Spiritism without the Spirits.

— Recently we saw a sect attempt to form, raising as its banner: The denial of prayer. Received at its outset by a general feeling of disapproval, it did not even manage to live. Men and Spirits united to repel a doctrine that was, at one and the same time, an ingratitude and a revolt against Providence. This was not difficult, because, by offending the inner sentiment of the immense majority, it carried within itself its destroying principle. (Review of January 1866).

Here now is another that is being tried out on new ground. Its motto is: No communication from the Spirits. It is very singular that this opinion should today be advocated by some of those who in former times extolled the importance and the sublimity of the Spiritist teachings, and who boasted of what they themselves received as mediums. Will it have more chance of success than the preceding one? That is what we are going to examine in a few words.

This doctrine, if one may give such a name to an opinion restricted to a few individuals, is founded upon the following data:

“The Spirits who communicate are nothing but ordinary Spirits, who, to this day, have taught us no new truth, and who prove their incapacity by not going beyond the banalities of morality. The criterion that is claimed to be established upon the concordance of their teaching is illusory, by virtue of its insufficiency. It is for man to probe the great mysteries of Nature and to submit what they say to the control of his own reason. Since their communications can teach us nothing, we proscribe them from our meetings. We shall discuss among ourselves; we shall seek out and decide, in our wisdom, the principles that ought to be accepted or rejected, without resorting to the assent of the Spirits.”

Let us note that it is not a matter of denying the fact of the manifestations, but of establishing the superiority of the judgment of man, or of a few men, over that of the Spirits; in a word, of detaching Spiritism from the teaching of the Spirits, since the instructions of the latter would be below what human intelligence can attain.

This doctrine leads to a singular consequence, which would not give an accurate idea of the superiority of man's logic over that of the Spirits. Thanks to the latter, we know that those of the most elevated order belonged to corporeal humanity, which they surpassed long ago, as the general surpassed the rank of soldier from which he rose. Without the Spirits, we would still believe that the angels are privileged creatures and the demons creatures predestined to evil for all eternity. “No,” they will say, “for there were men who combated that idea.” So be it; but what were those men, if not incarnate Spirits? What influence did their isolated opinion have upon the belief of the masses? Ask the first person who comes along whether he knows even by name the majority of those great philosophers. Whereas the Spirits, coming to the whole surface of the Earth, manifesting themselves to the most humble as to the most powerful, the truth spread with the swiftness of lightning. The Spirits may be divided into two categories: those who, having arrived at the most elevated point of the scale, have definitively left the material worlds, and those who, by the law of reincarnation, still belong to the whirlwind of earthly humanity. Let us grant that only the latter have the right to communicate with men, which is a question in itself: among that number there are those who, in life, were enlightened men, whose opinion carried authority, and whom it would be a fortune to consult were they still alive. Now, from the above doctrine it would result that these same superior men became nullities or mediocrities upon passing into the world of the Spirits, incapable of giving us instruction of any value, whereas one would bow respectfully before them were they to present themselves in flesh and blood in the same assemblies where they refuse to listen to them as Spirits. From this it further results that Pascal, for example, is no longer a light from the moment he is a Spirit; but that, were he to reincarnate as a Pierre or a Paul, necessarily with the same genius, since he would have lost nothing, he would be an oracle. This consequence is so rigorous that the partisans of this system admit reincarnation as one of the greatest truths. In short, one must infer that those who place — we suppose in very good faith — their own intelligence far above that of the Spirits will be, themselves, nullities or mediocrities, whose opinion will have no value, so that one would have to believe what they say while they are alive, and not believe tomorrow, when they are dead, even should they come to say the same thing, and still less should they come to say that they were mistaken.

— I know that the great difficulty of establishing identity is raised in objection. This question has already been amply treated, so that it is superfluous to return to it. We certainly cannot know, by a material proof, whether the Spirit who presents himself under the name of Pascal is really that of the great Pascal. What does it matter to us, if he says good things! It is for us to weigh the value of his instructions, not the form of the language, which is known to be often marked by the inferiority of the instrument, but by the grandeur and the wisdom of the thoughts. A great Spirit who communicates through a little-lettered medium is like a skilled calligrapher who makes use of a bad pen; on the whole the writing will bear the seal of his talent, but the details of the execution, which do not depend upon him, will be imperfect. Spiritism has never said that one must make abnegation of one's judgment and submit blindly to the sayings of the Spirits; it is the Spirits themselves who tell us to pass all their words through the crucible of logic, whereas certain incarnates say: “Believe only what we say, and do not believe what the Spirits say.” Now, since individual reason is subject to error, and man, very generally, is led to take his own reason and his own ideas as the sole expression of the truth, he who has not the proud pretension of judging himself infallible refers it to the appraisal of the majority. Is he for this regarded as abdicating his opinion? By no means; he is perfectly free to believe that he alone is right against all others, but he will not prevent the opinion of the greater number from prevailing and from having, in the end, more authority than the opinion of one or of a few.

— Let us now examine the question from another point of view. Who made Spiritism? Is it a personal human conception? Everyone knows the contrary. Spiritism is the result of the teaching of the Spirits, in such a way that, without the communications of the Spirits, there would be no Spiritism. If the Spiritist Doctrine were a simple philosophical theory born of a human brain, it would have only the value of a personal opinion; arising from the universality of the teaching of the Spirits, it has the value of a collective work, and it is for this very reason that in so short a time it has spread over the whole Earth, each one receiving for himself, or through his intimate relations, identical instructions and the proof of the reality of the manifestations.

— Well then! it is in the presence of this patent, material result that one attempts to erect into a system the uselessness of the communications of the Spirits. Let us acknowledge that if they had not the popularity they have acquired, they would not be attacked, and that it is the prodigious popularization of these ideas that arouses so many adversaries against Spiritism. Do those who today reject the communications not resemble those ungrateful children who deny and despise their parents? Is it not ingratitude toward the Spirits, to whom they owe what they know? Is it not to make use of what they taught in order to combat them, to turn against them, against their own parents, the weapons they gave us? Among the Spirits who manifest themselves, is there not the Spirit of a father, of a mother, of the beings who are dearest to us, from whom we receive those touching instructions that go straight to the heart? Is it not to them that we owe having been wrenched from incredulity, from the tortures of doubt about the future? And is it when one enjoys the benefit that one disregards the hand of the benefactor? What are we to say of those who, taking their own opinion for that of everyone, seriously affirm that, now, they want communications nowhere at all? Strange illusion! which a single glance cast around them would suffice to dispel. For their part, what must the Spirits think who are present at the meetings where it is discussed whether one should condescend to listen to them, or whether one should, or should not, exceptionally permit them speech in order to please those who have the weakness to attach themselves to their instructions? Without doubt there are among them Spirits before whom one would fall to one's knees if, at that moment, they were to present themselves to view. Have they thought of the price that might be paid for such ingratitude?

— Since the Spirits have the liberty to communicate, independently of their degree of knowledge, it results that there is a great diversity in the value of the communications, as in the writings of a people where everyone has the liberty to write and where, certainly, not all literary productions are masterpieces. According to the individual qualities of the Spirits, there are, then, communications good in substance and in form; others that are good in substance and bad in form; others, finally, that are worth nothing, neither in substance nor in form. It is for us to choose. To reject them all in a body, because some are bad, would be no more rational than to proscribe all publications merely because there are writers who produce banalities? Do the best writers, the greatest geniuses, not have weak parts in their works? Are selections not made of the best that they produce? Let us do the same with regard to the productions of the Spirits; let us take advantage of what is good and reject what is bad; but, in order to pull up the tares, let us not pull up the good grain. Let us consider, then, the world of the Spirits as a replica of the corporeal world, as a fraction of Humanity, and let us say that we ought not to disdain to hear them, now that they are disincarnate, since we would not have done so when they were incarnate; they are always in our midst, as in former times; only they are behind the curtain, and not in front: there is the whole difference.

— But, it will be asked, what is the scope of the teaching of the Spirits, even in what is good about it, if it does not surpass what men can know by themselves? Is it quite certain that they teach us nothing more? In their state as Spirits do they not see what we cannot see? Without them, would we know their state, their manner of being, their sensations? Would we know, as we know today, this world where perhaps we shall be tomorrow? If this world does not hold for us the same terrors, if we face without dread the passage that leads to it, is it not to them that we owe it? Is this world completely explored? Does it not daily reveal to us a new face? and is it nothing to know where one is going and what one may be upon departing from here? In former times we entered it groping and trembling, as into a bottomless abyss; now this abyss is resplendent with light and one enters it gladly. And do they still dare to say that Spiritism has taught us nothing? (Spiritist Review, August 1865: “What Spiritism Teaches”). Without doubt, the teaching of the Spirits has its limits. One should ask of it only what it can give, what is in its essence, in its providential aim, and it gives much to whoever knows how to seek. But, such as it is, have we already made all its applications? Before asking more of it, have we sounded the depths of the horizons that it unveils to us? As to its scope, it is affirmed by a material, patent, gigantic fact, unheard of in the annals of History: it is that, scarcely in its dawn, it is already revolutionizing the world and shaking the powers of the earth. What man would have such power?

— Spiritism contributes to the reform of Humanity through charity. It is not, then, to be wondered at that the Spirits preach charity unceasingly; they will preach it for a long time yet, so long as it has not rooted out egoism and pride from the heart of men. If some find the communications useless, because they incessantly repeat the lessons of morality, they are to be congratulated, for they are perfect enough to have no further need of them; but they ought to consider that those who have not so much confidence in their own merit and who take to heart the improving of themselves never tire of receiving good counsel. Do not seek, then, to take this consolation from them.

Has this doctrine any chance of prevailing? As we have said, the communications of the Spirits founded Spiritism. To repel them after having acclaimed them is to wish to sap Spiritism at its base, to tear out its foundations. Such cannot be the thought of serious and devoted Spiritists, because it would be absolutely like one who should call himself a Christian while denying the value of the teachings of Christ, under the pretext that his morality is identical to that of Plato. It is in these communications that the Spiritists found joy, consolation, hope; it is through them that they understood the necessity of good, of resignation, of submission to the will of God; it is through them that they bear with courage the vicissitudes of life; it is through them that there is no longer any real separation between them and the objects of their tenderest affections. It is to misjudge the human heart to believe that it could renounce a belief that makes its happiness! We repeat here what we said with regard to prayer: If Spiritism is to gain in influence, it is by increasing the sum of moral satisfactions that it affords. Let those who find it insufficient as it is strive to give more than it does; but it is not by giving less, by taking away what makes its charm, its strength, and its popularity, that they will supplant it.