Is Spiritism a religion?

“Wherever two or three persons are gathered together in my name, there I shall be with them.” (St. Matthew, 18:20.)

— Dear Spiritist brothers and sisters, We are gathered, on this day consecrated by custom to the commemoration of the dead, to give to those brothers of ours who have left the Earth a particular testimony of sympathy, to continue the relations of affection and fraternity that existed between them and us when they were alive, and to invoke upon them the goodness of the Almighty. But why do we gather? Can we not do in private what each of us proposes to do in common? What is the use of thus gathering on a set day?

Jesus indicates it to us by the words we cited above. This usefulness lies in the result produced by the communion of thoughts that becomes established among persons gathered with the same purpose.

Communion of thoughts! Do we fully understand the whole scope of this expression? Surely, until this day, few persons had formed a complete idea of it. Spiritism, which explains so many things to us through the laws it reveals, now also comes to explain the cause and the force of that state of the spirit.

Communion of thought means common thought, unity of intention, of will, of desire, of aspiration. No one can fail to recognize that thought is a force; but a purely moral and abstract force? No: otherwise certain effects of thought could not be explained, and still less the communion of thought. To understand it, one must know the properties and the action of the elements that constitute our spiritual essence, and it is Spiritism that teaches them to us.

Thought is the characteristic attribute of the spiritual being; it is what distinguishes the spirit from matter; without thought the spirit would not be spirit. The will is not a special attribute of the spirit; it is thought arrived at a certain degree of energy; it is thought transformed into a motive force. It is by the will that the spirit imparts to the limbs and to the body movements in a given direction. But if it has the force to act upon the material organs, how much greater must that force be upon the fluidic elements that surround us! Thought acts upon the surrounding fluids as sound acts upon the air; those fluids bring us thought, as the air brings us sound. It can therefore be said with all truth that there are in those fluids waves and rays of thoughts that cross without mingling, as there are in the air waves and rays of sound.

— An assembly is a focus from which diverse thoughts radiate; it is like an orchestra, a choir of thoughts, where each one produces its note. From this there results an immensity of currents and fluidic emanations, of which each one receives the impression through the spiritual sense, as in a musical choir each one receives the impression of the sounds through the sense of hearing.

But, just as there are harmonious or discordant sound rays, so too there are harmonious or discordant thoughts. If the whole is harmonious, the impression is agreeable; if discordant, the impression will be painful. Now, for this it is not necessary that the thought be formulated in words; the fluidic radiation does not cease to exist, whether or not it is expressed. If all are beneficial, those present will experience a true well-being and will feel at ease; but if some bad thoughts are mingled in, they will produce the effect of a current of icy air in a tepid environment.

Such is the cause of the feeling of satisfaction that one experiences in a congenial gathering; there reigns there a kind of wholesome moral atmosphere, where one breathes at ease; from it one emerges comforted, because there one becomes imbued with salutary fluidic emanations. Thus too are explained the anxiety and the indefinable malaise that one feels in an uncongenial environment, where malevolent thoughts provoke, so to speak, unwholesome fluidic currents.

The communion of thoughts therefore produces a sort of physical effect that reacts upon the moral; only Spiritism could make this understood. Man feels it instinctively, since he seeks out the gatherings where he knows he will find that communion. In those homogeneous and congenial gatherings he draws new moral forces; one might say that there he recovers the fluidic losses lost daily through the radiation of thought, as he recovers through food the losses of the material body.

— To these effects of the communion of thoughts is joined another that is its natural consequence, and which it is important not to lose sight of: it is the power that thought or the will acquires through the aggregate of the thoughts or wills gathered together. The will being an active force, this force is multiplied by the number of identical wills, as muscular force is multiplied by the number of arms.

This point established, one conceives that in the relations that become established between men and Spirits, there is, in a gathering where a perfect communion of thoughts reigns, an attractive or repulsive force that the isolated individual does not always possess. If, up to the present, very numerous gatherings are less favorable, it is because of the difficulty of obtaining a perfect homogeneity of thoughts, which is due to the imperfection of human nature on the Earth. The more numerous the gatherings, the more there mingle in them heterogeneous elements, which paralyze the action of the good elements, and which are like grains of sand in a gear mechanism. It is not so in the more advanced worlds, and such a state of things will change on the Earth as men become better. For Spiritists, the communion of thoughts has a still more special result. We have seen the effect of this communion from man to man; Spiritism proves to us that it is no less from men to Spirits, and reciprocally. Indeed, if collective thought acquires force through number, an aggregate of identical thoughts, having good as their object, will have more force to neutralize the action of the bad Spirits; we also see that the tactic of these latter is to lead to division and isolation. Alone, a man may succumb, whereas if his will is corroborated by other wills he will be able to resist, according to the axiom: Union makes strength, an axiom true both from the moral point of view and from the physical. On the other hand, if the action of the malevolent Spirits can be paralyzed by a common thought, it is evident that that of the good Spirits will be seconded; their fluidic emanations, not being held back by contrary currents, will spread over those present, precisely because all will have attracted them by thought, not each one for personal benefit, but for the benefit of all, according to the law of charity. They will descend upon them like tongues of fire, to make use of an admirable image from the Gospel.

Thus, through the communion of thoughts men assist one another and, at the same time, assist the Spirits and are assisted by them. The relations between the visible and invisible worlds are no longer individual, but collective and, for this very reason, more powerful for the benefit of the masses and of individuals. In a word, they establish solidarity, which is the basis of fraternity. Each one works for all, and not only for himself; and working for all, each one finds his share there. This is what egoism does not understand.

Thanks to Spiritism, we then understand the power and the effects of collective thought; we explain to ourselves better the feeling of well-being that one experiences in a homogeneous and congenial environment; but we know, likewise, that it is the same with the Spirits, because they too receive the emanations of all the benevolent thoughts that rise toward them, like a cloud of perfume. Those who are happy experience greater joy from that harmonious concert; those who suffer feel greater relief.

— All religious gatherings, whatever the worship to which they belong, are founded on the communion of thoughts; indeed, it is there that they can and must exert their force, because the object must be the liberation of thought from the bonds of matter. Unfortunately, the majority depart from this principle as religion becomes a question of form. From this it results that each one, making his duty consist in the carrying out of the form, judges himself even with God and with men, once he has practiced a formula. It results further that each one goes to the places of religious gathering with a personal thought, on his own account and, most often, without any sentiment of fellowship toward the other persons present; he remains isolated in the midst of the multitude and thinks of heaven only for himself.

— Certainly it was not thus that Jesus understood it when he said: “When two or more persons are gathered together in my name, there I shall be among them.” Gathered in my name, that is, with a common thought; but one cannot be gathered in the name of Jesus without assimilating his principles, his doctrine. Now, what is the fundamental principle of the doctrine of Jesus? Charity in thoughts, words, and deeds. The egoists and the proud lie when they say they are gathered in the name of Jesus, because Jesus does not know them for his disciples.

— Shocked by these abuses and deviations, there are persons who deny the usefulness of religious assemblies and, consequently, that of the edifices consecrated to such assemblies. In their radicalism, they think it would be better to build asylums than temples, since the temple of God is everywhere and everywhere he can be adored; that each one can pray at home and at any hour, while the poor, the sick, and the infirm need a place of refuge.

But, because abuses have been committed, because men have departed from the right path, must we conclude that the right path does not exist and that everything that is abused is bad? No, certainly. To speak thus is to misunderstand the source and the benefits of the communion of thoughts, which must be the essence of religious assemblies; it is to be ignorant of the causes that provoke it. One conceives that the materialists profess such ideas, since in everything they make abstraction of the spiritual life; but on the part of the spiritualists and, better still, of the Spiritists, it would be a contradiction. Religious isolation, like social isolation, leads to egoism. That some men may be strong enough by themselves, amply endowed by the heart, so that their faith and charity have no need to be reinvigorated in a common focus, is possible; but it is not so with the masses, for they lack a stimulant, without which they might let themselves be carried away by indifference. Moreover, what man can call himself enlightened enough to have nothing to learn regarding his future interests? perfect enough to dispense with the counsels of the present life? Will he always be capable of instructing himself by himself? No; the majority need direct teachings in matters of religion and morality, as in matters of science. Incontestably, such teachings can be given everywhere, under the vault of heaven, as under that of a temple; but why should men not have special places for celestial questions, as they have for earthly ones? Why should they not have religious assemblies, as they have political, scientific, and industrial assemblies? Here is an exchange where one always gains. This does not prevent the edifices for the benefit of the unfortunate. We say, moreover, that there will be fewer people in the asylums when men understand better their interests of heaven. If the religious assemblies – I speak in general, without alluding to any worship – have often departed from their primitive principal object, which is the fraternal communion of thought; if the teaching administered there has not always followed the progressive movement of Humanity, it is because men do not all progress at the same time. What they do not do in one period, they do in another; in proportion as they become enlightened, they see the gaps existing in their institutions, and they fill them; they understand that what was good in one epoch, in relation to the degree of civilization, becomes insufficient at a more advanced stage, and they restore the level. We know that Spiritism is the great lever of progress in all things; it marks an era of renewal. Let us know, then, how to wait, not demanding of an epoch more than it can give. Like plants, ideas must ripen, so that their fruits may be gathered. Let us know, moreover, how to make the necessary concessions to the epochs of transition, because in Nature nothing operates in an abrupt and instantaneous manner.

— We have said that the true object of religious assemblies must be the communion of thoughts; for, indeed, the word religion means bond. A religion, in its broad and true acceptation, is a bond that binds men together in a communion of sentiments, of principles, and of beliefs; consecutively, this name was given to those same principles codified and formulated in dogmas or articles of faith. It is in this sense that one says: the political religion; however, even in this acceptation, the word religion is not synonymous with opinion; it implies a particular idea: that of conscientious faith; this is why one also says: political faith. Now, men may affiliate themselves, out of interest, with a party, without having faith in that party, and the proof is that they leave it without scruple when they find their interest elsewhere, whereas he who embraces it out of conviction is unshakeable; he persists at the cost of the greatest sacrifices, and it is the abnegation of personal interests that is the true touchstone of sincere faith. Nevertheless, if the renunciation of an opinion, motivated by interest, is an act of contemptible cowardice, it is, nonetheless, respectable when it is the fruit of the recognition of the error in which one was; it is, then, an act of abnegation and of reason. There is more courage and grandeur in openly recognizing that one was mistaken than in persisting, out of self-love, in what one knows to be false, and so as not to contradict oneself, which accuses more obstinacy than firmness, more pride than reason, and more weakness than strength. It is more still: it is hypocrisy, because one wishes to appear what one is not; besides, it is a bad action, because it is to encourage error by one’s own example. The bond established by a religion, whatever its object, is therefore essentially moral, binding hearts, identifying thoughts and aspirations, and not merely the fact of material commitments, which are broken at will, or of the carrying out of formulas that speak more to the eyes than to the spirit. The effect of this moral bond is to establish among those whom it unites, as a consequence of the communion of views and of sentiments, fraternity and solidarity, mutual indulgence and benevolence. It is in this sense that one also says: the religion of friendship, the religion of the family.

— If this is so, they will ask, then is Spiritism a religion? Why, yes, without doubt, gentlemen! In the philosophical sense, Spiritism is a religion, and we glory in this, because it is the Doctrine that founds the bonds of fraternity and of communion of thoughts, not upon a mere convention, but upon more solid bases: the very laws of Nature.

— Why, then, do we declare that Spiritism is not a religion? By reason of there being but one word to express two different ideas, and that, in the general opinion, the word religion is inseparable from that of worship; because it awakens exclusively an idea of form, which Spiritism does not have. If Spiritism called itself a religion, the public would see in it nothing more than a new edition, a variant, if you will, of the absolute principles in matters of faith; a priestly caste with its retinue of hierarchies, of ceremonies, and of privileges; it would not separate it from the ideas of mysticism and from the abuses against which opinion has so often risen up. Spiritism having none of the characters of a religion, in the usual acceptation of the word, could not and should not adorn itself with a title about whose value one would inevitably have been mistaken. This is why it simply says: philosophical and moral doctrine.

— Spiritist gatherings can therefore be held religiously, that is, with the recollection and the respect that the grave nature of the subjects with which they are occupied warrants; one may even, on occasion, offer prayers there which, instead of being said in private, are said in common, without their being, for this reason, taken for religious assemblies. Let it not be thought that this is a play on words; the nuance is perfectly clear, and the apparent confusion arises only from the lack of a word for each idea.

— What, then, is the bond that must exist among Spiritists? They are not united among themselves by any material contract, by any obligatory practice. What is the sentiment in which all thoughts must be merged? It is a sentiment wholly moral, wholly spiritual, wholly humanitarian: that of charity toward all or, in other words: the love of one’s neighbor, which comprehends the living and the dead, for we know that the dead always form part of Humanity.

Charity is the soul of Spiritism; it sums up all the duties of man toward himself and toward his fellows, which is why one can say that there is no true Spiritist without charity.

But charity is yet one of those words of multiple meaning, whose entire scope must be well understood; and if the Spirits do not cease to preach and define it, it is that, probably, they recognize that this is still necessary.

The field of charity is very vast; it comprehends two great divisions which, for lack of special terms, may be designated by the expressions beneficent charity and benevolent charity. The first is easily understood, which is naturally proportional to the material resources at one’s disposal; but the second is within the reach of all, of the poorest as of the richest. If beneficence is necessarily limited, nothing but the will could set limits to benevolence.

What is needed, then, in order to practice benevolent charity? To love one’s neighbor as oneself. Now, if one loves one’s neighbor as much as oneself, one will love him much; one will act toward others as one would wish others to act toward oneself; one will neither wish nor do harm to anyone, because we would not wish it to be done to us.

To love one’s neighbor is, then, to abjure every sentiment of hatred, of animosity, of rancor, of envy, of jealousy, of vengeance, in a word, every desire and every thought of doing harm; it is to forgive one’s enemies and to return good for evil; it is to be indulgent toward the imperfections of one’s fellows and not to seek the speck in the neighbor’s eye when one does not see the beam in one’s own; it is to conceal or to excuse the faults of others, instead of taking pleasure in putting them in relief, out of a spirit of slander; it is also not to make oneself valued at the expense of others; not to seek to crush anyone under the weight of one’s superiority; not to scorn anyone out of pride. Behold the true benevolent charity, practical charity, without which charity is a vain word; it is the charity of the true Spiritist, as of the true Christian; that without which he who says: Outside of charity there is no salvation, pronounces his own condemnation, both in this world and in the other.

— How many things there would be to say on this subject! What beautiful instructions the Spirits incessantly give us! Were it not for the fear of dwelling too long and of abusing your patience, gentlemen, it would be easy to demonstrate that, placing oneself at the point of view of personal interest, egoistic, if you will, because not all men are yet ripe for a complete abnegation, for doing good solely out of love of good, I say that it would be easy to demonstrate that they have everything to gain by acting in this manner, and everything to lose by acting otherwise, even in their social relations; then, good attracts good and the protection of the good Spirits; evil attracts evil and opens the door to the malevolence of the bad. Sooner or later the proud man will be chastised by humiliation, the ambitious by disappointments, the egoist by the ruin of his hopes, the hypocrite by the shame of being unmasked; he who abandons the good Spirits is abandoned by them and, from fall to fall, finally finds himself at the bottom of the abyss, whereas the good Spirits raise up and support him who, in the greatest trials, does not cease to entrust himself to Providence and never strays from the right path; he, in short, whose secret sentiments dissimulate no hidden thought of vanity or of personal interest. Thus, on the one hand, assured gain; on the other, certain loss; each one, by virtue of his free will, may choose the lot he wishes to run, but he will be able to complain only of himself for the consequences of his choice.

— To believe in an Almighty God, supremely just and good; to believe in the soul and in its immortality; in the preexistence of the soul as the sole justification of the present; in the plurality of existences as a means of expiation, of reparation, and of intellectual and moral advancement; in the perfectibility of the most imperfect beings; in happiness increasing with perfection; in the equitable remuneration of good and of evil, according to the principle: to each one according to his works; in the equality of justice for all, without exceptions, favors, or privileges for any creature; in the duration of expiation limited to that of imperfection; in the free will of man, which always leaves him the choice between good and evil; to believe in the continuity of the relations between the visible world and the invisible world; in the solidarity that binds together all beings past, present, and future, incarnate and disincarnate; to consider terrestrial life as transitory and as one of the phases of the life of the Spirit, which is eternal; to accept courageously the trials, in view of a future more enviable than the present; to practice charity in thoughts, in words, and in deeds in the broadest acceptation of the term; to strive each day to be better than the day before, extirpating every imperfection from one’s soul; to submit all beliefs to the control of free examination and of reason, and to accept nothing through blind faith; to respect all sincere beliefs, however irrational they may appear to us, and to do violence to no one’s conscience; to see, in short, in the discoveries of Science, the revelation of the laws of Nature, which are the laws of God: behold the Credo, the religion of Spiritism, a religion that can be reconciled with all forms of worship, that is, with all manners of adoring God. It is the bond that must unite all Spiritists in a holy communion of thoughts, in the hope that it will bind all men under the banner of universal fraternity. With fraternity, daughter of charity, men will live in peace and will spare themselves innumerable ills, which are born of discord, itself the daughter of pride, of egoism, of ambition, of envy, and of all the imperfections of Humanity.

Spiritism gives men everything that is needed for their happiness here on the Earth, because it teaches them to content themselves with what they have. Let Spiritists, then, be the first to profit from the benefits it brings, and let them inaugurate among themselves the reign of harmony, which will shine forth in future generations.

The Spirits who surround us here are innumerable, attracted by the object we proposed to ourselves in gathering together, in order to give to our thoughts the force that is born of union. Let us offer to those who are dear to us a fond remembrance and the pledge of our affection, encouragements and consolations to those who have need of them. Let us so act that each one may gather his share of the sentiments of benevolent charity with which we are animated, and that this gathering may yield the fruits that all have the right to expect.

Allan Kardec.

— After this discourse, the reading was made of a spontaneous communication, dictated by the Spirit of Mr. H. Dozon on the solemnity of All Saints’ Day, on November 1, 1865, and which is read every year at the commemorative session.

ALL SAINTS’ DAY.

The feast of All Saints, my good friends, is a feast which, for the greater part of those who do not possess the true faith, saddens them and makes them shed tears, instead of rejoicing. See, from the humble cottage to the palace, when the death knell recalls the name of the husband or of the wife, of a father, of a mother, of a son, of a daughter, they weep; it seems that all is over, that they have nothing more to hope for here on the Earth and, nevertheless, they pray! What, then, is that prayer? It is a thought given to the beloved being, but without hope. The tears stifle the prayer; why? Ah! it is that they doubt; they do not have that living faith, which brings hope, which sustains you in the greatest struggles. It is that they have not understood that earthly life is but a departure, a momentary separation; in a word, it is because those who taught them to pray also did not have the true faith, the faith that rests upon reason. But the hour has come when these beautiful words of the Christ will at last be understood: “My Father must be adored, no longer only in the temples, but everywhere, in Spirit and in truth.” The time will come when they will be realized. Beautiful and sublime words. Yes, my God, you are adored not only in the temples, but you are adored on the mountains and everywhere. Yes, he who has wet his lips in the blessed cup of Spiritism prays not only on this day, but every day; the traveler prays on his road, the workman during his labor; he who can dispose of his time employs it in the relief of his brothers who suffer.

My brothers, rejoice, for in a very short time you will see great things! When I was on the Earth, I saw the doctrine as great and beautiful, but I was very far from being able to understand it in all its grandeur and in its true object. Therefore I will say to you: Redouble your zeal; console those who suffer, for there are beings who were so afflicted during their life that they need to be supported and helped in the struggle. You know how agreeable charity is to God: practice it, then, under all its forms; practice it in the name of the Spirits whose memory you celebrate on this day, and they will bless you!

H. Dozon.

— After the customary prayers (see the Spiritist Review of November 1865), thirty-two communications were obtained by the mediums present, eighteen in number. Considering the impossibility of publishing them all, the Society chose the three following ones, to be annexed to the discourse above, whose printing it requested. The others will find their place in the special collections that will be published later.

I.

— A great Spirit, La Rochefoucauld, said in one of his works that one should tremble before life and before death! Certainly, if one should tremble, it is at seeing one’s existence uncertain, troubled, completely failed; it is at having carried out a sterile labor, useless for oneself and for others; it is at having been a false friend, a bad brother, a pernicious counselor; it is at being a bad son, a thoughtless father, an unjust citizen, ignorant of his duties, of his country, of the laws that govern you, of society, and of solidarity.

How many friends I have seen, brilliant, ingenious, learned spirits, fail many times in the profound object of life! They constructed hypotheses more or less absurd: here negation, there ardent faith; over there they made themselves neophytes of this or that system of government, of philosophy, and often cast, alas! their fine intelligences into a ditch from which they could no longer emerge except mortified and offended forever.

Life, with its asperities, its disappointments, and its uncertainties, is, nonetheless, a beautiful thing! What! you come forth from an embryo, from a nothing, and you bring around you kisses, cares, love, devotion, work, and this would be nothing but life! How is it, then, that for you, miserable beings [read: insignificant], without force, without language, whole generations have created the fields, incessantly explored, of human economy [organization]? Economy [Conquests] of knowledge, of philosophy, of mechanics, of diverse sciences; thousands of courageous citizens consumed their bodies and gave up their nights to create for you a thousand diverse elements of your civilization. From the first letters up to a learned definition, one finds everything that can guide and form the spirit; today it can be seen, because all is light. The shadow of the dark ages has disappeared forever, and the youth of sixteen can contemplate and admire a sunrise and analyze, weigh the air and, with the help of Chemistry, of Physics, of Mechanics, and of Astronomy, permit himself a thousand divine enjoyments. With painting, he reproduces a landscape; with music, he inscribes some of those harmonies that God spreads in profusion in the infinite harmonies! With life, one can love, give, spread much; at times one can be a sun and illuminate one’s home, one’s family, the neighborhood, be useful, fulfill one’s mission. Oh! yes, life is a beautiful thing, palpitating, full of enthusiasm and of expansion, full of fraternity and of those dazzlements that cast our little miseries far away.

O all of you, my dear fellow students of the Rue Richelieu; you, my faithful ones of the 14th; all of you who, so many times, questioned existence, asking it for the final word; you who bowed your heads, uncertain before the last hour, before the word Death, which signifies for you: emptiness, separation, disaggregation, to you I come to say: Lift up your heads and hope; no weakness, no terror; because, if your conscientious studies and the religions of our fathers left you nothing but the disgust of life, uncertainty, and incredulity, it is that, sterile in everything, ill-conducted human science attained only nothingness. All of you who love Humanity and sum up the future hope in the study of the social sciences, in their serious application, I say to you: Hope, believe, and seek. Like me, you let the truth pass by; we abandoned it and it knocked at our door, which we had obstinately closed to it. Henceforth, you will love life, you will love death, that great consoler; because you will wish, by an exemplary life, to avoid beginning again; you will wish to wait on the threshold of erraticity for all those whom you love, not only your family, but the whole generation you guided, in order to wish them welcome and emigration to superior worlds. As you see, I live and we all live. Reincarnation, which made us laugh so much, is the solved problem that we sought so much. There is this problem in your hands, full of attractions, of ardent promises; your fathers, your wives, your children, the multitude of friends wish to answer you; they are all gathered, those dear ones who have disappeared from your eyes; they will speak to your spirit, to your reason; they will give you truths, and faith is a well-beloved law; but question them with perseverance.

Ah! death caused us fear and tremblings! And, nevertheless, here am I, Guillaumin, an unbeliever, an inconstant man, brought back to the truth. Thousands of Spirits hasten, awaiting your decision; they like the remembrance and the pilgrimage to the cemeteries! It is a point of reference, that respect for the dead; but those dead are all living; instead of funerary urns and of epitaphs more or less truthful, they ask of you an exchange of ideas, of counsels, a sweet commerce of spirit, that communion of ideas that engenders courage, perseverance, will, acts of devotion, and that fortifying and consoling thought that life is re-tempered in death and that one can, henceforth, in spite of La Rochefoucauld and other great geniuses, neither tremble before life, nor before death. God is exuberance, he is life in all things and always. It is for us to understand his wisdom in the diverse phases through which he purifies Humanity.

Guillaumin.

(Medium: Mr. Leymarie)

II.

— To choose my moment badly has always been one of my continual ineptitudes; and to come on this day, in the midst of this numerous gathering of Spirits and of incarnates, is truly an act of audacity, of which only my timidity could be capable. But I see in you so much goodness, gentleness, and amiability; I feel so well that in each of you I can find a loving, compassionate heart, and indulgence being the least of the qualities that animate your hearts, in spite of my audacity, I am not perturbed and I preserve all the presence of mind that at times fails me in less important circumstances.

But, you will ask, what then does this stranger come to do, with his insinuating verbosity, who, in the stead and place of an instructor, comes to monopolize a useful medium? As for the present, you are right; therefore I hasten to make known my design, so as not to appropriate for too long a place that I usurp.

In a passage of the discourse pronounced today by your president, a reflection vibrated in my ear, as only a truth can vibrate and, blended in the multitude of attentive Spirits, I suddenly laid myself bare. Again I was severely judged by an immensity of Spirits who, basing themselves on their recollections and on the reputation of an appraisal held in other times, suddenly recognized in me the savage misanthrope, the bear of civilization, the austere critic of the institutions at variance with his own reasoning. Alas! how an error makes one suffer, and how long the harm done to the masses endures through the foolish pretension of one proud of humility, of a madman of sentiment! Yes, you are right: isolation in religious and social matters can engender nothing but egoism and, often without being aware of it, man becomes a misanthrope, letting his egoism dominate him. The recollection produced by the effect of the grandiose silence of Nature speaking to the soul is useful, but its usefulness cannot bear its fruits except when the being who hears Nature speaking to his soul reports to men the truth of its morality; but if he who feels, in the face of creation, his soul take flight toward the regions of a pure and virtuous era, makes use of his sensations, on awakening, in the midst of the institutions of his epoch, only to censure the abuses that his sensitive nature exaggerates to him, because it suffers from this, if he finds, to correct the errors of humans, nothing but gall and resentment, without gently showing them the true path, just as he discovered it in Nature itself, oh! then, woe to him, if he uses his intelligence only to lash, instead of dressing the wounds of society! Yes, you are right: to live alone in the midst of Nature is to be an egoist and a thief, because man was created for sociability; and this is so true that I, the savage, the misanthrope, the indomitable hermit, come to applaud this passage of the discourse pronounced here: Social and religious isolation leads to egoism.

Unite yourselves, then, in your efforts and in your thoughts; above all love. Be good, gentle, humane; give to friendship the sentiment of fraternity; preach by the example of your deeds the salutary effects of your philosophical beliefs; be Spiritists in fact, and not only in name, and soon the madmen of my kind, the utopians of good, will no longer have need to complain of the defects of a legislation under which they must live, because Spiritism, understood and above all practiced, will reform everything, for the benefit of men.

J.-J. Rousseau.

(Medium: Mr. Morin)

III.

— [Various communications.]

The perfume that exhales from all good sentiments is a constant prayer that rises to God, and all good actions are acts of thanksgiving to the Eternal.

Mrs. Victor Hugo.

Dedication out of gratitude is an impulse of the heart; devotion out of love is an impulse of the soul.

Mrs. Dauban.

Acknowledgment is a benefit that rewards him who deserves it. Gratitude is an act of the heart that gives, at the same time, the pleasure of the good to him to whom one ought to be grateful and to him who is grateful.

Vézy.

Ingratitude is punished as a bad action by the abandonment of which it is the object, as gratitude is rewarded by the joy it provides.

Lerclerc.

The duty of woman is to bring to man all the consolations and the encouragements necessary to his life of vicissitudes and painful labors. Woman must be his support, his guide, the torch that illuminates his path, and she must prevent him from failing; if she fails in her mission she will be punished; but if, in spite of her devotion, man repels the impulses of her heart, she is doubly rewarded for having persisted in the fulfillment of her duties.

Delphine de Girardin.

Doubt is the slow poison that the soul makes matter absorb, and from which it receives the first chastisement. Doubt is the suicide of the soul, which leads immediately to the death of the body. – That a soul should commit suicide is difficult to understand; but is it not to die, to live in the shadow when one feels the light around oneself? Cast away, then, from your Spirit, the veil that conceals from you the splendors of life, and see those radiant suns that give you the day: there is the true light; there is the object to which you must come through faith.

Jobard.

Egoism is the paralysis of all good sentiments. Egoism is the deformity of the soul, which transfixes matter, making you love all that is directed to it and repel all that is directed to others. Egoism is the negation of the sublime maxim of the Christ, a maxim ignominiously altered: “Do unto others what you would like them to do unto you.”

Plácido.

Susceptibility, behold the defect for the use of all, and each one – do not say the contrary – is a little laden with it. Bah! if you knew how ridiculous it is to be susceptible and how disagreeable that defect becomes, I assure you that no one would any longer wish to be afflicted by it, because one likes to be beautiful.

Gay.

Pride is the social umbrella of all, which each one casts off upon gracious self-love; certainly! one must have self-love and pride, it is what gives the ambition of good (no play on words), but too much, this spoils the Spirit and corrupts the heart.

Mangin.

Ambition, he has just said! but do you know what the ambition is that does not prevent the soul from rising toward the splendors of the infinite? Well then! it is the one that leads you to do good. All other ambitions lead you to pride and to egoism, scourges of Humanity.

Bonnefon.

My dear friends, the Spirits who have just spoken to you were not only happy to manifest their presence, but they have the joy of thinking that each of you will strive to correct himself and to put into practice the wise lessons they gave you and those they bring you at each of your sessions. Believe it, the Spirits are for you what your parents were or ought to have been. They admonish you, counseling and helping you; and when you do not listen to them, they say that they abandon you; they revolt against you; then, as soon as they have spoken harshly to you, they return to you to encourage you, and they strive constantly to impel your thoughts toward good. Yes, the Spirits love you as the good father loves his children; they have compassion for you, they care for your days and ward off from you every evil that may befall you, as the mother surrounds her child with all the most delicate cares, with all the attentions necessary to his frailty. God has given them a mission; he has given them the courage to fulfill it, and none of those good Spirits, whatever his degree in the spiritual hierarchy, will fail in his task; they understand, they feel, they see those divine splendors that must be their reward; they go ahead and would wish to take you in their company, to impel you ahead of them, if they could. This is why they admonish you, this is why they counsel you. For your part, pray for them, so that your indocility may not prevent them from continuing their benefits toward you, and so that God may continue to give them the strength to help you. Saint Louis.

(Medium: Mr. Bertrand.)

[1] The first part of this discourse is taken from an earlier publication on the Communion of thoughts, but which it was necessary to recall, because of its connection with the principal idea.

[2] [see J.-J.

.Rousseau.]

[3] [see Delphine de Girardin.]

[4] [see Plácido.]

[5] [see Gay.]

[6] [see Bonnefon.]

[7] [see Saint Louis.]