Spiritism Everywhere.

— It is a truly curious thing to see the very same people who repel the name of Spiritism with the greatest obstinacy sowing its ideas in profusion. There is not a day on which, in the press, in literary works, in poetry, in speeches, even in sermons, one does not find thoughts belonging to the purest Spiritism. Ask these writers whether they are Spiritists, and they will answer with disdain that they take care not to be; if you tell them that what they write is Spiritism, they will answer that it cannot be, since it is not the apology of the Davenports and of turning tables. For them that is the whole of Spiritism, and from there they do not depart, nor do they wish to depart. They have already pronounced themselves: their judgment is without appeal. Yet they would be quite surprised to learn that at every instant they are doing Spiritism without knowing it, that they are connected with it without perceiving that they are so close to it! But what does the name matter, provided the fundamental ideas are accepted! What does the form of the plow matter, so long as it prepares the ground! Instead of arriving all at once, the idea comes in fragments; that is the whole difference. Now, when they see later on that the fragments brought together are nothing other than Spiritism, they will necessarily go back on the opinion they had formed of it. Spiritists are not so puerile as to attach more importance to the name than to the thing; that is why they congratulate themselves on seeing their ideas spreading under any form whatsoever. The Spirits who direct the movement say to themselves: Since they do not want the thing under this name, let us make them accept it in detail, under another form; believing themselves the inventors of the idea, they will be its own propagators. We shall do what is done with sick people who do not want to take certain remedies, and who take them without suspecting it, when one changes their color.

Generally the adversaries know so little of what constitutes Spiritism that we hold it for certain that the most fervent Spiritist, who was not known as such, could, with the help of a few oratorical precautions, and provided he refrained from speaking of the Spirits, develop the most essential principles of the doctrine and be applauded by the very people who would not have granted him the floor had he presented himself as an adept.

But whence come these ideas, since those who emit them have not gathered them from the doctrine, which they do not know?

We have already said it several times: when a truth reaches its term and the spirit of the masses is ripe to assimilate it, the idea germinates everywhere; it is in the air, carried to all points by the fluidic currents; each one inhales some particles of it and emits them as if they had sprung from his own brain. If some are inspired by the Spiritist idea without daring to confess it, it is certainly because in many it is spontaneous. Now, since Spiritism is found in the collectivity and in the coordination of these partial ideas, one day it will be, by the force of things, the bond of union among those who profess them; it is a question of time. It is to be noted that when an idea is to take its place in Humanity, everything concurs to open the way for it. So it is with Spiritism. Observing what is taking place in the world at this moment, the great and small events that arise or are being prepared, there is not a Spiritist who does not say that everything seems made on purpose to smooth the difficulties and facilitate its establishment. Its very adversaries seem impelled by an unconscious force to clear the way and to dig an abyss beneath their feet, the better to make felt the necessity of filling it. And let it not be believed that the contraries are harmful; far from it. Never have incredulity, atheism, and materialism raised their heads more boldly and proclaimed their pretensions. They are no longer personal opinions, respectable like everything that is within the province of the intimate conscience: they are doctrines that they wish to impose and with the help of which they claim to govern men in spite of themselves. The very exaggeration of these doctrines is their remedy, because one asks what would become of society if one day they came to prevail. This exaggeration was needed to make better understood the benefit of the beliefs that can be the safeguard of the social order. But what a strange blindness! or, better said, what a providential blindness! Those who wish to substitute themselves for what exists, like those who wish to oppose the new ideas, at the moment when the gravest questions are being stirred, instead of drawing people to themselves, of conciliating sympathies through gentleness, benevolence, persuasion, seem to arrogate to themselves the task of doing everything to inspire repulsion; they find nothing better than to impose themselves by violence, suppressing consciences, shocking convictions, persecuting. A singular means of making themselves welcome to the populations! In the present state of our world, persecution is the obligatory baptism of every new belief of any value. In receiving its own, Spiritism is the proof of the importance attached to it. But, we repeat, all this has its reason for being and its usefulness; it must be so, in order to prepare the ways. Spiritists must consider themselves as soldiers on a field of battle; they owe themselves to the cause and can hope for rest only when the victory is won. Happy are those who shall have contributed to the victory at the price of a few sacrifices! For the observer who, coolly, contemplates the work of the creation of the idea, it is something marvelous to see how everything, even what, at first sight, appears insignificant or contrary, converges definitively toward the same goal; to see the diversity and the multiplicity of the resources that the invisible powers bring into play to attain that goal; everything serves them, everything is utilized, even what seems to us bad.

There is, then, no cause to be disturbed by the fluctuations that Spiritism may experience in the conflict of the ideas that are in ferment; it is an effect of the same effervescence that it produces in opinion, where it cannot find sympathies everywhere; one must reckon with these fluctuations, until the equilibrium is reestablished. Meanwhile, the idea marches on; that is the essential thing. And as we said at the beginning, it springs up through every pore; all, friends and enemies, work at it in rivalry, and it is not doubtful that without the active involuntary collaboration of the adversaries, the progress of the doctrine, which never made propaganda to become known, would not have been so rapid. They believe they are smothering Spiritism by proscribing its name. But, as it does not consist of words, if they close the door on it because of its name, it penetrates under the impalpable form of the idea. And what is curious is that many who repel it, not knowing it, not wishing to know it, ignoring, consequently, its goal, its tendencies, and its most serious principles, acclaim certain ideas, which are sometimes their own, without suspecting that often they form an essential and integral part of the doctrine. If they knew it, it is probable that they would abstain. The only means of avoiding the misunderstanding would be to study the doctrine thoroughly, in order to know what it says and what it does not say. But then another difficulty would arise: Spiritism touches upon so many questions, the ideas that group themselves around it are so manifold, that if they wished to abstain from speaking of everything connected with it, they would often find themselves singularly hampered and, often even, checked in the impulses of their own inspirations; for, through this study, they would convince themselves that Spiritism is in everything and everywhere, and they would be surprised to find it in the most accredited writers; more still, they themselves would be surprised to be doing it in many circumstances, without wishing to. Now, an idea that becomes a common patrimony is imperishable. We have already several times reproduced the Spiritist thoughts found in profusion in the press and in writings of every kind, and we shall continue to do so from time to time, under the title of Spiritism Everywhere. The following article, above all, comes in support of the reflections above; it is taken from the Phare de la Manche, a newspaper of Cherbourg, of August 18, 1867.

— The author there gives an account of a collection of poems by Mr. Amédée Marteau and, in this regard, expresses himself thus:

“Two thousand years ago, some time before the establishment of Christianity, the priestly caste of the druids taught its adepts a singular doctrine. It said: No being shall ever end; but all beings, except God, have begun. Every being is created at the lowest degree of existence. At first the soul has no consciousness of itself; subjected to the invariable laws of the physical world, a spirit enslaved to matter, a latent and obscure force, it fatally ascends the steps of inorganic nature, then of organized nature. Then the lightning falls from the sky, the being knows itself, it is man. “The human soul begins at dawn the trials of its free will; it makes its own destiny, advances from existence to existence, from transmigration to transmigration, through the liberation that death gives it; or else, it turns back upon itself, falls from step to step, if it has not merited to rise, without, however, any fall being forever irreparable.

“When the soul has reached the highest point of the science, the strength, the virtue of which the human condition is susceptible, it escapes the circle of trials and transmigrations, attains the term of happiness: heaven. Once arrived at this term, man falls no more; he ever ascends, raises himself toward God by an eternal progress, without, however, ever merging with Him. Far from losing in heaven his activity, his individuality, it is there that each soul acquires its full possession, with the memory of all the prior states through which it has passed. Its personality, its own nature develops there, ever more distinct, as it climbs the infinite ladder, whose steps are nothing but realizations of life, which death no longer separates. “Such was the conception that druidism had of the soul and of its destinies. It was the Pythagorean idea enlarged, made into a dogma and applied to the infinite.

“How is it that this opinion, after having slumbered so many centuries in the limbo of human intelligence, awakens today? Perhaps it has its reason for being in the revolution that, beginning with Galileo, was wrought in the astronomical system; perhaps it owes its resurrection to the seductive perspectives that it presents to the reveries of philosophers and thinkers; or, finally, to that innate curiosity that incessantly impels man toward the unknown.

“Be that as it may, Fontenelle was the first whose spiritual pen transformed these questions in his charming banter on the plurality of the worlds.”

“From the habitability of the worlds to the transmigration of souls the slope is slippery, and our century has let itself be dragged down it. It has seized upon this idea and, leaning upon Astronomy, attempts to raise it to the height of a science. Jean Reynaud developed it, in masterly form, in Heaven and Earth; Lamennais adopts and generalizes it in the Sketch of a Philosophy; Lamartine and Hugo extol it; Maxime Ducamp popularized it in a novel; Flammarion published a book in its favor; finally, Mr. Amédée Marteau, in a poetic work, which we read with the most lively interest, clothes with the colors of his seductive palette this vast and magnificent utopia. “Mr. Marteau is the poet of the new idea; he is an enthusiastic and devoted believer in the transmigration of souls into celestial bodies, and it must be admitted that he has succeeded in treating with a master's hand this splendid subject. God, man, time, space are the inspirers of his muse. Vertiginous abysses, immeasurable elevations, nothing stops him, nothing terrifies him. He enjoys himself in immensity, skirts without paling the edges of the infinite. He travels among the stars, like an eagle over the high peaks. He describes in harmonious language, with mathematical precision, their forms, their march, their color, their contours.” After quoting a fragment of one of the odes of the collection, the author of the article adds:

“Mr. Marteau is not only a poet of high distinction: he is, moreover, a philosopher and a scholar. Astronomy is familiar to him; he colors his poetry with the gold dust that he makes fall from the sidereal spheres. We could not say which captivated us more: whether the interest of the diction, or the originality of the thought. All this fits together, coordinates itself in a manner so neat, so clear, so natural, that one remains as though fascinated under the charm.

“We do not know Mr. Marteau. But we think that if, to compose a book like this, one must be endowed with great talent, one must also be endowed with a great heart, for, in this author, everything breathes the love of man and the love of God.

“Thus, we cannot refrain from urging those who are not absorbed in material preoccupations and interests to cast a glance at the works of Mr. Marteau. There they will find consolations and hopes, not to mention the intellectual pleasures that the reading of a generous poetry causes one to experience, rich in conceptions, ideal and destined, we have no doubt, to a brilliant success.”

Digard.

— As may be seen, the exposition of the druidic doctrine on the destinies of the soul, with which the article begins, is a complete summary of the Spiritist Doctrine on the same subject. Does the author know it? One may be permitted to doubt it; otherwise it would be strange that he should have abstained from citing Spiritism, unless he feared to make it share in the praises that he lavishes on the author's ideas. We shall not do him the injury of supposing so naïve a partiality; we prefer to imagine that he is even unaware of its existence. When he asks: “How is it that this opinion, after having slumbered so many centuries in the limbo of human intelligence, awakens today?” had he studied Spiritism, it would have answered him, and he would have seen that these ideas are more popular than is thought. “Mr. Marteau,” he says, “is the poet of the new idea; he is an enthusiastic and devoted believer in the transmigration of souls into celestial bodies, and it must be admitted that he has succeeded in treating with a master's hand this splendid subject.” Further on, he adds: “If, to compose a book like this, one must be endowed with great talent, one must also be endowed with a great heart, for, in this author, everything breathes the love of man and the love of God.” Then is Mr. Marteau not a madman for professing such ideas? Are Jean Reynaud, Lamennais, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Louis Jourdan, Maxime Ducamp, Flammarion, then not madmen for having extolled them? To make the eulogy of men, is that not to praise their principles? Besides, can one make a greater eulogy of a book than by saying that the readers will gather there hopes and consolations? Considering that these doctrines are those of Spiritism, is that not to accredit them in opinion? Thus, here is an article in which it was said that the name of Spiritism is omitted on purpose, and in which the ideas it professes on the most essential points are acclaimed: the plurality of existences and the destinies of the soul.

[1] [Espoirs et Souvenirs - Google Books.] (Hopes and Memories), Hachette, 77, boulevard Saint-Germain.