Spiritism in Brazil.

Under the title The Spiritist Doctrine, the Diário da Bahia of September 26 and 27, 1865 contains two articles, which are nothing more than the Portuguese translation of those published six years ago by Dr. Déchambre in the Gazette médicale de Paris. The second edition of The Spirits' Book had just appeared, and it is of that work that Mr. Déchambre gives a semi-burlesque account. But, in this regard, he proves historically, and by quotations, that the phenomenon of turning tables is mentioned in Theocritus, under the name of Kosskinomanteia, divination by the sieve, because at that time a sieve was used for that kind of operation, and from this he concludes, with the ordinary logic of our adversaries, that since it is not a new phenomenon, it has no basis in reality whatsoever. For a man of the positive sciences—it must be conceded—there is a singular argument. We regret that Mr. Déchambre's erudition did not permit him to go back still further, for he would have found it in ancient Egypt and in the Indies. We shall one day return to this article, which we had lost sight of and which was missing from our collection. While we wait, we only ask Mr. Déchambre: should modern Medicine and Physics be rejected because their rudiments are found interspersed among the superstitious practices of Antiquity and the Middle Ages? Did not the learned Chemistry of today have its cradle in alchemy, and Astronomy its own in judicial astrology? Why then should the spiritist phenomena, which, in the final analysis, are nothing but natural phenomena whose laws were not known, not also be found in ancient beliefs and practices? Since this article was reproduced purely and simply, without comments, it in no way proves, on the part of the Brazilian newspaper, a systematic hostility against the doctrine. It is even probable that, not knowing it, the newspaper believed it found in it an exact appraisal. What would prove this was its haste in inserting, in the following issue, of September 28, the refutation that the Spiritists of Bahia addressed to it, and which was conceived as follows:

“Sir Editor, “As you are of good faith, with respect to the doctrine of Spiritism, we beg that you also deign to publish in the Diário a passage from The Spirits' Book, by Mr. Allan Kardec, already in its thirteenth edition, so that your readers may appraise, at its just value, the reproduction you made of an article from the Gazette médicale de Paris, written more than six years ago, by Dr. Déchambre, against that same doctrine, in which it is recognized that the said physician was not faithful in the quotations he made from The Spirits' Book, aiming to disparage that doctrine. “We are, Sir Editor, your grateful friends, Luís Olímpio Teles de Menezes, n José Álvares do Amaral, Joaquim Carneiro de Campos.”

There follows, as a reply and refutation, a very extensive extract from the introduction of The Spirits' Book.

Indeed, the textual quotations from the spiritist works are the best refutation of the distortions that certain critics make the doctrine suffer. The doctrine justifies itself, which is why it does not suffer from this. It is not a matter of convincing its adversaries that it is good, which, in most cases, is wasted time, since, in all fairness, they have entire freedom to find it bad, but simply of proving that it says the contrary of what they make it say. It falls to the impartial public to judge, by comparison, whether it is good or bad. Now, since it incessantly recruits new partisans, in spite of all that they have been able to do, it is proof that it does not displease everyone, and that the arguments opposed to it are powerless to discredit it. One can see from this article that it has no nationality and is going around the world. [1]

[v. Luís Olímpio Teles de Menezes.]