The Newspaper Le Siècle — Somnambulant Paris

For some time the Siècle has been publishing, under the title of All Paris, a series of very interesting feuilletons, written by various authors. There was Artistic Paris, Gastronomic Paris, Contesting Paris, etc. In its feuilleton of April 24 and 25, 1868, it published Somnambulant Paris, by Mr. Eugène Bonnemère, author of the Novel of the future. It is an exposition at once scientific and true, of the different varieties of somnambulism, in which it incidentally brings in Spiritism, under its own name, although with all the oratorical precautions determined by the requirements of the newspaper, whose responsibility it did not wish to compromise. This is what explains certain reticences. The lack of space not permitting us to make citations as numerous as we would have wished, we will limit ourselves to the following passages: “The most elevated form of somnambulism is, without contradiction, Spiritism, which aspires to pass to the state of a science. It possesses a literature already rich, and notably the books of Mr. Allan Kardec, an authoritative source on the matter.”

“Spiritism is the correspondence of souls among themselves. According to the adepts of this belief, an invisible being puts itself in communication with another, called a medium, who enjoys a particular organization, which renders him apt to receive the thought of those who have lived, and who writes, either by an unconscious mechanical impulse imparted to the hand, or by a direct transmission to the intelligence of the mediums.”

“No, death does not exist. It is the instant of repose after the day's journey accomplished and the task finished; then it is the awakening to a new work, greater and more useful than the one that has just been carried out.”

“We depart carrying with us the memory of the knowledge acquired here; the world to which we shall go will give us its own, and we shall group them all in a sheaf, to form with them progress.”

“It is by the succession of generations that Humanity advances, each time taking one more step toward the light, because they arrive animated by souls, always naturally pure, after they have returned to God, and remain impregnated with the progress they have traversed.”

“As a consequence of conquests definitively assured, the very Earth we inhabit will deserve to ascend in the scale of worlds. A new cataclysm will occur; certain vegetal essences, certain animal species, inferior or harmful, will disappear, as others disappeared in the past, to give place to more perfect creations and, in our turn, we shall become a world to which beings already tried will come to seek a greater development. It depends on us to hasten, by our efforts, the advent of that happier period. Our beloved dead come to help us in that difficult task.” “Serious or not, these beliefs are not without a certain grandeur. Materialism and atheism, which human sentiment repels with all its energies, are nothing but an inevitable reaction against ideas, hardly admissible by reason, concerning God, Nature, and the destiny of souls. Broadening the question, Spiritism rekindles in hearts the faith on the point of being extinguished.”