Refutation of an article from the “Univers”;

— The newspaper Univers, in its edition of last April 13, carries an article by Abbé Chesnel in which the question of Spiritism is discussed at length. We would have set it aside, as we do with so many others to which we attach no importance, had it been one of those coarse diatribes that reveal, on the part of their authors, the most absolute ignorance of that which they attack. We have the satisfaction of recognizing that Abbé Chesnel's article is written in a completely different spirit. By the moderation and propriety of its language it deserves a reply, all the more necessary in that the article contains a serious error and may give a very false idea, whether of Spiritism in general, or in particular of the character and the aim of the works of the Parisian Society for Spiritist Studies. Here is the article in full: “Everyone is acquainted with the spiritualism of Mr. Cousin, that philosophy destined to slowly replace religion. Under the same title, today we possess a body of revealed doctrines, which little by little is being completed, and a worship that is very simple, it is true, but of marvelous efficacy, for it would put its devotees into real, perceptible, and almost permanent communication with the supernatural world.

“That worship has periodic meetings, opened by the invocation of a canonized saint.

After the presence of Saint Louis, king of France, has been verified among the faithful, they ask him to forbid the entry of malignant Spirits into the temple and they read the minutes of the previous session. Then, at the president's invitation, a medium approaches the secretary charged with noting down the questions put by one of the faithful and the answers that will be dictated to the medium by the invoked Spirit. The assembly attends gravely, piously, to that scene of necromancy, at times rather long and, when the order of the day is exhausted, the persons withdraw more convinced than ever of the truthfulness of spiritualism. In the interval between two sessions, each of the faithful takes the occasion to maintain an assiduous, but private, intercourse with the Spirits who are most accessible or most dear to him. The mediums multiply and there are almost no secrets in the other life that they do not end up penetrating. Once revealed to the faithful, these secrets are not hidden from the public. The Revue spiritualiste — Google Books, which is published regularly every month, refuses no subscription from the profane, and whoever wishes may buy the books that contain the revealed text, with its authentic commentary on it.

“We would be led to believe that a religion consisting solely in the evocation of the dead would be very hostile to the Catholic Church, which has never ceased to forbid the practice of necromancy. But these petty thoughts, however natural they may seem, are no less foreign, we are assured, to the heart of the spiritualists. They do justice to the Gospel and to its Author; they confess that Jesus lived, acted, spoke, and suffered as our four evangelists narrate. The evangelical doctrine is true; but this revelation, of which Jesus was the instrument, far from excluding progress, must be completed. It is spiritualism that will give to the Gospel the sound interpretation it lacks and the completion it has awaited for eighteen centuries. “Meanwhile, who shall set the limits to the progress of Christianity taught, interpreted, and developed such as it is by the souls detached from matter, strangers to earthly passions, to our prejudices and to human interests? The infinite itself unfolds before us. Now, the infinite has no limits and everything leads us to expect that the revelation of the infinite will be continued without interruption; as the centuries flow by, one will see revelations added to revelations, without these mysteries ever being exhausted, whose extent and depth seem to increase as they free themselves from the obscurity which until now enveloped them.

“Hence the consequence that spiritualism is a religion, because it puts us intimately in relation with the infinite and absorbs, while enlarging it, the Christianity which, of all religious forms, present or past, is, as is readily confessed, the most elevated, the purest, and the most perfect. But to magnify Christianity is a difficult task, which cannot be accomplished without tearing down the barriers behind which it keeps itself entrenched. The rationalists respect no barrier; less ardent or better advised, the spiritualists find only two, whose reduction seems indispensable, namely: the authority of the Catholic Church and the dogma of eternal punishments.

“Does this life constitute the only trial that man is granted to pass through? Will the tree remain eternally on the side on which it fell? Is the state of the soul, after death, definitive, irrevocable, and eternal? No, answers spiritualist necromancy. Death ends nothing, everything begins again. For each of us death is the point of departure of a new incarnation, of a new life and of a new experience.

“According to German pantheism, God is not being, but the eternal becoming. Whatever God may be, for the Parisian spiritualists man has no other destiny than to become progressive or regressive, according to his merits and works. The moral or religious law has a true sanction in the other lives, where the good are rewarded and the wicked punished, but during a period more or less long, of years or of centuries, and not for all eternity.

“Is spiritualism the mystical form of error of which Mr. Jean Reynaud is the most legitimate representative? Perhaps. Is it permitted to go further and say that between Mr. Reynaud and the new sectaries there exists a bond closer than that of community of doctrines? Perhaps so. But this question, for lack of sure information, will not here be resolved in a decisive manner.

“More than the kinship or the heretical alliances of Mr. Jean Reynaud, what matters far more is the confusion of ideas, of which the progress of spiritualism is a sign; it is the ignorance in matters of religion that makes possible so much extravagance; it is the levity with which men, otherwise estimable, welcome these revelations from the other world, which possess no merit, not even that of novelty.

“It is not necessary to go back to Pythagoras and the Egyptian priests to discover the origins of contemporary spiritualism. We shall find them by handling the records of animal magnetism.

“Since the eighteenth century necromancy already played a great role in the practices of magnetism and, several years before the rapping Spirits manifested themselves in America, it was said that certain French magnetizers obtained, from the mouth of the dead or of the demons, the confirmation of the doctrines condemned by the Church, notably that of the errors of Origen, relative to the future conversion of the wicked angels and of the reprobates.

“Equally it must be said that the spiritualist medium, in the exercise of his functions, differs little from the subject in the hands of the magnetizer, and that the circle embraced by the revelations of the former likewise does not exceed that which is delimited by the vision of the latter.

“The teachings that public curiosity obtains in private matters, by means of necromancy, in general reveal nothing beyond what was already known before. The answer of the spiritualist medium is obscure on the points which our personal researches could not clarify; it is clear and precise in that which we know well; mute in all that escapes our studies and efforts. In a word, it seems that the medium has a magnetic vision of our soul, but discovers nothing beyond what is found engraved within it. But this explanation, which seems very simple, is nevertheless subject to grave difficulties. It supposes, in effect, that one soul can naturally read in the depths of another soul, without the concurrence of signs and independently of the will of the one who, at first sight, would become an open and very legible book. Now, the good or wicked angels naturally do not possess this privilege, neither as regards us, nor in the direct relations they maintain among themselves. God alone immediately penetrates the Spirits and scrutinizes to the bottom the hearts most obstinately closed to His light. “If the strangest spiritualist facts that are told are authentic, it will be necessary, in order to explain them, to have recourse to other principles. It is often forgotten that these facts generally refer to an object that strongly preoccupies the heart or the intelligence, that has provoked long researches and of which we often speak outside the spiritualist consultation. Under these conditions, which must not be lost sight of, a certain knowledge of the things that interest us does not absolutely exceed the natural limits of the power of the Spirits.

“Be that as it may, in the spectacle that today is offered to us there is nothing more than the evolution of magnetism, which strives to become a religion.

“Under the dogmatic and polemical form which the new religion owes to Mr. Jean Reynaud, it incurred the condemnation of the Council of Périgueux [see Réponse au Concile de Périgueux, by Jean Reynaud — Google Books.], whose authority, as everyone remembers, was gravely denied by the guilty party.

“In the mystical form it today assumes in Paris, it deserves to be studied, at least as a sign of the times in which we live. Spiritualism has already recruited a certain number of men, among whom several are honorably known in the world. This power of seduction that it exercises, the slow, but uninterrupted progress, attributed to it by witnesses worthy of faith, the pretensions it proclaims, the problems it presents, the harm it can do to souls, these are, without doubt, motives too well combined to attract the attention of Catholics. Let us beware of attributing to the new sect more importance than it really deserves. But, in order to avoid exaggeration, which amplifies everything, let us not fall either into the mania of denying or of belittling all things. Nolite omni spiritui credere, sed probate spiritus si ex Deo sint ; quoniam multi pseudoprophætæ exierunt in mundum (I Joannis 4:1)

[Believe not every Spirit, but try whether the Spirits are of God;

because many are the false prophets, who have arisen in the world.]”

Abbé François Chesnel.

— Monsieur l'Abbé, The article you published in the Univers, relative to Spiritism, contains several errors which it is important to rectify and which proceed, beyond doubt, from an incomplete study of the matter. To refute them all, it would be necessary to take up again, from the beginning, the various points of the theory, as well as the facts that serve as its basis, which I absolutely do not intend to do here. I limit myself, then, to the principal points.

You did well to recognize that the Spiritist ideas “have recruited a certain number of men honorably known in the world.” That fact, whose reality far surpasses what you believe, incontestably deserves the attention of every serious man, for so many personalities, eminent by intelligence, by knowledge, and by social position would not become impassioned for an idea devoid of some foundation. The natural conclusion is that at the bottom of all this there must be something.

Perhaps you will object that certain doctrines, half religious, half social, in recent years found sectaries in the very ranks of the intellectual aristocracy, which did not prevent them from falling into ridicule. Thus, then, men of intelligence may let themselves be seduced by utopias.

To this I will answer that utopias have their time: sooner or later reason does them justice. So it will be with Spiritism, if it is not a utopia. But if it is a truth, it will triumph over all oppositions, over all sarcasms; I will say even, over all persecutions, if these still belonged to our century, and the detractors will gain nothing. Cost what it may, its opponents will be obliged to accept it, as they accepted so many things against which protest had supposedly been raised in the name of reason.

Is Spiritism a truth? The future will judge it. It seems, however, that it is already pronouncing itself, such is the rapidity with which these ideas spread. And, note it well, it is not in the ignorant and illiterate class that adherents are found, but, quite on the contrary, among enlightened persons.

It is also to be noted that all philosophical doctrines constitute the work of men, imbued with ideals more or less great, more or less just; all have a chief, around whom other men have grouped themselves who share the same point of view.

Who is the author of Spiritism? True or false, who imagined this theory? It is true that there has been an effort to coordinate it, to formulate it, to explain it. But who conceived the first idea? No one; or, better said, everyone, because all were able to see, and those who did not see were those who did not want to see or wanted to see it in their own way, without leaving the circle of preconceived ideas, which caused them to see and judge ill.

Spiritism arises from observations that everyone can make and that constitute no one's privilege, which explains its irresistible propagation. It is not the product of any individual system, and that is what distinguishes it from all other philosophical doctrines.

You said that these revelations from the other world do not even have the merit of novelty. Would novelty, then, be a merit? Who ever claimed that it was a modern invention? Being a consequence of human nature, and occurring by the will of God, these communications form part of the immutable laws by which He governs the world; they must therefore have existed since man has existed on Earth. This is why we find them in the most remote Antiquity, among all peoples, both in profane history and in sacred history. The antiquity and the universality of this belief are arguments in its favor. To draw unfavorable conclusions therefrom would be, above all, to fail entirely in logic.

Then you said that the faculty of the mediums differs little from that of the subjects in the hand of the magnetizer, otherwise called somnambulists; but let us even admit that there be perfect identity.

What could be the cause of that admirable somnambulistic clairvoyance which finds no obstacle either in matter or in distance, and which is exercised without the concurrence of the organs of sight? Would it not be the most patent demonstration of the existence and the individuality of the soul, the pivot of religion?

If I were a priest, and if during the sermon I wished to prove that there is in us something more than the body, I would demonstrate it in an irrefutable manner by the phenomena of somnambulism, natural or artificial. If mediumship is nothing more than a variety of somnambulism, its effects are no less worthy of observation for that. In them I would find one more proof in favor of my thesis and would make of it a new weapon against atheism and materialism.

All our faculties are the work of God. The greater and more marvelous they are, the more they attest His power and His goodness.

For me, who for thirty-five years made a special study of somnambulism; who saw in it a variety no less profound than the many modalities that exist of mediums, I assure, like all those who do not judge from the sight of a single facet of the problem, that the medium is endowed with a particular faculty, which cannot be confounded with the somnambulist, and that the perfect independence of his thought is proved by facts of the greatest evidence, for all those who place themselves in the conditions required to observe without partiality.

Abstraction made of the written communications, what somnambulist ever caused a thought to spring forth from an inert body? Who produced visible and even tangible apparitions? Who was able to hold a heavy body in space without a point of support? Was it by somnambulistic effect that a medium drew, a fortnight ago, in my house, in the presence of twenty witnesses, the portrait of a young person, deceased eighteen months before, whom he had never known, a portrait recognized by the father, who was present at the session? Is it by somnambulistic effect that a table answers with precision the questions proposed, including mental questions?

Certainly, if we admit that the medium is in a magnetic state, it seems difficult to believe that the table is a somnambulist.

You say that the medium speaks clearly only of the things that he knows. How to explain the following fact, and hundreds of others of the same kind, which have been reproduced innumerable times and which are within my personal knowledge? One of my friends, an excellent psychographic medium, asks a Spirit whether a person whom he had not seen for fifteen years still belonged to this world. “Yes, she still lives; she dwells in Paris, on such a street, at such a number.” He goes and finds the person at the indicated address. Was it an illusion? Could his thought suggest that answer to him? If, in certain cases, the answers may coincide with the thought, is it rational to conclude that it is a general law? In this, as in all things, hasty judgments are always dangerous, because they may be contradicted by the facts that have not been observed.

In spite of this, Monsieur l'Abbé, my intention is not to give here a course in Spiritism, nor to discuss whether it is right or wrong. It would be necessary, as I said a moment ago, to recall the numerous facts that I cited in the Spiritist Review, as well as the explanations given in my various writings.

I come, finally, to the part of your article that seems to me the most important.

You entitle your article: “A new religion in Paris.” Admitting that such were, in effect, the character of Spiritism, there would be a first error there, considering that it is far from being confined to Paris. It counts millions of adherents scattered in the five parts of the world and Paris was not the primitive focus.

In the second place, is Spiritism a religion? It is easy to demonstrate the contrary. n Spiritism is based on the existence of an invisible world, formed of incorporeal beings who people space and who are nothing more than the souls of those who lived on Earth or on other globes, where they left their material envelopes. It is these beings to whom we had given, or rather, who gave themselves the name of Spirits. These beings, who surround us incessantly, exercise over men, in spite of themselves, a great influence; they play a very active role in the moral world and, to a certain point, in the physical world.

Spiritism, then, is in Nature and one may say that, in a certain order of ideas, it is a force, as electricity also is from a different point of view, just as universal gravitation, equally.

It unveils to us the world of the invisibles, as the microscope unveiled to us the world of the infinitely small, whose existence we did not even suspect. The phenomena whose source is that invisible world must have been produced and were produced in all times, which is why the history of all peoples makes mention of them. Only men, in their ignorance, attributed them to causes more or less hypothetical and, on that account, gave free rein to the imagination, as they did with all the phenomena whose nature they only imperfectly knew.

Spiritism, better observed since it became widespread, comes to cast light upon a multitude of problems hitherto insoluble or ill resolved. Its true character is, then, that of a science and not that of a religion, 24 and the proof of this is that it counts, among its adherents, men of all creeds, who have not for that renounced their convictions: fervent Catholics, who practice all the duties of their worship, Protestants of all sects, Israelites, Muslims, and even Buddhists and Brahmanists. There is everything, except materialists and atheists, because these ideas are incompatible with the Spiritist observations.

Spiritism, then, rests upon general principles, independent of every dogmatic question.

It is true that it has moral consequences, like all the philosophical sciences. These consequences are in the sense of Christianity, because, of all doctrines, Christianity is the most enlightened, the purest, which is why, of all the religious sects of the world, the Christian ones are the most apt to comprehend it in its true essence.

Spiritism is not, then, a religion. If it were, it would have its worship, its temples, its ministers.

Without doubt each one may make a religion of his opinions and interpret at will the known religions, but from there to the constitution of a new Church there is a great distance and I believe it would be imprudence to follow such an idea.

In sum, Spiritism occupies itself with the observation of facts and not with the particularities of this or that creed, with the research of causes, with the explanation that these facts may give of known phenomena, both in the moral order and in the physical order, and it imposes no worship upon its partisans, as astronomy does not impose the worship of the stars, nor pyrotechnics the worship of fire.

Still more: in the same way that Sabaeism was born of astronomy ill understood, Spiritism, ill understood in Antiquity, was the source of polytheism.

Today, thanks to the lights of Christianity, we can judge it with more discernment. It puts us on guard against the erroneous systems, fruits of ignorance, 32 and religion itself may draw from it the palpable proof of many truths contested by certain opinions. This is why, contrary to the greater part of the philosophical sciences, one of its effects is to lead back to religious ideas those who have strayed into an exaggerated skepticism.

The Society to which you refer defines its aim in its very title; the denomination Parisian Society for Spiritist Studies does not resemble that of any sect; so different is its character that its statute forbids treating of religious questions; it is classified in the category of scientific societies, because, in effect, its aim is to study and to deepen all the phenomena that result from the relations between the visible and invisible worlds; it has its president, its secretary, and its treasurer, like all societies; it does not invite the public to its sessions; there no discourse is delivered, nor anything that has the character of any worship. It conducts its works with calm and recollection, first because it is a necessary condition for the observations and, second, because it knows that those who no longer live on Earth must be respected. It calls them in the name of God because it believes in God, in His Omnipotence, and knows that nothing is done in this world without His permission. It opens the sessions with a general appeal to the good Spirits, since, knowing that there are good and wicked ones, it takes care that the latter do not come to mingle fraudulently in the communications it receives and lead it into error.

What does that prove? That we are not atheists; but it in no way implies that we are partisans of a religion. Of this the person who described to you what takes place among us ought to have been convinced, had he followed our works and, above all, had he judged them with less levity and perhaps with a less prejudiced and less impassioned spirit.

Thus, the facts themselves protest against the qualification of new sect that you gave to the Society, certainly because you do not know it better.

You end your article by drawing the attention of Catholics to the harm that Spiritism may do to souls. If the consequences of Spiritism were the negation of God, of the soul, of its individuality after death, of the free will of man, of future punishments and rewards, it would be a profoundly immoral doctrine. Far from that, it proves, not by reasoning, but by facts, those fundamental bases of religion, whose most powerful enemy is materialism.

Still more: by its consequences it teaches one to bear with resignation the miseries of this life; it calms despair; it teaches men to love one another as brothers, according to the divine precepts of Jesus.

If you knew, as I do, how many hardened unbelievers it has caused to be reborn; how many victims it snatched from suicide by the prospect of the lot reserved for those who abridge life, contrary to the will of God; how many hatreds it calmed, how many enemies it brought together! Is it this that you call doing harm to souls? No; you cannot think so. I prefer to suppose that, if you knew it better, you would judge it otherwise.

You will say that religion can do all this. Far be it from me to contest it. But do you believe that it would have been better, for those whom it found rebellious, to remain in an absolute incredulity? If Spiritism triumphed over them, if it made clear to them what before was obscure, evident what seemed doubtful to them, where is the harm? For me, instead of losing souls, it saved them.

Accept, etc.

Allan Kardec.

[Review of July 1859.]

Reply to the Rejoinder of Abbé Chesnel in the “Univers”.

The newspaper Univers inserted, in its issue of last May 28, the reply we had given to the article of Abbé Chesnel on Spiritism, following it with a rejoinder from the latter. Reproducing all the arguments of the first, less the urbanity of form which everyone agreed to do justice to, we could not answer this second article except by repeating what we had already said, which seems to us entirely useless. Abbé Chesnel strives always to prove that Spiritism is, must be, and cannot fail to be anything but a new religion, because a philosophy arises from it and because in it we occupy ourselves with the physical and moral constitution of the worlds. Under this aspect, all philosophies would be religions. Now, as systems flow in in abundance and all of them have partisans more or less numerous, this would singularly restrict the circle of Catholicism. We do not know to what point it would be imprudent and dangerous to enunciate such a doctrine, since it is to provoke a schism that does not exist; it is, at least, to give the idea of one. See, a little, to what consequences you arrive. When science came to contest the meaning of the biblical text of the six days of Creation, anathemas were hurled and it was said that it was an attack on religion. Today, that the facts have given reason to science, that there are no longer means of contesting them except by denying the light, the Church has put itself in agreement with science. Let us suppose, then, that it had been said that that scientific theory was a new religion, a sect, because it seemed in contradiction with the sacred books and because it overthrew an interpretation given for centuries, whence resulting that it was not possible to be Catholic and to adopt these new ideas. Let us think, then, to what the number of Catholics would be reduced, if all those were excluded who do not believe that God made the Earth in six times twenty-four hours!

The same happens with Spiritism. If you look upon it as a new religion, it is that in your eyes it is not Catholic. Now, follow our reasoning well. One of two things: either it is a reality, or a utopia. If it is a utopia, there is no reason to concern oneself with it, since it will fall of itself. If it is a reality, all the thunderbolts will not prevent it from being, in the same way that, formerly, the Earth was never prevented from turning. If, truly, there is an invisible world that surrounds us; if we can enter into communication with that world and obtain from it teachings about the state of its inhabitants – and all of Spiritism is contained therein – in a short time this will seem as natural as to see the Sun at midday or to find thousands of living and invisible beings in a drop of limpid water. That belief will become so common that you will be forced to surrender to the evidence. If in your eyes that belief is a new religion, it is outside Catholicism, because it cannot be simultaneously the Catholic religion and a new religion. If, by the force of things and of evidence, it becomes generalized – and it cannot fail to be so, since it concerns a law of Nature – according to your point of view there would no longer be any Catholics and you yourself would no longer be Catholic, because you would see yourself forced to act like everyone. Here, Monsieur l'Abbé, is the ground onto which your doctrine drags us, and it is so absolute that you already gratify me with the title of high priest of that religion, an honor of which I did not suspect. But you go further: in your opinion, all mediums are priests of that religion. Here I stop you in the name of logic. Until now it had seemed to me that sacerdotal functions were optional; that one was a priest only by an act of one's own will; that one was not so unwittingly and in virtue of a natural faculty. Now, the mediumistic faculty is a natural faculty, which depends on one's organization, like the somnambulistic faculty; it requires neither sex, nor age, nor instruction, for we find it in children, in women, and in old men, in the learned as well as in the ignorant. Would it be comprehensible that boys and girls should be priests and priestesses without willing it and without knowing it? In truth, Monsieur l'Abbé, it is to abuse the right of interpreting words. As I have said, Spiritism is outside all dogmatic beliefs, with which it does not concern itself. We consider it only as a philosophical science, which explains to us a portion of things that we do not understand and, for that very reason, instead of stifling the religious ideas, like certain philosophies, it causes them to spring forth in those in whom they do not exist. But if at all costs you wish to elevate it to the level of a religion, you yourself launch it onto a new path. This is what many ecclesiastics perfectly understand who, far from letting themselves be dragged toward schism, strive to reconcile things, in virtue of this reasoning: If there are manifestations of the invisible world, this cannot occur except by the will of God and we cannot go against His will, unless we say that, in this world, something happens without His permission, which would be an impiety. If I had the honor of being a priest, I would use this in favor of religion; I would make of it a weapon against incredulity and would say to the materialists and atheists: You ask for proofs? Here they are: it is God who sends them. [1] Translator's Note: In vain will one try to deny the religious aspect of Spiritism, taking as a basis, in isolation, the present reasoning of Allan Kardec. One must examine the whole of his work, in order not to arrive at hasty conclusions. In the Spiritist Review of December 1868 the Codifier defends in a peremptory manner the religious character of the Spiritist Doctrine.