1 – Can we consider Spiritism as a revelation? In this case, what is its character? What is its authenticity based on? To whom and in what way was it made? Is the Spiritist doctrine a revelation, in the liturgical sense of the word, in other words, is it in every way the product of an occult teaching from above? Is it absolute or subject to change? By bringing the ready-made truth to men, wouldn't the revelation have the effect of preventing them from making use of their faculties, since it would spare them the work of research? What can be the authority of the teaching of the Spirits, if they are not infallible and superior to humanity? What is the utility of the morality they preach, if this morality is no other than that of Christ, that is known? What new truths are they bringing to us? Does man need a revelation, and can’t he find in himself and in his conscience all that is necessary for him to behave? These are the questions on which it is important to concentrate.
2 – Let us first define the meaning of the word revelation.
To reveal, derived from the word veil (from the Latin velum), literally means to remove the veil, and figuratively: to discover, to make known a secret or unknown thing. In its most general vulgar acceptation, it is said of anything ignored that comes to light, of any new idea put in the path of what one did not know.
From that point of view, all the sciences that allow us to know the mysteries of nature are revelations, and we can say that there is a never-ending revelation for us; astronomy has revealed to us the astral world, that we did not know; geology, the formation of earth; chemistry, the law of affinities; physiology, bodily functions, etc.; Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Lavoisier, are revealers.
3 – The essential character of every revelation must be the truth. To reveal a secret is to make a fact known; if it is wrong, it is not a fact, and therefore there is no revelation. Any revelation contradicted by the facts is not a revelation; if it is attributed to God, since God is unable to lie or to be mistaken, it cannot emanate from Him; it should be seen as the product of personal opinion.
4 – What is the role of the teacher regarding his students, if not that of a revealer? He teaches them what they do not know, what they would neither have the time nor the possibility to discover by themselves, because science is the collective work of centuries and of a multitude of people, each one bringing their contingent of observations, and that benefit those that come after them. Teaching, therefore, is the revelation of certain scientific or moral, physical, or metaphysical truths, made by men who know them, to others that ignore them, and that would otherwise have always ignored them.
5 – But the teacher only teaches what he has learned: he is a second-order revealer; the man of genius teaches what he himself has found: he is the primitive revealer; he brings the light that is popularized step by step. Where would humanity be, without the revelation of the men of genius that appear from time to time?
But what are the men of genius? Why are they men of genius? Where do they come from? What are they becoming? Note that most of them bring transcendent faculties and innate knowledge at birth, that a little work is enough to develop. They really belong to humanity, since they are born, live and die like us. Where did they get this knowledge that they could not have acquired during their lifetime? Will we say, with the materialists, that chance gave them brain matter in greater quantity and of better quality? In that case, they would not have more merit than a vegetable bigger and tastier than another.
Will we say, with certain spiritualists, that God has endowed them with a more favored soul than that of the common man? An equally illogical assumption since it would accuse God of partiality. The only rational solution to this problem is in the preexistence of the soul and in the plurality of existences. The man of genius is a Spirit that has lived longer, who has, therefore, acquired more and progressed more than those who are less advanced. By incarnating, he brings what he knows, and as he knows much more than the others, without needing to learn, he is what we call a man of genius. But what he knows is nonetheless the fruit of previous work and not the result of a privilege. Before being reborn, therefore, he was an advanced Spirit; he reincarnates either to make others benefit from what he knows, or to acquire more.
Men undoubtedly progress by themselves and by the efforts of their intelligence; but, left to their own strength, this progress is very slow if they are not aided by more advanced men, as the schoolboy is by his teachers. All peoples have had their men of genius who have come, at various times, to give an impetus and to drive them out of their inertia.
6 – As soon as we admit the solicitude of God to his creatures, why not admit that Spirits capable of advancing humanity, by their energy and the superiority of their knowledge, incarnate, by the will of God, with the objective of helping progress in a determined direction; that they receive a mission, as an ambassador receives one from his sovereign? This is the role of the great geniuses. What do they come to do, if not to teach men truths that they do not know, and that they would have still ignored for long periods, giving them a footstool with the help of which they will be able to rise more quickly? These geniuses that appear through the centuries, like shining stars, leaving behind them a long shining trail upon humanity, are missionaries, or messiahs, if you will. If they did not teach men anything other than what these know, their presence would be completely useless; the new things that they teach, either in the physical order or in the philosophical order, are
revelations.
If God requests revealers for scientific truths, God can, with even more reason, requests revealers for moral truths, that are one of the essential elements of progress. These are the philosophers whose ideas have traversed the centuries.
7 – In the special sense of religious faith, revelation is more particularly said of spiritual things that man cannot know for himself, that he cannot discover by means of his senses, and whose knowledge is given by God or by his messengers, either by direct speech or by inspiration. In this case, the revelation is always made to privileged men, designated under the name of prophets or
messiahs, that is,
envoys, missionaries, with the mission of transmitting it to men. Considered from this point of view, revelation implies absolute passivity; it is accepted without control, without examination, without discussion.
8 – All religions have had their revealers, and although all are far from having known the whole truth, they had their reasons for being providential, for they were appropriate to the time and environment in which they lived, to the particular genius of peoples to whom they spoke, and to whom they were relatively superior. Despite the errors of their doctrines, they nonetheless stirred minds, and by that very fact, sowed the seeds of progress that were to flourish later or will one day flourish in the sun of Christianity. It is, therefore, wrong that they are execrated in the name of orthodoxy, because a day will come when all these beliefs, so diverse in form, but that are in reality based on the same fundamental principle: God and the immortality of the soul, will merge into a great and vast unity, when reason has prevailed over prejudices.
Unfortunately, religions have always been instruments of domination; the role of prophets tempted secondary ambitions, and we saw the emergence of a multitude of so-called revealers or messiahs who, thanks to the prestige of this name, exploited credulity for the benefit of their pride, their greed or their laziness, finding it more convenient to live at the expenses of their victims. The Christian religion has not been immune to these parasites. On this subject, we call serious attention to chapter XXI of the Gospel according to Spiritism: “
There will be false Christs and false prophets ".
9 – Are there direct revelations from God to men? This is a question that we would not dare to resolve either affirmatively or negatively, in an absolute manner. The thing is not radically impossible, but nothing gives a certain proof of it. What cannot be doubted is that the Spirits closest to God by perfection penetrate His thought and can transmit it. As for the incarnate revealers, depending on the hierarchical order to which they belong and the level of their personal knowledge, they may draw their instructions from their own knowledge, or receive them from more elevated Spirits, or even from direct messengers of God. These, speaking in the name of God, could sometimes be mistaken for God himself.
There is nothing strange about these kinds of communications to anyone that is familiar with the Spiritist phenomena, and the way by which the relationships between the incarnate and discarnate are established. The instructions can be conveyed by various means: by pure inspiration, by hearing the word, by seeing the teaching Spirits in visions and appearances, either in dreams or in the waking state as well, as we see many examples of it in the Bible, in the Gospel and in the sacred books of all peoples. It is therefore strictly correct to say that most revealers are inspired, hearing or seeing mediums; hence it does not follow that all mediums are revealers, and even less so the direct intermediaries of the Divinity or of its messengers.
10 – Pure Spirits alone receive the word of God with the mission of transmitting it; but we now know that Spirits are far from being all perfect, and that there are some that give themselves false appearances; this is what made St. John say: "
Do not believe in every Spirit, but see first whether the Spirits are of God." (Epistle 1, chap. IV, v. 4.)
So, there can be serious and true revelations, as there are apocrypha and false ones. The essential character of the divine revelation is that of
eternal truth. Any revelation tainted with error or subject to change cannot emanate from God. Thus, the law of the Decalogue has all the characteristics of its origin, while the other Mosaic laws, essentially transitory, often in contradiction with the law of the Sinai, are the personal and political work of the Hebrew legislator. The morals of the people softening, these laws have themselves fallen into disuse, while the Decalogue has remained standing as the beacon of humanity. Christ made it the basis of his edifice, while he abolished the other laws; if they had been the work of God, he would have been careful not to touch them. Christ and Moses are the two great revealers that changed the face of the world, and that is the proof of their divine mission. A purely human work would not have such power.
11 – An important revelation is taking place in the present day; it is the one that shows us the possibility of communicating with the beings of the spiritual world. This knowledge is not new, no doubt, but it had remained in the state of a dead letter until our days, that is, of no benefit to humanity. The ignorance of the laws governing these relationships had muffled it under superstition; man was incapable of drawing any healthy deduction from it; it was reserved to our time to rid it from its ridiculous accessories, to understand its reach, and to bring out the light that was to illuminate the road of the future.
12 – Having Spiritism allowed us to know the invisible world that surrounds us, and in the midst of which we live without suspecting it, the laws that govern it, its relationships with the visible world, the nature and the state of the beings that inhabit it, and consequently the destiny of man after death, it is a real revelation in the scientific acceptance of the word.
13 – By its nature, the Spiritist revelation has a double character; it is, at the same time, a divine revelation, and a scientific revelation. It derives from the first, in that its advent is providential, and not the result of man's initiative and premeditated design; for the fundamental points of the doctrine are the fact of the teaching given by the Spirits, assigned by God to enlighten men on things that they did not know, that they could not learn by themselves, and that it is important for them to know today, that they are mature to understand them. It derives from the second, in that this teaching is not the privilege of any individual, but that it is given to everyone by the same means; that those who transmit it and those who receive it are not
passive beings, exempt from the work of observation and research; that they do not renounce their judgment and their free will; that control is not forbidden to them, but on the contrary recommended; finally, that the doctrine
was not dictated in all parts, nor imposed on a blind belief; that it is deduced, by the work of man, from the observation of the facts that the Spirits put before his eyes, and of the instructions that they give him, instructions that he studies, comments on, compares, and from which he himself draws the consequences and applications.
In a word, what characterizes the Spiritist revelation is that its source is divine, that the initiative belongs to the Spirits, and that the development is the work of man. 14 – As a means of elaboration, Spiritism proceeds exactly in the same way as the positive sciences, that is, it applies the experimental method. Facts of a new order are presented, that cannot be explained by the known laws; he observes them, compares them, analyzes them, and from the effects going back to the causes, he arrives at the law that governs them, then he deduces the consequences and seeks useful applications. He does not establish any preconceived theory; thus he did not present as a hypothesis neither the existence nor the intervention of Spirits, nor the perispirit, nor reincarnation, nor any of the principles of the doctrine; he concluded by the existence of Spirits when this existence emerged with evidence from the observation of the facts, as with the other principles. It was not the facts that subsequently came to confirm the theory, but the theory that subsequently came to explain and summarize the facts. It is, therefore, strictly correct to say that Spiritism is a science of observation, and not the product of imagination.
15 – Let us cite an example. A very singular fact that takes place in the world of the Spirits, and which certainly no one would have suspected, is that of Spirits who do not believe themselves to be dead. Well! the superior Spirits, who know this perfectly well, have not come to say, in anticipation: “
There are Spirits that still believe they are living the earthly life; who have retained their tastes, habits and instincts;” But they provoked the manifestation of Spirits of that category, to make us observe them. Having thus seen Spirits uncertain of their state or affirming that they were still of this world, and believing to go about their ordinary businesses, from the example one concluded with the rule. The multiplicity of analogous facts has proved that this was not an exception, but one of the phases of the spiritual life; it has made it possible to study all the varieties and causes of this singular illusion; to recognize that this situation is particularly common to Spirits that are not very advanced morally, and to certain kinds of death; that it is only temporary, but can last for days, months and years. This is how the theory was born from the observation. The same is true to all other principles of the doctrine.
16 – Just as science, properly called, has for its object the study of the laws of the material principle, the special object of Spiritism is the knowledge of the laws of the spiritual principle; now, as this last principle is one of the forces of nature, that reacts incessantly on the material principle and vice versa, it follows that the knowledge of one cannot be complete without the knowledge of the other; that Spiritism and science complement each other; that science without Spiritism is unable to explain certain phenomena by the sole laws of matter, and that it is for having disregarded the spiritual principle that it has stopped at so many dead ends; that Spiritism without science would lack support and control, and could feed illusions. If Spiritism had appeared before scientific discoveries, it would have been an aborted work, like everything that comes before its time.
17 – All the sciences are linked and follow one another in a rational order; they arise from each other, as they find a support in previous ideas and knowledge. Astronomy, one of the first to be cultivated, remained in the errors of childhood until the time when physics came to reveal the law of the forces of the natural agents; chemistry, being unable to do anything without physics, had to succeed it closely, to then work in concert, leaning on one another. Anatomy, physiology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, have only become serious sciences with the help of the insights brought by physics and chemistry. Geology, born yesterday, without astronomy, physics, chemistry and all the others, would have lacked its true elements of vitality; it could only come afterwards.
18 – Modern science has done justice to the four primitive elements of Ancient times, and from observation to observation, it has arrived at the conception of
a single element generating all the transformations of matter; but matter, by itself, is inert; it has no life, no thought, no feeling; it needs its union with the spiritual principle. Spiritism neither discovered nor invented this principle, but it was the first to demonstrate it by irrefutable proofs; Spiritism studied it, analyzed it, and turned its action obvious. To the
material element, it came to add the
spiritual element. Material element and spiritual element, these are now the two principles, the two living forces of nature. By the indissoluble union of these two elements one can easily explain a host of facts hitherto inexplicable.
By its very essence, and as having as its object of study one of the two constitutive elements of the universe, Spiritism necessarily touches most of the sciences; it could only come after the elaboration of these sciences, and above all after they had demonstrated their inability to explain everything by the sole laws of matter.
19 – Spiritism is accused of being related to magic and witchcraft; but we forget that the ancestor of astronomy is judicial astrology, that is not so far from us; that chemistry is the daughter of alchemy, that no rational man would dare deal with today. No one denies, however, that there was, in astrology and alchemy, the germ of truths from which the current sciences have sprung. Despite its ridiculous formulas, alchemy has set the path for simple bodies and the law of affinities; astrology was based on the position and movement of the stars it had studied; but due to the ignorance of the true laws that govern the mechanism of the universe, the stars were, to the uneducated, mysterious beings to which superstition lent a moral influence and a revealing meaning. When Galileo, Newton, Keppler had these laws known, that the telescope had torn the veil, and plunged into the depths of space a glance, that some people found indiscreet, the planets appeared to us as simple worlds similar to ours, and the whole scaffolding of the marvelous collapsed.
It is the same with Spiritism with regard to magic and witchcraft; these were also based on the manifestation of Spirits, like astrology was on the movement of the stars; but due to the ignorance of the laws that govern the spiritual world, they mixed with these relationships ridiculous practices and beliefs, of which modern Spiritism, fruit of experience and observation, has done justice. Certainly, the distance that separates Spiritism from magic and witchcraft is greater than that between astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy; the wish to confuse them is to prove that one does not know the alphabet.
20 – The mere fact of the possibility of communicating with beings of the spiritual world has incalculable consequences, of the highest gravity; a whole new world is revealed to us, and that is all the more important because it reaches all men, without exception. This knowledge cannot fail to bring about, by being generalized, a profound modification in the manners, in the character, in the habits, and in the beliefs that have such a great influence on social relationships. A whole revolution is taking place in the ideas, a revolution that is all the greater, all the more powerful, because it is not confined to a people, to a caste, but that it simultaneously reaches all classes, all nationalities, all cults through the heart.
It is therefore with good reason that Spiritism is considered the third great revelation. Let us see how they differ, and by which link they relate to each other.
21 – As a prophet, Moses revealed the knowledge of a unique God to men, sovereign master and creator of all things; he promulgated the law of Sinai and laid the foundations of true faith; as a man, he was the legislator of the people by whom this primitive faith, by purifying itself, was one day to spread over the whole world.
22 – Jesus Christ, taking from the old law what is eternal and divine, and rejecting what was only transitory, purely disciplinary and of human conception, adds the revelation of the future life, of which Moses had not spoken, and the penalties and rewards that await man after death. (See Spiritist Review, 1861).
23 – The most important part of the revelation of Christ, in the sense that it is the first source, the cornerstone of all his doctrine, is the completely new point of view from which he makes us consider the divinity.
It is no longer the terrible, jealous, vindictive God of Moses, the cruel and merciless God that waters earth with human blood, who orders the massacre and extermination of peoples, not excluding women, children and the elderly; who chastises those who spare the victims; it is no longer the unjust God that punishes a whole people for the fault of their leader, that retaliates the guilty one on the person of the innocent, that harms the children for the fault of their parents, but a merciful God, sovereignly righteous and good, full of compassion and mercy, that forgives a repentant sinner,
and repays each according to their works; it is no longer the God of a single privileged people, the
God of armies presiding over the battles to support his own cause against the God of other peoples, but the common father of mankind who extends his protection over all his children, and calls them all to him; it is no longer the God who only rewards and punishes with the goods of earth, who makes glory and happiness consist in the enslavement of rival peoples, and in the multiplicity of progenies, but who says to men: "Your true homeland is not in this world, it is in the celestial kingdom; there the humble in heart will be exalted and the proud will be humbled." It is no longer the God that turns vengeance into a virtue, and orders to give back eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but the God of mercy who says: "Forgive offenses if you want to be forgiven; return good for evil; do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you.” It is no longer the petty and meticulous God who imposes, under the most rigorous penalties, the way in which he wants to be worshiped, who takes offense at the non-observance of a formula, but the great God that looks at thought and does not take pride in the form; Finally, it is no longer the God that wants to be feared, but the God that wants to be loved.
24 – God being the pivot of all religious beliefs, the goal of all cults,
the character of all religions is consistent with the idea they make of God. Those who make him a vindictive and cruel God believe they honor him by acts of cruelty, by stake and torture; those who make him a partial and jealous God are intolerant; they are more or less meticulous in form, according to whether they believe it to be more or less tainted with human weaknesses and pettiness.
25. All the doctrine of Christ is founded on the character that he attributes to the Divinity. With an impartial God, supremely just, good and merciful, he was able to make the love of God and charity towards the neighbor the express condition of salvation, and say:
This is all the law and the prophets, There's no other. On this belief alone, he was able to establish the principle of the equality of men before God, and that of universal brotherhood.
This revelation of the true attributes of the divinity, joined to that of the immortality of the soul and of the future life, profoundly modified the mutual relationships between men, imposed on them new obligations, made them consider the present life in a different light. It was, by that very fact, a whole revolution in the ideas, a revolution that was bound to react on manners and social relationships. It is incontestably, by its consequences, the most capital point of the revelation of Christ, and of which one has not sufficiently understood the importance; It is regrettable to say it, it is also the one from which one has deviated the most, that one has misunderstood the most in the interpretation of his teachings.
26 – However, Christ adds: Many of the things I am telling you, you cannot understand yet, and I would have many more to tell you that you would not understand; therefore, I speak to you in parables; but later I will send you the
Consoler, the Spirit of Truth who will restore all things and explain them all to you.
If Christ did not say all that he could have said, it is because he believed he had to leave certain truths in the shade, until men were able to understand them. By his admission, his teaching was therefore incomplete, since he announces the coming of the one who must complete it; he, therefore, foresaw that one would misunderstand his words, that one would deviate from his teaching, in a word, that one would undo what he had done, since everything must be restored; well, one can only
restore what has been undone.
27 – Why does he call the new messiah the
Consoler? This meaningful and unambiguous name is quite a revelation. He, therefore, foresaw that men would need consolations, that implies the insufficiency of those that they would find in the belief they were going to acquire. Never, perhaps, has Christ been clearer and more explicit than in these last words, to which few people have taken notice, perhaps because they have avoided to bring them to light and to deepen their prophetic meaning.
28 – If Christ could not develop his teaching in a complete way, it is because men lacked knowledge that they could only acquire with time, and without which they could not understand it; there are things that would have seemed nonsense, in the state of knowledge of that time. Completing one's teaching, therefore, must be understood in the sense of
explaining and developing, much more than in that of adding new truths, for everything is there in germ; the key to grasp the meaning of his words was missing.
29 – But who dares to allow oneself to interpret the sacred Scriptures? Who has that right? Who has the necessary enlightenment, if not the theologians? Who dares? To begin with, science that does not ask permission from anyone to make the laws of nature known, jumping with both feet over errors and prejudices. Who has this right? In this century of intellectual emancipation and freedom of conscience, the right of examination belongs to everyone, and the Scriptures are no longer the holy ark that no one dared to touch, without risking being smashed. As for the special enlightenment necessary, without contesting those of the theologians, and however enlightened were those of the Middle Ages, and in particular the Fathers of the Church, they were not sufficient enough not to condemn, as heresy, the movement of earth and the belief in the antipodes; and without going back so far, haven't those of our day cast anathema to the periods of formation of earth?
Men could only explain the Scriptures with the help of what they knew, with the false or incomplete notions they had about the laws of nature, later revealed by science; this is why theologians themselves have been able, in very good faith, to misunderstand the meaning of certain words and certain facts of the Gospel. Wanting to find there, at all costs, the confirmation of a preconceived thought, they always walked around in the same circle, without leaving their point of view, so that they saw there only what they wanted to see. However wise those theologians were, they could not understand the causes that depend on laws they did not know.
But who will be the judge of the various, and often contradictory, interpretations given outside of theology? The future, logic, and common sense. Men, more and more enlightened, as new facts and new laws come to light, will know how to distinguish between utopian systems and reality; now, science makes certain laws known; Spiritism makes others; both are essential for the understanding of the sacred texts of all religions, from Confucius and Buddha to Christianity. As for theology, it cannot judiciously point at the contradictions of science, when it does not always agree with itself.
30 – Spiritism taking its point of departure from the very words of Christ, as Christ took his from Moses, it is a direct consequence of his doctrine.
To the vague idea of the future life, he adds the revelation of the existence of the invisible world that surrounds us and populates the space, and by this it defines the belief; it gives it a body, a consistency, a reality in thought. It defines the bonds that unite the soul and the body and lifts the veil that hid from men the mysteries of birth and death.
Through Spiritism, man knows where he comes from, where he is going, why he is on earth, why he suffers there temporarily, and he sees the justice of God everywhere. He knows that the soul is constantly progressing through a series of successive existences, until it has reached the degree of perfection that can bring it closer to God.
He knows that all souls, having the same starting point, are created equal, with the same ability to progress by virtue of their free will; that all are of the same essence, and that the only difference that there is between them is the accomplished progress; that all have the same destiny and will reach the same goal, more or less rapidly, according to their work and their good will.
He knows that there are no disinherited creatures, nor one more favored than the other; that God has not created any who are privileged and exempt from the work imposed on others, in order to progress; that there are no beings perpetually doomed to evil and suffering; that those designated under the name of
demons are
Spirits, still belated and imperfect, who do evil in the state of Spirits, as they did in the state of men, but who will advance and improve; that the angels or pure Spirits are not beings apart in creation, but Spirits who have reached the goal, after having followed the path of progress; that thus, there are no multiple creations of different categories among the intelligent beings, but that all creation emerges from the great law of unity that governs the universe, and that all beings gravitate towards a common goal, that is perfection, without some being favored at the expense of others, for all are the children of their own works.
31 – By the relationships that man can now establish with those who have left the earth, he not only has the material proof of the existence and the individuality of the soul, but he understands the solidarity that connects the living and the dead of this world, and those of this world with those of other worlds. He knows their situation in the world of the Spirits; he follows them in their migrations; he witnesses their joys and their sorrows; he knows why they are happy or unhappy, and the fate that awaits him, according to the good or the bad he does. These relationships initiate him into the future life, that he can observe in all its phases, in all its vicissitudes; the future is no longer a vague hope: it is a positive fact, a mathematical certainty. Then, there is nothing scary about death anymore because it is freedom for him, the door to true life.
32 – By studying the situation of the Spirits, man knows that happiness and unhappiness in the spiritual life are inherent to the degree of perfection and imperfection; that each one suffers the direct and natural consequences of their faults, in other words, that one is punished where one has sinned; that these consequences last as long as the cause that produced them; that thus, the guilty one would suffer eternally if he persisted in evil eternally, but that suffering ceases with
repentance and reparation; Now, as it depends on each one to improve oneself, each one can, by virtue of one’s free will, prolong or shorten their sufferings, as the patient suffers from his excesses, as long as he does not put an end to them.
33 – If reason rejects, as incompatible with the goodness of God, the idea of irremissible, perpetual and absolute punishments, often inflicted for a single fault, of the punishments of hell that cannot be softened by the most ardent and the most sincere repentance, it bows before this distributive and impartial justice, that takes everything into account, that never closes the door of returning, and ceaselessly extends its hand to the castaway, instead of pushing him back into the abyss.
34 – The plurality of existences, of which Christ laid down the principle in the Gospel, but without defining it more than many others, is one of the most important laws revealed by Spiritism, in the sense that it demonstrates its reality and its need for progress. By this law, man can understand all the apparent anomalies presented by human life; differences in social position; premature deaths that, without reincarnation, would make shortened lives useless to the soul; the inequality of intellectual and moral aptitudes, by the seniority of the Spirit, that has lived more or less, learned and progressed more or less, and that through rebirth, brings the achievements of previous existences. (No. 5).
35 – With the doctrine of the creation of the soul at each birth, we fall back into the system of privileged creations; men are strangers to each other, nothing links them, and family ties are purely carnal; they are not in solidarity with a past in which they did not exist; with that of nothingness after death, all relationships ceases with life; they are not united in the future. Through reincarnation, they are linked with the past and the future; their relationships are perpetuated in the spiritual world and in the corporeal world, and fraternity is based on the very laws of nature; good has an objective, evil has its inevitable consequences.
36 – With reincarnation, prejudices of races and castes fall, since the same Spirit can be reborn rich or poor, great lord or proletarian, master or subordinate, free or slave, man or woman. Of all the arguments invoked against the injustice of servitude and slavery, against the subjection of women to the law of the strongest, there is none that logically takes precedence over the material fact of reincarnation. If, therefore, reincarnation bases the principle of universal brotherhood on a law of nature, it bases on the same law the equality of social rights, and consequently that of liberty.
Men are born inferior and subordinate only through the body; by the Spirit they are equal and free. Hence, the duty to treat inferiors with kindness, benevolence and humanity, because he who is our subordinate today, may have been our equal or our superior, perhaps a relative or a friend, and in turn we may become the subordinate of the one we command.
37 – Take away from man the free Spirit, independent, outliving matter, and you make an organized machine, without objective, without responsibility, without any restraint other than the civil law, and good to exploit like an intelligent animal. Expecting nothing after death, nothing stops him from increasing the pleasures of the present; if he suffers, he has by perspective only despair and nothingness for refuge. With the certainty of the future, that of finding those he loved, the fear of seeing again those he has offended, all his ideas change. If Spiritism had only taken the doubt away from man, concerning the future life, it would have done more for his moral improvement than all disciplinary laws that sometimes restrain him, but do not change him.
38 – Without the preexistence of the soul, the doctrine of original sin is not only irreconcilable with the justice of God, that would make all men responsible for the fault of one, but it would also be nonsense, and much less justifiable, since the soul did not exist at the time when it is claimed to be responsible. With pre-existence and reincarnation, by being reborn man brings the germ of his past imperfections, defects that he has not corrected, and that are reflected in his innate instincts, his propensities for such and such a vice. This is his true original sin, the consequences of which he naturally suffers, but with the fundamental difference that he bears the penalty for his own faults, and not for the fault of another; and this other difference, at the same time consoling, encouraging, and supremely equitable, that each existence offers him the means to redeem himself by reparation, and to progress either by shedding some imperfection, or by acquiring new knowledge, and that until he is sufficiently purified, and he no longer needs the bodily life, and can live exclusively the spiritual, eternal, and blessed life.
For the same reason, he who has progressed morally brings, by being reborn, innate qualities, just as he who has progressed intellectually brings innate ideas; he is identified with the good; he practices it without effort, without calculation, and so to speak without thinking about it. Whoever is obliged to fight his evil tendencies is still in the struggle; the first has already won, the second is in the winning path.
The same cause produces original sin and original virtue.
39 – Experimental Spiritism has studied the properties of spiritual fluids and their action on matter. It demonstrated the existence of the perispirit, suspected since antiquity, and designated by Saint Paul under the name of
Spiritual Body, that is the fluidic body of the soul after the destruction of the tangible body. We know today that this envelope is inseparable from the soul; that it is one of the constitutive elements of the human being; that it is the vehicle for the transmission of thought, and that, during the life of the body, it serves as a link between Spirit and matter. The perispirit plays an important role in the organism and in a host of illnesses, that it is linked as much to physiology as to psychology.
40 – The study of the properties of the perispirit, of the spiritual fluids and of the physiological attributes of the soul, opens up new horizons to science, and gives the key to a host of phenomena hitherto misunderstood for lack of knowledge of the law that governs them, phenomena denied by materialism, because they are linked to spirituality, qualified by others as miracles or spells, according to beliefs. Such are, among others, the phenomena of double sight, sight at a distance, natural and artificial somnambulism, psychic effects of catalepsy and lethargy, premonition, presentiments, apparitions, transfigurations, the transmission of thought, fascination, instantaneous healings, obsessions and possessions, etc. By demonstrating that these phenomena are based on laws as natural as the electrical phenomena, and the normal conditions in which they can be produced, Spiritism destroys the empire of the marvelous and the supernatural, and consequently the source of most superstitions. If it leads to the belief in the possibility of certain things regarded by some as chimerical, it prevents believing in many others whose impossibility and irrationality it demonstrates.
41 – Spiritism, far from denying or destroying the Gospel, it on the contrary confirms, explains and develops, by the new laws of nature that it reveals, all that Christ said and did; it sheds light on the obscure points of his teaching, so that those for whom certain parts of the Gospel were unintelligible, or seemed
unacceptable, understand them without difficulty, with the help of Spiritism, and admit them; they see its significance better, and can distinguish between the reality and the allegory; Christ seems greater to them: he is no longer simply a philosopher, he is a divine Messiah.
42 – If we additionally consider the moralizing power of Spiritism, by the goal that it assigns to all the actions of life, by the consequences of the good and the bad that it makes tangible; the moral strength, courage, the consolations that it gives in sufferings, by an unalterable confidence in the future, by the thought of having around us the loved ones, by the assurance of seeing them again, the possibility of speaking with them, finally by the certainty of all that one does, of all that one acquires in intelligence, in science, in morality,
until the last hour of life, that nothing is lost, that everything benefits the advancement, it is then recognized that Spiritism fulfills all the promises of Christ regarding the announced Consoler. Now, as it is the
Spirit of Truth that presides over the great movement of regeneration, the promise of his coming is also fulfilled, for he is the true Consoler.
[2] 43 – If, to these results, we add the incredible speed of the propagation of Spiritism, despite everything that has been done to destroy it, we cannot deny that its coming is providential, since it succeeds over all forces and all human ill-will. The ease with which it is accepted by such a large number, and that without constraint, and without other resources than the power of the idea, proves that it responds to a need: that of believing, after the void created by skepticism, and that therefore it has come in due time.
44 – The afflicted are in great number, so it is not surprising that so many people welcome a doctrine that consoles in preference to those that despair; for it is to the underprivileged, more than to the happy ones in the world, that Spiritism is addressed. The patient sees the doctor coming with more joy than the one who is doing well; now the afflicted are sick ones, and the Consoler is the physician.
You who fight Spiritism, if you want people to leave it to follow you, give more and better than it does; heal wounds of the soul more surely; be like the merchant who, to fight against a competitor, gives better quality and cheaper merchandise. Give, therefore, more consolations, more satisfactions of the heart, more legitimate hopes, greater certainties; make the future a more rational, more attractive picture, but do not think of defeating it with the prospect of the nothingness, with the alternative of the flames of hell or the heavenly and useless perpetual contemplation. What would you say of a merchant who calls crazy all customers who don't want his merchandise and go to the next door? You do the same by accusing of madness and ineptitude all those who do not want your doctrines, that they are wrong in not finding it to their liking.
[3]45 – The first revelation was personified in Moses, the second in Christ, the third is not in any individual. The first two are individual, the third is collective; this is an essential character of great importance. It is collective in the sense that it was not made by privilege to anyone; that no one, therefore, can call himself the exclusive prophet. It was done simultaneously all over the world, to millions of people, of all ages, all times and conditions, from the lowest to the highest of the ladder, according to this prediction reported by the author of the Acts of the Apostles: “In the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and daughters will prophesy; your youngsters will have visions, and the old ones will have dreams.” It did not come out of any special cult, in order to one day serve as a point of connection to all.
[4]46 – The first two revelations being the product of a personal teaching, they were necessarily localized, that is to say that they took place on a single point, around which the idea spread gradually; but it took many centuries for them to reach the ends of the world, without invading it entirely. The third is unique in that, not being personified in an individual, it has occurred simultaneously at thousands of different points, all of which have become centers or foci of radiation. As these centers multiply, their rays come together little by little, like circles formed by a multitude of stones thrown into the water; so that, in a given time, they will end up covering the entire surface of the globe.
This is one of the causes of the rapid spread of the doctrine. If it had ascended on a single point, if it had been the exclusive work of a man, it would have formed a sect around him; but perhaps half a century would have passed before it had reached the limits of the country where it would have originated, while after ten years it has milestones planted from one pole to the other.
47 – This unprecedented circumstance in the history of doctrines, gives it an exceptional force and an irresistible power of action; indeed, if one suppresses it at one point, in a country, it is materially impossible to suppress it at all the points, in all countries. For a place where it will be hampered, there will be a thousand nearby where it will flourish. Moreover, if an individual is affected, one cannot reach the Spirits who are its source. Now, since the Spirits are everywhere, and there will always be some, if it was to stifle it all over the globe – what seems impossible to us, it would reappear sometime later, because it is based on a fact, and that fact is in nature, and one cannot suppress the laws of nature. This is what those who dream of the annihilation of Spiritism must be convinced. (Spiritist Review, February 1865: Perpetuity of Spiritism).
48 – However, these scattered centers could have remained isolated from one another for a long time, confined as some are in distant countries. A link was needed between them, that would put them in communion of thoughts with their brothers in belief, by teaching them what was being done elsewhere. This link, that Spiritism would have lacked in antiquity, is to be found in the publications that go everywhere, that condense, in a single, concise, and methodical form, the teaching given everywhere in multiple forms and in various languages.
49 – The first two revelations could only be the result of direct teaching; they were to be imposed on the faith by the authority of the word of the teacher, for men were not sufficiently advanced to contribute to their elaboration. Let us note, however, a very perceptible nuance between them that is due to the progress of manners and ideas, although they were made among the same people and in the same environment, but almost eighteen centuries apart. The doctrine of Moses is absolute, despotic; it does not admit discussion and is imposed on all the people by force. That of Jesus is essentially counselling; it is freely accepted and is imposed only by persuasion; it was controversial even during the very lifetime of its founder, who did not refuse to discuss with his adversaries.
50 – The third revelation came at a time of emancipation and intellectual maturity, when the developed intelligence cannot be reduced to a passive role, where man does not accept anything blindly, but wants to see where he is led, to know the why and the how of everything; it had to be, at the same time, the product of a teaching and the fruit of the work, the research and free examination. The Spirits only teach what is precisely needed to set in the path of truth, but they refrain from revealing what man can find by himself, leaving him to discuss, control and to submit everything to the crucible of reason, often even letting him acquire experience at his own expense. They give him the principle, the materials, being up to him to take advantage of and implement them (No. 15).
51 – The elements of the Spiritist revelation having been given simultaneously on a multitude of points, to men of all social conditions and of various degrees of education, it is quite obvious that the observations could not be made everywhere with the same results; that the consequences to be drawn from them, the deduction from the laws that govern this order of phenomena, in a word, the conclusion that was to establish the ideas, could only arise from the whole and the correlation of the facts. However, each isolated center, circumscribed in a restricted circle, most often only seeing a particular order of facts, sometimes apparently contradictory, generally having to deal only with the same category of Spirits, and moreover hampered by local influences and by the spirit of party, found themselves in the material impossibility of embracing the whole and, by that very fact, powerless to relate, in isolation, observations to a common principle. Each appreciating the facts from the point of view of their previous knowledge and beliefs, or of the particular opinion of the Spirits that manifest themselves, there would soon be as many theories and systems as there were centers, and none of which could be complete, due to a lack of elements of comparison and control.
52 – It should also be noted that nowhere has the Spiritist teaching been given in a complete manner; it touches such a great a number of observations, on subjects so diverse that require either knowledge or special mediumistic aptitudes, that it would have been impossible to combine on the same point all the necessary conditions. Since the teaching had to be collective and not individual, the Spirits divided the work by disseminating the subjects of study and observation, as in certain factories the making of each part of the same object is distributed between different workers.
The revelation was thus made partially, in various places and by a multitude of intermediaries, and it is in this way that it is still going on at this time, for all is not revealed. Each center finds, in the other centers, the complement of what it obtains, and it is the whole, the coordination of all the partial teachings, which constituted the
Spiritist Doctrine.
It was therefore necessary to group the scattered facts to see their correlation, to gather the various documents, the instructions given by the Spirits on all points and on all subjects, to compare them, analyze them, study their analogies and differences. The communications being given by Spirits of all kinds, more or less enlightened, it was necessary to appreciate the degree of confidence that reason allowed to grant them, to distinguish the systematic individual and isolated ideas from those that had the sanction of the general teaching of the Spirits, utopias from practical ideas; to prune those that were notoriously contradicted by the data of positive science and sound logic; to use the very errors, the information furnished by even the lowest Spirits, for the knowledge of the state of the invisible world, and to form a homogeneous whole. In short, it was necessary a center of development, independent of any preconceived idea, any sectarian prejudice,
resolved to accept the truth that had become evident, even if it were contrary to one’s personal opinions. This center was formed by itself, by the force of circumstances, and without premeditated design.
[5]53 – From this state of things, resulted a double current of ideas: some going from the extremities to the center, the others returning from the center to the circumference. This is how the doctrine quickly marched towards unity, despite the diversity of the sources from which it emanated; that the divergent systems have gradually fallen, by the fact of their isolation, before the ascendancy of the opinion of the majority, for lack of finding sympathetic echoes there. A communion of thoughts was therefore established between the different partial centers; speaking the same spiritual language, they understand and sympathize from one end of the world to the other.
The Spiritist found themselves stronger, they fought with more courage, they walked with a more assured step, when they no longer saw themselves isolated, when they felt a fulcrum, a link that united them to the big family; the phenomena they witnessed no longer seemed strange to them, abnormal, contradictory, when they were able to relate them to general laws of harmony, to embrace the edifice at a glance, and to see in all this whole a great and humanitarian goal.
[6] 54. - There is no science that has sprouted from the brain of a man; all, without exception, are the product of successive observations based on previous observations, like from a known point to arrive at the unknown. This is how the Spirits proceeded with Spiritism; that is why their teaching is progressive; they only tackle questions when the principles on which they are to be based are sufficiently developed, and when public opinion is ripe to assimilate them. It is even remarkable that whenever particular centers have tried to tackle questions prematurely, they have only obtained contradictory and inconclusive answers. When, on the contrary, the favorable moment has come, the teaching is identical in the whole line, in the almost universality of the centers.
There is, however, between the progress of Spiritism and that of the sciences, a fundamental difference, it is that the latter reached the point where they are only after long intervals, whereas it was enough to a few years to Spiritism, if not to reach the climax, at least to collect a large enough sum of observations suitable to constitute a doctrine. This is due to the innumerable multitude of Spirits who, by the will of God, have manifested themselves simultaneously, each bringing the contingent of their knowledge. It resulted from this that all the parts of the doctrine, instead of being worked out successively during several centuries, were worked out more or less simultaneously in a few years, and that it was enough to group them together to form a whole. God wished it to be so, first so that the building would reach the summit more quickly; second, so that we can, by comparison, have an almost immediate and permanent control over the universality of the teaching, each part having value and authority only through its connection with the whole, all having to harmonize, and each arriving in its own time and in its own place. By not entrusting to a single Spirit the care of the promulgation of the doctrine, God further wished that the smallest, as well as the greatest, among the Spirits as among men, should bring their stone to the edifice, in order to establish between them a bond of cooperative solidarity, that was lacking in all the doctrines that emerged from a single source. On the other hand, each Spirit, as well as each man, having only a limited amount of knowledge, individually they were incapable of treating as experts the innumerable questions that touch Spiritism; this is also why the doctrine, to fulfill the designs of the Creator, could not be the work of either one Spirit or one medium; it could only come out of the collectivity of works, controlled by one another. (See in the Gospel according to Spiritism, Introduction, part VI, and Spiritist Review, April 1864: Authority of the Spiritist doctrine; universal control of the teaching of Spirits).
55 – A final character of the Spiritist revelation, and that emerges from the very conditions in which it is made, is that, being based on facts, it is and can only be essentially progressive, like all sciences of observation. By its very essence, it establishes an alliance with science, that being the exposition of the laws of nature, in a certain order of facts, it cannot be contrary to the will of God, the author of these laws.
The discoveries of science glorify God instead of lowering him; they only destroy what men have built on the misconceptions they have of God. Spiritism, therefore, poses as absolute principle only what is demonstrated by evidence, or what logically emerges from observation. Touching on all the branches of the social economy, to which it lends the support of its own discoveries, it will always assimilate all the progressive doctrines, of whatever order, that have reached the status of practical truths, coming out of the realm of utopia, otherwise it would commit suicide; by ceasing to be what it is, it would be lying to its origin and its providential goal. Spiritism, marching with progress, will never be overwhelmed, because, if new discoveries showed that it is in error on one point, it would modify itself on that point; if a new truth comes to light, it accepts it.
[7]
[1] This article is an excerpt from a new book we are currently sending to press, and that will be out before the end of this year. A matter of opportunity has prompted us to publish this extract in advance in the Spiritist Review; despite its length, we felt it necessary to insert it all at once so as not to interrupt the flow of ideas. The entire work will be the size and volume of
Heaven and Hell.
[2] Many parents deplore the premature death of children for whose education they have made great sacrifices and say to themselves that all has been a waste. With Spiritism, they do not regret these sacrifices, and would be ready to make them, even with the certainty of seeing their children die, because they know that, if the latter do not benefit from this education in the present, it will serve, first to their advancement as Spirits, then that it will be so much acquired for a new existence, and that when they return, they will have an intellectual baggage that will make them more capable of acquiring new knowledge. Such are these children who bring innate ideas at birth, and who know without, so to speak, needing to learn. If, as parents, they do not have the immediate satisfaction of seeing their children putting this education to good use, they will certainly enjoy it later, either as Spirits or as men. Perhaps they will once again be the parents of these same children who are happily said to be gifted by nature, and who owe their aptitudes to a previous education; as also, if children turn out badly as a result of the neglect of their parents, they may have to suffer later through the troubles and sorrows that they will bring to them in a new existence.
[3] Isn't Spiritism contrary to the dogmatic belief concerning the nature of Christ, and in this case, can it be said to be the complement of the Gospel, if it contradicts it? The solution to this question affects Spiritism only in an accessory way, for it does not have to concern itself with the particular dogmas of such or such religion; a simple philosophical doctrine, it poses itself neither as a champion nor as a systematic adversary of any cult, and leaves to each one their own belief. The question of the nature of Christ is capital, from a Christian point of view; it cannot be treated lightly, and
it is not the personal opinions of either men or Spirits that can decide it; in such a subject, it is not enough to affirm or deny, it is necessary to prove it; now, of all the reasons alleged for or against, there is none that is not more or less hypothetical, since all are controversial; the materialists only saw the thing with the eyes of disbelief and the bias of negation; theologians with the eyes of blind faith, and the bias of affirmation; neither was in the necessary conditions of impartiality; interested in supporting their opinion, they saw and sought only what could be favorable to it, and closed their eyes to what could be contrary to it. If since the time that the question has been raised, it has not yet been resolved in a peremptory manner, it is because there has been a lack of elements that alone could give the key to it, absolutely as was lacking to the scientists of antiquity the knowledge of the laws of light to explain the phenomenon of the rainbow. Spiritism is neutral in the matter; it is no more interested in one solution than in another; it walked without it, and it will still walk whatever the result; placed outside particular dogmas, to Spiritism it is not a question of life or death. When it deals with it, basing all its theories on facts, it will solve it with facts, and that in due course; if there were an emergency, it would already be resolved. The elements of a solution are now complete, but the ground is not yet ready to receive the seed; a premature solution, whatever it may be, would encounter too much opposition from both sides, and would deny Spiritism more supporters than it would give it; This is why it is our duty to be prudent to refrain from any controversy on this subject, until we are sure of being able to set foot on solid ground. In the meantime, we allow the pros and cons outside Spiritism to be discussed without taking part in it, leaving both parties to exhaust their arguments. When the moment is right, we will bring to the scale, not our personal opinion, that is of no weight and cannot be law, but facts until that moment unobserved, and then each one can judge with full knowledge of the facts. All we can say, without prejudging the question, is that the solution, in whatever sense it may be given, will not contradict either the actions or the words of Christ, but on the contrary, will confirm them by elucidating them. To those, therefore, who ask us what Spiritism says about the nature of Christ, we invariably answer: "
It is a question of dogma foreign to the goal of doctrine." The goal that every Spiritist must pursue, if he is to deserve this title,
is his own moral improvement. Am I better than I was? Have I corrected myself from any fault? Have I done good or bad to my neighbor? This is what every sincere and convinced Spiritist must ask oneself. What does it matter whether Christ was God or not, if one is still selfish, proud, jealous, envious, anger, defaming, slanderer? The best way to honor Christ is to imitate him in his conduct; the more one elevates him in his thought, the less one is worthy of him, and the more one insults and lays down him, by doing the opposite of what he says. Spiritism says to its followers: "
Practice the virtues recommended by Christ, and you will be more Christian than many who claim to be such." To Catholics, Protestants, and others, it says: "
If you fear Spiritism disturbs your conscience, don't worry about it.” It is addressed only to those who come to it freely, and who need it. It is not addressed to those who have any given faith, and to whom this faith is sufficient, but to those who do not have any or who doubt, and it gives them the belief that they lack, not more particularly that of Catholicism or Protestantism, Judaism or Islamism, but a fundamental belief, the indispensable basis of any religion; there ends its role. Once this basis has been established, everyone remains free to follow the route that best satisfies their reason.
[4] Our personal role, in the great movement of ideas that is being prepared by Spiritism, and that is already beginning to take place, is that of an attentive observer who studies the facts to seek the cause and draw the consequences. We confronted all those that it was possible for us to bring together; we compared and commented on the instructions given by the Spirits on all points of the globe, then we coordinated everything methodically; in short, we have studied and given to the public the fruit of our research, without attributing to our work any other value than that of a philosophical work, deduced from observation and experience, without ever having posed ourselves as chief of the doctrine, nor having wanted to impose our ideas on anyone. By publishing them, we used a common right, and those who accepted them did so freely. If these ideas have found many sympathies, it is because they have had the advantage of responding to the aspirations of a large number, of which we cannot be proud, since the origin does not belong to us. Our greatest merit is that of perseverance and dedication to the cause that we have embraced. In all this we have done what others could have done like us; that is why we have never pretended to believe ourselves to be a prophet or a messiah, and even less to consider ourselves as such. Without having any of the external qualities of effective mediumship, we do not dispute being assisted in our work by the Spirits, because we have proofs too obvious to doubt it, that we undoubtedly owe to our good will, and to what each one is given to deserve. In addition to the ideas that we admit have been suggested to us, it is remarkable that the subjects of study and observation, in a word, all that can be useful to the accomplishment of the work, always happens to us in due time - in other times one would have said: as if by magic; so that the materials and documents of the work never fail us. If we have to deal with a subject, we are certain that, without asking it, the elements necessary for its elaboration are provided to us, and this by means that are absolutely very natural, but that are undoubtedly provoked by our invisible collaborators, like so many things that the world attributes to chance.
[5] The Spirits’ Book, the first work that brought Spiritism into the philosophical path, by deducing the moral consequences of the facts, that addressed all parts of the doctrine, touching on the most important questions it raises, has been, since its inception, the rallying point towards which individual works spontaneously converged. It is well known that, from the publication of this book, dates the era of
Philosophical Spiritism, that until then remained in the field of experiments of curiosity. If this book won the sympathies of the majority, it is because it was the expression of the feelings of this same majority, and because it responded to its aspirations; it is also because each one found there the confirmation or a rational explanation of what they obtained in particular. If it had disagreed with the general teaching of the Spirits, it would have had no credit, and would have been forgotten. Now, who have we rallied to? It is not for the man who is nothing by himself, kingpin who dies and disappears, but for the idea, that does not perish when it emanates from a source superior to man. This spontaneous concentration of scattered forces has given rise to an immense correspondence, a unique monument in the world, a living picture of the true history of modern Spiritism, in which are reflected both the partial works and the multiple feelings that the doctrine gave birth to, the moral results, dedication and failures; precious archives for posterity that will be able to judge men and things on authentic pieces. In the presence of such incontrovertible testimonies, what will become of all the false allegations, the defamations of envy and jealousy?
[6] A significant testimony, as remarkable as touching of this communion of thoughts that established between the Spiritists, by the conformity of their beliefs, are the requests for prayers that come to us from the most distant countries, from Peru to the extremes of Asia, from people of various religions and nationalities, whom we have never seen. Isn’t this the prelude to the great unification that is being prepared, the proof of the serious roots that Spiritism takes everywhere? It is remarkable that, of all the groups that formed with the premeditated intention of splitting by proclaiming divergent principles, as well as those that, for reasons of self-esteem or otherwise, not wanting to submit to the common law, believed themselves strong enough to walk alone, enlightened enough to do without advice, none of them managed to constitute a preponderant and viable unit; all have died out or have vegetated in the shadows. How could it be otherwise, since, in order to distinguish themselves, instead of striving to give a greater sum of satisfactions, they rejected the principles of the doctrine, precisely what made them the most powerful attraction, what is there more comforting, more encouraging and more rational? If they had understood the power of the moral elements that constituted unity, they would not have been lulled into a chimerical illusion; but taking their little circle for the universe, they saw in the adherents only a coterie that could easily be overthrown by a counter-coterie. This was a strange misunderstanding of the essential characters of the doctrine, and this error could only lead to disappointments, for one does not offend with impunity the feeling of a mass that has convictions based on solid foundations; instead of breaking the unity, they broke the only the bond that could give them strength and life. (See Spiritist Review, April 1866: Spiritism without Spirits; Independent Spiritism).
[7] Faced with declarations as clear and as categorical as those contained in this chapter, all the allegations of tendency to absolutism and the autocracy of principles fall, all the false assimilations that prejudiced or ill-informed people attribute to the doctrine. These statements, moreover, are not new; we have repeated them often enough in our writings, to leave no doubt in this regard. They also assign to us our real role, the only one that we aspire to: that of a worker.
