Biography of Mr. Allan Kardec.

It is still under the blow of the profound grief caused us by the premature departure of the venerable founder of the Spiritist Doctrine that we venture upon a task, simple and easy for his wise and experienced hands, but whose weight and gravity would crush us, were we not to count on the effective help of the good Spirits and on the indulgence of our readers.

Who, among us, could, without being charged with presumption, flatter himself with possessing the spirit of method and organization with which all the master's works show themselves illumined? Only his powerful intelligence could concentrate so many diverse materials, grind them up and transform them, in order then to spread them, like beneficial dew, over the souls eager to know and to love.

Incisive, concise, profound, he knew how to please and to make himself understood in a language at once simple and elevated, as far removed from the familiar style as from the obscurities of metaphysics.

Multiplying himself ceaselessly, he had until now been able to suffice for everything. Nevertheless, the daily widening of his relations and the continual development of Spiritism made him feel the need to gather around himself some intelligent assistants, and he was simultaneously preparing the new organization of the Doctrine and of its labors, when he left us, to go, in a better world, to receive the sanction of the mission he had carried out and to gather elements for a new work of devotion and sacrifice. He was alone!… We shall call ourselves legion, and, however weak and inexperienced we may be, we nourish the intimate conviction that we shall keep ourselves equal to the situation, if, setting out from the established principles of incontestable evidence, we devote ourselves to executing, as far as is possible for us and in accordance with the needs of the moment, the projects he intended to realize in the future.

So long as we keep ourselves in his footsteps, and all those of good will unite, in a common effort for the progress and the intellectual and moral regeneration of Humanity, with us shall be the Spirit of the great philosopher to second us with his powerful influence, given that it be possible for him to supply for our insufficiency, and that we may show ourselves worthy of his assistance, dedicating ourselves to the work with the same abnegation and the same sincerity as he, though without so much science and intelligence. Upon his banner the master had inscribed these words: Work, solidarity, tolerance. Let us be, like him, indefatigable; let us be, in accord with his longings, tolerant and supportive, and let us not fear to follow his example, reconsidering, as many times as may be necessary, the principles still under dispute. Let us appeal to the assistance and the enlightenment of all. Let us try to advance with security and certainty rather than with speed, and our efforts will not remain fruitless if, as we are persuaded, and we shall be the first to give an example of it, each one takes care to fulfill his duty, setting aside all personal questions, in order to contribute to the general good. Under no more favorable auspices could we enter the new phase that is opening for Spiritism than by making known to our readers, in a rapid sketch, what he was, throughout his whole life, the upright and honorable man, the intelligent and fruitful sage, whose memory will be handed down to the centuries to come with the halo of the benefactors of Humanity.

Born in Lyon, on October 3, 1804, of an old family that distinguished itself in the magistracy and in the legal profession, Allan Kardec (Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail) did not follow those careers. From his earliest youth, he felt himself inclined to the study of the sciences and of philosophy.

Educated at the School of Pestalozzi, in Yverdun (Switzerland), he became one of the most eminent disciples of that celebrated professor and one of the zealous propagandists of his system of education, which exercised so great an influence upon the reform of teaching in France and in Germany.

Endowed with remarkable intelligence and drawn to teaching, by his character and by his special aptitudes, already at fourteen years of age he was teaching what he knew to those of his fellow students who had learned less than he. It was in that school that there blossomed in him the ideas which would later place him in the class of progressive men and free thinkers.

Born under the Catholic religion, but educated in a Protestant country, the acts of intolerance that he had to endure on that account, with regard to that circumstance, early led him to conceive the idea of a religious reform, on which he worked in silence for long years with the aim of attaining the unification of beliefs. He lacked, however, the element indispensable to the solution of that great problem.

Spiritism came, in its time, to impress upon his labors a special direction.

Having completed his studies, he returned to France. Knowing the German language thoroughly, he translated for Germany various works of education and morals, and, what is very characteristic, the works of Fénelon, which had captivated him in a particular way.

He was a member of several learned societies, among others, of the Royal Academy of Arras, which, in the competition of 1831, awarded a prize to a notable memoir of his on the following question: What is the system of studies most in harmony with the needs of the age?

From 1835 to 1840, he founded, at his home, on the rue de Sèvres, free courses in Chemistry, Physics, Comparative Anatomy, Astronomy, etc., an undertaking worthy of praise in all times, but, above all, in an age when only a very small number of minds dared to set out upon that path.

Always concerned to make systems of education attractive and interesting, he invented, at the same time, an ingenious method of teaching arithmetic and a mnemonic table of the History of France, having as its object to fix in the memory the dates of the most prominent events and the discoveries that made each reign famous.

Among his numerous works of education, we shall cite the following: Plan proposed for the improvement of public Instruction ; Practical and theoretical Course of Arithmetic, according to the method of Pestalozzi, for the use of teachers and of mothers of families ; Classical French Grammar ; Manual of Examinations for the certificates of competence; Rational Solutions of the questions and problems of Arithmetic and of Geometry ; Grammatical Catechism of the French language ; Program of the usual courses of Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Physiology, which he taught at the Polymathic Lyceum; Standard Dictations for the examinations of the Municipality and of the Sorbonne, followed by Special Dictations on the orthographic difficulties , a work much appreciated at the time of its appearance and of which, even recently, new editions were being printed. Before Spiritism made his pseudonym Allan Kardec popular, he had already distinguished himself, as one sees, by means of works of a very different nature, yet all having, as their object, to enlighten the masses and to bind them more closely to their respective families and countries.

Around the year 1855, the question of the manifestations of the Spirits having been brought to the fore, Allan Kardec devoted himself to persevering observations on that phenomenon, considering principally how to deduce from it the philosophical consequences. He glimpsed, from the outset, the principle of new natural laws: those which govern the relations between the visible world and the invisible world. He recognized, in the action of the latter, one of the forces of Nature, the knowledge of which would cast light upon an immensity of problems held to be insoluble, and he understood its reach, from the religious point of view. “His principal works on this matter are: The Spirits' Book, concerning the philosophical part, and whose first edition appeared on April 18, 1857; The Mediums' Book, relating to the experimental and scientific part (January 1861); The Gospel According to Spiritism, concerning the moral part (April 1864); Heaven and Hell, or the Justice of God according to Spiritism (August 1865); Genesis, the miracles and the predictions (January 1868); the Spiritist Review, journal of psychological studies, a monthly periodical begun on January 1, 1858. He founded in Paris, on April 1, 1858, the first regularly constituted Spiritist Society, under the name of the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, whose exclusive aim was the study of all that may contribute to the progress of the new science. Allan Kardec defended himself, with entire justification, from having written anything under the influence of preconceived or systematic ideas. A man of a cold and calm character, he observed the facts and from his observations deduced the laws that govern them. He was the first to present the theory relating to such facts and to form with them a body of doctrine, methodical and regular. “Demonstrating that the facts erroneously qualified as supernatural are subject to laws, he included them in the order of the phenomena of Nature, thus destroying the last refuge of the marvelous and one of the elements of superstition.

“During the first years in which spiritist phenomena were dealt with, these constituted an object of curiosity rather than of serious meditations. The Spirits' Book caused the subject to be considered under a very different aspect. The turning tables, which had been only a prelude, were abandoned, and people began to give heed to the doctrine, which embraces all the questions of interest to Humanity.

“The founding of Spiritism dates from the appearance of The Spirits' Book; Spiritism, which, until then, had counted only on scattered elements, without coordination, and whose reach not everyone had been able to appreciate. From that moment, the doctrine seized the attention of serious men and took on rapid development. In a few years, those ideas won numerous adherents in all social strata and in all countries. This unprecedented success arose without doubt from the sympathy that such ideas awakened, but it is also due, in great part, to the clarity with which they were set forth and which is one of the characteristics of the writings of Allan Kardec. “Avoiding the abstract formulas of Metaphysics, he knew how to make everyone read him without fatigue, an essential condition for the popularization of an idea. On all controversial points, his argumentation, of close logic, offers little scope to refutation and predisposes to conviction. The material proofs that Spiritism presents of the existence of the soul and of the future life tend to destroy materialistic and pantheistic ideas. One of the most fruitful principles of that doctrine, and which derives from the preceding one, is that of the plurality of existences, already glimpsed by a multitude of ancient and modern philosophers and, in these latter times, by Jean Reynaud, Charles Fourier, Eugène Sue and others. It had remained, however, in the state of a hypothesis and of a system, whereas Spiritism demonstrates its reality and proves that in that principle resides one of the essential attributes of Humanity. From it proceeds the explanation of all the apparent anomalies of human life, of all the intellectual, moral and social inequalities, enabling man to know whence he comes, where he goes, for what end he finds himself on Earth and why he suffers there. “Innate ideas are explained by the knowledge acquired in previous lives; the march of peoples and that of Humanity, by the action of the men of times past who live again, after having progressed; sympathies and antipathies, by the nature of the previous relations. These relations, which bind together the great human family of all epochs, give as a basis, to the great principles of fraternity, of equality, of liberty and of universal solidarity, the very laws of Nature and no longer a mere theory. “In place of the postulate: Outside the Church there is no salvation, which feeds the separation and the animosity among the different religious sects and which has caused so much blood to flow, Spiritism has as its device: Outside Charity there is no salvation, that is, the equality among men before God, tolerance, freedom of conscience and mutual benevolence.

“In place of blind faith, which annuls freedom of thought, it says: An unshakable faith is only that which can look reason in the face, in all the epochs of Humanity. To faith a basis is necessary, and that basis is the perfect understanding of that in which one is to believe. To believe, it is not enough to see, it is necessary, above all, to understand. Blind faith is no longer for this century. It is precisely to the dogma of blind faith that is owed the fact that the number of the incredulous is today so great, because that faith wishes to impose itself and demands the abolition of one of the most precious faculties of man: reasoning and free will.” (The Gospel According to Spiritism.) An indefatigable worker, always the first to take up the work and the last to leave it, Allan Kardec succumbed, on March 31, 1869, when he was preparing for a change of location, imposed by the considerable extent of his multiple occupations. Various works that he was almost about to finish, or that were awaiting an opportunity to come to light, will one day demonstrate, still more, the extent and the power of his conceptions.

He died as he had lived: working. He had suffered, for long years, from an illness of the heart, which could only be combated by means of intellectual repose and slight material activity. Consecrated, however, wholly to his work, he refused all that might absorb even a single one of his moments, at the cost of his favorite occupations. There happened with him what happens with all souls of strong temper: the blade wore out the sheath.

His body grew numb and refused the services that the Spirit demanded of it, while the latter, ever more alive, more energetic, more fruitful, was always widening the circle of its activity.

In that unequal struggle matter could not resist eternally. It ended by being vanquished: the aneurysm burst and Allan Kardec fell as if struck by lightning. There was one man fewer on Earth; but a great name took its place among those who shed luster upon this century; a great Spirit had gone to retemper itself in the Infinite, where all those whom he had consoled and enlightened awaited his return impatiently!

“Death,” he was saying a short while ago, “redoubles its blows in the illustrious ranks!… Whom will it now come to set free?”

He went, like so many others, to recover himself in Space, to seek new elements to restore his organism worn out by a life of incessant labors. He departed with those who will be the beacons of the new generation, to return soon with them to continue and finish the work left in dedicated hands.

The man is here no longer; the soul, however, will remain among us. He will be a sure protector, one more light, a tireless worker whom the phalanxes of Space have won. As on Earth, without wounding anyone whatsoever, he will cause each one to hear from him the opportune counsels; he will moderate the premature zeal of the ardent, will support the sincere and the disinterested and will stimulate the lukewarm. He now sees and knows all that he but lately foresaw! He is no longer subject to uncertainties, nor to failings of strength, and he will make us share in his conviction, making us touch the goal with the finger, pointing out to us the way, in that clear, precise language which made him crowned with a halo in the literary annals. The man no longer exists, we repeat it. Nevertheless, Allan Kardec is immortal, and his memory, his works, his Spirit will always be with those who grasp strongly and vigorously the standard that he always knew how to make respected.

A powerful individuality constituted the work. He was the guide and the beacon of all.

On Earth, the work will replace the worker. The believers will not gather around Allan Kardec; they will gather around Spiritism, just as he structured it, and, with his counsels, his influence, we shall advance, with firm steps, toward the happy phases promised to regenerated Humanity.

[Virtual visit to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise.]

[A. DESLIENS.]

[1] Translator's Note: Transcribed in Posthumous Works, immediately after the index.

[2] Translator's Note: Although in the original French the year 1829 appears, the correct one is as written above .

[3] Translator's Note: It was in 1855, and not in 1850, as appears in the original, that Allan Kardec heard for the first time, through his friend, Mr. Carlotti, the explanation that the phenomena of the turning tables were due to the intervention of disincarnate Spirits. (Posthumous Works, 2nd part, My first initiation into Spiritism).