Galileo – regarding the drama of Mr. Ponsard The literary event of the day is the performance of Galileo, a drama in verse by Mr. Ponsard. Although it does not deal with Spiritism, it is linked to it by an essential aspect: that of the plurality of inhabited worlds, and from this point of view we can consider it as one of the works that are called upon to favor the development of the doctrine, by popularizing one of its fundamental principles.
The destiny of humanity is linked to the organization of the universe, as that of the inhabitant is linked to his dwelling. Ignoring such organization, man has had to form ideas about his past and his future, in relation to the state of his knowledge. If he had always known the structure of earth, he would never have dreamed of placing hell in its guts; if he had known the infinity of space and the multitude of worlds moving there, he would not have located the sky above the sky of stars; he would not have made earth the central point of the universe, the only dwelling of living beings; he would not have condemned the belief in the antipodes as a heresy; if he had known geology, he would never have believed in the formation of earth in six days, and in its existence for six thousand years.
The petty idea that man had of creation must have given him a petty idea of the divinity. He could only understand the greatness, the power, the infinite wisdom of the Creator when his thought could embrace the immensity of the universe, and the wisdom of the laws that govern it, as one judges the genius of a mechanic on the whole, the harmony and the precision of a mechanism, and not by looking at a single gear. It was only then that the ideas could grow and rise above his limited horizon. His religious beliefs have always been modeled on the idea he had of God and his work; the error of his beliefs about the origin and destiny of mankind was due to his ignorance of the true laws of nature; if he had known these laws from the beginning, his dogmas would have been quite different.
Galileo, one of the first to reveal the laws of the mechanism of the universe, not by hypotheses, but by an irrefutable demonstration, opened the way to new progress; for that very reason, he would produce a revolution in beliefs, by destroying the scaffolding of the erroneous scientific systems on which they were based.
To each one his own mission. Neither Moses nor Christ had that of teaching men the laws of science; the knowledge of these laws was to be the result of the work and research of man, of the activity and development of his own mind, and not of a revelation a priori, that would have given him knowledge without difficulty. They should have and could spoke to him only in a language appropriate to his intellectual state, otherwise they would not have been understood. Moses and Christ had their moralizing mission; scientific missions are transferred to geniuses of another order. Now, as moral laws and the laws of science are divine laws, religion and philosophy can only be true by the alliance of these laws.
Spiritism is founded on the existence of the spiritual principle, as a constitutive element of the universe; it rests on the universality and the perpetuity of intelligent beings, on their indefinite progress through worlds and generations; on the plurality of corporeal existences, necessary for their individual progress; on their relative cooperation, as incarnate and discarnate, in the general work, in the measure of the accomplished progress; on the solidarity that links all beings of the same world and the worlds between them. In this vast ensemble, incarnate and discarnate, each has their mission, their role, duties to fulfill, from the smallest to the angels that are not but human Spirits that have reached the state of pure Spirits, and to whom the great missions are entrusted, the governments of the worlds, as to experienced generals; instead of the deserted solitudes of boundless space, life and activity everywhere, useless idleness nowhere; everywhere the use of acquired knowledge; everywhere the desire to advance even further, and to increase the sum of happiness, by the useful employment of the faculties of intelligence.
Instead of an ephemeral and unique existence, spent on a small corner of the earth, forever deciding its future fate, imposing limits on progress, and rendering sterile, for the future, the trouble it takes to learn, man has for domain the universe; nothing that he knows and does is lost; the future is his; instead of selfish isolation, universal solidarity; instead of nothingness, according to some, eternal life; instead of a perpetual contemplative beatitude, according to others, that would render a perpetual uselessness, an active role proportioned to the acquired merit; instead of irreparable punishments for temporary faults, the position that each one takes for oneself, by one’s perseverance in good or in evil; instead of an original blemish that makes liable for mistakes that one has not committed, the natural consequence of one's own native imperfections; instead of the flames of hell, the obligation to repair the wrong that one has done, and to start again what one has done wrong; instead of an angry and vindictive God, a just and good God, taking into account all repentance and all good will.
Such is, in short, the picture presented by Spiritism, and that emerges from the very situation of the Spirits that manifest themselves; it is no longer a simple theory, but the result of observation. The man who sees things from this point of view feels that he is growing; he stands up before his own eyes; he is stimulated in his progressive instincts by seeing a purpose in his work, in his efforts to improve himself.
But to understand Spiritism in its essence, in the immensity of the things it embraces; to understand the objective of life and the destiny of man, it was not necessary to relegate humanity to a small globe, to limit the existence to a few years, shrinking the Creator and the creature; to have man getting a fair idea of his role in the universe, he had to understand, through the plurality of worlds, the field open to his future explorations and to the activity of his Spirit; to push back indefinitely the limits of creation, to destroy the prejudices about the special places of reward and punishment, about the different levels of heavens, he had to penetrate the depths of space; that instead of the crystalline and the empyrean, he saw there circulating, in a majestic and perpetual harmony, the innumerable worlds similar to his own; that his thought should meet the intelligent creature everywhere.
The history of earth is linked to that of humanity; in order for man to get rid of his petty and false opinions on the time, duration and mode of creation of our planet, of his legendary beliefs about the flood and his own origin; in order for him to consent to dislodge hell and the empire of Satan from the heart of earth, he had to be able to read in the geological strata the history of its formation and of its physical revolutions. Astronomy and geology, aided by the discoveries of physics and chemistry, supported by the laws of mechanics, are the two powerful levers that have broken down his prejudices about his origin and his destiny.
Matter and spirit are the two constitutive principles of the universe; but the knowledge of the laws that govern matter had to precede that of the laws that govern the spiritual element; only the former could successfully combat the prejudices by the evidence of facts. Spiritism, that has for its special object the knowledge of the spiritual element, had to come in second place; for it to take off and bear fruit, for it to be understood as a whole, it was necessary that it found the ground prepared, the field of the human mind cleared of prejudices and false ideas, if not in totality, at least in large part, without which we would have had only a minor, bastard, incomplete Spiritism, mixed with absurd beliefs and practices, as it is still today among belated peoples. If we consider the present moral situation of the advanced nations, we will recognize that it has come in right time, to fill the gaps that are created in beliefs.
Galileo opened the way; by tearing the veil that hid the infinite, it widened the domain of intelligence, and threw a fatal blow against erroneous beliefs; it destroyed more superstitions and misconceptions than all philosophies, for he undermined them from the ground up by showing reality. Spiritism must place him among the great geniuses who have cleared its way, by removing the barriers opposed by ignorance.
The persecutions of which it was the object, and that are the reward of anyone that attacks prejudices and inherited ideas, have raised it to the eyes of posterity, at the same time as they have lowered the persecutors. Who is the greatest today, them, or Spiritism?
We regret that the lack of space does not allow us to quote some fragments of the beautiful drama by Mr. Ponsard. We will do so in the next issue.
