Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867

Change of title of the La Vérité de Lyon



The journal La Vérité, from Lyon, has just changed its title; from March 10^th, 1867, it became The Universal Tribune, journal of free conscience and free thought. It announces it and explains the reasons for it in the following note, inserted in the February 24^th issue.

“To our Spiritist brothers and sisters.

Philalethes, the relentless champion that you know, thought it to be his duty to inform you that he would henceforth direct his investigations towards general philosophy, and no longer only towards Spiritism, of which, scientists do not even want to hear the name, thanks to their prejudices. But you should not think, dear brothers and sisters, that by removing the label from the bag, after all very indifferent, he wants to throw away the contents to the nettles, no more than we do! As far as we are personally concerned, we would be sorry if our readers could suspect us, for a single moment, wanting to desert an idea for which we have expended all the living forces, that we were capable of. The Spiritist idea today is an integral part of our being, and to remove it would be to doom our heart, our mind to death.

If we are Spiritists, however, and precisely because we believe we are, in the truest sense of the word, we want to be charitable, tolerant towards all opposing systems, and we want to reach out to them, since they refuse to come to us.

Is the label of Spiritists, stuck onto our forehead, a scarecrow for you, gentlemen deniers? Well, we willingly consent to remove it, reserving the right to carry it high in our souls. We will no longer be called La Vérité, journal of Spiritism, but The Universal Tribune, journal of free conscience and free thought. This terrain is as vast as the world, and systems of all kinds will be able to grapple with it at their will, risking assault with defectors from La Vérité, who will claim for themselves the right granted to all: discussion. It is then that, inflamed by the struggle, inspired by faith and guided by reason, we hope to shine in the eyes of our adversaries such a bright light, that God and immortality will no longer stand before them as a hideous phantom, a product of centuries of ignorance, but as a sweet and kind vision, in which all humanity will rest at last.

E. E.”