Contradictions in the language of the Spirits.

— The contradictions found very frequently in the language of the Spirits, even on essential questions, have, until today, been for certain persons a cause of uncertainty as to the real value of their communications, a circumstance of which our adversaries have not failed to take advantage. Indeed, at first sight these contradictions seem to be one of the principal stumbling blocks of the spiritist science. Let us see whether they have the importance attributed to them.

We shall ask, in the first place, what science there is that did not present, in its beginnings, similar anomalies? In their investigations, what scholar was not many times confounded by facts that seemed to overturn the established rules? Do Botany, Zoology, Physiology, Medicine, and our own language not offer us thousands of examples, and do their foundations not defy all contradiction? It is by comparing the facts, by observing the analogies and the dissimilarities, that one arrives, little by little, at establishing the rules, the classifications, the principles: in a word, at constituting Science. Now, Spiritism is only beginning to emerge; it is not, then, surprising that it should submit to the common law, until its study is complete. Only then will it be recognized that here, as in all things, the exception almost always comes to confirm the rule.

Nevertheless, in every epoch the Spirits have told us not to be troubled by these small divergences, and that, within a short time, all would be led to unity of belief. This prediction is certainly realized each day, as one penetrates further into the causes of these mysterious phenomena and the facts are better observed. Already the dissensions that manifested themselves at the origin tend evidently to weaken; one may even say that they now result only from isolated personal opinions.

Although Spiritism exists in Nature, and has been known and practiced since the most remote Antiquity, it is a well-known fact that in no other epoch was it so universally spread as today. The reason is that formerly they made of it a mysterious study, into which the common people were not initiated; it was preserved by a tradition, which the vicissitudes of Humanity and the absence of means of transmission weakened imperceptibly. The spontaneous phenomena, which from time to time never ceased to occur, passed unnoticed or were interpreted according to the prejudices or the ignorance of the epoch, or else exploited for the profit of this or that belief. It was reserved for our century, in which progress receives an incessant impulse, to make clear a science that, so to speak, existed only in a latent state. It was only a few years ago that the phenomena were seriously observed. In reality Spiritism is a new science that is implanting itself little by little in the spirit of the masses, awaiting the occupation of an official position. At first this science seemed quite simple; for superficial persons, it consisted in the art of making tables turn; yet, by its ramifications and consequences, a more attentive observation revealed that it was, on the contrary, much more complex than had been suspected. The turning tables are like Newton's apple which, in its fall, contains the system of the world. With Spiritism it happened as happens at first with all things: the first ones could not see everything; each saw from his own side and hastened to transmit his impressions according to his point of view and according to his ideas or prejudices. Now, is it not known that, according to the circumstances, the same object may seem hot to some, while others will find it cold?

Let us take yet another comparison from common things, even though it may seem trivial, in order to make ourselves better understood.

Lately one read in various newspapers: “The mushroom is one of the most bizarre products; delicious or deadly, microscopic or of phenomenal dimension, it ceaselessly confounds the observation of the botanist. In the Doncaster tunnel there exists a mushroom that for twelve months has been developing, seeming not yet to have reached its last phase of growth. At present it measures fifteen feet in diameter. It came on a piece of wood; it is considered the most beautiful specimen of mushroom that ever existed. Its classification is difficult, because opinions are divided.” Thus, here is science in great difficulty because of a mushroom that presents itself under a new aspect. This fact provoked in us the following reflection: Let us suppose several naturalists, each observing from his own side a variety of this plant: one will say that the mushroom is an edible cryptogam, appreciated by persons of fine palate; the second, that it is poisonous; the third, that it is invisible to the naked eye; and the fourth, that it can attain up to forty-five feet in circumference, etc. At first sight, all the assertions are contradictory and little suited to the fixing of ideas about the true nature of mushrooms. Then will come a fifth observer who will recognize the identity of the general characters and will show that these so diverse properties constitute, in truth, subdivisions or varieties of one and the same class. From his point of view, each was right; all, however, were laboring in error, in concluding from the particular to the general, and in taking the part for the whole. The same occurs with regard to the Spirits. They have been judged according to the nature of the relations one has had with them: some were made into demons; others into angels. Then, having rushed to explain the phenomena before they had seen everything, each did so in his own manner, seeking their causes, evidently, in that which constituted the object of his preoccupations; the magnetizer related everything to magnetic action, the physicist to electrical action, etc. The divergence of opinion in matters of Spiritism originates, then, from the different aspects under which it is considered. On which side is the truth? That is what it falls to the future to demonstrate; but the general tendency could not offer any doubt. Evidently, one principle dominates and gathers together, little by little, the premature systems; a less exclusive observation will unite them all to a common source, and it will soon be seen that the divergence, definitively, is more of form than of substance.

— One understands perfectly that men should elaborate contrary theories on many things; however, what may seem more singular is the fact that the Spirits themselves can fall into contradiction; it was principally this that, in the beginning, cast a kind of confusion into ideas. The different spiritist theories have, then, two origins: some blossomed from the human brain, while the others were revealed by the Spirits. The first emanate from men who, trusting too much in their own lights, believe they hold in hand the key to what they seek when, most of the time, they find only a means to promote themselves. There is nothing surprising in this; among the Spirits, however, it would be inadmissible that some should say one thing and the others speak another, which is now perfectly explicable. At first, a completely false idea was formed of the nature of the Spirits. They were represented as beings apart, of exceptional nature, possessing nothing in common with matter and bound to know everything. According to personal opinion, they were beneficent or maleficent beings, some with all the virtues, the others with all the vices, and all, in general, with an infinite knowledge, superior to that of Humanity. At the news of the recent manifestations, the first thought that sprang up in the mind of the greater part of creatures was that of seeking a means of penetrating into all hidden things, a new manner of divination less subject to doubt than the common processes. Who could tell the number of those who dreamed of easy fortune, through the revelation of hidden treasures or through industrial and scientific discoveries, which would have cost their inventors nothing but the labor of describing the procedures, under the dictation of the wise of the other world! God alone knows how many disillusionments and how many disappointments! What pretended recipes, each one more ridiculous than the other, were given by the jesters of the invisible world? We knew someone who had requested an infallible recipe for dyeing the hair; he was given a formula of composition, a kind of ointment that turned the head of hair into a kind of compact mass, of which the patient had the greatest difficulties in the world to rid himself. All these chimerical hopes had to dissipate as the nature of this world and the real purpose of the visits its inhabitants made to us became better known. But, then, for certain persons who did nothing, what was the value of these Spirits, who did not even have the power to obtain for them a few millions? They could not be Spirits. To that passing fever succeeded indifference and, afterward, incredulity. Oh! What proselytes the Spirits would have made, if they had been able to do good while the others slept! They would have worshiped the devil, even if he had merely brandished his purse of coins. Alongside these dreamers, there were serious persons who saw only vulgarity in these phenomena; they observed attentively, sounded the recesses of this mysterious world, recognizing easily, in these strange, if not new, facts, at least a providential aim of a higher order. Everything changed face when it was learned that these very Spirits are nothing more than the creatures who lived on Earth, whose number we ourselves will increase when we die; who left here their gross envelope, as the caterpillar leaves the chrysalis to transform itself into a butterfly. We could not doubt when we saw our relatives, friends, and contemporaries come to converse with us and give us irrefutable proofs of their presence and identity. Considering the innumerable varieties that Humanity presents, from the twofold intellectual and moral point of view, and the multitude that daily emigrates from the Earth to the invisible world, it is repugnant to reason to believe that a stupid Samoyed, a ferocious cannibal, a vile criminal, should undergo with death a transformation that places them on the same level as the wise man and the man of good. It was thus understood that there could and should be Spirits more or less advanced and, from then on, there were naturally explained all those so different communications, of which some rise even to the sublime, while others crawl in the filth. And they were understood still better when it was discovered that our little grain of sand lost in space was not the only one inhabited, among so many millions of similar globes, occupying, in the Universe, only an intermediate position, in the vicinity of the lowest rung of the scale; that there were, consequently, beings more advanced than the most advanced among us, and others still more backward than our savages. From then on the intellectual and moral horizon broadened, as happened with our terrestrial horizon when the fourth part of the world was discovered; in our eyes, the power and the majesty of God grew from the finite to the infinite. In this way, the contradictions in the language of the Spirits became explained, for it was understood that beings inferior, from every point of view, could not think nor express themselves as if they were superior; consequently, they could not know everything nor understand everything, since God reveals to the elect alone the knowledge of the mysteries, which ignorance would never attain. Traced by the Spirits themselves and by the observation of the facts, the spiritist scale gives us the key to all the apparent anomalies in the language of the Spirits. One must come, by the force of habit, to know them, so to speak, at first sight, and to be able to assign them their class according to the nature of their manifestations. It is necessary, of necessity, to say to one that he is a liar, to another that he is a hypocrite, to this one that he is wicked, to that one that he is seditious, etc., without letting oneself be carried away either by his arrogance, or by his bravado, or by his threats, or by his sophisms, or even by his flatteries. This is the means of driving away that throng which, incessantly, swarms around us, and which withdraws when we know how to attract only the truly good and serious Spirits, in a manner identical to that in which we proceed with regard to the living. Will they be lowly beings, devoted to ignorance and to evil for ever and ever? No, because such partiality would conform neither with the justice nor with the goodness of the Creator, who provides for the existence and the well-being of the smallest insect. It is by a succession of existences that they rise and draw near to Him as they become better. These inferior Spirits know of God only the name; they neither see Him nor understand Him, in the same way that the lowliest of peasants, isolated in the most distant corners, neither sees nor understands the sovereign who governs his country. If we study carefully the proper character of each class of Spirits, we will easily conceive that some of them are incapable of furnishing exact teachings about the state of their world; if, moreover, we consider that, by their nature, some Spirits are frivolous, lying, mocking, and malevolent, while others are still imbued with terrestrial ideas and prejudices, we will understand that, in their relations with us, they may amuse themselves at our expense, lead us deliberately into error out of malice, affirm what they do not know, give us perfidious counsels, or even deceive themselves in good faith, judging things according to their point of view.

— Let us cite a comparison.

Let us suppose that a colony of inhabitants of the Earth one fine day finds the means of establishing itself on the Moon; let us imagine this colony composed of diverse elements of the population of our globe, from the most civilized European to the Australian savage. Without doubt the inhabitants of the Moon will be moved and marveled to be able to obtain, from their new guests, precise information about our planet, which some supposed inhabited, although they were not certain, considering that among them too some believe themselves the only beings of the Universe. They fall upon the newcomers, ply them with questions, and the wise hasten to publish the physical and moral history of the Earth. How would this history not be authentic, since it was obtained from eyewitnesses? One of them takes into his house a New Zealander, who teaches him that in this world it is a feast to eat men, and that God permits it, provided the victims are sacrificed in His name. In the house of another, it is a moralist philosopher who speaks to him of Socrates and Plato, assuring him that anthropophagy is an abomination condemnable by all divine and human laws. Here is a Mohammedan who does not feed on human flesh, but says that salvation is obtained by killing the greatest possible number of Christians; there is a Christian, who says that Mohammed is an impostor; further on, a Chinese considers all the others as barbarians, affirming that God permits that children should be cast into the river, provided they exist in great quantity; a bohemian sketches the picture of the delights of the dissolute life of the capitals; an anchorite preaches abstinence and mortifications; an Indian fakir lacerates his body and for years imposes suffering on himself in order to open the doors of Heaven, in such a way that the privations of our most pious cenobites are but sensuality. Next comes a graduate, affirming that it is the Earth that turns, and not the Sun; a peasant, saying that the graduate is a liar, for he sees very well the Sun rise and set every day; an African says that it is very hot; an Eskimo, that the sea is a plain of ice and that one travels only by sledge. Politics is not far behind; some praise the absolute regime, others liberty; one guarantees that slavery is contrary to Nature, all men being brothers, since they are children of God; yet another affirms that certain races were made for slavery and are much happier than in the state of liberty, etc. I imagine the selenite writers quite embarrassed to write the physical, political, moral, and religious history of the terrestrial world with such documents. “Perhaps — some will think — we will find greater unity among the wise; let us interrogate that group of doctors.”

Now, one of the two, a physician of the Faculty of Paris, center of enlightenment, guarantees that all maladies have for their principle the vitiated blood, it being necessary, then, to renew it by means of bloodlettings, whatever its cause may be. “You labor in error, my dear colleague — replies a second — man never has so much blood at his disposal; if you take it from him, you take his life. Let us grant that the blood is vitiated; what do we do when a vessel is dirty? We do not break it, we clean it; so purge, purge, purge to the point of extinction.” Taking the floor, a third says: “Gentlemen, with your bloodlettings you kill the sick; with your purgatives you poison them; Nature is wiser than all of us; let us leave it to act and let us wait. — If that is so, reply the first two, if we kill our sick, you let them die.”

The dispute was beginning to grow heated when a fourth, taking a selenite aside, and keeping him at his left, said to him: “Do not listen to them; they are all ignoramuses; I do not even know why they are part of the Academy. Follow my reasoning well: every sick person is weak; therefore, he suffers from weakness in the organs; this is pure logic, or I know myself no more; this being so, one must give him fortifiers; for this I have but one remedy: cold water, cold water, and I go no further than that. — Do you cure all the sick? — Always, when the disease is not mortal. — With a process so infallible, do you belong to the Academy? — I have submitted my candidacy three times. Well! Do you know that I was repelled by these pretended wise men, because they were sure that I would pulverize them with my cold water? — Mister selenite, says a new interlocutor, pulling him to the right: we live in an atmosphere of electricity; electricity is the true principle of life: add it, when there is not enough of it; remove it, when there is too much. Neutralize the contrary fluids by one another — there is the secret. I work wonders with my apparatus: read my advertisements and you will see!” We would not reach the end, if we wished to relate all the contrary theories that were successively advocated in all the branches of human knowledge, without excepting the exact sciences; however, it was above all in the metaphysical sciences that the field opened to the most contradictory doctrines. If, however, a judicious man of spirit — why should there not be any on the Moon? — compares all these incoherent accounts, he will arrive at the following conclusion, very logical: that on the Earth there exist hot and cold regions; that in certain countries men devour one another; that in others they kill those who do not think in the same way, all for the greater glory of their divinity; finally, that each one pronounces according to his knowledge and exalts things from the point of view of his passions and his interests. In short, in whom will he believe, in preference?

By the language he will recognize, without difficulty, the true wise man from the ignorant; the serious man from the frivolous; he who has good sense from him who reasons falsely; he will not confuse good and bad sentiments, elevation with baseness, good with evil. And he will say to himself: “I must hear everything, listen to everything, because even in the conversation of the most brutish man I can learn something; my esteem and my confidence, however, will not be won except by those who show themselves worthy of them.” If this terrestrial colony wishes to implant its customs and usages in its new homeland, the wise will repel the counsels that seem to them pernicious and will confide in those they judge more enlightened, seeing in them neither falsehood nor lies, but, on the contrary, recognizing their sincere love of the good. Would we act in a different manner, if a colony of selenites came to fall upon the Earth? Well! What is given here as a supposition becomes reality as concerns the Spirits; if they do not come among us in flesh and bone, they are nonetheless no less present in a hidden manner, transmitting to us their thoughts through their interpreters, that is, through the mediums. When we learn to know them, we will judge them by their language, by their principles, and their contradictions will have nothing more in them that should surprise us, for we see that some know that which others are ignorant of; that some are placed very low, or are still too material to understand and appreciate things of a higher order; such is the man who, at the foot of the mountain, sees only a few steps around him, while he who is at the top discovers a horizon without limits.

— The first source of the contradictions arises, then, from the degree of intellectual and moral development of the Spirits; but there are others, on which it is useful to call attention. They will say that we pass over the question of the inferior Spirits, since it is so; one understands that they may deceive themselves out of ignorance; yet, how is it justified that superior Spirits should be in dissension? That they should use in a certain country a language different from that which they employ in another? Finally, that the same Spirit should not always be consistent with himself?

The answer to this question rests on the complete knowledge of the spiritist science, and this science cannot be taught in a few words, because it is as vast as all the philosophical sciences. Like all the branches of human knowledge, it is acquired only by study and by observation. We cannot repeat here all that we have already published on the subject; to it, then, we refer our readers, limiting ourselves to a simple summary. All these difficulties disappear for whoever casts upon this ground an investigating gaze and one without prejudice.

The facts prove that the deceiving Spirits array themselves in respectable names, without the least scruple, in order that their vile acts may be accepted more easily, which sometimes also occurs among us. From the fact that a Spirit presents himself under any name whatever, it does not mean that he is really the one he claims to be; nevertheless, in the language of the serious Spirits there is a stamp of dignity with which one could not be mistaken: it breathes only goodness and benevolence, and never belies itself. That of the impostor Spirits, on the contrary, whatever the veneer with which they present themselves, always leaves the tail exposed, as is commonly said. There is nothing, then, astonishing in that the inferior Spirits, under usurped names, should teach veritable nonsense. It falls to the observer to seek to know the truth, and he can do so without difficulty, provided he is willing to take to heart what we have said on this subject in our Practical Instruction. [see in The Mediums' Book: Of Charlatanism and Deception.]

These same Spirits generally flatter the tastes and inclinations of persons whose character they know to be weak enough and credulous enough to listen to them. They make themselves the echo of their prejudices and, even, of their superstitious ideas, for a very simple reason: the Spirits are attracted by their sympathies to the spirit of the persons who call them or who listen to them with pleasure.

As for the serious Spirits, they may likewise maintain a different language, according to the persons, but with another aim. When they judge it useful and in order better to convince, they avoid shocking too brusquely the rooted beliefs, and they express themselves according to the times, the places, and the persons. “This is why — they say — we do not speak to a Chinese or to a Mohammedan as to a Christian or to a civilized man: we would never be heard. Sometimes, then, we seem to enter into the manner of seeing of persons, in order to lead them little by little to that which we wish, provided this can be accomplished without altering the essential truths.” Is it not evident that if a Spirit wished to lead a fanatical Mohammedan to practice the sublime maxim of the Gospel: “Do not do unto others what you would not wish others to do unto you,” he would be repelled if he said that it was Jesus who taught it? Now, which is worth more, to leave the Mohammedan his fanaticism or to make him good, by making him momentarily believe that it was Allah who had spoken? Here is a problem whose solution we transfer to the reader. As for us, it seems to us that, in making him gentler and more humane, he would be less fanatical and more accessible to the idea of a new belief than if we wished to impose it on him by force. There are truths that, in order to be accepted, cannot be thrown in the face without a certain precaution. How many evils would men have avoided if they had always acted thus! As one sees, the Spirits also take precautions when they speak; in this case, however, the divergence is in the accessory, and not in the principal. To induce men to good, to destroy egoism, hatred, envy, jealousy, to teach them to practice true Christian charity, there for them is the essential; the rest will come in its due time; and they preach as much by word as by example, when it is a matter of truly good and superior Spirits; everything in them breathes gentleness and benevolence. Irritation, violence, harshness, and hardness of language, even if it be to say good things, never denote a sign of true superiority. The Spirits who are really good neither irritate themselves nor ever fall into anger: if they are not heard, they go away; that is all.

There exist yet two causes of apparent contradictions that we must not pass over in silence. As we have already said on many occasions, the inferior Spirits say all that one wishes, without concerning themselves with the truth; the superior Spirits keep silent or refuse to answer when one asks them an indiscreet question or one about which they are not permitted to give explanations. They say: “In this case, never insist, because it will be frivolous Spirits who will answer and will deceive you; you believe it is we, and you may think that we fall into contradiction. The serious Spirits never contradict themselves; their language is always the same with the same persons. If one of them says contrary things under the same name, be certain that it is not the same Spirit who speaks or, at least, that it is not a matter of a good Spirit. You will recognize the good one by the principles he teaches, for every Spirit who does not preach the good is not a good Spirit, and you must repel him.”

Wishing to say the same thing in two different places, the same Spirit will not make use literally of the same words: for him the thought is everything; but man, unfortunately, is led more to attach himself to the form than to the substance, and it is this form that he often interprets according to his ideas and passions. From this interpretation there may originate apparent contradictions, which likewise have their source in the insufficiency of human language to express extra-human things. Let us study the substance, let us scrutinize the intimate thought, and we will see analogy often where a superficial examination would have shown us nonsense.

— The causes of the contradictions in the language of the Spirits can, then, be thus summarized:

1st The degree of ignorance or of knowledge of the Spirits to whom we address ourselves;

2nd The deception of the inferior Spirits who, taking names on loan, may say, out of malice, ignorance, and wickedness, the contrary of what the Spirit whose name they usurped said elsewhere;

3rd The personal defects of the medium, which may influence the purity of the communications and alter or modify the thought of the Spirit;

4th The insistence in obtaining an answer that a Spirit refuses to give, and which is transmitted by an inferior Spirit;

5th The very will of the Spirit, who speaks according to the times, the places, and the persons, and who may judge it convenient not to say everything to everyone;

6th The insufficiency of human language to express the things of the incorporeal world;

7th The interpretation that each one may give to a word or explanation, according to his ideas and prejudices, or the point of view under which he regards things.