Caesar, Clovis and Charlemagne.

— This is not merely a material question, but also a very spiritualist one. Before approaching the principal point, there is one of which we will speak first. What is war? To begin with, we answer that war is permitted by God, since it exists, has existed and will always exist. It is an error in the education of the intelligence to see in Caesar only a conqueror, in Clovis only a barbarian, in Charlemagne only a despot, whose senseless dream wished to found an immense empire. Ah! my God! As is generally said, conquerors are themselves the playthings of God. As their audacity, their genius brought them to the first rank, they saw around themselves not only armed men, but ideas, advances, civilizations, which it was necessary to cast upon the other nations. They set out, like Caesar, to carry Rome to Lutetia; like Clovis, the germs of a monarchical solidarity; like Charlemagne, to radiate the torch of Christianity among the blind peoples, in the nations already corrupted by the heresies of the early times of the Church. Now, behold what happened: Caesar, the most egoistic of those three great geniuses, makes military tactics, discipline, law, in a word, serve to bring them to the Gauls; in the rear of his armies followed the immortal idea, and the tribes, vanquished and indomitable, suffered the yoke of Rome, it is true, but were transformed into Roman provinces. Would proud Marseilles have existed without Rome? Lugdunum n and so many other cities celebrated in the annals became immense centers, hearths of light for the sciences, letters and arts. Caesar is, then, a great propagator, one of those universal men, who make use of man to civilize man, one of those men who sacrifice men for the benefit of the idea. The dream of Clovis was to establish a monarchy, foundations, a rule for his people. But as the grace of Christianity did not yet illuminate him, he was a barbarian propagator. We must regard him in his conversion: an active, feverish, bellicose imagination, he saw in the victory over the Visigoths a proof of the protection of God; and, henceforth, certain of being always with Him, he allowed himself to be baptized. Behold how baptism spreads through the Gauls and Christianity expands more and more. It is the moment to say, with Corneille: Rome was no longer Rome. The barbarians invaded the Roman world. After the plunder of all the civilizations sketched out by the Romans, behold a man who dreams of spreading throughout the world, no longer the mysteries and the prestige of the Capitol, but the formidable beliefs of Aix-la-Chapelle; behold a man who is, or believes himself to be, with God. An odious cult, rival of Christianity, still occupies the barbarians; Charlemagne hurls himself upon those peoples and Witikind, after balanced struggles and victories, finally submits, humbly receiving baptism.

Behold, certainly, an immense picture, where so many facts unfold, so many strokes of Providence, so many falls and so many victories. But what is the conclusion? Does not the idea, universalizing itself, propagating itself more and more, halting neither at the dismemberments of families, nor at the discouragement of peoples, and having as its object, everywhere, the implanting of the cross of Christ on every point of the Earth, constitute an immense spiritualist fact? It is necessary, then, to consider these three men as great propagators who, through ambition or through belief, advanced the light in the West, while the East succumbed in intoxicating idleness and in inactivity. Now, the Earth is not a world where progress is made rapidly and by means of persuasion and gentleness. Do not be astonished, then, that it is often necessary to take up the sword, instead of the cross.

Lamennais. n Q. — You said that war will always exist. Yet it seems that moral progress, destroying its causes, will make it cease.

Answer. – It will always exist, considering that there will always be struggles; but the struggles will change in form. It is true that Spiritism must spread peace and fraternity throughout the world. Nevertheless, as you well know, even with the triumph of good there will always be struggle. Evidently Spiritism will make the necessity of peace better and better understood; but evil is ever watchful. It will still be necessary to struggle a long time on Earth for the good. Only the struggles will become rarer and rarer.

(SAME SUBJECT. — MEDIUM, MR. LEYMAR.)

The influence of men of genius upon the future of peoples is incontestable. In the hands of Providence they are instruments to accelerate the great reforms that, without them, would only come after a long time. It is they who sow the germs of new ideas. And, most often, they return some centuries later, under other names, to continue or complete the work they began.

Caesar, that great figure of Antiquity, represents to us the genius of war, organized law. The passions carried by him to the extreme profoundly shook Roman society. The latter changes its face and in its evolution everything is transformed around it. The peoples feel their ancient constitution change; an implacable law, that of force, unites what was not to be separated, according to the epoch in which Caesar lived. Under his triumphant hand the Gauls are transformed and, after ten years of combats, constitute a powerful unity. But from that epoch dates the Roman decadence. Carried to excess, that power that made the world tremble committed the faults of extreme power. Everything that grows beyond the proportions fixed by God must fall in the same manner. That great empire was invaded by a cloud of peoples come from regions then unknown. Fame had carried, with the arms of Caesar, the new ideas to the countries of the North, which hurled themselves upon it like a torrent. Behold those barbarian tribes, flinging themselves rapaciously upon the provinces, where the sun was better, the wine so sweet, the women so beautiful. They crossed the Gauls, the Alps, the Pyrenees, to go and found their colonies everywhere and to disaggregate that great body called the Roman Empire. The genius of Caesar alone had sufficed to bring his nation to the culmination of power. From him dates the epoch of renewal, in which all peoples mingle, advance one upon another, seeking other cohesions, other elements. And yet, during several centuries, how much hatred among those creatures! how many combats! how many crimes! how much blood! Barbaret.

With his barbarian hand, Clovis was to be the point of departure of a new era for the peoples. He obeyed custom and, to form a nation, recoiled before no obstacle. He formed it with the dagger and with cunning. He created a new element by adopting baptism, initiating his rude soldiers into a new belief. However, everything went adrift after him, despite the idea, despite Christianity. There were needed Charles Martel, Pepin and then Charlemagne.

Let us salute that powerful figure, that energetic nature, like a new Caesar gathering into one sheaf all the dispersed peoples, changing the ideas and giving a form to that chaos. Charlemagne is grandeur in war, in faith, in politics, in the nascent morality, which was to fuse the peoples and give them the intuition of conservation, of unity, of solidarity. From him go back the great principles that formed France, our laws and our applied sciences. A transformer, he was marked by Providence to be the link between Caesar and the future. He is also called the Great because, if he employed terrible means of execution, it was to give a form and a single thought to that gathering of barbarian peoples, who could obey only one who was powerful and strong. Barbaret.

Note. – As this name was unknown, the Spirit was asked to give some clarifications about his person:

I lived in the time of Henry IV. I was very humble. Lost in this Paris where one so easily forgets the one who hides himself and seeks only study, I loved to be alone, to read and to comment in my own manner. Poor, I worked, and the daily labor gave me that ineffable joy that is called liberty. I copied books and made those marvelous vignettes, prodigies of patience and of knowledge, which gave only bread and water to my patience. But I studied, I loved my country and I sought the truth in Science. I occupied myself with History and for my beloved France I desired liberty, the realization of all the aspirations that I dreamed of in my humility. Since then I am in a better world and God has rewarded my abnegation, giving me that tranquility of Spirit, in which all the obsessions of the body are absent, and I dream for my homeland, for the whole world, for our Earth, for love and for liberty. I often come to see and hear you. I like your works and take part in them with all my being. I wish you perfect and satisfied in the future. May you be happy, as I desire it. But you will not be completely so if you do not strip off the old garment that has long clothed the whole world: I refer to egoism. Study the past, the history of your country and you will learn more from the suffering of your brothers than from any other science.

To live is to know, is to love, is to help one another mutually. Go, then, and act according to your Spirit. God is present and sees and judges you.

Barbaret.

[1] Translator's Note: Thus was called Lyon, native land of Allan Kardec, founded by the Romans in 43 B.C. [Colonia Copia Claudia Augusta Lugdunum (present-day: Lyon, France) was an important Roman city in Gaul. The city was founded in 43 B.C. by Lucius Munatius Plancus. It served as the capital of the Roman province of Gallia Lugdunensis. For 300 years after its founding, Lugdunum was the most important city of Northwestern Europe. — Source: ]

[2] [v.

Lamennais.]