Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867

“Picturesque and sentimental journey to the resting fields of Montmartre and Père-Lachaise”; by Ant. Caillot, author of the encyclopedia of young ladies, and of the new elementary lessons of the French history. This is the title of a book published in Paris, in 1808, and that must be very rare today. The author, after having telling the history and the description of these two cemeteries, quotes a large number of tomb inscriptions, making philosophical reflections on each one, marked by a deep religious feeling, provoked by the thought that dictated them. We first noticed the following passage, in which the idea of reincarnation is clearly expressed:

“What a wise and deeply religious man was the first to name Resting Field, the last asylum of this creature whose existence, until his last breath, is tormented by the beings that surround him and by himself! Here, all lie in the womb of the common mother, and in a sleep that is only the precursor of awakening, of a new existence. Earth preserves as a sacred deposit, these venerable remains; and if it hastens to dissolve them, it is to purify their elements, and make them more worthy of the intelligence that will, one day, revive them for new destinies.”

Further down, he says:

Oh! how astonished was the blind and audacious mortal, who dared drive you out of his mind and his heart (the atheist that denies God), when his soul appeared before the Infinite Majesty! How couldn’t one see his remains shaking and trembling with surprise and terror? How come didn’t his icy tongue revive, to express the terror with which he was struck, when the flesh was no longer between him and the divine gazes! Good Lord! Universal cause, and soul of nature! All beings recognize you and celebrate you as their sole author. Would man alone, turn away from you the intelligent and rational Spirit, that you gave him to glorify you? Ah! No doubt, and I like to believe it, there wasn’t a single one of the forty thousand mortals, whose bodies lie here in the dust, who did not have the conviction of your existence and the feeling of your adorable perfections.

As I finished uttering these last words, with emotion, a noise was heard beside me. I cast my eyes towards the place where it came from, and I saw, an admirable and unheard-of thing! A specter who, wrapped in his shroud, had come out of a tomb, and gravely approached me, to speak to me. Was this apparition just a game of my imagination? This is what it is impossible for me to assure; but the following dialogue, that I remember well, makes me believe that I was not the only speaker for two roles at the same time.”

Here we will make a small critical observation, first on the qualification of specter given by the author to the appearance, real or imagined; this word is too reminiscent of the lugubrious ideas that superstition attaches to the phenomenon of apparitions, now perfectly explained from the knowledge we have of the constitution of the spiritual beings. Second, on what he brings this apparition to come out from the tomb, as if the soul made it its dwelling. But this is only a detail of form that stems from long rooted prejudices; the essential is in the picture that he presents of the moral situation of this soul, a situation identical to that revealed to us today by communications with the Spirits.

The author reports the dialogue he had, with the being that appeared to him, in the following terms:

“When the specter approached me, he made me hear these words, in a voice such that it is impossible for me to specify the sound, since I have never heard such thing among men:

Specter: You do well in worshiping God; don’t you ever imitate me, for I was an atheist.

Me: So, you didn't believe that there was a God?

Specter: No; or rather, I pretended not to believe it.

Me: What reasons did you have for not believing that the universe was produced and that it is ruled by a supreme intelligence?

Specter: None. No matter how much I looked for it, I did not find any solid ones, and I was reduced to repeating only vain sophisms that I had read in the works of a few so-called philosophers.

Me: If you didn't have good reasons for being an atheist, then you had reasons for appearing so?

Specter: Without a doubt. Seeing all my fellow human beings convinced of the idea of a God and the feeling of his existence, the pride that blinded me led me to distinguish myself from the multitude, sustaining before anyone that wanted to hear me that God did not exist, and that the universe was the work of chance, or even that it had always existed. I regarded it as a glory to think about this great subject differently from everybody, and I found nothing more flattering than to be regarded, in the world, as a Spirit strong enough to rise up against the common belief of all men and of all ages.

Me: Didn't you have another reason to embrace atheism, other than pride?

Specter: Yes.

Me: What was this motive? Tell the truth.

Specter: The truth !!… Without doubt, I will tell you that; for it is impossible for me, in the order of things in which I exist, to fight it or to conceal it.

Like all my fellows, I was born with the feeling of the existence of a God, the author and principle of all beings. This feeling, that initially was only a germ, in which my mind discovered nothing, developed little by little; and when I had reached the age of reason, and acquired the faculty of reflection, I had to make no effort to indulge myself in it. How much the lessons of my parents and my teachers pleased me, when God and his infinite perfections were the subject! How the spectacle of nature enchanted me and what sweet satisfaction I felt when I was told about this great God who created everything by his power, supports, governs, and preserves everything by his wisdom!

However, I reached adolescence, and passions began to make me hear their seductive voices. I was forming relationships with young people of my age; I followed their disastrous advice and conformed to their dangerous examples. Entering the world with these culpable dispositions, I no longer thought of anything else but of sacrificing all the principles of virtue and wisdom that had been inspired in me, at first. Those principles, every day attacked by my passions, took refuge in the depths of my conscience, and there they changed into remorse. Since that remorse wouldn’t give me a break, I resolved to annihilate, as much as I could, the cause that had given birth to them. I found that this cause was nothing more than the idea of a God, rewarding of virtue and avenging of crime; and I attacked it with all the sophisms that my Spirit could invent or discover, in the works intended to exalt the doctrine of atheism.

Me: Have you calmed down when you piled sophisms upon sophisms against the existence of God?

Specter: No matter how much I did, rest constantly eluded me; I was convinced, in spite of myself, and although my mouth did not utter a word that was not blasphemy, I did not have a feeling that did not fight against me, in favor of God.

Me: What happened to you during the illness from which you died?

Specter: I wanted to sustain the strong-minded character until the end; and pride prevented me from confessing my error, although, internally, I felt the pressing need. It was in this criminal and false disposition that I ceased to exist.

Me: What happened to you when your eyes were forever closed to light?

Specter: I found myself fully invested with the majesty of God, and I was seized by such a deep horror that I have no term that can give you a fair idea. I expected to be severely punished; but, the sovereign judge, whose mercy softens justice, relegated me to a dark region, inhabited by Spirits who had innocent hands and a sick brain.

Me: What is the fate of atheists who committed crimes against the society of their fellow human beings?

Specter: The Being of beings punishes them for having been wicked and not for being mistaken; for he despises opinions and only rewards or punishes actions.

Me: So, you are not punished in the dark abode where you are exiled?

Specter: I am suffering there a harsher punishment than you can imagine. God, after having condemned me, moved away from me; and immediately I lost any idea of my existence, and the nothingness presented itself before me, in all its horror.

Me: What! You have completely lost the idea of the existence of God?

Specter: Yes. It is the greatest torment an immortal Spirit can endure, and nothing can explain the state of abandonment, pain, and disorder in which one finds oneself.

Me: What is it that you do then, with the Spirits subjected to the same torture?

Specter: We argue endlessly, without being able to get along; irrationality and madness preside over all our debates; and in the deep obscurity in which our intelligence is buried, there is no opinion, no system that it does not adopt, to reject them soon and to conceive new extravagances. It is, therefore, the perpetual agitation of this ebb and flow of ideas, without foundation, without continuation, without connection, that consists in the punishment of the atheist philosophers.

Me: Yet, you are reasoning at this moment.

Specter: It's because my ordeal will soon end. This torture has taken very long; because, although we only count two years since my earthly death, I have suffered so much from all this madness that I have said and heard that I seem to have already spent thousands of centuries in the region of systems and disputes.

Having said that, the Specter bowed, worshiped God, and disappeared.

When I recovered from the emotion of what I had just seen and heard had caused me, my thoughts returned to the amazing things the specter had taught me. Does what he told me, about the first Being, correspond to the idea that so many men have formed? What did I just hear? What! the atheist himself, the horror of his fellows, ends up finding favor in the eyes of this Divinity, to whom I am introduced as of a vindictive and jealous nature! Hey! Who will now dare to tell me: If you do not adopt such and such an opinion, you will be condemned to the eternal torments? What a barbarian will dare to say: Outside of my communion there is no salvation? Incomprehensible and all merciful Being, have you assigned someone to take revenge? Is it up to a vile creature to tell his fellows: think like me or be forever miserable! What limits, great God, can we, narrow-minded beings as we are, fix to your clemency and justice? And by what right would I say to you: Here you will reward, there you will punish? Answer, O dead people who lie in this dust! Was it possible for you all to have the belief in which I was born? Were all your intelligences equally struck with the proofs that establish the mysteries that I adore and the dogmas in which I believe? Hey! How could the degrees of a belief be the same everywhere, as well as the degrees of conviction? Intolerant and cruel man, come, if you have the courage, sit beside me, and dare to tell the victims of death whose lessons I have come to listen to: “You are forty thousand here; well! There are only ten, only fifty, only a hundred among you, whom the vengeful God has not destined to the eternal flames!"



If this speech was not of a fool, of what use would the religion of the tombs be? Why should I respect the ashes of those that did not worship the great Being in my own way? Is it in this place, where the enemies of my belief rest, confused with its followers, that I could hear the lessons of true wisdom? And of what impiety would I be guilty of by communicating with reprobate intelligences, to whose spoils I come to pay homage, inspired by religion, as by humanity?