Characters of the Spiritist Revelation.

— Can Spiritism be considered a revelation? In that case, what is its character?

On what is its authenticity founded?

To whom and in what manner was it made?

Is the Spiritist Doctrine a revelation, in the theological sense of the word, or rather, is it, as a whole, the product of occult teaching come from On High?

Is it absolute or susceptible of modifications?

By bringing to men the whole truth, would the revelation not have the effect of preventing them from making use of their faculties, since it would spare them the labor of investigation?

What is the authority of the teaching of the Spirits, if they are neither infallible nor superior to Humanity?

What is the usefulness of the morality they preach, if that morality is no different from that of Christ, already known? What new truths do they bring us?

Does man have need of a revelation? And can he not find within himself and in his conscience all that is needful to guide himself in life? Such are the questions on which it is important that we dwell.

— Let us first define the meaning of the word revelation.

To reveal, derived from the word veil (from the Latin velum), literally means to come out from under the veil — and, figuratively, to uncover, to make known a secret or unknown thing.

In its most general common acceptation, this word is used with respect to anything unknown that is divulged, to any new idea that brings us up to date on what we did not know.

From this point of view, all the sciences that make us know the mysteries of Nature are revelations, and it may be said that for Humanity there is an unceasing revelation. Astronomy revealed the astral world, which we did not know; Geology revealed the formation of the Earth; Chemistry, the law of affinities; Physiology, the functions of the organism, etc.;

Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Lavoisier were revealers.

— The essential characteristic of any revelation must be truth.

To reveal a secret is to make known a fact; if it is false, it is no longer a fact and, consequently, there is no revelation.

Every revelation contradicted by facts ceases to be one, if it is attributed to God. Since God can neither lie nor be mistaken, it cannot emanate from Him: it must be considered as the product of a personal opinion.

— What is the role of the teacher before his pupils, if not that of a revealer?

The teacher teaches them what they do not know, what they would have neither the time nor the possibility of discovering by themselves, 3 because Science is the collective work of the centuries and of a multitude of men who each bring their contingent of observations useful to those who come after.

Teaching is, therefore, in reality, the revelation of certain scientific or moral, physical or metaphysical truths, made by men who know them to others who are ignorant of them and who, were it not so, would have remained ignorant of them forever.

— But the teacher teaches only what he has learned: he is a revealer of the second order; 2 the man of genius teaches what he has discovered by himself: he is the primitive revealer; he brings the light that little by little becomes common knowledge.

What would become of Humanity without the revelation of the men of genius who appear from time to time?

But who are these men of genius? And why are they men of genius? Whence did they come? What becomes of them?

Let us note that the majority of them denote, at birth, transcendent faculties and certain innate knowledge, which they develop with little effort.

They truly belong to Humanity, for they are born, live, and die like us. But where did they acquire that knowledge which they could not have learned during life?

Will it be said, with the materialists, that chance gave them cerebral matter in greater quantity and of better quality? In that case, they would have no more merit than a vegetable larger and tastier than another.

Will it be said, as certain spiritualists do, that God gave them a soul more favored than that of the common run of men? An equally illogical supposition, since it would charge God with partiality.

The only rational solution of the problem lies in the pre-existence of the soul and the plurality of lives.

The man of genius is a Spirit who has lived a longer time; who, consequently, has acquired and progressed more than those who are less advanced.

In incarnating, he brings what he knows and, since he knows far more than others and has no need to learn, he is called a man of genius.

But his knowledge is the fruit of an earlier labor and not the result of a privilege.

Before being reborn, he was therefore an advanced Spirit: he reincarnates to make others profit from what he already knows, or to acquire more than he possesses.

Men progress incontestably by themselves and by the efforts of their intelligence; but, left to their own forces, they would progress only very slowly, were they not aided by others more advanced, as the student is by his teachers.

All peoples have had men of genius, who arose in various epochs to give them impulse and draw them out of inertia.

— Since the solicitude of God toward His creatures is admitted, why should it not be admitted that Spirits capable, by their energy and superiority of knowledge, of making Humanity advance, incarnate by the will of God, with the aim of activating progress in a determined direction? Why not admit that they receive missions, as an ambassador receives them from his sovereign? Such is the role of the great geniuses.

What do they come to do, if not to teach men truths which they are ignorant of and would yet remain ignorant of for long periods, so as to give them a point of support by means of which they may rise more rapidly?

These geniuses, who appear across the centuries like brilliant stars, leaving a long luminous trail upon Humanity, are missionaries or, if you will, messiahs.

What they teach men anew, whether in the physical order or in the philosophical order, are revelations.

If God raises up revealers for scientific truths, He can, with all the more reason, raise them up for moral truths, which constitute essential elements of progress. Such are the philosophers whose ideas cross the centuries.

— In the special sense of religious faith, revelation is said more particularly of spiritual things which man cannot discover by means of intelligence, nor with the aid of the senses, and the knowledge of which is given him by God or His messengers, whether by means of the direct word or by inspiration.

In this case, the revelation is always made to predisposed men, designated under the name of prophets or messiahs, that is, envoys or missionaries, charged with transmitting it to men.

Considered from this point of view, revelation implies absolute passivity and is accepted without verification, without examination, nor discussion.

— All religions have had their revealers and these, though far from knowing the whole truth, had a providential reason for being, because they were appropriate to the time and the milieu in which they lived, to the particular character of the peoples to whom they spoke and to whom they were relatively superior.

Despite the errors of their doctrines, they did not fail to stir minds and, for that very reason, to sow the germs of progress, which were later to develop, or will develop, in the brilliant light of Christianity.

It is, therefore, unjust to cast anathema upon them in the name of orthodoxy, because a day will come when all those beliefs, so diverse in form, but which truly repose upon one and the same fundamental principle — God and the immortality of the soul — will be fused into one great and vast unity, as soon as reason triumphs over prejudices.

Unfortunately, religions have always been instruments of domination; 5 the role of prophet has tempted secondary ambitions and there has been seen to arise a multitude of pretended revealers or messiahs, who, availing themselves of the prestige of this name, exploit credulity to the profit of their pride, their greed, or their indolence, finding it more convenient to live at the expense of the deluded.

The Christian religion could not avoid these parasites.

In this regard, we call particular attention to chapter XXI of The Gospel According to Spiritism: “False christs and false prophets will arise.”

— Are there direct revelations from God to men? That is a question which we would not dare to resolve, either affirmatively or negatively, in an absolute manner.

The fact is not radically impossible, but nothing gives us certain proof of it.

What admits no doubt is that the Spirits nearest to God by perfection imbue themselves with His thought and can transmit it.

As for the incarnate revealers, according to the hierarchical order to which they belong and the degree of knowledge they have reached, these can draw from their own knowledge the instructions they impart, or receive them from more elevated Spirits, even from the direct messengers of God, who, speaking in the name of God, have sometimes been taken for God Himself.

Communications of this kind have nothing strange about them for one who knows the Spiritist phenomena and the manner in which relations are established between the incarnate and the disincarnate.

The instructions may be transmitted by various means: by simple inspiration, by the hearing of the word, by the visibility of the instructing Spirits, in visions and apparitions, whether in dream or in the waking state, of which there are many examples in the Bible, in the Gospel and in the sacred books of all Peoples.

It is, therefore, rigorously exact to say that nearly all the revealers are inspired, hearing, or seeing mediums; from this, however, one must not conclude that all mediums are revealers, nor, still less, direct intermediaries of the divinity or of His messengers.

— Only the pure Spirits receive the word of God with the mission of transmitting it; 2 but it is known today that not all Spirits are perfect and that there exist many who present themselves under false appearances, 3 which led Saint John to say: “Believe not in all Spirits; see first whether the Spirits are of God.” (Epistle I, chapter IV, v. 4).

There may, therefore, be revelations serious and true just as there are apocryphal and lying ones.

The essential character of divine revelation is that of eternal truth.

Every revelation tainted with errors or subject to modifications cannot emanate from God.

It is thus that the law of the Decalogue has all the characters of its origin, whereas the other Mosaic laws, fundamentally transitory, often in contradiction with the law of Sinai, are the personal and political work of the Hebrew legislator.

As the customs of the people softened, those laws of themselves fell into disuse, while the Decalogue ever remained standing, as a beacon of Humanity.

Christ made it the foundation of his edifice, abolishing the other laws.

Had these been the work of God, they would have been preserved intact.

Christ and Moses were the two great revealers who changed the face of the world, and therein lies the proof of their divine mission. A purely human work would lack such power.

— An important revelation is taking place in the present epoch and shows the possibility of our communicating with the beings of the spiritual world.

This knowledge is not new, without doubt; but it had remained until our days, in a certain way, as a dead letter, that is, without profit for Humanity.

Ignorance of the laws that govern these relations had smothered it under superstition; man was incapable of drawing from it any salutary deduction; 4 it was reserved for our epoch to disencumber it of the ridiculous accessories, to comprehend its scope, and to bring forth the light destined to illuminate the path of the future.

— Spiritism, by making known to us the invisible world that surrounds us and in the midst of which we lived without suspecting it, as well as the laws that govern it, its relations with the visible world, the nature and the state of the beings that inhabit it and, consequently, the destiny of man after death, is a true revelation, in the scientific acceptation of the word.

— By its nature, the Spiritist revelation has a double character: it partakes at the same time of divine revelation and of scientific revelation.

It partakes of the first, because its appearance was providential and not the result of the initiative, nor of a premeditated design of man; because the fundamental points of the doctrine come from the teaching given by the Spirits charged by God with enlightening men concerning things which they were ignorant of, which they could not learn by themselves, and which it matters to them to know, now that they are apt to comprehend them.

It partakes of the second, because that teaching is not the privilege of any individual, but imparted to all in the same way; 4 because those who transmit it and those who receive it are not passive beings, dispensed from the labor of observation and research, 5 because they do not renounce reasoning and free will; because examination is not forbidden them but, on the contrary, recommended; 6 finally, because the doctrine was not dictated complete, nor imposed upon blind belief; 7 because it is deduced, by the labor of man, from the observation of the facts which the Spirits place before his eyes and from the instructions which they give him, instructions which he studies, comments upon, compares, in order to draw himself the inferences and applications.

In a word, what characterizes the Spiritist revelation is that its origin is divine and proceeds from the initiative of the Spirits, while its elaboration is the fruit of the labor of man.

— As a means of elaboration, Spiritism proceeds in exactly the same way as the positive sciences, applying the experimental method.

New facts present themselves, which cannot be explained by the known laws; it observes them, compares, analyzes them and, going back from effects to causes, arrives at the law that governs them; then it deduces the consequences and seeks the useful applications.

It established no preconceived theory; thus, it did not present as hypotheses the existence and the intervention of the Spirits, nor the perispirit, nor reincarnation, nor any of the principles of the doctrine; it concluded for the existence of the Spirits, when that existence stood out evident from the observation of the facts, proceeding in the same manner with respect to the other principles.

It was not the facts that came a posteriori to confirm the theory: it is the theory that came subsequently to explain and summarize the facts.

It is, therefore, rigorously exact to say that Spiritism is a science of observation and not the product of imagination.

The sciences made important progress only after their studies were based upon the experimental method; until then, it was believed that this method was applicable only to matter, whereas it is also applicable to metaphysical things. [The text of indicator 6 was transcribed from the corresponding chapter of Genesis]

— Let us cite an example. There occurs in the world of the Spirits a very singular fact, which surely no one would have suspected: that of there being Spirits who do not consider themselves dead.

Well then, the superior Spirits, who perfectly know this fact, did not come to say beforehand: “There are Spirits who believe they still live the terrestrial life, who retain their tastes, customs, and instincts.” They provoked the manifestation of Spirits of this category so that we might observe them.

Having seen Spirits uncertain as to their state, or still affirming that they were of this world, believing themselves applied to their ordinary occupations, the rule was deduced.

The multiplicity of analogous facts demonstrated that the case was not exceptional, that it constituted one of the phases of the spirit life; it has allowed the study of all the varieties and the causes of so singular an illusion, the recognition that such a situation is above all proper to Spirits little advanced morally and peculiar to certain kinds of death; that it is temporary, being able, nevertheless, to last weeks, months, and years.

It was thus that the theory was born of observation. The same occurred with respect to all the other principles of the Doctrine.

— Just as Science properly so called has for its object the study of the laws of the material principle, the special object of Spiritism is the knowledge of the laws of the spiritual principle; 2 now, since this latter principle is one of the forces of Nature, reacting unceasingly upon the material principle and reciprocally, it follows that the knowledge of the one cannot be complete without the knowledge of the other.

Spiritism and Science complete each other reciprocally;

Science, without Spiritism, finds itself in the impossibility of explaining certain phenomena by the laws of matter alone; Spiritism, without Science, would lack support and corroboration.

The study of the laws of matter had to precede that of spirituality, because it is matter that first strikes the senses.

Had Spiritism come before the scientific discoveries, it would have miscarried, like everything that arises before its time.

— All the sciences are linked together and succeed one another in a rational order; they are born of one another, in proportion as they find a point of support in the prior ideas and knowledge.

Astronomy, one of the first cultivated, retained the errors of infancy, until the moment when Physics came to reveal the law of the forces of natural agents; Chemistry, being able to do nothing without Physics, had to follow it closely, in order then to march both in accord, supporting one another. Anatomy, Physiology, Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, became serious sciences only with the aid of the lights brought to them by Physics and Chemistry. To Geology, born yesterday, without Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry and all the others, elements of vitality would have been wanting; it could come only after those.

— Modern Science abandoned the four primitive elements of the ancients and, from observation to observation, arrived at the conception of a single element generating all the transformations of matter; 2 but matter, by itself, is inert; lacking life, thought, sentiment, it needs to be united to the spiritual principle.

Spiritism did not discover, nor invent this principle; but it was the first to demonstrate its existence by incontrovertible proofs; it studied it, analyzed it, and made its action evident.

To the material element, it joined the spiritual element. Material element and spiritual element, these are the two principles, the two living forces of Nature.

By the indissoluble union of them, a multitude of facts hitherto inexplicable are easily explained.

By its very essence, and having for its object the study of one of the constitutive elements of the Universe, Spiritism necessarily touches the greater part of the sciences; it could therefore come only after their elaboration, and above all after they had proved their impossibility of explaining everything with the aid of the laws of matter alone.

— They accuse it of kinship with magic and sorcery; but they forget that Astronomy has for an elder sister judicial Astrology, not yet very distant from us; that Chemistry is the daughter of Alchemy, with which no sensible man would today dare to occupy himself.

No one denies, however, that in Astrology and Alchemy there was the germ of the truths from which the present sciences issued.

Despite its ridiculous formulas, Alchemy led the way to the discovery of the simple bodies and of the law of affinities. Astrology relied upon the position and movement of the stars, which it had studied; but, in ignorance of the true laws that govern the mechanism of the Universe, the stars were, for the common people, mysterious beings, to which superstition attributed a moral influence and a revealing meaning.

When Galileo, Newton and Kepler made those laws known, when the telescope rent the veil and plunged into the depths of space a gaze that some creatures found indiscreet, the planets appeared as simple worlds similar to ours and the whole castle of the marvelous crumbled.

The same occurs with Spiritism, in relation to magic and sorcery, which also relied upon the manifestation of the Spirits, as Astrology upon the movement of the stars; 6 but, ignorant of the laws that govern the spiritual world, they mixed, with those relations, ridiculous practices and beliefs, with which modern Spiritism, the fruit of experience and observation, has done away.

Certainly, the distance that separates Spiritism from magic and sorcery is greater than that which exists between Astronomy and Astrology, Chemistry and Alchemy. To confound them is to prove that one knows not a jot of any of them.

— The mere fact that man can communicate with the beings of the spiritual world brings incalculable consequences of the highest gravity; it is a whole new world that is revealed to us and that has all the more importance, since to it all men, without exception, must return.

The knowledge of such a fact cannot fail to bring about, in becoming general, a profound modification in customs, character, habits, as well as in the beliefs that have exercised so great an influence upon social relations.

It is a complete revolution to be wrought in ideas, a revolution all the greater, all the more powerful, in that it is not circumscribed to a single people, nor to a caste, seeing that it reaches simultaneously, through the heart, all classes, all nationalities, all forms of worship.

There is reason, therefore, for Spiritism to be considered the third of the great revelations. Let us see in what these revelations differ and what is the bond that links them to one another.

— Moses, as a prophet, revealed to men the existence of a single God, Sovereign Lord and Director of all things; he promulgated the law of Sinai and laid the foundations of the true faith. As a man, he was the legislator of the people through whom that primitive faith, purifying itself, was to spread over the Earth.

— Christ, taking from the old law that which is eternal and divine and rejecting that which was transitory, purely disciplinary and of human conception, added the revelation of the future life, of which Moses had not spoken, as well as that of the penalties and rewards that await man after death. (See: Spiritist Review, 1861.)

— The most important part of the revelation of Christ, in the sense of primary source, of cornerstone of his whole doctrine, is the entirely new point of view under which he considers the Divinity.

This is no longer the terrible, jealous, vengeful God of Moses; 3 the cruel and implacable God, who waters the earth with human blood, who orders the massacre and extermination of peoples, without excepting the women, the children and the elderly, and who chastises those who spare the victims; 4 it is no longer the unjust God, who punishes a whole people for the fault of its chief, who avenges himself on the guilty in the person of the innocent, who strikes the children for the faults of the fathers; 5 but a clement God, sovereignly just and good, full of meekness and mercy, who pardons the repentant sinner and gives to each according to his works; 6 it is no longer the God of a single privileged people, the God of armies, presiding over the combats to sustain his own cause against the God of the other peoples; but the common Father of the human race, who extends his protection over all his children and calls them all to himself; 7 it is no longer the God who rewards and punishes only by the goods of the Earth, who makes glory and felicity consist in the enslavement of rival peoples and in the multiplicity of offspring, but rather a God who says to men: “Your true homeland is not in this world, but in the celestial kingdom, there where the humble of heart shall be raised up and the proud shall be humbled…”

It is no longer the God who makes of vengeance a virtue and orders an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; but the God of mercy, who says: “Forgive offenses, if you wish to be forgiven; do good in exchange for evil; do not do what you would not have done to you.”

It is no longer the petty and meticulous God, who imposes, under the most rigorous penalties, the manner in which he wishes to be adored, who is offended by the non-observance of a formula; but the great God, who sees the thought and who is not honored by the form.

Finally, it is no longer the God who wishes to be feared, but the God who wishes to be loved.

— God being the axis of all religious beliefs and the objective of all forms of worship, the character of all religions conforms to the idea they give of God.

The religions that make of God a vengeful and cruel being believe they honor him with acts of cruelty, with stakes and tortures; those that have a partial and jealous God are intolerant and more or less meticulous in form, because they believe him more or less contaminated by human weaknesses and trifles.

— The whole doctrine of Christ is founded on the character he attributes to the Divinity.

With an impartial God, sovereignly just, good and merciful, he made of the love of God and of charity toward one’s neighbor the indeclinable condition of salvation, saying: Love God above all things and your neighbor as yourself; in this are the whole law and the prophets; there exists no other law.

Upon this belief he established the principle of the equality of men before God and that of universal fraternity.

But was it possible to love the God of Moses? No; one could only fear him.

This revelation of the true attributes of the Divinity, together with that of the immortality of the soul and of the future life, profoundly modified the mutual relations of men, imposed upon them new obligations, made them regard the present life under another aspect and had, for that very reason, to react against customs and social relations.

It is this, incontestably, by its consequences, the capital point of the revelation of Christ, whose importance was not sufficiently comprehended and, it grieves us to say it, it is also the point from which Humanity has most strayed, which it has most failed to recognize in the interpretation of his teachings.

— Meanwhile, Christ adds: “Many of the things I tell you, you do not yet comprehend, and many others I would have to say, which you would not comprehend; that is why I speak to you in parables; later, however, I will send you the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who will reestablish all things and explain them all to you.”

If Christ did not say all that he could have said, it is that he judged it fitting to leave certain truths in the shadow, until men should reach the state of comprehending them.

As he himself confessed, his teaching was incomplete, since he announced the coming of him who would complete it; 4 he had foreseen, then, that his words would not be well interpreted, and that men would deviate from his teaching; 5 in short, that they would undo what he did, since all things must be reestablished: now, only that which has been undone is reestablished.

— Why does he call the new messiah Comforter? This name, significant and without ambiguity, contains a whole revelation.

Thus, he foresaw that men would have need of consolations, which implies the insufficiency of those they would find in the belief they were about to found.

Perhaps never was Christ so clear, so explicit, as in these last words, to which few persons gave sufficient attention, probably because they avoided clarifying them and probing their prophetic meaning.

— If Christ could not develop his teaching in a complete manner, it is that men lacked knowledge which they could acquire only with time and without which they would not comprehend it; 2 there are many things that would have seemed absurd in the state of the knowledge of that time.

To complete his teaching must be understood in the sense of explaining and developing, not in that of adding to it new truths, because everything is found in it in the state of germ, lacking only the key to grasp the meaning of the words.

— But who takes the liberty of interpreting the Sacred Scriptures? Who has that right? Who possesses the necessary lights, if not the theologians?

Who dares it? First, Science, which asks permission of no one to make known the laws of Nature and which leaps over errors and prejudices. 3 — Who has that right? In this century of intellectual emancipation and of liberty of conscience, the right of examination belongs to all, and the Scriptures are no longer the holy ark which no one would dare to touch with the tip of a finger, without running the risk of being struck down.

As for the special lights, necessary, without contesting those of the theologians, however enlightened those of the Middle Ages were, and in particular the Fathers of the Church, they were nevertheless not enlightened enough to refrain from condemning as heresy the movement of the Earth and the belief in the antipodes; 5 and, even without going so far, did not the theologians of our days cast anathema at the theory of the periods of formation of the Earth?

Men could explain the Scriptures only with the aid of what they knew, of the false or incomplete notions they had about the laws of Nature, later revealed by Science; that is why the theologians themselves, in very good faith, were mistaken about the meaning of certain words and facts of the Gospel.

Wishing at all costs to find in it the confirmation of a preconceived idea, they always turned in the same circle, without abandoning their point of view, so that they saw only what they wished to see.

However learned they were, they could not comprehend causes dependent on laws which were unknown to them.

But who will judge the diverse and often contradictory interpretations, outside the field of theology? — The future, logic and good sense.

Men, more and more enlightened, as new facts and new laws are revealed, will know how to separate from reality the utopian systems; 11 now, the sciences make known some laws; Spiritism reveals others; all are indispensable to the understanding of the Sacred Texts of all religions, from Confucius and Buddha to Christianity.

As for theology, it cannot judiciously allege contradictions of Science, seeing that it too is not always in accord with itself.

— Spiritism, starting from the very words of Christ, as he started from those of Moses, is the direct consequence of his doctrine.

To the vague idea of the future life, it adds the revelation of the existence of the invisible world that surrounds us and peoples space, and with this it makes the belief precise, gives it a body, a consistency, a reality to the idea.

It defines the bonds that unite the soul to the body and lifts the veil that hid from men the mysteries of birth and of death.

By Spiritism, man knows whence he comes, whither he goes, why he is on the Earth, why he suffers temporarily, and he sees everywhere the justice of God.

He knows that the soul progresses unceasingly, through a series of successive existences, until it attains the degree of perfection that brings it near to God.

He knows that all souls, having one and the same point of origin, are created equal, with identical aptitude for progressing, by virtue of their free will; 7 that all are of the same essence and that there is no difference among them, save as to the progress accomplished; 8 that all have the same destiny and will reach the same goal, more or less rapidly, by labor and good will.

He knows that there are no disinherited creatures, nor any more favored than others; 10 that God created none privileged and dispensed from the labor imposed on the others in order to progress; 11 that there are no beings perpetually devoted to evil and suffering; 12 that those designated by the name of demons are Spirits still backward and imperfect, who practice evil in space, as they practiced it on the Earth, but who will advance and perfect themselves; 13 that the angels or pure Spirits are not separate beings in the Creation, but Spirits who have reached the goal, after having traversed the road of progress; 14 that, in this way, there are no multiple creations, nor different categories among intelligent beings, but that the whole creation derives from the great law of unity that governs the Universe and that all beings gravitate toward a common end which is perfection, without any being favored at the expense of others, seeing that all are children of their own works.

— Through the relations he can today establish with those who have left the Earth, man possesses not only the material proof of the existence and individuality of the soul, but also comprehends the solidarity that links the living to the dead of this world and those of this world to those of the other planets.

He knows their situation in the world of the Spirits, accompanies them in their migrations, appreciates their joys and their sorrows; he knows the reason why they are happy or unhappy and the lot that is reserved for them, according to the good or the evil they do.

These relations initiate man into the future life, which he can observe in all its phases, in all its vicissitudes; the future is no longer a vague hope: it is a positive fact, a mathematical certainty.

From then on, death has nothing more that is terrifying, since it is for him the liberation, the door of the true life.

— Through the study of the situation of the Spirits, man knows that happiness and unhappiness, in the spirit life, are inherent in the degree of perfection and of imperfection; 2 that each one suffers the direct and natural consequences of his faults, or rather, that he is punished in that wherein he sinned; 3 that these consequences last as long as the cause that produced them; 4 that, consequently, the guilty one would suffer eternally, were he to persist in evil, but that the suffering ceases with repentance and reparation; 5 now, since each one’s perfecting depends on himself, all can, by virtue of free will, prolong or shorten their sufferings, as the sick person suffers, through his excesses, as long as he does not put an end to them.

— If reason rejects, as incompatible with the goodness of God, the idea of irremissible, perpetual and absolute penalties, often inflicted for a single fault; 2 that of the torments of hell, which cannot be mitigated even by the most ardent and most sincere repentance, 3 that same reason bows before that distributive and impartial justice, which takes everything into account, which never closes the door to repentance and constantly extends a hand to the shipwrecked, instead of pushing him toward the abyss.

— The plurality of existences, the principle of which Christ established in the Gospel, without however defining it, as so many others, is one of the most important laws revealed by Spiritism, since it demonstrates its reality and its necessity for progress.

With this law, man explains all the apparent anomalies of human life; the differences of social position; the premature deaths which, without reincarnation, would render brief existences useless to the soul; the inequality of intellectual and moral aptitudes, by the antiquity of the Spirit who has more or less learned and progressed, and brings, in being born, what he acquired in his anterior existences. (no. 5).

— With the doctrine of the creation of the soul at the instant of birth, one falls into the system of privileged creations; 2 men are strangers to one another, nothing links them, the bonds of family are purely carnal; they are in no way bound in solidarity in the past in which they did not exist; 3 with the doctrine of nothingness after death, all relations cease with life; human beings are not bound in solidarity in the future.

Through reincarnation, they are bound in solidarity in the past and in the future and, since their relations perpetuate themselves, both in the spiritual world and in the corporeal, fraternity has for its base the very laws of Nature; good has an objective and evil inevitable consequences.

— With reincarnation, the prejudices of races and castes disappear, for the same Spirit can be born again rich or poor, capitalist or proletarian, chief or subordinate, free or slave, man or woman.

Of all the arguments invoked against the injustice of servitude and slavery, against the subjection of woman to the law of the stronger, there is none that surpasses, in logic, the material fact of reincarnation.

If, then, reincarnation founds upon a law of Nature the principle of universal fraternity, it also founds upon the same law that of the equality of social rights and, consequently, that of liberty.

Men are born inferior and subordinate only by the body; by the Spirit they are equal and free. Hence the duty of treating inferiors with kindness, benevolence and humanity, because he who is our subordinate today may have been our equal or our superior, perhaps a relative or a friend, and we in our turn may come to be the subordinate of him whom we command. (Publisher’s Note: See “Explanatory Note,” p. 527.)

— Take from man the free and independent Spirit, surviving matter, and you will make of him a mere organized machine, without purpose, nor responsibility; without other check than the civil law and fit to be exploited like an intelligent animal.

Expecting nothing after death, nothing prevents him from increasing the enjoyments of the present; if he suffers, he has only the prospect of despair and nothingness as a refuge.

With the certainty of the future, with that of finding again those whom he loved and with the fear of seeing again those whom he offended, all his ideas change.

Spiritism, even if it only freed man from doubt with respect to the future life, would have done more for his moral perfecting than all the disciplinary laws, which restrain him sometimes, but which do not transform him.

— Without the pre-existence of the soul, the doctrine of original sin would not only be irreconcilable with the justice of God, which would make all men responsible for the fault of one alone, it would also be a contradiction, and all the less justifiable in that, according to that doctrine, the soul did not exist at the epoch to which its responsibility is supposedly traced back.

With pre-existence, man brings, in being reborn, the germ of his imperfections, of the defects of which he has not corrected himself and which are translated by the natural instincts and by the inclinations toward this or that vice.

This is his true original sin, the consequences of which he naturally suffers, but with the capital difference that he suffers the penalty of his own faults, and not those of another; 4 and with the other difference, at the same time consoling, encouraging and sovereignly equitable, that each existence offers him the means of redeeming himself by reparation and of progressing, whether by divesting himself of some imperfection, or by acquiring new knowledge, 5 and thus, until, sufficiently purified, he no longer needs the corporeal life and can live exclusively the spirit life, eternal and blessed.

For the same reason, he who has progressed morally brings, in being reborn, natural qualities, as he who has progressed intellectually brings innate ideas; identified with good, he practices it without effort, without calculation and, so to speak, without thinking.

He who is obliged to combat his bad tendencies still lives in struggle; the first has already conquered, the second seeks to conquer.

There exists, then, original virtue, as there exists original knowledge, and original sin or, rather, original vice.

— Experimental Spiritism studied the properties of the spiritual fluids and their action upon matter.

It demonstrated the existence of the perispirit, suspected since Antiquity and designated by Saint Paul under the name of spiritual body, that is, the fluidic body of the soul, after the destruction of the tangible body.

It is known today that this envelope is inseparable from the soul, forms one of the constitutive elements of the human being, is the vehicle for the transmission of thought and, during the life of the body, serves as a bond between the Spirit and matter.

The perispirit plays a most important role in the organism and in a multitude of afflictions, which relate to physiology, as well as to psychology.

— The study of the properties of the perispirit, of the spiritual fluids and of the physiological attributes of the soul opens new horizons to Science and gives the key to a multitude of phenomena hitherto incomprehensible, for lack of knowledge of the law that governs them; 2 phenomena denied by materialism, because they are connected to spirituality, and qualified as miracles or sorceries by other beliefs.

Such are, among many, the phenomena of second sight, of vision at a distance, of natural and provoked somnambulism, of the psychic effects of catalepsy and lethargy, of prescience, of presentiments, of apparitions, of transfigurations, of the transmission of thought, of fascination, of instantaneous cures, of obsessions and possessions, etc.

By demonstrating that these phenomena repose upon natural laws, like the electrical phenomena, and under what normal conditions they can be reproduced, Spiritism overthrows the empire of the marvelous and the supernatural and, consequently, the source of the greater part of superstitions.

If it makes one believe in the possibility of certain things considered by some as chimerical, it also prevents one from believing in many others, of which it demonstrates the impossibility and the irrationality.

— Spiritism, far from denying or destroying the Gospel, comes, on the contrary, to confirm, explain and develop, by the new laws of Nature which it reveals, all that Christ said and did; 2 it elucidates the obscure points of Christian teaching, in such a way that those for whom certain parts of the Gospel were unintelligible, or seemed inadmissible, comprehend and admit them, without difficulty, with the aid of this doctrine, see better their scope and can distinguish between reality and allegory;

Christ appears to them greater: he is no longer simply a philosopher, he is a divine Messiah.

— Moreover, if we consider the moralizing power of Spiritism, by the purpose it assigns to all the actions of life, 2 by rendering almost tangible the consequences of good and evil, 3 by the moral force, the courage and the consolations it gives in afflictions, by means of an unalterable confidence in the future, 4 by the idea of each one having near himself the beings whom he loved, the certainty of seeing them again, the possibility of conversing with them, 5 finally, by the certainty that all that has been done, all that has been acquired in intelligence, wisdom, morality, up to the last hour of life, is not lost, that everything profits the advancement of the Spirit, 6 it is recognized that Spiritism fulfills all the promises of Christ concerning the announced Comforter.

Now, since it is the Spirit of Truth that presides over the great movement of regeneration, the promise of his coming is thus fulfilled, because, in fact, he is the true Comforter. n

— If to these results we add the prodigious rapidity of the propagation of Spiritism, despite all that is done to crush it, it cannot be denied that its coming is providential, seeing that it triumphs over all the forces and all the ill will of men.

The ease with which it is accepted by a great number of persons, without constraint, merely by the power of the idea, proves that it corresponds to a need, namely that of man believing in something to fill the void opened by incredulity and that, therefore, it came at the precise moment.

— The afflicted are in great number; it is not, then, surprising that so many people welcome a doctrine that consoles, in preference to those that bring despair, because it is to the disinherited, more than to the happy of the world, that Spiritism addresses itself.

The sick person sees the physician arrive with greater satisfaction than he who is in good health; now, the afflicted are the sick and the Comforter is the physician.

You who combat Spiritism, if you wish us to abandon it in order to follow you, give us more and better than it; cure with greater certainty the wounds of the soul; do as the merchant who, to compete with his rival, offers merchandise of better quality and at a lower price.

Give more consolations, more satisfactions to the heart, more legitimate hopes, greater certainties; make of the future a more rational, more seductive picture; but do not think to vanquish it with the prospect of nothingness, with the alternative of the flames of hell, or with the useless perpetual contemplation.

What would you say of a merchant who treated as madmen all the customers who do not want his merchandise and go to the neighbor? You do the same, branding as madness and ineptitude all who do not want your doctrines, who are mistaken because they do not find them to their taste. [The text of indicator 5, item 44, does not exist in the corresponding chapter of Genesis] n

— The first revelation had its personification in Moses, the second in Christ, the third has it in no individual.

The first two were individual, the third collective; therein lies an essential character of great importance.

It is collective in the sense that it is not made or given as a privilege to any person; no one, consequently, can put himself forward as its exclusive prophet; it was spread simultaneously, over the Earth, to millions of persons, of all ages and conditions, from the lowest to the highest of the scale, according to this prediction recorded by the author of the Acts of the Apostles: “In the last times, said the Lord, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; your sons and daughters shall prophesy, the young men shall have visions, and the old men, dreams.”

It did not proceed from any special form of worship, so as to serve one day, for all, as a point of connection. n

— The first two revelations, being the fruit of personal teaching, remained perforce localized, that is, they appeared at a single point, around which the idea propagated little by little; but many centuries were needed for them to reach the extremities of the world, without even invading it entirely.

The third has this particularity: not being personified in a single individual, it arose simultaneously at thousands of different points, which became centers or focal points of irradiation.

As these centers multiply, their rays join little by little, like the circles formed by a multitude of stones thrown into the water, in such a way that, in a given time, they will end by covering the whole surface of the globe.

This is one of the causes of the rapid propagation of the doctrine.

Had it arisen at a single point, had it been the exclusive work of one man, it would have formed sects around it; and perhaps half a century would elapse without its reaching the limits of the country where it began, whereas, after ten years, it already extends roots from one pole to the other.

— This circumstance, unheard of in the history of doctrines, gives it exceptional force and irresistible power of action; 2 in fact, if it is persecuted at one point, in a given country, it will be materially impossible to persecute it everywhere and in all countries.

In contrast to one place where its march is hindered, there will be a thousand others in which it will flourish.

Furthermore: if it is struck in an individual, it cannot be struck in the Spirits, who are the source whence it emanates.

Now, since the Spirits are everywhere and will exist always, if, by an impossible chance, they succeeded in stifling it over the whole globe, it would reappear a short time afterward, because it reposes upon a fact that is in Nature and the laws of Nature cannot be suppressed.

Here is what those who dream of the annihilation of Spiritism must persuade themselves of. (Spiritist Review, February 1865: Perpetuity of Spiritism).

— Meanwhile, the centers being disseminated, they could still remain for a long time isolated from one another, confined as some of them are in far-off countries. There was lacking among them a connection, that would put them in communion of ideas with their brothers in belief, informing them of what was being done elsewhere.

This link of union, which in antiquity would have been wanting to Spiritism, exists today in the publications that go everywhere, condensing, under a single, concise and methodical form, the teaching given universally under multiple forms and in the diverse languages.

— The first two revelations could result only from a direct teaching; since men were not yet sufficiently advanced to contribute to their elaboration, they had to be imposed by faith, under the authority of the word of the Master.

Nevertheless, one notes between the two a quite perceptible difference, due to the progress of customs and ideas, although made to the same people and in the same milieu, but with eighteen centuries of interval.

The doctrine of Moses is absolute, despotic; it admits no discussion and imposes itself upon the people by force.

That of Jesus is essentially counseling; it is freely accepted and imposes itself only by persuasion; it was controverted from the time of its founder, who did not disdain to discuss with his adversaries.

— The third revelation, coming in an epoch of emancipation and intellectual maturity, in which the intelligence, already developed, does not resign itself to playing a passive role; in which man accepts nothing blindly, but wishes to see where he is being led, wishes to know the why and the how of each thing, had to be at the same time the product of a teaching and the fruit of labor, of research and of free examination.

The Spirits teach only just what is needful to guide him in the path of truth, but abstain from revealing what man can discover by himself, leaving to him the care of discussing, verifying and submitting everything to the crucible of reason, leaving even, often, that he acquire experience at his own cost.

They furnish him the principle, the materials; it falls to him to make use of them and to put them to work. (no. 15)

— The elements of the Spiritist revelation having been imparted simultaneously at many points, to men of all social conditions and of diverse degrees of instruction, it is clear that the observations could not be made everywhere with the same result; 2 that the consequences to be drawn, the deduction of the laws that govern this order of phenomena, in short, the conclusion upon which the ideas were to be settled, could come only from the whole and the correlation of the facts.

Now, each isolated center, circumscribed within a restricted circle, most often seeing only a particular order of facts, not seldom contradictory in appearance, generally coming from one and the same category of Spirits and, moreover, hampered by local influences and by the spirit of party, found itself in the material impossibility of embracing the whole and, for that very reason, incapable of conjoining the isolated observations to a common principle.

Each one appreciating the facts from the point of view of his prior knowledge and beliefs, or of the special opinion of the Spirits who manifested themselves, there would soon have arisen as many theories and systems as there were centers, all incomplete for lack of elements of comparison and examination.

In a word, each one would have immobilized himself in his partial revelation, believing he possessed the whole truth, ignorant that in a hundred other places more or better was being obtained. [The text of indicator 5 was transcribed from the corresponding chapter of Genesis]

— Besides this, it is fitting to note that nowhere was the Spiritist teaching given integrally; it concerns so great a number of observations, subjects so different, requiring special knowledge and mediumistic aptitudes, that it was impossible for all the necessary conditions to be found united at a single point.

The teaching having to be collective and not individual, the Spirits divided the labor, disseminating the subjects of study and observation as, in some factories, the making of each part of a single object is distributed among various workers.

The revelation was thus made partially in diverse places and by a multitude of intermediaries and it is in this way that it still proceeds, since not everything was revealed.

Each center finds in the other centers the complement of what it obtains, and it was the whole, the coordination of all the partial teachings that constituted the Spiritist Doctrine.

It was, therefore, necessary to group the scattered facts, in order to grasp their correlation, to gather the diverse documents, the instructions given by the Spirits on all points and on all subjects, in order to compare, analyze them, study their analogies and their differences.

The communications coming from Spirits of all orders, more or less enlightened, it was necessary to appreciate the degree of confidence that reason allowed to be granted to them, 7 to distinguish the systematic individual or isolated ideas from those that had the sanction of the general teaching of the Spirits, the utopias from the practical ideas, 8 to set aside those that were notoriously contradicted by the data of positive science and of logic, 9 to make use equally of the errors, of the information furnished by the Spirits, even those of the lowest category, for knowledge of the state of the invisible world and to form with this a homogeneous whole.

It was necessary, in a word, a center of elaboration, independent of any preconceived idea, of all prejudice of sect, resolved to accept the truth made evident, though contrary to personal opinions.

This center formed itself by itself, by the force of things and without premeditated design. n

— From all these things, there originated a double current of ideas: some, directing themselves from the extremities toward the center; the others making their way from the center toward the circumference.

In this way, the doctrine marched rapidly toward unity, despite the diversity of the sources whence it emanated; the divergent systems crumbled little by little, owing to the isolation in which they remained, before the ascendancy of the opinion of the majority, in which they found no sympathetic repercussion.

From then on, a communion of ideas was established among the diverse partial centers. Speaking the same spiritual language, they understand and esteem one another, from one extremity of the world to the other.

The Spiritists thus felt themselves stronger, struggled with more courage, marched with firmer step, from the moment they no longer saw themselves isolated, from the moment they perceived a point of support, a bond binding them to the great family; 5 the phenomena they witnessed no longer seemed to them singular, abnormal, nor contradictory, from the moment they could conjoin them to general laws and discover a grand and humanitarian end in the whole. n

But how is one to know whether a principle is taught everywhere, or whether it merely expresses a personal opinion? The independent groups not being in a condition to know what is said elsewhere, it was necessary that a center should gather all the instructions, in order to proceed to a kind of tallying of the votes and to transmit to all the opinion of the majority. [The text of indicator 6 was transcribed from the corresponding chapter of Genesis]

— There exists no science that has come ready-made from the brain of one man. All, without exception of any, are the fruit of successive observations, supported on preceding observations, as on a known point, in order to reach the unknown.

It was thus that the Spirits proceeded, with respect to Spiritism; hence the gradual character of the teaching they impart; 3 they tackle the questions only in proportion as the principles on which they are to be supported are sufficiently elaborated and opinion sufficiently matured to assimilate them.

It is even to be noted that, every time the particular centers have wished to deal with premature questions, they obtained no more than contradictory, in no way conclusive answers.

When, on the contrary, the opportune moment arrives, the teaching becomes general and is unified in the near universality of the centers.

There is, nevertheless, a capital difference between the march of Spiritism and that of the sciences; that of these latter not having reached the point they attained, save after long intervals, whereas a few years sufficed for Spiritism, if not to scale the culminating point, at least to gather a sum of observations great enough to form a doctrine.

This fact stems from the multitude of Spirits being innumerable who, by the will of God, manifested themselves simultaneously, each bringing the contingent of his knowledge.

The result was that all the parts of the doctrine, instead of being elaborated successively during long years, were so almost at the same time, in only a few years, and that it sufficed to gather them in order that they should structure a whole.

God willed it to be thus, first, so that the edifice might more rapidly reach its summit; next, so that one might, by means of comparison, obtain a verification, immediate and permanent so to speak, of the universality of the teaching, none of its parts having value, nor authority, except by its connection with the whole, all having to harmonize, each placed in its proper place and each coming at the opportune hour.

Not confiding to a single Spirit the charge of promulgating the doctrine, God willed, also, that the smallest, as well as the greatest, both among the Spirits and among men, should bring his stone for the edifice, in order to establish among them a bond of cooperative solidarity, which was wanting to all the doctrines stemming from a single trunk.

On the other hand, every Spirit, like every man, disposing only of a limited sum of knowledge, they were not apt, individually, to treat ex professo of the innumerable questions which Spiritism involves. This is yet another reason why, in fulfillment of the designs of the Creator, the doctrine could be the work neither of a single Spirit, nor of a single medium. It had to emerge from the collectivity of the labors, corroborated one by the other. (See, in The Gospel According to Spiritism, introduction, item II, and Spiritist Review, of April 1864: Authority of the Spiritist Doctrine; Universal control of the teaching of the Spirits).

— A last character of the Spiritist revelation, standing out from the very conditions in which it is produced, is that, supporting itself on facts, it must be, and cannot fail to be, essentially progressive, like all the sciences of observation.

By its substance, it allies itself to Science which, being the exposition of the laws of Nature, with respect to a certain order of facts, cannot be contrary to the laws of God, author of those laws.

The discoveries that Science accomplishes, far from lowering Him, glorify God; they destroy only what men have built upon the false ideas they formed of God.

Spiritism, then, establishes as absolute principle only what is evidently demonstrated, or what stands out logically from observation.

Concerned with all the branches of the social economy [society], to which it gives the support of its own discoveries, it will always assimilate all progressive doctrines, of whatever order they may be, provided they have assumed the state of practical truths and abandoned the domain of utopia, without which it would commit suicide; 6 ceasing to be what it is, it would belie its origin and its providential end.

Marching abreast of progress, Spiritism will never be surpassed, because, if new discoveries should demonstrate that it is in error concerning any point whatever, it would modify itself on that point; if a new truth should be revealed, it will accept it. n [Note: In the Spiritist Review this article on the Characters of the Spiritist Revelation ends here, but in Genesis it continues from item 56 to 62]

[1]

This article is extracted from a new work which is at this moment in the press and which will appear before the end of the year. A reason of opportunity led us to publish this extract in advance in the Review. Despite its length, we judged it our duty to insert it all at once, so as not to interrupt the linking of the ideas. The whole work will be of the format and the volume of Heaven and Hell [see Bibliographical Notices: Genesis, the miracles and the predictions according to Spiritism, by Allan Kardec.] (Translator’s Note: This is the first chapter of Genesis, with slight modifications; a book published in 1868.)

[2] Many parents deplore the premature death of their children, for whose education they made great sacrifices, and say to themselves that all was in pure loss. In the light of Spiritism, however, they do not lament those sacrifices and would be ready to make them, even having the certainty that they would see their children die, because they know that if these do not profit from it in the present life, that education will serve, first of all, for their spiritual advancement; and, moreover, that they will be new acquisitions for another existence and that, when they return to this world, they will have an intellectual patrimony that will render them more apt to acquire new knowledge. Such are those children who bring, in being born, innate ideas – who know, so to speak, without needing to learn. If, as parents, they do not have the immediate satisfaction of seeing their children profit from the education they gave them, they will certainly enjoy it later, whether as Spirits or as men. Perhaps they will again be the parents of those same children, who are pointed out as fortunately endowed by Nature and who owe their aptitudes to a preceding education; likewise, if the children stray toward evil, through the negligence of the parents, these may come to suffer later the disgusts and sorrows that those will arouse in them in a new existence.

[3] Is Spiritism not contrary to the dogmatic belief relative to the nature of Christ and, in this case, can it be said to be the complement of the Gospel, if it contradicts it?

The solution of this question touches Spiritism only in an accessory manner, for Spiritism must not concern itself with the particular dogmas of this or that religion. A simple philosophical doctrine, it presents itself neither as champion, nor as systematic adversary of any form of worship, leaving to each one his belief.

The question of the nature of Christ is capital from the Christian point of view. It cannot be treated lightly, and it is not the personal opinions, neither of men nor of Spirits, that can decide it. In such a matter, it is not enough to affirm or deny, it is necessary to prove. Now, of all the reasons alleged for or against, there is none that is not more or less hypothetical, seeing that all are questionable. The materialists saw the thing only with the eyes of incredulity and the preconceived idea of negation; the theologians, with the eyes of blind faith, and the preconceived idea of affirmation; neither the ones, nor the others were in the necessary conditions of impartiality; interested in sustaining their opinion, they saw and sought only what could be favorable to it and closed their eyes to what could be contrary to it. If, since the question was agitated, it has not yet been resolved in a peremptory manner, it is that elements were lacking, the only ones that could give the key to it, exactly as the savants of antiquity lacked the knowledge of the laws of light, to explain the phenomenon of the rainbow. Spiritism is neutral in this question; it is no more interested in one solution than in the other; it marched without this and will march still, whatever the result; placed outside the particular dogmas, it is for it not a question of life or death. When it approaches it, supporting all its theories on facts, it will resolve it by facts, and in opportune time; if it had urgency, it would already be resolved. The elements of a solution are today complete, but the ground is not yet prepared to receive the seed. A premature solution, whatever it might be, would meet much opposition on both sides, and Spiritism would lose more partisans than it would conquer. That is why prudence imposes upon us the duty of abstaining from all polemic on the subject, until we are sure of being able to set foot on firm ground. While we wait, let us leave the pros and cons to be discussed outside Spiritism, without taking part in it, leaving the two parties to exhaust their arguments. When the moment is propitious, we will bring to the balance, not our personal opinion, which has no weight, nor can make law, but facts hitherto unobserved, and then each one can judge with knowledge of the cause. All we can say, without prejudging the question, is that the solution, in whatever sense it may be given, will contradict neither the acts, nor the words of Christ, but, on the contrary, will confirm them, elucidating them. Therefore, to those who ask us what Spiritism says about the nature of Christ, we reply invariably: “It is a question of dogma, foreign to the objective of the doctrine.” The objective that every Spiritist must pursue, if he wishes to merit that title, is his own moral improvement. Am I better than I was? Have I corrected myself of any defect? Have I done good or evil to my neighbor? This is what every sincere and convinced Spiritist must ask himself. What does it matter to know whether Christ was God, or not, if one is always selfish, proud, jealous, envious, choleric, slanderous, calumnious? The best manner of honoring Christ is to imitate him in his conduct. Doing the contrary of what he says, the more one elevates him in thought, the less one is worthy of him and the more one insults and profanes him. Spiritism says to its adepts: “Practice the virtues recommended by Christ and you will be more Christian than many who pass themselves off as such.” To Catholics, Protestants and others, it says: “If you fear that Spiritism may disturb your conscience, do not occupy yourselves with it.” It addresses itself only to those who come to it freely, and who have need of it. It does not address itself to those who have a faith of any kind and for whom this faith suffices, but to those who do not have one or who doubt, and gives them the belief they lack, no longer more particularly that of Catholicism, of Protestantism, of Judaism or of Islamism, but the fundamental belief, the indispensable base of all religion. There its role ends. This base being established, each one is free to follow the road that best satisfies his reason. [4] Our personal role, in the great movement of ideas that is being prepared by Spiritism and that begins to be wrought, is that of an attentive observer, who studies the facts in order to discover their cause and draw their consequences. We confront all those it has been possible for us to gather, we compare and comment upon the instructions given by the Spirits at all points of the globe and then we coordinate methodically the whole; in short, we studied and gave to the public the fruit of our inquiries, without attributing to our labors a value greater than that of a philosophical work deduced from observation and experience, without ever considering ourselves chief of the Doctrine, nor seeking to impose our ideas on anyone whatsoever. In publishing them, we use a common right and those who accepted them did so freely. If these ideas found numerous sympathies, it is because they had the advantage of corresponding to the aspirations of a considerable number of creatures, but from this we draw no vanity, given that their origin does not belong to us. Our greatest merit is perseverance and devotion to the cause we embraced. In all this, we did what any other could have done as we did, which is why we never had the pretension of judging ourselves prophet or messiah, nor, still less, of presenting ourselves as such. Without having any of the exterior qualities of effective mediumship, we do not contest being assisted by the Spirits in our labors, for we have proofs too evident to doubt it, which, without doubt, we owe to our good will, which is given to each one to merit. Besides the ideas which we recognize are suggested to us, it is remarkable that the subjects of study and observation, in a word, all that can be useful to the realization of the work, always come to us apropos – in other times they would say: as if by enchantment – so that the materials and documents of the work never fail us. If we have to deal with a subject, we are certain that, without asking for it, the elements necessary to its elaboration are furnished to us, and this by very natural means, but which, without doubt, are provoked by our invisible collaborators, like so many things that the world attributes to chance. [5] The Spirits’ Book, the first work that led Spiritism to be considered from a philosophical point of view, by the deduction of the moral consequences of the facts; that considered all the parts of the Doctrine, touching on the most important questions which it raises, was, from its appearance, the point toward which the individual labors spontaneously converged. It is notorious that from the publication of that book dates the era of philosophical Spiritism, until then kept in the domain of curious experiments. If that book won the sympathies of the majority, it is that it expressed their sentiments, corresponded to their aspirations and contained also the confirmation and the rational explanation of what each one obtained in particular. Had it been in disaccord with the general teaching of the Spirits, it would have fallen into discredit and oblivion. Now, what was that point of convergence? Certainly it was not the man, who is worth nothing by himself, who dies and disappears; but the idea, which does not perish when it emanates from a source superior to man. This spontaneous concentration of dispersed forces gave rise to a most ample correspondence, a monument unique in the world, a living picture of the true history of modern Spiritism, in which are reflected at the same time the partial labors, the multiple sentiments to which the Doctrine gave birth, the moral results, the devotions, the faintings of heart; archives precious for posterity, which will be able to judge men and things through authentic documents. In the presence of these unassailable testimonies, to what will be reduced, in time, all the false allegations of envy and jealousy?

[6] A significant testimony, as remarkable as it is touching, of that communion of ideas which was established among the Spiritists, by the conformity of their beliefs, are the requests for prayers that reach us from the most distant countries, from Peru to the extremities of Asia, made by persons of diverse religions and nationalities and whom we have never seen. Is this not a prelude to the great unification that is being prepared? Is it not the proof that everywhere Spiritism casts strong roots?

Worthy of note is that, of all the groups that have formed with the premeditated intention of opening a schism, proclaiming divergent principles, likewise of all those that, relying on reasons of self-love or any others whatever, so as not to appear to submit to the common law, consider themselves strong enough to march alone, possessors of lights sufficient to dispense with counsel, none managed to build an idea that was preponderant and viable. All were extinguished or vegetated in the shadow. Nor could it be otherwise, given that, in order to exalt themselves, instead of striving to provide a greater sum of satisfactions, they rejected principles of the Doctrine, precisely what is most attractive in it, what most consoling it contains and most rational. Had they comprehended the force of the moral elements that constituted its unity, they would not have lulled themselves with chimerical illusions. On the contrary, taking for the Universe the small circle they constituted, they saw in the adepts no more than a clique easily overthrown by another clique. It was to be mistaken in a singular manner, with regard to the essential characters of the Doctrine, and such an error could bring only disappointments, for one does not wound with impunity the sentiment of a mass that has convictions settled on solid bases. Instead of breaking the unity, they broke the only bond that could give them force and life. (See: Spiritist Review, April 1866: Spiritism without the Spirits; Independent Spiritism.)

[7] Before declarations so clear and so categorical as those contained in this chapter, all the allegations of tendencies toward absolutism and autocracy of the principles fall to the ground, as well as all the false assimilations that some prejudiced or ill-informed persons lend to the Doctrine. These declarations are not new, moreover; we have repeated them very many times in our writings, so that no doubt may persist in this regard. They, furthermore, mark the true role that falls to us, the only one we aspire to: that of a mere laborer.