Death of Mr. Bruneau.

— The Spiritist Society of Paris has just lost one of its members in the person of Mr. Bruneau, who died on November 13, 1864, at the age of seventy, whose death the Opinion nationale announces in these terms:

“Death strikes squarely the surviving members of the Saint-Simonian mission in Egypt. After Enfantin, after Lambert Bey, we today have to deplore the loss of Mr. Bruneau, former colonel of artillery, who founded in that country the cavalry school, while Lambert Bey, his son-in-law, organized a polytechnic school. Mr. Bruneau died as a free man, full of hopes in physical, intellectual, and moral progress, full of faith in the religious and social doctrines of his youth.”

A former student of the Polytechnic School, Mr. Bruneau had been a member of the Spiritist Society of Paris for several years. We do not know the faith he had in the future of the religious and social doctrines of his youth, but we do know that he had absolute confidence in the future of Spiritism, of which he was a fervent and enlightened adherent. He had acquired an unshakable faith in the future life and in the humanitarian reforms that are its consequence. We will add that his colleagues were able to appreciate his excellent qualities, his extreme modesty, his benevolence, and his charity. He communicated at the Society a few days after his death, and gave proof of the elevation of his Spirit by the accuracy and depth of his appraisals. For him the invisible world held no surprise, for he understood it in advance. Thus, he came to confirm for us all that the doctrine teaches us in this regard. He joyfully found again the relatives, friends, and colleagues who had preceded him and who awaited him upon his arrival among them. The Spiritist Society of Paris was represented at the funeral of Mr. Bruneau by a delegation of twenty members. We would have considered it a duty to express on that occasion the sentiments of the Society; however, since we knew that the family was not sympathetic to our ideas, we deemed it proper to abstain from any manifestation. Spiritism does not impose itself; it wishes to be accepted freely; that is why it respects all beliefs and, out of a spirit of tolerance and charity, avoids whatever might shock opinions contrary to its own.

Moreover, the just tribute of praise and regret, which could not be paid to him ostensibly, before an indifferent or hostile public, was paid with much more recollection within the Society. At the session following the funeral, an address was delivered, and all his colleagues joined wholeheartedly in the prayers that were said on his behalf.

— At the session of the Society consecrated to the memory of Mr. Bruneau, Mr. Allan Kardec delivered the following discourse:

Gentlemen and dear Spiritist brethren, One of our colleagues has just left the Earth to enter the world of the Spirits. By consecrating this session especially to him, we fulfill toward him a duty of fellowship, with which, I have no doubt, each one of us will associate himself wholeheartedly and through holy communion of thoughts.

Mr. Bruneau had been a part of the Society since April 1, 1862. A member of the committee, he was, as you know, very assiduous at our sessions. We were all able to appreciate the gentleness of his character, his extreme benevolence, his simplicity, and his charity. There is not a single misfortune brought to the Society's attention in favor of which he did not bring his offering. His death revealed to us another eminent quality that he possessed: modesty. He never boasted of his titles, which recommended him as a man of learning. A fortuitous circumstance had made known to me that he was a former student of the Polytechnic School, but we all were unaware that he had been a colonel of artillery and had carried out a high mission in Egypt, where he founded a cavalry school, at the same time that his son-in-law, Lambert Bey, founded there a polytechnic school. We knew him as a sincere, devoted, and enlightened Spiritist; and, although he kept silent about his titles, he did not hide his opinions. These circumstances, gentlemen, make his memory still dearer to us, and we do not doubt that he has found, in the world of the Spirits, a position worthy of his merit.

Mr. Bruneau had been one of the active members of the Saint-Simonian school, a detail that the newspapers which announced his death took care to highlight, although they avoided saying that he died in the Spiritist belief.

We shall not discuss here the principles of the Saint-Simonian school. Nevertheless, the beginning of the article in the Opinion nationale leads us involuntarily to make a comparison. There it is said: “Death strikes squarely the members of the Saint-Simonian mission in Egypt; after Enfantin, after Lambert Bey, we today have to deplore the loss of Mr. Bruneau, etc.” For some years Saint-Simonism shone intensely, whether by the singularity of some of its doctrines, or by the eminent men attached to it; yet it is known how fleeting that brilliance was. Why, then, an existence so ephemeral, if it was in possession of the philosophical truth?

At times truth is slow to spread; but, from the moment it begins to dawn, it grows without ceasing and does not perish, because truth is eternal, and it is eternal because it emanates from God. Only error is perishable, because it comes from men. Progress is the law of Humanity. Now, Humanity cannot progress except insofar as it discovers the truth. Once the discovery is made, it is acquired and unbreakable. What theory could today prevail against the law of the movement of the stars, of the formation of the Earth, and so many others? Philosophy is mutable only because it is the product of systems created by men; it will have stability only when it has acquired the precision of mathematical truth. If, then, a system, a theory, any doctrine whatsoever, philosophical, religious, or social, marches toward decline, it is sure proof that it is not with the absolute truth. In all religions, not excepting Christianity, the divine element is imperishable; the human element falls, if it is not in harmony with the law of progress; but since progress is incessant, it follows that, in religions, the human element must modify itself, on pain of perishing; only the divine element is invariable. See it in the Mosaic law: the tablets of Sinai stand upright, becoming more and more the code of Humanity, while the rest has already had its day. Since absolute truth can establish itself only upon the ruins of error, it necessarily encounters antagonists among those who, living off error, have an interest in combating the truth and, for that very reason, wage upon it an obstinate war; but it soon wins the sympathies of the disinterested masses. Was it thus with the Saint-Simonian doctrine? No. As a practice it lived; it survived only as a sympathetic theory and individual belief in the thought of some of its former adherents. But, as the Opinion nationale attests, taking daily some of its representatives, the time is not far off when all will have disappeared; then, it will live only in History. From which it must be concluded that it did not possess the whole truth and did not correspond to all aspirations. Does this mean that all the sects and schools that fall are in absolute falsehood? No; on the contrary, for the most part, they glimpsed a point of the truth; but the sum of truths they possessed was not great enough to sustain the struggle against progress, and they did not prove equal to the needs of Humanity. Moreover, in general the sects are very exclusive and, for that very reason, stationary. From this it results that those which were able to mark a stage of progress in a certain epoch end by falling behind and become extinct by the force of things. Nevertheless, whatever the errors under which they succumbed, their passage was not useless: they stirred up ideas, drew man out of his torpor, raised new questions which, better elaborated and freed from the spirit of system and of exaggeration, later receive their solution. Among the ideas they sow, only the good ones bear fruit and are reborn under another form; time, experience, and reason do justice to the others. The error of almost all social doctrines, presented as the panacea for the ills of Humanity, is to rely exclusively on material interests. From this it results that the solidarity they seek to establish among men is as fragile as bodily life; the bonds of fellowship, having no roots in the heart and in faith in the future, break at the slightest shock of egoism.

Spiritism presents itself under entirely different conditions. Is it with the truth? We believe so; but are our foundations better than those of the others? The motives that lead us to believe in it are very simple; they stand out, at the same time, from the cause and from the effects. As a cause, it has in its favor that it is not a human conception, the product of a personal system, which is capital. There is not a single one of its principles — and when I say a single one I make no exception — that is not based on the observation of facts. If a single one of the principles of Spiritism were the result of an individual opinion, this would be its vulnerable side. But since it advances nothing that is not sanctioned by the experience of facts, and since the facts are in the laws of Nature, it must be immutable like those laws, because everywhere and in all times it will find its sanction and its confirmation, and, sooner or later, it is necessary that, in the face of facts, all beliefs bow down. Indeed, it corresponds to all the aspirations of the soul; it satisfies, at the same time, the mind, the reason, and the heart; it fills the void left by doubt; it gives a foundation, a raison d'être to solidarity, by the link it establishes between the present and the future; in short, it sets upon a solid base the principle of equality, of liberty, and of fraternity. It is, thus, the pivot upon which all serious social reforms will rest. It itself relying upon facts and upon the laws of Nature, without any admixture of human theories, does not risk straying from the divine element. Thus, it offers the spectacle, unique in history, of a doctrine which, in a few years, implanted itself at every point of the globe and grows without ceasing; which links all religious beliefs, whereas the others are exclusive and remain confined within a circumscribed circle of adherents. Such are, in a few words, the reasons upon which our faith in the truth and in the stability of Spiritism rests. We hope that our former colleague and ever brother Bruneau will have the kindness to tell us how he views the question, now that he can consider it from a more elevated standpoint.

Note. — The communication of Mr. Bruneau corresponded fully to our expectation. It is connected, as are those obtained in this session, to a set of questions that will be dealt with later; therefore we postpone its publication.