Spiritism and Contemporary Literature

Spiritism is, by its very nature, modest and little given to noise. It exists by the power of truth, and not by the noise made around it by its adversaries and partisans. Were it a utopia or the dream of a disordered imagination, after a brief success it would have fallen under the conspiracy of silence, or, better still, under that of ridicule which, as is claimed, destroys everything in France. But silence annihilates only works without substance, and ridicule kills only what is mortal. If Spiritism has survived, although it has done nothing to escape the snares of every kind that have been set for it, it is because it is not the work of one man, nor of a party, but the result of the observation of facts and of the methodical coordination of the universal laws. Supposing its human adherents were to disappear, and that the works which erected it into a body of doctrine were to be destroyed, it would still survive as long as the existence of the worlds and of the laws that govern them. A man is a materialist, a Catholic, a Muslim, or a freethinker by his will or his conviction; but it suffices to exist, if not to be a Spiritist, at least to be subject to Spiritism. To think, to reflect, to live, are, in effect, Spiritist acts, and strange as this claim may seem, it is readily justified after a few minutes of examination by those who admit a soul, a body, and an intermediary between that soul and that body; by those who, like Pascal and Louis Blanc, regard Humanity as a man who lives always and learns without ceasing; by those who, like the Liberté, admit that a man may live successively in two different centuries and exert upon the institutions and philosophy of his time an influence of the same nature. [see Reincarnation – Preexistence.]

Whether one is convinced or not, to think, to listen to the inner voice of meditation, is this not to perform a Spiritist act, if Spirits really exist? To live, that is, to breathe, is this not to make the body feel an impression that is transmitted to the Spirit by means of the perispirit? To admit these three constituent principles of the human being is to admit one of the fundamental bases of the Doctrine; it is to be a Spiritist, or at least to have a point of contact with Spiritism, a belief in common with the Spiritists. Enter our ranks openly or by the hidden door, gentlemen scholars, it matters little, provided you enter. The Doctrine penetrates you from now on; and, like a stain of oil, it spreads and grows without ceasing. You are of ours, because human science is entering at full steam into the domains of philosophy, and Spiritist philosophy admits all the rational conclusions of Science. On this common ground, whether you accept it or not, whatever name you give to your concessions, you will be with us, and the form matters not to us, if the substance is the same. You are very close to believing and above all to being convinced, Monsieur de Girardin, you who found it fitting to take from Spiritism its words, its forms, and its fundamental principles, in order to captivate your readers! And all of you, poets, novelists, men of letters, are you not a little Spiritist, when your characters dream of a past they never knew, when they recognize places they never visited, when sympathy or aversion arises between them at the first contact? Without doubt you make Spiritism, as scene-painters make theatrical pieces; for you, perhaps, it is a ruse, a staging, a tableau. What does it matter to us! You none the less popularize the teachings that find an echo everywhere, because many have a presentiment, without being able to define, of those principles of conviction upon which your learned or poetic pens cast the light of evidence. Spiritism is a fertile source, gentlemen! It is the inexhaustible Golconda that enriches the spirit and the heart of the writers who exploit it and of those who read their productions! Thank you, gentlemen! You are our allies, without wishing it, perhaps without knowing it, but we leave you the judgment of your intentions, in order to appreciate only the results. The scarcity of the instruments of conviction was lamented; the number of mediums was diminishing; their zeal was cooling; but now, is it not the fashionable poet, the man of letters whose works are sought after, the scholar charged with enlightening minds, who popularize and propagate everywhere the new conviction?

Ah! fear not for the future of Spiritism! As a child, it escaped all the enemy's encirclements; as an adolescent, and adopted for better or worse by Science and by literature, it will not abandon its invading march until it has inscribed in every heart the regenerating principles that will reestablish peace and harmony everywhere that disorder and intestine dissensions still reign. Allan Kardec.