American Spiritist Profession of Faith.

— We reproduce, following the Salut of New Orleans, the declaration of principles approved at the fifth national convention, or assembly of the delegates of the Spiritists from the various parts of the United States. The comparison of the beliefs on these matters, between what is called the American school and the European school, is something of great importance, as everyone will be able to convince himself.

Declaration of principles.

Spiritualism teaches us:

– That man has a spiritual nature as much as a corporeal nature; or, rather, that the true man is a Spirit, having an organic form, composed of sublimated materials, which represents a structure corresponding to that of the material body.

– That man, as a Spirit, is immortal. Having recognized that he survives this change called death, one may rationally suppose that he survives all future vicissitudes.

– That there is a spiritual world or state, with its substantial realities, both objective and subjective.

– That the process of physical death does not transform, in any essential way, the mental constitution or the moral character of the one who experiences it, for if it were otherwise, his identity would be destroyed.

– That happiness or unhappiness, both in the spiritual state and in this one, does not depend on an arbitrary decree or on a special law, but rather on the character, the aspirations, and the degree of harmony or conformity of the individual with the divine and universal law.

– It follows that the experience and the knowledge acquired from this life on become the bases upon which the new life begins.

– Since growth, in certain respects, is the law of the human being in the present life, and considering that what is called death is, in reality, nothing but birth into another condition of existence, which preserves all the advantages gained in the experience of this life, it can thence be inferred that growth, development, expansion, or progression are the infinite destiny of the human spirit.

– That the spiritual world is not removed from us, but is near, surrounds us, or is interwoven with our present state of existence, and, consequently, we are constantly under the watch of the spiritual beings.

– That, since individuals pass constantly from earthly life to spiritual life, in all degrees of intellectual and moral development, the spiritual state comprises all degrees of characters, from the lowest to the highest.

– That, since heaven and hell, or happiness and unhappiness, depend rather on the intimate feelings than on the exterior circumstances, there are as many gradations for each as there are nuances of characters, each individual gravitating to his own place, by a natural law of affinity. They may be divided into seven general degrees or spheres; but these must comprise the indefinite varieties, or an “infinity of dwellings,” corresponding to the diverse characters of individuals, each being enjoying as much happiness as his character permits him.

– That the communications of the world of the Spirits, whether received by mental impression, by inspiration, or by any other manner, are not necessarily infallible truths, but, on the contrary, are inevitably affected by the imperfections of the intelligence from which they emanate and of the ways by which they arrive; and that, moreover, they are susceptible of receiving a false interpretation from those to whom they are addressed.

– It follows that no inspired communication, in the present time or in the past (whatever the pretensions that may, or may have been able to be presented as to its source), has an authority broader than that of representing the truth to the individual conscience, this latter being the final standard to which all inspired or spiritual teachings must be referred for their judgment.

– That inspiration, or the influence of ideas and suggestions, coming from the spiritual world, is not a miracle of past times, but a perpetual fact, the constant method of the divine economy [organization] for the elevation of the human race.

– That all the angelic or demonic beings who manifested themselves or who interfered in the affairs of men in the past were simply disincarnate human Spirits, in diverse degrees of progression.

– That all the authentic miracles (so called) of past times, such as the resurrection of those who were apparently dead, the cure of ailments by the laying on of hands, or by other equally simple means, the harmless contact with poisons, the movement of material objects without visible concurrence, etc., etc., were produced in harmony with the universal laws and, consequently, may repeat themselves in all times, under favorable conditions.

– That the causes of every phenomenon – the sources of life, of intelligence, and of love – must be sought in the interior and spiritual domain, and not in the exterior and material domain.

– That the chain of causes tends inevitably to ascend and to advance toward an infinite Spirit, who is not only a formative principle (wisdom), but a source of affection (love) – thus sustaining the double relationship of kinship, of father and of mother, of all the finite intelligences which, nonetheless, are united by filial ties.

– That man, in the condition of son of that infinite father, is his highest representation in this sphere of beings, the perfect man being the most complete personification of the “fullness of Peace” that we can contemplate, and that each man, by virtue of that kinship, is, or has in his intimate recesses, a germ of divinity, an incorruptible portion of the divine essence, which constantly leads him to the good, and which, in time, will dominate all the imperfections inherent in the rudimentary or earthly condition, and will triumph over all evil.

– That evil is the more or less great lack of harmony with that intimate or divine principle; and yet, whether the principle be called Christianity, Spiritualism, Religion, Philosophy; whether one recognizes the “Holy Spirit,” the Bible, or spiritual and celestial inspiration, everything that helps man to submit to his internal nature what in himself is most exterior, and to make it harmonious with it, is a means of triumphing over evil.

— Here, then, is the basis of the belief of the American Spiritists. If it is not that of all, at least it is that of the majority. This belief is no more the result of a preconceived system in that country than Spiritism is in Europe. No one imagined it; it was seen, it was observed, and conclusions were drawn. There, as here, one did not set out from the hypothesis of the Spirits to explain the phenomena; but from the phenomena, as effect, one arrived at the Spirits as cause, through observation. Here is a capital circumstance, which the detractors persist in not taking into account. Because they bring with them, in their thought, the very desire not to find the Spirits, they imagine that the Spiritists must have taken their point of departure in the preconceived idea of the Spirits, and that the imagination makes them see them everywhere. How is it, then, that so many people who did not believe in them surrendered to the evidence? There are thousands of examples, in America as here. Many, on the contrary, passed through the hypothesis of Mr. Chevillard and renounced it only after having recognized its impotence to explain everything. Once again, one arrived at the affirmation of the Spirits only after having tried all the other solutions. It has already been possible to note the relations and the differences existing between the two schools, and for those who do not content themselves with vain words, but go to the bottom of the ideas, the difference reduces itself to very little. These two schools not having copied one another, such a coincidence is a truly remarkable fact. Thus, here are millions of people on the two sides of the Atlantic who observe a phenomenon and arrive at the same result. It is true that Mr. Chevillard had not yet passed by there to affix his veto and to say to those millions of individuals, among whom there are a good number who do not pass for fools: “You have deceived yourselves; I alone possess the key to these strange phenomena and am going to give the world their definitive solution.”

— To make the comparison more difficult, we shall take the American profession, article by article, and compare what the doctrine of The Spirits' Book, published in 1857, and which is also developed in other fundamental works, says about each of the propositions formulated therein.

A more complete summary will be found in chapter II of What Is Spiritism:

– Man possesses a soul or Spirit, an intelligent principle, in which reside thought, will, the moral sense, and of which the body is but a material envelope. The Spirit is the principal being, preexistent to and surviving the body, which is nothing but a temporary accessory.

Whether during carnal life or after having left it, the Spirit is clothed with a fluidic body or perispirit, which reproduces the form of the material body.

– The Spirit is immortal; only the body is perishable.

– Detached from the carnal body, the Spirits constitute the invisible or spiritual world, which surrounds us and in whose midst we live.

The fluidic transformations produce images and objects as real for the Spirits, themselves fluidic, as the earthly images and objects are for men, who are material. Everything is relative in each of these worlds. (See Genesis According to Spiritism, the chapter on fluids and fluidic creations).

– The death of the body in no way modifies the nature of the Spirit, which preserves the intellectual and moral aptitudes acquired during earthly life.

– The Spirit carries within itself the elements of its happiness or of its unhappiness; it is happy or wretched according to the degree of its moral purification; it suffers from its own imperfections, whose natural consequences it bears, without the punishment resulting from a special or individual condemnation.

The unhappiness of man on Earth comes from the non-observance of the divine laws. When he conforms his acts and his social institutions to those laws, he will be as happy as his corporeal nature allows.

– Nothing that man acquires during earthly life in knowledge and in moral perfections is lost to him; he is, in the future life, that which he accomplished in the present life.

– Progress is the universal law, by virtue of which the Spirit progresses indefinitely.

– The Spirits are in our midst; they surround us, see us, listen to us, and participate, to a certain measure, in the actions of men.

– The Spirits being nothing but the souls of men, they are found in all degrees of knowledge and of ignorance, of goodness and of perversity that exist on Earth.

– According to the vulgar belief, heaven and hell are circumscribed places of rewards and punishments. According to Spiritism, the Spirits bearing within themselves the elements of their happiness or of their sufferings, they are happy or unhappy wherever they may be found; the words heaven and hell are nothing but figures that characterize a state of happiness or of unhappiness.

There are, so to speak, as many degrees among the Spirits as there are nuances in the intellectual and moral aptitudes. Nevertheless, if one considers the most marked characters, they may be grouped into nine principal classes or categories, which may be subdivided to infinity, without that classification having anything absolute about it. (The Spirits' Book; Part II, chapter I, no. 100 – “Spiritist Scale.”)

As the Spirits advance in perfection, they inhabit worlds increasingly advanced physically and morally. Surely this is what Jesus meant by these words: “In my Father's house there are many dwellings.” (See The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter III.)

– The Spirits can manifest themselves to men in diverse ways: by inspiration, by speech, by sight, by writing, etc.

It is an error to believe that the Spirits have infused science; their knowledge, in space as on Earth, is subordinate to their degree of advancement, and there are those who, on certain things, know less than men. Their communications are in relation to their knowledge and, for this very reason, could not be infallible. The thought of the Spirit may, moreover, be altered by the medium it passes through in order to manifest itself.

To those who ask what the communications of the Spirits serve for, since they know no more than men, one answers, first, that they serve to prove that the Spirits exist and, consequently, the immortality of the soul; secondly, to teach us where they are, what they are, what they do, and under what conditions one is happy or wretched in the future life; thirdly, to destroy the vulgar prejudices about the nature of the Spirits and the state of souls after death, things which would not be known without the communications with the invisible world.

– The communications of the Spirits are personal opinions, which must not be accepted blindly. Man must, under no circumstance, despise his own judgment and his free will. It would be to give proof of ignorance and of frivolity to accept as absolute truths everything that comes from the Spirits; they say what they know. It is up to us to submit their teachings to the control of logic and of reason.

– The manifestations being the consequence of the incessant contact of the Spirits and of men, they have existed in all times; they are within the order of the laws of Nature and have nothing miraculous about them, whatever the form under which they present themselves. Putting the material world and the spiritual world in contact, these manifestations tend to elevate man, proving to him that the Earth is for him neither the beginning nor the end of all things, and that he has other destinies.

– The beings designated under the name of angels or of demons are not special creations, distinct from Humanity. The angels are Spirits issued from Humanity and arrived at perfection; the demons are Spirits still imperfect, but who will improve.

It would be contrary to the justice and the goodness of God for him to have created beings perpetually devoted to evil, incapable of returning to the good, and others, privileged, exempt from all labor to arrive at perfection and at happiness.

According to Spiritism, God has neither favors nor privileges for any of his creatures; all the Spirits have one same point of departure and the same road to travel, in order to arrive, through labor, at perfection and at happiness. Some have arrived: they are the angels or pure Spirits; the others are still in the rear: they are the imperfect Spirits. (See Genesis, the chapters on the Angels and the Demons.) [Note. That chapter does not exist. See Heaven and Hell: The angels, chapter VIII; The demons, chapter IX, and in Genesis, chapter XI, Doctrine of the fallen angels.]

– Spiritism does not admit miracles, in the theological sense of the word, since, according to it, nothing is realized outside the laws of Nature. Certain facts, supposing them authentic, were only reputed miraculous because their natural causes were unknown. The character of the miracle is to be exceptional and unusual; when a fact reproduces itself spontaneously or at will, it is because it is submitted to a law, and from then on it is no longer a miracle. The phenomena of second sight, of apparitions, of prescience, of cures by the laying on of hands, and all the effects designated under the name of physical manifestations are in this case. (See, for the complete development of this question, the second part of Genesis, the Miracles and the Predictions According to Spiritism.)

– All the intellectual and moral faculties have their source in the spiritual principle, and not in the material principle.

– In purifying itself, the Spirit of man tends to approach the divinity, principle and end of all things.

– The human soul, a divine emanation, carries within itself the germ or principle of the good, which is its final aim, and which must make it triumph over the imperfections inherent in its state of inferiority on Earth.

– Everything that tends to elevate man, to detach his soul from the constrictions of matter, whether under the philosophical form or under the religious one, is an element of progress that brings him closer to the good, helping him to overcome his evil instincts.

All religions lead to that aim, by means more or less efficacious and rational, according to the degree of advancement of the men for whose practice they were made.

— In what, then, does American Spiritism differ from European Spiritism? Would it be because one is called Spiritualism and the other Spiritism? A puerile question of words, on which it would be superfluous to insist. On both sides the matter is seen from a point of view too elevated to attach itself to such a triviality. Perhaps they still differ on a few points of form and of details, very insignificant, and which are due more to the milieus and to the customs of each country than to the substance of the Doctrine. The essential thing is that there be concordance on the fundamental points, and that is what stands out with evidence from the comparison above. Both recognize the indefinite progress of the soul as the essential law of the future; both admit the plurality of successive existences in worlds increasingly advanced. The only difference consists in that European Spiritism admits this plurality of existences on Earth, until the Spirit has here attained the degree of intellectual and moral advancement that this globe allows, after which it leaves it for other worlds, where it acquires new qualities and new knowledge. In accordance with the principal idea, they differ only as to one of the modes of application. Could there be in this a cause of antagonism between people who pursue a great humanitarian aim? Moreover, the principle of reincarnation on Earth is not peculiar to European Spiritism; it was a fundamental point of the Druidic doctrine; in our days it was proclaimed before Spiritism by illustrious philosophers, such as Dupont de Nemours, Charles Fourier, Jean Reynaud, etc. One could make an interminable list of writers of all nations, poets, novelists, and others who affirmed it in their works; in the United States we shall cite Benjamin Franklin and Mrs. Beecher-Stove, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Thus, we are neither its creator nor its inventor. Today it tends to take its place in modern philosophy, outside of Spiritism, as the only possible and rational solution of an immensity of psychological and moral problems, hitherto inexplicable. This is not the place to discuss that question, for whose development we refer the reader to the introduction of The Spirits' Book, and to chapter IV of The Gospel According to Spiritism. One of two things: this principle is true, or it is not; if it is true, it is a law and, like every law of Nature, it is not the contrary opinions of a few men that will prevent it from being a truth and from being accepted. We have already explained many times the causes that had opposed themselves to its introduction into American Spiritism [See: Reincarnation in America]; these causes disappear day by day, and it is within our knowledge that it already meets with numerous sympathies in that country. Moreover, the program above does not speak of it. If it is not proclaimed, it is not contested. One may even say that it stands out implicitly, as the inevitable consequence of certain affirmations. In short, as one sees, the greatest barrier that separates the Spiritists of the two continents is the ocean, across which they can perfectly shake hands.

— What was lacking to the United States was a center of action to coordinate the principles. There does not exist, properly speaking, a methodical body of doctrine; there one finds, as one may be convinced, ideas very just and of high reach, but without connection. It is the opinion of all the Americans whom we had occasion to see, and it is confirmed by a report made at one of the conventions held in Cleveland, in 1867, from which we extract the following passages: “In the opinion of your committee, what is today called Spiritualism is a chaos where the purest truth is incessantly mixed with the grossest errors. One of the things that will most serve for the advancement of the new philosophy will be the habit of employing good methods of observation. We recommend to our brothers and sisters an attention carried to scrupulousness in all this part of Spiritualism. We also advise them to distrust appearances and not always to take for an ecstatic state, or for an agitation originating from the spiritual world, dispositions of soul that may have their origin in the disorder of the organs, and in particular in ailments of the nerves and of the liver, or in any other excitation completely independent of the action of the Spirits. “Each of the members of the committee has already had a very long experience of these phenomena; already ten or fifteen years ago, we had all been witnesses of facts whose extraterrestrial origin could not be cast into doubt, and which imposed themselves upon reason. But we were all equally convinced that a great part of what is given to the multitude as spiritualist manifestations are quite simply feats of magic more or less well executed by falsifiers who make use of this to exploit public credulity. “The observations we have just made regarding the skills qualified as manifestations apply entirely to all the supposed mediums who refuse to perform their experiments in any place other than a dark room: the Davenports, Fays, Eddies, Ferrises, Church, Miss Vanwie, and others, who claim to do things materially impossible, and let themselves pass for instruments of the Spirits, without bringing the slightest proof in support of their operations. After an attentive investigation of the matter, we are under the obligation to declare that obscurity is not an indispensable condition for the production of the phenomena; that it is claimed as such only by the rogues, and that it has no other utility than to favor their cheats. In consequence, we advise the persons who occupy themselves with Spiritualism to renounce the evocation of the Spirits in the dark. “In criticizing a practice that can be replaced without effort by modes of experimentation infinitely more probative, we do not intend to inflict a censure upon the mediums who do it in good faith, but to denounce to public opinion the charlatans who exploit a thing worthy of all respect. We wish to defend the true mediums and to free our glorious cause from the impostures that dishonor it.

“We believe in the physical manifestations; they are indispensable to the progress of Spiritism. They are simple and clear proofs that strike, at the outset, those whom prejudices do not blind; they are a point of departure for arriving at the comprehension of the manifestations of a higher order, the path that led the greater part of the American spiritualists from atheism or from doubt to the knowledge of the immortality of the soul. (Extracted from the New-York Herald, of September 10, 1867.)”