The Moralizing Effect of Reincarnation.

The Figaro of the 5th of April, 1868, the same journal that, two days before, published this definition of immortality: “A tale of male nurses, to reassure their patients”; and the letter referred to in the preceding article [The Funeral Rites of Madame Victor Hugo], contained the following article:

“The composer E… believes firmly in the migration of souls. He recounts, willingly, that in previous centuries he was a Greek slave, then a buffoon and a celebrated Italian composer, but an envious one, preventing his colleagues from producing…

“— Today I am punished for this, he adds with philosophy; it is my turn to be sacrificed and to see the ways barred to me!

“This manner of consoling oneself is quite as good as another.”

This idea is pure Spiritism, because it is not only the principle of the plurality of existences, but that of the expiation of the past, by the penalty of retaliation, in the successive existences, according to the maxim: “One is always punished in the very thing wherein one sinned.” That composer thus explains his tribulations; he consoles himself by the thought that he has only what he deserves; the consequence of this thought is that, in order not to deserve it again, it is in his own interest to seek to improve himself; is this not better than blowing out one's brains, which would logically lead him to the thought of nothingness? This belief is, then, a powerful and very natural cause of moralization; it is striking by its timeliness and by the material fact of the miseries that one endures and which, because one cannot explain them, are charged to the account of fatality or of injustice on the part of God. It is comprehensible to everyone, to the child and to the most unlettered man, because it is neither abstract nor metaphysical. There is no one who does not understand that one may already have lived, and that if one has already lived, one may live still. Considering that it is not the body that can live again, it is the most evident sanction of the existence of the soul, of its individuality and of its immortality. It is, then, in order to popularize it that the efforts of all those who occupy themselves seriously with the improvement of the masses must tend; it is for them a powerful lever, with which they will do more than by the idea of the devils and of hell, at which people laugh today.

Since it is the order of the day, germinating on all sides, and its logic makes it easily accepted, very naturally it opens to the Spiritists a door for the propagation of the doctrine. Let them attach themselves, then, to this idea, at which no one laughs, which is accepted by the most serious thinkers, and they will make more proselytes by this way than by that of the material manifestations. Since it is today the sensitive chord, it is this one that one must attack; and when it has vibrated, the rest will come of itself. Do not speak, then, to those whom the mere word Spiritism terrifies; speak of the plurality of existences, of the numerous writers who advocate this idea; speak also above all to the afflicted, as Mr. Victor Hugo does, of the presence, around us, of the beloved beings whom we have lost; they will understand you and, later on, they will be quite surprised to be Spiritists without having suspected it.