Second letter from Father Marouzeau.

— Mister vicar, In my preceding letter, I gave the reasons that lead me not to answer your booklet article by article. I will not recall them, limiting myself to highlighting a few passages.

You say: “We conclude from all this that Spiritism must limit itself to combating materialism, to giving man palpable proofs of his immortality, by means of well-attested manifestations from beyond the grave; that, apart from this case, everything in it is nothing but uncertainty, thick darkness, illusions, a veritable chaos; that, as a philosophical-religious doctrine, it is merely a utopia, like so many others recorded in History and to which time will do good justice, in spite of the spiritual army of which you have made yourself commander-in-chief.”

First of all, mister vicar, you will have to admit that your predictions have hardly come to pass and that time is in no hurry to do justice to Spiritism. If it has not succumbed, it has not been for want of indifference and negligence on the part of the clergy and its partisans. Attacks have not been lacking: booklets, newspapers, sermons, excommunications have fired along the whole line; nothing has been lacking, not even the incontestable talent and merit of some champions. If, then, under such formidable artillery, the ranks of Spiritism have increased instead of diminishing, it is because the fire has turned to smoke. Once again, a rule of elementary logic tells us that one judges a force by its effects; you could not halt the march of Spiritism; therefore it moves faster than you; and the reason for this is that it goes ahead, while you drag along in the rearguard, and the century is in a hurry.

In examining the various attacks directed against Spiritism, a lesson stands out, at once grave and sad: those coming from the skeptical and materialist party are characterized by negation, by more or less witty mockery, by jokes generally silly and vulgar, whereas – it is regrettable to say – it is among those of the religious party that one finds the coarsest insults, personal outrages, slanders; it is from the pulpit that the most offensive words fall; it is in the name of the Church that the ignoble and lying pamphlet on the supposed budget of Spiritism was published. I gave some samples in the Review and did not say everything, out of deference and because I know that not all members of the clergy approve of such things. It is useful, however, that later it be known what weapons were used to combat Spiritism. Unfortunately, newspaper articles are as fleeting as the leaves that contain them; even booklets have an ephemeral existence, and in a few years the names of the most ardent and most bilious antagonists will probably be forgotten! There is only one means of preventing this effect of time: it is to collect all the diatribes, from whatever side they come, and to make a compilation, which will be not one of the least instructive pages of the history of Spiritism. I do not lack documents for this work, and, I regret to say, it is publications made in the name of religion that, to this day, have furnished the strongest contingent. I note with pleasure that your booklet at least constitutes an exception with respect to urbanity, if not by the force of its arguments. In your opinion, mister vicar, everything in Spiritism is nothing but uncertainty, thick darkness, illusions, chaos, utopias. Then you confess that it is not very dangerous, since no one ought to understand it. What can the Church fear from a thing so absurd? If that is so, why this show of force? Seeing such great fury, one would say that it is afraid. Ordinarily one does not fire a cannon shot at a fly in flight. Is there no contradiction in saying, on the one hand, that Spiritism is fearsome, that it threatens religion, and, on the other, that it is nothing?

— In the passage cited above I note, in passing, an error, certainly involuntary, for I do not suppose that, like some of your colleagues, you consciously alter the truth out of professional necessity. You say: “In spite of the spiritual army of which you have made yourself commander-in-chief.” First of all I will ask what you understand by spiritual army. Is it the army of Spirits or of Spiritists? The first interpretation would lead you to say an absurdity; the second, a falsehood, for it is well known that I have never made myself chief of anything whatsoever. If the Spiritists give me this title, it is from a spontaneous sentiment on their part, by reason of the confidence they have deigned to grant me, whereas you give to understand that I imposed myself and took this initiative, a thing which I formally deny. Moreover, if the success of the doctrine I profess gives me a certain authority over the adherents, it is a purely moral authority, which I use only to recommend to them calm, moderation, and abstention from any reprisal against those who treat them most unworthily, to remind them, in a word, of the practice of charity, even toward their enemies.

— The most important part of this paragraph is the one in which you say that Spiritism must limit itself to combating materialism and proving the immortality of the soul by means of manifestations from beyond the grave. So Spiritism is good for something! If manifestations from beyond the grave are useful for destroying materialism and proving the immortality of the soul, then it is not the devil who manifests himself. To arrive at this proof which, according to you, results from these manifestations, it is necessary that in them one recognize one’s parents and friends. Therefore, the Spirits who communicate are the souls of those who lived. Thus, mister vicar, you are in contradiction with the doctrine professed by several of your illustrious confreres, namely, that only the devil can communicate. Is it a point of doctrine or a personal opinion? In the second case, one has no more authority than the other; in the first, you proclaim a heresy.

There is more: considering that communications from beyond the grave are useful for combating incredulity regarding the fundamental basis of religion – the existence and immortality of the soul; since Spiritism must serve such an end, then it is lawful for all of us to seek in evocation the remedy for the doubt that religion, alone, could not vanquish. Consequently, it is permitted to every believer, to every good Catholic, even to every priest, to make use of evocation to lead the stray sheep back to the fold. If Spiritism has the means of dispelling doubts that religion is incapable of destroying, it is because it offers resources that religion does not possess, for, otherwise, there would not be a single unbeliever in the Catholic religion. Why, then, does it reject an efficacious means of saving souls? On the other hand, how can one reconcile the usefulness you recognize in communications from beyond the grave with the formal prohibition the Church makes of evoking the dead? Since it is a rigorous principle that one cannot be a Catholic without conforming scrupulously to the precepts of the Church; that the least deviation from her commandments is a heresy, here is the mister vicar well and duly heretical, for you declare good that which she condemns. You say that Spiritism is merely chaos and uncertainty; are you, then, much clearer? On which side is orthodoxy, since some think in one way, and others think the contrary? How do you expect there to be agreement when you yourself are in contradiction with your own words? Your refutation is entitled: Complete Refutation of the Spiritist Doctrine from the Religious Point of View. He who says complete says absolute; if the refutation is complete, it must leave nothing subsisting; and behold, from the very religious point of view, you recognize an immense usefulness in that which the Church prohibits! Can there be greater usefulness than to lead unbelievers back to God? It would have been better to entitle your booklet: Refutation of the Demonic Doctrine of the Church. Besides, this is not the only contradiction I could point out. But rest easy, for you are not the only dissident; for my part I know a good number of ecclesiastics who no more believe than you in the exclusive communication of the devil; who occupy themselves with evocations with full security of conscience; who no more believe than I do in irremissible penalties and absolute eternal damnation, thereby agreeing with more than one Father of the Church, as will be demonstrated to you later. Yes, many more priests than one thinks regard Spiritism from a more elevated point; struck by the universality of the manifestations and by the imposing spectacle of this irresistible march, they see in it the dawn of a new era and a sign of the will of God, before which they bow in silence. You say, mister vicar, that Spiritism ought to stop at such a point, and not go beyond it. In everything one must be consistent with oneself. In order for these souls to be able to convince the unbelievers of their existence, it is necessary that they speak. Now, can we prevent them from saying what they wish? Is it my fault if they come to describe their situation, happy or unhappy, in a manner different from what the Church teaches? if they come to say that they have already lived and will live again corporeally? that God is neither cruel, nor vengeful, nor inflexible, as they present Him, but good and merciful? if, in all points of the globe where they are called to convince themselves of the future life, they say the same thing? In short, is it my fault if the picture they make of the future reserved for men is more alluring than the one you offer? if men prefer mercy to damnation? Who made the Spiritist Doctrine? They are its words, and not my imagination; it is the very actors of the invisible world, the eyewitnesses of the things of beyond the grave, who dictated it, and it was established only upon the concordance of the immense majority of revelations made on all sides and to thousands of persons whom I had never seen. In all this I have done nothing but gather and methodically coordinate the teaching given by the Spirits; without taking account of isolated opinions, I adopted those of the greatest number, setting aside all systematic, individual, eccentric ideas, or those in contradiction with the positive data of Science. From these teachings and their concordance, as well as from the attentive observation of the facts, it stands out that Spiritist manifestations have nothing supernatural about them, but, on the contrary, result from a law of Nature, until now unknown, as were for a long time those of gravitation, of the movement of the heavenly bodies, of the formation of the Earth, of electricity, etc. Since this law is in Nature, it is the work of God, unless one says that Nature is the work of the devil. This law, explaining a number of things which, without it, would be inexplicable, has converted so many unbelievers to the existence of the soul that the fact properly speaking of the manifestations and its proof lies in the great number of materialists led back to God merely by the reading of the works, without having seen anything. Would it have been better that they remained in incredulity, at the risk of not even being in Catholic orthodoxy?

The Spiritist Doctrine is not my work, but that of the Spirits. Now, if these Spirits are the souls of men, it cannot be the work of the demon. If it were my personal conception, seeing its prodigious success I could only congratulate myself; but I could not attribute to myself what is not mine. No, it is not the work of one alone, man or Spirit, who, whoever he might be, could not have given it sufficient sanction; it is the work of a multitude of Spirits, and this is what constitutes its strength, for each one can receive its confirmation. Will time, as you say, do good justice to it? For that, it would be necessary that it cease to be taught, that is, that the Spirits cease to exist and to communicate over all the Earth; it would be necessary, moreover, that it cease to be logical and to satisfy the aspirations of men. You add that you hope I will recognize my error. I do not believe it, and, frankly, it is not the arguments of your booklet that will make me change my opinion, nor desert the post in which Providence has placed me, in which I have all the moral joys to which a man can aspire in this world, seeing what he has sown bear fruit. It is a very great and very sweet happiness, I assure you, at the sight of those it has made happy, of so many men snatched from despair, from suicide, from the brutality of the passions, and led back to good. A single one of its blessings amply repays me for all the fatigues and all the insults. It is not in anyone’s power to snatch this happiness from me; you do not know it, since you wish to take it from me. I wish it for you with all my soul; try it and you will see. Mister vicar, I grant you a term of ten years to see what you will then think of the doctrine.

Accept, etc.

Allan Kardec.

[1]

[Marouzeau (L’abbé) Réfutation complète de la doctrine spirite.]