Reply to Mr. Oscar Comettant.

Sir, You devoted to the Spirits and their adherents the feuilleton of the Siècle of last October 27. Despite the ridicule you cast upon a question far more serious than you think, it pleases me to acknowledge that, in attacking the principle, you preserve propriety through the urbanity of your form, since it is not possible to say more politely that we lack good sense. Thus, I shall not confuse your witty article with those coarse diatribes that give a sorry idea of the “good taste” of their authors, to whom all distinguished persons, whether or not they are our adherents, do justice.

As I am not in the habit of replying to criticisms, I would have let your article pass, like so many others, had I not been charged by the Spirits, first, to thank you for having concerned yourself with them and, then, to give you a piece of advice. You well understand, Sir, that I would not allow myself to do so of my own accord; I am discharging my task, that is all. — “What!” you will say, “so the Spirits concern themselves with a feuilleton I wrote about them? That would be very kind of them.” — Certainly, for they were at your side when you were writing. One of them, who is fond of you, even went so far as to try to prevent you from using certain reflections that he judged to be beneath your sagacity, fearing for you the criticism, not of the Spirits, with whom you concern yourself little, but of those who know the reach of your judgment. Be assured that they are everywhere, that they know all that is said and done and, at the moment you read these lines, they will be at your side, observing you. But, you will say: — “I cannot believe in the existence of these beings who people space, but whom we do not see.”

— Do you believe in the air, which you do not see and which, nonetheless, surrounds you?

— “That is quite different. I believe in the air because, even though I do not see it, I feel it, I hear it roar in the storm and resound in the chimney flue; I see the objects it knocks down.”

— Well then! The Spirits also make themselves heard; they also move heavy bodies, lift them, transport them, break them.

— “Come now, Mr. Allan Kardec! Appeal to your reason. How would you have it that impalpable beings, supposing they exist, which I would admit only if I saw them, have such power? How can immaterial beings act upon matter? This is not rational.”

— Do you believe in the existence of those myriads of animalcules that are on your hand, and of which the point of a needle could cover thousands?

— “Yes, because if I do not see them with my eyes, the microscope lets me see them.

— But before the invention of the microscope, if someone had told you that you have upon your skin thousands of insects swarming there; that a drop of clear water contains a whole population; that you absorb them en masse with the purest air you breathe, what would you have answered? You would have cried out against the absurdity and, were you a feuilletonist, you would not have failed to write a fine article against the animalcules, which would not have prevented them from existing. Today you admit it because the fact is evident, but before you would have declared it an impossible thing. What, then, is there irrational in the belief that space is peopled by intelligent beings who, though invisible, are by no means microscopic? As for me, I confess that the idea of beings as small as a homeopathic particle and yet provided with visual, reproductive, circulatory, respiratory organs, etc., seems to me even more extraordinary. — “I agree; but, once again, they are material beings, they represent something, whereas your Spirits are what? Nothing; merely abstract, immaterial beings.”

— In the first place, who told you that they are immaterial? Observation — weigh this word observation carefully, which does not mean system — observation, I repeat, demonstrates that these hidden intelligences have a body, an envelope, invisible it is true, — but no less real. Now, it is through this semimaterial intermediary that they act upon matter. Is it only solid bodies that have a motive force? Is it not, on the contrary, the rarefied bodies, such as air, vapor, all the gases and electricity, that possess this power to the highest degree? Why then would you deny it to the substance that constitutes the envelope of the Spirits?

— “Agreed. But if in certain cases these substances are invisible and impalpable, condensation can render them visible and even solid. We can take hold of them, keep them, analyze them, so that their existence is demonstrated in an irrefutable manner.”

— Indeed! You deny the Spirits because you cannot put them in a test tube and learn whether they are composed of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Tell me whether, before the discoveries of modern chemistry, the composition of air, of water, and the properties of that immensity of invisible bodies whose existence we did not even suspect, were known. What would they have said, then, to anyone who announced all the marvels we admire today? They would have treated him as a charlatan, a visionary. Suppose there fell into your hands a book by a savant of that time, denying all these things and, moreover, having sought to demonstrate their impossibility. You would say: There is a very presumptuous savant, who pronounced very lightly, deciding upon what he did not know; for his reputation it would have been better to abstain. In a word, you would not form a very favorable judgment of his opinion. Well then! In a few years we shall see what is thought of those who today try to demonstrate that Spiritism is a chimera. It is doubtless regrettable for certain persons, as for certain collectors, that the Spirits cannot be placed within a glass flask, in order to be observed at will; do not imagine, however, that they escape our senses in an absolute manner. If the substance that composes their envelope is invisible in its normal state, it can also, in certain cases, like vapor, but from another cause, undergo a kind of condensation or, to be more exact, a molecular modification that renders it momentarily visible and even tangible. Then we can see them, as we see one another, touch them, feel them; they can take hold of us and leave an impression upon our limbs. Only this state is temporary; they can leave it as quickly as they assumed it, not by virtue of a mechanical rarefaction, but by the effect of the will, considering that they are intelligent beings and not inert bodies. If the existence of the intelligent beings who people space is proved; if, as we have just seen, they exercise an action upon matter, what is there surprising in their being able to communicate with us and transmit their thoughts by material means? “Very well, in case the existence of these beings is proved. But there lies the problem.”

Initially, the important thing is to prove this possibility: experience will do the rest. If for you this existence is not proved, it is for me. I hear from here that you say inwardly: There is a very feeble argument. I admit that my personal opinion carries little weight, but I am not alone. Before me, many others thought in the same way, for I neither invented nor discovered the Spirits. This belief counts millions of adherents, as intelligent as I or more so. Between those who believe and those who do not believe, who shall decide?

— “Good sense,” you will say.

— So be it. But I add: and time, which daily comes to our aid. But by what right do those who do not believe arrogate to themselves the privilege of good sense, especially when precisely those who believe are recruited, not among the ignorant, but among enlightened persons, whose number grows each day? I judge it by my correspondence, by the number of foreigners who visit me, by the acceptance of my journal, which is completing its second year and counts subscribers in the five parts of the world, in the most elevated strata of society and even upon thrones. Tell me, in conscience, whether this is the trajectory of an empty idea, of a utopia.

Noting this capital fact in your article, you say that it threatens to take on the proportions of a scourge and you add: “Was not the human species already dealing, O good God! with futilities enough to disturb its reason, even before this new doctrine came to take possession of our poor brain?” It seems you do not appreciate doctrines; each has his taste. Not everyone likes the same things. I will only say that I do not know to what intellectual role man would be reduced if, since he has been on Earth, doctrines had not arisen which, by making him reflect, drew him out of the passive state of the brute. Doubtless there are good and bad ones, true and false ones, but it was to discern them that God gave us reason. You forgot one thing: the clear and categorical definition of that which you classify among the futilities. There are persons who thus brand all ideas they do not share. But you have too much intelligence to believe that this has been concentrated in you alone. There are other persons who give this name to any religious opinion, considering the belief in God, in the soul and its immortality, in future penalties and rewards to be of use limited to women of the common people or to children one wishes to frighten. I do not know your opinion in this regard, yet, from the judgments you have expressed, some persons might infer that you accept these ideas a little. Whether you share them or not, I take the liberty of saying, like many others, that in them would lie the true scourge, should they spread. With materialism, which is the belief that we die like animals, that after us there will be nothingness, good will have no reason for being, social bonds no consistency: it is the sanction of egoism. The penal law will be the only curb to prevent man from living at the expense of another. If it were so, by what right would we punish the man who kills his fellow to seize his goods? Because it is an evil, you would say. But why this evil? He will answer you: After me there is nothing; everything ends; I have nothing to fear; I want to live here as well as possible and, for that, I will take from those who have. Who forbids me? Your law? Your law will be right if it is stronger, that is, if it catches me. But if I am more cunning, if I escape it, reason is on my side. What society, I ask, could subsist on such principles? This reminds me of the following fact: A gentleman who, as is commonly said, believed neither in God nor in the devil, and did not deny it, noticed that for some time he had been robbed by his servant. One day he caught him in the act and said to him: How dare you, wretch, take what does not belong to you? The domestic began to laugh and replied: Why should I believe, if you do not believe either? Why do you have more than I? If I were rich and you poor, who would prevent you from doing what I do? I had bad luck this time — that is all. Next time, I shall take care to act better.

That gentleman would have been more content had the domestic not taken the belief in God for a futility. It is to this belief and to those that flow from it that man owes his true social security, far more than to the severity of the law, because the law cannot reach everything. If the belief were rooted in the heart of all, they would have nothing to fear from one another. To level the batteries against it is to give free rein to all the passions, it is to annihilate all scruples. This is what recently led a priest, when he was asked to give his opinion on Spiritism, to utter these sensible words: Spiritism leads to belief in something. Now, I prefer those who believe in something to those who believe in nothing, for the latter do not even believe in the necessity of good.

Indeed, Spiritism is the destruction of materialism. It is the evident, irrefutable proof of that which certain persons call futilities, namely: God, the soul, the future life, happy or unhappy. This scourge, as you call it, has other practical consequences. If you knew, as I do, how many times it has restored calm to hearts ulcerated by grief; what sweet consolation it has spread over the miseries of life; how much hatred it has appeased, how many suicides it has prevented, you would not mock so much. Suppose that one of your friends comes to tell you “I was in despair; I was going to blow my brains out; but today, thanks to Spiritism, I know how much this would cost me and I give it up entirely.” If another individual tells you: “I envied your merit, your superiority; your success kept me from sleeping; I wanted to avenge myself, to defeat you, to ruin you, even to kill you. I confess you ran great dangers. Today, however, that I am a Spiritist, I understand all that is ignoble in those sentiments and I abjure them. And, instead of doing you harm, I come to render you a service.” You would probably say: “Excellent! It is just as well that there is something good in this madness.” What I am saying, Sir, does not aim to convince you nor to induce you to my ideas. You have convictions that satisfy you and that, for you, resolve all the questions of the future: it is, then, quite natural that you keep them. But you present me to your readers as the propagator of a scourge; I had to show them that it would be desirable that all scourges did no greater harm, beginning with materialism, so that I count on your impartiality to transmit my reply to them.

“But, you will say, I am not a materialist. One may very well not be a materialist and, even so, not believe in the manifestation of the Spirits.” — Agreed: then you are a spiritualist and not a Spiritist. If I was mistaken as to your manner of seeing, it is because I took literally the profession of faith placed at the end of your article. You say: “I believe in two things: in the love of men for all that is marvelous, even though this marvelous be absurd, and in the publisher who sold me the fragment of the sonata dictated by the Spirit of Mozart, at the price of 2 francs.” If all your belief is summed up in that, very well: to me it seems the first cousin of skepticism. But I wager that you believe in something more than in Mr. Ledoyen, who sold you for 2 francs a fragment of a sonata: you believe in the proceeds of your articles, for I presume that, unless I am mistaken, you do not offer them for the love of God, just as Mr. Ledoyen does not offer his books. Each has his trade: Mr. Ledoyen sells books, the man of letters sells prose and verse. Our poor world is not yet sufficiently advanced for us to be able to live, eat, and clothe ourselves for free. Perhaps one day the landlords, the tailors, the butchers, and the bakers will be sufficiently enlightened to understand that it is ignoble for them to ask for money; then the booksellers and the men of letters will be carried along by the example. “With all this you have not given me the advice the Spirits offer me.” — Here it is: It is prudent not to pronounce too lightly upon that which we do not know; let us imitate the wise reserve of the sage Arago, with regard to animal magnetism: “I could not approve of the mystery with which the serious scientists who today go to attend the experiments of somnambulism surround themselves. Doubt is a proof of modesty and rarely harms the progress of the sciences. We would not say the same of incredulity. He who, outside of pure mathematics, pronounces the word IMPOSSIBLE, fails in prudence. Reserve is a duty, especially when it concerns the animal organization.” (Notice on Bailly). [see also in the Review of August 1860: Questions of a Spiritist of Sétif to Mr. Oscar Comettant.]

Accept, etc.

Allan Kardec.