Spiritism and Spiritualism

I am happier than you can imagine, my good friends, to find you gathered together. I am among you, in a sympathetic and benevolent atmosphere that satisfies at the same time my spirit and my heart.

For a long time I have ardently desired the establishment of regular relations between the French school and the American school. To understand one another, my God, it would simply suffice to see one another and exchange opinions. I have always regarded your salon, dear miss, as a bridge thrown between Europe and America, between France and England, and which contributes powerfully to suppressing the divergences that separate us, and to establishing, in a word, a current of common ideas, from which would arise, in the future, fusion and unity. Dear Mr. Peebles, n allow me to congratulate you on your keen desire to enter into relation with us. We must not recall whether we are Spiritists or spiritualists. We shall be, for one another, men and Spirits who conscientiously seek the truth and who will welcome it with gratitude, whether it results from French studies or from American studies.

In space the Spirits preserve their sympathies and their earthly habits. The Spirits of dead Americans are still Americans, just as the disincarnate who lived in France are still French in space. Hence the difference of teachings in certain centers. Each group of Spirits, by its own nature, by its national spirit, adapts its instructions to the character, to the special genius of those to whom they speak. But, just as on Earth the barriers that separate nationalities tend to disappear, so too in space the distinctive characters fade away, the nuances merge, and, in a future time, less distant than you suppose, there will no longer be on Earth nor in space either French, or English, or Americans, but men and Spirits, children of God in the same manner, and aspiring, with all their faculties, to universal progress and regeneration. Gentlemen, this evening, in this gathering, I salute the dawn of an imminent fusion of the various spiritist schools, and I congratulate myself on finding Mr. Peebles among the number of men without prejudice, whose concurrence and good will shall ensure the vitality of our teachings in the future and their universal popularization.

Translate my works! In America they know only the arguments against reincarnation. When the demonstrations in favor of that principle become popular there, Spiritism and Spiritualism will not be slow to merge, becoming, by their fusion, the natural Philosophy adopted by all.

Allan Kardec.

[1]

Errata. – Spiritist Review of November 1869, page 337, line 2: instead of Paris, September 14, read: Paris, October 4.

[2] [v.

Mr. Peebles's Journey in Europe.]