What Spiritism teaches.

— There are people who ask what new conquests we owe to Spiritism. On the grounds that it has not endowed the world with a new productive industry, like steam, they conclude that it has produced nothing. Most of those who ask such a question, not having taken the trouble to study it, know only a fanciful Spiritism, created for the needs of criticism, which has nothing in common with serious Spiritism. It is therefore not surprising that they ask what its useful and practical side might be. They would have discovered it had they sought it at its source, and not in the caricatures made of it by those who have an interest in disparaging it.

In another order of ideas, on the contrary, some impatient ones find the march of Spiritism too slow for their liking. They are astonished that it has not yet probed all the mysteries of Nature, nor addressed all the questions that seem to fall within its purview; they would like to see it daily teach new things, or enrich itself with some recent discovery. And, because it has not yet resolved the question of the origin of beings, of the beginning and the end of all things, of the divine essence and a few others of the same importance, they conclude that it has not gotten beyond the A-B-C, that it has not entered upon the true philosophical path, and that it drags along in commonplaces, since it incessantly preaches humility and charity. “Until now,” they say, “Spiritism has taught us nothing new, because reincarnation, the negation of eternal punishments, the immortality of the soul, the gradation through periods of intellectual vitality, the perispirit, are not Spiritist discoveries properly speaking; we must therefore march toward more genuine and more solid discoveries.” In this connection, we deem it well to present a few observations, which will likewise not be novelties, for there are things it is useful to repeat in various forms.

It is true that Spiritism invented none of all this, because only true truths are eternal and, for that very reason, must have germinated in every epoch. But is it not something to have drawn them forth, if not from nothing, at least from oblivion? to have made of a seed a hardy plant? to have made of an individual idea, lost in the night of time, or smothered beneath prejudices, a general belief? to have proven what lay in the realm of hypotheses? to have demonstrated the existence of a law in what seemed exceptional and fortuitous? to have made of a vague theory a practical thing? to have drawn useful applications from an unproductive idea? Nothing is truer than the proverb: “There is nothing new under the sun.” And even this truth is not new. Thus, there is not a single discovery whose traces and principle are not to be found somewhere. In view of this, Copernicus would not have the merit of his system, because the movement of the Earth had been suspected before the Christian era. If the matter were so simple, it ought to have been found. The story of Christopher Columbus’s egg will always be an eternal truth. Moreover, it is incontestable that Spiritism still has much to teach us. This is what we have not ceased to repeat, for we have never claimed that it has said the last word. But, from what still remains to be done, does it follow that it has not yet gotten beyond the A-B-C? The turning tables were its alphabet; and since then, it seems to us, it has taken a few steps; it even seems to have taken quite large steps in a few years, if we compare it to the other sciences, which took centuries to reach the point where they now stand. None reached its apogee in a single leap; they advance, not by the will of men, but as circumstances point to new discoveries. Now, no one has the power to command those circumstances, and the proof of this is that, every time an idea is premature, it miscarries, to reappear later, at the opportune time. But in the absence of new discoveries, will men of science have nothing to do? Will Chemistry no longer be Chemistry if it does not daily discover new bodies? Will astronomers be condemned to fold their arms because they find no new planets? And so in all the other branches of the sciences and of industry. Before seeking new things, should one not make the application of what one knows? It is precisely in order to give men time to assimilate, to apply, and to popularize what they know that Providence puts a curb on the march forward. There is History to show us that the sciences do not follow a continuous ascending march, at least ostensibly. The great movements that revolutionize an idea operate only at more or less distant intervals. Thus, there is not stagnation, but elaboration, application, and fructification of what is known, which is always progress. Could the human Spirit incessantly absorb new ideas? Does not the earth itself need a period of rest before reproducing? What would be said of a teacher who daily taught new rules to his pupils, without giving them time to practice the ones they had learned, to identify themselves with them and to apply them? Would God, then, be less provident and less skillful than a teacher? In all things new ideas must rest upon acquired ideas; if the latter are not sufficiently elaborated and consolidated in the brain, if the mind has not assimilated them, those one wishes to implant there take no root: one sows into the void. The same thing happens with Spiritism. Have the adherents so profited from what it has taught until now that they have nothing more to do? Are they more charitable, free of pride, disinterested and benevolent toward their fellows? Have they moderated their passions, abjured hatred, envy, and jealousy? In short, are they so perfect that from now on it is superfluous to preach to them charity, humility, abnegation, in a word, morality? This pretension, by itself alone, would prove how much they still need those elementary lessons, which some consider tedious and puerile. Yet, only with the aid of these instructions, if they profit from them, will they be able to raise themselves high enough to become worthy of receiving a higher teaching.

— Spiritism contributes to the regeneration of Humanity: this is a confirmed fact. Now, since this regeneration can operate only through moral progress, it results that its essential, providential aim is the improvement of each one; the mysteries it can reveal to us are the accessory part, for, in opening to us the sanctuary of all knowledge, we shall be more advanced for our future state only if we are better. To admit us to the banquet of supreme happiness, God does not ask what we know, nor what we possess, but what we are worth and the good we have done. Therefore, it is above all upon his individual improvement that every sincere Spiritist must work. Only he who has mastered his evil tendencies has truly profited from Spiritism and will receive his reward. This is why the good Spirits, by order of God, multiply their instructions and repeat them to satiety; only a senseless pride can say: I need no more. God alone knows when they will be useless, and it belongs to him alone to direct the teaching of his messages and to proportion it to our advancement.

— However, let us see whether, apart from purely moral teaching, the results of Spiritism are as sterile as some claim.

1st – First of all it gives, as everyone knows, the patent proof of the existence and immortality of the soul. It is not a discovery, true, but it is for lack of proofs on this point that there are so many who are incredulous or indifferent regarding the future; it is by proving what was nothing more than theory that it triumphs over materialism and forestalls its disastrous consequences for society. Having changed into certainty the doubt regarding the future, Spiritism operates a whole revolution in ideas, whose results are incalculable. If the result of the manifestations were limited exclusively to this, how immense those results would be!

2nd – By the firm belief it develops, it exerts a powerful action upon man’s morale; it impels him toward the good, consoles him in afflictions, gives him strength and courage in the trials of life, and turns suicide away from his thought.

3rd – It rectifies all the false ideas one may have had about the future of the soul, about heaven, hell, punishments and rewards; it radically destroys, by the irresistible logic of facts, the dogmas of eternal punishments and of demons; in a word, it discovers for us the future life and shows it to us as rational and conformable to the justice of God. This is yet another thing of great value.

4th – It makes known what takes place at the moment of death; this phenomenon, until now unfathomable, no longer has mysteries; the smallest particulars of that so dreaded passage are today known. Now, since everyone dies, this knowledge concerns the whole world.

5th – By the law of the plurality of existences, it opens a new field to philosophy; man knows whence he comes, whither he goes, and with what aim he is on the Earth. It explains the cause of all human miseries, of all social inequalities; it gives the very laws of Nature as the basis of the principles of universal solidarity, of fraternity, of equality and of liberty, which rested only on theory. In short, it casts light upon the most arduous questions of metaphysics, of psychology and of morals.

6th – By the theory of the perispiritual fluids, it makes known the mechanism of the soul’s sensations and perceptions; it explains the phenomena of second sight, of sight at a distance, of somnambulism, of ecstasy, of dreams, of visions, of apparitions, etc.; it opens a new field to Physiology and to Pathology.

7th – By proving the relations existing between the corporeal world and the spiritual world, it shows in the latter one of the active forces of Nature, an intelligent power, and gives the reason for a host of effects attributed to supernatural causes, which fed the greater part of superstitious ideas.

8th – By revealing the fact of obsessions, it makes known the hitherto unknown cause of numerous afflictions, about which Science had been mistaken to the detriment of the sick, and gives the means of curing them.

9th – By making known to us the true conditions of prayer and its mode of action; by revealing to us the reciprocal influence of incarnate and disincarnate Spirits, it teaches us man’s power over the imperfect Spirits to moralize them and to wrest them from the sufferings inherent to their inferiority.

10th – By making known spiritual magnetization, which was unknown, it opens a new path to magnetism and brings to it a new and powerful element of cure.

— The merit of an invention does not lie in the discovery of a principle, almost always previously known, but in the application of that principle. Doubtless reincarnation is not a new idea, just as the perispirit, described by Saint Paul under the name of spiritual body , is not new either, nor even communication with the Spirits. Spiritism, which does not boast of having discovered Nature, carefully seeks all the traces it can find of the anteriority of its ideas and, when it finds them, hastens to proclaim it, as proof in support of what it advances. Those, then, who invoke that anteriority with a view to depreciating what it does, go against their own aim and act clumsily, because this would lead to the suspicion of a preconceived idea. The discovery of reincarnation and of the perispirit does not, then, belong to Spiritism; it is a settled matter. But, until it came, what profit had Science, morals, religion drawn from those two principles, ignored by the masses and left in a state of dead letter? It has not only brought them to light, proved them, and made them recognized as laws of Nature, but it has developed them and made them bear fruit; it has already drawn from them numerous and fruitful results, without which one could not understand an infinity of things; daily it makes us understand new ones, and we are far from having exhausted this mine. Considering that these two principles were known, why did they remain unproductive for so long? Why, for so many centuries, did all the philosophies collide against so many insoluble problems? It is because they were rough diamonds, which had to be cut. That is what Spiritism does. It has opened a new path to philosophy or, better said, it has created a new philosophy, which daily takes its place in the world. Are these results, then, so null that we must hasten the march toward more genuine and more solid discoveries? In sum, from a certain number of fundamental truths, sketched out by a few elite minds and preserved, for the most part, as it were in a latent state, once they were studied, elaborated and proven, from sterile that they were they became a fruitful mine, from which issued a multitude of secondary principles and applications, and they opened a vast field for exploration, new horizons to Science, to philosophy, to morals, to religion and to social economy [organization].

Such are, until now, the principal conquests due to Spiritism, and we have done no more than indicate the culminating points. Supposing that they had to be limited to this, we could already deem ourselves satisfied, and say that a new science, which gives such results in less than ten years, cannot be accused of nullity, because it touches upon all the vital questions of Humanity and brings to human knowledge a contingent that is not to be disdained. Until these points alone have received all the applications of which they are susceptible, and until men have profited from them, much time will yet pass, and the Spiritists who wish to put them into practice for themselves and for the good of all will not remain idle.

These points are so many focal centers from which will radiate innumerable secondary truths, which it is a matter of developing and applying, which is done every day, because daily facts are revealed that lift a new corner of the veil. Spiritism has given, successively and in a few years, all the fundamental bases of the new edifice. It now falls to its adherents to put these materials to work, before asking for new ones. God will know well how to furnish them, when they have finished their task.

They say that the Spiritists know only the A-B-C of Spiritism. So be it. Let us learn, then, to spell out this alphabet, which will not be the work of a single day, because, even reduced to these proportions, much time will pass before all the combinations have been exhausted and all the fruits gathered. Are there no more facts to explain? Besides, should the Spiritists not teach this alphabet to those who are ignorant of it? Have they already cast the seed everywhere they could do so? Are there no more incredulous to convince, obsessed to cure, consolations to give, tears to dry? Is there any ground for saying that nothing more should be done when the task is not finished, when so many wounds still remain to be closed? These are noble occupations that are well worth the vain satisfaction of knowing them a little more and a little sooner than others. Let us, then, know how to spell our alphabet before wishing to read fluently in the great book of Nature. God will know well how to open it to us, as we advance, but it depends on no mortal to force his will, anticipating the time for each thing. If the tree of Science is too high for us to reach it, let us wait, in order to fly over it, until our wings are grown and solidly fixed, lest we come to have the fate of Icarus.