Mr. Allan Kardec's Reply to the Gazette de Lyon.

— Under the title A Spiritist Session, the Gazette de Lyon, in its issue of August 2, 1860, published the following article, to which Mr. Allan Kardec, during his visit to Lyon, gave the reply set forth below, even though that newspaper has not yet deigned to reproduce it.

The name Spiritists is given to certain deranged persons who, despite having broken with all the religious beliefs of their time and their country, claim to enter into relations with the Spirits.

Conceived from the turning tables, Spiritism is merely one of the thousand forms of that pathological state into which the human brain can fall when it lets itself be carried away by those countless aberrations of which Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the present times have not failed to provide many examples.

Prudently condemned by the Catholic Church, all these mysterious investigations, which escape the domain of positive facts, have no other result than to produce madness in those who occupy themselves with them, supposing that this state of madness has not already passed into a chronic state in the brain of the adepts, which is far from being demonstrated.

The Spiritists have a journal in Paris and it is enough to read a few passages to convince ourselves that we exaggerate nothing. The ineptitude of the questions addressed to the evoked Spirits is comparable only to the stupidity of their answers and, with good reason, one is permitted to tell them that it is not worth coming back from the other world to speak so many foolish things.

In short, this new madness, copied from the ancients, has just descended upon our city. Lyon has its Spiritists, and it is in the homes of simple weavers that the Spirits deign to manifest themselves.

The cave of Trophonius is situated (sic) in a workshop; the high priest of the place is a silk weaver and his wife is the sibyl; the adepts are, in general, workers, for those who, by their outward appearance, might betray much intelligence are not easily received there. The Spirits deign to manifest themselves only to the simple. It was probably this that earned us our admission to that place.

Invited to attend one of the weekly meetings of the Lyonese Spiritists, we entered a workshop where there were four looms, one of which was idle. There, among the four uprights of these machines, the sibyl sat before a square table, on which there was a notebook and, beside it, a goose quill. Note well that we said a goose quill, and not a metal pen, for the Spirits have a horror of metals.

Twenty to twenty-five people of both sexes, including this your servant, formed a circle around the table.

After a little speech [1] from the high priest on the nature of the Spirits, all in a style that ought to enchant the Spirits, owing to its… simplicity, the questions began.

A young man approaches and asks the sibyl why, eight days before the battles, whether in the Crimea or in Italy, he always found himself summoned elsewhere.

The inspired one — that is the name they give her — taking the goose quill, moves it over the paper, on which she traces cabalistic signs, and then pronounces this formula: “My God, grant me the grace to enlighten us on this matter.” She then adds: “I read the following answer: It is that you are destined to live in order to instruct and enlighten your brothers.”

Evidently, it is an influential adept whom they wish to win over to the cause. Besides, he had been a soldier, perhaps a former zouave; let us not make an issue of it; let us go on.

Another young man approaches in his turn and asks whether the Spirit of his father accompanied and protected him in the battles.

Answer: Yes.

We approached the young man aside and asked him how long his father had been dead.

— My father is not dead, he replied.

Next an old man presents himself and asks — note well the subtlety of the question, imitated from Tarquin the Elder — whether what he is thinking was the reason his father gave him the name John.

Answer: Yes.

An old soldier of the first empire then asks whether the Spirits of the soldiers of the old empire did not accompany our young soldiers to the Crimea and to Italy.

Answer: Yes.

Next, a superstitious question is put by a lady: Why is Friday a day of ill omen?

The answer was not long in coming and, surely, deserves that one take care, because of various historical obscurities that it sets aside. — It is, replied the inspired one, because Moses, Solomon, and Jesus Christ died on that day.

A young Lyonese worker, judging by his accent, wishes to be enlightened about a marvelous fact. One night, he says, my mother felt a face touching hers; she awakens me and my father, we search everywhere and find nothing. Suddenly, however, one of our looms begins to clatter; as we approach, it stops. Another also begins to clatter, at the far end of the workshop. We were terrified, and everything grew worse when we saw them all working at the same time, without our perceiving anyone. — It is your grandfather, replied the sibyl, who comes to ask for prayers.

To which the young man replied with an air that ought to assure him easy access to the sanctuary: That is exactly it. Poor old man! They had promised him masses, which were not celebrated.

Another worker asks why, on several occasions, the needle of his balance moved by itself.

— It is a rapping Spirit, the inspired one replies, that produced the phenomenon.

— Very well, replies the worker; I made the prodigy cease by putting a piece of lead on the lighter pan.

— It is quite simple, continued the soothsayer, the Spirits have a horror of lead, owing to the mirage.

Everyone wants to know the meaning of the word mirage.

There the sibyl's power stops: God does not wish to explain this, she says, not even to me!

It was a considerable reason, before which everyone bowed.

Then the high priest, foreseeing inward objections, took the floor and said: — On this question, gentlemen, we must abstain, because we should be drawn into other scientific questions that we cannot resolve.

At that moment the questions multiplied and crossed one another:

Whether the signs that have appeared to us in the sky for some time (the comets) are those of which the Apocalypse speaks?

— Answer: Yes; and in a hundred and forty years the world will no longer exist.

— Why did Jesus Christ say that there would always be poor people?

— Answer: Jesus Christ meant the poor in spirit; for these, God has just prepared a special globe.

We shall not emphasize all the importance of such an answer. Who does not understand how happy our descendants will be when they no longer have to fear contact with the poor in spirit? As for the others, the sibyl's answer fortunately allows us to suppose that their reign has ended. Good news for the economists, whom the problem of pauperism prevents from sleeping.

To conclude, a woman between forty and fifty years of age approaches, and asks whether her Spirit has already been incarnated and how many times.

Like me, you would be greatly embarrassed to answer. But the Spirits have an answer for everything:

— Yes, replies the goose quill, it was three times: the first, as the natural daughter of a respectable Russian princess (that respectable, next to the preceding word, intrigues me); the second, as the legitimate daughter of a ragpicker of Bohemia; and the third, she knows it herself…

We hope this sample of a session of the Lyonese Spiritists suffices to demonstrate that the Spirits of Lyon are quite the equal of those of Paris.

But, we ask, would it not be a case for preventing poor madmen from becoming even madder?

Formerly the Church was powerful enough to impose silence on such ramblings. Perhaps it punished too much, it is true, but it held back the evil. Today, considering that religious authority is powerless, that good sense has not enough power to do justice to such hallucinations, ought not the other authority to intervene in this case, putting an end to practices whose least inconvenience is to make those who occupy themselves with them ridiculous?

C. M.

MR. ALLAN KARDEC'S REPLY To the Editor of the Gazette de Lyon.

Sir, There has been sent to me an article, signed by C. M., which you published in the Gazette de Lyon of August 2, 1860, under the title: A Spiritist Session. In that article, if I am attacked only indirectly, I am so in the person of all those who share my convictions. This, however, would amount to nothing, if your words did not tend to falsify public opinion regarding the principle and the consequences of Spiritist practices, covering with ridicule and censuring those who profess them, and whom you point out to legal vengeance. I beg your leave to make a few corrections in this regard, hoping from your impartiality that you will publish my reply, since you saw fit to publish the attack. Do not think, sir, that I have the aim of convincing you, nor of returning insult for insult. Whatever the reasons that prevent you from sharing our way of seeing, I do not think of seeking them out, and I respect them, if they are sincere. I claim only the reciprocity practiced among people who know how to live together. As for uncivil epithets, it is not my custom to use them.

If you had seriously discussed the principles of Spiritism; if you had opposed to them any arguments, good or bad, I should have been able to answer you. But since all your argumentation is restricted to qualifying us as imbeciles, it is not for me to discuss with you whether or not you are right. I limit myself, then, to pointing out what is inexact in your assertions, apart from all personal matters.

It is not enough to tell people who do not think as we do that they are imbeciles: this is within anyone's reach. It is necessary to demonstrate to them that they are mistaken. But how to do it? How to enter into the heart of the question, if one does not know its first word? Now, I believe this is the case in which you find yourself, for otherwise you would have employed better weapons than the banal accusation of stupidity. When you have devoted to the study of Spiritism the necessary moral time — and I warn you that a good deal is needed; when you have read everything that can ground your opinion, gone deeply into all the questions, attended, as a conscientious and impartial observer, some thousands of experiments, your criticism will have some value. Until then, it is merely a personal opinion, which rests on nothing and concerning which you may, word for word, be caught in flagrant delict of ignorance. The beginning of your article is a proof of this. You say: “The name Spiritists is given to certain deranged persons who have broken with all the religious beliefs of their epoch and their country.” Do you know, sir, that this accusation is very grave, and all the graver in that it is, at the same time, false and slanderous? Spiritism is based entirely on the dogma of the existence of the soul, its survival of the body, its individuality after death, its immortality, future punishments and rewards. Not only does it sanction these truths by theory; it is of its essence to prove them in a patent manner. This is why so many people, who believed in nothing, have been led back to religious ideas. All its morality is summed up in the development of these maxims of the Christ: To practice charity, to repay evil with good, to be indulgent toward one's neighbor, to forgive one's enemies; in a word, to act toward others as we would wish them to act toward us. Do you, then, find these ideas so stupid? Have those broken with all religious belief who rest upon the very foundations of religion? No, you will say, but one need only be a Catholic to have such ideas. To have them, granted; but to practice them is another matter, it seems. Is it very evangelical for you, a Catholic, to insult simple people, who have never done you any harm, whom you do not know, and who had enough confidence in you to receive you among them? Let us grant that they are mistaken; will it be by covering them with insult and irritating them that you will lead them back? Your article contains an error of fact which, once again, proves your ignorance in matters of Spiritism. You say: The adepts, in general, are workers. Know then, sir, for your guidance, that of the five or six million Spiritists who exist at present, nearly all belong to the most enlightened classes of society; among its adherents, it counts a great number of physicians in every country, lawyers, magistrates, men of letters, high officials, officers of every rank, artists, scholars, merchants, etc., persons whom you flippantly place among the inept. But let us set this aside. Do the words insult and injury seem to you too strong? Let us see. Did you weigh well the import of your words when, after having said that the adepts are generally workers, you add, regarding the Lyonese meetings: for those who, by their outward appearance, might betray much intelligence are not easily received there. The Spirits deign to manifest themselves only to the simple. It was probably this that earned us our admission to that place. And further on, this other sentence: After a little “speech” from the high priest on the nature of the Spirits, all in a style that ought to enchant the Spirits, owing to its simplicity, the questions began. I do not recall the witticisms relating to the goose quill, which, in your opinion, the medium made use of, nor other things, also rather witty; I speak more seriously. I shall make only one simple observation: your eyes and ears served you very ill, since the medium of whom you speak does not make use of a goose quill, and both the form and the substance of most of the questions and answers that you report in your article are pure invention. They are, then, little slanders, through which you wished to make your intelligence shine. Thus, according to what you think, in order to be admitted to these meetings of workers one must be a worker, that is, devoid of good sense, and you were introduced there only because they certainly took you for a fool. It is likely that they would have shut the door on you, had they judged you to have enough wit to invent things that do not exist.

Have you considered, sir, that you attack not only the Spiritists, but the whole working class and, in particular, that of Lyon? Do you forget that it is these same workers, these weavers, as you say with affectation, who make the prosperity of your city through their industry? Would they have been creatures without moral worth, the workers who produced Jacquard? Whence have come, in good number, your manufacturers, who acquired their fortune by the sweat of their brow and thanks to order and economy? Is it not insulting labor to compare their looms to ignoble gallows? You ridicule their language and forget that their trade does not allow them to make academic discourses. Will it require excessive frankness to say what one thinks? Your words, sir, are not merely flippant — I use this word out of consideration — they are imprudent. If ever God has reserved for you ill-fated days, pray to Him that the weavers of Lyon may not remember this. Those who are Spiritists will forget it, because charity commands it. Therefore, make a wish that all may be so, since it is in Spiritism that they draw the principles of social order, of respect for property, and of religious sentiments. Do you know what the Lyonese Spiritist workers do, whom you treat with so much contempt? Instead of unbalancing themselves in a tavern, or feeding on subversive and chimerical doctrines, in that workshop which in derision you compare to the cave of Trophonius, in the midst of those looms of four uprights, they think of God. I saw them during my stay there; I conversed with them and convinced myself of the following: Among them many cursed their toilsome labor; today they accept it with the resignation of the Christian, as a trial; many looked with jealousy and envy upon the lot of the rich; today they know that wealth is a trial even more dangerous than that of misery, and that the unfortunate one who suffers and does not yield to temptation is the true elect of God; they know that true happiness does not lie in the superfluous and that those who are called the happy of this world also endure cruel anguishes, which gold does not soothe. Many laughed at prayer; today they pray and have found again the road to the church, which they had forgotten, because formerly they believed in nothing and now they believe; several would have succumbed to despair; today, knowing the lot of those who voluntarily shorten their life, they resign themselves to the will of God, for they know that they have a soul, of which before they were not certain. In short, because they know that they are only passing through the Earth, and that the justice of God fails no one. There, sir, is what these inept ones, as you call them, know and do. Perhaps they express themselves in a language that is ridiculous, trivial in the eyes of a man of wit like yourself, but in the eyes of God merit lies in the heart and not in the elegance of phrases.

Elsewhere you say: Formerly the Church was powerful enough to impose silence on such ramblings. Perhaps it punished too much, it is true, but it held back the evil. Today, considering that religious authority is powerless, ought not the other authority to intervene in this case? Indeed, it burned people. It is truly regrettable that there are no more stakes. Oh! deplorable effects of the progress of enlightenment!

It is not my habit to answer diatribes. If it were only a matter of myself, I should have said nothing; but, regarding a belief that I am proud to profess, because it is an eminently Christian belief, you ridicule honest and laborious people, because they are unlettered, forgetting that Jesus himself was a worker; you incite them with irritating words; you call down upon them the rigors of civil and religious authority, when they are peaceable and understand the emptiness of the utopias with which they were lulled and which frighten you. I had to take up their defense, recalling the duties that charity imposes and telling them that, if others do not fulfill their obligations, that is no reason for them to stray from the straight path. There, sir, are the counsels I give them; they are also those given to them by the Spirits who commit the folly of addressing themselves to simple and ignorant people and not to you. It is, probably, because they know that they will be more heeded. By the way, could you tell me why Jesus chose his apostles among the common people, and not among men of letters? Doubtless because at that time there were no journalists to tell him what he ought to do. You will say, no doubt, that your criticism touches only the belief in Spirits and their manifestations, and not the sacred principles of religion. I am sure of this. But then, why did you say that the Spiritists had broken with all religious principles? It is that you did not know on what they rest. Nevertheless, you saw a medium pray with recollection, and you, a Catholic, laughed at a person who was praying!

Probably you do not know, either, what the Spirits are. The Spirits are nothing other than the soul of those who have lived; souls and Spirits are, then, one and the same thing, so that to deny the existence of the Spirits is to deny the soul. To admit the soul, its survival, its individuality, is to admit the Spirits. The whole question, therefore, comes down to knowing whether, after death, the soul can manifest itself to the living. The sacred books and the fathers of the Church recognized it. If the Spirits are mistaken, those authorities were also deceived. To prove it, one must demonstrate, not by a simple negation, but by peremptory reasons: 1st That the being which thinks in us during life can no longer think after death;

2nd That, if it thinks, it must no longer think of those whom it loved;

3rd That, if it thinks of those it loved, it must no longer wish to communicate with them;

4th That, if it can be everywhere, it cannot be at our side;

5th That, if it is at our side, it cannot communicate with us. If you knew the state of the Spirits, their nature and, if I may so express myself, their physiological constitution, such as they describe it to us and such as observation confirms it for us, you would know that, Spirit and soul being one and the same thing, the only thing the Spirit lacks is the body, of which it divests itself on dying, but there remains to it, however, an ethereal envelope, which constitutes for it a fluidic body, by the aid of which it can, in certain circumstances, become visible. This is what occurs in the cases of apparitions, which the Church itself perfectly admits, seeing that of some of them it makes articles of faith. This basis being given, to the preceding propositions I shall add the following, asking you to prove: 6th That, by its fluidic envelope, the Spirit cannot act upon inert matter;

7th That, if it can act upon inert matter, it cannot act upon an animate being;

8th That, if it can act upon an animate being, it cannot direct its hand to make it write;

9th That, being able to make it write, it cannot answer its questions and transmit its thought to it.

When you have demonstrated that all this is impossible, by means of reasonings as patent as those by which Galileo demonstrated that it is not the Sun that turns, then your opinion may be taken into consideration.

You will object, no doubt, that in their communications the Spirits sometimes say absurd things. This is true; and they do more: at times they say coarse and impertinent things. It is that, on leaving the body, the Spirit does not immediately divest itself of all its imperfections. It is, then, probable that those who say ridiculous things as Spirits said still more ridiculous things when they were among us. This is why we do not accept more blindly everything that comes from them than what comes from men. As, however, I do not intend to give a course, I shall stop here. It was enough for me to prove that you had spoken of Spiritism without knowing it. Accept, sir, my respectful greetings.

Allan Kardec.

[1] Translator's note: Speech, introductory address.