Spiritist thoughts circulating the world.

— In our last issue we reported some thoughts found here and there in the press, which Spiritism may claim as integral parts of the doctrine. [see: Review of the Press concerning Spiritism.] We shall continue to report, from time to time, those that come to our knowledge. These quotations have their useful and instructive side, for they prove the popularization of Spiritist ideas.

In the weekly review of the Siècle of December 2, Mr. E. Texier, giving an account of a new work by Mr. P. J. Stahl, entitled Bonnes fortunes parisiennes, n expresses himself thus: “What distinguishes these Parisian Good Fortunes is the delicacy of touch in the depiction of sentiment, it is the fine fragrance of the book, which one breathes like a breeze. Rarely had they treated this subject so vast, so explored, so worn out and yet always new — love — with true science, felt observation, more tact and lightness of hand. It has been said that, in a previous existence, Balzac must have been a woman; one might also say that Stahl had been a young girl. All the little secrets of the heart that opens at the contact of the first rapture, he captures them and fixes them even in their finest nuances. He did better than study his heroines; one would say that he felt all their impressions, all their vibrations, all those lovely shocks — joy or sorrow — that succeed one another in the feminine soul and fill it at the first buds of the April flowering.” It is not the first time that the idea of previous existences has been expressed outside of Spiritism. The author of the article formerly spared no sarcasm toward the new belief, with regard to the Davenport brothers, in whom, like most of his colleagues in journalism, he judged, and perhaps still judges, the doctrine to be incarnate. In writing these lines, he certainly did not suspect that he was formulating one of its most important principles. Whether he did so seriously or not matters little! The thing nonetheless proves that the incredulous themselves find in the plurality of existences, even if admitted only by way of hypothesis, the explanation of the innate aptitudes of the present existence. This thought, cast to millions of readers by the wind of publicity, becomes popular, infiltrates beliefs; one grows accustomed to it; each one seeks therein the reason for being of an immensity of incomprehensible things, of one's own tendencies: here jesting, there seriously; the mother whose child is somewhat precocious gladly smiles at the idea that he may have been a man of genius. In our rationalist century, people want to account for everything; it repels the greater number to see in the good and bad qualities brought at birth a play of chance or a caprice of the divinity; the plurality of existences resolves the question by showing that existences link together and complete one another. From deduction to deduction one comes to find, in this fruitful principle, the key to all mysteries, to all the apparent anomalies of moral and material life, of social inequalities, of the goods and ills of here below; in short, man knows whence he comes, whither he goes, why he is on Earth, why he is happy or wretched, and what he must do to ensure his future happiness. If it is deemed rational to admit that we have already lived on Earth, it is no less so that we may yet live here again. As it is evident that it is not the body that lives again, it can only be the soul; this soul has therefore preserved its individuality; it has not become confounded in the universal whole; in order to preserve its aptitudes, it must have remained itself. The sole principle of the plurality of existences is, as one sees, the negation of materialism and of pantheism.

In order for the soul to be able to accomplish a series of successive existences in the same milieu, it must not lose itself in the depths of the infinite; it must remain in the sphere of terrestrial activity. Here, then, is the spiritual world that surrounds us, in the midst of which we live, into which corporeal Humanity pours itself, as it itself pours into this one. Now, call these souls Spirits and here we are in full Spiritism.

If Balzac could have been a woman and Stahl a young girl, then women can incarnate as men and, consequently, men can incarnate as women. There is, then, between the two sexes only a material, accidental, and temporary difference, a difference of carnal garment; but as for the essential nature of the being, it is the same. Now, from the equality of nature and of origin, logic concludes to the equality of social rights. One sees to what consequences the principle of the plurality of existences alone leads. Mr. Texier probably did not believe he had said so much in the few lines that we quote.

— But, perhaps they will say, Spiritism admits the presence of souls in our midst and their relations with the living; here is where the absurdity lies. On this point let us listen to the abbé V…, the new curate of Saint Vincent de Paul. In the discourse he pronounced on Sunday, November 25 last, upon his investiture, making the eulogy of the patron of the parish, he said: “The Spirit Saint Vincent de Paul is here, I affirm it, my brethren; yes, he is in our midst; he hovers over this assembly; he sees us and hears us; I feel him near me, inspiring me.” What more would a Spiritist have said? If the Spirit Saint Vincent de Paul is in the assembly, by whom is he attracted, if not by the sympathetic thought of those present? This is what Spiritism says. If he is there, other Spirits may likewise be found there. Here is the spiritual world that surrounds us. If the abbé undergoes his influence, he may undergo that of other Spirits, just as other people do. There are, then, relations between the spiritual world and the corporeal world. If he speaks by the inspiration of that Spirit, then he is a speaking medium; but if he speaks, he can also write under that same inspiration what he has, without doubt, done more than once without suspecting it; here he is, then, an inspired, intuitive writing medium. Yet, if he were told that he had preached Spiritism, he would probably defend himself with all his might. But under what appearance could the Spirit Saint Vincent de Paul be in that assembly?

If the curate does not say so, Saint Paul says it: it is with the spiritual or fluidic body, the incorruptible body, which clothes the soul after death, and to which Spiritism gives the name of perispirit. [1 Cor 15.38-42.]

— The perispirit, one of the constitutive elements of the human organism, established by Spiritism, had been suspected long ago. It is impossible to be more explicit on this subject than Mr. Charpignon, in his work on magnetism, published in 1842. n Indeed, one reads in chapter II, page 355:

“The psychological considerations to which we have just devoted ourselves had as their result to fix us in the necessity of admitting, in the composition of human individuality, a true trinity, and of finding in this ternary composite an element of a nature essentially different from the two other parts, an element perceptible more by its phenomenal faculties than by its constitutive properties, because the nature of a spiritual being escapes our means of investigation. Man is, then, a mixed being, an organism of double composition, namely: a combination of atoms forming the organs, and an element of material but indecomposable nature, dynamic by essence, in a word, an imponderable fluid. This as regards the material part. Now, as the characteristic element of the human species: this simple, intelligent, free, and voluntary being, which psychologists call the soul…”

These quotations and the reflections that accompany them have for their aim to show that opinion is less removed from Spiritist ideas than one might believe, and that the force of things and the irresistible logic of facts lead to it by a quite natural inclination. It is, then, no vain presumption to say that the future is ours.

[1] [Pierre-Jules Hetzel, born on January 15, 1814 in Chartres, and died on March 17, 1886 in Monte Carlo, was a French writer and publisher, known under the pseudonym P. J. Stahl.]

[2] Physiologie, médecine et métaphysique du magnétisme - Google Books, by Charpignon, 1 vol. In-8. Paris, Baillière, 17, Rue de l’École-de-Médecine. Price: 6 fr.