The Spirits and Spiritism.

Under this title, Mr. Flammarion, author of the brochure on the Plurality of inhabited worlds, of which we gave notice in our issue of last January, has just published in the French Review of the month of February 1863 n a very interesting opening article, the beginning of which we shall give below. The work, which was requested of him by the management of the journal—an important and widely circulated literary collection—is an exposition of the history and the principles of Spiritism. Its dimension almost gives it the importance of a special work, for the first article has twenty-three large pages in-8º. To a certain extent the author thought it well to set aside his personal opinion on the subject and to remain on ground that is in a certain way neutral, limiting himself to an impartial exposition of the facts, in such a way as to leave the reader complete liberty of appreciation. He begins thus: “In a century in which metaphysics has fallen from its high pedestal and the religious idea has wished to free itself from every dogma and every special cult, in which philosophy itself has changed its manner of reasoning in order to harness itself to the positivism of experimental science, a spiritualist doctrine came to offer itself to men and they received it; it proposed to them a symbol of belief and they adopted it; it showed them a new road leading to unexplored regions and they committed themselves to this path; and behold, that doctrine, based on the manifestations of invisible beings, rose, scarcely out of the cradle, above the ordinary affections of life and propagated itself universally among the peoples of the old and the new world. What, then, is this powerful breath, under whose impulse so many thinking heads have looked at the same point of the sky? “Vain utopia or real science, fantastic lure or profound truth, the event is there before our eyes and shows us the standard of Spiritism binding around it a great number of champions, counting today its defenders by the millions. And this prodigious number formed itself in the limited space of ten years.

“We have, then, a new event before our eyes: it is an incontestable fact. Now, whatever may be, moreover, the frivolity or the importance of such an event, it will not be useless to study it in itself, in order to know whether it has a birthright among the children of progress, whether its march is parallel to the movement of progressive ideas, or whether it does not tend, as some claim, to make us retreat toward antiquated beliefs, unworthy of our consideration.

“To reason about any subject whatever, it is important, above all, to know it well, in order not to expose ourselves to erroneous appreciations. Thus, we shall examine successively upon what facts Spiritism rests, upon what base the theory of its teaching has been constructed, and in what this science consists summarily. Let us observe that it is a matter here of facts and not of speculative systems, of risky opinions; because, however marvelous the question that occupies us may be, Spiritism nonetheless bases itself purely and simply on the observation of facts. If it were not so, if it were a matter only of a new religious sect, of a new school of philosophy, we hold it certain that the event would lose much of its importance and that the serious men of the present epoch, for the most part disciples of the Baconian method, would not have wasted time in examining a pure question of theory. Numerous utopias have inscribed themselves in the book of human weakness for one to wish to gather any longer dreams proclaimed daily, conceived by exalted brains. “Now, let us frankly, and without ulterior motive, approach this doctrinal science, of which much good and much ill has been said, perhaps because it has not been sufficiently studied. In this exposition we shall begin with the origin of its modern history—for Spiritism has its ancient history—and we shall make known the successive phenomena that established it definitively. Following the natural order of things, we shall examine the effect before going back to the cause.”

There follows the account of the first manifestations in America, their introduction into Europe, their conversion into a philosophical doctrine.

[1] French Review, rue d'Amsterdam, 35. – 20 fr. per year. – Each monthly issue of 120 pages, 2 fr.