The leisure of a Spiritist in the desert.

We reproduce without commentary the following passages, from a letter that, last March, one of our correspondents, a captain of the army in Africa, wrote to us.

“Spiritism is spreading in the north of Africa and will gain the center, if the French direct themselves there. Here it penetrates into Laghouat, on the borders of the Sahara, at 33 degrees of latitude. I lent your books; some of my comrades read them; we discussed, and force and reason remained with the doctrine.

“For some years I have given myself to the study of comparative anatomy, physiology, and psychology. The same current of ideas drew me to the study of animals. I was able to realize, by observation, that all the organs, all the apparatuses become simplified, as one descends to the inferior races and species. How beautiful Nature is to study! How one feels the spirit spread everywhere! Sometimes I spend long hours following the habits and the movements of the life of the insects and reptiles of this region; I witness their struggles, their efforts, their stratagems to assure their existence; I contemplate the battle of the species. The Sahara, on whose borders we have been encamped for more than a year, so deserted for my comrades, seems to me, on the contrary, very populated; where they find exile, I find liberty! It is that I know God is everywhere and that each one has happiness within himself. Whether I be at the pole or at the equator, my friends of space will follow me, and I know that the dear invisible ones can populate the saddest solitudes. Not that I disdain the society of my fellows, nor that I am indifferent to the affections I preserved in France, oh no! for I long to see again and embrace my family and all who are dear to me; but it is only to bear witness that one can be happy at any point of the globe in which one finds oneself, when one takes God for guide. For the Spiritist there is never isolation; he knows and feels himself constantly surrounded by benevolent beings, with whom he is in communion of thoughts. “Your latest work Genesis, which I have just reread, and over several chapters of which I dwelt particularly, unveils to us the mysteries of creation and strikes a terrible blow at prejudices. This reading did me immense good and opened new horizons to me. I already understood our origin and saw in my material body the last link of animality on Earth; I knew that the spirit, during its corporeal gestation, takes an active part in the construction of its nest and adapts its envelope to its new needs. This theory of the origin of man may seem, to the proud, an attack on human greatness and dignity, but it will be accepted in the future thanks to its simplicity and its thrilling amplitude.

“In effect, geology makes us read in the great book of Nature. Through it, we find that the species of today would have as ancestors the species whose remains are found in the terrestrial strata; one can no longer deny that there is a continuous progression in the development of organic forms, when we see the simplest types appear first. These types were modified by the instincts of the animals themselves, provided with organs appropriate to their new needs and to their development. Moreover, Nature changes the types when the necessity makes itself felt; life gradually multiplies its organs and specializes them. The species issue from one another, without the miraculous intervention being necessary. Adam did not issue armed with all his parts from the hands of the Creator: most certainly a chimpanzee gave birth to him.

The species are not absolutely independent of one another; they are linked by a secret filiation, and one may even consider them interdependent up to Humanity. As you said very judiciously, from the zoophyte to man, there is a chain in which all the links have a point of contact with the preceding link. And just as the Spirit rises and cannot remain stationary, so too the instinct of the animal progresses, and each incarnation causes it to mount a step on the scale of beings. The phases of these metamorphoses are completed through thousands of links, and the rudimentary forms, some samples of which are found in the Silurian terrains, tell us where animality passed.

“There must no longer be a veil between Nature and man, and nothing must remain hidden. The Earth is our domain, and it is for us to study its laws; it is ignorance and laziness that created the mysteries. How much greater God appears to us in the harmony and the unity of his laws!

“I sincerely pity the people who are bored, because it is a proof that they think of no one, and that their spirit is empty like the stomach of the individual who is hungry.”