To the readers of the Spiritist Review.

The Spiritist Review has just completed its first year, and we feel happy to announce that, henceforth, its existence being assured by a number of subscribers that increases each day, we shall continue its publications.

The testimonies of sympathy that we have received from every quarter, the suffrage of the men most eminent in learning and in social position are, for us, a powerful encouragement in the laborious task we have undertaken; may those, then, who have supported us in the carrying out of our work, here receive the pledge of our gratitude. It would be an unusual fact in the annals of publicity if we did not encounter contradictions, nor criticisms, especially when it is a matter of the emission of ideas so recent; but, if we must be astonished at anything, it is at having found so few contradictors, in comparison with the signs of approval that have been given to us, and no doubt this is due far less to the merit of the writer than to the attraction aroused by the very subject treated and to the credit that, daily, it gains in the highest layers of society. We owe it also, and of this we are convinced, to the dignity that we have always preserved before our adversaries, leaving the public to judge between moderation, on the one hand, and impropriety, on the other. Spiritism marches throughout the whole world with giant strides; every day it gathers some dissidents by the force of things; and, if for our part we can cast a few grains into the balance of this great movement that is taking place and that will mark our epoch as a new era, it will not be by offending nor by colliding head-on with those whom we precisely wish to win over. It is by this reasoning, and not by insults, that we shall make ourselves heard. In this respect, the superior Spirits who assist us give us the rule to follow and the example. It would be unworthy of a doctrine, which preaches nothing but love and benevolence, to descend into the arena of personal attacks; we leave that role to those who do not understand it. Nothing will make us depart from the line we have followed, from the calm and the composure that we do not cease to demonstrate in the reasoned examination of all problems, knowing that thus we shall win more serious partisans for Spiritism than by bitterness and acrimony. In the introduction with which we began our first issue, we traced the plan we proposed to follow: to cite the facts, but also to investigate them and submit them to the scalpel of observation; to appraise them and deduce their consequences. In the beginning, all attention was concentrated on the material phenomena that, at that time, fed the curiosity of the public; but curiosity does not last forever; once satisfied it ceases to interest, just like the child who abandons a toy. At that time the Spirits told us: “This is the first period, which will soon pass to give place to more elevated ideas; new facts will reveal themselves, marking a new period — the philosophical one — and in a short time the doctrine will grow, like the child who leaves the cradle. Do not trouble yourselves over the mockeries: the mockers themselves will be mocked, and tomorrow you will find zealous defenders, among your most ardent adversaries of today. May God will that it be so, and we have been charged with executing His will; the ill will of certain men will not prevail against it; the pride of those who claim to know more than He will be brought low.” Indeed, we are far from the turning tables, which no longer amuse, because everything wearies; we tire only of that which does not speak to reason, and Spiritism sails at full sail in its second period. Everyone has understood that it is a whole science that is being founded, a whole philosophy, a new order of ideas. It was necessary to follow this movement, even to contribute to it, on pain of being rapidly overtaken; this is why we have striven to keep ourselves at the level, without shutting ourselves within the narrow limits of an anecdotal bulletin. Rising to the position of a philosophical doctrine, Spiritism has won countless adherents, even among those who have witnessed no material fact. It is that man appreciates what speaks to his reason, that of which he can give himself an account; it is that he finds in the spiritist philosophy something more than an amusement, something to fill the poignant void of uncertainty. Entering the extracorporeal world by the path of observation, we wished our readers to penetrate it, in order to make them understand it. To them it falls to judge whether we have attained our goal. We shall therefore continue our task in the year that is about to begin and that, as everything announces, should be very fruitful. New facts of a strange order arise at this moment, revealing to us new mysteries. We shall record them carefully, seeking in them the light with as much perseverance as in the past, since everything presages that Spiritism will enter a new phase, more grandiose and still more sublime.

Allan Kardec.

Note. – The abundance of materials obliges us to defer to the next issue the continuation of our article on the plurality of existences and the tale of Frédéric Soulié. [Obs. These articles are already appended to the first ones of the series.]

Allan Kardec.

Paris. — Typ. of M. Décembre, 326, rue de Vaugirard.