Lectures.

In a series of lectures given last April by Mr. Chavée, at the Free Institute on the boulevard des Capucines, no. 39, the speaker made, with as much talent as true science, an analytical and philosophical study of the Indian Vedas and of the laws of Manu, compared with the book of Job and the Psalms. The subject led to considerations of lofty scope, which directly touch the fundamental principles of Spiritism. Here are some notes gathered by a listener at these lectures; they are nothing but thoughts caught at random, which necessarily lose by being detached from the whole and deprived of their developments, but which are enough to show the order of ideas followed by the author: “What good is it to cast a veil over what is? What good is it not to say aloud what one thinks under one's breath? One must have the courage to speak. As for me, I shall have this courage.”

“In the Indian Vedas it is said: “One has one's peers on high.” And I am of this opinion.”

“With the eyes of the flesh one cannot see everything.”

“Man has an indefinite existence, and the progress of the soul is indefinite. Whatever the sum of its enlightenment, it always has something to learn, because it has the infinite before it and, though it cannot attain it, its aim will always be to draw ever closer to it.”

“Individual man cannot exist without an organism that bounds him within the bosom of creation. If the soul exists after death, then it has a body, an organism that I call the superior organism, in opposition to the carnal body, which is the inferior organism. During waking life, these two organisms are, so to speak, blended together; during sleep, somnambulism, and ecstasy, the soul makes use only of its ethereal body or superior organism; it is freer in this state; its manifestations are more elevated, because it acts upon this more perfect organism, which offers it less resistance; it embraces an admirable set of relations, something it cannot do with its inferior organism, which limits its clairvoyance and the field of its observations.” “The soul is without extension; it is extended only by its ethereal body, and circumscribed by the limits of that body, which Saint Paul calls the luminous organism.”

“An organism, ethereal in its constitutive elements, but invisible and attainable only by scientific induction, in no way contradicts the known laws of physics and chemistry.”

“There are facts that experimentation can always reproduce, confirming in man the existence of a superior internal organism, which must succeed the ordinary opaque organism at the moment of the latter's destruction.”

“After death has separated the soul from its carnal organism, it continues its life in space, with its ethereal body, thus preserving its individuality. Among the men of whom we speak and who are dead according to the flesh, there are certainly some here among us, who attend, invisible, our conversations; they are at our side and hover above our heads; they see us and they hear us. Yes, they are here, I assure you of it.” “The scale of beings is continuous; before being what we are, we passed through all the degrees of this scale that are below us, and we shall continue to climb those that are above. Before our brain was a reptile, it was a fish, and it was a fish before being a mammal.”

“The materialists deny these truths; they are honest; they are in good faith, but they are mistaken! I defy a materialist to come here, to this rostrum, to prove that he is right and that I am wrong. Let them come and prove materialism! No, they will not prove it; they will merely put forth ideas supported by the void; they will merely oppose denials, whereas I am going to demonstrate by facts the truth of my thesis.” “Are there pathological phenomena that prove the existence of the soul after death? Yes, there are, and I am going to cite one. I see here doctors of medicine, who claim that this does not occur. I shall only answer them: If you have not seen it, it is because you looked badly. Observe, search, study, and you will find it, as I myself found it.”

“It is to somnambulism and to ecstasy that I am going to ask for the proofs I promised you. – To somnambulism? they will ask me. But the Academy of Medicine has not yet recognized it. — And so? I have nothing to do with the Academy of Medicine and I dispense with it. — But Mr. Dubois, of Amiens, wrote a thick octavo volume [Description of the character, manners, and customs of the people of India … Par Jean Antoine Dubois - Google Books.] against that doctrine. — This too matters not to me; they are opinions without proofs, which vanish before the facts.” “They will further say to me: “It is no longer fashionable to defend somnambulism.” I shall reply that I do not concern myself with being fashionable, and that if few men dare to profess truths that still attract ridicule, I am among those whom ridicule cannot reach, and who confront it willingly, in order to say courageously what they judge to be the truth. If each of us acted thus, incredulity would soon lose all the ground it has gained for some time now, and would be replaced by faith. Not the faith that is daughter of revelation, but the more solid faith, daughter of Science, of observation, and of reason.” The speaker cites numerous examples of somnambulism and of ecstasy, which gave him the proof, in a certain material way, of the existence of the soul, of its action isolated from the carnal body, of its individuality after death, and, finally, of its ethereal body, which is nothing but the fluidic envelope or perispirit.

As one sees, the existence of the perispirit, suspected from earliest antiquity by elite intelligences, but unknown to the masses, demonstrated and popularized in these latter times by Spiritism, is a whole revolution in psychological ideas and, consequently, in philosophy. Once this point of departure is admitted, one inevitably arrives, from deduction to deduction, at the individuality of the soul, at the plurality of existences, at indefinite progress, at the presence of Spirits among us, in a word, at all the consequences of Spiritism, even to the fact of manifestations, which are explained in an entirely natural manner. On the other hand, we have demonstrated in due course that, starting from the principle of the plurality of existences, today admitted by numerous serious thinkers, even outside Spiritism, one arrives at exactly the same consequences.

If, then, men whose learning has authority profess openly, by word or by their writings, even without speaking of Spiritism, some the doctrine of the perispirit under some name or other, others the plurality of existences, in reality this is to profess Spiritism, for these are two paths that lead inevitably to it. If they drew these ideas from within themselves and from their own observations, this only proves all the better that they are in Nature and how irresistible their power is. Thus the perispirit and reincarnation are, from now on, two doors open to Spiritism, in the domain of philosophy and in popular beliefs. Mr. Chavée's lectures are, then, true Spiritist lectures, save for the word; and, under this latter aspect, we shall say that at present they are more profitable to the Doctrine than if they openly took up its banner. They popularize its fundamental ideas without alienating those who, through ignorance of the matter, might have a prejudice against the name. An evident proof of the sympathy that these ideas meet with in public opinion is the enthusiastic welcome given to the doctrines professed by Mr. Chavée, by the numerous public that crowds into his lectures. We are persuaded that more than one writer, who holds the Spiritists up to ridicule, applauds Mr. Chavée and his doctrines, which he finds perfectly rational, without suspecting that they are nothing more nor less than the purest Spiritism.

The newspaper Solidarité, in its issue of May 1, cited by us above, gives an account of these lectures, to which we call the attention of our readers, since it completes, from other points of view, the teachings above.

Note – The abundance of material obliges us to postpone to the next issue the account of two most interesting feuilletons by Mr. Bonnemère, author of The Novel of the Future, published in the Siècle of April 24 and 25, 1868, under the title of Somnambulant Paris. Spiritism is there clearly defined.