Solidarity

Glory to God and peace to men of good will!

The study of Spiritism must not be in vain. For certain frivolous men, it is a diversion; for serious men, it must be serious.

First of all reflect on one thing. You are not on Earth to live there in the manner of animals, to vegetate in the manner of grasses or trees. Grasses and trees have organic life, but they do not have intelligent life, just as animals do not have moral life. Everything lives, everything breathes in Nature, but only man feels and is aware of himself.

How lamentable and senseless are those who despise themselves to the point of comparing themselves to a blade of grass or to an elephant! Let us not confuse the genera nor the species. They are no great philosophers and great naturalists who, for example, see in Spiritism a new edition of metempsychosis and, above all, of an absurd metempsychosis. Metempsychosis is nothing other than the dream of a man of imagination. An animal, a vegetable produces its like, nothing more, nothing less. Let this be said in order to prevent old false ideas from being believed again, under the shadow of Spiritism.

Man, be a man; know whence you come and whither you go. You are the beloved child of Him who made all things and gave you an end, a destiny that you must accomplish without knowing it absolutely. Were you necessary to His designs, to His glory, to His own happiness? Useless questions, because insoluble. You are; be grateful for this; but to be is not everything; one must be according to the laws of the Creator, which are your own laws. Cast into existence, you are at the same time cause and effect. At least as regards the present, you cannot determine your role, neither as cause nor as effect, but you can follow your laws. Now, the principal one is this: Man is not an isolated being, he is a collective being. Man is solidary with man. It is in vain that he seeks the complement of his being, that is, happiness in himself or in what surrounds him in isolation; he can find it only in man or in Humanity. Then you will do nothing to be personally happy, so long as the unhappiness of a member of Humanity, of a part of yourself, can afflict you. But, you will say, it is morality that you teach. Now, morality is an old commonplace. Look around you: what is more ordinary, more common than the periodic succession of day and night, than the necessity of feeding and clothing yourselves? It is toward this that all your cares, all your efforts tend. And it is necessary, for thus does the material part of your being require it. But is not your nature double, and are you not spirit as much as body? How, then, is it more difficult for you to hear the moral laws recalled than the physical laws, which you apply at every instant? If you were less preoccupied and less distracted, that repetition would not be so necessary.

Let us not stray from our subject. Well understood, Spiritism is, for the life of the soul, what material work is for the life of the body. Occupy yourselves with it with this aim, and be assured that when you have done, for your moral improvement, half of what you do to improve your material existence, you will have made Humanity take a great step.

A Spirit.