Correspondence.

Loudéac, December 20, 1858.

Mister Allan Kardec, I congratulate myself on having entered into relations with you through the kind of studies to which we mutually devote ourselves. For more than twenty years I have been occupied with a work that was to be titled Study on the Germs. That work was to be especially physiological; nevertheless, my intention was to demonstrate the insufficiency of Bichat's system, which admits only organic life and the life of relation. I wished to prove that there exists a third mode of existence, which survives the other two in a non-organic state. This third mode is nothing other than the animic, or spirit, life, as you call it. In a word, it is the primitive germ that engenders the other two modes of existence, the organic and that of relation. I also wished to demonstrate that the germs are of a fluidic nature, bidynamic, attractive, indestructible, autogenous and definite in number, both on our planet and in all circumscribed environments. When Jean Reynaud's Heaven and Earth n appeared, I was obliged to modify my convictions. I recognized that my system was too limited, and with it I admitted that the heavenly bodies, by the exchange of electricity they can establish among themselves, must necessarily, by means of various electric currents, favor the transmigration of germs or Spirits of the same fluidic nature. When there was talk of turning tables, I at once devoted myself to that practice and obtained such results that I no longer had any doubt regarding the manifestations. I soon understood that the moment had come when the invisible world was going to become visible and tangible, and that, from then on, we would be marching toward a revolution never before seen in science and philosophy. Nevertheless, I was far from expecting that a Spiritist journal could establish itself so quickly and sustain itself in France. Today, sir, thanks to your perseverance, it is an accomplished fact and one of great consequence. I am far from believing that the difficulties are overcome; you will encounter many obstacles and you will be humiliated, but, after all, the truth will shine forth. We shall come to recognize the justness of the observation of our celebrated professor Gay-Lussac, who told us in his course, regarding imponderable and invisible bodies, that these expressions were inexact and merely reflected our impotence in the present state of science, adding that it would be more logical to call them imponderate. The same holds for visibility and tangibility; what is not visible to one is visible to another, even with the naked eye, of which the sensitives are the example. Finally, hearing, smell and taste, which are nothing other than modifications of the tangible property, prove null in man compared with the dog, the eagle and other animals. There is, then, nothing absolute in these properties, which multiply according to the organisms. There is nothing invisible, intangible or imponderable: everything can be seen, touched or weighed once our organs—our first and most precious instruments—have become more subtle. To the various experiments to which you have already resorted in order to verify our third mode of existence—the spirit life—I beg you to add the following: Magnetize a person blind from birth and, in the somnambulic state, address to him a series of questions about forms and colors. If the sensitive is lucid, he will prove to you peremptorily that, concerning these things, he possesses knowledge which he could only have acquired in one or several prior existences.

I conclude, sir, by asking you to accept my most sincere compliments for the kind of studies to which you devote yourself. As I have never feared to manifest my opinions, you may insert this letter in your Review, if you judge it to be useful.

Your wholly devoted servant, MORHÉRY, Doctor of Medicine.

Observation – We feel very happy with the authorization granted by Dr. Morhéry to publish the remarkable letter we have just read. It proves that, alongside the man of science, there is in him the judicious man who sees something beyond our sensations and who knows how to sacrifice his personal opinions for the benefit of evidence. In him, conviction is not blind faith, but reasoned; it is the logical deduction of the wise man, who does not think he knows everything.

Allan Kardec.

Imprimerie de H. CARION, rue Bonaparte, 64.

[1] [Terre et ciel — Google Books.]