A few words to the Spiritist Review.

— The newspaper Exposition Populaire Illustrée contains, in its issue number 34, the following article concerning the reflections we appended to the two articles in our last issue about the healer Gassner and prognostics, which we had taken from that newspaper.

“The Spiritist Review is a special monthly newspaper which, for ten years, has courageously sustained the struggle against the numerous class of writers and superficial men who, vying with one another, treat the adherents of the new faith as ‘the enlightened, the deluded, simpletons, madmen, impostors, charlatans, and, in short, partisans of Satan.’ As you see, certain writers prefer to insult and outrage rather than to discuss. “Oh, my God! all this vocabulary was exhausted thirty-five or thirty-six years ago against the Saint-Simonians and, if we are not mistaken, the eloquence of the Parquet was set aside, and it seems to us that the father and one of his ardent disciples were struck by a condemnation that left them free to direct great administrations, to have a seat in the Institute, to be elevated to the dignity of senator, to wear across their chests the insignia of various decorations, including the cross of honor, and that does not merely permit them to take part in the Municipal Council of their city, but also to use the civic right of the vote. “You see plainly that the outrage does not mean a great deal; yet you also see plainly that something always remains; it is a sort of calumny. Now, it was already said long before us, when calumny does not burn, it scorches.

“Let us return to the Spiritists. Who knows what is reserved for the men of the Spiritist school? Perhaps one day we shall see them taking the short road to reach the heights of power, as the Saint-Simonian gentlemen did.

“There are always those who progress (the Spiritists), who swell their ranks with serious and intelligent men, magistrates renowned in their bodies.

“We speak today of the Spiritist Review, because the Spiritist Review saw fit to occupy itself with us in its last issue (that of November)… It reproduced several passages from our twenty-fourth issue, relating to a correspondence about thaumaturges, and hastened to protest against the qualification of thaumaturge, which we gave, in several other articles, to the healer Jacob [see The healing zouave of the Camp of Châlons] and to past, present, and future healers, when they healed outside of scientific therapeutics. “The Spiritist Review protests against the word thaumaturge, because it does not admit that anything be done outside the natural laws…; but it seems to me that this is what our little newspaper has already said more than twenty times.

“There is nothing, nothing, nothing, outside the natural laws.

“Everything that is, everything that happens, everything that is produced is the result of natural laws, of natural phenomena, known or unknown.

“Yes, a thousand times yes, ‘the phenomena belonging to the order of spiritual facts are no more miraculous than material facts, considering that the spiritual element is one of the forces of Nature, just as the material element,’ you say.

“Yes, gentlemen, a thousand times yes, we share your sentiment; but we protest against this expression element, as you protested against the qualification of thaumaturge given by us to a Spiritist, conscious or unconscious.

“The word thaumaturge shocks you; give me another, rational, logical, comprehensible… I will accept it.

“By logical consequence, the word miracle must shock you. Give me another, to signify, to express what the word miracle signifies, what it expresses, and I will adopt it.

“But as long as your dictionary, as long as our dictionary is not made, nor known, one must have recourse to the dictionary of the Academy. [Dictionnaire de l’Académie - Google Books.] In truth, Spiritist gentlemen, we must not allow ourselves the pretension of having any other vocabulary than that of the Forty Gentlemen [members of the Academy].

“Linguistically, academically speaking, what is a thaumaturge? a worker of miracles.

“What is a miracle? — An act of the divine power, contrary to the known laws of Nature.

“Therefore, the healing gentlemen, the Hohenlohes, the Gassners, the Jacobs are thaumaturges, workers of miracles, because they act outside the known laws of Nature.

“Invent, create, give, promulgate a new word and we will adopt it. But, until then, allow us to keep the old vocabulary and to conform to it until further instruction. We cannot do otherwise.

“Do you know how Jacob acts? say it. If you do not know it, do as we do: acknowledge that he acts outside the known laws of Nature; therefore he is a thaumaturge.

“For our part, as we have said, we protest against the word element, for a very simple reason: it is that we declare we are completely ignorant of what the spiritual element is and what it is, just as we do not know what the material element is.

“As regards the spiritual element, we recognize only the creating element: God… — With all humility, with all veneration, we bow our heads and respect the inexplicable mystery of the incarnation of the breath of God in us… limiting ourselves to repeating what we said: ‘There is in us an unknown that is ourselves, and that, at the same time, commands our matter-self and obeys it.’ “As for the material element, we proclaim with all the force of our sincerity that we are no less embarrassed… the creation of the first man, of the first woman, as material beings, is a mystery as inextricable as that of the spiritualization of this created being.

“Veil of darkness, secret of the Creator, that it is not permitted to lift, to penetrate.

“The primitive element is God, or is in God… Let us not seek and, with the wisest of the doctors of the Church, let us say: ‘Do not seek to penetrate this mystery: you would go mad.’ “Now we ask the gentlemen of the Spiritist Review, those who believe in second sight, in spiritual vision: why do they rise up against physical phenomena considered as prognostics of happy or unhappy events?

“You say that these phenomena in general have no connection with the things they seem to presage. [See: Presentiments and prognostics.] They may be the precursors of physical effects that are their consequence, as a black point on the horizon may presage to the sailor a storm, or certain clouds announce hail, but the signification of these phenomena for things of the moral order, you add, must be classed among the superstitious beliefs, which can never be combated with too much energy.

“Explain yourselves a little better, gentlemen, because here you touch one of the grave questions of the cabalistic sciences, of prophetic predictions.

“Tell us frankly, loyally, in what category you class the numerical influences. Do you deny them? do you contest them? do you believe in them?… have you never reflected on these questions? [see The science of the concordance of numbers and fatality.]

“Take care. Everything is linked in the mysteries of Creation, in the secret of the correlations of worlds, of planetary correlations. You believe in yourselves, in your spiritual self, in your incarnated Spirit, and you believe, too, in the disincarnated Spirits: therefore, in the Spirits who were incarnated and who, purified of their preceding incarnation, await an incarnation, we will not say more celestial, more divine, but more angelic… Behold your faith. And then, you stop the divine mathematics and say: I do not believe in this regular prescience, which would affect my free will; I do not believe in these detailed calculations… Limit yourselves to doubting, gentlemen; but do not deny. “If you studied the history of Humanity taking the numerical concordances as a guide, you would be crushed and would no longer dare to say that these superstitious beliefs could never be combated with too much energy.

“We can place before your eyes more than four thousand numerical, historical, indisputable concordances. Make an event arrive, be born or die a year earlier or later, and the concordance ceases… What law governs them?… Mystery of God, secret unknown to the creature…; and as everything is bound and linked, you dare, you who in your quality of Spiritist must believe in magnetism, in sleep-activity, in somnambulism; you who must believe in the spiritual agent (and not element), how can you deny the unknown laws that govern the relations of worlds among themselves?… You believe in the relations of incarnated Spirits with disincarnated Spirits! Then be logical and do not recoil before any possibility still hidden in the darkness of the unknown. “We shall return to this question, which is not new, but which has always remained in the limbo of Science. (We use this word intentionally).”

REPLY.

The reasons why Spiritism repudiates the word miracle, as concerns it in particular, and in general for the phenomena that do not escape the natural laws, have been developed many times, whether in our works on the doctrine, or in various articles of the Spiritist Review. They are summarized in the following passage, taken from the issue of May 1867. [On the use of the word miracle.]

“In its usual acceptation the word miracle has lost its primitive signification, like so many others, beginning with the word philosophy (love of wisdom), which today is used to express the most diametrically opposed ideas, from the purest spiritualism to the most absolute materialism. No one doubts that, in the thought of the masses, miracle implies the idea of an extranatural fact. Ask all those who believe in miracles whether they regard them as natural effects. The Church has fixed itself so firmly on this point that it anathematizes those who claim to explain miracles by the laws of Nature. The Academy itself defines this word: An act of the divine power, contrary to the known laws of nature. — True, false miracle. — Proven miracle. — To work miracles. — The gift of miracles. “To be understood by all, one must speak as everyone speaks. Now, it is evident that if we had qualified the Spiritist phenomena as miraculous, the public would have been mistaken as to their true character, unless, each time, a circumlocution were employed and one said that there are miracles that are not miracles, as generally understood. Since the generality attaches to it the idea of a derogation of the natural laws, and the Spiritist phenomena are nothing but the application of those same laws, it is much simpler and above all more logical to say without beating around the bush: No, Spiritism does not work miracles. In this way, there is no mistake, nor false interpretation. Just as the progress of the physical sciences destroyed a multitude of prejudices and brings into the order of natural facts a great number of effects once considered miraculous, Spiritism, by the revelation of new laws, comes to further restrict the domain of the marvelous; we say more: it deals it the final blow, which is why it is not ill-seen anywhere, just as astronomy and geology are not.” Moreover, the question of miracles is treated in a complete manner, and with all the developments it entails, in the second part of the new work that we publish under the title Genesis, the miracles and the predictions, according to Spiritism. [see Characters of miracles.] The natural cause of facts reputed miraculous, in the vulgar sense of the word, is explained. If the author of the above article takes the trouble to read it, he will see that the cures of Mr. Jacob and all those of the same kind are not a problem for Spiritism which, for a long time, has known how to proceed on this point. It is an almost elementary question.

The acceptation of the word miracle, in the sense of an extranatural fact, is consecrated by usage. The Church claims it for its own account, as an integral part of its dogmas; it seems to us, then, difficult to bring this word back to its etymological acceptation, without exposing oneself to misunderstandings. It would be necessary, says the author, to have a new word. Now, as everything that is not outside the laws of Nature is natural, we see no other able to encompass them all but that of natural phenomena. But natural phenomena, reputed miraculous, are of two orders: some depend on laws that govern matter, others on laws that govern the action of the spiritual principle. The former fall within the province of Science properly so called, the latter are more especially in the domain of Spiritism. As for these last, since they are, for the most part, a consequence of the attributes of the soul, the word exists: they are called psychic phenomena; and when combined with the effects of matter, they could be called psychic-material or semi-psychic. The author criticizes the expression spiritual element, for the reason, he says, that the only spiritual element is God. The reply to this is very simple. The word element is not here taken in the sense of a simple body, elementary, of primitive molecules, but in that of a constituent part of a whole. In this sense, it may be said that the spiritual element has an active part in the economy [organization] of the Universe, as one says that the civil element and the military element figure in such a proportion in the figure of a population; that the religious element enters into education; that in Algeria there is the Arab element and the European element, etc. For our part, we will say to the author that, for lack of a special word for this latter acceptation of the term element, one is forced to use it. Moreover, as these two acceptations do not represent contradictory ideas, like that of the term miracle, no confusion is possible, for the radical idea is the same. If the author takes the trouble to study Spiritism, against which we note with pleasure that he has no preconceived idea of negation, he will find in it the reply to the doubts that some parts of his article seem to express, as to the manner of regarding certain things, save, however, as concerns the science of numerical concordances, with which we have never occupied ourselves, and on which, consequently, we could not have a formed opinion. [See: The science of the concordance of numbers and fatality.]

Spiritism does not have the pretension of saying the last word on all the laws that govern the Universe, which is why it has never said: Nec plus ultra. n By its very nature it opens the way to all new discoveries, but until a new principle is established, it accepts it only by way of hypothesis or probability.