Recognition of the existence of Spirits

If the first Spiritist manifestations made numerous adepts, they not only encountered many unbelievers, but fierce adversaries and, very often, even people interested in their discredit. Today, the facts speak so loudly that one is forced to acknowledge the evidence and, if there still exist systematic unbelievers, we can predict to them with certainty that not many years will pass before there happens to the Spirits what happened to the greater part of the discoveries, which were obstinately combated or regarded as utopias by those whose knowledge should have made them less skeptical with respect to progress. We have already seen many persons, among those who have not delved deeply into these strange phenomena, agree that our century is so fertile in extraordinary facts, that Nature has so many unknown resources, that it would be more than frivolity to deny the possibility of that which one does not understand. Such persons give proof of wisdom. Here is an authority that could not be suspected of lending itself frivolously to a mystification, the Civiltà Cattolica, one of the principal ecclesiastical journals of Rome. We will reproduce, further on, an article that this journal published last March, in which it will be seen that it would be difficult to prove the existence and the manifestation of the Spirits by more peremptory arguments. It is true that we diverge from it on the nature of the Spirits; they admit only the evil ones, whereas we admit good and evil ones; it is a point that we will address later, with all the necessary developments. The recognition of the Spiritist manifestations by an authority so grave and so respectable is a capital point.

It remains, then, to judge them: that is what we will do in the next issue.

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Different orders of Spirits.] In reproducing the article, the Univers prefaces it with the following and wise reflections:

“On the occasion of the publication of a work, in Ferrara, on the practice of animal magnetism, we referred our readers to the learned articles that had just appeared in the Civiltà Cattolica, of Rome, on modern Necromancy, reserving for ourselves the task of bringing them fuller information. We publish today the last of those articles which, in a few pages, contains the conclusions of the Roman review. Besides the interest that naturally attaches to these matters, and the confidence that a work published by the Civiltà must inspire, the particular timeliness of the question dispenses us, at this moment, from calling attention to a matter that many persons, in theory as in practice, have treated in so little a serious manner, despite the rule of vulgar prudence which recommends that facts be examined with all the greater circumspection the more extraordinary they appear.” Here is the article: “Of all the theories advanced to explain naturally the various phenomena known under the name of American spiritualism, there is not a single one that attains the objective, and, still less, succeeds in accounting for all of them. If one or another of these hypotheses suffices to explain some of these phenomena, there will always remain some that will stay inexplicable. Fraud, falsehood, exaggeration, hallucinations no doubt must have a great part in the facts reported; but, the deduction made, there still remains such a volume that, to deny the reality, it would be necessary to refuse all faith in the authority of the senses and in human testimony. Among the facts in question, a certain number can be explained by the mechanical or mechanico-physiological theory; however, there is a part, far more considerable, that does not lend itself in any way to an explanation of this kind. To this order of facts are connected all the phenomena in which, they say, the effects obtained evidently surpass the intensity of the motive force that should produce them. Such are: 1st the movements; the violent jolts of heavy masses solidly balanced, at the simple pressure and at the light touch of the hands; 2nd the effects and the movements that are produced without any contact, consequently without any mechanical impulse, whether immediate or mediate; and, finally, those other effects, which are of a nature to manifest, in the one who produces them, an intelligence and a will distinct from those of the experimenters. To account for these three orders of diverse facts, we still have the theory of magnetism; but, however great the concessions one may be disposed to make to it, and even admitting, with eyes closed, all the gratuitous hypotheses upon which it is founded, all the errors and absurdities with which it is replete, and the miraculous faculties attributed by it to the human will, to the nervous fluid or to whatever other magnetic agents, never will this theory, with the aid of these principles, be able to explain completely how a table magnetized by a medium manifests in its movements an intelligence and a will of its own, that is, distinct from those of the medium and which, at times, are contrary and superior to its intelligence and will. “How to account for such phenomena? Do we, too, wish to resort to I know not what occult causes, to what forces still unknown of Nature?; to new explanations of certain faculties, of certain laws which, until the present, have remained inert and as if asleep in the bosom of Creation? We would, in this way, be openly confessing our ignorance and leading the problem to increase the number of so many enigmas, which the poor human spirit has not been able, up to this moment, nor will ever be able, to decipher. Besides, we do not hesitate to confess our ignorance in relation to several of the phenomena in question, of which the nature is so equivocal and so obscure, that the most prudent attitude, it seems to us, is not to attempt to explain them. On the other hand, there are others for which it is not difficult for us to find the solution; it is true that it is impossible to seek it in natural causes; why, then, would we hesitate to resort to causes that belong to the supernatural order? Perhaps we might be diverted by the objections that the skeptics oppose to us, and those who, denying that supernatural order, tell us that one cannot define how far the forces of Nature extend; that the field that still remains to be discovered by the physical sciences has no limits and that no one knows sufficiently well what the limits of the natural order are to be able to indicate, with precision, the point where the one ends and the other begins. The answer to such an objection seems to us easy: admitting that one cannot determine, in a precise manner, the point of division of these two opposed orders, the natural and the supernatural, it does not follow from this that it is impossible to define with certainty whether a given effect belongs to this one or that one. Who can, in the rainbow, distinguish the precise point where one color ends and the next begins? Who can fix the exact instant where the day ends and the night begins? And, nevertheless, there is not a single man, however limited he may be, who does not distinguish whether such a zone of the rainbow is red or yellow, whether at such an hour it is day or night. Who does not perceive that, to know the nature of a fact, it is in no way necessary to pass through the limit where the category to which it belongs begins or ends, and that it suffices to ascertain whether it has the characters peculiar to that category? “Let us apply this so simple observation to the present question: we cannot say how far the forces of Nature go; nevertheless, a fact being given we can say, very often, with certainty, according to its characters, that it belongs to the supernatural order. And, in order not to depart from our problem, among the phenomena of the talking tables there are several which, in our opinion, manifest these characters in the most evident manner; such are those in which the agent that moves the tables acts as an intelligent and free cause, at the same time that it reveals an intelligence and a will of its own, that is, superior or contrary to the intelligence and the will of the mediums, of the experimenters, of the bystanders; in a word, distinct from these, whatever be the mode that attests this distinction. Be that as it may, in such cases we are forced to admit that this agent is a Spirit, and it is not a human Spirit, being, from then on, outside that order, those causes that we are accustomed to call natural, those that do not surpass the forces of man. “Such are precisely the phenomena that, as we said above, resisted every theory based upon purely natural principles, whereas in ours they find a more easy and clear explanation, for everyone knows that the power of the Spirits over matter far surpasses the power of man, and because there is no marvelous effect, among those cited of modern necromancy, that cannot be attributed to their action.

“We know perfectly well that, upon seeing us bring the Spirits onto the stage, more than one reader will smile out of pity. Without speaking of those who, true materialists, do not believe in the existence of the Spirits and reject as fable all that is not ponderable and palpable matter, as also those who, admitting that Spirits exist, deny them any influence or intervention with respect to our world; there are, in our days, many creatures who, conceding to the Spirits what no good Catholic could refuse them, that is, existence and the faculty of intervening in the facts of human life, in a hidden or patent, ordinary or extraordinary manner, seem nevertheless to belie their faith in practice, and to consider it a shame, an excess of credulity, a superstition of an old woman, to admit the action of those same Spirits in certain special cases, contenting themselves, in general, with not denying it. In truth, for a century such mockery has been made of the simplicity of the Middle Ages, accusing it of seeing Spirits, sorceries and sorcerers everywhere, and so much has been inveighed in this regard, that it is not to be wondered at that so many weak heads, wishing to appear strong, now experience repugnance and a kind of shame at believing in the intervention of the Spirits. But this excess of incredulity is no less preposterous than in other epochs was the contrary excess; if, in such a matter, believing too much leads to vain superstitions, on the other hand, wishing to admit nothing leads directly to the impiety of naturalism. The wise man, the prudent Christian must, then, in the same way, avoid these two extremes and hold firm to the intermediate line: there are the truth and the virtue. Now, in this question of the talking tables, to which side will a prudent faith make us incline? “The first, the wisest of the rules that this prudence imposes upon us teaches us that, to explain the phenomena that offer an extraordinary character, one must resort to supernatural causes only if those belonging to the natural order are not sufficient to explain them. On the other hand, from this results the obligation to admit the former, when the latter are insufficient; it is precisely our case. In effect, among the phenomena of which we speak, there are those for which no theory, no purely natural cause could account. Thus, then, it is not only prudent, but even necessary to seek their explanation in the supernatural order or, in other words, to attribute them to pure Spirits, since, outside and above Nature, no other possible cause exists. “Here is a second rule, an infallible criterium for affirming, regarding any fact whatever, whether it belongs to the natural order or to the supernatural: to examine well its characters and, according to them, to determine the nature of the cause that produced it. Now, the most marvelous facts of this kind, those that no other theory can explain, present such characters that they not only demonstrate an intelligent and free cause, but one further endowed with an intelligence and a will that have nothing human about them; therefore, this cause cannot fail to be anything but a pure Spirit. “Thus, by two paths, one indirect and negative, which proceeds by exclusion, the other direct and positive, founded upon the very nature of the facts observed, we will arrive at this same conclusion, namely: that among the phenomena of modern necromancy there is at least one category of facts that, without any doubt, are produced by the Spirits. We are led to this conclusion by a reasoning so simple, so natural that, in accepting it, far from the fear of yielding to an imprudent credulity, we judge, on the contrary, that we would be giving proof of an inexcusable weakness and incoherence of spirit, were we to refuse it. To confirm our assertion, we do not lack arguments, but rather space and time to develop them here. What we have said up to this moment is sufficient and can be summarized in the four following propositions: “1st Among the phenomena in question, leaving aside those that can reasonably be attributed to imposture, to hallucinations and to exaggerations, a great number still exists, whose reality cannot be put in doubt without violating all the laws of a sound criticism.

“2nd All the natural theories that we have set forth and discussed above are powerless to give a satisfactory explanation of all these facts; if they explain some, they leave a great number – and these are the most difficult – totally unexplained and inexplicable.

“3rd The phenomena of this last order, by implying the action of an intelligent cause foreign to man, can only be explained by the intervention of the Spirits, whatever, moreover, be the character of these Spirits, a question with which we will soon occupy ourselves.

“4th One can divide all these facts into four categories: many of them must be rejected as false or as products of fraud; as for the others, the simplest, the easiest to conceive, such as the turning tables, in certain circumstances admit a purely natural explanation: that of the mechanical impulse, for example; a third class is composed of phenomena more extraordinary and more mysterious about the nature of which one remains in doubt, because, although they appear to surpass the forces of Nature, they do not present, however, such characters that, evidently, to explain them, one must resort to a supernatural cause. Finally, we group in the fourth category the facts which, offering these characters in an evident manner, must be attributed to the invisible operation of pure Spirits. “But, what are these Spirits? Good or evil? Angels or demons? Blessed souls or condemned souls? The answer to this last part of our problem cannot raise doubt, however little one considers, on the one hand, the nature of these Spirits and, on the other, the character of their manifestations. That is what we have yet to demonstrate.”