Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867

In an article in our last issue entitled: A retrospective look at the Spiritism movement, we made two distinct classes of free thinkers: unbelievers and believers, and said that, for the former, to be free thinker is not only believing in what one wants, but not believing in anything; it is to free oneself from all restraints, even from the fear of God and of the future; for the latter, it is to subordinate belief to reason and to free oneself from the yoke of blind faith. The latter have the Free Conscience, as a means of advertisement, a significant title; the others, the journal Free Thought, a more vague qualification, but that specializes in the opinions expressed, and that corroborates the distinction we made in all points. We read in its number 2 of October 28th, 1866:

“Questions of origin and end have so far preoccupied humanity, to the point of often troubling their sanity. These problems, which have been qualified as formidable, and that we believe to be of secondary importance, are not the immediate domain of science. Their scientific solution can only offer half-certainty. For us, it is sufficient as is, and we will not try to complete it with metaphysical quibbles. Our goal is, moreover, to deal only with subjects that are covered by observation. We intend to keep our feet on the ground. If, sometimes, we move away from it, to respond to the attacks of those that do not think like us, the excursion outside the real will be short-lived. We will always have in mind this wise advice from Helvetius: "One must have the courage to ignore what we cannot know."

A new journal, the Free Conscience, our brother a few days older, as it notices, welcomes us in its first number. We thank the courteous way by which they used their elderly right. Our comrade believes that, despite the analogy of titles, we shall not always be in “complete affinity of ideas.” After reading their first issue, we are certain of that; besides, we do not understand free conscience and free thought with a previously established dogmatic boundary. When someone clearly declares to be a disciple of science, and champion of free conscience, it is irrational, in our opinion, to have it followed by any belief as a dogma, impossible to be demonstrated scientifically. Limited freedom like this is not freedom. From our part, we welcome Free Conscience and we are prepared to see an ally in them, since it declares its wishes to fight in favor of all freedoms… except one.”



It is strange to see the origin and end of humanity being considered as secondary issues, proper to disturb reason. What to say of a man that, only earning the necessary for his survival, were not worried about tomorrow? Would he be considered sensible? What would we think of someone that, having a wife, children, and friends, said: I don’t care if they are going to be dead or alive tomorrow! Well, the tomorrow of the dead is long, therefore, one should not be surprised that so many people are concerned with that.

If we do the statistics of all those that lose their minds, we will see that the larger number is precisely on the side of those that do not believe in that tomorrow, or that doubt it, and that for the very simple reason that the great majority of the cases of madness is produced by despair, and lack of moral courage, that allows to endure the miseries of life, while the certainty of that tomorrow makes the vicissitudes of the present less bitter, considering them as transient incidents, reason why the morale is only slightly affected, or not affected at all. Their confidence in the future gives them a strength that will never be held by the one that only has the void by perspective. He is in the position of a man that, ruined today, he is certain that tomorrow he is going to have a fortune greater than the one he has just lost. In this case, he then takes a decision and remains calm. If, on the contrary, he expects nothing, he gets desperate and his reason may suffer with that.

Nobody will dispute the fact that, knowing where we came from and where we are going to, what we did yesterday and what we are going to do tomorrow, is not something necessary to regulate the businesses of life, and that this does not influence our personal behavior. Certainly, the soldier that knows where he is led to, that sees his objective, marches more firmly, with more eagerness, with more enthusiasm than if he were led blindly. That is how it is with small things, as well as great things, with individuals and with groups. Knowing where one comes from and where one is going to is not less necessary to rule the businesses of the collective life of humanity. The day the whole humanity was assured that death was certain, we would see general confusion, and men throwing at one another saying: if we have to live one life only, let us live the best we can, and doesn’t matter who pays!

The journal Free Thought declares that they intend to keep their feet on the ground, and if they eventually move away from that, it is to refute those that think differently, but that such excursions will be short lived. We would understand it to be like so for a journal that is exclusively scientific, dealing with special subject matters. It is evident that it would be inopportune to speak of spirituality, psychology or theology regarding mechanics, chemistry, physics, calculus, commerce or industry; but, since it includes philosophy in its program, it could not be accomplished without dealing with metaphysical issues. Although the word philosophy is too elastic, and was singularly deviated from its etymological definition, it implies, in its very essence, research and studies that are not exclusively material.

Helvetius’ advice: "One must have the courage to ignore what we cannot know" is very wise and is, above all, directed to the presumptuous sages, that believe that nothing can be hidden from man, and that what they don’t know or don’t understand must not exist. However, it would be fairer to say: “One must have the courage to confess one’s own ignorance about what they do not know.” As it is formulated, it could be translated like this: “One must have the courage to preserve one’s ignorance”, with this consequence: “It is useless to try to know what we do not know.” There are things, undoubtedly, that man will never know while on Earth, because humanity is here still in the state of adolescence, however great its presumption. But who would dare establish limits to what he can know? Considering that today he knows infinitely more than primitive men, why couldn’t he know more later, than what he knows now? That is what cannot be understood by those that do not admit the perpetuity and perfectibility of the spiritual being. Many say to themselves: I am at the top of the intellectual ladder; what I cannot see, and I do not understand, nobody can see or understand.

In the paragraph above, about the journal Free Conscience, it says: “We do not understand free conscience and free thought with a previously established dogmatic boundary. When someone clearly declares to be a disciple of science, and champion of free conscience, it is irrational, in our opinion, to have it followed by any belief as a dogma, impossible to be demonstrated scientifically. Limited freedom like this is not freedom.”

The whole doctrine is in these words; the profession of faith is clear and categorical. Thus, since God cannot be demonstrated by an algebraic equation and the soul is not perceptible with the support of a reactive, it is absurd to believe in God and in the soul. Every disciple of science must, therefore, be atheist and materialist. But, to stay within materiality, is science always infallible in its demonstrations? Haven’t we seen it many times give as absolute truths what later was recognized as a mistake, and vice-versa? Wasn’t that in the name of science that Fulton’s system was declared to be a chimera? Before knowing the law of gravity, hasn’t science demonstrated that there could not be antipodes? Before knowing electricity, hasn’t it demonstrated by a + b that there wasn’t any speed capable of transmitting a telegram five hundred leagues in a few minutes?

Many experiments had been carried out with light, however, just a few years back, who would imagine the prodigies of photography? However, it was not the official scientists that made such prodigious discovery, neither the electric telegraph nor the steam engine. Does science know all laws of nature, in our days? Is it only science that knows all the resources that can be taken from the known laws? Who would dare say it? Isn’t that possible that, one day, the knowledge of new laws makes the extra-corporeal life so evident, so rational, so intelligible as that of the antipodes? Would then such a result, after ruling out the uncertainties, be prone to be disdained? Would that be less important to humanity, than the discovery of a new continent, a new planet, a new engine of destruction? Well! Such a hypothesis became reality; we owe it to Spiritism, and it is thanks to it that so many people that believed to live only once and die forever, now are certain to live forever.

We have spoken of the force of gravity, of this force that governs the universe, from the grain of sand to the worlds; but who has seen it, who has been able to follow it, analyze it? What does it consist of? What is its nature, its primary cause? No one knows it, and yet no one doubts it today. How did we recognize it? By its effects; from the effects one has concluded the cause; we did more: by calculating the power of the effects, we calculated the power of the cause that we have never seen.

It is the same with God and the spiritual life, also judged by their effects, according to this axiom: "Every effect has a cause. Every intelligent effect has an intelligent cause. The power of the intelligent cause is proportional to the magnitude of the effect.” To believe in God and in the spiritual life, therefore, is not a purely gratuitous belief, but a result of observations, just as positive as the one that allowed us to believe in the force of gravity.

Then, in the absence of material evidence, or concurrently therewith, doesn’t philosophy admit the moral proofs that sometimes have much more value than others? You, who hold true only what is proven physically, how about if you are unjustly accused of a crime in which all appearances are against you, as it is often seen in court, wouldn’t the judges take into account moral evidence that would be in your favor? Wouldn’t you bet the first to invoke them, to assert their predominance upon purely material effects that can deceive, to prove that the senses can deceive the most clairvoyant? If, then, you admit that moral proofs must weigh in the balance of a judgment, you would not be consistent with yourself in denying its value, when it is a question of forming an opinion on the things that, by their nature, are beyond materiality.

What could be freer, more independent, less graspable by its very essence, than thought? And yet, here is a school that claims to emancipate it by linking it to matter; that sustains, in the name of reason, that thought circumscribed on earthly things is freer than that which soars into infinity, and wants to see beyond the material horizon! One might as well say that the prisoner that can only take a few steps in his dungeon is freer than the one that runs in the fields. If, to believe in the things of the spiritual world that is infinite, it is not to be free, you are a hundred times less so, you who circumscribe yourselves within the narrow limit of the tangible, who say to the thought: You will not go out of the circle that we are tracing for you, and if you leave it, we declare that you are no longer a sound thought, but madness, foolishness, unreason, because it is up to us alone to distinguish the false from the true.

Spiritualism responds to this: We form the immense majority of men, of which you are barely the millionth part; by what right do you attribute to yourself the monopoly of reason? Do you want to emancipate our ideas by imposing yours on us? But you don't teach us anything; we know what you know; we believe, without restriction, in everything you believe: in matter, and the value of hard evidence, and more than you: in something outside matter; in an intelligent power greater than humanity; in causes inappreciable by the senses, but perceptible to thought; in the perpetuity of the spiritual life that you limit to the length of the life of the body. Our ideas are, therefore, infinitely broader than yours; while you circumscribe your point of view, ours embraces boundless horizons. How can he who concentrates his thought on a determined order of facts, thus posing a stopping point to his intellectual movements, to his investigations, can claim to emancipate the one that moves unhindered, and whose thought probes the depths of infinity? To restrict the field of exploration of thought is to restrict its freedom, and that is what you are doing.

You still say that you want to take the world from the yoke of dogmatic beliefs; do you, at least, make a distinction between these beliefs? No, because you confuse in the same reprobation all that is not the exclusive domain of science, all that cannot be seen by the eyes of the body, in a word, all that is of spiritual essence, consequently God, the soul and the future life. But, if every spiritual belief is an obstacle to the freedom to think, so is all material belief; whoever believes that something is red, because he sees it red, is not free to believe it is green. As soon as thought is stopped by any conviction, it is no longer free; to be consistent with your theory, absolute freedom would consist in believing nothing at all, not even in one's own existence, for that would still be a restriction; but then what would become of thought?

Seen from this point of view, free thought would be nonsense. It must be understood in a broader and truer sense; that is to say, of the free use that one makes of the faculty of thinking, and not of its application to any order of ideas. It consists, not in believing one thing rather than another, nor in excluding this or that belief, but in the absolute freedom of the choice of beliefs. It is, therefore, improperly that some apply it exclusively to anti-spiritualist ideas. Any reasoned opinion, that is neither imposed nor blindly chained to that of others, but that is voluntarily adopted by virtue of the exercise of personal judgment, is free thought, whether religious, political or philosophical.

Free thought, in its broadest sense, means: free examination, freedom of conscience, reasoned faith; it symbolizes intellectual emancipation, moral independence, complementing physical independence; it does not want slaves of thought any more than slaves of the body, for what characterizes the free thinker is that he thinks for himself, and not for others, in other words, his opinion belongs to him. So, there can be free thinkers in all opinions and beliefs. In this sense, free thought raises the dignity of man; it makes him an active, intelligent being, instead of a believing machine.

In the exclusive sense that some give it, instead of emancipating the mind, it restricts its activity, it makes it the slave of matter. Fanatics of disbelief do, in one way, what fanatics of blind faith do in another; while the latter say: To be according to God you must believe in all that we believe; outside our faith there is no salvation, the others say: To be according to reason, you must think like us, believe only what we believe; outside the limits that we trace for belief, there is neither freedom nor common sense, a doctrine that is formulated by this paradox: Your mind is free only on the condition of not believing what it wants , which amounts to saying to an individual: You are the freest of all men, on condition that you do not go further than the end of the rope, to which we are attaching you.

We, certainly, do not contest the right of unbelievers to believe in nothing other than matter, but they will agree that there are singular contradictions in their claim to hold the monopoly of freedom of thought.

We have said that, by the quality of free thinker, certain people seek to attenuate what the absolute incredulity has of repellent to the opinion of the masses; suppose, in fact, that a journal is openly titled; the Atheist, the Incredulous or the Materialist; one can judge the impression that such title would have on the public; but if it shelters these same doctrines under the cover name of free thinker, with this label, one says: It is the flag of the moral emancipation; it must be that of freedom of conscience, and above all, of tolerance; let's see. We see that it is not always necessary to refer to the label.

It would be wrong, moreover, to be excessively frightened by the consequences of certain doctrines; they may, momentarily, seduce a few individuals, but they will never seduce the masses, that are opposed to them, out of instinct and necessity. It helps that all systems come to light, so that everyone can judge their strength and the weakness, and by the right of free examination, can knowingly adopt or reject them. When utopias have been seen in action, and their powerlessness proven, they will fall and never get up again. By their very exaggeration, they stirred up society and prepared the renovation. This is, again, a sign of the times.

Is Spiritism, as some think, a new blind faith substituted by another blind faith? In other words, is it a new slavery of thought in a new form? To believe it, one must ignore the first elements. Indeed, Spiritism establishes, as a principle, that before believing one must understand; to understand, one must use judgment; that is why it tries to verify everything before admitting anything, namely the why and the how of everything; also, the Spiritists are more skeptical than many others, regarding the phenomena that go beyond the circle of the usual observations. It is not based on any preconceived and hypothetical theory, but on experience and observation of facts; instead of saying, “Believe first, and then you will understand, if you can,” it says, “Understand first, and then you will believe if you will.” It does not impose itself on anyone; it says to everybody: “See, observe, compare and come to us freely if it suits you.” By speaking this way, it puts itself among competitors, and fights a chance with the competition. If many come to it, it is because it satisfies many, but no one accepts it with their eyes closed. To those who do not accept it, it says: “You are free, and I do not hold it against you; all I ask of you is to let me have my freedom, just as I am leaving yours to you. If you are trying to oust me, for fear that I will supplant you, it is because you are not quite sure of yourself."

Spiritism, not seeking to rule out any of the competitors, in the open competition of the ideas that must prevail in the regenerated world, it is in the conditions of true free thought; admitting no theory that is not founded on observation, it is, at the same time, in those of the most rigorous positivism; finally, it has the advantage of tolerance over its adversaries of two extreme opposing opinions.

Note. Some people have criticized us for the theoretical explanations that we have, from the beginning, sought to give about the Spiritist phenomena. These explanations, based on careful observation, by tracing the effects to the cause, proved, on the one hand, that we wanted to realize and not believe blindly; on the other hand, that we wanted to make Spiritism a science of reasoning and not of credulity. By these explanations that time has developed, but that it has blessed in principle, for none has been contradicted by experience, the Spiritists believed, because they understood, and there is no doubt that it is to this that the rapid increase in the number of serious followers must be attributed. It is to these explanations that Spiritism owes the fact that it has left the domain of the marvelous, and was connected to the positive sciences; through them, it is shown to the unbelievers that it is not a work of imagination; without them, we would still to understand the phenomena that arise every day. It was urgent, from the onset, to place Spiritism on its real ground. The theory, based on experience, was the brake that prevented superstitious credulity, as well as malevolence, from leading it astray. Why those that accuse us of having taken such initiative, haven’t they taken it themselves?