The misunderstandings.

— The eagerness with which the detractors of Spiritism seize upon the slightest news items that they judge to be unfavorable to it exposes them to singular blunders.

Their haste to publish them is such that they have no time to verify their accuracy. Besides, why so much effort! the truth of the fact is a secondary matter, provided that the ridicule stands out from it. At times this precipitation has its drawbacks and, in any case, it attests to a frivolity that is far from increasing the value of the criticism. [See the preceding article:

New and definitive burial of Spiritism.]

Formerly the mountebanks were simply called conjurers; the word having fallen into discredit, it was replaced by prestidigitators, but this still recalled too much the thimble-rigger. The celebrated Conte, it seems to us, was the first to adorn himself with the title of physicist and who obtained the privilege, under the Restoration, of putting in his advertisements and on the signs of his theater: Physicist to the king. From then on, even the most mediocre conjurer who roamed the fairs styled himself physicist, professor of physics, etc., a way, like any other, of throwing dust in the eyes of a certain public who, knowing no better, in good faith places them on the same level as the physicists of the Faculty of Sciences. Certainly the art of prestidigitation has made immense progress, and one cannot deny to some who practice it brilliantly special knowledge, a real talent, and an honorable character; but it is no more than the art of producing illusions, with greater or lesser skill, and not a serious science, with its place in the Institute. Mr. Robin acquired in this line a celebrity to which the role he played in the affair of the Davenport brothers contributed not a little. [See:

Simulated apparitions in the theater.] These gentlemen, rightly or wrongly, claimed that they operated with the aid of the Spirits; on their part was it a new means of exciting curiosity, by departing from commonplaces? This is not the place to examine the question. Be that as it may, by the mere fact of their saying they were agents of the Spirits, those who in no way admit them will protest. Mr.

Robin, as a man skilled in turning the thing to advantage, does not miss the opportunity;

he declares that he produces the same effects by simple sleight of hand. Believing that the Spirits are dead, criticism sings victory and proclaims him the victor.

But enthusiasm is blind and at times commits strange blunders. There are many Robins in the world, as there are many Martins. Here a Mr. Robin, professor of physics, has just been elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. There is no longer any doubt: it can only be Mr. Robin, the physicist of the boulevard du Temple, the rival of the Davenport brothers, who every evening torments the Spirits in his theater; and without further inquiry, a serious newspaper, the Opinion nationale, in its feuilleton of Saturday, January 20, publishes the following article: “Is there something wrong with the events of the week? And yet, there were among their number some quite curious ones. For example, the election of Charles Robin to the Academy of Sciences. For a long time we defended his candidacy here; but they preached loudly against it in more than one place. The fact is that this name of Robin has something diabolical about it. Remember Robin des Bois. n Was not the hero of the Memoirs of the Devil n named Robin? This Mr. Robin, who tied the bell to the neck of the Davenports, is a physicist as learned as he is amiable. The bell grew and grew; it became larger and more resounding than the great bell of Notre-Dame. The poor farceurs, stunned by the noise they were making, found themselves obliged to flee to America, but America itself no longer wants them. Great victory of common sense; defeat of the supernatural! He counted on taking his revenge upon the Academy of Sciences, and made heroic efforts to exclude this enemy, this positivist, this illustrious unbeliever named Charles Robin. And behold, in the very bosom of an Academy so right-thinking, the supernatural is still being debated. Charles Robin is going to sit at the left of Mr. Pasteur. And we are no longer in the time of sweet fables, in the happy and wistful time when the shepherd's crook imposed itself upon Robin the sheep!” Ed. About.

For whom is the mystification? We would really be tempted to believe that some malicious Spirit guided the pen of the author of the article.

— Here is another misunderstanding which, though less amusing, is no less a proof of the frivolity with which criticism welcomes, without examination, everything it judges contrary to Spiritism, obstinately persisting, in spite of all that has been said, in embodying it in the Davenport brothers; whence it concludes that whatever is a setback for these gentlemen is also one for the doctrine, which is no more bound up with those who take its name than true physics is with those who usurp the name of physicist. Several newspapers hastened to reproduce the following article, after the Messager franco-américain. Yet they ought, better than anyone, to know that not everything that is printed is gospel truth:

“The poor Davenport brothers could not escape the ridicule that awaits charlatans of every kind. Believed and praised in the United States, where for a long time they carried on their exploitation, then unmasked and ridiculed in the capital of France, less easy to be taken in by the deception, it was fitting that they should receive, in the very hall of their great feats in New York, the final refutation they deserved. “This refutation has just been given to them publicly by their former accomplice, Mr. Fay, in the hall of the Cooper Institute, Saturday evening, in the presence of a numerous assembly.

“There Mr. Fay unveiled everything, the secrets of the famous cabinet, the secret of the cords and the knots and of all the juggling tricks, so long employed with success. Human comedy! And to think that there are serious and learned people who admired and defended the Davenport brothers and who called Spiritism farces that might perhaps have been tolerated at carnival!” It is not for us to take up the defense of Messrs. Davenport, whose exhibitions we have always condemned as contrary to the principles of sound Spiritist Doctrine. But, whatever opinion one may form regarding them, we must say, for the sake of truth, that it was an error to infer from this article that they were in New York and had there been ridiculed. We know from a reliable source that, leaving Paris, they returned to England, where they still are at the moment. Mr. Fay, who is said to have revealed their secrets, is not their brother-in-law William Fay, who accompanies them, but a certain H. Melleville Fay, who produced similar effects in America, and of whom mention is made in their biography, with the recommendation not to confuse them. There is nothing astonishing in the fact that this gentleman, who was in competition with them, judged it expedient to take advantage of their absence to play them a trick and discredit them to his own profit. In this struggle over the phenomenon one could not see Spiritism. This is what the end of the article gives to understand, by this sentence: “And to think that there are serious people (…) who called Spiritism farces that might perhaps have been tolerated at carnival!” This exclamation has the air of a reproach directed at those who confuse such disparate things. The Davenport brothers furnished the detractors of Spiritism with the occasion or the pretext for a formidable uprising, in the presence of which it remained standing, calm and impassive, continuing its course without troubling itself over the noise they made around it. A fact worthy of note is that its followers, far from being frightened, were unanimous in regarding this effervescence as eminently useful to their cause, certain that Spiritism has only to gain by being known. Criticism fell without pity or mercy upon the Davenport brothers, believing it was killing Spiritism in them. If the latter did not cry out, it is because it did not feel itself wounded. What criticism killed was precisely what it condemns and disapproves: the exploitation, the public exhibitions, the charlatanism, the fraudulent maneuvers, the crude imitations of natural phenomena, which are produced under completely different conditions, the abuse of a name that represents a doctrine wholly moral, of love and of charity. After this rude lesson, we believe that it would be foolhardy to try one's luck by such means. It is true that there resulted from this a certain momentary confusion in the mind of some persons, a kind of hesitation very natural in those who heard only the criticism cast with partiality, without separating the true from the false; but from this evil came a great good: the desire to know, which can redound only to the advantage of the doctrine.

Thanks, then, to criticism for having done, with the help of the powerful means at its disposal, what the Spiritists could not have done by themselves; it advanced the question by several years, and once more convinced its adversaries of their impotence. Besides, the Davenport affair was a subject so worn out that to the public it seems as tedious as the cry of Lambert. It is time that the chronicle found a new theme to exploit. [1]

[Quiproquó.

(Masc. noun.

Confusion of one thing with another.

A comical situation or incident resulting from a misunderstanding(s). — Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira Dictionary.]

[2] [Robin des Bois is our well-known Robin Hood, an archetypal English hero. According to the legend, as is common today, Robin Hood was a generous thief who lived hidden in the forest of Sherwood and Barnsdale.]

[3] [Les mémoires du diable - Google Books by Frédéric Soulié. Of his works The Memoirs of the Devil is the best known. See in the Review: A forgotten night, or the sorceress Manouza by the same author.]