the torrent; a few adepts more or less will not, at the moment, count for anything in the balance; that is why you will never see me concern myself with bringing over to my ideas those who have, like you, good reasons as well for keeping their distance.

The visitor. — There would be, however, more interest than you believe in convincing me. Will you permit me to explain myself frankly, and do you promise me not to take offense at my words? They are my ideas about the subject and not about the person to whom I address myself; I can respect the person without sharing his opinion.

A. K. — Spiritism has taught me not to mind these petty susceptibilities of self-love, and not to take offense at words. If your words go beyond the limits of civility and propriety, I will conclude that you are an ill-bred man; that is all: as for me, I prefer to leave to others the faults I would share with them. You see, by this alone, that Spiritism serves some purpose. I told you, sir, that I in no way claim to make you share my opinion; I respect yours, if it is sincere, as I desire that you respect mine. Since you treat Spiritism as a vain dream, in coming to me you said: I am going to see a madman. Admit it frankly, I will not take offense. All Spiritists are madmen, it is an established thing. Well! Since you see in this belief a mental illness, I would have scruples about communicating it to you.

The visitor. — One may be mistaken, deceive oneself, without being mad for that reason.

A. K. — You say, like so many others, that this is a passing fashion; but you will grant that a fashion which in a few years has won millions of adherents in all countries, which counts learned men of every order, which spreads preferably among the enlightened classes, is a singular mania that does indeed merit some examination.

The visitor. — I have my ideas on this subject, it is true, but they are not so absolute that I would not consent to sacrifice them to evidence. I already told you, sir, that you would have a certain interest in convincing me. I confess to you that I am to publish a book in which I propose to demonstrate ex professo (sic) what I consider an error; and since this book is to have great scope, banishing the Spirits, if I were to become convinced, I would not publish it.

A. K. — It would be regrettable, sir, to deprive you of the benefit of a book that is to have great scope; I have, moreover, no interest in preventing you from making it; I desire, on the contrary, that it be greatly circulated, since it will save me the cost of prospectuses and advertisements. When a thing is attacked, it attracts attention; there are many persons who want to see the pros and the cons, and this causes it to become known even by those who never dreamed of it; thus, frequently, one makes propaganda without wishing to, to the advantage of those one wished to harm. The question of the Spirits is, besides, so palpitating with interest, arouses curiosity to such a point, that it is enough to draw attention to it to give the desire to deepen it.

The visitor. — So then, for you, criticism is of no use; public opinion counts for nothing?

A. K. — I do not regard criticism as the expression of public opinion, but as an individual opinion that may be mistaken. Read history, and you will see how many masterpieces were criticized at their appearance, which does not prevent them from remaining masterpieces; when a thing is bad, all possible praise will not make it good. If Spiritism is an error, it will fall of itself; if it is a truth, all the diatribes will not make it a lie. Your book will be a personal appreciation from your point of view; true public opinion will judge whether you have seen rightly; that is why we want to see; and if, later, it is recognized that you were mistaken, your book will be ridiculous, like those that have lately been published against the theory of the circulation of the blood, of vaccination, etc. But I forget that you are to treat the question ex professo, which means that you have studied it under all its aspects; that you have seen all that can be seen, read all that has been written on the matter, analyzed and compared the various opinions; that you have found the best conditions for observing it for yourself; that you have spent your vigils on it for years; in a word, that you have neglected nothing to arrive at the verification of the truth. I must believe that it is so if you are a serious man, for whoever has done all this alone has the right to say that he speaks with knowledge of the cause.

The visitor. — Do not believe, sir, that my opinion was formed inconsiderately. I have seen tables turn and rap; persons who supposedly wrote under the influence of the Spirits; but I am convinced that there was charlatanism.

A. K. — How much did you pay to see that?

The visitor. — Nothing, certainly.

A. K. — Then there are charlatans of a singular kind, and ones who will rehabilitate the word. Up to now disinterested charlatans had never been seen. If some joker wants to amuse himself once by chance, does it follow that the other persons are accomplices? Besides, with what aim would they have become accomplices in a mystification? To amuse the company, you will say. I am willing to believe that one might lend oneself to a prank once; but when a prank lasts for months and years, it is, I believe, the mystifier who is mystified. Is it probable that, for the sole pleasure of making people believe in something that one knows to be false, one would bore oneself for whole hours over a table? The pleasure would not be worth the trouble.

The visitor. — Could one not suppose that the table was prepared?

A. K. — It would be necessary, in this case, to have a very ingenious mechanism to do all that it does; and up to now the name of this skillful manufacturer is not known, who ought, however, to have great celebrity, since his devices are spread throughout the five parts of the world. It must also be granted that his method is very subtle, since it can adapt itself to the first table that comes along, and that, up to now, no one can either see it or describe it.

The visitor. — There is where you are mistaken. A famous surgeon has recognized that certain persons can, by the contraction of a muscle of the leg, produce a noise similar to that which you attribute to the table; from which it is concluded that your mediums amuse themselves at the expense of credulity.

A. K. — I respect the science of this learned surgeon, and I am perfectly acquainted with the fact of which he speaks, since I am no stranger to anatomical science; only that some difficulties present themselves in its application to talking tables. The first is, that it is singular that this faculty, until now exceptional, and looked upon as a pathological case, has suddenly become so common; the second, that one must have a very strong desire to mystify in order to crack one's muscle for two or three hours on end, when it brings nothing but fatigue and pain; the third, that I do not see how this muscle answers at the doors and at the walls upon which the raps are made to spread; the fourth, finally, that this cracking muscle must have a very marvelous property to move a heavy table, lift it, open it, close it, hold it in suspension without a point of support, and finally make it break in falling. One only doubted that this muscle had so many virtues. [Spiritist Review, June 1859: The cracking muscle.]

The visitor. — You see, therefore, that the fashion of turning tables has passed; for a time it was a furor; today no one occupies themselves with it anymore. Why, if it is a serious thing?

A. K. — Because out of the turning tables came something even more serious; there came a whole science, a whole philosophical doctrine much more interesting for men who reflect. When these had nothing more to learn from seeing a table turn, they no longer occupied themselves with it. For frivolous persons who go deeply into nothing, it was a pastime, a toy that they left when they had had enough of it; these persons count for nothing in the science. The period of curiosity has had its time: that of observation has begun. Spiritism has entered the domain of serious persons who do not amuse themselves, but who instruct themselves. The persons who do a serious thing also do not lend themselves to any experiment of curiosity, and still less for those who come with hostile thoughts; since they do not amuse themselves, they do not seek to amuse others; and I am of this number.

The visitor. — Nevertheless, is it not experiment that can convince, even if, at the beginning, one has curiosity as one's sole aim? If you operate only in the presence of convinced persons, permit me to tell you that you are preaching to the converted.

A. K. — It is one thing to be convinced, or to be disposed to convince oneself; it is to these last that I address myself, and not to those who believe they humble their reason by coming to hear what they call reveries. About these I do not concern myself in any way; others, more powerful than I, will take on the care of convincing them when the hour comes, and will provide in them themselves the means to do so. As for those who say they have the sincere desire to enlighten themselves, the best way to prove it is to show perseverance; they can be recognized by other signs than a desire to see one or two experiments; these wish to work seriously. Conviction is not acquired except with time, by a series of observations made with special care. Spiritist phenomena differ essentially from those presented by our exact sciences: they are not produced at will, it is necessary to grasp them in passing; it is by seeing much and for a long time that one discovers a multitude of proofs that escape at first sight, above all when one is not familiar with the conditions in which they can be found, and still more when one brings a spirit of prejudice. For the assiduous and thoughtful observer, the proofs abound: for him, a word, an apparently insignificant fact may be a ray of light, a confirmation; for the superficial and passing observer, for the merely curious, they are null; that is why I do not lend myself to experiments without probable result.

The visitor. — But, then, there must be a first time for everything. The novice, who is a blank page, who has seen nothing, but who wants to enlighten himself, how can he do it, if you do not give him the means?

A. K. — I make a great difference between the incredulous through ignorance and the incredulous through system; when I see in someone favorable dispositions, it costs me nothing to enlighten him; but there are persons in whom the desire to instruct themselves is only a false appearance: with these I do not waste my time; for if they do not first find what they seem to be seeking, and which they are perhaps vexed to find, the little they see is insufficient to destroy their prejudices; they judge it badly and make of it an object of mockery that there is no need to furnish them. To him who has the desire to instruct himself, I will say: “One cannot give a course of experimental Spiritism as one gives a course of physics and chemistry, considering that one is not master to produce phenomena at will, and that the intelligences which are the agents of these phenomena frequently surpass all our forecasts. Those which you might see accidentally, presenting no sequence, no necessary connection, would be little comprehensible to you. Instruct yourself first by theory, read and meditate the works that treat of this science, where you will learn the principles, will find the description of the phenomena, will understand the possibility by the explanation that is given, and the description of many spontaneous facts of which you may have been a witness without understanding them and which will return to your memory; you will be edified upon all the difficulties that may present themselves and will thus form a first moral conviction. Then, when the circumstances present themselves of seeing or operating for yourself, you will understand, independently of the order in which the facts present themselves, because nothing will be strange to you.” — There, sir, is what I advise any person who says he wishes to instruct himself, and by his answer it is easy to see whether there is in him anything other than curiosity. [1] In this second version of this book, published in 1860, the author presents What is Spiritism from a new point of view.