Several
newspapers reproduced the following fact:
“La Sentinelle, from Toulon, talks about a young phenomenon that is admired now, in this city:“She is a little girl, two years and eleven months old, called Eugénie Colombe. This child already knows how to read and write perfectly, she is also able to take the most serious examination on the principles of the Christian religion, on French grammar, geography, the history of France and the four rules of arithmetic. She knows the compass rose and perfectly supports a scientific discussion on all these subjects. This amazing little girl began to speak very distinctly when she was four months old.Presented in the salons of the maritime prefecture, Eugénie Colombe, endowed with a charming face, was a magnificent success."This article had seemed to us, and to many others, carried with such exaggeration that we gave no importance to it. Nevertheless, to know positively what to expect, we asked one of our correspondents, a naval officer in Toulon, to inquire into the fact. Here is what he told us:
“
To make sure of the truth, I went to the parents’ house of the little girl, reported by the Sentinelle of Toulon, on November 19th; I saw this charming child, whose physical development is commensurate with her age; she is only three years old. Her mother is a schoolteacher; it is she that directs her education. She questioned her, in my presence, about catechism, holy history, from the creation of the world to the flood, the first eight kings of France and various circumstances relating to their reign and that of Napoleon I. In geography, the child named the five parts of the world, the capitals of the countries they contain, several capitals of the departments of France. She also answered perfectly well the first notions of French grammar and the metric system. This child did all the above without hesitation, while having fun with the toys she was holding in her hands. Her mother told me that she has been able to read since she was two and a half years old and has assured me that she can answer over five hundred questions in the same way."
Freed from the exaggeration of the newspapers, and reduced to the above proportions, the fact is, nonetheless, remarkable, and important in its consequences. It necessarily calls attention to analogous facts of intellectual precocity and innate knowledge. We involuntarily try to explain them to ourselves, and with the ideas of plurality of existences that circulate, we only manage to find a rational solution in a previous existence. We must classify these phenomena among those that were announced before, confirming, by their multiplicity, the Spiritist beliefs, and contributing to their development.
In this case, memory certainly seems to play an important role. The mother of this child being a teacher, the little girl was undoubtedly usually in the class, and will have learned the lessons taught to the pupils by her mother, while we see some children possessing, by intuition, some kind of innate knowledge, and independent of any teaching. But why, with her rather than with others, this exceptional facility to assimilate what she heard, and that one probably did not dream of teaching her? It was because what she heard only awakened in her the memory what she had known. The precocity of certain children for languages, music, mathematics, etc., all innate ideas, in a word, are also only memories; they remember what they knew, as we see some people remember, more or less vaguely, what they did, or what happened to them. We know a little five-year-old boy that, being at the table, where nothing in the conversation could have provoked an idea on this subject, began saying: "
I was married, and I remember it well; I had a wife, small, young and pretty, and I had several children.” We certainly have no means of controlling his assertion, but we wonder where he could have taken such an idea from, when no circumstances could have provoked it.
Should we conclude that children that only learn through hard work have been ignorant or stupid in their previous existence? Certainly not; the faculty of remembering is an aptitude inherent to the psychological state, that is, to the easier release of the soul in some individuals than in others, a sort of retrospective spiritual view that reminds them of the past, while for those that do not have it, this past leaves no apparent trace. The past is like a dream that we remember, more or less exactly, or that we have totally lost the memory of. (See Spiritist Review of July 1860, and November 1864).
At the time of sending for printing, we received a letter, from one of our correspondents in Algeria, that while passing through Toulon, saw the young Eugénie Colombe; it contains the following account that confirms the previous one, and adds details to it that are not without interest:
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This child, of a remarkable beauty, is extremely lively, but angelically sweet. Placed on her mother's lap, she answered more than fifty questions about the Gospel. When asked about geography, she pointed out to me all the capitals of Europe and the various states of America; all the capitals of the French departments and Algeria; she explained to me the decimal system, the metric system. In grammar, verbs, participles, and adjectives. She knows, or at least defines, the first four basic rules. She wrote at my dictation, but with such rapidity that I am inclined to believe that she does a mediumistic writing. In the fifth line she put down her pen; she looked at me fixedly with her big blue eyes, and abruptly said to me: “Sir, that's enough; Then she got down from her seat and ran to her toys. This child is certainly a very advanced Spirit because we see that she answers and quotes without the slightest effort of memory. Her mother told me that, since the age of 12 to 15 months, she dreams at night and seems to be conversing, but in a language that does not allow her to be understood. She is charitable by instinct; she always attracts her mother's attention when she sees a poor person; she cannot bear to see dogs, cats or any animals mistreated. Her father is a shipyard worker.”Only enlightened Spiritists, like our two correspondents, could appreciate the psychological phenomenon presented by this young child, and investigate its cause; for, just as to judge a mechanism, one needs be a mechanic, to judge Spiritist facts, one must be a Spiritist. Now, who in general is responsible for the observation and explanation of phenomena of this kind? Precisely people that have not studied them, and that denying the first cause, cannot admit the consequences.
