The use of the word miracle The journal La Vérité, from Lyon, on September 16th, 1866, in an article entitled, Renan and his school, contained the following reflections on the word miracle:
“Renan and his school do not even bother to discuss the facts, they reject them all a priori, wrongly qualifying them as supernatural, and therefore impossible and absurd; they oppose them with an absolute end of inadmissibility, and a transcendent disdain. Renan said once, an eminently true and profound phrase: "The supernatural would be nothing other than the super-divine." We support this great truth with all our energy, but we point out that the very word miracle (mirum, astonishing and hitherto unexplained thing) does not mean, of course, inversion of the laws of nature, but rather the flexibility of these same laws still unknown to the human Spirit. We even say that there will always be miracles, for the ascent of humanity being always progressive towards a more perfect knowledge, this knowledge will constantly need to be surpassed and spurred on by facts that will appear marvelous to the mind, at the time when they will occur, and will not be understood and explained until later. A very accredited writer from our school let himself to accept this objection; (Allan Kardec) he repeats in many passages of his works that there are neither marvels nor miracles; it is an oversight resulting from the false sense of the supernatural, completely rejected by the etymology of the word. We say that if the word miracle did not exist, to qualify phenomena still under study and not covered by vulgar science, it would have to be invented as the most appropriate and the most logical.
Nothing is supernatural, we repeat, because apart from the created and the uncreated nature, there is nothing absolutely conceivable; but there is the superhuman, that is to say, phenomena that can be produced by intelligent beings, other than men, according to the laws of their nature, or else produced either mediately or immediately by God, still according to his nature and according to his natural relations with his creatures.
Philalethes”
We are not, thank God, ignoring the etymological meaning of the word miracle; we have proved this in many articles, and particularly in the article of the Spiritist Review, September 1860. It is, therefore, neither by mistake nor inadvertently that we reject its application to the Spiritist phenomena, however extraordinary they may appear at first glance, but with full knowledge of the facts and with intention. In its usual meaning, the word miracle has lost its original connotation, like so many others, starting with the word philosophy (love of wisdom), that we use today to express the most diametrically opposing ideas, from the purest spiritualism, down to the most absolute materialism. There is no doubt that, in the mind of the masses, miracle implies the idea of a supernatural fact. Ask anyone that believes in miracles if they regard them as natural effects.
The Church is so fixated on this point that it anathematizes those that claim to explain miracles by the laws of nature. The Academy itself defines this word as: Act of divine power, contrary to the known laws of nature. True, false miracle, proven miracle, work miracles. The gift of miracles.
To be understood by everyone, you have to speak like everyone else; now, it is obvious that if we had qualified the Spiritist phenomena as miraculous, the public would have misunderstood their true character, unless we used a periphrasis each time, and said that they are miracles that are not miracles like they are usually understood. Since it is generally attached to the idea of a derogation of the natural laws, and since the Spiritist phenomena are only the application of these same laws, it is much simpler and above all more logical to bluntly say: no, Spiritism does not work miracles. In this way, there is no misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Just as the progress of the physical sciences has destroyed a host of prejudices, and brought into the order of natural facts a large number of effects formerly considered to be miraculous, Spiritism, by the revelation of new laws, further restricts the realm of the marvelous; we say more: it swings the last blow, and that is why it is not everywhere, with the odor of sanctity, any more than astronomy and geology.
If those that believe in miracles understood this word in its etymological meaning (admirable thing), they would admire Spiritism instead of anathematizing it; instead of putting Galileo in prison, for having shown that Joshua could not stop the sun, they would have woven crowns for him, for having revealed to the world much more remarkable things, and that attest infinitely better to the greatness and the power of God.
For the same reasons, we reject the supernatural word from the Spiritist vocabulary. Miracle would still have its acceptance, in its etymology, except to determine its signification; supernatural is nonsense from the point of view of Spiritism. The word superhuman, proposed by Philalethes, is also inappropriate, in our opinion, because the beings who are the primitive agents of the Spiritist phenomena, although in the state of Spirits, nevertheless belong to humanity. The word superhuman would tend to sanction the opinion long accredited, and destroyed by Spiritism, that Spirits are creatures apart, outside of humanity. Another peremptory reason is that many of these phenomena are the direct product of embodied Spirits, consequently of men, and in all cases almost always require the assistance of an incarnate; therefore, they are no more superhuman than supernatural.
A word that has also completely deviated from its original meaning is demon. We know that daimon was used among the ancients, for the Spirits of a certain order, intermediaries between men and those who were called gods. Such designation did not imply, in the origin, any bad quality; on the contrary, it was taken in good sense; Socrates' demon was certainly not an evil Spirit; while according to modern opinion, resulting from Catholic theology, demons are fallen angels, beings apart, essentially and perpetually doomed to evil. To be consistent with the opinion of Philatethes, it would be necessary that, out of respect for etymology, Spiritism should also retain the qualification of demons. If Spiritism called its phenomena miracles, and the Spirits demons, its opponents would have had a good time! It would have been rejected by three quarters of those who accept it today, because they would have seen in it a return to beliefs that are no longer of our time. To dress Spiritism in worn clothes would have been a blunder; it would have been a fatal blow on the doctrine, that would have found it difficult to dispel the prejudices maintained by improper names.
