Opinion of a journalist

As is well known, the press does not die of love for us, which does not prevent Spiritism from advancing rapidly, evident proof that it is strong enough to march alone. If the press is mute or hostile, it would be an error to believe that it has against it all of its representatives. Many, on the contrary, are very sympathetic to it, but held back by personal considerations, because everyone wants someone else to set the example. In this time public opinion pronounces itself more and more. The idea is becoming generalized and, when it shall have invaded the masses, the progressive press will be forced indeed to follow it, under penalty of remaining with those who never advance. It will do so above all when it understands that Spiritism is the most powerful element of propagation for all the grand, generous, and humanitarian ideas that it never ceases to preach; doubtless its words are not lost; but how many blows of the pickaxe must be given to the rock of prejudices before breaking into it! Spiritism opens for them a fertile terrain and levels the last barriers that arrested their march. This is what those will understand who give themselves the trouble of studying it thoroughly, of measuring its scope and seeing its consequences, which already manifest themselves through positive results; but for this we need serious and not superficial observers, men who do not write for the sake of writing, but who make of their principles a religion. They will be found, let us not doubt it; and, sooner than one thinks, there will be seen at the head of the propagation of Spiritist ideas some of those names which, by themselves alone, are authorities and whose memory the future will preserve, as having contributed to the true emancipation of Humanity. The following article, published by the Akhbar, a newspaper of Algiers, of 15 October 1861 is, in this sense, a first step, which will certainly have imitators. Under the modest pseudonym of Ariel, our readers will perhaps recognize the practiced pen of one of our eminent journalists.

“The press of Europe has occupied itself a good deal with this work. After having read it, one understands why, whatever opinion one may have of the collaboration of the ultramundane intelligences which the author says he has obtained. Indeed, suppressing a few pages of introduction which set forth the ways and means of the said collaboration — the contestable part for the profane — there remains a book of high philosophy, of an eminently pure morality and, above all, of a most consoling effect for the human soul, beset between the sufferings of the present and the fear of the future. Thus, more than one reader must have said to himself, on reaching the last page: I do not know whether all this is true, but I should much like it to be!

“Who has not heard, for some years, of the strange communications of which certain privileged persons were the interpreters between our material world and the invisible world? Each one took sides in the question and, as habitually happens, the majority of those who placed themselves under the banner of the believers, or who entrenched themselves in the camp of the unbelievers, did not give themselves the trouble of verifying the facts, the reality of which was admitted by some and denied by others.

“But these are not subjects to be discussed in a newspaper of the nature of ours. Thus, without contesting or attesting the authenticity of the posthumous signatures of Plato, Socrates, Saint Augustine, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Saint Louis, Napoleon, etc., which are found at the foot of several paragraphs of Mr. Allan Kardec's book, we conclude that if these great men were to return to the world to give us explanations on the most interesting problems of Humanity, they would not express themselves with more lucidity, with a moral sense more profound, more delicate, with a greater elevation of views and of language than they do in the eccentric work of which we shall try to give an idea. These are things that are not read without emotion and are not of those that one soon forgets after having read them. In this sense, The Spirits' Book will not pass, like so many others, amid the indifference of the century: it will have ardent detractors, pitiless mockers, but we should not be surprised if, in compensation, it also had sincere and enthusiastic partisans.

“Not being able, in conscience, for lack of a prior verification, to place ourselves among one or the other, we remain in the humble office of reporter and say: Read this work, for it departs completely from the well-trodden byways of contemporary banality. If you are not seduced, subjugated, perhaps you will be irritated, but, with all certainty, you will be neither cold nor indifferent.

“We recommend, above all, the passage relative to death. Here is a theme upon which no one likes to fix his attention, even he who believes himself a strong and intrepid spirit. Well then! after having read and meditated, one feels much astonished no longer to find this supreme crisis so terrifying; on the subject, one arrives at the most desirable point, that at which we neither fear nor desire death. Other problems of no less importance have solutions equally consoling and unexpected. In short, the time that one consecrates to the reading of this book will be well employed for intellectual curiosity and will not be lost for moral improvement.”

Ariel.