Fernanda – Spiritist Novella This is the title of a feuilleton by M. Jules Doinel (d'Aurillac), published in the Moniteur du Cantal on May 23rd and 30th, June 6th, 13th, and 20th, 1866. As we can see, the name of the Spiritism is not concealed, and the author should be congratulated even more, for his courage of public opinion is rarer among provincial writers, where contrary influences exert greater pressure than Paris.
We regret that after having been published in a serialized form, the form in which an idea spreads more easily among the masses, this novella has not been published in a volume, and that our readers are deprived from the pleasure of acquiring it. Although it is an unpretentious work and circumscribed to a very small frame, it is a true and endearing painting of the relationships between the spiritual world and the corporeal world, that brings its contribution to the popularization of the Spiritist idea, from a serious and moral point of view. It shows the pure and noble feelings that this belief can develop in the heart of man, the serenity that it gives in afflictions, by the certainty of a future that responds to all the aspirations of the soul, and gives full satisfaction to reason. To paint these aspirations with truthfulness, as the author does, one must have faith in what one says; a writer, for whom such a subject would be only a banal framework, without conviction, would believe that to make Spiritism it is enough to accumulate the fantastic, the marvelous and the strange adventures, as some painters believe that it is enough to spread out flashy colors to make a painting. True Spiritism is simple; it touches the heart and does not strike imagination with a hammer. This is what the author understood.
Fernande's script is very simple. She is a young woman, tenderly loved by her mother, taken in the prime of her life from her tenderness, and from the love of her fiancé, and who raises their courage by manifesting herself to their sight, and by dictating to her loved one, which will soon join her, the picture of the world that awaits for him. We will cite some of the thoughts we noticed there.
“I had become, since the appearance of Fernanda, a determined follower of the science from beyond the grave. Why, moreover, should I have doubted it? Does man have the right to establish limits to thought, and say to God: Won’t you go further?
Since we are near her and we are treading on a holy land, I am going, my dear friend, to speak to you with an open heart, calling God to witness the sincerity of all that you are going to hear. You believe in Spirits, I know, and more than once you have asked me to clarify your belief on this point. I did not do it, and I must tell you, without the strange manifestations that you had, I would never have done it. My friend, I believe that God has given certain souls such a force of sympathy that it can spread to the unknown regions of the other life. It is on this foundation that all my doctrine rests. The deception and juggling of some followers hurt me, because I do not understand that one can desecrate such a holy thing.
Oh! Stephen Stany (the groom) was quite right that quackery and juggling desecrate the holiest things. Belief in Spirits should make the soul serene; Where does it come from that, in the dark, the slightest noise terrifies me? I have sometimes seen emerging, in the half-light of my bedroom, either the ghost of Fernanda de Moeris, or the vague image of my mother. I smiled at them. But very often also, my sight is turned away with fear from the grimacing face of some evil spirits, that come to keep me away from good and to turn me away from God.
While speaking to me, Stany was calm. I noticed no trace of elation on his face. But, near this stone, its vaporous shape became even more visible. The soul of my friend showed itself entirely to my eyes. This beautiful soul had nothing to hide. I understood that the link that chained her to this body of mud was very weak, and that the time was not far off when she would fly to the other world.
She had told me: "Go to my mother’s." It was difficult to me, I confess; although engaged to Fernanda, I was not very well with your cousin. You know how jealous she was of anyone that held back any part of her daughter's affection. I will tell you, she received me with open arms and said to me, crying: "I saw her again!" The ice was broken; we were going to understand each other for the first time. My dear Stephen, she added, I think I was dreaming! But, finally, I saw her again, and here is what she said to me: “Mother, you will ask Stéphen Stany to stay eight days in the room that was mine. During these eight days you will make sure he is not disturbed. During this retreat, God will reveal many things to him." I was immediately taken to your cousin's room; and from that very day until yesterday, the day I saw you again, her soul has been with me without interruption. I saw her well, with the eyes of my Spirit and not with those of my body, although they were open. She spoke to me. When I say that she spoke to me, I mean that there was a transmission of thought between us. I now know everything I needed to know. I know that this globe has nothing left for me, and that a better existence awaits me.”
I learned to value the world at its fair value. Remember these words, my friend: Any Spirit who wants to achieve higher bliss must keep his body chaste, his heart pure, his soul free. Happy are those who know how to perceive the immaterial form of God through the shadows of what is passing!
Let us never forget, brothers, that God is Spirit, and the more one becomes Spirit, the closer one gets to God. Man is not allowed to violently break the bonds of matter, flesh, and blood. These links imply duties; but he is allowed to detach himself from it, little by little, by the idealism of his aspirations, by the purity of his intentions, by the radiance of his soul, a sacred reflection whose duty is home, until his Spirit, a free dove, freed from the mortal chains, flies and hovers in the immensities of space.”
The manuscript dictated by the Spirit of Fernanda, during Stéphen's eight-day retreat, contains the following passages:
“I died in turmoil and awoke in joy. I saw my barely cooled body stretch out on the funeral bed, and I felt relieved of a heavy burden. It was then that I saw you, my beloved one, and that by God’s permission, and the free exercise of my will, I saw you near my corpse.
While the worms continued their work of decomposition, I entered, curious, the mysteries of the new world in which I was living. I thought, I felt, I loved as on earth; but my thought, my feeling, my love had grown. I understood better the designs of God, I aspired to his divine will. We live an almost immaterial life, and we are superior to you as much as the angels are to us. We see God, but not clearly; we see it as we see the sun of your earth, through a thick cloud. But this imperfect view is enough for our soul that is not purified yet.
Men appear to us as ghosts wandering in a twilight mist. God has granted some of us the grace of seeing more clearly those whom we love preferably. I saw you like that, my dear love, and my will always surrounded you with loving sympathy. That is how your thoughts came to me, your actions were inspired by me, your life, in a word, was only a reflection of my life. Just as we can communicate with you, superior Spirits can reveal themselves to us. Sometimes, in the immaterial transparency, we see the august and luminous silhouette of some Spirit passing by. It is impossible for me to describe to you the respect that such a sight inspires in us. Happy are those of us who are honored with these divine visits. Admire the goodness of God! All worlds correspond with one another. We show ourselves to you; they show themselves to us: it is the symbolic scale of Jacob.
There are some who, with a single stroke of wings, have risen to God. But these are rare. Others endure the long trials of successive lives. It is virtue that establishes the ranks, and the beggar, bent down to earth, is sometimes, in the eyes of the just and severe God, greater than the proud king or the undefeated conqueror. Nothing is worth except through the soul; it is the only weight that matters in the scale of God.”
Now that we have done the praising, let's do the criticism; it will not be long, for it concerns only two or three thoughts. At the beginning, in a dialogue between the two friends, we find the following passage:
“Do we have previous existences? I do not believe it: God draws us from nothing; but what I'm sure of is that after what we call death we begin - and when I say we, I speak of the soul - we begin, I say, a series of new existences. The day we are pure enough to see, understand, and love God fully, only that day do we die. Note that on this day we love only God and nothing but God. So, if Fernanda were purified, she would not think, she could not think of me. Since she has manifested, I conclude that she is living. Where? I'll find out soon! She is happy with her life, I believe so, because until the Spirit has been purified completely, it cannot understand that happiness is only in God. She can be relatively happy. As we go up, the idea of God grows in us more and more, and we are, therefore, more and more happy. But this happiness is never more than relative happiness. So, my fiancée lives. How is her life? I don't know: God alone can tell the Spirits to reveal these mysteries to men.”
After ideas such as those contained in the passages above, one is astonished to find a doctrine like this one, that turns perfect happiness into egoistic happiness. The charm of the Spiritist doctrine, that makes it a supreme consolation, is precisely the thought of the perpetuity of affections, purifying and tightening as the Spirit purifies and rises; here, on the contrary, the Spirit, when it is perfect, forgets those whom it has loved, to think only of itself; he died to any sentiment other than that of his happiness; perfection would deprive him of the possibility, even the desire, to come and console those that he leaves in affliction. That would be, it must be admitted, a sad perfection, or to put it better, it would be an imperfection. Eternal happiness, thus conceived, would be scarcely more enviable than that of perpetual contemplation, of which the cloistered retreat gives us the image, by the anticipated death of the holiest affections of the family. If this were so, a mother would be reduced to dreading, instead of desiring, the complete purification of those who are dearest to her. Never has the generality of Spirits taught such a thing; it looks like a transaction between Spiritism and the vulgar belief. But this transaction is not happy, because not satisfying the intimate aspirations of the soul, it has no chance of prevailing with the public opinion.
When the author says that he does not believe in previous existences, but that he is sure that, after death, we start a series of new existences, he did not realize that he was committing a blatant contradiction; if one admits, as a logical and necessary thing for progress, the plurality of posterior existences, on what does it base itself to not admit previous existences? He does not say how he explains, in a manner consistent with God's justice, the native, intellectual, and moral inequality that exists between men. If this existence is the first, and if all have emerged from nothingness, we fall back into the absurd doctrine, irreconcilable with the sovereign justice, of a partial God, that favors some of his creatures, by creating souls of all qualities. We could also see it as a transaction with new ideas, but which is not happier than the previous one.
Finally, we are surprised to see Fernanda, an advanced Spirit, supporting this proposal on another occasion: “Laura became a mother; God had mercy on her, and called her child to him. Sometimes he comes to see her again. He is sad, because having died without baptism, he will never enjoy divine contemplation.” So, here is a Spirit that God calls to him, and who is forever miserable and deprived of the contemplation of God, because he has not received the baptism, although it did not depend on him to receive it, and that the fault lies with God himself who called him too early. It is doctrines like these that have made so many nonbelievers, and those that hope to see them pass to the side of the rooting Spiritist ideas, are mistaken; one will only accept, from the Spiritist idea, what is rational and sanctioned by the universality of the teaching of the Spirits. If there is still a transaction, it is wrong. We ensure in fact that out of a thousand Spiritist centers where the proposals that we have just criticized would be submitted to the Spirits, there are nine hundred and ninety where they will be resolved in the opposite direction.
It was the universality of the teaching, sanctioned, in fact, by logic, that made and will complete the Spiritist doctrine. This doctrine draws, from this universality of the teaching given on all points of the globe, by different Spirits, and in centers completely foreign to each other, and which do not undergo any common pressure, a force against which individual opinions would struggle in vain, whether of Spirits or of men. The alliance that one would claim to establish between the Spiritist ideas and contradictory ideas, can only be ephemeral and localized. Individual opinions can rally a few individuals, but necessarily circumscribed, they cannot rally the majority, unless they have the sanction of that majority. Repelled by the majority, they have no vitality, and die out with their representatives.
This is the result of a simple mathematical calculation. If, out of a thousand centers, there are 990 where we teach in the same way, and ten in a contrary way, it is obvious that the dominant opinion will be that of 990 out of 1,000, that is to say, almost a unanimity. Well! We are certain to give too large a share to divergent ideas, bringing them to one hundredth. Never formulating a principle until we are assured of the general agreement, we always agree with the opinion of the majority.
Spiritism today is in possession of a sum of truths so much demonstrated by experience, that at the same time satisfy reason so completely, that they have become articles of faith in the opinion of the vast majority of followers. Now, putting oneself in open hostility against this majority, offending its most cherished aspirations and convictions, is to prepare for an inevitable failure. That is the cause of the failure of certain publications.
But it will be asked, is it therefore forbidden for those who do not share the ideas of the majority to publish their opinions? Certainly not, it is even useful that one does so; but then, one must do so at one’s own risk and peril, and not count on the moral and material support of those whose beliefs one wants to undermine.
Going back to Fernanda, the points of doctrine that we criticized seem to be the personal opinions of the author, whose weak side he did not feel. In addressing us his work, the beginning of a young man, he told us that when he wrote this short story, he only had a superficial knowledge of the Spiritist doctrine, and that we would undoubtedly find several things to correct, on which he sought our opinion; that, more enlightened today, there are principles that he would formulate differently. By congratulating him on his frankness and his modesty, we informed him that, if there were any reason to refute him, we would do so in the Spiritist Review, for the instruction of all.
Apart from the points that we have just cited, there is none that the Spiritist doctrine cannot accept; we congratulate the author on the moral and philosophical point of view in which he has placed himself, and we consider his work to be eminently useful for the dissemination of the idea, because he makes it to be considered it in its true light, that is the serious point of view. (See in the previous issue, a poetry by the same author, with the title: To the protecting Spirits).
