The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863

Allan Kardec

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NOTE: The following article is the introduction to a complete work that the author, Mr. Herrenschneider, intends to completeabout the need for harmony between Philosophy and Spiritism.

Since the time when Spiritism was revealed in France, about ten to twelve years ago, the continual communication of the Spirits provoked a positive religious movement throughout all layers of society to encourage and develop. The religious feeling was in fact lost in this century, particularly with the literate and educated classes; the sarcasm of the Voltairism had removed the prestige of Christianity; the progress of science made them see the existing contradictions between the dogmas and the natural laws; the astronomical discoveries demonstrated the puerility of the idea of God sustained by the sons of Abraham, Moses and Christ.

The development of wealth, of the wonderful inventions of art and industry, the whole civilization protested before the eyes of modern civilization against the renunciation of the world. It was due to these several reasons that disbelief and indifference penetrated the souls; that the concern with respect to the eternal destinies had hampered our love to good and paralyzed our moral betterment and that the passion towards the well-being, pleasure, luxury and the earthly vanities ended up by captivating our ambition; it was then that the dead came back to remind us that our current life is followed by another day and that our actions have fatal, inevitable consequences that will come if not in this life certainly in the future life.

That apparition of the Spirits was like a bolt that had a lot of people trembling in the presence of moving furniture by the action of an invisible force; when hearing intelligent thoughts dictated by the use of a gross telegraphy; when reading these sublime pages, written by distracted hands under the influence of a mysterious power. How many pounding hearts suddenly shaken by fear; how many oppressed consciences woke up by deserved anguishes; how many minds hurting by the stupor! The renovation of relationships with the soul of the dead is and continues to be an extraordinary event whose consequence will be the regeneration so much needed by modern society. This is due to the fact that when human society has the sole objective of material prosperity and the pleasure of the senses it dives into the egotist materialism; every action is weighed with the basis on its return; renouncing to any effort that does not lead to material advantage; only appreciates the wealthy and only respects power that is imposed. When people are only concerned with immediate and profitable success, they lose the sense of honesty, renounce to the choice of means, step on their own intimate happiness and virtues, no longer following the guidelines of justice and equity.

In such a society that is dragged into this immoral direction, the rich lead a life of dishonorable morality and hardening of the heart and the disinherited ones are left to a painful and monotonous life whose last consolation seems to be suicide.

Philosophy is powerless against such moral, public and private disposition. It is not that it lacks arguments to demonstrate the social need for pure and generous principles; it is not that it cannot demonstrate the imminence of the final responsibility and establish the perpetuity of our existence but in general people have no time or taste for this or have not given sufficient thought to pay attention to the voice of conscience and to the observations of reason. Besides, the vicissitudes of life are frequently very demanding to have them leaning towards the exercise of virtue by the love of good. Even if philosophy had been what it should had been: a complete and certain doctrine, it would had never been able to lead to an efficient social regeneration only through its teachings, hence up until today it was only able to give to the authority of its doctrine the abstract love to the ideal and to perfection.

To be convinced of the need to be dedicated to good humanity needs tangible things that speak to the senses. They need the striking image of their future pains to make them walk back the dismal ramp of their vices; they need to touch with their own fingers the eternal miseries that they engineered to themselves in their moral carelessness to understand that current life is not the objective of their existences but the Creator given means of having them working individually towards the achievement of their final destinies. It was also for these reasons that every religion based their commandments on the horror of hell and on the seduction of celestial joys.

But since people were reassured about the final consequences of their sins, under the influence of disbelief and religious indifference, an easy and inconsistent philosophy that supports the cult of the senses, temporal interests and the doctrines of selfishness finally prevailed. Today the enlightened, intelligent and strong ones move away from the Church and follow their own inspirations; it fails them for a lack of authority, an authority needed to regain its twenty century old influence. Therefore we can say that the Church is as powerless as philosophy, and that neither one nor the other will exert salutary influence unless each one is submitted to a radical reform, each on its own ground.

Meanwhile humanity stirs up, events follow one another, and the appearance of the Spirit manifestations in this century of lights, practical, and skeptical enough, is unquestionably the most remarkable event. We then see the tomb open before us, not as the end of our troubles and earthly miseries, not as the yawning abyss engulfing our passions, our joys and our illusions, but instead as the majestic door of a new world, where each will reap, despite themselves, the bitter fruits sowed by their own weaknesses; and where others, on the contrary, will ensure by their own merit the passage to the purest and highest spheres. Hence it is Spiritism that reveals our future destiny and the more it is known, the more religious and moral regeneration will gain momentum and reach.

The union between Spiritism and philosophical sciences, in fact, seems highly necessary for human happiness and moral, intellectual and religious progress of modern society because we no longer live in times when one could rule out human science and give preference to blind faith.

Modern science is too wise, too sure of itself and too advanced in the knowledge of the laws that God has imposed on the intelligence and character, so that the religious transformation can take place without its assistance. We know too well the relative tininess of our globe to assign humanity with a privileged place in the designs of the Providence. To the eyes of all, we are only a speck in the vastness of the worlds and we know that the laws that regulate this indefinite multitude of existences are simple, unchanging and universal.

Finally, the demands for the certainty of our knowledge were strongly reinforced so that a new doctrine can rise and sustain itself on another base without a touching and harmless mysticism. When therefore Spiritism wants to expand its influence over all classes of society, upon persons of intelligence and superiority, as onto the kind and believing souls, it must then unreservedly throw itself onto the course of human thoughts and that by its philosophical superiority it imposes to proud reason respect to its authority.

It is this independent action from the followers of Spiritism and the elevated Spirits fully understand. The one who calls himself St. Augustine said recently: "Observe and study carefully the communications that you receive; accept what your reason does not reject and reject what shocks it; ask for clarification about those that leave you in doubt. There you have the procedure to transmit to future generations, without fear of seeing them altered, the truths that you will effortlessly separate from the entourage of unavoidable mistakes.”

That is in a few words the true spirit of Spiritism, the one that science may admit without derogation; the one that will serve us to conquer humanity. As a matter of fact Spiritism has nothing to fear about its union to philosophy because it is based on incontestable facts whose very existence are based on the laws of creation. It is up to science to study its reach and coordinate the general principles according to this new order of phenomena for it is evident that if science had not foreseen the necessary existence of the souls of the dead or the ones that are destined to be reborn around us it must understand that its initial philosophy was wrong and that it had missed the fundamental principles.

Philosophy, on the contrary, has much to gain by considering the facts of Spiritism. To begin with because these are the solemn sanction of its moral teachings and because they will by themselves demonstrate the fatal reach of its conduct to the most hardened ones. Nonetheless, regardless of the importance of such a positive justification of its maxims the in-depth study of the deduced consequences of the attested survival of the soul will then serve to determine its constituent elements, origin and destiny, also serving to the establishment of the moral law and progress upon basis certain and unyielding. Besides, the knowledge of the essence of the soul will lead philosophy to the knowledge of the essence of God’s things allowing the union of all dividing doctrines in a single and same true complete system.

Finally, these several developments of philosophy, provoked by this precious determination of the psychic essence, will infallibly lead it through the traces of the fundamental principles of the old Cabala and the old hidden science of the hierophants whose last luminous beam that reached us is the Christian trinity. That is how by the simple apparition of the errant soul one will form, since we all have the right of waiting, to the unbreakable chain of moral, religious and metaphysical traditions of humanity, old and modern.

That considerable future that we conceive to philosophy allied to Spiritism will not seem impossible to those who have some notion of that science if they consider the emptiness of the principles that found several schools and their consequent impotence to explain the concrete reality of God and the soul.

That is how materialism claims that the creatures are no more than material phenomena, similar to those produced by combinations of chemical substances and that the principle that animates them is supposedly part of a universal vital principle. According to this system the individual soul would not exist and God would be a completely useless being. The disciples of Helel, in turn, imagine that the idea, this undisciplined phenomenon of our soul, is an element in itself, independent of us; that it is a universal principle that is manifested through humanity and its intellectual activity as well as through nature and its wonderful transformations. That school consequently denies the eternal individuality of our soul, confusing it in a whole with nature. It supposes that there is a perfect identity between the visible universe and the moral and intellectual world; that one and another are the result of the progressive and fatal primitive, universal idea, in one word, the absolute. God equally has no individuality, no freedom and knowledge of himself. He only noticed himself in 1810 through Hegel when he acknowledged Him in the absolute and universal idea (Historical).

Finally, our spiritualist school, commonly called eclecticism, considers the soul as only a force without extension and robustness, an imperceptible intelligence in the human body and that, once separated from its envelope, keeping its individuality and immortality, would no longer exist in time and space. Our soul would then be one I don’t know what without connection to what exists and would not occupy any determined space. According to the same system God would not be perceptible. He is the perfect thought and equally would not be permanent or have any stability or form or sensible reality; it is an empty being; without reason we can have no intuition of him. However, who are those who invented atheism, skepticism, pantheism, idealism, etc.? These are the man of reason, the intelligent and wise men! Ignorant peoples whose main guides are their sensations have never doubted God or the soul or its immortality. Hence reason only seems to be a bad counselor!

Those doctrines, as one can verify, consequently have not a real, stable principle, a living notion of the real Being. They move in an intelligible world that has nothing to do with concrete reality. The emptiness of their principles relates to the whole of their systems making them as much subtle as vague and oblivious to the reality of things. Common sense itself is hurt, despite the talent and prodigious erudition of their followers. But Spiritism is even more brutal with respect to them for it takes down these abstract systems by opposing them with a single fact: the substantial reality, living and current of the non-incarnate soul. It is shown as an individual being, existing in time and space, although invisible to us; like a being with a solid element, substantial and its thinking and active force. It even shows us the errant souls communicating with us out of their own initiative! It is evident that such a fact must destroy all the castles of sand and with a single pen dispel those proud and imaginary schemes.

But for more confusion, we can demonstrate to the followers of such convoluted doctrines that every person carries in their own conscience the elements sufficient to demonstrate the existence of the soul, like Spiritism establishes through the facts, so that their systems are not only wrong at the arrival but also at their starting point. Therefore the best side to be taken by those honorable wise people is to completely reformulate their doctrines and dedicate their profound knowledge to the foundation of a first science, more accurate and according to reality.

We effective carry in ourselves four irreducible notions that authorizes us to affirm the existence of our soul, as it is presented to us by Spiritism. First we have in ourselves the feeling of our own existence. Such feeling can only be revealed by an impression that we receive from ourselves. Well, no impression is possible from something that is not sturdy or extensive so that by considering the simple fact of our sensations we must deduce that there is a sensible element in us, subtle, extensive and resistant, that is, a substance. Second, we have the conscience of an active element, causal, that manifests in our free-will, thoughts and acts. Consequently it is still evident that we have a second element: a force. Hence by the simple fact that we feel ourselves and are aware of ourselves we must conclude that we have two constituent elements, force and substance, an essential, psychic duality. But these two primitive notions are not the only ones that we carry with ourselves. In third place we still conceive a personal unity, original, that remains always identical to itself; and in fourth place an equally personal destiny because we all seek happiness and our own conveniences in every circumstance of life. Consequently, joining these two new notions that constitute our double being to the two preceding ones,we acknowledge that we are formed by four distinct principles: the duality of essence and the duality of appearance.





Now with the knowledge of these four elements of our self that define our individuality that are notions independent of the body and that have no relationship with our material envelope, it is evident and peremptory to any fair and not prejudiced mind that our being depends on an invisible principle called “soul” and where that soul exists as such because it has a substance and a force, a proper and personal destiny.

These are the four elements of our fundamental psychic individuality whose notion each one of us intimately carries along and that none would deny. As a consequence, as we said, philosophy has, at any time, the elements sufficient to the acknowledgement of the soul as we are given to know by Spiritism. If so far human reason could not have construed a true and useful metaphysics that might have brought the knowledge that the soul must be considered as a real being, independent of the body and capable of existing by itself, substantially and virtually, in time and space, fact is that reason has disdained the direct observation of the facts of conscience and that, in its pride and sufficiency, reason took the place of reality.

According to these observations, one can understand how important it is to philosophy the union to Spiritism for it will take from that union the advantage of creating a first, serious and complete science, founded on the knowledge of the essence of the soul and the four conditions of its reality. But it is no longer necessary for Spiritism to ally to philosophy because it is the only way through which it will be able to establish the scientific certainty of the Spiritist events that form the fundamental basis of its belief and from there extract the important consequences that it contains.

No doubt that to common sense it is enough to see a phenomenon to attest its reality and many are satisfied with that but science many times had motives to doubt the claims of common sense and to mistrust the impressions of our senses and in the illusions of our imagination. Hence common sense is not enough to scientifically establish the reality of the presence of the Spirits around us. In order to establish that in an irrefutable way it is necessary that it is done rationally according to the general laws of creation, that its existence is necessary by itself and that its invisible presence is not but the confirmation of rational and scientific data as the ones that we just indicated unquestionably. Therefore it is only through the philosophical method that one can get at that result. That is necessary to the works of Spiritism and it is only philosophy that can do such a service.

In order to succeed in any undertaking it is necessary to the knowledge about the principles to the observation of the facts. In the particular circumstances of Spiritism it is even much more necessary to proceed in that rigorous manner to get to the truth because our new doctrine touches our dearest and highest interests, constituting our present and eternal happiness. The union of Spiritism and philosophy, consequently, is of the utmost importance for the success of our efforts and for the future of humanity.”

F. Herrenschneider

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