2.

Spiritism presents a phenomenon unprecedented in the history of philosophies: it is the rapidity of its march. No other doctrine offers a similar example. When one considers the progress it has made from year to year, one can, without much presumption, foresee the epoch when it will be the universal belief.

The majority of foreign countries participate in this movement: Austria, Poland, Russia, Italy, Spain, the city of Constantinople, etc., count numerous adepts and several perfectly organized societies. I have more than a hundred cities inscribed where there are meetings. In this group, Lyon and Bordeaux occupy the first place. Honor, then, to these two cities, imposing by their population and by their enlightenment, and where so high and so firmly the banner of Spiritism was hoisted. Many others aspire to walk in their footsteps.

Through my travels, I am in a position to converse with many people. All agree in saying that each year public opinion registers progress; the scoffers diminish visibly. But to mockery succeeds anger. Yesterday they laughed, today they grow angry. According to an old proverb, this is of good augury, for it leads the incredulous to conclude that there must be something serious in all this.

A fact no less characteristic is that all that the adversaries of Spiritism have done to hinder its march, far from stopping it, has quickened its progress, and one can say that, everywhere, the progress is in proportion to the violence of the attacks. Did the press exalt it? Everyone knows that, far from aiding it, it has dealt it kicks. Well then! such expedients only made it advance. The same happens with the attacks of every nature of which it has been the object.

There is, then, a constant phenomenon: it is that, without the resource of any of the means commonly employed to attain what is called a success, in spite of the hindrances raised against it, Spiritism has not ceased to grow, and grows every day as if to give the lie to those who predicted its near end. Is it a presumption, a bravado? No, it is a fact that is impossible to deny. It has, then, drawn its force from itself, which proves the power of this idea. Those whom this displeases must take their part in it and resign themselves to letting pass those whom they cannot stop. It is that Spiritism is an idea; and when an idea marches, it crosses all barriers; one cannot stop it at the frontier like a bale of merchandise. Books are burned, but ideas are not burned, and their very ashes, carried by the wind, go to fertilize the earth where they are to bear fruit. But it is not enough to cast an idea into the world for it to take root; no, certainly. Opinions or habits are not created at will. The same happens with inventions and discoveries: the most useful one fails if it comes before its time or if the need it is destined to satisfy does not yet exist. So it is with philosophical, political, religious, or social doctrines; the spirits must be ripened to accept them; coming too soon, they remain in a latent state and, like fruits planted out of season, do not develop.

If, then, Spiritism finds so numerous sympathies, it is that its time has come; it is that the spirits were ripe to receive it; it is that it answers a need, an aspiration. Of this you have the proof in the number, today considerable, of persons who welcome it without strangeness, as a very natural thing, when they are spoken to of it for the first time, and who confess that things ought to be just so, without, however, being able to define them. One feels the moral void that incredulity and materialism create around man; one understands that these doctrines dig an abyss for society; that they destroy the most solid bonds: those of fraternity. And, besides, instinctively, man has a horror of nothingness, as Nature has a horror of the void. This is why he welcomes with joy the proof that nothingness does not exist. But, they will object, is he not taught daily that nothingness does not exist? Without a doubt they teach it; but, then, how is it possible that incredulity and indifference have grown without cease in this last century? It is that the proofs given no longer satisfy now; it is that they no longer correspond to the needs of his intelligence. Scientific and industrial development has made man positive. He wants to give himself an account of everything; he wants to know the why and the how of each thing. To understand in order to believe has become an imperious necessity, which is why blind faith no longer has dominion over him. For some this is an evil, for others it is a good. Without discussing the principle, we shall say that such is the march of Nature. Collective humanity, like individuals, has its infancy and its mature age; when it finds itself in maturity, it sheds the swaddling clothes and wishes to use its own forces, that is, its intelligence. To make it retrograde is as impossible as to make a river ascend to its source. They will say that to attack the merit of blind faith is an impiety, because God wills that His word be accepted without examination. Blind faith could have its reason for being, I will even say its necessity, in a certain period of Humanity. If today it no longer suffices to strengthen belief, it is because it is in the nature of Humanity that it should be so.

Now, who made the laws of Nature? God or satan? If it was God, there will be no impiety in following His laws. If, today, to understand in order to believe has become a necessity for the intelligence, as drinking and eating is for the stomach, it is that God wills that man make use of his intelligence, for otherwise He would not have given it to him.

There are persons who do not feel that need; who are content to believe without examination. We do not censure them at all, and far from us is the thought of disturbing them in their quietude. Spiritism does not address itself to them; since they have all that they need, there is nothing to offer them; it does not compel to eat by force those who declare they are not hungry. Spiritism addresses itself only to those for whom the intellectual nourishment given to them is no longer sufficient, and their number is great enough that it should concern itself with the others. Why, then, do they complain, when it does not go to seek them? Spiritism seeks no one; it imposes itself upon no one. It limits itself to saying: Here I am, here is what I am, here is what I bring; let those who judge they need me draw near; the others, let them remain in their houses; I shall not go to disturb their conscience, nor to insult them. I only ask of them reciprocity. Why, then, does materialism tend to supplant faith? It is that until now faith does not reason, limiting itself to saying: Believe! while materialism reasons. Let us agree that they are sophisms, but, good or bad, they are reasons that, in the thought of many, drag along those to whom nothing is offered. Add to this that the materialist idea satisfies those who take pleasure in material life; who wish to pass over the consequences of the future, hoping, in this way, to escape the responsibility of their acts. In short, the materialist idea is eminently favorable to the satisfaction of all brutal appetites. In the uncertainty of the future, man says to himself: Let us always enjoy the present; what do my fellow men matter to me? Why sacrifice myself for them? They say they are my brothers; but of what use to me are brothers whom I shall see no more? who perhaps tomorrow will be dead and I as well? What shall we then be, one toward another? Nothing, if once dead nothing remains of us. Of what use would it be to impose privations upon myself? what compensation would result for me, if everything ends with me? Found, then, a society upon the bases of fraternity, with such ideas! Egoism, such is its natural consequence; with it, each one takes the better part and it is the strongest who triumphs. In his turn the weak one says: Let us be egoistic, since the others are; let us think only of ourselves, for the others think only of themselves.

Such is, one is forced to admit, the evil that tends to invade modern society, and this evil, like a gnawing worm, can ruin it in its foundations! Oh! how guilty are those who lead it along that path, those who strive to kill beliefs and those who extol the present at the expense of the future! They will have a terrible account to render for the use they shall have made of their intelligence!

Nevertheless, incredulity leaves behind it a wave of disquiet. However much man seeks to delude himself, he cannot keep from thinking sometimes of what will befall him afterward; in spite of himself, the idea of nothingness chills him. He would wish for a certainty and does not find it; then he wavers, hesitates, doubts, and the uncertainty kills him; he feels himself unhappy in the midst of the material pleasures that cannot fill the abyss of nothingness that opens before him, and into which he imagines he will be hurled.

It is at that moment that Spiritism arrives, like an anchor of salvation, like a light in the darkness of his soul. It comes to draw him from the void, not by a vague hope, but by irrefutable proofs: those of the observation of facts; it comes to strengthen his faith, not by simply telling him: Believe, because I tell you so, but: See, touch, understand, and believe. It could not have come at a more opportune moment, whether to stop the evil before it became incurable, or to satisfy the needs of man, who no longer believes upon mere word, who wishes to rationalize that in which he believes. Materialism had seduced him by its false reasonings; to its sophisms it was necessary to oppose solid reasonings, supported by material proofs. In this struggle, blind faith already showed itself impotent. This is why I say that Spiritism came at its time. What man lacks is faith in the future; but the idea given to him of it is incapable of satisfying his taste for the positive. It is too vague, too abstract; the bonds that link him to the present are not sufficiently defined. On the contrary, Spiritism presents the soul to us as a circumscribed being, similar to us, less the material envelope of which it has divested itself, but clothed in a fluidic covering, which is already more comprehensible and makes its individuality better conceived. Besides this, it proves, by experience, the incessant relations of the visible world and of the invisible world, which thus become solidary one with another. The relations of the soul with the Earth do not cease with life; the soul, in the state of Spirit, constitutes one of the gears, one of the living forces of Nature; it is no longer a useless being, that does not think and no longer acts except for itself throughout eternity; it is always and everywhere an active agent of the will of God for the execution of His works. Thus, according to the Spiritist Doctrine, everything is linked, everything is chained together in the Universe; and in this great movement, admirably harmonious, the affections survive. Far from being extinguished, they are strengthened and purified. Even if all this were no more than a system, it would have over the others the advantage of being more seductive, although without offering more certainty. But it is the invisible world itself that comes to reveal itself to us, to prove that it exists, not in regions of space inaccessible even to thought, but here, at our side, surrounding us, and that we live in the midst of it, like a people of the blind in the midst of persons who see. This may disturb certain ideas, I admit, but, in the face of a fact, whether we wish it or not, we must bow. However much they may say that it is not so, they would need to prove its impossibility; to palpable proofs they would have to oppose proofs more palpable still. Now, what do they oppose? Negation! Spiritism rests upon facts. These facts, in accordance with reasoning and a rigorous logic, give to the Spiritist Doctrine the character of positivism that suits our epoch. Materialism came to undermine all belief, to subvert every base, every reason for being of morality, and to sap the very foundations of society, proclaiming the reign of egoism. Then serious men asked themselves where such a state of things would lead us; they saw an abyss, and behold, Spiritism came to fill it, saying to materialism: You shall go no further, for here are facts that prove the falsity of your reasonings. Materialism threatened to plunge society into darkness, saying to men: The present is everything, since the future does not exist. Spiritism comes to reestablish the truth, affirming: The present is nothing, the future is everything, and it proves it. An adversary asserted in a certain newspaper that Spiritism is full of seductions. He could not, in spite of himself, make a greater eulogy of the Doctrine, condemning himself at the same time in the most peremptory manner. To say that a thing is seductive is to say that it pleases. Now, here is the great secret of the propagation of Spiritism. Let them, then, oppose to it something more seductive in order to supplant it! If they do not do so, it is that they have nothing better to offer. Why does it please? It is very easy to say it.

It pleases:

Because it satisfies the instinctive aspiration of man with regard to the future;

Because it presents the future under an aspect that reason can admit;

Because the certainty of the future life makes man suffer without complaining of the miseries of the present life;

Because, with the plurality of existences, these miseries have a reason for being, are explicable and, instead of accusing Providence, men consider them just and accept them without murmuring;

Because man is happy to know that the beings dear to him are not lost forever, that he will find them again and that they are almost always at his side;

Because all the maxims given by the Spirits tend to make men better toward one another.