Letter from Mr. Monico

The newspaper Mahouna of June 26, 1868 published the following letter, which we reproduce with pleasure, addressing to the author our most sincere congratulations.

“Sir Director, “I have just read an article in the Indépendent, of Constantine, of the 20th of this month, appraising the rather indelicate role that a certain Mr. Home would have played, according to that newspaper (in England), beginning with these lines: “The Spiritists, successors of the sorcerers of the Middle Ages, no longer limit themselves to pointing out hidden treasures to imbeciles, their adherents: they contrive to discover them for their own benefit.” There follows the appraisal, etc. “Allow me, sir editor, to make use of your honored newspaper to protest energetically against the author of those lines so unliterary and so offensive to the adherents of these new ideas, ideas certainly very little known, since they are so falsely appraised.

“Spiritism succeeds the sorcerers, as astronomy succeeded the astrologers. Does that mean that this science, today so widespread, which has enlightened man, making known to him the sidereal immensities, which the primitive religions had shaped to their ideal and to serve their interests, espoused all the fantastic and crude lucubrations of the astrologers of old? Surely you do not think so. “In the same way, Spiritism, so slandered by those who do not know it, comes to destroy the errors of the sorcerers and to reveal a new science to Humanity. It comes to explain those phenomena hitherto incomprehensible, which popular ignorance attributed to miracle.

“Far from espousing the superstitions of another age, which the sorcerers, the magicians, etc., a whole multitude of pariahs rebellious to civilization, employed in order to exploit ignorance and speculate upon vices, it comes, I say, to destroy them and, at the same time, to bring into the service of man an immense force, far superior to all those brought by the ancient and modern philosophers. “This force is: knowledge of the past and of the future reserved to man, answering these questions: Where do I come from? Where am I going?

“This terrible doubt, which weighed upon the human conscience, Spiritism comes to explain, not only theoretically and by abstraction, but materially, that is, by proofs accessible to our senses, and outside of all aphorism and theological sentence.

“The old opinions, often born of ignorance and fantasy, disappear little by little to give way to new convictions, founded on observation, and whose reality is most manifest; the trace of old prejudices fades away, and the more reflective man, studying these phenomena reputed supernatural with more attention, found in them the product of a will, manifesting itself outside of him. “By reason of this manifestation, the Universe appears, to the Spiritist, as a mechanism driven by an infinite number of intelligences, an immense government in which each intelligent being has its share of action under the gaze of God, whether in the state of man, or in that of soul or Spirit. For him death is not a scarecrow that makes one tremble, nor nothingness; it is but the extreme point of one phase of the being and the beginning of another, that is, quite simply, a transformation. “I stop here, for I do not pretend to give a course in Spiritism nor, even, to convince my adversary. But I cannot allow a doctrine that proclaims as a principle freedom of conscience and the maxims of the most purified Christianity to be offended, without protesting with all my soul.

“Spiritism has for enemies those who have studied it neither in its philosophical part nor in its experimental part; it is for this reason that the first who comes along, without taking the trouble to enlighten himself, arrogates to himself the right, a priori, to treat it as absurd.

“But, unfortunately for man, it has always been so, every time a new idea has arisen. History is there to prove it.

“Spiritism being in agreement with the sciences of our age (See Genesis, the Miracles and the Predictions according to Spiritism), its most authorized representatives and all the writings issued from its bosom have declared that it was ready to accept all ideas based on scientific truths and to reject all those recognized as tainted with error; in a word, it wishes to march at the forefront of human progress. “The adherents of this doctrine, instead of hiding themselves in the shadows and gathering in the catacombs, proceed in an entirely different manner. It is in full light and publicly that they emit their ideas and exercise themselves in the practice of their principles. In France the Spiritist opinion is represented by five reviews or newspapers; in England, in Germany, in Italy and in Russia, by fifteen weekly sheets; in the United States of America, that country of liberty and of progress in every kind, by numerous newspapers or reviews, and the adherents of Spiritism in that country already number in the millions, adherents whom the author of the article in the Indépendent, involuntarily and without reflection, treats as imbeciles. “Our age, so distant from acts of religious intolerance, which laughs at theological disputes and at the thunderbolts of the Vatican, ought to inspire better respect for contrary opinions.

“Accept, etc.”

Jules Monico.

The same newspaper, of July 17, contains another article by Mr. Monico, who announces that he is to publish a series in response to some attacks by the antagonists of Spiritism. There we likewise see the announcement, as being in the press, of a brochure by the same author, entitled: Freedom of conscience, and which is to appear in the first fortnight of the month of August. Price: 1 franc.