Spiritist Dissertations
Social Condition of Women
Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, October 20th, 1865
Medium: Sr. Leymarie
When I lived among you, my friends, I used to give serious thoughts to the condition of the women. I always spared some time, from my painstaking studies, to those beloved beings. Every night, before sleeping, I used to pray for those poor, unfortunate and much unknown sisters, begging God for them to see better days, hoping to find ideas to help the miserable ones to progress. I sometimes saw them, in my dreams, dearly, loved, living a legal and morally sound life in society, with a family, surrounded by care and respect; I saw them transfigured and that image was so touching that I used to wake up crying. But, ah, I then saw the dismal and appalling truth of reality, sometimes loosing hope that there would be better days.
Those days have come, my friends. There are only a few among you that do not intuitively perceive woman’s rights; many, in fact, deny them, although internally they do recognize them; but it is not less true that amidst profound misery and disillusion, there is hope and there is joy.
A few days back I overheard a group of distinct ladies, given their beauty, social position and fortune, and said to myself: These are all perfume; loved and spoiled ones. There must be a lot of love! Certainly, good mothers, enchanting wives, respectful daughters! They have a lot of knowledge, love and donate a lot.
What a strange mistake! All those fresh faces were lying, disguised by stereotyped smiles; they talked frivolity, about fabrics, fashion and races. With a charming grace they talked behind the one that was absent, but did not talk about their children, their husbands, or about literary issues, or about our geniuses, or about their country or freedom! Beautiful head, no brain… Charming birds, straighten posture and attitude: it is the etiquette; the intent is to please everyone, touch everything and know nothing. The babbler goes with the wind leaving nothing behind; you are not daughters, wives or mothers. You forget your land, your past, the sufferings and greatness. Your child entrusted to a mercenary. Your inner happiness is a fiction. Shiny butterflies with beautiful wings… but then…
I also overhead a group of young working-class ladies. What did they know? Nothing…like the others… nothing of life, duty or reality! They were envious, that was all. Were they taught to understand one another, to like one another, to respect? Were they taught to understand God, the greatness of God and God’s will? No, a thousand times no… The Church teaches them luxury and luxury knock at the door of their shanty, saying: Let me in! I am the bow, the lace, the silk, the good dishes, and the fine wines. Open and you shall be beautiful, you shall have every bedazzlement, every fantasy! That is why so many of them become the shame of the family!
Kind brains that make fun of Spiritism, can you tell me what is the panacea that you invented to purify and vivify the family? I know you are indulgent when it comes to moral issues; lots of talks, outcries for the falling peoples, for the lack of education of the masses; but to morally lift the woman, what is it that you have done? Nothing… Master of Literature, how many times have you poked the sacred laws of respect to women, that you praise so much? You ignore God and neglect women, the family and the future of a nation.
It is through them that the social problems of the future shall be fixed. Spiritism will do what you cannot do, as you know, given women the robust faith that moves mountains, showing that worth and their power, God’s promise for their kindness, intelligence and powerful will. By understanding the magnificent laws developed in The Spirits’ Book, none of them will consider trading their bodies or their souls; daughter of God, the woman will see in her children the visit of the creating Spirit; she will learn herself to be able to teach; she will love the homeland and her history, initiating her children in the great progressive ideas. They shall be mothers and doctors, counselors and managers; in short, women according to Spiritism, and that is the future, the progress and the greatness of the country in its broadest expression.
Baluze
Continuation – October 27th, 1865
In my last communication, my friends, I had shown women from two aspects and added that education in some and ignorance in others had produced negative results. Yet, there are serious exceptions that seem to defy the rule. There are young ladies that can study and take advantage of the teachings of their educators. These have no vanity or light-heartedness; they are not permanently distracted by an ornament or a lace! Fed by strong and serious lessons, they enjoy subjects that magnify the Spirit, and soothes their soul, with that calmness of the strong and generous minds.
They foresee a family in marriage; entice a child not to pass on to the care of others but to sacrifice their own life. The new-born is the center of everything; the first thought, the first gesture of love, the fervent prayers and the sleepless nights, the short days in preparation for the full comfort of the newly incarnate. The child is the object of study, it is love in all forms. The husband is all kindness, forgetting the tough endeavors of the earthly life to hold the first steps of the child and give format to the first syllables.
Therefore, respect to these exemplary exceptions that defy temptation and escape pleasures for the devotion of divinely intelligent mothers. Humble and poor workers; ulcered hearts that love their only hope, a child, there is still a lot to say about their abnegation, they profound feeling of duty, their endurance before the troubles of everyday life. Nothing can disturb them from reassuring the little one; he is the work and the strength, the sublime egotism that sacrifices the mother day and night.
But if religion, or better saying, the multiple cults together with education, cannot destroy in the rich as well as in the poor, that general tendency to live mischievously, ignoring the objective of life, it is because of their inability to impress correctly the infancy.
They frequently hear about the interest of the enemies. The parents, fighting the difficulties of life, show the weak hearts a cruel cynicism. Children that just learned the initial words can already show rage, perceiving that their personal interest is in the center of the circle where everybody moves around. Such initial impressions affect them seriously… Religion and education are useless words thereafter, if their only interest is to multiply comfort and fortune at any price!
When we scream at full power the Spiritist idea, an idea that excites every generous passion, leading to a certainty of mathematical precision, we are laughed at! Pretense liberals that climb on the thrones of their falsehood to call us ridicule and ignorant! We cannot write, we have no style! We are the role model of ineptitude, we are mad… good enough to be sent to hospices. And the apostles of the freedom of speech, would gladly instigate the authority, based on the Penal Code, to persecute these enlightened ones that lessen common sense!
Fortunately the opinion of the masses does not belong to a family or to a writer; nobody is more entitled to common sense than anybody else, and in these days that obscure authors try to destroy theologists, philosophers and the geniuses of all kinds, the common sense in its highest expression, each person wants to decide by herself.
They seek people and things that are badly mouthed, and after examining everything, after hearing everything, they keep aside the insolent pamphlets and the malevolent insinuations, finally paying tribute to the truth that touches every heart.
That is why Spiritism grows before your blows. We are accepted and praised by the families. A hard-working father, with a Spiritist son, will not see him leaving home to become a drifter like in the past. This shall not be the one to sell his conscience or deny the sacred laws that protect women and children. He knows that God does exist; he is aware of the laws of the fluids and the Spirit, and the existence of the soul with all their remarkable consequences. A serious, virtuous, fraternal and charitable man, and not a well-educated clown, a traitor of life and God, friends and parents and finally of oneself. Mothers shall be truly mothers, embedded in the Spiritist ideal, they shall be the safeguard of their beloved daughters. They shall teach their children the awareness of their true value, the magnificent role that each one must play.
Everyone rightfully owns their destiny, hence everyone, to accomplish their mission, must learn to be able to dignify the child entrusted by God. Knowledge shall no longer be the corollary of unbounded desires and shameful wishes, but, on the contrary, the complement of dignity and respect to oneself. What could temptation and unruly passions do against such women? God and righteousness shall be their aegis, added by superior additions that come from above. Now, what is a woman if not a family; and what is a family if not a nation? You see the women, and then you see the people. We want to create what you have destroyed by the extremes. The women were diminished by superstition in the Middle Ages. You did the same, illustrious thinkers, by skepticism! Neither one nor the other is good. We free and moralize women to have them educated next. You want to instruct them without moralization. That is why you lose the current generation and the mothers will soon be no exception.
Baluze
