Charles Fourier, Louis Jourdan and reincarnation.

— We extract the following passage from a letter that a friend of the author was kind enough to send us.

“Imagine what was my surprise when, in the Spiritist Doctrine, of which I had not the slightest idea, I recognized the whole theory of Fourier on the soul, the future life, the mission of man in the present life and the reincarnation of souls. Judge for yourself. Here, in summary, is the theory of Fourier:

“Man is bound to the planet; he lives his life and does not leave it even in dying.

“He has two existences: the present life, which Fourier compares to sleep, and the life he calls aromal, another life, in a word, which is the awakening. His soul passes alternately from one life to the other and returns periodically to reincarnate in the present life.

“In the present life the soul has not the sentiment of its previous lives, but it has it in the aromal life and sees all its past existences.

“The penalties in the aromal life are the fears that souls experience, when they reincarnate, of being condemned to animate the body of an unfortunate; for, says Fourier, one sees daily persons begging charity at the doors of the castles of which they were owners in their previous lives. And he adds: ‘If men were well convinced of the truth that I bring to the world, each one would strive to work for the happiness of all.’ “By this brief extract, dear friend, you can see how much the doctrine of Fourier and Spiritism resemble each other, and that, being a phalansterian, n it was not difficult to make of me an adept of the Spiritist Doctrine.”

— It is impossible to be more explicit on the chapter of reincarnation. It is not merely a vague idea of successive existences, through different worlds: it is in this one that man is reborn to purify himself and to expiate. Everything is there: alternations of spiritual life, which he calls aromal, and of corporeal life; in the latter, momentary forgetfulness of previous existences and remembrance of the past during the former; expiation through the vicissitudes of life. His picture of the unfortunate, coming to beg at the doors of the castles of which they were owners in preceding existences, seems modeled on the revelations of the Spirits. Why, then, did those who today are so stubborn against the doctrine of reincarnation say nothing when Fourier made of it one of the cornerstones of his theory? It is that, on that occasion, it seemed to them confined to the phalansteries, whereas today it runs through the world, besides other reasons, easily understandable, there being no need to develop them.

— Moreover, he was not the only one to have had the intuition of this law of Nature. The germ of this idea is found in a multitude of modern writers. Mr. Louis Jourdan, editor of the Siècle, formulated it in an unequivocal manner in his charming opuscule Prières de Ludovic, published for the first time in 1849, consequently before Spiritism was thought of. It is known that this book is not a work of fiction, but of conviction. Among other things, one reads in it the following:

“For my part, I confess, I believe firmly, passionately, as one believed in primitive epochs, that each of us today prepares his future transformation, just as our present existence is the product of previous existences.” The book is entirely modeled on this element.

— Now let us consider the question from another point of view, in order to answer a question that has been put to us several times in this regard.

Some persons oppose the doctrine of reincarnation because it contradicts the dogmas of the Church, thence concluding that it must not exist. What can we answer them?

The answer is very simple. Reincarnation is not a system that it depends on men to adopt or to reject, as one does with a political, economic or social system. If it exists, it is because it is in Nature; it is a law inherent to Humanity, like drinking, eating and sleeping; an alternation of the life of the soul, as wakefulness and sleep are alternations of the life of the body. If it is a law of Nature, it will not be a favorable opinion that will make it prevail, nor a contrary opinion that will invalidate it. The Earth does not turn around the Sun because one believes that it does, but because it obeys a law; and the anathemas hurled against this law did not prevent the Earth from turning. It is the same with reincarnation; it will not be the opinion of a few men that will prevent them from being reborn, if they have to be reborn. Admitting that reincarnation is a law of Nature, let us suppose that it cannot be reconciled with a dogma; the matter is to know who is right, the dogma or the law. Now, who is the author of a law of Nature, if not God? In this case I will say that it is not the law that contradicts the dogma, but the dogma that contradicts the law, taking into account that any law of Nature is anterior to the dogma and that men were reborn before the dogma was established. If there were absolute incompatibility between a dogma and a law of Nature, this would be proof that the dogma is the work of men, who did not know the law, since God cannot contradict Himself, undoing on the one side that which He did on the other. To maintain this incompatibility is, then, to put the dogma on trial. Does it follow that the dogma is false? No, but simply that it may be susceptible of an interpretation, as Genesis was interpreted when it was recognized that the six days of creation could not be reconciled with the law of the formation of the globe. Religion will gain by this, for it will find fewer unbelievers. The question is to know whether or not the law of reincarnation exists. For Spiritists there are thousands of proofs against one, which it is useless to repeat here. I will say only that Spiritism demonstrates that the plurality of existences is not only possible, but necessary, indispensable; and it finds its proof, abstraction made of the revelation of the Spirits, in an innumerable multitude of phenomena of the moral, psychological and anthropological order. Such phenomena are effects that have a cause. Seeking the cause, we find it in reincarnation, brought into evidence by the observation of those phenomena, as the presence of the Sun, though hidden by the clouds, is brought into evidence by the light of day. To prove that the law is wrong, or that it does not exist, it would be necessary to explain better, by other means, all that it explains, which no one has yet done. Before the discovery of the properties of electricity, anyone who had announced that, in five minutes, he could correspond at five hundred leagues, would not have lacked specialists who would prove to him scientifically, by the laws of mechanics, that the thing was materially impossible, for they knew no other laws. For this there was need of the revelation of a new force. It was thus with reincarnation. It is a new law, which comes to cast light upon an immensity of obscure questions and which will profoundly modify all ideas when it is known.

Thus, it is not the opinion of a few men that proves the existence of this law: it is the facts. If we invoke their testimony, it is to demonstrate that it had been glimpsed and suspected by others before Spiritism, which is not its inventor, but which developed it and deduced its consequences.

[1] Phalansterian: One who inhabits the phalanstery, a city for the dwelling of the societary commune; or also, the sectarian of the system of the French sociologist and philosopher Charles Fourier .