Anthropophagy.

— One reads in the Siècle of December 26, 1865:

“The English admiralty has just addressed a circular to the maritime cities that transport armaments to Oceania, in which it announces that, for some time, a resurgence of anthropophagy has been noted among the inhabitants of the islands of the great ocean. In this circular, it exhorts the captains of merchant ships to take all necessary precautions to prevent their crews from becoming victims of this horrible custom.

“For about a year now the crews of four ships have been devoured by the anthropophagi of the New Hebrides, of Jervis Bay or of New Caledonia, and all measures must be taken to avoid the repetition of such cruel misfortunes.”

Here is how the newspaper Le Monde explains this resurgence of anthropophagy:

“We have had cholera, the epizootic, smallpox; the vegetables, the animals, are sick. Here is an even more painful epidemic, which the English admiralty makes known to us: the savages of Oceania, it is said, are exacerbating themselves in anthropophagy. Several horrible cases have come to the knowledge of the lords of the admiralty. The crews of several English ships have disappeared. No one doubts that our maritime authorities will also take measures, for two French ships were attacked, the crewmen seized and devoured by the savages. The mind halts before these horrors, which all the efforts of our civilization have been powerless to triumph over. Who knows whence these criminal inspirations come? “What watchword was given to all these pagans scattered across hundreds and thousands of islands in the immensities of the southern seas? Their monstrous passion, appeased for a moment, reappears to the point of calling for repression, of disquieting the powers of the Earth. It is one of those problems whose solution only the Catholic dogma can give. At certain moments the Spirit of darkness acts in all freedom. Before grave events he stirs, impels his creatures, sustains them and inspires them. Great events are in preparation. The revolution believes the hour has come to proceed to the crowning of the edifice; it gathers itself for the supreme struggle, it attacks the cornerstone of Christian society. The hour is grave and it seems that all Nature senses and foresees its gravity.”

— We are astonished not to see, among the causes of the worsening of ferocity in the savages, Spiritism figuring, that scapegoat for all the evils of Humanity, as Christianity was formerly in Rome. Perhaps it is implicitly included there, as being, according to some, the work of the Spirit of darkness. “Only the Catholic dogma,” says Le Monde, “can give the explanation of this problem.” We do not see much clarity in the explanation it gives, nor what the revolutionary spirit of Europe has in common with these barbarians. We even find in this dogma a complication of the difficulty.

The anthropophagi are men: no one ever doubted it. Now, since the Catholic dogma does not admit the preexistence of the soul, but the creation of a new soul at the birth of each body, it follows that in some place God creates souls of man-eaters and here souls capable of becoming saints. Why this difference? It is a problem whose solution the Church has never given and which, nevertheless, is an essential cornerstone. According to its doctrine, the resurgence of anthropophagy can be explained only thus: it is that at this moment it pleases God to create a greater number of anthropophagous souls, a solution little satisfactory and, above all, little consistent with the goodness of God. The difficulty increases if one considers the future of these souls. What do they become after death? Will they be treated in the same way as those who have consciousness of good and evil? This would be neither just nor rational. With its dogma the Church, instead of explaining, finds itself in an impasse, from which it can emerge only by appealing to mystery, which need not be understood, a kind of non possumus that cuts off troublesome questions at the root.

— Well then! this problem that the Church cannot resolve, Spiritism finds its simplest and most rational solution in the law of the plurality of existences, to which all beings are subject, and by virtue of which they progress. Thus, the souls of the anthropophagi are near their origin, their intellectual and moral faculties are still obtuse, little developed, and, for that very reason, the animal instincts dominate in them.

But these souls are not destined to remain perpetually in this inferior state, which would deprive them forever of the happiness of the more advanced souls; they grow in reasoning, become enlightened, are purified, instruct themselves, and improve in successive existences. They live again in the savage races, so long as they have not surpassed the limits of savagery. Having reached a certain degree, they leave this milieu to incarnate in a race a little more advanced; from this one to another and so on, they rise in degree, in proportion to the merits they have acquired and the imperfections of which they have divested themselves, until they have attained the degree of perfection of which the creature is susceptible. The path of progress is closed to none, so that the most backward can aspire to supreme happiness. But some, by virtue of their free will, which is the prerogative of Humanity, work with ardor at their purification and at their instruction, at divesting themselves of the material instincts and of the swaddling clothes of their origin, because, at each step they take toward perfection they see more clearly, understand better, and are happier. These advance more readily, enjoy sooner: there is their reward. Others, always by virtue of their free will, linger on the way, like lazy and unwilling students, or like negligent workmen; they arrive later, they suffer longer: there is their punishment or, if you will, their hell. Thus is confirmed, by the plurality of progressive existences, the admirable law of unity and of justice that characterizes all the works of creation. Compare this doctrine to that of the Church, concerning the past and the future of souls, and see which is the more rational, the more conformable to divine justice, and which better explains social inequalities.

— Anthropophagy is, assuredly, one of the lowest degrees of the human scale on Earth, for the savage who no longer eats his fellow man is already in progress. But whence comes the resurgence of this bestial instinct? It must be noted, first of all, that it is only local and that, in sum, cannibalism has disappeared from a great part of the Earth. It is inexplicable without the knowledge of the invisible world and of its relations with the visible world. By deaths and births, they feed incessantly upon one another. Now, imperfect men cannot furnish the invisible world with perfect souls, and the perverse souls, in incarnating, can make only wicked men. When catastrophes and scourges seize at the same time a great number of men, there is a mass arrival in the world of the Spirits. Since these same souls must live again, by virtue of the law of Nature, and for their advancement, circumstances may equally bring them in mass back to the Earth. The phenomenon in question depends, then, simply on the accidental incarnation, in the lowest milieus, of a greater number of backward souls, and not on the malice of Satan, nor on the watchword given to the peoples of Oceania. By aiding the development of the moral sense of these souls, during their sojourn on Earth — and this is the mission of civilized men — they improve; and when they resume a new corporeal existence, with a view to their progress, they will still be less wicked men than they were, more enlightened, of less ferocious instincts, because the progress achieved is never lost. It is thus that gradually the progress of Humanity is accomplished. Le Monde is in the truth, saying that great events are in preparation. Yes, a transformation is being elaborated in Humanity. The first jolts of the birth are already making themselves felt; the corporeal world and the spiritual world are stirring, because it is the struggle between what is ending and what is beginning. To whose profit will this transformation be? Progress being the providential law of Humanity, it can take place only to the benefit of progress. But great births are laborious; it is not without jolts and without great tearings of the soil that there are uprooted from the lands to be cleared the noxious weeds, which have long and deep roots.