Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867

The Exposition Populaire Illustrée contains, in its thirty-fourth issue, the following article, on the subject of the thoughts that we forwarded in the two articles in our last issue about Father Gassner, and the prognoses that we had borrowed from that journal:

“The Spiritist Review is a special monthly journal that, for ten years, has courageously supported the struggle against the large class of writers and superficial men who treat, at the envy of one another, the followers of the new faith as “illuminated, hallucinated, dupes, lunatics, impostors, charlatans, and finally Satan's henchmen.” You see that some writers prefer to insult and outrage rather than argue.

Oh my God! all this vocabulary was exhausted thirty-five to thirty-six years ago, against the Saint-Simonians, and if we are not mistaken, the eloquence of the Parquet^[1] took part, and it seems to us that the father and one of his ardent disciples were hit by a condemnation that left them free to lead large administrations, to have a seat at the Institute, to be elevated to the dignity of senator, to wear the badges of various corporations, the cross of honor included, but that does not only allow them to sit on the municipal council of their village, and use the civic right to vote.

You can see that the outrage doesn't mean much; however, you can also see that there is always something left; it is a kind of calumny. Now, calumny, as someone said a long time before us, when it does not burn, it darkens.

Let us return to the Spiritists; who knows what is reserved for men of the Spiritist school? Perhaps one day we will see them take the short ladder to reach the summits of power, as the Saint-Simonians gentlemen do.

Still, they progress (the Spiritists), growing their ranks with serious and intelligent men, of magistrates regarded in their institutions.



Today we are talking about the Spiritist Review, because the Reivew kindly mentioned us in its last issue (that of November) … It reproduced various passages from our twenty-fourth issue, related to a correspondence about the thaumaturges, and hastened to object to the qualification of thaumaturge that we gave, in various other articles, to the healer Jacob and to the healers of the past, present and future, when they heal outside of scientific therapy.

The Spiritist Review objects to the word thaumaturge, for the reason that it does not admit that anything is done outside of natural laws ...; but it seems to me that this is what our little newspaper has already said more than twenty times.

There is nothing, nothing, nothing, outside the natural laws.

All that is, all that happens, all that occurs, is the result of natural laws, of known or unknown natural phenomena.

Yes, a thousand times yes, "the phenomena that belong to the order of spiritual facts are no more miraculous than the material facts, since the spiritual element is one of the forces of nature, just as well as the material element”, you say!

Yes, gentlemen, a thousand times yes, we share your sentiment; but we object to this expression element, just as you objected to the qualification of miracle worker, given by us to a conscious or unconscious Spiritist.

The word thaumaturge shocks you; give me another one, rational, logical, understandable… I will accept it. As a logical consequence, the word miracle must shock you; give me another one to explain, to express the meaning, what the word miracle expresses, and I will adopt it.

But as long as your, our dictionary will not be made, will not be known, it is necessary to recourse to the dictionary of the Academy; truly, Spiritist Gentlemen, we must not pretend to have a vocabulary other than that of the Messrs. the Forties.

Linguistically, academically speaking, what is a thaumaturge? a miracle worker. What is a miracle? An act of divine power, contrary to the known laws of nature. Therefore, Messrs. healers, the Hohenlohe, the Gassner, the Jacob, are thaumaturge, miracle workers, because they act outside the known laws of nature.

Invent, create, give, promulgate a new word and we will adopt it; but, until then, allow us to keep the old vocabulary, and conform to it until further instruction. We cannot do otherwise. Do you know how Jacob acts? Say it; if you don't know, do like us, recognize that he acts outside the known laws of nature, so he is a thaumaturge. For our own part, as we said, we object to the word element, for a very simple reason: that is, we declare that we are completely ignorant of what the spiritual element is, as we do not know what the material element is.

In the case of the spiritual element, we only recognize the creative element: God… - In all humility, in all veneration, we bow our heads and respect the inexplicable mystery of the incarnation of the breath of God in us… limiting ourselves to repeat what we have said: "There is in us an unknown that is us, that at the same time commands our material self and obeys it."

As for the material element, we proclaim with all the power of our sincerity that we are as much embarrassed… the creation of the first man, of the first woman, as material beings, is a mystery as much inexplicable as that of the spiritualization of this created being.

Veil of darkness, secret of the Creator that it is not allowed to lift, to penetrate.

The primitive element is God or is in God ... Let us not seek and let us say, with the most enlightened of the doctors of the Church: "Do not seek to penetrate this mystery, for you would go mad."

Now we will ask the gentlemen of the Spiritist Review, those who believe in the double sight, in the spiritual sight, why do they speak up against the physical phenomena, considered as precursors of happy or unhappy events. These phenomena, you say, in general have no connection with the things they seem to presage. They can be the precursors of physical effects that are their consequence, as a black point on the horizon can presage a storm to the sailor, or certain clouds announce hail, but the significance of these phenomena for the things of the moral order, must, you add, be ranked among the superstitious beliefs that cannot be combated with enough energy.

Explain yourself a little better, gentlemen, because you are touching here on one of the serious questions of the cabalistic sciences, of prophetic forecasts. Tell us frankly, honestly, in which category you place numerical influences; do you deny them, do you challenge them, do you believe in them? ... Have you ever thought about these questions?

Be careful; everything is linked in the mysteries of creation, in the secret of the correlations of the worlds, of the planetary correlations. You believe in yourself, in your spiritual self, in your incarnate Spirit, and you also believe in discarnate Spirits, therefore, in the Spirits who have been incarnated and who, purged of their previous incarnation, await an incarnation, we will not say more celestial, more divine, but more angelical… That is your faith; and then you stop the divine mathematics, and say: I do not believe in this regular prescience that would infringe my free will; I don't believe in these detailed calculations… Limit yourselves to doubt, gentlemen, but do not deny.

If you were to study the history of mankind using numerical concordances as your guide, you would feel crushed and dare not say that this superstitious belief cannot be combated with too much energy.

We can place before your eyes more than four thousand numerical, historical, indisputable concordances. Make an event happen, be born or die a year sooner or later, and the concordance ceases… What law regulates them? Mystery of God, secret unknown to the creature…; and as everything is connected and linked, dare in your quality of Spiritist, that must believe in magnetism, in the sleep-activity, in somnambulism; you who must believe in the spiritual agent (and not the element), how can you deny the unknown laws that govern the relationships between the worlds?… You believe in the relationships between the incarnate and discarnate Spirits! So, be logical and do not flinch before any possibility still hidden in the darkness of the unknown.

We will come back to this question, that is not new, but that has always remained in the limbs of science (We used this word intentionally).

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[1] Public prosecutor’s office in France (T.N.)