Spiritism in Brazil
Extracted from “
Bahia Daily”
The Bahia Daily on September 26th and 27th, 1865 publishes two articles that are the translation to Portuguese of those published six years ago by Dr. Déchambre, in the Gazette Médicale in Paris. The second edition of The Spirits’ Book had just been published and that was the subject of a kind of semi burlesque report done by Dr. Déchambre. By the way, he demonstrates with history and citations that the phenomena of the turning and vibrating tables are mentioned by Theocritus, with the name “Kosskinomanteia” which means foretelling with the use of a crucible, used for divination those days; he then concluded, with the common logic of our adversaries, that if the phenomenon was not ours it could not hold any truth. We must acknowledge that this is a singular argument from a man of positive sciences. We regret the fact that Mr. Déchambre’s erudition was unable to take him further back because he would have find it in the old Egypt and in the Indies. We will one day return to this article that we had lost sight of and that was missing in our collection. While we wait, we ask Mr. Déchambre if we are expected to reject modern medicine and physics for the fact that their rudiments are mixed up with the superstitious practices of antiquity and middle ages. If the modern chemistry of our days was not originated in the alchemy and modern astronomy in judicious astrology. Why then the Spiritist phenomena, that are not but natural phenomena, could not be also found in the primitive practices and beliefs? Considering that this article, just reproduced and without comments, proves nothing from the part of the Brazilian newspaper, showing a systematic hostility against the doctrine. It is even likely that since they did not know the doctrine, they found in that article an accurate appreciation. This is demonstrated by their interest in publishing in the following issue, on September 28th, the refutation sent by the Spiritists of Bahia, reproduced below:
“Dear Mr. Editor,
Since you act in good faith with respect to the Spiritist doctrine, we beg you to kindly publish in your Daily paper a passage from The Spirits’ Book, by Mr. Allan Kardec, that has already reached its thirteenth edition, so that your readers may appreciate the article that you reproduced from the Gazette Médicale of Paris, in its fair value. The article was published, against this very doctrine, more than six years ago by Dr. Déchambre and it is acknowledged that the referred doctor is not faithful in the citations that he made of The Spirits’ Book, just trying to depreciate that doctrine.
Yours sincerely and thankfully,
Luis Olympio Telles de Menezes, Jose Alvarez do Amaral, Joaquim Carneiro de Campos”
A lengthy excerpt from the Introduction to The Spirits’ Book is provided as an answer and refutation. The literal citation of the Spiritist books is, in fact, the best refutation to the deformations carried out by certain critics of the doctrine. The doctrine justifies itself, and that is the reason it suffers those attacks. One does not wish to convince the adversaries that the doctrine is good because, most of the time, this is a waste of time since, truth be told, they have all the freedom to believe it is bad; all one must do is to demonstrate that the doctrine says the opposite of what people make believe it does. It is up to the impartial public judge if it is good or bad. As despite everything they may do, the doctrine daily recruits new partisans, a demonstration that it does not displeases everybody and that the arguments that are opposed are powerless to discredit it. From this article we can see that it does not have nationality and that it goes around the world.
