Robinson Crusoe Spiritist Who would have suspected that Robinson's innocent book was tainted with the principles of Spiritism, and that the youth, in whose hands it is placed, without mistrust, could draw from it the unhealthy doctrine of the existence of Spirits? We would still be unaware of it ourselves, if one of our subscribers had not pointed out to us, the following passages that are in the complete editions, but not in the abridged ones.
This work, in which we have seen mainly curious adventures, suitable to amuse little children, is imbued with a high moral philosophy, and a deep religious feeling.
One reads on page 161 (edition illustrated by Granville):
“These thoughts inspired me with a sadness that lasted quite a long time; but at last they took another direction; I felt the gratitude I owed heavens, which had spared me of a danger of which I did not know existed. This matter revived in me a reflection, that had already occurred to me more than once, since I had recognized how much, in all the dangers of life, Providence shows its goodness, by dispositions whose objective we do not understand. Often, in fact, we come out of the greatest dangers by marvelous ways; sometimes, a secret impulse suddenly guides us, in a moment of grave uncertainty, to take such and such a path, rather than another which would have brought us to our loss. I therefore made it a rule to never resist these mysterious voices that invite us to take such a side, to do or not to do such a thing, although no reason supports this secret impulse. I could cite more than one example in which deference to such warnings had full success, especially in the latter part of my stay on this unhappy island, without counting many other occasions that must have escaped me, and to which I would have payed attention if my eyes were open to that point. But it is never too late to be wise, and I advise all thoughtful men whose existence would be subjected, like mine, to extraordinary accidents, even to more common vicissitudes, to never neglect these intimate warnings of Providence, whatever the invisible intelligence that transmits them to us.”
On page 284:
“I had often heard very sensible people say that all that is said about ghosts and apparitions can be explained by the force of imagination; that a Spirit never appeared to anyone; but, that by thinking assiduously of those that one has lost, they become so present in the thought, that, under certain circumstances, one believes to see them, to speak to them, to hear their answers, and that all this is only an illusion, a shadow, a memory.
For me, I cannot say whether there exist in the present time real apparitions, specters, dead people who come back to roam the world, or if the stories that are told about these kinds of facts are based only on visions of ill brains, of exalted and disordered imaginations; but, I know that mine got to such a point of excitement, threw me in such fantastic excess of vapors, or whatever name you want to give them, that I sometimes believed to be in my island, in my old castle, behind the woods; I saw my Spaniard, Friday's father, and the degenerate sailors I had left on these shores; I even thought I was talking to them, and although I was wide awake, I stared at them fixedly, as if they were in front of me. This happened often enough to scare me.
Once, in my sleep, first the Spaniard, and then the old savage, recounted to me, in such natural and energetic terms, the wickedness of the three pirate sailors, that it was indeed surprising. They told me how these perverse men had tried to assassinate the Spaniards, then burned all their provisions, with the intention of making them starve; and this fact, that I could not know then, and that was true, was shown to me so clearly by my imagination, that I remained convinced of its truthfulness. I believed also in the continuation of this dream. I listened to the Spaniard's complaints with deep emotion; I called the three guilty parties before me and sentenced them to be hanged. We will see, in its place, what was accurate in this dream.
But how were these facts revealed to me? By which secret communication of the invisible spirits, they were made? This is what I cannot explain. Not all was literally true; but the main points were consistent with the reality, and the infamous conduct of these three scoundrels had been hardened far beyond what one might suppose. My dream, in this regard, had too much resemblance to the facts; moreover, when I found myself in the island, I wanted to punish them severely, and if I had them hanged, I would have been justified by the divine and human laws.
Nothing demonstrates more clearly the reality of a future life and of an invisible world than the concurrence of secondary causes with certain ideas that we have formed internally, without having received or given any human communication about them.”
