Retrospective review of Spiritist ideas.

“Picturesque and sentimental journey to the Field of Repose of Montmartre and of Père-Lachaise; by Ant. Caillot, author of the Encyclopedia of Young Women, and of the New Elementary Lessons in the History of France.” Such is the title of a book published in Paris in 1808, and which today must be very rare. The author, after recounting and describing these two cemeteries, cites a great number of tomb inscriptions, on each of which he makes philosophical reflections, marked by deep religious sentiment, prompted by the thought that dictated them. At the outset we observe the following passage, in which the idea of reincarnation is clearly expressed: “What a wise man and what a deeply religious man was the first to call Field of Repose the last refuge of this being whose existence, until its last breath, is tormented by the beings that surround it and by itself! Here all repose in the bosom of the common mother, in a sleep that is but the forerunner of the awakening, that is, of a new existence. These venerable remains the earth preserves as a sacred deposit; and if it hastens to dissolve them, it is to purify their elements and to make them more worthy of the intelligence that will one day reanimate them for new destinies.” Further on he says: “Oh! how the blind and audacious mortal who dared to expel you from his spirit and from his heart (the atheist who denies God) was astonished when his soul appeared before the infinite Majesty! How his remains were seen to stir and tremble with surprise and terror! How his frozen tongue came alive to express the dismay with which it was stricken, when flesh no longer stood between it and your divine gaze! Great God! universal cause, soul of Nature! all beings acknowledge you and celebrate you as their sole author: would man alone turn away from you the intelligent and rational spirit that you give him to glorify you? Ah! without doubt, and it pleases me to believe it, there was not a single one of the forty thousand mortals whose bodies lie here in the dust who did not have the conviction of your existence and the sentiment of your adorable perfections. “When I had just pronounced these last words with emotion, a noise made itself heard at my side. I cast my gaze toward that side and – admirable and unheard-of thing! – I perceived a specter who, wrapped in his shroud, had come out of a tomb and was advancing gravely toward me, to speak to me. Might this apparition not have been a play of my imagination? That is what it is impossible for me to assert. But the following dialogue, which I have well preserved, made me believe that I was not the sole interlocutor for two roles at the same time.” Here we shall make a small critical observation, first regarding the qualification of specter, given by the author to the apparition, real or supposed. This word recalls all too well the dismal ideas that superstition attaches to the phenomenon of apparitions, today perfectly explained, according to the knowledge one has of the constitution of spiritual beings. Secondly, regarding the fact that he has this apparition come out of the tomb, as though the soul had its dwelling there. But this is no more than a detail of form, due to long-rooted prejudices; the essential thing lies in the picture he presents of the moral situation of that soul, a situation identical to that which communications with Spirits reveal to us today. The author relates as follows the dialogue he had with the being that appeared to him:

When the specter approached me, he made me hear these words in a voice such that it was impossible for me to specify the sound, for I had never heard a like one among men:

“You do well to adore God. Beware of ever imitating me, for I was an atheist.”

I – So you did not believe that a God existed?

The Specter – No. Or rather, I pretended not to believe.

I – What reasons did you have for not believing that the Universe was created and is governed by a supreme intelligence?

The Specter – None. However much I sought, I found no solid grounds and was reduced to merely repeating vain sophisms, which I had read in the works of certain supposed philosophers.

I – If you had no good reasons to be an atheist, then did you have motives to appear to be one?

The Specter – Without doubt. Seeing all my fellow men imbued with the idea of a God and with the sentiment of his existence, the pride that blinded me led me to distinguish myself from the multitude, maintaining to whoever would hear me that God did not exist and that the Universe was the work of chance, or even that it had always existed. I regarded it as a glory to think on this great subject differently from all men, and I found nothing more flattering than to be considered in the world as a Spirit strong enough to rise up against the common belief of all men and of all the centuries. I – Had you no other motive besides pride for embracing atheism?

The Specter – Yes.

I – What was it? Tell the truth.

The Specter – The truth!!… Without doubt I shall tell it, for it is impossible for me, in the order of things in which I exist, to combat it or to dissemble it.

Like all my fellow men, I was born with the sentiment of the existence of a God, author and principle of all beings. This sentiment, which at first was but a germ, in which my spirit discovered nothing, developed little by little; and when I reached the age of reason and acquired the faculty of reflecting, I had to make no effort to free myself of it. How many lessons of my parents and of my teachers pleased me, when God and his infinite perfections were the subject! How the spectacle of Nature enchanted me, and what sweet satisfaction I experienced when they spoke to me of that great God, who created all by his power, who sustains, governs, and conserves all by his wisdom! Meanwhile, I reached adolescence and the passions began to make me hear their seductive voice. I formed connections with young men of my age; I followed their baneful counsels and conformed myself to their dangerous examples. Entering the world with these reprehensible dispositions, I thought of nothing more than to make to it the sacrifice of all the principles of virtue and of wisdom that had at first been inspired in me. These principles, daily attacked by my passions, took refuge in the depths of my conscience and there were transformed into remorse. As this remorse left me no repose, I resolved to annihilate, as much as lay within me, the cause that had engendered it. I found that this cause was none other than the idea of a God who rewards virtue and avenges crime; and I attacked it with all the sophisms that my Spirit could invent or discover in the works destined to spread the doctrine of atheism. I – Were you more tranquil when you heaped sophisms upon sophisms against the existence of God?

The Specter – However much I did, repose fled from me incessantly. In spite of myself, I was convinced and, although my mouth pronounced not a word that was not a blasphemy, I had not a single sentiment that did not combat against me, in favor of God.

I – What happened to you during the illness of which you died?

The Specter – I wished to sustain to the end the character of a strong spirit, but pride prevented me from confessing my error, notwithstanding that I felt inwardly a pressing need. It was in this criminal and false disposition that I ceased to exist.

I – What happened to you when your eyes closed forever to the light?

The Specter – I found myself entirely surrounded by the majesty of God and was seized by a terror so profound that I find no term that can give you a just idea of it. I greatly expected to be rigorously punished, but the sovereign judge, whose mercy softens justice, relegated me to a shadowy region, inhabited by the Spirits who had innocent hands and a diseased brain.

I – What is the lot of the atheists who committed crimes against the society of their fellow men?

The Specter – The Being of beings punishes them for having been wicked, and not for having been mistaken, for he despises opinions and only rewards or punishes actions.

I – So you are not chastised in the shadowy abode where you are exiled?

The Specter – There I suffer a penalty more cruel than you can imagine. God, after having condemned me, withdrew from me; immediately I lost all idea of his existence, and nothingness presented itself to me in all its horror.

I – What! you lost entirely the idea of God?

The Specter – Yes. It is the greatest torment that an immortal Spirit can bear, and nothing can make one conceive the state of abandonment, of pain, and of disorder in which one finds oneself.

I – What, then, is your occupation with the Spirits subjected to the same torment?

The Specter – We quarrel incessantly, without understanding one another. Folly and madness preside over all our debates and, in the deep darkness in which our intelligence lies buried, there is no opinion, no system that it does not adopt, only to reject them at once and conceive new extravagances. It is, then, in the perpetual agitation of this ebb and flow of ideas without foundation, without continuity, without connection, that the chastisement of the philosophers who were atheists consists. I – In spite of everything, you are reasoning at this moment.

The Specter – It is because my torment is soon to end. It has been very long, for, although on Earth only two years are counted since my death, I suffered so much from these follies that I uttered and heard, that it seems to me thousands of centuries have already passed in the region of systems and disputes.

After having thus spoken, the Specter bowed, adored God, and disappeared.

When I recovered from the emotion caused by what I had just seen and heard, my thoughts turned to the astonishing things the specter had taught me. Does what he told me of the first Being correspond to the idea that so great a number of men have formed? What have I just heard? What! the atheist himself, the horror of his fellow men, ended by finding favor in the eyes of this Divinity whom they present to me as a vengeful and envious nature? Oh! who will now dare to say to me: If you do not adopt such or such an opinion, you will be condemned to eternal torments? What barbarian will dare to say: Outside my communion there is no salvation? Incomprehensible and all-merciful Being, have you charged anyone with the care of avenging you? Is it for a vile creature to say to its fellow men: think as I do, or you will be unhappy forever! What limits, great God! Can we, limited beings that we are, fix your clemency and your justice? And with what right would I say to you: Here you will reward, there you will punish? Answer, O dead who lie in the dust! Was it possible for all of you to have held the same belief in which I was born? Were your intelligences all equally touched by proofs that establish the mysteries I adore and the dogmas in which I believe? Oh! how would the degrees of a belief be the same everywhere, just as the degrees of conviction? Intolerant and cruel man, come, if you have the courage, sit at my side, and dare to say to the victims of death, whose lessons I have heeded: “Here you are forty thousand. Well then! there are but ten, fifty, a hundred among you whom the avenging God has not consigned to the eternal flames!” If this were the discourse of a madman, of what use would the religion of the tombs be? Why should I respect the ashes of those who adore the great Being in my own manner? Is it in this enclosure, where the enemies of my belief repose, mingled with its adherents, that I could hear the lessons of true wisdom? And of what impiety would I become guilty, communicating with reproved intelligences, to whose remains I come to render a homage inspired by religion, as by Humanity? [1]

[Voyage pittoresque et sentimental au Champ du Repos sous Montmartre et à la maison de campagne du Père-Lachaise à Montlouis - Google Books, par Antoine Caillot, in-8º, Paris, Hénée, impr., 1808, orné d’une gravure sans nom d’auteur.] [Virtual visit to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise.]