Fernanda.

— Such is the title of a serial novel, by Mr. Jules Doinel (d'Aurillac), n published in the Moniteur du Cantal of May 23 and 30, June 6, 13, and 20, 1866. As one can see, the name of Spiritism is not concealed, for which the author should be all the more commended for that courage of opinion, which is rarer in provincial writers, where the contrary influences exert a greater pressure than in Paris.

We regret that, after having been published in serial form, the form under which an idea spreads most easily among the masses, this novel has not been gathered into a volume, and that our readers are deprived of the pleasure of acquiring it. Although it is an unpretentious work, confined within a very small frame, it is a true and engaging portrait of the relations between the spiritual world and the corporeal world, which brings its contribution to the popularization of the Spiritist idea, from the serious and moral point of view. It shows the pure and noble sentiments that this belief can develop in the heart of man, the serenity it gives amid afflictions, through the certainty of a future that corresponds to all the aspirations of the soul and gives full satisfaction to reason. To paint these aspirations truthfully, as the author does, one must have faith in what one says. A writer, for whom such a subject would be nothing more than a commonplace picture, without conviction, would believe that to do Spiritism it would suffice to combine fanaticism, the marvelous, and strange adventures, just as certain painters think it sufficient to spread vivid colors in order to make a picture. True Spiritism is simple; it touches the heart and does not wound the imagination with hammer blows. This is what the author understood. The plot of Fernanda is very simple. It concerns a young woman, tenderly loved by her mother, torn in the flower of her age from her tenderness and from the love of her betrothed, and who shows her courage by manifesting herself before his eyes and dictating to her beloved, who is soon to be reunited with her, the picture of the world that awaits him. We shall cite some of the thoughts we note therein.

— "Ever since the apparition of Fernanda, I had become a resolute adept of the science of beyond the grave. Why, moreover, should I have doubted it? Has man the right to set limits to thought and to say to God: You shall go no further?"

"Considering that we are near her and that we tread upon ground that is holy, I shall, my dear friend, speak to you with an open heart, taking God as witness to the sincerity of all that you are about to hear. I know that you believe in the Spirits, and more than once you have asked me to make your belief precise on this point. I did not do so, and, it must be said, without the strange manifestations that you have had, I would never have done so. My friend, I believe that God gave to certain souls a power of sympathy so great that it can propagate itself to the unknown regions of the other life. It is upon this foundation that my entire doctrine rests. The charlatanism and hypocrisy of certain adepts pain me, because I cannot understand that one could profane a thing so holy." "Oh! Stéphen Stany (the betrothed) was quite right to say that charlatanism and hypocrisy profane the most holy things. Belief in the Spirits should make the soul serene; whence comes it, then, that in the darkness the slightest noise terrifies me? At times I have seen take shape, in the half-light of my alcove, now the phantom of Fernanda de Moeris, now the vague profile of my mother; at them I smiled. But, often too, my gaze turned away in dread from the grimaces of certain evil Spirits, come there to draw me away from good and to divert me from God."

"While he spoke to me, Stany was calm. I noticed in his countenance no trace of exaltation. But, near that stone, his diaphaneity became even more visible. The soul of my friend showed itself wholly to my gaze. That beautiful soul had nothing to hide. I understood that the bond binding him to the body of clay was very weak, and that the hour was not far off when he would fly to the other world."

"She had said to me: 'Go to my mother's house' — This was painful to me, I confess it; although betrothed to Fernanda, I was not on very good terms with your cousin. You know how jealous she was of anyone who held a part of the affection of her daughter. I will tell you that she received me with open arms and said to me, weeping: 'I have seen her again!' The ice was broken; we were going to understand each other for the first time. — My dear Stéphen, she added, I believe I have dreamed! But, in short, I saw her again, and here is what she said to me: 'Mother, you shall ask Stéphen Stany to remain eight days in the room that was mine. During that period, you will not permit him to be disturbed. During that retreat, God will reveal many things to him.' — They led me immediately to your cousin's room; and from that very day until yesterday, the day when I saw you again, her soul was uninterruptedly with me. I saw her and saw her very well, with the eyes of the Spirit, and not with the eyes of my body, though these were open. She spoke to me. When I say that she spoke to me, I mean that there was between us a transmission of thought. I now know all that I needed to know. I know that this globe represents nothing to me and that a better existence awaits me." "I have learned to esteem the world at its just value. Retain these words, my friend: Every Spirit who wishes to attain the higher happiness must keep his body chaste, his heart pure, his soul free. Happy is he who knows how to perceive the immaterial form of God through the shadows of what passes!"

"Let us never forget, O brothers, that God is Spirit, and that the more we become Spirit, the more we draw near to God. It is not permitted to man to break violently the bonds of matter, of flesh and blood. These bonds entail duties; but it is permitted to him to detach himself from them little by little through the idealism of his aspirations, through the purity of his intentions, through the radiance of his soul, sacred reflection whose duty is the home, until, a free dove, his Spirit, freed from the mortal chains, flies and soars in the immeasurable spaces."

The manuscript dictated by the Spirit Fernanda, during the eight days of Stéphen's retreat, contains the following passages:

"I died in confusion and awoke in joy. I saw my body, barely grown cold, stretched out on the funeral bed, and I felt as though relieved of a heavy burden. It was then that I perceived you, my beloved, and that, by the permission of God, united with the free exercise of my will, I discerned you beside my corpse.

"While the worms pursued their work of corruption, I penetrated, curious, the mysteries of the new world I inhabited. I thought, felt, loved as on Earth; but my thought, my sensation, my love had increased. I understood better the designs of God, I aspired to His divine will. We live an almost immaterial life, and we are superior to you as much as the angels are to us. We see God, but not clearly; we see Him as one sees the Sun of your Earth, through a thick cloud. But this imperfect vision suffices for our soul, which is not yet purified.

"Men appear to us as wandering phantoms in a twilight mist. God has granted to some among us the grace of seeing more clearly those whom they love by preference. I saw you thus, dear love, and my will enveloped you with a loving sympathy at every moment. It is thus that your thoughts came to me, that your acts were inspired by me, that your life, in a word, was nothing but a reflection of my life. Just as we can communicate with you, the higher Spirits can reveal themselves to our gaze. At times, in the immaterial transparency, we see pass the august and luminous silhouette of some Spirit. It is impossible for me to describe to you the respect that this vision inspires in us. Happy are those among us who are honored with these divine visits. Admire the goodness of God! the worlds all correspond with one another. We show ourselves to you; they show themselves to us: it is the symbolic ladder of Jacob." "It is thus that, in a single beat of wings, they rose up to God. But these are rare. Others endure the long trials of successive existences. It is virtue that gives the positions, and the beggar bowed toward the earth is, at times, in the eyes of the just and severe God, greater than the proud king or the unvanquished conqueror. Nothing has worth save the soul; it is the only weight that matters in the balance of God."

— Now that we have given the part of praise, let us give that of criticism. It will not be long, because it refers only to two or three thoughts. First, in the dialogue between the two friends, we find the following passage:

"Do we have anterior existences? I do not believe so: God draws us out of nothingness; but what I am certain of is that, after what we call death, we begin — and when I say we, I speak of the soul — we begin, I say, a series of new existences. On the day when we are pure enough to see, to understand, and to love God entirely, only on that day shall we die. Note well that on that day we love nothing more than God and nothing but God. If, then, Fernanda were purified, she would not think, could not think, of me. Since she has manifested herself, I conclude that she lives. Where? I shall soon know! She is happy in her life, I believe so, because as long as the Spirit has not been completely purified, it cannot understand that happiness lies only in God. It can be relatively happy. As we ascend, the idea of God grows ever larger within us, and we are, for that very reason, ever happier. But this happiness is never anything but a relative happiness. Thus, my betrothed lives. What is her life? I do not know. God alone can tell the Spirits to reveal these mysteries to men." After ideas such as those contained in the aforementioned passages, we are surprised to find a doctrine such as this, which makes of perfect happiness a selfish happiness. The charm of the Spiritist Doctrine, what makes of it a supreme consolation, is precisely the idea of the perpetuity of the affections, purifying themselves and drawing closer as the Spirit purifies and elevates itself. Here, on the contrary, when the Spirit is perfect, it forgets those whom it loved, in order to think only of itself; it is dead to any sentiment other than that of its own happiness; perfection would take from it the possibility, the very desire to come and console those whom it leaves in affliction. One must agree that this would be a sad perfection or, rather, it would be an imperfection. Eternal happiness, thus conceived, would scarcely be more enviable than that of perpetual contemplation, of which cloistered seclusion gives us the image through the anticipated death of the most holy affections of the family. If it were so, a mother would be reduced to fearing, instead of desiring, the complete purification of the beings dearest to her. Never has the generality of the Spirits taught anything similar; one would call it an accommodation between Spiritism and the common belief. But this accommodation is not a happy one, for, not satisfying the intimate aspirations of the soul, it has no chance of prevailing in opinion. When the author says that he does not believe in anterior existences, but that he is certain that, after death, we begin a series of new existences, he did not realize that he was committing a flagrant contradiction. If he admits the plurality of posterior existences, as a thing logical and necessary to progress, on what does he base himself for not admitting anterior existences? He does not say how he explains, in a manner conformable to the justice of God, the innate inequality, intellectual and moral, that exists among men. If this existence be the first, and if all came out of nothingness, one falls into the absurd doctrine, irreconcilable with sovereign justice, of a partial God, who favors some of His creatures, creating souls of all qualities. One could equally see in this an accommodation with the new ideas, but one that is no happier than the preceding. Finally, we are astonished to see Fernanda, an advanced Spirit, uphold this proposition from another time: "Laura became a mother; God took pity on her and called this child to Himself. She comes to see her again at times. She is sad, because, having died without baptism, she will never enjoy the divine contemplation." Thus, here is a Spirit whom God calls to Himself, and who is forever unhappy and deprived of the contemplation of God, because she did not receive baptism, when it did not depend on her to receive it, and the fault is God's own, who called her too soon. It is such doctrines that have made so many unbelievers, and those who hope to pass them off as Spiritist ideas deceive themselves, for these take root; of Spiritist ideas there will be accepted only that which is rational and sanctioned by the universality of the teaching of the Spirits. If there is yet agreement here, it is clumsy. We hold it as certain that in a thousand Spiritist centers where the propositions we have just criticized are submitted to the Spirits, there will be nine hundred and ninety where they will be resolved in the contrary sense. It is the universality of the teaching, sanctioned, moreover, by logic, that has made and that will complete the Spiritist Doctrine. From that universality of the teaching given at all points of the globe, by different Spirits, and in centers wholly foreign to one another, and which undergo no common pressure, this doctrine gathers a strength against which individual opinions, whether of Spirits or of men, will struggle in vain. The alliance that one might wish to establish of Spiritist ideas with contradictory ideas can only be ephemeral and localized. Individual opinions may bring together a few individuals, but, necessarily circumscribed, they cannot bring together the majority, unless they have the sanction of that majority. Rejected by the greater number, they have no vitality and become extinct with their representatives. This is the result of a calculation exclusively mathematical. If, in 1,000 centers, there be 990 where the teaching is the same, and ten of a contrary manner, it is evident that the dominant opinion will be that of 990 in 1,000, that is, the near unanimity. Well then! we are sure to allot a very large share to the divergent ideas in bringing them to one hundredth. Never formulating a principle before being assured of general assent, we are always in agreement with the opinion of the majority.

Spiritism is today in possession of a sum of truths so well demonstrated by experience, that at the same time satisfy reason so completely, that they have become articles of faith in the opinion of the immense majority of adepts. Now, to place oneself in open hostility with this majority, to clash with its aspirations and its dearest convictions, is to prepare for oneself an inevitable setback. Such is the cause of the failure of certain publications.

But, they will say, is it then forbidden to whoever does not share the ideas of the majority, to publish his own opinions? Certainly not; it is even useful that he should do so. But, in that case, he must do so at his own risk and peril, and not count on the moral and material support of those whose beliefs he wishes to attack with fury.

Returning to Fernanda, the points of doctrine that we combat appear to be the personal opinion of the author, who did not perceive the weak side. Referring us to his work, the beginning of a young man's career, he tells us that in writing this novel he had only a superficial knowledge of the Spiritist Doctrine and that, doubtless, we would find in it several things to censure, on which he asked our opinion; that, more enlightened today, there are principles he would formulate otherwise. Commending him for his frankness and modesty, we inform him that, if there were occasion to refute him, we would do so in the Review, for the instruction of all.

With the exception of the points we have just cited, there is none that the Spiritist Doctrine cannot accept. We commend the author for the moral and philosophical point of view in which he placed himself, and we consider his work as eminently useful to the diffusion of the idea, because it makes it viewed under its true light, which is the serious point of view. (See in the preceding issue the poem by the same author, entitled: To the Protector Spirits.)

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[More information about Jules Doinel:

Jean Kostka, pseudonym of Jules Stanislas Doinel.]