Spiritualism and the Ideal

— Our issue of the month of August contains the reproduction of a very notable article, taken from the journal Droit, on the disastrous consequences of materialism, from the point of view of legislation and the social order; the Patrie of July 30, 1868 made the appraisal of a work on the influence of spiritualism in the arts. These two articles are the corollary and complement of one another: in the first the dangers of materialism for society are proven, and in the second the necessity of spiritualism is demonstrated, without which the arts and poetry are deprived of their vital element. Indeed, the sublime in art and poetry is to speak to the soul, to elevate thought above the matter that oppresses us and from which we incessantly aspire to escape; but, in order to make the strings of the soul vibrate, one must have a soul that vibrates in unison. How could one who believes only in matter inspire himself and become the interpreter of thoughts and sentiments that are outside of matter? His ideal does not rise above the pedestrian, and it is cold, because it speaks neither to the heart nor to the spirit, but only to the material senses. The beautiful ideal is not in the material world; one must, therefore, seek it in the spiritual world, which is the world of light for the blind; the impossibility of attaining it created the realist school, which does not leave this world, because there is its whole horizon; the true beautiful being beyond the reach of certain artists, they declare that the beautiful is ugly. The fable of the fox who has had its tail cut off remains forever a truth. The epoch in which religious faith was ardent and sincere is also the one in which religious art produced its most beautiful masterpieces; the artist identified himself with his subject, because he saw it with the eyes of the soul and understood it; it was his own thought that he was translating; but as faith departed, the inspiring genius left with it. It is not, then, to be wondered at that if religious art is today in full decadence, it is not talent that is lacking, but sentiment.

It is the same with the ideal in all things. Works of art captivate only when they make one think. One can admire the plastic talent of the artist, but he cannot arouse a thought that does not exist within himself; he paints a world that he does not see, feel, or understand; that is why he sometimes falls into the grotesque; one feels that he aims at effect and has striven to make something new by torturing the form: that is all.

The same may be said of modern music; it makes much noise, demands of the performer a great agility of the fingers and of the throat, a veritable dislocation; it moves the fibers of the ear, but not those of the heart. This tendency of art toward materiality has perverted the taste of the public, whose delicacy of moral sense is dulled. n Mr. Chassang's work is the application of these ideas to art in general, and to Greek art in particular. We reproduce with pleasure what the author of the critique in the Patrie says of it, because it is one more proof of the energetic reaction that is taking place in favor of spiritualist ideas and which, as we have said, every defense of rational spiritualism opens the way of Spiritism, which is its development, combating its most tenacious adversaries: materialism and fanaticism.

Mr. Chassang is the author of the history of Apollonius of Tyana, to which we referred in the Review of October 1862.

— “This book, of a quite special character, was not written on the occasion of the recent debates on materialism and, without a shadow of doubt, it is independently of the author's will that circumstances have come to give it a kind of timeliness. In writing it Mr. Chassang did not intend to do the work of a metaphysician, but of a simple man of letters. However, since the great questions of metaphysics are eternally the order of the day, and every literary work truly worthy of that name always supposes a philosophical principle, this book, of very marked spiritualist inspiration, finds itself in correlation with the preoccupations of the moment. “Mr. Chassang leaves to others the refutation of materialism from the purely philosophical point of view. His thesis is entirely aesthetic. What he intends to prove is that literature and art are no less interested than the moral life in the triumph of the spiritualist doctrines. Just as materialism depoetizes life and takes the cruel pleasure of disenchanting man, depriving him of all hope, all consolation amid the evils that surround him, so it impiously subtracts from literature and art what it calls illusions and lies, and, under the pretext of truth, proclaims realism, making artists and writers express only what is. “The spiritualist doctrines, on the contrary, open life in every direction to noble aspirations; they entertain man with the future and immortality; they tell the poet and the artist that there is a beautiful ideal, of which the most beautiful human creations are but pale reflections, and upon which whoever wishes to charm his contemporaries and to live for posterity must always fix his eyes.

“After having, in his introduction, developed this premise from the general point of view, Mr. Chassang seeks his proof in the most beautiful of literatures and in the greatest of the arts that have excited the admiration of men: in the literature and the art of the ancient Greeks. For such a demonstration, a rigorous and didactic order is rather to be avoided than to be sought after; thus, after the introduction which sets forth the principles, there come not chapters closely joined and methodically related, but isolated studies which all attach themselves to the same subject, draw inspiration from the same sentiment, and converge toward the same aim. Thus, the book has, at the same time, unity in the whole and variety in the parts. “It is, above all, a treatise on what the author aptly calls popular spiritualism among the ancients, that is, the beliefs of the Greeks and the Romans concerning the destiny of souls after death. He shows that, if among these beliefs there are evident errors, nonetheless these errors all rest on the hope of another life. Does not the cult of the dead in fact implicitly contain a profession of spiritualist faith? The final victory of materialism would be to suppress it, and its adherents ought logically to arrive at that; otherwise, of what use would it be to raise the stone of the tomb? of what use, above all, to surround the tomb with respect, if there is nothing within? Thus speaks Mr. Chassang.” Octave Sachot.

[1] [Le spiritualisme et l’idéal dans l’art et la poésie des Grecs - Google Books.] 1 vol. in-12, 3 fr. 50 c. Didier & Co., 35, quai des Augustins.

[2] See the Review of December 1860 and January 1861: Pagan art, Christian art and Spiritist art.