Thus is history written!

— We were informed that in a large commercial city, where Spiritism counts numerous followers, and where it does the greatest good among the laboring class, a priest became the propagandist of a certain bit of gossip, which charitable souls hastened to spread through the streets and, certainly, to amplify. According to such intrigue, we are millionaires; in our home everything sparkles and we tread only upon the most beautiful Aubusson carpets.

They knew us poor in Lyon;

today we have a carriage of four horses and lead in Paris a princely life. They say that all this fortune comes to us from England, ever since we occupied ourselves with Spiritism, and that we generously remunerate our agents in the province. We sell the manuscripts of our works dearly, on which we still earn a commission, which does not prevent us from selling them at exorbitant prices, etc. [see The Budget of Spiritism; — see also the explanations of Allan Kardec in item 2 of the article:

Report on the Treasury of Spiritism.]

— Here is the reply we gave to the person who sent us such details:

“My dear sir, I laughed much at the millions with which Abbé V.. so generously gratifies me, principally because I was far from suspecting such good fortune. The report made to the Society of Paris, before the receipt of your letter, published here [Discourse of Mr. Allan Kardec at the opening of the social year on the 1st of April 1862], unfortunately comes to reduce that illusion to a much less gilded reality. Moreover, it is not the only inexactitude in that fantastic account; first of all, I never lived in Lyon n and so I do not see how they could have known me poor there; as for my carriage of four horses, I regret to say that it is reduced to the nags of a fiacre which I take only five or six times a year, out of economy. It is true that before the railways I made some journeys by stagecoach; no doubt they confused matters. But it is well not to forget that at that time Spiritism was not yet even thought of, and, according to the abbé, it is to Spiritism that I owe my immense fortune. Where, then, did they fish all this out, if not from the arsenal of calumny? It would be all the more plausible if one thought of the nature of the population in whose midst they trumpet such rumors. It must be granted that good reasons are lacking, that they should let themselves be reduced to such ridiculous expedients in order to discredit Spiritism. Does Mr. Abbé not see that he goes directly against his own purpose, because, to say that Spiritism enriched me to such a degree is to confess that it is immensely widespread. If, then, it has spread so much, it is because it pleases. Thus, that which he wished to hurl against the man turns to the benefit of the doctrine. After this, make someone believe that a doctrine which in a few years gives millions to its propagator is a utopia, an empty idea! Such a result would be a veritable miracle, for there is no example of a philosophical theory that has ever been a source of riches. Generally, as happens with inventions, one consumes the little one has; this would be, more or less, my case, were everything known about what the work to which I have dedicated myself costs me, and to which I sacrifice my time, my vigils, my repose, and my health. Nevertheless, I have it as a principle to keep to myself that which I do, and not to shout it from the rooftops. To be impartial, Mr. Abbé ought to have drawn a parallel with the sums that the communities and the convents usurp from the faithful; as for Spiritism, it measures its influence by the good it does, by the number of the afflicted it consoles, and not by the money it produces. If we lead a princely life, we should naturally dispose of a refined table. What, then, would Mr. Abbé say if he saw my most sumptuous repasts, at which I receive my friends? He would find them very frugal, beside the sober repasts of certain dignitaries of the Church, who would perhaps refuse them even in the most austere Lents. I shall tell him, then, since he is unaware of it, and to spare him the labor of comparisons, that Spiritism is not and cannot be a means of getting rich; that it repudiates all speculation of which it might be the object; that it teaches one to make little of the temporal, to be content with the necessary, and not to seek the joys of the superfluous, which are not the path to heaven; that if all men were Spiritists, they would have neither envy nor jealousy, nor would they despoil one another; they would not curse their neighbor nor calumniate him, because it teaches this maxim of Christ: Do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you. n It is in order to put it into practice that I do not write out all the letters of the name of Mr. Abbé V.. Spiritism teaches further that fortune is a deposit of which we must render account, and that the rich man will be judged according to the use he has made of it. If I possessed that which they attribute to me and, above all, if I owed it to Spiritism, I should be a perjurer to my principles to employ it in the satisfaction of pride and in the possession of worldly pleasures, instead of making it serve the cause whose defense I have embraced.

But — they will ask — and your works? Did you not sell the manuscripts dearly? One moment; this is to enter the private domain, where I recognize no one’s right to interfere. I have always honored my obligations, no matter at what price of sacrifices and privations; I owe nothing to anyone whatsoever, while many owe me, without which I should have more than double what remains to me; thus, instead of rising, I have descended on the scale of fortune. I have, then, no account of my affairs to give to anyone; let that be quite clear. However, to satisfy a little the curious, who ought not to meddle with what does not concern them, I shall say that if I had sold my manuscripts I should only have used the right that every worker has to sell the product of his labor; but I sold none; some I even donated, purely and simply, in the interest of the cause, and which are sold at will, without a single cent coming to me. Manuscripts are sold dearly when they refer to known works, of profit guaranteed in advance, but nowhere are publishers found so accommodating as to pay their weight in gold for works whose profit is hypothetical, when they do not even wish to run the risk of the printing. Now, in this respect, a philosophical work has a hundred times less value than certain novels linked to particular names. To give an idea of my immense profits, I shall say that the first edition of The Spirits’ Book, which I undertook at my own risk and expense, having no publisher willing to take charge of it, yielded me about five hundred francs, expenses already deducted and after all the copies were exhausted, sold and donated, as I can prove by documents. I do not know what kind of carriage one could buy with this. In the impossibility in which I found myself, not yet having the millions in question, of assuming personally the costs of all my publications and, above all, of occupying myself with their commercialization, I ceded for some time the right of publication, by means of an author’s royalty, calculated at so many cents per copy sold; thus, I am entirely unaware of the details of the sale and of the transactions that the intermediaries may make with the consignments sent by the publishers to their correspondents, transactions for whose responsibility I decline, being obliged, as far as I am concerned, to render account to the publishers, at a stipulated value, of all the books withdrawn, sold, or considered lost. As for the profit that may come from the sale of my works, I have no explanations to give of its amount, nor of its use. Certainly, it falls to me to use it as it best pleases me; however, they do not know whether such proceeds have a determined destination, from which they cannot be diverted; that is what they will know later. Because, if one day someone should have the whim of writing my history with data similar to those reported above, the facts ought to be restored in their integrity. For this reason I shall leave detailed memoirs on all my relations and all my affairs, especially in what concerns Spiritism, in order to spare future chroniclers the misunderstandings into which they often fall, for having trusted in the rumors of scatterbrains, of evil tongues, and of persons interested in distorting the truth, to whom I leave the pleasure of railing at will, so that later their bad faith may become more evident. Personally I should trouble myself very little if, henceforth, my name were not intimately linked to the history of Spiritism. By my relations, I naturally possess in this regard the most numerous and authentic documents that exist; I have been able to follow the doctrine in all its development, to observe all its vicissitudes, as well as to foresee its consequences. To every man who studies this movement, it becomes evident that Spiritism will mark one of the phases of Humanity. It is, then, necessary that, later, it be known what vicissitudes it had to traverse, the obstacles it encountered, the enemies who sought to arrest its march, the weapons of which they made use to combat it. No less important is it to know by what means it was able to triumph; what persons, by their zeal, devotion, and abnegation will have contributed effectively to its propagation; those whose names and acts will merit being noted for the recognition of posterity, and which I take as a duty to inscribe in my files. It is understood that this history cannot appear so soon; Spiritism has only just been born, and the most interesting phases of its establishment have not yet been concluded. Moreover, it may happen that, among the Sauls of Spiritism of today, there will later arise Saint Pauls; let us hope we shall not have to record the Judases. Such are, my dear sir, the reflections suggested by the strange rumors that have reached me. If I have refuted them, it was not for the Spiritists of your city, who know me very well and who would have been able to judge me when I visited them, had they perceived in me the tastes and attitudes of a great lord. I do it in consideration of those who do not know me and who might be led into error by this more than frivolous manner of writing history. If Mr. Abbé V… has nothing in view but to speak the truth, I am ready to furnish him verbally with all the explanations necessary for his enlightenment.

Wholly yours, A. K.

[1] Translator’s Note: Recent research indicates that Allan Kardec, although born in Lyon, spent his childhood in Bourg-en-Bresse, (Department of the Ain), located sixty kilometers from that city.

[2] This maxim is equivalent to that other one of the Golden Rule: Therefore, all that you would have men do to you, do you also so to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. — Jesus.