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Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867 > December
December
Man before History – Antiquity[1] of the human raceIn the history of Earth, humanity may be only a dream, and when our old world falls asleep in the ice of its winter, the passage of our shadows on its forehead may not have left any memory there. Earth has, in its own right, a history incomparably richer and more complex than that of man. Long before the appearance of our race, for centuries of centuries, it was alternately occupied by various inhabitants, by primordial beings, that extended their successive domination over its surface, and disappeared with the elementary modifications of the physics of the planet.
In one of the last periods, in the Tertiary era, to which we can safely assign a date, several hundred thousand years ago, the site where Paris today displays its splendors, was a Mediterranean, a gulf of the universal ocean, above which rose in France alone the Cretaceous terrain of Troy, Rouen, Tours; the Jurassic terrain of Chaumont, Bourges, Niort; the Triassic terrain of the Vosges, and the primitive terrain of the Alps, Auvergne and the coasts of Brittany. Later, the configuration changed. At the time when the mammoth, the cave bear, the rhinos with partitioned nostrils still lived, one could go from Paris to London by land; and this journey was perhaps made by our ancestors of that time, because there were men here before the formation of geographic France.
Their lives were as different from ours as that of the savages we talked about recently. Some had built their villages on stilts in the middle of the great lakes; these lake towns, comparable to those of beavers, were discovered in 1853, when after a long drought, the lakes of Switzerland fell to an unusual low level, uncovering poles, stone, horn, gold and clay utensils, unmistakable vestiges of the ancient inhabitation of man; and these aquatic towns were no exception: more than two hundred have been found in Switzerland alone. Herodotus relates that the Paeonians[2] lived in similar towns on Lake Prasias. Each citizen who took a wife was obliged to bring three stones from the neighboring forest and fix them in the lake. As the number of women was not limited, the floor of the city grew quickly. The cabins were in communication with the water by a trap, and the children were tied to a rope by the foot, for fear of accident. Men, horses, cattle, lived together, feeding on fish. Hippocrates reports the same customs with the inhabitants of Phase. In 1826, Dumont d'Urville discovered similar lake towns on the coasts of New Guinea.
Others inhabited caves, natural caves, or formed a crude refuge from ferocious beasts. Today we find their bones mixed with those of the hyena, the cave bear, the tichorrhine rhinos. In 1852, a digger wishing to assess the depth of a hole through which rabbits escaped hunters, in Aurignac (Haute-Garonne), found large back bones from this opening. Then attacking the side of the mound in hopes of finding a treasure there, he soon found himself in front of an authentic ossuary. Public rumor, taking hold of the fact, circulated accounts of counterfeit money, assassinations, etc. The mayor thought it advisable to have all the bones collected and taken to the cemetery; and when in 1860 Mr. Lartet wanted to examine these old remains, the digger did not even remember the place of their burial. With the help of the rare remains that surrounded the cave, traces of a hearth, split bones to extract the marrow, it was possible, nevertheless, to ensure that the three species named above lived on that part of France, at the same time as the man. The dog was already man's companion, and it was, undoubtedly, his first conquest.
The food of these primitive men was already much varied. A professor claims that the proportion between carnivorous and frugivorous was twelve to twenty. Mr. Flourens prefers to believe that they fed exclusively on fruit. But the truth is that, from the beginning, man was omnivores.[3] The Danish Kjokkenmoddings have preserved debris of antediluvian cooking, proving this fact up to the evidence. They were already eating oysters and fish, knew the goose, the swan, the duck; appreciated the heather cock, the stag, the roe deer, the reindeer, that they hunted and whose remains were found pierced with stone arrows. The urus or primitive ox already gave them the milk; the wolf, the fox, the dog and the cat served as main courses. Acorns, barley, oats, peas, lentils gave them bread and vegetables; wheat did not come until later. Hazelnuts, beechnuts, apples, pears, strawberries and raspberries completed these dishes of the ancient Danes. The Swiss of the Stone Age had, moreover, appropriated the flesh of the bison, the elk, the wild bull, and had domesticated the goat and the sheep. The hare and the rabbit were despised for some superstitious reason; but, on the other hand, the horse had already taken its place in their meals. All these meats were originally eaten raw and steaming, and curiously, the ancient Danes did not use their incisors like us to slice, but to grasp, to hold and to chew their food; so that those teeth were not sharp like ours, but flattened like our molars and the two dental arches rested on each other instead of interlocking.
Not all primitive savages were naked. The first inhabitants of northern latitudes, of Denmark, Gaul and Helvetia, had to protect themselves from the cold with skins and furs. Later, they thought of ornaments. Coquetry, the love for adornment are not new, ladies: witness these necklaces formed with the teeth of a dog, a fox or a wolf, pierced with a hole for suspension. Later, hairpins, bracelets, bronze staples multiplied ad infinitum, and one is astonished at the variety, and even the good taste of the objects used for the toilet of the young ladies and courtiers of that time.
During these remote ages, the dead were buried under sepulchral vaults. The corpses were placed in a crouched posture, knees almost in contact with the chin, arms folded over the chest and close to the head. That is, as it was noticed, the position of the child in its mother's womb. These primordial men were certainly unaware of it, and it was by a kind of intuition that they associated the tomb to a cradle.
Vestiges of the vanished ages, these long tumuli, these mounds, these hills that in past centuries were called "tombs of the giants" and that served as inviolable limits, are the funeral chambers under which our ancestors hid their dead. Who were these first men? “It's not just out of curiosity,” says Virchow, “that we ask who these dead were, if they belonged to a race of giants, when they lived. These questions affect us. These dead are our ancestors, and the questions we ask these tombs also relate to our own origin. What race do we come from? From what beginnings did our current culture come and where is it leading us?”
It is not necessary to go back to creation to receive some light on our origins; otherwise we would have to be condemned to remain always in complete darkness in that respect. On the date of creation alone we counted more than 140 opinions, and from the first to the last there is no less than 3,194 years of difference! Adding the 141st hypothesis would not clarify the problem. We will, therefore, confine ourselves to establishing that, from a geological point of view, the last period in the history of earth, the Quaternary period, that still lasts today, was divided into three phases: the diluvial phase, during which there were immense partial floods, and vast deposits and accumulations of sand; the glacial phase, characterized by the formation of glaciers and by a greater cooling of the globe; finally the modern phase. In short, the important question, more or less resolved today, was whether man dates only from this later period or from earlier ones.
However, it is now proven that it dates at least from the first, and that our first ancestors rightfully deserve the title of fossils, since their bones (the little that remains) lie with those of the Ursus spelæus, of the hyena and Felis spelæa, Elephas primigenius, Megaceros, etc., in a layer belonging to an order of life different from the present order.
In those distant times a very different nature reigned from what today displays its splendors around us; other types of plants decorated the forests and the countryside, other species of animals lived on the surface of earth and in the seas. Who were the first men who awoke in this primordial world? What cities were built? What language was spoken? What habits were in use? These questions are still shrouded in a deep mystery for us. But what is certain today is that in the place where we founded dynasties and monuments, several races of men successively inhabited during the secular periods.
Sir John Lubbock, in the work mentioned in the beginning of this study, has demonstrated the antiquity of the human race, by the discoveries relating to the uses and habits of our ancestors, as Sir Charles Lyell had demonstrated from a geological point of view. Whatever mystery still envelops our origins, we prefer this still incomplete result of positive science to the fables and novels of ancient mythology.
Camille Flammarion
[1] This article is taken from the scientific articles that Mr. Flammarion published in the Century. We thought it to be our duty to reproduce it, first of all because we know the interest that our readers have in the writings of this young scientist, and also because it touches, from the point of view of science, to some of the fundamental points of the doctrine, exposed in our work Genesis.
[2] Ancient Greek Northern Macedonia (T.N.)
[3] Organisms that eat a variety of other organisms, including animals, plants and fungi – NatGeo (T.N.)
In one of the last periods, in the Tertiary era, to which we can safely assign a date, several hundred thousand years ago, the site where Paris today displays its splendors, was a Mediterranean, a gulf of the universal ocean, above which rose in France alone the Cretaceous terrain of Troy, Rouen, Tours; the Jurassic terrain of Chaumont, Bourges, Niort; the Triassic terrain of the Vosges, and the primitive terrain of the Alps, Auvergne and the coasts of Brittany. Later, the configuration changed. At the time when the mammoth, the cave bear, the rhinos with partitioned nostrils still lived, one could go from Paris to London by land; and this journey was perhaps made by our ancestors of that time, because there were men here before the formation of geographic France.
Their lives were as different from ours as that of the savages we talked about recently. Some had built their villages on stilts in the middle of the great lakes; these lake towns, comparable to those of beavers, were discovered in 1853, when after a long drought, the lakes of Switzerland fell to an unusual low level, uncovering poles, stone, horn, gold and clay utensils, unmistakable vestiges of the ancient inhabitation of man; and these aquatic towns were no exception: more than two hundred have been found in Switzerland alone. Herodotus relates that the Paeonians[2] lived in similar towns on Lake Prasias. Each citizen who took a wife was obliged to bring three stones from the neighboring forest and fix them in the lake. As the number of women was not limited, the floor of the city grew quickly. The cabins were in communication with the water by a trap, and the children were tied to a rope by the foot, for fear of accident. Men, horses, cattle, lived together, feeding on fish. Hippocrates reports the same customs with the inhabitants of Phase. In 1826, Dumont d'Urville discovered similar lake towns on the coasts of New Guinea.
Others inhabited caves, natural caves, or formed a crude refuge from ferocious beasts. Today we find their bones mixed with those of the hyena, the cave bear, the tichorrhine rhinos. In 1852, a digger wishing to assess the depth of a hole through which rabbits escaped hunters, in Aurignac (Haute-Garonne), found large back bones from this opening. Then attacking the side of the mound in hopes of finding a treasure there, he soon found himself in front of an authentic ossuary. Public rumor, taking hold of the fact, circulated accounts of counterfeit money, assassinations, etc. The mayor thought it advisable to have all the bones collected and taken to the cemetery; and when in 1860 Mr. Lartet wanted to examine these old remains, the digger did not even remember the place of their burial. With the help of the rare remains that surrounded the cave, traces of a hearth, split bones to extract the marrow, it was possible, nevertheless, to ensure that the three species named above lived on that part of France, at the same time as the man. The dog was already man's companion, and it was, undoubtedly, his first conquest.
The food of these primitive men was already much varied. A professor claims that the proportion between carnivorous and frugivorous was twelve to twenty. Mr. Flourens prefers to believe that they fed exclusively on fruit. But the truth is that, from the beginning, man was omnivores.[3] The Danish Kjokkenmoddings have preserved debris of antediluvian cooking, proving this fact up to the evidence. They were already eating oysters and fish, knew the goose, the swan, the duck; appreciated the heather cock, the stag, the roe deer, the reindeer, that they hunted and whose remains were found pierced with stone arrows. The urus or primitive ox already gave them the milk; the wolf, the fox, the dog and the cat served as main courses. Acorns, barley, oats, peas, lentils gave them bread and vegetables; wheat did not come until later. Hazelnuts, beechnuts, apples, pears, strawberries and raspberries completed these dishes of the ancient Danes. The Swiss of the Stone Age had, moreover, appropriated the flesh of the bison, the elk, the wild bull, and had domesticated the goat and the sheep. The hare and the rabbit were despised for some superstitious reason; but, on the other hand, the horse had already taken its place in their meals. All these meats were originally eaten raw and steaming, and curiously, the ancient Danes did not use their incisors like us to slice, but to grasp, to hold and to chew their food; so that those teeth were not sharp like ours, but flattened like our molars and the two dental arches rested on each other instead of interlocking.
Not all primitive savages were naked. The first inhabitants of northern latitudes, of Denmark, Gaul and Helvetia, had to protect themselves from the cold with skins and furs. Later, they thought of ornaments. Coquetry, the love for adornment are not new, ladies: witness these necklaces formed with the teeth of a dog, a fox or a wolf, pierced with a hole for suspension. Later, hairpins, bracelets, bronze staples multiplied ad infinitum, and one is astonished at the variety, and even the good taste of the objects used for the toilet of the young ladies and courtiers of that time.
During these remote ages, the dead were buried under sepulchral vaults. The corpses were placed in a crouched posture, knees almost in contact with the chin, arms folded over the chest and close to the head. That is, as it was noticed, the position of the child in its mother's womb. These primordial men were certainly unaware of it, and it was by a kind of intuition that they associated the tomb to a cradle.
Vestiges of the vanished ages, these long tumuli, these mounds, these hills that in past centuries were called "tombs of the giants" and that served as inviolable limits, are the funeral chambers under which our ancestors hid their dead. Who were these first men? “It's not just out of curiosity,” says Virchow, “that we ask who these dead were, if they belonged to a race of giants, when they lived. These questions affect us. These dead are our ancestors, and the questions we ask these tombs also relate to our own origin. What race do we come from? From what beginnings did our current culture come and where is it leading us?”
It is not necessary to go back to creation to receive some light on our origins; otherwise we would have to be condemned to remain always in complete darkness in that respect. On the date of creation alone we counted more than 140 opinions, and from the first to the last there is no less than 3,194 years of difference! Adding the 141st hypothesis would not clarify the problem. We will, therefore, confine ourselves to establishing that, from a geological point of view, the last period in the history of earth, the Quaternary period, that still lasts today, was divided into three phases: the diluvial phase, during which there were immense partial floods, and vast deposits and accumulations of sand; the glacial phase, characterized by the formation of glaciers and by a greater cooling of the globe; finally the modern phase. In short, the important question, more or less resolved today, was whether man dates only from this later period or from earlier ones.
However, it is now proven that it dates at least from the first, and that our first ancestors rightfully deserve the title of fossils, since their bones (the little that remains) lie with those of the Ursus spelæus, of the hyena and Felis spelæa, Elephas primigenius, Megaceros, etc., in a layer belonging to an order of life different from the present order.
In those distant times a very different nature reigned from what today displays its splendors around us; other types of plants decorated the forests and the countryside, other species of animals lived on the surface of earth and in the seas. Who were the first men who awoke in this primordial world? What cities were built? What language was spoken? What habits were in use? These questions are still shrouded in a deep mystery for us. But what is certain today is that in the place where we founded dynasties and monuments, several races of men successively inhabited during the secular periods.
Sir John Lubbock, in the work mentioned in the beginning of this study, has demonstrated the antiquity of the human race, by the discoveries relating to the uses and habits of our ancestors, as Sir Charles Lyell had demonstrated from a geological point of view. Whatever mystery still envelops our origins, we prefer this still incomplete result of positive science to the fables and novels of ancient mythology.
Camille Flammarion
[1] This article is taken from the scientific articles that Mr. Flammarion published in the Century. We thought it to be our duty to reproduce it, first of all because we know the interest that our readers have in the writings of this young scientist, and also because it touches, from the point of view of science, to some of the fundamental points of the doctrine, exposed in our work Genesis.
[2] Ancient Greek Northern Macedonia (T.N.)
[3] Organisms that eat a variety of other organisms, including animals, plants and fungi – NatGeo (T.N.)
A distraught resuscitated
Extracted from Mr. Victor Hugo’s trip to Zeeland
The following episode is taken from the story published by the newspaper La Liberté, of a trip by Mr. Victor Hugo to Holland, in the province of Zeeland. This article can be found in the issue of November 6th, 1867:
“We had just entered the city. I was looking up and calling Stevens’ attention, my car companion, to the picturesque indentation of a succession of Hispano-Flemish roofs when, by his turn, he touched me on the shoulder and pointed me out to watch what was happening on the platform.
A noisy crowd of men, women and children surrounded Victor Hugo. He got out of the car, and escorted by the city authorities, he came forward, looking simply moved, his head uncovered, with two bouquets in his hands and two little girls in white dresses by his side.
Those two girls had just offered him the flowers.
What do you say, in this time of crowned visits and artificial or official cheers, of this singularly triumphant entry of a universally popular man, that arrives unexpectedly in a lost region, whose existence he did not even suspected, and who is there quite naturally in its estates? Who could have made the poet foresee that this unknown little town, whose outline he had regarded with curiosity from afar, was his good town of Ziéricsée?
At dinner, Mr. Van Maenen asked Victor Hugo:
"- Do you know who these two pretty children that gave you the bouquets are?”
" - No.”
"- They are the daughters of a ghost.”
This called for an explanation, and the captain told us the following strange adventure:
It was about a month ago. One evening, at dusk, a car with a man and a little boy was driving into town. It must be said that not long before, this man had lost his wife and one of his children and was very sad. Although he still had two little girls, and the boy he now had with him, he found no consolation and lived in melancholy.
That evening his car was following one of those high, steep causeways that are bordered left and right by a ditch of stagnant and often deep water. The horse, undoubtedly misdirected through the evening mist, suddenly lost its balance, and rolled off the top of the embankment into the ditch, dragging the car, the man, and the child with it.
There was in this group of rushed creatures a moment of dreadful anguish, that nobody witnessed, and a dark and desperate effort towards salvation. But the engulfment was done with the jumble of the fall, and everything disappeared in the cesspool, that closed again with the thick slowness of the mud.
Only the child, miraculously left out of the ditch, cried, and called out miserably, waving his little arms. Two peasants, who were crossing a field of madder at some distance from there, heard he boy and ran up. They took the child away.
The child cried: “My daddy! my dad! I want my daddy! "
"- And where is your daddy?”
“There,” said the child, pointing to the ditch.
The two peasants understood and set to work. After a quarter of an hour, they removed the broken car; after half an hour they removed the dead horse. The little one was still screaming and asking for his father.
At last, after renewed efforts, from the same hole in the ditch where the carriage and the horse were, they fished and brought out of the water something inert and fetid that was entirely black and covered with mud: it was the corpse of the father.
All that had taken about an hour. The child's despair redoubled; he did not want his father to be dead. The peasants believed him to be dead, however; but as the child begged them and grabbed them, and they were good people, they tried, to calm the little one, something that is always done in such a case in the country, and began to roll the drowned in the madder field.
They rolled him like that for a good quarter of an hour. Nothing changed. They rolled him over again. Same stillness. The little one followed and wept. They did it a third time, and they were about to give up for good, when they thought the corpse was moving an arm. They continued. The other arm twitched. They persisted. The whole body gave vague signs of life, and the dead man began to resuscitate slowly.
This is extraordinary, isn't it? Well! Here is what is even more unexpected. The man sighed for a long time as he came to life and cried out in despair: “Ah! my God! What have you done? I was so good where I was. I was with my wife, with my son. They had come to me, and I to them. I saw them, I was in heavenb, I was in the light. Ah! My God! What have you done? I am no longer dead!"
The man who spoke like that had just spent an hour in the marsh. He had a broken arm and severe contusions.
“He was brought back to the city, and he has just recovered," added Mr. Van Maenen, finishing this story. It is Mr. D ..., one of the highest intelligences, not only of Zeeland, but of Holland. He's one of our best lawyers. Everyone respects and honors him here. When he learned, Mr. Victor Hugo, that you were going to pass through the city, he absolutely wanted to get up from his bed, that he had not yet left for a month, and he did his first outing today to meet you and introduce you to his two little daughters, to whom he had given bouquets for you.
There was a unanimous cry from all over the table.
“These are things that only happen in Zeeland! Travelers don't come here, but locals revive.”
“He should have been invited to dinner," ventured the female part of the table.
"- Invite him! I cried; but we were already twelve! Now was not exactly the time to invite a ghost. Would you like, ladies, to see a dead as the thirteenth.”
"- There are," said Victor Hugo, who had remained silent, "two enigmas in this story, the enigma of the body and that of the soul. I do not undertake to explain the first nor to say how it is possible that a man remains engulfed for a whole hour in a cesspool, without death ensuing. Asphyxiation, it must be believed, is a phenomenon that is still poorly understood. But what I understand admirably is the lamentation of this soul. What! She had already left the earthly life, from this shadow, from this soiled body, from those black lips, from this black ditch! She had started the charming escape. Through the mud she had reached the surface of the cesspool, and there, still barely attached by the last feather of his wing, to that horrible last sigh strangled with mud, she was already silently inhaling the ineffable freshness of life outside. She could already fly to her lost loves and reach the woman and rise to the child. Suddenly, the semi-escapee shudders; she feels that the earthly bond, instead of being completely broken, is renewed, and that instead of ascending with the light, she suddenly descends again in the night, and that she, the soul, is violently returned to the corpse. Thus, she utters a terrible cry.”
"What results from this to me," added Victor Hugo, "is that the soul can remain for a certain time above the body, in a floating state, no longer being a prisoner and not being freed yet. This floating state is agony, it is lethargy. The rattle is the soul that rushes out of the open mouth and falls back at times, and that shakes, panting, until she breaks the vaporous thread of the last breath. It seems that I see her. She struggles, she half escapes from the lips, she returns to them, she escapes again, then she gives a great flap of the wing, and there she goes, flying away in one gulp and disappearing into the immense azure. She's free. But sometimes also the dying person comes back to life: then the desperate soul returns to the dying person. The dream sometimes gives us the sensation of these strange comings and goings of the prisoner. The dreams are the few daily steps that the soul takes outside of us. Until it has finished its time in the body, the soul makes, every night, in our sleep, the tour of the playground of the dream.”
Paul de la Miltière”
The fact in itself is eminently Spiritist, as one can see; but if there is anything more Spiritist still, it is the explanation given by Mr. Victor Hugo; one would say it was drawn verbatim from the doctrine; it is, moreover, not the first time that he has expressed himself in this direction. We remember the charming speech he gave, almost three years ago, at the tomb of the young Emily Putron (Spiritist Review, February 1865); certainly, the most convinced Spiritist would not speak otherwise. All that is missing from such thoughts is the word; but what does the word matter if the ideas are accredited? Mr. Victor Hugo, by his authorized name, is a popularizer. And yet, those who applaud him ridicule Spiritism, a new proof that they do not know what it consists of. If they knew it, they would not treat the same idea as madness in some, and sublime truth in others.
“We had just entered the city. I was looking up and calling Stevens’ attention, my car companion, to the picturesque indentation of a succession of Hispano-Flemish roofs when, by his turn, he touched me on the shoulder and pointed me out to watch what was happening on the platform.
A noisy crowd of men, women and children surrounded Victor Hugo. He got out of the car, and escorted by the city authorities, he came forward, looking simply moved, his head uncovered, with two bouquets in his hands and two little girls in white dresses by his side.
Those two girls had just offered him the flowers.
What do you say, in this time of crowned visits and artificial or official cheers, of this singularly triumphant entry of a universally popular man, that arrives unexpectedly in a lost region, whose existence he did not even suspected, and who is there quite naturally in its estates? Who could have made the poet foresee that this unknown little town, whose outline he had regarded with curiosity from afar, was his good town of Ziéricsée?
At dinner, Mr. Van Maenen asked Victor Hugo:
"- Do you know who these two pretty children that gave you the bouquets are?”
" - No.”
"- They are the daughters of a ghost.”
This called for an explanation, and the captain told us the following strange adventure:
It was about a month ago. One evening, at dusk, a car with a man and a little boy was driving into town. It must be said that not long before, this man had lost his wife and one of his children and was very sad. Although he still had two little girls, and the boy he now had with him, he found no consolation and lived in melancholy.
That evening his car was following one of those high, steep causeways that are bordered left and right by a ditch of stagnant and often deep water. The horse, undoubtedly misdirected through the evening mist, suddenly lost its balance, and rolled off the top of the embankment into the ditch, dragging the car, the man, and the child with it.
There was in this group of rushed creatures a moment of dreadful anguish, that nobody witnessed, and a dark and desperate effort towards salvation. But the engulfment was done with the jumble of the fall, and everything disappeared in the cesspool, that closed again with the thick slowness of the mud.
Only the child, miraculously left out of the ditch, cried, and called out miserably, waving his little arms. Two peasants, who were crossing a field of madder at some distance from there, heard he boy and ran up. They took the child away.
The child cried: “My daddy! my dad! I want my daddy! "
"- And where is your daddy?”
“There,” said the child, pointing to the ditch.
The two peasants understood and set to work. After a quarter of an hour, they removed the broken car; after half an hour they removed the dead horse. The little one was still screaming and asking for his father.
At last, after renewed efforts, from the same hole in the ditch where the carriage and the horse were, they fished and brought out of the water something inert and fetid that was entirely black and covered with mud: it was the corpse of the father.
All that had taken about an hour. The child's despair redoubled; he did not want his father to be dead. The peasants believed him to be dead, however; but as the child begged them and grabbed them, and they were good people, they tried, to calm the little one, something that is always done in such a case in the country, and began to roll the drowned in the madder field.
They rolled him like that for a good quarter of an hour. Nothing changed. They rolled him over again. Same stillness. The little one followed and wept. They did it a third time, and they were about to give up for good, when they thought the corpse was moving an arm. They continued. The other arm twitched. They persisted. The whole body gave vague signs of life, and the dead man began to resuscitate slowly.
This is extraordinary, isn't it? Well! Here is what is even more unexpected. The man sighed for a long time as he came to life and cried out in despair: “Ah! my God! What have you done? I was so good where I was. I was with my wife, with my son. They had come to me, and I to them. I saw them, I was in heavenb, I was in the light. Ah! My God! What have you done? I am no longer dead!"
The man who spoke like that had just spent an hour in the marsh. He had a broken arm and severe contusions.
“He was brought back to the city, and he has just recovered," added Mr. Van Maenen, finishing this story. It is Mr. D ..., one of the highest intelligences, not only of Zeeland, but of Holland. He's one of our best lawyers. Everyone respects and honors him here. When he learned, Mr. Victor Hugo, that you were going to pass through the city, he absolutely wanted to get up from his bed, that he had not yet left for a month, and he did his first outing today to meet you and introduce you to his two little daughters, to whom he had given bouquets for you.
There was a unanimous cry from all over the table.
“These are things that only happen in Zeeland! Travelers don't come here, but locals revive.”
“He should have been invited to dinner," ventured the female part of the table.
"- Invite him! I cried; but we were already twelve! Now was not exactly the time to invite a ghost. Would you like, ladies, to see a dead as the thirteenth.”
"- There are," said Victor Hugo, who had remained silent, "two enigmas in this story, the enigma of the body and that of the soul. I do not undertake to explain the first nor to say how it is possible that a man remains engulfed for a whole hour in a cesspool, without death ensuing. Asphyxiation, it must be believed, is a phenomenon that is still poorly understood. But what I understand admirably is the lamentation of this soul. What! She had already left the earthly life, from this shadow, from this soiled body, from those black lips, from this black ditch! She had started the charming escape. Through the mud she had reached the surface of the cesspool, and there, still barely attached by the last feather of his wing, to that horrible last sigh strangled with mud, she was already silently inhaling the ineffable freshness of life outside. She could already fly to her lost loves and reach the woman and rise to the child. Suddenly, the semi-escapee shudders; she feels that the earthly bond, instead of being completely broken, is renewed, and that instead of ascending with the light, she suddenly descends again in the night, and that she, the soul, is violently returned to the corpse. Thus, she utters a terrible cry.”
"What results from this to me," added Victor Hugo, "is that the soul can remain for a certain time above the body, in a floating state, no longer being a prisoner and not being freed yet. This floating state is agony, it is lethargy. The rattle is the soul that rushes out of the open mouth and falls back at times, and that shakes, panting, until she breaks the vaporous thread of the last breath. It seems that I see her. She struggles, she half escapes from the lips, she returns to them, she escapes again, then she gives a great flap of the wing, and there she goes, flying away in one gulp and disappearing into the immense azure. She's free. But sometimes also the dying person comes back to life: then the desperate soul returns to the dying person. The dream sometimes gives us the sensation of these strange comings and goings of the prisoner. The dreams are the few daily steps that the soul takes outside of us. Until it has finished its time in the body, the soul makes, every night, in our sleep, the tour of the playground of the dream.”
Paul de la Miltière”
The fact in itself is eminently Spiritist, as one can see; but if there is anything more Spiritist still, it is the explanation given by Mr. Victor Hugo; one would say it was drawn verbatim from the doctrine; it is, moreover, not the first time that he has expressed himself in this direction. We remember the charming speech he gave, almost three years ago, at the tomb of the young Emily Putron (Spiritist Review, February 1865); certainly, the most convinced Spiritist would not speak otherwise. All that is missing from such thoughts is the word; but what does the word matter if the ideas are accredited? Mr. Victor Hugo, by his authorized name, is a popularizer. And yet, those who applaud him ridicule Spiritism, a new proof that they do not know what it consists of. If they knew it, they would not treat the same idea as madness in some, and sublime truth in others.
Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Mrs. Jone Mecone about the pre-existence
December 1770
“In my first visit to London, almost forty-five years ago, I knew someone who had an opinion almost like that of your author. Her name was Hive; she was the widow of a printer. She died shortly after I left. By her will, she compelled her son to read publicly, at the Salter's-Hall, a solemn speech whose objective was to prove that this earth is the real hell, the place of punishment for the Spirits who have sinned in a better world. In atonement for their sins, they are sent down here in all kinds of forms. I saw this speech that was printed a long time ago. I think I remember that it did not lack quotes from the Scriptures; it supposed that, although we have no memory of our pre-existence today, we would come back to it after our death, and we would remember the punishments suffered, so as to be corrected. As for those who had not yet sinned, the sight of our sufferings was to serve as a warning to them.
In fact, we see here that each animal has its enemy, and this enemy has instincts, faculties, weapons to scare it, hurt it, destroy it. As for man, who is at the first step of the ladder, he is a devil to his fellow human being. In the received doctrine of goodness and justice from the great Creator, it seems that an assumption like that of Mrs. Hive is needed to reconcile this apparent state of general and systematic evil with the honor of the divinity. But, for lack of history and facts, our reasoning cannot go far when we want to discover what we were before our earthly existence, or what we will be later. (Magasin Pittoresque, October 1867, page 340).”
We have reported in the Spiritist Review, August 1865, the epitaph of Franklin composed by himself and that is thus conceived:
“Here rests the body of Benjamin Franklin, thrown to the worms; a printer, like the cover of an old book whose pages were torn off, and whose title and graphic decoration were erased. But, as he believed, the work will not be lost, and it will come back in a new and better edition, reviewed and revised by the author.”
Another of the great doctrines of Spiritism, the plurality of existences, professed more than a century ago by a man rightly regarded as one of the lights of humanity. This idea is, moreover, so logical, so evident from the facts that we daily have before our eyes, that it is in the state of intuition in a multitude of people. It is even positively admitted today, by great intelligences, as a philosophical principle, apart from Spiritism. Spiritism, therefore, did not invent it; but it has demonstrated and proved it, and from the state of a simple theory it made it pass into the state of positive fact. This is one of the many doors open to the Spiritist ideas, because, as we explained on another circumstance, admitting this starting point, from deduction to deduction, we necessarily get to everything that Spiritism teaches.
“In my first visit to London, almost forty-five years ago, I knew someone who had an opinion almost like that of your author. Her name was Hive; she was the widow of a printer. She died shortly after I left. By her will, she compelled her son to read publicly, at the Salter's-Hall, a solemn speech whose objective was to prove that this earth is the real hell, the place of punishment for the Spirits who have sinned in a better world. In atonement for their sins, they are sent down here in all kinds of forms. I saw this speech that was printed a long time ago. I think I remember that it did not lack quotes from the Scriptures; it supposed that, although we have no memory of our pre-existence today, we would come back to it after our death, and we would remember the punishments suffered, so as to be corrected. As for those who had not yet sinned, the sight of our sufferings was to serve as a warning to them.
In fact, we see here that each animal has its enemy, and this enemy has instincts, faculties, weapons to scare it, hurt it, destroy it. As for man, who is at the first step of the ladder, he is a devil to his fellow human being. In the received doctrine of goodness and justice from the great Creator, it seems that an assumption like that of Mrs. Hive is needed to reconcile this apparent state of general and systematic evil with the honor of the divinity. But, for lack of history and facts, our reasoning cannot go far when we want to discover what we were before our earthly existence, or what we will be later. (Magasin Pittoresque, October 1867, page 340).”
We have reported in the Spiritist Review, August 1865, the epitaph of Franklin composed by himself and that is thus conceived:
“Here rests the body of Benjamin Franklin, thrown to the worms; a printer, like the cover of an old book whose pages were torn off, and whose title and graphic decoration were erased. But, as he believed, the work will not be lost, and it will come back in a new and better edition, reviewed and revised by the author.”
Another of the great doctrines of Spiritism, the plurality of existences, professed more than a century ago by a man rightly regarded as one of the lights of humanity. This idea is, moreover, so logical, so evident from the facts that we daily have before our eyes, that it is in the state of intuition in a multitude of people. It is even positively admitted today, by great intelligences, as a philosophical principle, apart from Spiritism. Spiritism, therefore, did not invent it; but it has demonstrated and proved it, and from the state of a simple theory it made it pass into the state of positive fact. This is one of the many doors open to the Spiritist ideas, because, as we explained on another circumstance, admitting this starting point, from deduction to deduction, we necessarily get to everything that Spiritism teaches.
Reflection on the pre-existence, by Jean Raynaud
“Here is a man who is nearing the end of his career; in a few hours he will be gone. At this supreme moment, is he aware of the result, of the net product of life? Does he see the summary as in a mirror? Can he get an idea of that? No without a doubt. Yet, this net product, this summary exists somewhere. It is in the soul, in a latent way, without her being able to discern it. She will discern it in broad daylight; then the summary of all the past coming to life, at the same time, it will be really recognized. Here below, we only know each other by installments; the light of one day is erased by the darkness of another day; the soul collects and keeps in its treasure a crowd of impressions, perceptions, desires that we forget.
Our memory is far from being proportionate to the capacity of our soul; and so many things that have acted on our soul, of which we have lost the memory, are for us as if they had never been. However, they have had their effect, and their effect remains; the soul keeps its imprint, that will be found in the final summary that will be our future life. (Extract from Pensées Genevoises, by François Roget. Magasin Pittoresque, 1861, page 222.)”
Our memory is far from being proportionate to the capacity of our soul; and so many things that have acted on our soul, of which we have lost the memory, are for us as if they had never been. However, they have had their effect, and their effect remains; the soul keeps its imprint, that will be found in the final summary that will be our future life. (Extract from Pensées Genevoises, by François Roget. Magasin Pittoresque, 1861, page 222.)”
Joan of Arc and her commentators
Joan of Arc is one of the great figures of France, that stands in history as a huge problem, and at the same time as a living voice against disbelief. It is worth noting that in this time of skepticism, it is the most obstinate adversaries of the marvelous who strive to exalt the memory of this almost legendary heroine; obliged to investigate this life full of mysteries, they are forced to recognize the existence of facts that the sole laws of matter cannot explain, because if we remove these facts, Joan of Arc is no more than a courageous woman, as we see many. It is probably not without a reason of convenience that public attention is being drawn to this subject at this time; it is a means, like any other, to pave the way for new ideas.
Joan of Arc is neither a problem nor a mystery to the Spiritists; it is an eminent model of almost all mediumistic faculties, whose effects, like a host of other phenomena, are explained by the principles of the doctrine, without any need to seek the cause in the supernatural. She is the brilliant confirmation of Spiritism, of which she was one of the most eminent precursors, not by her teachings, but by the facts, as much as by her virtues that denote in her a superior Spirit.
We propose to do a special study on this subject, as soon as our work allows us; in the meantime, it is useful to know the way in which her faculties are considered by her commentators. The following article is taken from the Propagateur de Lille, August 17th, 1867:
Our readers will undoubtedly remember that this year, on the celebration of the anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Orleans, Father Freppel asked, with a humble and generous subtleness, for the canonization of our Joan of Arc. We are reading today, in the Library of the École des Chartes, an excellent article by Mr. Natalis de Wailly, member of the Académie des Inscriptions, about Joan of Arc, giving his conclusions and those of true science, on the supernatural history of the one who was, at the same time, a heroine of the Church and of France. Mr. de Wailly's arguments are well suited to encourage the hopes of Father Freppel and ours. Léon GAUTIER (Monde)."
There aren’t many historical figures that were, more than Joan of Arc, exposed to the contradiction of contemporaries and posterity; there is none, however, whose life is simpler or better known.
Suddenly emerging from obscurity, she appears on the stage only to fulfill a marvelous role that immediately attracts everyone's attention. She is a young girl, skilled only at weaving and sewing, who claims to be sent from God to defeat the enemies of France. At first, she only has a small number of devoted followers who believe her word; the skillful are suspicious and stand in the way: they finally give in, and Joan of Arc can win the victories she had predicted. Soon she drags to Reims an incredulous and ungrateful king, who betrays her when she is preparing to take Paris, who abandons her when she falls prisoner in the hands of the English, who does not even try to protest or proclaim her innocent when she will expire for him. On the day of her death, therefore, there weren’t only enemies that declared her apostate, idolatrous, shameless, or faithful friends that venerated her as a saint; there were also ungrateful people that forgot her, not to mention the indifferent who did not care about her, and clever people who boasted of never having believed in her mission or of having half believed only.
All these contradictions, amid which Joan of Arc had to live and die, survived her, and accompanied her through the centuries. Between the shameful poem of Voltaire and the eloquent history of Mr. Wallon, the most diverse opinions were produced; and if everyone agrees today to respect this great memory, we can say that under the common admiration there are still deep disagreements. Anyone who reads or writes the story of Joan of Arc sees a problem standing in front of him, that modern criticism does not like to handle, but that imposes itself as a necessity. The problem is the supernatural character that manifests itself in the whole of this extraordinary life, and more especially in certain particular facts.
Yes, the question of the miracle inevitably comes up in the life of Joan of Arc; it has embarrassed more than one writer and often elicited strange responses. Mr. Wallon rightly thought that the first duty of a historian of Joan of Arc was not to elude this difficulty: he tackles it head on and explains it by the miraculous intervention of God. I will try to show that this solution is perfectly in accordance with the rules of historical criticism.
The metaphysical proofs on which the possibility of a miracle can be based, escape or displease certain minds; but history does not have to make these proofs. Its mission is not to establish theories; it is to attest facts, and to register all those that seem to be true. That a miraculous or inexplicable fact must be verified with more attention, no one will dispute it; therefore, also this same fact, more carefully verified than the others, in a way acquires a greater degree of certainty. To reason otherwise is to violate all the rules of criticism, and inappropriately transport the prejudices of metaphysics into history. There is no argument against the possibility of the miracle that dismisses the examination of the historical proofs of a miraculous fact, and admitting them, when they are such to produce conviction in a man of good sense and good faith. Later we will have the right to seek an explanation for this fact that satisfies this or that scientific system; but first of all, and whatever happens, the existence of the fact must be recognized, when it rests on proofs that satisfy the rules of historical criticism.
Are there, or are there not, facts of this nature, in the story of Joan of Arc? This question was discussed and discussed by a scholar who preceded Mr. Wallon, and who has acquired undeniable authority in this matter. If I am quoting here Mr. Quicherat, in preference to M. Wallon, it is not only because one has established the facts, that I wish to recall, before the other; it is also because he set out to establish them without claiming to explain them, so that his criticism, independent of any preconceived system, was limited to laying down premises of which he did not even want to foresee the conclusions.
“It is clear,” he said, “that the curious will want to go further, and reason about a cause whose effects it will not be enough for them to admire. Theologians, psychologists, physiologists, I have no solution to indicate to them. May they find, if they can, each one from their point of view, the elements of an appreciation that defies any contradictor. The only thing that I feel capable of doing, in the direction in which such research will be carried out, is to present, in their most precise form, the peculiarities of Joan of Arc's life, that seem to be outside the circle of human faculties.
The most important particularity, the one that dominates all the others, is the fact of the voices that she heard several times a day, that called out to her or answered her, whose pitches she distinguished, relating them especially to Saint Michael, to Saint Catherine and to Saint Marguerite. At the same time a bright light appeared, in which she saw the faces of her interlocutors: "I see them with the eyes of my body," she said to her judges, "as well as I see you." Yes, she maintained with unwavering firmness that God was advising her through saints and angels. For a moment, she contradicted herself, she weakened before the fear of torture; but she wept for her weakness and publicly confessed; her last cry in the flames was that her voices had not deceived her and that her revelations were from God. We must, therefore, conclude with Mr. Quicherat that “on this point, the most severe criticism has no suspicion to raise against her good faith." The fact once noted, how did certain scientists explain it? In two ways: either by madness, or by simple hallucination. What does Mr. Quicherat say about it? That he foresees great dangers for those who will want to classify the fact of the Maid among pathological cases.
But, he adds, whether science finds its account or not, it will nevertheless be necessary to admit the visions, and, as I will show it, strange perceptions of mind resulting from these visions.
What are these strange perceptions of mind? These are revelations that enabled Joan sometimes to know the most secret thoughts of certain people, sometimes to perceive objects beyond the reach of her senses, sometimes to discern and announce the future.
Mr. Quicherat cites, for each of these three kinds of revelations, an example based on such solid foundations that one cannot, he says, reject it without rejecting the very foundation of history.
In the first place, Joan reveals to Charles VII a secret known to God and to him, the only way she had to force the belief of that suspicious prince.
Then, being in Tours, she discerned that there was, between Loches and Chinon, in the church of Saint-Catherine of Fierbois, sunk to a certain depth near the altar, a rusty sword marked with five crosses. The sword was found, and her accusers later charged her that she had heard from hearsay that the weapon was there or had it put there herself.
“I feel," said Mr. Quicherat on this subject, "how strong such an interpretation will appear, in a time like ours; how weak, on the contrary, are the fragments of interrogation that I put in opposition; but when you have the whole process in front of you, and you can see how the accused exposed her conscience, then it is her testimony that is strong, and the interpretation of the reasoners that is weak.”
I finally let Mr. Quicherat himself tell one of Joan of Arc's predictions:
In one of her first conversations with Charles VII, she announced to him that by operating the liberation of Orleans, she would be injured, but without being incapacitated to act; her two saints had told her so, and the event proved to her that they had not deceived her. She confesses this in her fourth interrogation. We would be reduced to this testimony, that skepticism, without questioning its good faith, could attribute its saying to an illusion of memory. But what shows that she truly predicted her injury is that she got it on May 7th, 1429, and that on April 12th, a Flemish ambassador who was in France, wrote a letter to the Brabant government in which it was reported, not only the prophecy, but the way it would be fulfilled. Joan had her shoulder pierced with a crossbow when attacking Fort des Tourelles, and the Flemish envoy had written: She must be wounded in a single stroke in a fight in front of Orleans, but she will not die. The passage of his letter was logged in the registers of the Brussels Chamber of Accounts.
One of the scholars whose opinion I recalled earlier, the one who makes Joan of Arc a hallucinated rather than a madwoman, does not dispute her predictions, and he attributes them "to a kind of sensitive impressionability, to a radiation of the nervous force whose laws are not yet known.”
Are we certain that these laws exist, and that they should never be known? While they are not, isn’t that better to frankly admit his ignorance than to offer such explanations? Is every hypothesis good when it comes to denying the action of Providence, and does disbelief dismisses any reasoning? Should we not say to ourselves that, since the beginning of time, the vast majority of men have agreed to believe that there is a personal God who, after having created the world, directs it and manifests himself when he pleases by extraordinary signs? If we silenced our pride for a moment, wouldn't we hear this concert of all races and all generations? The marvelous thing is that one can have such a strong faith in oneself, when speaking on behalf of a science, that is the most uncertain and the most variable of all, of a science whose champions do not cease to contradict each other, whose systems are dying and reborn like fashion, without experience ever having been able to ruin or permanently establish a single one. I would gladly say to these doctors in pathology: If you encounter illnesses like that of Joan of Arc, be careful not to cure them; rather, try to get them to become contagious.
Better inspired, Mr. Wallon did not claim to know Joan of Arc better than she knew herself. Placed in front of the sincerest of the witnesses, he lent her an attentive ear and granted her complete confidence. This mixture of good sense and elevation, of simplicity and grandeur, this superhuman courage, heightened still further by the short failings of nature, appeared to him not as symptoms of madness or hallucination, but as striking signs of heroism and holiness. There, and not elsewhere, was the right review; it follows that, in seeking the truth, he also found eloquence, and surpassed all those that had preceded him in this path. He deserves to be placed ahead of those writers of whom Mr. Quicherat has said excellently: “They restored Joan as whole as they could, and the more they were concerned with reproducing her originality, the more they found the secret of her greatness.”
Mr. Quicherat will find it quite natural that I borrow his words to characterize a success to which he has contributed more than anyone; for if he did not agree to write the story of Joan of Arc himself, from now on it is impossible to undertake it without resourcing to his works. Mr. Wallon, in particular, derived immense benefit from it, almost never having anything to modify either in the texts collected by the publisher, or in its conclusions. However, he did not accept them without control. That is how he points out to an involuntary omission that has been used by a writer who leans more towards hallucination than the inspiration of Joan of Arc. We read on page 216 of the Trial (volume I) that Joan of Arc was fasting the day she heard the angel's voice for the first time, but that she had not fasted the previous day. On page 52, on the contrary, Mr. Quicherat had printed: “et ipsa Johanna jejunaverat die præcedenti.” By deleting on page 216 the negation that is missing on page 52, we had two consecutive fasting that seemed a sufficient cause of hallucination. The manuscript does not lend itself to this hypothesis; Mr. Wallon noted that Mr. Quicherat's usual accuracy is lacking here, and that we should read, on page 52, no jejunaverat.
The only slightly serious disagreement that I see between the two authors is when they assess the formal errors reported at the trial. Mr. Quicherat maintains that Pierre Cauchon was too clever to commit illegalities, and Mr. Wallon believes him to be too passionate to have been able to defend himself against them. I am not able to resolve this question; I will only point out that it is basically of little importance, since both sides agree on the iniquity of the judge and the innocence of the victim.
I find Mr. Wallon affirming with Mr. Quicherat, contrary to an already old opinion and that still has partisans, that once Charles VII was crowned in Reims, Joan of Arc had not yet accomplished her whole mission; for she had announced her commitment to expel the English. I deliberately leave aside the freedom of the Duke of Orleans because it is a point on which his declarations are not so explicit. But with regard to the expulsion of the English, we have the very letter that she addressed to them on March 22nd, 1429: "I came from God, the king of heaven, body for body, to kick you out of France.” Her short failings can do nothing against this authentic text, that she has moreover confirmed on many occasions, until she sanctifies it at the stake, with a supreme protest. I cannot, therefore, understand that a doubt may exist, especially in the minds of those who believe in the inspiration of Joan of Arc. How can they know her mission, if not through her? And why deny her here the credit they grant her elsewhere?
She failed, it will be said, therefore she had no mission from God to undertake it. Such was, in fact, the sad thought that crossed the minds when she was found to be the prisoner of the English. But the pious Gerson, a few months before his death and the day after the freedom of Orleans, had in a way foreseen the setbacks after the victory, not as a reproach to Joan of Arc, but as a punishment for the ungrateful people who she came to defend. He wrote on May 14th, 1529:
“Even if (God forbid!) she would be deceived in her hope and in ours, it should not be concluded that what she did came from the evil spirit and not from God; but rather to attack our ingratitude and the righteous judgment of God, although secret ... because God, without changing his counsel, changes the judgment according to the merits.
Here again, Mr. Wallon has made good criticism: he does not divide Joan of Arc's testimonies, he accepts them all and declares them sincere, even when they no longer seem to be prophetic. I add that he fully justifies them by showing that if she had a mission to drive out the English, she did not promise to carry out everything by herself, but that she began the work and predicted its outcome. Mr. Wallon felt it well; to glorify her in her triumphs to deny her in her passion is not to understand Joan of Arc.
We, especially, who know the outcome of this marvelous drama, we who know that the English were indeed driven from the kingdom and the crown of Reims strengthened on Charles VII’s head, we must believe, with Mr. Wallon, that God never ceased to inspire the one whose greatness it pleased him to bless by trial and whose holiness it pleased him to bless by martyrdom.
N. de Wailly.”
Our correspondent in Antwerp, who kindly sent us the above article, has attached the following note, from his personal research, on the trial of Joan of Arc:
“Pierre Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais, and an inquisitor named Lemaire, followed by sixty assistants, were the judges of Joan. Her trial was instructed by the mysterious and barbaric forms of the Inquisition, that had sworn her downfall. She wanted to submit to the judgment of the Pope and the Council of Basel, but the bishop opposed it. A priest, L'Oyseleur, deceived her by abusing confession, and gave her fatal advices. Following intrigues of all kinds, she was condemned in 1431, to be burnt alive, "as a liar, pernicious, abuser of the people, diviner, blasphemer of God, unbeliever in the faith of Jesus Christ, boast, idolater, cruel, dissolute, invocator of the devils, systematic and heretic.
Pope Callistus III, in 1456, ordered the rehabilitation of Joan by an ecclesiastical commission, and it was declared, by a solemn decree, that Joan had died a martyr for the defense of her religion, her country and her King. The Pope would have liked to canonize her, but his courage did not go so far.
Pierre Cauchon died suddenly in 1443, shaving his beard; he was excommunicated; his body was dug up and dumped in the street."
Joan of Arc is neither a problem nor a mystery to the Spiritists; it is an eminent model of almost all mediumistic faculties, whose effects, like a host of other phenomena, are explained by the principles of the doctrine, without any need to seek the cause in the supernatural. She is the brilliant confirmation of Spiritism, of which she was one of the most eminent precursors, not by her teachings, but by the facts, as much as by her virtues that denote in her a superior Spirit.
We propose to do a special study on this subject, as soon as our work allows us; in the meantime, it is useful to know the way in which her faculties are considered by her commentators. The following article is taken from the Propagateur de Lille, August 17th, 1867:
Our readers will undoubtedly remember that this year, on the celebration of the anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Orleans, Father Freppel asked, with a humble and generous subtleness, for the canonization of our Joan of Arc. We are reading today, in the Library of the École des Chartes, an excellent article by Mr. Natalis de Wailly, member of the Académie des Inscriptions, about Joan of Arc, giving his conclusions and those of true science, on the supernatural history of the one who was, at the same time, a heroine of the Church and of France. Mr. de Wailly's arguments are well suited to encourage the hopes of Father Freppel and ours. Léon GAUTIER (Monde)."
There aren’t many historical figures that were, more than Joan of Arc, exposed to the contradiction of contemporaries and posterity; there is none, however, whose life is simpler or better known.
Suddenly emerging from obscurity, she appears on the stage only to fulfill a marvelous role that immediately attracts everyone's attention. She is a young girl, skilled only at weaving and sewing, who claims to be sent from God to defeat the enemies of France. At first, she only has a small number of devoted followers who believe her word; the skillful are suspicious and stand in the way: they finally give in, and Joan of Arc can win the victories she had predicted. Soon she drags to Reims an incredulous and ungrateful king, who betrays her when she is preparing to take Paris, who abandons her when she falls prisoner in the hands of the English, who does not even try to protest or proclaim her innocent when she will expire for him. On the day of her death, therefore, there weren’t only enemies that declared her apostate, idolatrous, shameless, or faithful friends that venerated her as a saint; there were also ungrateful people that forgot her, not to mention the indifferent who did not care about her, and clever people who boasted of never having believed in her mission or of having half believed only.
All these contradictions, amid which Joan of Arc had to live and die, survived her, and accompanied her through the centuries. Between the shameful poem of Voltaire and the eloquent history of Mr. Wallon, the most diverse opinions were produced; and if everyone agrees today to respect this great memory, we can say that under the common admiration there are still deep disagreements. Anyone who reads or writes the story of Joan of Arc sees a problem standing in front of him, that modern criticism does not like to handle, but that imposes itself as a necessity. The problem is the supernatural character that manifests itself in the whole of this extraordinary life, and more especially in certain particular facts.
Yes, the question of the miracle inevitably comes up in the life of Joan of Arc; it has embarrassed more than one writer and often elicited strange responses. Mr. Wallon rightly thought that the first duty of a historian of Joan of Arc was not to elude this difficulty: he tackles it head on and explains it by the miraculous intervention of God. I will try to show that this solution is perfectly in accordance with the rules of historical criticism.
The metaphysical proofs on which the possibility of a miracle can be based, escape or displease certain minds; but history does not have to make these proofs. Its mission is not to establish theories; it is to attest facts, and to register all those that seem to be true. That a miraculous or inexplicable fact must be verified with more attention, no one will dispute it; therefore, also this same fact, more carefully verified than the others, in a way acquires a greater degree of certainty. To reason otherwise is to violate all the rules of criticism, and inappropriately transport the prejudices of metaphysics into history. There is no argument against the possibility of the miracle that dismisses the examination of the historical proofs of a miraculous fact, and admitting them, when they are such to produce conviction in a man of good sense and good faith. Later we will have the right to seek an explanation for this fact that satisfies this or that scientific system; but first of all, and whatever happens, the existence of the fact must be recognized, when it rests on proofs that satisfy the rules of historical criticism.
Are there, or are there not, facts of this nature, in the story of Joan of Arc? This question was discussed and discussed by a scholar who preceded Mr. Wallon, and who has acquired undeniable authority in this matter. If I am quoting here Mr. Quicherat, in preference to M. Wallon, it is not only because one has established the facts, that I wish to recall, before the other; it is also because he set out to establish them without claiming to explain them, so that his criticism, independent of any preconceived system, was limited to laying down premises of which he did not even want to foresee the conclusions.
“It is clear,” he said, “that the curious will want to go further, and reason about a cause whose effects it will not be enough for them to admire. Theologians, psychologists, physiologists, I have no solution to indicate to them. May they find, if they can, each one from their point of view, the elements of an appreciation that defies any contradictor. The only thing that I feel capable of doing, in the direction in which such research will be carried out, is to present, in their most precise form, the peculiarities of Joan of Arc's life, that seem to be outside the circle of human faculties.
The most important particularity, the one that dominates all the others, is the fact of the voices that she heard several times a day, that called out to her or answered her, whose pitches she distinguished, relating them especially to Saint Michael, to Saint Catherine and to Saint Marguerite. At the same time a bright light appeared, in which she saw the faces of her interlocutors: "I see them with the eyes of my body," she said to her judges, "as well as I see you." Yes, she maintained with unwavering firmness that God was advising her through saints and angels. For a moment, she contradicted herself, she weakened before the fear of torture; but she wept for her weakness and publicly confessed; her last cry in the flames was that her voices had not deceived her and that her revelations were from God. We must, therefore, conclude with Mr. Quicherat that “on this point, the most severe criticism has no suspicion to raise against her good faith." The fact once noted, how did certain scientists explain it? In two ways: either by madness, or by simple hallucination. What does Mr. Quicherat say about it? That he foresees great dangers for those who will want to classify the fact of the Maid among pathological cases.
But, he adds, whether science finds its account or not, it will nevertheless be necessary to admit the visions, and, as I will show it, strange perceptions of mind resulting from these visions.
What are these strange perceptions of mind? These are revelations that enabled Joan sometimes to know the most secret thoughts of certain people, sometimes to perceive objects beyond the reach of her senses, sometimes to discern and announce the future.
Mr. Quicherat cites, for each of these three kinds of revelations, an example based on such solid foundations that one cannot, he says, reject it without rejecting the very foundation of history.
In the first place, Joan reveals to Charles VII a secret known to God and to him, the only way she had to force the belief of that suspicious prince.
Then, being in Tours, she discerned that there was, between Loches and Chinon, in the church of Saint-Catherine of Fierbois, sunk to a certain depth near the altar, a rusty sword marked with five crosses. The sword was found, and her accusers later charged her that she had heard from hearsay that the weapon was there or had it put there herself.
“I feel," said Mr. Quicherat on this subject, "how strong such an interpretation will appear, in a time like ours; how weak, on the contrary, are the fragments of interrogation that I put in opposition; but when you have the whole process in front of you, and you can see how the accused exposed her conscience, then it is her testimony that is strong, and the interpretation of the reasoners that is weak.”
I finally let Mr. Quicherat himself tell one of Joan of Arc's predictions:
In one of her first conversations with Charles VII, she announced to him that by operating the liberation of Orleans, she would be injured, but without being incapacitated to act; her two saints had told her so, and the event proved to her that they had not deceived her. She confesses this in her fourth interrogation. We would be reduced to this testimony, that skepticism, without questioning its good faith, could attribute its saying to an illusion of memory. But what shows that she truly predicted her injury is that she got it on May 7th, 1429, and that on April 12th, a Flemish ambassador who was in France, wrote a letter to the Brabant government in which it was reported, not only the prophecy, but the way it would be fulfilled. Joan had her shoulder pierced with a crossbow when attacking Fort des Tourelles, and the Flemish envoy had written: She must be wounded in a single stroke in a fight in front of Orleans, but she will not die. The passage of his letter was logged in the registers of the Brussels Chamber of Accounts.
One of the scholars whose opinion I recalled earlier, the one who makes Joan of Arc a hallucinated rather than a madwoman, does not dispute her predictions, and he attributes them "to a kind of sensitive impressionability, to a radiation of the nervous force whose laws are not yet known.”
Are we certain that these laws exist, and that they should never be known? While they are not, isn’t that better to frankly admit his ignorance than to offer such explanations? Is every hypothesis good when it comes to denying the action of Providence, and does disbelief dismisses any reasoning? Should we not say to ourselves that, since the beginning of time, the vast majority of men have agreed to believe that there is a personal God who, after having created the world, directs it and manifests himself when he pleases by extraordinary signs? If we silenced our pride for a moment, wouldn't we hear this concert of all races and all generations? The marvelous thing is that one can have such a strong faith in oneself, when speaking on behalf of a science, that is the most uncertain and the most variable of all, of a science whose champions do not cease to contradict each other, whose systems are dying and reborn like fashion, without experience ever having been able to ruin or permanently establish a single one. I would gladly say to these doctors in pathology: If you encounter illnesses like that of Joan of Arc, be careful not to cure them; rather, try to get them to become contagious.
Better inspired, Mr. Wallon did not claim to know Joan of Arc better than she knew herself. Placed in front of the sincerest of the witnesses, he lent her an attentive ear and granted her complete confidence. This mixture of good sense and elevation, of simplicity and grandeur, this superhuman courage, heightened still further by the short failings of nature, appeared to him not as symptoms of madness or hallucination, but as striking signs of heroism and holiness. There, and not elsewhere, was the right review; it follows that, in seeking the truth, he also found eloquence, and surpassed all those that had preceded him in this path. He deserves to be placed ahead of those writers of whom Mr. Quicherat has said excellently: “They restored Joan as whole as they could, and the more they were concerned with reproducing her originality, the more they found the secret of her greatness.”
Mr. Quicherat will find it quite natural that I borrow his words to characterize a success to which he has contributed more than anyone; for if he did not agree to write the story of Joan of Arc himself, from now on it is impossible to undertake it without resourcing to his works. Mr. Wallon, in particular, derived immense benefit from it, almost never having anything to modify either in the texts collected by the publisher, or in its conclusions. However, he did not accept them without control. That is how he points out to an involuntary omission that has been used by a writer who leans more towards hallucination than the inspiration of Joan of Arc. We read on page 216 of the Trial (volume I) that Joan of Arc was fasting the day she heard the angel's voice for the first time, but that she had not fasted the previous day. On page 52, on the contrary, Mr. Quicherat had printed: “et ipsa Johanna jejunaverat die præcedenti.” By deleting on page 216 the negation that is missing on page 52, we had two consecutive fasting that seemed a sufficient cause of hallucination. The manuscript does not lend itself to this hypothesis; Mr. Wallon noted that Mr. Quicherat's usual accuracy is lacking here, and that we should read, on page 52, no jejunaverat.
The only slightly serious disagreement that I see between the two authors is when they assess the formal errors reported at the trial. Mr. Quicherat maintains that Pierre Cauchon was too clever to commit illegalities, and Mr. Wallon believes him to be too passionate to have been able to defend himself against them. I am not able to resolve this question; I will only point out that it is basically of little importance, since both sides agree on the iniquity of the judge and the innocence of the victim.
I find Mr. Wallon affirming with Mr. Quicherat, contrary to an already old opinion and that still has partisans, that once Charles VII was crowned in Reims, Joan of Arc had not yet accomplished her whole mission; for she had announced her commitment to expel the English. I deliberately leave aside the freedom of the Duke of Orleans because it is a point on which his declarations are not so explicit. But with regard to the expulsion of the English, we have the very letter that she addressed to them on March 22nd, 1429: "I came from God, the king of heaven, body for body, to kick you out of France.” Her short failings can do nothing against this authentic text, that she has moreover confirmed on many occasions, until she sanctifies it at the stake, with a supreme protest. I cannot, therefore, understand that a doubt may exist, especially in the minds of those who believe in the inspiration of Joan of Arc. How can they know her mission, if not through her? And why deny her here the credit they grant her elsewhere?
She failed, it will be said, therefore she had no mission from God to undertake it. Such was, in fact, the sad thought that crossed the minds when she was found to be the prisoner of the English. But the pious Gerson, a few months before his death and the day after the freedom of Orleans, had in a way foreseen the setbacks after the victory, not as a reproach to Joan of Arc, but as a punishment for the ungrateful people who she came to defend. He wrote on May 14th, 1529:
“Even if (God forbid!) she would be deceived in her hope and in ours, it should not be concluded that what she did came from the evil spirit and not from God; but rather to attack our ingratitude and the righteous judgment of God, although secret ... because God, without changing his counsel, changes the judgment according to the merits.
Here again, Mr. Wallon has made good criticism: he does not divide Joan of Arc's testimonies, he accepts them all and declares them sincere, even when they no longer seem to be prophetic. I add that he fully justifies them by showing that if she had a mission to drive out the English, she did not promise to carry out everything by herself, but that she began the work and predicted its outcome. Mr. Wallon felt it well; to glorify her in her triumphs to deny her in her passion is not to understand Joan of Arc.
We, especially, who know the outcome of this marvelous drama, we who know that the English were indeed driven from the kingdom and the crown of Reims strengthened on Charles VII’s head, we must believe, with Mr. Wallon, that God never ceased to inspire the one whose greatness it pleased him to bless by trial and whose holiness it pleased him to bless by martyrdom.
N. de Wailly.”
Our correspondent in Antwerp, who kindly sent us the above article, has attached the following note, from his personal research, on the trial of Joan of Arc:
“Pierre Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais, and an inquisitor named Lemaire, followed by sixty assistants, were the judges of Joan. Her trial was instructed by the mysterious and barbaric forms of the Inquisition, that had sworn her downfall. She wanted to submit to the judgment of the Pope and the Council of Basel, but the bishop opposed it. A priest, L'Oyseleur, deceived her by abusing confession, and gave her fatal advices. Following intrigues of all kinds, she was condemned in 1431, to be burnt alive, "as a liar, pernicious, abuser of the people, diviner, blasphemer of God, unbeliever in the faith of Jesus Christ, boast, idolater, cruel, dissolute, invocator of the devils, systematic and heretic.
Pope Callistus III, in 1456, ordered the rehabilitation of Joan by an ecclesiastical commission, and it was declared, by a solemn decree, that Joan had died a martyr for the defense of her religion, her country and her King. The Pope would have liked to canonize her, but his courage did not go so far.
Pierre Cauchon died suddenly in 1443, shaving his beard; he was excommunicated; his body was dug up and dumped in the street."
The young peasant of Monin – Case of Apparition
One of our correspondents in Oloron (Basses-Pyrénées), sent us the report of the following fact, of his personal knowledge:
“Towards the end of December 1866, not far from the village of Monin (Basses-Pyrénées), a twenty-four-year-old peasant woman, named Marianne Courbet, was busy collecting leaves in a meadow near the house lives with her father, aged sixty-four, and a sister, aged twenty-nine. For a few moments now, an old man of average height, wearing peasant clothes, had been standing at the corner of the gate that gives passage to the meadow. Suddenly, he calls the young girl, that promptly comes, and asks her if she could give him alms.
“Towards the end of December 1866, not far from the village of Monin (Basses-Pyrénées), a twenty-four-year-old peasant woman, named Marianne Courbet, was busy collecting leaves in a meadow near the house lives with her father, aged sixty-four, and a sister, aged twenty-nine. For a few moments now, an old man of average height, wearing peasant clothes, had been standing at the corner of the gate that gives passage to the meadow. Suddenly, he calls the young girl, that promptly comes, and asks her if she could give him alms.
- “But what could I give you,” she said to him, “I have nothing; unless you want to accept a piece of bread?”
- “As you wish,” replied the old man; “besides, you can rest assured, you will not miss it.”
- “You answered me a long time ago.”
- “How could I have answered you?”, said the woman. “You hadn't called me yet.”
- “I had not called you, it is true, but my Spirit had been transported to you, had embraced your Spirit, and thus I knew your intentions in advance. I also stopped in front of another house over there; my Spirit entered it and I knew the not very charitable dispositions of those who inhabit it. So, I thought there was no point in asking anything there. If these people do not change, if they continue to not practice charity, they shall be very sorry. As for you, you never refuse to give alms, and God will take your feelings into account and will give you back well beyond what you have given to the unfortunate ... Do you have sore eyes?”
- “Alas! Yes,” replies the peasant woman, “and most of the time my eyesight is so weak that I cannot devote myself to the work in the countryside.”
- "Well!”, continued the old man, “here is a pair of glasses with which you will see perfectly. You had a sister whom you loved very much and who has been dead for eight years and four months.”
- “It is true,” said the woman, more and more surprised.
- “Your mother died a year ago.”
- “Right”, she said, still surprised.
- Well! You will say five Our Father and five Hail Mary on her grave. Besides, they are both in a place where they are happy and where you will see them again one day. Before leaving you, I have one thing to recommend to you: you must go to such and such a person (a girl of bad behavior with several children), and you will ask her to let you take one of her children whom you will bring up until the time of his first communion.
Finally, here is a book of prayer that you must keep preciously, and to which is attached a grace for all those who will touch it. The people who will come to see you will have to say two Our Father and two Hail Mary for the souls in purgatory, when they come and when they leave. Among these people, whose number will increase day by day in a considerable way, there are some who will laugh, who will mock; to these you will tell nothing. Do not fail to recommend to the person from whom you are to take the child to be converted, for I do not believe that she will live much longer.
I warn you that you will have a serious illness towards the end of March; do not call a doctor, for it would be useless; it is a test to which you must submit with resignation. Besides, I'll come back to see you.”
And the old man went away. When he got to a little bridge, very close, he suddenly disappeared.
Naturally, the young peasant woman hastened to go and tell the story to the Mr. Priest, to whom she showed the book of prayer. The parish priest told her that he thought there was something extraordinary there and urged her to look after that book with care. She also hastened to do all that the old man had recommended to her, and since then we have always seen her with her glasses and the child that she has taken care of.
She was visited by an innumerable crowd, and last Sunday, her house was so full that the priest had to sing vespers almost by himself. I must not forget an important circumstance, that is, according to the prediction of the old man, the peasant woman has been in bed for a few days. Now, I must tell you that in Monin, as in Oloron, opinions are very divided about the fact in question; some believe in it and others remain skeptical. The priest of Monin, who had at first found the thing very extraordinary, preached several times to dissuade his parishioners from going to visit the peasant woman. According to her, the character who presented himself to her, told her his name and confided in her several things that she should not reveal, at least for the moment. In all this, what would make me think a little is that he expressed the desire that a statue be erected representing him in the place where he appeared.
The general opinion among believers is that it must be Saint Joseph. For me, if the fact is true, I can only see in it a Spiritist manifestation with the aim of calling attention to our philosophy, in a region dominated by contrary influences."
I warn you that you will have a serious illness towards the end of March; do not call a doctor, for it would be useless; it is a test to which you must submit with resignation. Besides, I'll come back to see you.”
And the old man went away. When he got to a little bridge, very close, he suddenly disappeared.
Naturally, the young peasant woman hastened to go and tell the story to the Mr. Priest, to whom she showed the book of prayer. The parish priest told her that he thought there was something extraordinary there and urged her to look after that book with care. She also hastened to do all that the old man had recommended to her, and since then we have always seen her with her glasses and the child that she has taken care of.
She was visited by an innumerable crowd, and last Sunday, her house was so full that the priest had to sing vespers almost by himself. I must not forget an important circumstance, that is, according to the prediction of the old man, the peasant woman has been in bed for a few days. Now, I must tell you that in Monin, as in Oloron, opinions are very divided about the fact in question; some believe in it and others remain skeptical. The priest of Monin, who had at first found the thing very extraordinary, preached several times to dissuade his parishioners from going to visit the peasant woman. According to her, the character who presented himself to her, told her his name and confided in her several things that she should not reveal, at least for the moment. In all this, what would make me think a little is that he expressed the desire that a statue be erected representing him in the place where he appeared.
The general opinion among believers is that it must be Saint Joseph. For me, if the fact is true, I can only see in it a Spiritist manifestation with the aim of calling attention to our philosophy, in a region dominated by contrary influences."
A Few Words to the Spiritist Review
by the Journal Exposition Populaire Illustrée
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).
[1] Public prosecutor’s office in France (T.N.)
“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).
[1] Public prosecutor’s office in France (T.N.)
Answer
The reasons for which Spiritism repudiates the word miracle, in its particular aspect, and in general for the phenomena that do not depart from the natural laws, have been developed many times, either in our works on the doctrine, or in several articles of the Spiritist Review. They are summarized in the following passage, taken from the May 1867 issue:
In its usual meaning, the word miracle has lost its original connotation, like so many others, starting with the word philosophy (love of wisdom), that we use today to express the most diametrically opposing ideas, from the purest spiritualism, down to the most absolute materialism. There is no doubt that, in the mind of the masses, miracle implies the idea of a supernatural fact. Ask anyone that believes in miracles if they regard them as natural effects.
The Church is so fixated on this point that it anathematizes those that claim to explain miracles by the laws of nature. The Academy itself defines this word as: Act of divine power, contrary to the known laws of nature. True, false miracle, proven miracle, work miracles. The gift of miracles.
To be understood by everyone, you have to speak like everyone else; now, it is obvious that if we had qualified the Spiritist phenomena as miraculous, the public would have misunderstood their true character, unless we used a periphrasis each time, and said that they are miracles that are not miracles like they are usually understood. Since it is generally attached to the idea of a derogation of the natural laws, and since the Spiritist phenomena are only the application of these same laws, it is much simpler and above all more logical to bluntly say: no, Spiritism does not work miracles. In this way, there is no misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Just as the progress of the physical sciences has destroyed a host of prejudices, and brought into the order of natural facts a large number of effects formerly considered to be miraculous, Spiritism, by the revelation of new laws, further restricts the realm of the marvelous; we say more: it swings the last blow, and that is why it is not everywhere, with the odor of sanctity, any more than astronomy and geology.”
As a matter of fact, the issue of miracles is treated in a comprehensive way and with all the developments that it requires in the second part of the new book that we published with the title “Genesis, the miracles and predictions according to Spiritism.” The natural cause of the events called miracles is explained. If the author of the article above take the burden or reading it, he will see that the healings of Mr. Jacob, and all others of the same kind, are not a problem to Spiritism, that since long knows how to handle this matter. It is an almost elemental question.
The meaning of the word miracle, in the sense of a supernatural fact, is blessed by the use; the Church claims it to itself, as part of its dogmas. Hence, it seems difficult to us to make this word go back to its etymological meaning, without exposing ourselves to misunderstandings. The author says that a new word would be needed. Since all that is not outside the laws of nature is natural, we cannot see another one capable of embracing them all, but the natural phenomena.
But the natural phenomena called miraculous are of two kinds: some depend on the laws that rule matter, others on the laws that rule the spiritual principle. The former phenomena are in the field of science, properly speaking; the latter are more specially in the domain of Spiritism. As for the latter, since they are mostly a consequence of the attributes of the soul, the word does exist: these are the so called psychic phenomena; and when combined with the effects of matter, they could be called psychic-material or semi-psychic.
The author criticizes the expression “spiritual element”, for the reason, he says, that the only spiritual element is God. The answer to this is very simple. The word element is not taken here in the sense of simple body, elemental, of primitive molecules, but as in the part that is constituent of the whole. In that sense, one can say that the spiritual element is an active part in the economy of the universe, as one say that the civil element and the military element appear in a given proportion in the formation of the population; that the religious element enters education; that there is the Arabic element and the European element in Algeria, etc. From our side we tell the author that, in the absence of a special word for this last meaning of the word element, we are forced to use it. As a matter of fact, since these two meanings do not represent contradictory ideas, like the word miracle, then there is no possible confusion, for the essential idea is the same.
If the author takes the burden of studying Spiritism, against which, we attest with pleasure that he does not have a preconceived idea, he will find there the answer to the doubts that he seems to express in some parts of his article, with the exception though of what is related to the science of the numerical concordances, that we have never handled, and about which we could not consequently have a formed opinion.
Spiritist does not have the pretension of giving the last word about all laws that govern the universe, being that the reason why it has never said: Nec plus ultra.[1] By its own nature, it opens the way to all new discoveries, but up until a new principle is attested, Spiritism does not accept it unless as a hypothesis or a likelihood.
[1] Latin expression meaning “the highest point to be attained” – Merriam-Webster dictionary (T.N.)
In its usual meaning, the word miracle has lost its original connotation, like so many others, starting with the word philosophy (love of wisdom), that we use today to express the most diametrically opposing ideas, from the purest spiritualism, down to the most absolute materialism. There is no doubt that, in the mind of the masses, miracle implies the idea of a supernatural fact. Ask anyone that believes in miracles if they regard them as natural effects.
The Church is so fixated on this point that it anathematizes those that claim to explain miracles by the laws of nature. The Academy itself defines this word as: Act of divine power, contrary to the known laws of nature. True, false miracle, proven miracle, work miracles. The gift of miracles.
To be understood by everyone, you have to speak like everyone else; now, it is obvious that if we had qualified the Spiritist phenomena as miraculous, the public would have misunderstood their true character, unless we used a periphrasis each time, and said that they are miracles that are not miracles like they are usually understood. Since it is generally attached to the idea of a derogation of the natural laws, and since the Spiritist phenomena are only the application of these same laws, it is much simpler and above all more logical to bluntly say: no, Spiritism does not work miracles. In this way, there is no misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Just as the progress of the physical sciences has destroyed a host of prejudices, and brought into the order of natural facts a large number of effects formerly considered to be miraculous, Spiritism, by the revelation of new laws, further restricts the realm of the marvelous; we say more: it swings the last blow, and that is why it is not everywhere, with the odor of sanctity, any more than astronomy and geology.”
As a matter of fact, the issue of miracles is treated in a comprehensive way and with all the developments that it requires in the second part of the new book that we published with the title “Genesis, the miracles and predictions according to Spiritism.” The natural cause of the events called miracles is explained. If the author of the article above take the burden or reading it, he will see that the healings of Mr. Jacob, and all others of the same kind, are not a problem to Spiritism, that since long knows how to handle this matter. It is an almost elemental question.
The meaning of the word miracle, in the sense of a supernatural fact, is blessed by the use; the Church claims it to itself, as part of its dogmas. Hence, it seems difficult to us to make this word go back to its etymological meaning, without exposing ourselves to misunderstandings. The author says that a new word would be needed. Since all that is not outside the laws of nature is natural, we cannot see another one capable of embracing them all, but the natural phenomena.
But the natural phenomena called miraculous are of two kinds: some depend on the laws that rule matter, others on the laws that rule the spiritual principle. The former phenomena are in the field of science, properly speaking; the latter are more specially in the domain of Spiritism. As for the latter, since they are mostly a consequence of the attributes of the soul, the word does exist: these are the so called psychic phenomena; and when combined with the effects of matter, they could be called psychic-material or semi-psychic.
The author criticizes the expression “spiritual element”, for the reason, he says, that the only spiritual element is God. The answer to this is very simple. The word element is not taken here in the sense of simple body, elemental, of primitive molecules, but as in the part that is constituent of the whole. In that sense, one can say that the spiritual element is an active part in the economy of the universe, as one say that the civil element and the military element appear in a given proportion in the formation of the population; that the religious element enters education; that there is the Arabic element and the European element in Algeria, etc. From our side we tell the author that, in the absence of a special word for this last meaning of the word element, we are forced to use it. As a matter of fact, since these two meanings do not represent contradictory ideas, like the word miracle, then there is no possible confusion, for the essential idea is the same.
If the author takes the burden of studying Spiritism, against which, we attest with pleasure that he does not have a preconceived idea, he will find there the answer to the doubts that he seems to express in some parts of his article, with the exception though of what is related to the science of the numerical concordances, that we have never handled, and about which we could not consequently have a formed opinion.
Spiritist does not have the pretension of giving the last word about all laws that govern the universe, being that the reason why it has never said: Nec plus ultra.[1] By its own nature, it opens the way to all new discoveries, but up until a new principle is attested, Spiritism does not accept it unless as a hypothesis or a likelihood.
[1] Latin expression meaning “the highest point to be attained” – Merriam-Webster dictionary (T.N.)
The Abbot of Saint-Pierre
The Ephemerides of the Siècle on April 29th, contained the following notice:
1743 - Death of the Abbot of Saint-Pierre (Charles-Irénée Castel de), writer and philanthropist, to whose name the memory of the project of perpetual peace will remain eternally attached, the conception of which seems to become more impracticable every day. The whole life of this worthy Abbot was consumed in works and actions that had the happiness of men for goal. To give and to forgive should be, in his opinion, the basis of all morality, and he constantly put it into practice; he was also the one that created, or at least, resuscitated the word beneficence, expressing a virtue that he exercised every day. The Abbot of Saint-Pierre was born on February 18th, 1658, and the French Academy had opened its doors to him in 1695; but one day, in his Polysynodie,[1] the Abbot spoke severely about the reign of Louis XIV. Cardinal de Polignac denounced the book to the Academy, that condemned the author without consenting to hear him, and excluded him from its organization in 1718. J.J. Rousseau, who shared and developed some of the ideas of the Abbot of Saint-Pierre, said of him: “He was a rare man, the honor of his century and of his species."
Abbot of Saint-Pierre was a good man and of talent, justly esteemed. In the present circumstances, the idea he had pursued during his lifetime gave his evocation a sort of actuality.
Parisian Society, May 17th, 1867 – medium Mr. Rul
Evocation: The note that we have just read in the Ephemerides of the Siècle, reminded us of your memory, and we read there, with interest, the fair tribute of praise rendered to the qualities that have earned you the esteem of your contemporaries, and assured you that of posterity. A man who has had such elevated ideas can only be an advanced Spirit; that is why we will gladly take advantage of your instructions, if you would kindly come to us. We will be particularly delighted to hear your current opinion about the perpetual peace, that has been the subject of your concerns.
Answer: I am pleased to come, responding to the president's call. You know that, in all epochs, Spirits come to incarnate on earth, to help the advancement of their less advanced brothers. I was one of those Spirits. I had a duty to try to persuade men, who are used to fratricidal struggles, that there would come a time when the passions that engender war would give way to appeasement and harmony. I wanted to make them feel that one day the enemy brothers would be reconciled, would give each other the kiss of peace, that there would only be room in their hearts for love and kindness, and that they would no longer think of forging weapons that sow death, devastation and ruin! If I were benevolent, it was the effect of my more advanced nature than that of my contemporaries. Today, many you practice this evangelical virtue, and if it is less noticed, it is because it is more widespread, and manners have softened.
But I come back to the question that is the subject of this communication, the perpetual peace. There is not a single Spiritist who doubts that what is called a utopia, Abbot of Saint-Pierre’s dream, will later become a reality.
It is not easy today, amid all these uproars that announce the approach of serious events, to speak of perpetual peace; but be well persuaded that this peace will come down on your Earth. You are witnessing a great spectacle, that of the renovation of your globe. But how many wars there were before! How much blood was shed! How many disasters! Sadness to those who, by their pride, by their ambition, have unleashed the storm! They will have to account for their actions to the one who judges the great and the powerful as he does to the smallest of his children!
Persevere all, brothers, who are also the apostles of the perpetual peace, for to be the disciples of Christ is to preach peace, concord. However, I tell you again, before you witness this great event, you will see new devices of destruction, and the more the means of killing each other multiply, the faster men will prepare the advent of perpetual peace.
I leave you repeating the words of Christ: "Peace on earth to the men of good will."
The one who was,
Abbot of Saint-Pierre
[1] System of government in use in France between 1715 and 1718 (Wikipedia, T.N.)
1743 - Death of the Abbot of Saint-Pierre (Charles-Irénée Castel de), writer and philanthropist, to whose name the memory of the project of perpetual peace will remain eternally attached, the conception of which seems to become more impracticable every day. The whole life of this worthy Abbot was consumed in works and actions that had the happiness of men for goal. To give and to forgive should be, in his opinion, the basis of all morality, and he constantly put it into practice; he was also the one that created, or at least, resuscitated the word beneficence, expressing a virtue that he exercised every day. The Abbot of Saint-Pierre was born on February 18th, 1658, and the French Academy had opened its doors to him in 1695; but one day, in his Polysynodie,[1] the Abbot spoke severely about the reign of Louis XIV. Cardinal de Polignac denounced the book to the Academy, that condemned the author without consenting to hear him, and excluded him from its organization in 1718. J.J. Rousseau, who shared and developed some of the ideas of the Abbot of Saint-Pierre, said of him: “He was a rare man, the honor of his century and of his species."
Abbot of Saint-Pierre was a good man and of talent, justly esteemed. In the present circumstances, the idea he had pursued during his lifetime gave his evocation a sort of actuality.
Parisian Society, May 17th, 1867 – medium Mr. Rul
Evocation: The note that we have just read in the Ephemerides of the Siècle, reminded us of your memory, and we read there, with interest, the fair tribute of praise rendered to the qualities that have earned you the esteem of your contemporaries, and assured you that of posterity. A man who has had such elevated ideas can only be an advanced Spirit; that is why we will gladly take advantage of your instructions, if you would kindly come to us. We will be particularly delighted to hear your current opinion about the perpetual peace, that has been the subject of your concerns.
Answer: I am pleased to come, responding to the president's call. You know that, in all epochs, Spirits come to incarnate on earth, to help the advancement of their less advanced brothers. I was one of those Spirits. I had a duty to try to persuade men, who are used to fratricidal struggles, that there would come a time when the passions that engender war would give way to appeasement and harmony. I wanted to make them feel that one day the enemy brothers would be reconciled, would give each other the kiss of peace, that there would only be room in their hearts for love and kindness, and that they would no longer think of forging weapons that sow death, devastation and ruin! If I were benevolent, it was the effect of my more advanced nature than that of my contemporaries. Today, many you practice this evangelical virtue, and if it is less noticed, it is because it is more widespread, and manners have softened.
But I come back to the question that is the subject of this communication, the perpetual peace. There is not a single Spiritist who doubts that what is called a utopia, Abbot of Saint-Pierre’s dream, will later become a reality.
It is not easy today, amid all these uproars that announce the approach of serious events, to speak of perpetual peace; but be well persuaded that this peace will come down on your Earth. You are witnessing a great spectacle, that of the renovation of your globe. But how many wars there were before! How much blood was shed! How many disasters! Sadness to those who, by their pride, by their ambition, have unleashed the storm! They will have to account for their actions to the one who judges the great and the powerful as he does to the smallest of his children!
Persevere all, brothers, who are also the apostles of the perpetual peace, for to be the disciples of Christ is to preach peace, concord. However, I tell you again, before you witness this great event, you will see new devices of destruction, and the more the means of killing each other multiply, the faster men will prepare the advent of perpetual peace.
I leave you repeating the words of Christ: "Peace on earth to the men of good will."
The one who was,
Abbot of Saint-Pierre
[1] System of government in use in France between 1715 and 1718 (Wikipedia, T.N.)
Spiritist Dissertations
Scientific MistakesParis, March 20th, 1867 – Group of Mr. Lampérière
“Just as the body has its organs of locomotion, nutrition, respiration, etc., so the Spirit has various faculties that relate respectively to each situation of its being. If the body has its infancy, if the members of this body are weak and feeble, unable to move the loads that they will later be able to lift without difficulty, the Spirit, first of all, possesses faculties that must, like everything else that exists, evolve from childhood to youth and from youth to middle age. Will you ask the child in the cradle to act with the speed, safety, and skill of a grown man? No, that would be madness, wouldn't that? One can only ask of each one what fits within the framework of their strengths and knowledge. To ask someone, who has never touched a book of mathematics or physics, to reason on any branch of the knowledge that depends on these sciences, would be as illogical as to require an exact description of a distant land, from a Parisian, who has never left the walls of his native town, and sometimes of his suburb!
To judge something soundly, it is therefore necessary to have as complete a knowledge of it as possible. It would be absurd to submit to a fluency reading test someone that is just beginning to spell; and yet! ... man, this human-animal endowed with reason, this powerful creature, to whom everything is an obstacle in the book of the worlds, this naughty child that barely stutters the first words of true science, this mystified appearance, claims to read, without hesitation, the most indecipherable pages of the manual that nature presents to him every day. The unknown is born under his feet; it touches him on the side, in front, on the back, everywhere, everything is just problems without solution, or whose known solutions are illogical and irrational, and the grown child turns his eyes away from the book, saying: I know you, on to another! ... Unaware of things, he clings to the causes of these things, and without a compass, he embarks on the stormy sea of preconceived systems, that inevitably leads him to a shipwreck, whose results are doubt and sketicism! Fanaticism, the son of error, holds him under its staff; for, know it well, the fanatic is not the one who believes without proof and who would give his life for a misunderstood faith; there are fanatics of skepticism, as there are fanatics of faith!
The road to truth is narrow, and it is necessary to probe the terrain before advancing, so as not to rush into the abysses, that surrounds it right to left.
Hurry slowly, says the wisdom of the nations, and as always when it agrees with common sense, the wisdom of the nations is right. Do not leave enemies behind you, and only advance when you are sure that you do not have to turn back. God is patient because he is eternal; man, who has eternity before him, can also be patient.
If he judges by appearance, if he is mistaken and admits his error in the future, it is logical; but if he pretends that he cannot be mistaken, if he assigns some limit to human knowledge, the child reappears on the water with his caprices and his helpless anger! ... The young horse has not yet thrown his strings; he gets carried away, he jumps! The burnt blood circulates in his veins! … Leave him, age will know how to calm his passion without destroying him, and he will derive more profit from it by measuring the expenditure more wisely!
At birth, man saw the plains formed by earth and rock stretching without limit under his feet; an azure plains dotted with scintillating fires extended over his head, and seemed to move regularly; he concluded that earth was a wide, rugged plateau, surmounted by a dome, animated by constant movement. Reporting everything to himself, he made himself the center of a system created for him, and the static earth beheld the sun, revolving in the celestial plains. Today, the sun no longer turns and the earth has started to move; the first point would not be perhaps difficult to elucidate according to the Bible, because, if Joshua one day ordered the sun to stop, it is seen nowhere that he commanded it to resume its course.
The human intelligence of today belies the works of the intelligences of a more remote epoch, and thus, from age to age, to the origin; and yet, despite the lessons of the past, although he realizes, through precedents, that yesterday's utopia is often tomorrow’s reality, man persists in saying: No, you won't go further! Who could do more than us? Intelligence is at the top of the scale; after us, one can only go down! … And yet, those who say this are the witnesses, the propagators and the promoters of the wonders accomplished by current science. They made many discoveries that have singularly modified the theories of their predecessors; but what does it matter! … The ego speaks in them higher than reason. Enjoying a royalty for a day, they cannot admit that tomorrow they will be subjected to a power that the future keeps from their sight.
They deny the Spirit, as they denied the movement of the earth! … Let us be sorry for them, and console ourselves for their blindness, by telling us that what is cannot remain eternally hidden; light cannot become shadow; truth cannot become error; darkness disappears before dawn.
O Galileo! ... wherever you are, you rejoice, because it moves ... and we too can rejoice, because our own land, our world, intelligence, the Spirit also has its movement misunderstood, unknown, but that will soon become as obvious as the axioms recognized by science.
François Arago.”
To judge something soundly, it is therefore necessary to have as complete a knowledge of it as possible. It would be absurd to submit to a fluency reading test someone that is just beginning to spell; and yet! ... man, this human-animal endowed with reason, this powerful creature, to whom everything is an obstacle in the book of the worlds, this naughty child that barely stutters the first words of true science, this mystified appearance, claims to read, without hesitation, the most indecipherable pages of the manual that nature presents to him every day. The unknown is born under his feet; it touches him on the side, in front, on the back, everywhere, everything is just problems without solution, or whose known solutions are illogical and irrational, and the grown child turns his eyes away from the book, saying: I know you, on to another! ... Unaware of things, he clings to the causes of these things, and without a compass, he embarks on the stormy sea of preconceived systems, that inevitably leads him to a shipwreck, whose results are doubt and sketicism! Fanaticism, the son of error, holds him under its staff; for, know it well, the fanatic is not the one who believes without proof and who would give his life for a misunderstood faith; there are fanatics of skepticism, as there are fanatics of faith!
The road to truth is narrow, and it is necessary to probe the terrain before advancing, so as not to rush into the abysses, that surrounds it right to left.
Hurry slowly, says the wisdom of the nations, and as always when it agrees with common sense, the wisdom of the nations is right. Do not leave enemies behind you, and only advance when you are sure that you do not have to turn back. God is patient because he is eternal; man, who has eternity before him, can also be patient.
If he judges by appearance, if he is mistaken and admits his error in the future, it is logical; but if he pretends that he cannot be mistaken, if he assigns some limit to human knowledge, the child reappears on the water with his caprices and his helpless anger! ... The young horse has not yet thrown his strings; he gets carried away, he jumps! The burnt blood circulates in his veins! … Leave him, age will know how to calm his passion without destroying him, and he will derive more profit from it by measuring the expenditure more wisely!
At birth, man saw the plains formed by earth and rock stretching without limit under his feet; an azure plains dotted with scintillating fires extended over his head, and seemed to move regularly; he concluded that earth was a wide, rugged plateau, surmounted by a dome, animated by constant movement. Reporting everything to himself, he made himself the center of a system created for him, and the static earth beheld the sun, revolving in the celestial plains. Today, the sun no longer turns and the earth has started to move; the first point would not be perhaps difficult to elucidate according to the Bible, because, if Joshua one day ordered the sun to stop, it is seen nowhere that he commanded it to resume its course.
The human intelligence of today belies the works of the intelligences of a more remote epoch, and thus, from age to age, to the origin; and yet, despite the lessons of the past, although he realizes, through precedents, that yesterday's utopia is often tomorrow’s reality, man persists in saying: No, you won't go further! Who could do more than us? Intelligence is at the top of the scale; after us, one can only go down! … And yet, those who say this are the witnesses, the propagators and the promoters of the wonders accomplished by current science. They made many discoveries that have singularly modified the theories of their predecessors; but what does it matter! … The ego speaks in them higher than reason. Enjoying a royalty for a day, they cannot admit that tomorrow they will be subjected to a power that the future keeps from their sight.
They deny the Spirit, as they denied the movement of the earth! … Let us be sorry for them, and console ourselves for their blindness, by telling us that what is cannot remain eternally hidden; light cannot become shadow; truth cannot become error; darkness disappears before dawn.
O Galileo! ... wherever you are, you rejoice, because it moves ... and we too can rejoice, because our own land, our world, intelligence, the Spirit also has its movement misunderstood, unknown, but that will soon become as obvious as the axioms recognized by science.
François Arago.”
The exhibition
Paris, March 20th, 1867 – Group Desliens, medium Mr. Desliens
“The superficial observer who would cast his eyes on your world at this moment, without worrying too much about a few small spots scattered on its surface, and that seem destined to bring out the splendors of the whole, would say to himself, without a doubt, that humanity has never shown a happier physiognomy.
Gamache's wedding is celebrated everywhere. These are just parties, fun trains, adorned cities, and happy faces. All the great arteries of the globe bring to your narrow capital the diverse crowd, coming from all climates. The Chinese and the Persian greet the Russian and the German on your boulevards; Asia in cashmere shakes hand with Africa in turban; the new world and the old, young America and the citizens of the European world collide, elbow each other, converse in a tone of unalterable friendship.
So, is the world really invited to the feast of peace? Could the French Exhibition of 1867 be the long-awaited signal of universal solidarity? One would be tempted to believe it, if all hostilities were extinguished; if each one, thinking of industrial prosperity and the victory of intelligence over matter, quietly left the engines of death, the instruments of violence and force, sleeping at the bottom of their arsenals, as relics, good to satisfy the curiosity of visitors.
But are you there? Alas! No; The face grimaces under the smile, the eye threatens when the mouth compliments, and we cordially shake hands, at the very moment when each one is pondering the ruin of his neighbor. They laugh, sing, dance; but listen carefully, and you will hear the echo repeating those laughter and songs like sobs and cries of agony!
Joy is in the faces, but worry is in the hearts. They rejoice to be dizzy, and, if we think of tomorrow, we close our eyes so as not to see.
The world is in crisis, and commerce is wondering what it will do when the great hubbub of the Expo has passed. Everyone is thinking about the future, and we feel that at this moment we only live by pawning the future time.
What is missing to all these happy people? Aren’t they today what they were yesterday? Won’t they be tomorrow what they are today? No, the commercial, intellectual, and moral arc stretches more and more, the rope is tightened, the arrow will go off! Where will it take them? This is the secret of the instinctive fear that is reflected on many fronts! They don't see, they don't know, they foresee a don’t know what; a danger is in the air, and each one trembles, each one feels morally oppressed, as when a ready to break out storm acts on the nervous temperaments. Everyone is waiting, and what will happen? A disaster or a happy solution? Neither one nor the other, or rather the two results will coincide.
What is lacking to anxious populations, to hard-pressed intelligences, is the moral sense attacked, macerated, half destroyed by incredulity, positivism, and materialism. They believe in the nothingness, but they fear it; they feel at the threshold of this nothingness, but we tremble! ... The demolishers have done their work; the terrain is cleared. So, build quickly so that the current generation does not remain homeless! So far, the sky has remained starry, but a cloud appears on the horizon; quickly cover your hospital roofs; invite all the guests from the plains and the mountains. The hurricane will soon be striking with vigor, and then, woe to the incautious, confident in the certainty of the good weather. They will have the solution of their vague fears, and if they leave the struggle bruised, torn, defeated, they will only have themselves to blame, their refusal to accept the so generously offered hospitality.
So, hands on; always build as quickly as possible; welcome the traveler that comes to you, but also go and look around, and try to bring to you the one who goes away without knocking at your door, for God knows how much suffering he would be exposed to, before finding any shelter capable of protecting him from the scourge.
Moki.”
Gamache's wedding is celebrated everywhere. These are just parties, fun trains, adorned cities, and happy faces. All the great arteries of the globe bring to your narrow capital the diverse crowd, coming from all climates. The Chinese and the Persian greet the Russian and the German on your boulevards; Asia in cashmere shakes hand with Africa in turban; the new world and the old, young America and the citizens of the European world collide, elbow each other, converse in a tone of unalterable friendship.
So, is the world really invited to the feast of peace? Could the French Exhibition of 1867 be the long-awaited signal of universal solidarity? One would be tempted to believe it, if all hostilities were extinguished; if each one, thinking of industrial prosperity and the victory of intelligence over matter, quietly left the engines of death, the instruments of violence and force, sleeping at the bottom of their arsenals, as relics, good to satisfy the curiosity of visitors.
But are you there? Alas! No; The face grimaces under the smile, the eye threatens when the mouth compliments, and we cordially shake hands, at the very moment when each one is pondering the ruin of his neighbor. They laugh, sing, dance; but listen carefully, and you will hear the echo repeating those laughter and songs like sobs and cries of agony!
Joy is in the faces, but worry is in the hearts. They rejoice to be dizzy, and, if we think of tomorrow, we close our eyes so as not to see.
The world is in crisis, and commerce is wondering what it will do when the great hubbub of the Expo has passed. Everyone is thinking about the future, and we feel that at this moment we only live by pawning the future time.
What is missing to all these happy people? Aren’t they today what they were yesterday? Won’t they be tomorrow what they are today? No, the commercial, intellectual, and moral arc stretches more and more, the rope is tightened, the arrow will go off! Where will it take them? This is the secret of the instinctive fear that is reflected on many fronts! They don't see, they don't know, they foresee a don’t know what; a danger is in the air, and each one trembles, each one feels morally oppressed, as when a ready to break out storm acts on the nervous temperaments. Everyone is waiting, and what will happen? A disaster or a happy solution? Neither one nor the other, or rather the two results will coincide.
What is lacking to anxious populations, to hard-pressed intelligences, is the moral sense attacked, macerated, half destroyed by incredulity, positivism, and materialism. They believe in the nothingness, but they fear it; they feel at the threshold of this nothingness, but we tremble! ... The demolishers have done their work; the terrain is cleared. So, build quickly so that the current generation does not remain homeless! So far, the sky has remained starry, but a cloud appears on the horizon; quickly cover your hospital roofs; invite all the guests from the plains and the mountains. The hurricane will soon be striking with vigor, and then, woe to the incautious, confident in the certainty of the good weather. They will have the solution of their vague fears, and if they leave the struggle bruised, torn, defeated, they will only have themselves to blame, their refusal to accept the so generously offered hospitality.
So, hands on; always build as quickly as possible; welcome the traveler that comes to you, but also go and look around, and try to bring to you the one who goes away without knocking at your door, for God knows how much suffering he would be exposed to, before finding any shelter capable of protecting him from the scourge.
Moki.”