The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863

Allan Kardec

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Spiritism and the Spirits by Mr. Flammarion- Extracted from the Revue Française

Mr. Flammarion, author of the brochure about the “Plurality of the inhabited worlds” that we mentioned in our January issue, has just published a first and very interesting article in the February 1863 edition of the Revue Française whose initial part is given below. The work requested by the periodical is an important and widely spread literary summary of the principles of Spiritism. The extension of the work almost gives it the title of a special publication for it has nothing less than 23 large format pages (in-8). Up to a certain point the author thought adequate to abstract from his personal opinion about the subject and stay in a kind of neutral terrain, limiting himself to an impartial presentation of the facts thus giving the reader a total freedom of appreciation.

Here is how he begins:

In a century where metaphysics has fallen from its pedestal; in which the religious idea wanted to stay away from any dogma and special cult; in which philosophy itself changed its way of thinking in order to connect to the positivism of experimental science, a spiritualist philosophy was offered to mankind who received it. That philosophy proposed a symbol of belief that was adopted by its people. It showed them a new avenue leading to unexplored regions and they followed it and there you have it a doctrine based on the manifestations of invisible creatures, standing from its birth above ordinary things, universally propagating amongst peoples of the new as well as the old world. What is then this powerful breath that has led so many thinking heads to gaze the same point in the skies? Simple utopia or a real science; fantastic deception or a profound truth fact is that it is before our eyes and it shows us the flag of Spiritism uniting a large number of champions around it, today counting on millions of followers. And that prodigious number was formed in the short span of ten years. The event is then before us: it is an undeniable fact. Now, whatever the frivolity or importance of this fact wouldn’t that be useful to study it on its own merit so that we can establish if it has the right to live among the children of progress; if its path is parallel to the movement of progressive ideas or if it would not tend, as some people pretend, to make us march backwards towards deprecated beliefs unworthy of consideration. And considering that in order to analyze any subject we must know it very well, before anything else, so that we do not expose ourselves to erroneous appreciations, we will gradually examine the points upon which Spiritism rests; about the basis that sustains the theory of its teachings and in short what this science is about.



Notice that we are talking about facts and not speculative systems and adventurous opinions for, irrespective of how wonderful the analyzed matter, Spiritism is purely and simply based on the observation of facts. If that were not the case, if it were only another religious sect, a new philosophical school, we are certain that the event would lose a lot of its importance that and that serious people of the present time, in its majority disciples of the “Baconian” method, would not have wasted their time examining a pure matter of theory.

Many utopias were written in the book of human weakness so that we no longer have to take into account the dreams daily proposed by exalted brains.

Let us now and without a hidden agenda discuss this doctrinaire science that a lot of good and bad things have been said about but without studying it sufficiently. In this current work, we begin by its modern history – since Spiritism has its old history – bringing about the successive phenomena that have definitely established the doctrine. Following the natural order of things, we will examine the effects before going back to the causes.”

It is then followed by the first manifestations in America, its introduction in Europe and its conversion to a philosophical doctrine.





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