June
Mediumship in a glass of water“The clairvoyant mediumship through the glass of magnetized water has just revealed itself to us in a certain number of people; for the past month, we have had fifteen seeing mediums of this genre, each with their own specialty. One of the best is a young woman who can neither read nor write; it is more particularly proper to diseases, and this is how our good Spirits proceed to show us the illness and the remedy. I'll take a random example: A poor woman who was at the meeting had received a nasty blow to the chest; it appeared in the glass absolutely like a photograph; she put her hand on the sick part. Mrs. V… (the medium) then saw the chest opening and noticed that coagulated blood was stuck at the place where the blow had been given; then the whole thing disappeared to make room for the image of the remedies that consisted of a white plaster and a glass containing benzoin. This woman was perfectly healed after following the treatment.
When it is about an obsessed, the medium sees the evil Spirits that torment him; then appear as remedies the Spirit symbolizing prayer, and two hands that magnetize.
We have another medium whose specialty is seeing the Spirits. Poor suffering Spirits have often presented to us, through him, touching scenes to make us understand their anxieties. One day we evoked the Spirit of an individual who had drowned voluntarily; he appeared disturbed in the water; you could only see the back of the head and the hair, half submerged in the water. For two sessions, it was impossible for us to see the face. We prayed for the suicides; the next day the medium saw the head above the water, and we could recognize the features of a relative of one of the people of the Society. We continued our prayers, and now the figure still bears the expression of suffering, it is true, but it seems to come to life.
For some time now, in the house of a woman who lives in one of the suburbs of Geneva, noises have been produced, like those of Poitiers, causing a great stir throughout the house. This lady, who did not know Spiritism at all, having heard of it, came to see us with her brother, requesting to attend our sessions. None of our mediums knew them. One of them saw, in his glass, a house in which an evil Spirit was messing up everything, moving the furniture and breaking the dishes. In the description he gave, this lady recognized her gardener's wife, very wicked during her lifetime, and who had caused her great harm. We addressed a few kind words to this Spirit to bring her back to better feelings, and as we spoke to her, her face assumed a softer expression. The next day, we went to the house of this lady, and the work was completed in the evening. The noises have almost entirely ceased since the departure of the cook who, as it seems, served as an unconscious medium to that Spirit. As everything has its reason for being and its usefulness, I believe that these rumors were intended to bring this family to the knowledge of Spiritism.
Now, here is what our observations have taught us about the way to operate: One needs a smooth glass, with an also smooth bottom; it is half-filled with water, magnetized by ordinary procedures, that is, by laying the hands, and especially the tips of the fingers, on the opening of the glass, aided by the sustained action of gaze and thought. The duration of the magnetization is about ten minutes for the first time; five minutes is enough later. The same person can magnetize several glasses at the same time.
The clairvoyant medium, or the one who wants to try, must not magnetize his glass himself, because he would spend the fluid that is necessary for him to see. A special medium is needed for magnetization, and there are some that are endowed with more or less power. Magnetic action does not produce any phenomenon in the water that indicates its saturation.
After this is done, each experimenter places the glass in front of him, and looks at it for twenty or thirty minutes at most, sometimes less, depending on the aptitude; this time is only necessary in the first tests; when the faculty is developed, it only takes a few minutes. Meanwhile, a person is praying to call for the help of the good Spirits.
Those who can see, first distinguish a kind of small cloud at the bottom of the glass; it is a sure indication that they will see; little by little this cloud takes on a more accentuated form, and the image emerges to the sight of the medium. The mediums can see on each other’s glasses, but not the people who are not gifted with this skill. Sometimes part of the subject appears in one glass, and the other part in another glass; for diseases, for example, one will see the illness and the other the remedy. Other times, two mediums will simultaneously see the image of the same person, each in their own glass, but generally in different conditions.
Often the image transforms, changes appearance, then fades away. It is generally quite spontaneous; the medium must wait and say what he sees; but it can also be caused by an evocation.
Lately I went to see a lady who has a young, eighteen-year-old employee, who had never heard of Spiritism; this lady begged me to magnetize a glass of water for her. The young girl looked at it for about a quarter of an hour and said: “I see an arm; it looks like my mother's; I see sleeve of her dress pulled up, as she used to wear. This mother, who knew her daughter's sensitivity, undoubtedly did not want to show herself suddenly, to avoid too great of an impression on her. Thus, I begged this Spirit, if it were the medium’s mother, to allow herself to be recognized. The arm disappeared, and the Spirit presented itself the size of a photograph, but with her back turned. It was still a precaution to prepare her daughter for the sight of her. She recognized her cap, a kerchief, the colors, and the model of her dress; deeply moved, she addressed the tenderest words to her, begging her to show her face. I begged her myself to attend to her daughter's desire. She then faded away, the cloud faded away, and the figure appeared. The young girl cried of gratitude as she thanked God for the gift she had just been granted.
The lady was very anxious to see for herself; the next day we had a session with her that was full of good lessons. After uselessly looking in the glass for half an hour, she said, “My God! if I could only see the devil in the glass, I would be happy! But God did not give her that satisfaction.
The unbelievers will not fail to put these phenomena to the account of imagination. But the facts are there to prove that in so many cases the imagination has absolutely nothing to do with it. First, not everyone sees, however much one may wish; I, myself, have often overexcited my mind for this purpose, without ever obtaining the slightest result. The lady I just mentioned, despite her desire to see the devil, after half an hour of waiting and concentrating, saw nothing. The young girl was not thinking of her mother when she appeared to her; and then, all these precautions to show oneself only gradually attest to a combination, a foreign will, in which the imagination of the medium could have no part.
To have an even more positive proof of that, I carried out the following experiment. I spent a few days in the country, a few leagues from Geneva, in the home of a family with several children; since they were making a lot of noise, I suggested a more peaceful game to keep them busy. I took a glass of water and magnetized it, without anyone realizing it, and I said to them: "Which of you will have the patience to look at this glass for twenty minutes, without looking away?" I was careful not to add that they might see something there; it was just a pastime. Several lost patience before the end of the test; an eleven-year-old little girl was more perseverant; at the end of twelve minutes, she uttered a cry of joy, saying that she saw a magnificent landscape, that she described to us. Another seven-year-old girl, wishing to look herself, fell asleep instantly. For fear of tiring her, I woke her up immediately. Where is the effect of the imagination here?
This faculty can therefore be tried in a meeting, but I do not advise to admit hostile persons to the first experiences; the faculty will only develop more easily with the necessary calm and meditation; when it is consolidated, it is less likely to be troubled.
The medium only sees with his eyes open; when he closes them, he is in the dark; at least that is what we have noticed, and that denotes a variety in clairvoyant mediumship. The medium only closes their eyes to rest, something that happens two or three times per session. The medium can see both at daylight and at night, but at night one needs light.
The image of living people shows up in glass just as easily as that of dead people. I asked my familiar Spirit for the reason, to which he replied: “It is their images that we present to you; Spirits are as skilled at painting as they are at traveling. However, the mediums easily distinguish a Spirit from a living person; there is something less material.
The medium for the glass of water differs from the somnambulist in that the Spirit of the latter is detached; he needs a conducting wire to find the absent person, while the first has his image before him, that is the reflection of his soul and his thoughts. He tires less than the somnambulist, and he is also less likely to be intimidated by the sight of evil Spirits that may show up. These Spirits can tire him, because they seek to magnetize him, but he can escape their gaze at will, and in fact he receives a less direct impression.
It is with this mediumship as with all others: the medium attracts to himself the Spirits who are sympathetic to him; inferior Spirits readily present themselves to the impure medium. The way to attract good Spirits is to be driven by good feelings, to ask only for just and reasonable things, to use this faculty only for the good, and not for trivial things. If we make it an object of amusement, curiosity, or traffic, we inevitably fall into the mob of lighthearted and deceptive Spirits, who have fun presenting ridiculous and misleading images."
Observation: As a principle, this mediumship is certainly not new; but it is drawn here in a more precise way, especially more practical, and it is shown in specific conditions. It can therefore be considered as one of the varieties that have been announced. From the point of view of the
Spiritist science, it enables us to penetrate further into the mystery of the intimate constitution of the invisible world, of which it confirms the known laws, at the same time as it shows us new applications. It will help us understand certain phenomena still misunderstood in daily life, and by its popularization, it cannot fail to open a new path for the propagation of Spiritism. People will want to see, people will try; they will want to understand, to study, and many will enter Spiritism through this door.
This phenomenon offers a remarkable peculiarity. Until now we have understood the direct sight of Spirits under certain conditions; the remote sight of real objects is today an elementary theory; but here it is not the Spirits themselves that we see, and who cannot be lodged in a glass of water, any more than houses, landscapes and living people.
Besides, it would be a mistake to believe that this is a better way than any other for knowing everything that one wishes. Clairvoyant mediums, by this process or any other, do not see at will; they only see what the Spirits want them to see, or have permission to show them when it is useful. We cannot force either the will of Spirits or the faculty of mediums. For the exercise of any mediumistic faculty, the sensory apparatus, if one can say so, must be in an operational state; however, it does not depend on the medium to make it work at will. That is why mediumship cannot be a profession, since it could lack at the time it would be necessary to attend the client; hence, the incitement to fraud to simulate the action of the Spirit.
Experience proves that the Spirits, whoever they are, are never at the whim of men, in the same way and even less than when they were in this world; on the other hand, simple common sense says that serious Spiritist could not answer the appeal of the first one to call for trivial things, playing the role of acrobats or fortune tellers. Quackery alone can claim the possibility of having an open office for trading with the Spirits.
The skeptical laugh at the Spiritists, because they imagine that the latter believe in Spirits confined in a table or in a box and that they are maneuvered like puppets; they find it ridiculous and they are a hundred times right; they are wrong in believing that Spiritism teaches such absurdities, when it positively says the opposite. If, at times, they have encountered some with a somewhat too easy credulity in the world, it is not among the enlightened Spiritists; now, in their number, there are necessarily some that are more or less, as in every science.
The Spirits are not definitely lodged in the glass of water. What is it in the glass? An image, nothing else; image taken from nature, that is why it is often accurate. How is it produced? That is the problem. The fact exists; therefore, it has a cause. Although we cannot yet give a complete and definitive solution, the following article seems to throw a great light on the issue.
Photography of thought
The spiritual fluids, that constitute one of the states of the universal cosmic fluid are, properly saying, the atmosphere of the spiritual beings; it is the element from which they draw the materials on which they operate; it is the environment where special phenomena occur, perceptible to the sight and to the hearing of the Spirit, and that escape the corporeal senses only impressed by tangible matter, where this light particular to the spiritual world is formed, different of ordinary light in its cause and its effects; it is, finally, the vehicle of thought as air is the vehicle of sound.
The Spirits act on the spiritual fluids, not by manipulating them as men does with gases, but with the aid of their thought and will. Thought and will are to the Spirits what the hand is to man. Through thought, they impart such or such direction to these fluids; they agglomerate, combine or disperse them; they form combinations having a specific appearance, shape, color; they change their properties as a chemist change those of gases or other bodies, by combining them according to certain laws; it is the great workshop or laboratory of the spiritual life.
Sometimes these transformations are the result of intention; often they are the product of unconscious thought; it suffices for the Spirit to think of one thing for this thing to happen, just as it suffices to modulate an aria so that this aria resonates in the atmosphere.
That is how, for example, a Spirit presents itself to the sight of an incarnate, endowed with psychic vision, with the appearances that he had during his life, at the time when he was known, although he would have had several incarnations since. He presents himself with the outfit, the external signs - diseases, scars, amputated limbs, etc. - that he had then; a decapitated person will present himself headless. This is not to say that he kept such appearances; certainly not; for, as a Spirit, he is neither lame, nor disabled, nor one-eyed, nor beheaded, but since his mind refers to the time when he was like that, his perispirit instantly takes on that appearance, that he leaves it behind instantaneously, as soon his thought stops acting. If therefore he was black one and another time white, he will present himself as a black or as a white, depending on which of these two incarnations he will be referred to, and to which his thoughts will refer.
By a similar effect, the thought of the Spirit fluidically creates the objects which he used to employ: a greedy will handle gold; a soldier will have his weapons and his uniform; a smoker, his pipe; a plowman, his plow, and his oxen; an old woman her distaff. These fluidic objects are as real to the Spirit who is fluidic itself, as they were material for the living man; but, for the very reason that they are created by thought, their existence is as ephemeral as thought.
Since the fluids are the vehicle of thought, they bring us thought as air brings us sound. We can therefore say, in all truth, that these fluids have waves and rays of thoughts, that cross over without being confused, just as there are waves and sound rays in the air.
As it can be seen, it is a whole new order of facts that take place outside the tangible world, that constitute, if one can put it that way, the special physics, and chemistry of the invisible world. But since, during incarnation, the spiritual principle is united with the material principle, it follows that certain phenomena of the spiritual world occur jointly with those of the material world and are inexplicable to anyone who does not know their laws. Knowledge of these laws is, therefore, as useful to the incarnate as to the discarnate, since it is only through that knowledge that one can explain certain facts of the material life.
By creating fluidic images, thought is reflected in the perispiritual envelope as in a mirror, or even as these images of terrestrial objects that are reflected in vapors of air; it takes a body there and photographs it, in a way. If a man, for example, has the thought of killing another, however impassive his material body may be, his fluidic body is put into action by his thought, in which all the nuances are reproduced; he fluidically executes the gesture, the action he intends to accomplish; his thought creates the image of the victim, and the whole scene is pictured, as in a painting, like it is in his mind.
That is how the most secret movements of the soul are reflected in the fluidic envelope; that a soul, incarnate or discarnate, can read another soul as in a book, and see what is not perceptible by the eyes of the body. The eyes of the body see the interior impressions that are reflected on the features of the face: anger, joy, sadness; but the soul sees in the features of the soul the thoughts that are not expressed in the outside.
However, according to the intention, the clairvoyant may well foresee the realization of the act that will follow it, but he cannot determine the moment when it will be accomplished, nor specify the details, nor even affirm that it will be accomplished, because subsequent circumstances may modify the arranged plans and change the outcomes. He cannot see what is not yet in the mind; what he sees is the current or usual concern of the individual, his desires, his projects, his good or bad intentions; hence the errors in the forecasts of certain seers, when an event is subordinated to the free will of a man; they can only foresee the probability from the thought they see, but not affirm that it will take place in such and such a way, and at such a time. The more or less accuracy in the predictions depends, moreover, on the extent and clarity of the psychic vision; in certain individuals, Spirits or incarnate, it is diffuse or limited to a point, while in others it is clear, and embraces all the thoughts and wills that must contribute to the realization of a fact; but above all, there is always the superior will that, in its wisdom, can allow or prevent a revelation; in the latter case, an impenetrable veil is thrown over the most insightful psychic sight. (See Genesis, Chapter on Foresight).
The theory of fluidic creations, and consequently of the photography of thought, is a conquest of modern Spiritism, and can henceforth be considered acquired, in principle, except for the applications of detail that are the result of observation. This phenomenon is undoubtedly the source of fantastic visions and must play a big role in some dreams.
We believe that one can find there the explanation of mediumship by the glass of water. (See the previous article). Considering that the object that we see cannot be in the glass, the water must act as a mirror that reflects the image created by the thought of the Spirit. This image can be the reproduction of a real thing, just as it can be that of a fictional creation. The glass of water is, in all cases, only a means of reproducing it, but it is not the only one, as the diversity of the processes employed by some clairvoyants proves it; this may be better for some organisms.
Death of Mr. Bizet, priest of Sétif
Hunger among the Spirits
“Mr. Bizet, parish priest of Sétif, died on April 15th, at the age of forty-three, undoubtedly victim of his eagerness during the cholera, and of the fatigue he endured during the famine in which he showed truly exemplary activity and dedication. Born in the vicinity of Viviers, in the Ardèche Department, for seventeen years he had been a pastor of this town, where he earned the sympathies of all its inhabitants, without distinction of cults, by his prudence, his moderation and the wisdom of his character.
In the beginning of Spiritism in this locality, and mainly when the Echo of Sétif had proclaimed this doctrine out loud, Mr. Bizet for a moment wanted to fight it; however, he refrained from entering a struggle that they were determined to support. Since then, he had carefully read your books. It is probably to this reading that we must attribute his reserved wisdom when he was ordered to read from the podium the famous commandment from Mgr. Pavie, bishop of Algiers, who qualified Spiritism as the new shame of Algeria. Mr. Bizet did not want to read this letter himself from the pulpit; he had his vicar read it, without adding any comment.”
We also extract from the Journal de Sétif, April 23rd, the following passage on the obituary it published about Mr. Bizet.
“His funeral took place on the day after his death, on April 15th. A requiem mass was sung at ten o'clock in the morning for the repose of his soul; it was officiated by one of the grand vicars, sent by the bishop a few days earlier. Not one person from Sétif was missing; the different religions had gathered and mingled to bid farewell to Father Bizet. The Arabs, represented by Qaids and cadhis; the Israelites by the Rabbi and the main notables among them; the Protestants, through their pastor, were there, competing in zeal and eagerness to give Father Bizet a final testimony of esteem, affection, and grief. The gathering of so many different religions in the same feeling of sympathy is one of the greatest successes achieved by Christian charity, that during his apostolate in Sétif, never ceased to animate Abbot Bizet. Living amid a population that is far from being homogeneous, and among which there are dissidents of all kinds, he knew how to keep intact the Catholic faith that had been entrusted to him, while having benevolent and affectionate relationships with those who did not share his religious convictions, winning him everybody’s sympathy.
But what overflowed from all hearts was the memory of the feelings of Christian charity that drove Father Bizet. His charity was gentle, patient before anything else, in the long winter we have just gone through, amid a dreadful misery that had commended him a multitude of unfortunate people. His charity believed everything, hoped for everything, endured everything, and was never discouraged. It was amid this dedication to help the unfortunate starving people, threatened every day with dying of cold and hunger, that he took the germ of the disease that has ravished him from this world, if he was not already affected, owing to the exceptional dedication he had displayed during the cholera of last summer."
Was Mr. Bizet a Spiritist? Not ostensibly, but in his inner self, we ignore it; if he were not, he at least had the good spirit not to anathematize a belief that brings the skeptical and indifferent back to God. Besides, what does it matter to us? He was a good man, a true Christian, a priest according to the Gospel; as such, even if it had been hostile to us, the Spiritists would not place him less among the men whose memory humanity must honor and that it must take for model.
The Spiritist Society of Paris wanted to give him a testimony of its respectful sympathy by calling him to its midst, where he gave the following communication:
Parisian Society, Paris May 14th, 1868
“I am pleased, sir, for the benevolent appeal you have kindly addressed to me, and to which I consider an honor as well as a pleasure to respond. If I did not immediately come to you, it is because the disturbance of the separation and the new spectacle with which I was struck, did not allow me to do so. And then, I did not know which one to hear; I have found many friends whose warm welcome has greatly helped me to recognize myself; but I also had the atrocious spectacle of famine among the Spirits, before my eyes. I found up there many of those unfortunate people, dead in the tortures of hunger, still seeking in vain to satisfy an imaginary need, fighting against each other to tear off a shred of food that slips through their hands, tearing each other apart, and if I may say so, devouring each other; a horrible, hideous scene, exceeding anything most distressing that human imagination can conceive! … Many of those unfortunate people recognized me, and their first cry was: Bread! It was in vain that I tried to make them understand their situation; they were deaf to my consolations. - What a terrible thing death in such conditions, and how this spectacle is of such a nature to make one reflect on the nothingness of certain human thoughts! … Thus, while on earth one thinks that those that left are at least spared from the cruel torture they were undergoing, we see on the other side that it is not, and that the picture is no less gloomy, although the actors have changed their appearance.
You ask me if I was a Spiritist. If you mean by that word accepting all the beliefs that your doctrine advocates, no, I did not get there. I admired your principles; I believed them capable of delivering salvation to those who put them sincerely into practice; but I had my reservations on many points. I did not follow, about you, the example of my colleagues and of some of my superiors whom I internally blamed, because I have always thought that intolerance was the mother of skepticism, and that it was better to have a belief in charity and the practice of good, than not to have any at all. Was I a de facto Spiritist? It is not for me to comment on this.
As for the little good that I was able to do, I am truly embarrassed at the exaggerated praise addressed to me. Who would not have acted like me? ... Are they not more deserving than me still, if there is some merit in that, those who devoted themselves to helping the unfortunate Arabs, and who were only brought there by the love of good? ... Charity was a duty to me, owing to the character with which I was invested. By failing, I would have been guilty, I would have lied to God and to the men to whom I had devoted my existence. Who could have remained insensitive to so much misery? ...
You see, they did as always: magnified the facts enormously; I have been surrounded by a sort of renown that makes me confused and sorrowful, and from which I suffer in my self-esteem; because after all I know very well that I do not deserve all this, and I am quite sure, sir, that by knowing me better, you will reduce the noise that has been made around me to its fair value. If I have any merit, let it be granted to me, I consent to it, but may a pedestal with a stolen reputation not be raised for me, for I cannot agree to that.
As you can see, sir, I am still very new in this new world to me, very ignorant most of all, and more eager to instruct myself than capable of instructing others. Your principles seem to me today more correct because after having read the theory, I see their broadest practical application. So, I would be happy to assimilate them completely, and I would be grateful if you would sometimes accept me as one of your listeners.
Father Bizet.”
Observation: To anyone who does not know the true constitution of the invisible world, it will seem strange that Spirits who, according to them, are abstract, immaterial, indefinite, bodyless beings, are in the grip of the horrors of famine; but the astonishment ceases when one realizes that these same Spirits are beings like us; that they have a body, a fluidic one it is true, but that is nonetheless matter; that by leaving their fleshly envelope, certain Spirits continue the terrestrial life with the same vicissitudes during a more or less long time. It seems strange, but it is so, and observation teaches us that such is the situation of the Spirits who have lived more of the material life than of the spiritual life, a situation often terrible, because the illusion of the needs of the flesh is felt, and one has all the anguishes of an impossible to satisfy need. The mythological torture of Tantalus[1] shows, among the ancients, a more accurate knowledge of the state of the world beyond the grave than one supposes, more precise especially than among the moderns.
Quite different is the position of those who, from this life, have dematerialized by the elevation of their thoughts and their identification with the future life; all the pains of bodily life cease with the last breath, and the Spirit immediately hovers, radiant, in the ethereal world, happy like the prisoner freed from his chains.
Who told us that? Is it a system, a theory? Did anyone say it had to be, and do we take their word for it? No; it is the inhabitants themselves of the invisible world who repeat it on all corners of the globe, for the teaching of the incarnates.
Yes, legions of Spirits continue their bodily life with its tortures and anguish; but which ones? Those who are still too subservient to matter to instantly detach themselves from it. Is it a cruelty of the Supreme Being? No, it is a law of a nature, inherent to the state of inferiority of the Spirits and necessary for their advancement; it is a mixed prolongation of terrestrial life for a few days, a few months, a few years, depending on the moral state of the individuals. Would they have come to accuse this legislation of barbarism, those who advocate the dogma of eternal, irremissible penalties, and the flames of hell as an effect of sovereign justice? Can they put it in parallel with a temporary situation, always subordinate to an individual desire to progress, to the possibility of advancing through new incarnations? Besides, doesn’t it depend on everyone to escape this intermediate life that is frankly neither the material nor the spiritual life? The Spiritists escape it naturally, because, understanding the state of the spiritual world before entering it, they immediately realize their situation.
The evocations show us a crowd of Spirits who believe they are still of this world: suicides, tortured people who do not suspect that they are dead, and suffer from their kind of death; others who attend their funeral as if of a stranger; greedy people who guard their treasures, sovereigns who still believe they are in command and who are furious at not being obeyed; after great maritime disasters, castaways who fight against the fury of the waves; after a battle, soldiers who fight, and beside all that, radiant Spirits, who no longer have anything earthly, and are to the incarnate what the butterfly is to the caterpillar. Can one ask what is the use of evocations when they let us know, down to its finest details, this world that awaits us all at the end of it? It is the incarnate humanity that converses with the discarnate humanity; the prisoner that talks to the free man. No, of course, they are of no use to the superficial man who sees them only as an amusement; they serve him no more than recreational physics and chemistry serve his education; but for the philosopher, the serious observer who thinks about the tomorrow of life, it is a great and healthy lesson; a whole new world is being discovered; it is the light cast on the future; it is the destruction of secular prejudices on the soul and on the future life; it is the sanction of universal solidarity that links all beings. We can be deceived, we say; undoubtedly, as we can be on all things, even on those that we see and that we touch: everything depends on the way of observing.
There is nothing strange about the picture presented by Father Bizet; it comes, on the contrary, to confirm, by one more great example, what we already knew; and what rules out any idea of the reflection of thoughts is that he did so spontaneously, without anyone thinking of focusing their attention on this point. Why then would he have come to say it without being asked, if it was not true? He was undoubtedly led there for our instruction. Moreover, the whole communication bears a stamp of seriousness, sincerity and modesty that is well in its character, and which is not characteristic of mystifying Spirits.
[1] In Greek mythology, Tantalus was punished by Zeus to forever go thirsty and hungry (T.N.)
Spiritism Everywhere
Journal La Solidarité
Spiritism leads precisely to the goal that all men of progress propose; it is therefore impossible that, even without knowing each other, they do think in the same about certain points, and that, when they do get to know each other, they do not join hands to march together against their common enemies: the social prejudices, routine, fanaticism, intolerance, and ignorance.
La Solidarité is a journal whose editors take their title seriously; and what a vaster and more fruitful field for the moralist philosopher than this word that contains the whole program of the future of humanity! Thus, this periodical that has always been noted for the elevated reach of its views, if it does not have the popularity of light papers, it has acquired more solid credit among serious thinkers.[1]Although, to this day, it has not shown itself to be very sympathetic to our doctrines, we didn’t do less justice to the sincerity of its points of views and the undeniable talent of its writings. It is therefore with great satisfaction that today we see it doing justice to the principles of Spiritism. Its editors will also give us the credit for recognizing that we have taken no steps to bring them to us; their opinion, therefore, is not the result of any personal deference.
With the title Bulletin of the Philosophical and Religious Movement, the May 1st issue contains a remarkable article from which we extract the following passages:
“The mess is constantly increasing. Where will it stop? It is not only in politics that we no longer get along; it is no longer only in social economy, but it is also in morality and religion, so that the disorder extends to all spheres of human activity, that it has invaded the whole domain of consciousness, and that civilization itself is involved.
Not that the material order is in danger. Today there are too many acquired elements in society and too many interests to maintain for the material order to be seriously disturbed. But the material order proves nothing. It can persist for a long time when the very principle of social life is reached, and corruption slowly dissolves the organism. Order reigned in Rome under the Caesars, while Roman civilization was crumbling every day, not by the efforts of the barbarians, but by the weight of its own vices.
Will our society succeed in eliminating from its midst the morbid elements that threaten to become its seeds of dissolution and death? We hope so, but it requires the fulcrum of the eternal principles, the assistance of a truly positive science, and the prospect of a new ideal.
These are the conditions of social salvation because these are the means of a true rebirth for individuals. A society can only be the product of the social beings that constitute it, and as the result of their physical, intellectual, and moral state. If you want social transformation, make the new man first.[2]
Although the circle of readers of philosophical publications has grown a lot in recent years, how many people still ignore the existence of these journals, or neglect reading them! It is a mistake. Without them, it is impossible to realize the state of the souls. The organizations of contemporary philosophy have yet another reach: they prepare the questions that the events will soon raise, and that will be urgent to solve.
Certainly, there is great confusion in the philosophical press; it is a bit like the Tower of Babel: everyone speaks their own language and is much more concerned with covering the neighbor's voice than listening to their reasons. Each system aspires to be unique and excludes all others. But we must be careful not to take them literally in their exclusivity. And there is possibly no one of them that does not represent some legitimate point of view. They will all pass, for truth alone is eternal; but none of them, perhaps, will have been completely sterile; not one will have disappeared without adding something to the intellectual capital of humanity. Materialism, religious and philosophical positivism, “independentism” (forgive me for this barbarism, it is not mine), criticism, idealism, spiritualism, spiritism - because it is necessary to count on this newcomer that has more supporters than all the others together; and on the other hand, liberal Protestantism, liberal idealism, and even liberal Catholicism: such are the names of the main banners that, in various capacities and with unequal strengths, are represented in the philosophical arena. No doubt, there is no army here since there is no obedience to a leader, no hierarchy, no discipline, but these groups, today divided and independent, can be united by a common danger.
The philosophical movement that we are witnessing shortly precedes the great religious movement that is being prepared. Soon religious questions will fascinate people's minds, as social questions once did, and even more strongly.
That the order must be founded by a simple evolution of the Christian idea brought back to its primitive purity, as some think, or by a kind of fusion of beliefs on the wasteland of a Judeo-Christian deism, as hoped by other men of good will, or what seems to us much more probable, by the intervention of a larger and more comprehensible idea, that gives human life its true goal, the first need for the time we are in is freedom: freedom to think and publish one's thoughts, freedom of conscience and worship, freedom of propaganda and preaching! Of course, amid so many current systems, it is impossible not to see the opening of a phase of ardent, passionate, apparently disordered discussions, but this preparatory phase is necessary just as chaotic agitation is necessary for creation. Like lightning and bolts in the earth's atmosphere, the amalgamation of ideas stirs the moral atmosphere to purify it. Who can fear the storm, knowing that it must restore the disturbed balance and renew the sources of life?”
The same issue contains the following appreciation of our work about the Genesis. We only reproduced it because it is linked to the general interests of the Doctrine:
“There is something of capital importance happening in our time, and people pretend not to see it. There are, however, phenomena to be observed that are of interest to science, notably physics and human physiology; but, even when the phenomena of what is called Spiritism exist only in the imagination of its followers, the belief in Spiritism, so rapidly spread everywhere, is a considerable phenomenon and well worthy of occupying the meditations of the philosopher. It is difficult, even impossible to assess the number of people who believe in Spiritism, but we can say that this belief is general in the United States, and that it is spreading more and more in Europe. In France, there is a whole Spiritist literature. Paris has two or three journals that represent it. Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille each have their own. Mr. Allan Kardec is in France the most eminent representative of Spiritism. Fortunately to this belief it found a leader who knew how to keep it within the limits of rationalism. It would have been so easy, with all this mixture of real phenomena and purely ideal and subjective creations that constitutes the marvelousness of what is called Spiritism, to indulge in the attraction of the miracle, and the resurrection of old superstitions! Spiritism could have lent the enemies of reason a powerful support if it had turned to demonology, and there exists within the Catholic world a party that still makes all its efforts there. There is also a whole deplorable literature there, unhealthy, but fortunately without influence. Spiritism, on the contrary, in France as in the United States, resisted the spirit of the Middle Ages. The demon plays no part in it, and the miracle never comes to introduce its silly explanations. Apart from the hypothesis that forms the basis of Spiritism and that consists in believing that the Spirits of dead people talk to the living by means of certain processes of correspondence, very simple and accessible to everyone; apart from the hypothesis of this starting point, we were saying, we find ourselves in the presence of a general doctrine that is perfectly in keeping with the state of science in our time, and that perfectly meets the needs and modern aspirations. And what is remarkable is that the Spiritist doctrine is almost the same everywhere. If we study it only in France, we can believe that the works of Mr. Allan Kardec, which are like the encyclopedia of Spiritism, have a lot to do with it. But this parity of doctrine extends to other countries; for example, Davis' teachings in the United States do not differ essentially from those of Mr. Allan Kardec. It is true that, in the ideas emitted by Spiritism, one finds nothing that could not have been found by the human mind, given over to the sole resources of imagination and of positive science; but considering that the syntheses proposed by the Spiritist writers are scientific and rational, they deserve to be examined without prejudice, without bias, by philosophical criticism.
The new book by Mr. Allan Kardec addresses the issues that are the subject of our studies. We cannot present the report today. We will come back to this in a future issue, and we will say at the same time what we think of the so-called Spiritist phenomena, and the explanations that can be given to them in the current state of science."
Note: This same number contains a remarkable article by Mr. Raisant, entitled: My religious ideal, that the Spiritists would not disavow.
[1] La Solidarité, a monthly journal of 16 in-4 pages, published on the 1st of each month. Price: Paris, 5 francs per year; departments, 6 francs; foreigner, 7 francs. Price of an issue, 25 cents; by mail, 30 cents. - Office: rue des Saints-Pères, 13, at the Library of Social Sciences.
[2] We wrote in 1862: “Before making institutions for men, we must form men for institutions."(Spiritist Journey).
Conferences
In a series of conferences given last April by Mr. Chavée, at the Free Institute of Boulevard des Capucines, # 39, the speaker made, with as much talent as he did with real science, an analytical and philosophical study of the Indian Vedas and the laws of Manu, compared to the book of Job and the Psalms. This subject led him to considerations of great importance that directly touch on the fundamental principles of Spiritism. Here are some notes collected by a listener in these conferences; these are only thoughts seized on the fly, that necessarily misses out by being detached from the whole and deprived of their developments, but that suffice to show the order of ideas followed by the author:
“What is the point of throwing a veil over what is?" What is the use of not saying out loud what one is thinking in a whisper? One must have the courage to say it; as for me, I will have this courage.
In the Indian Vedas it says, “We have our peers up there”, and I agree with that.
“With the eyes of the flesh one cannot see everything."
“Man has an indefinite existence, and the progress of the soul is indefinite. Whatever the sum of her lights, she always must learn, for she has infinity in front of her, and although she cannot reach it, her goal will always be to get closer and closer to that."
“Individual man cannot exist without an organism that limits him within creation. If the soul exists after death, then it has a body, an organism that I call the superior organism, as opposed to the carnal body that is the inferior organism. During vigil these two organisms are, so to speak, confused; during sleep, somnambulism and ecstasy the soul makes use only of its ethereal body or the superior organism; she is freer in this state; her manifestations are more elevated, because she acts on this more perfect organism that offers her less resistance; she embraces a whole and relationships that are admired, something that cannot be done with her inferior organism that limits her clairvoyance and the field of her observations."
The soul is without extension; it is only extended by its ethereal body and circumscribed by the limits of this body that Saint Paul calls a luminous organism.
An organism, ethereal in its constituent elements, but invisible and reachable only by scientific induction, does not, in any way, contradict the known laws of physics and chemistry.
There are facts that experimentation can always reproduce, noting the existence, in man, of a superior internal organism that must succeed the usual opaque organism at the time of the destruction of the latter.
After death separates the soul from its carnal organism, it continues life in space, with its ethereal body, thus retaining its individuality. Among the men of whom we have spoken and who have died according to the flesh, there are certainly some here among us who participate, invisible, at our talks; they are by our side, and hover above our heads; they see us and hear us. Yes, they are there, I assure you.
The scale of beings is continuous; before being what we are, we have passed through all the steps of this ladder that are below us, and we will continue to climb those that are above. Before our brain was a reptile, it was a fish, and it was a fish before it was a mammal.
Materialists deny these truths; they are honest people; they are in good faith, but they are wrong! I challenge a materialist to come here to this podium and prove that he is right and that I am wrong. Come and prove materialism! No, they will not prove it; they will only put forward ideas based on a void; they will only oppose denials, while I am going to demonstrate by facts the truth of my thesis.
Are there pathological phenomena that prove the existence of the soul after death? Yes, there are, and I'll mention one. I see medical doctors here who claim that there aren’t. I will only answer this: If you haven't seen any, it's because you looked badly. Observe, seek, study, and you will find some as I have found myself.
It is to somnambulism and ecstasy that I am going to ask for the proofs that I have promised you. Somnambulism? I will be asked; but the Academy of Medicine has not yet recognized it. - What does that matter to me? I don't care about the Academy of Medicine, and I will do without it. - But Mr. Dubois, of Amiens, wrote a big book against this doctrine. - It doesn't matter to me either; these are opinions without proof, that disappear before the facts.
People will say to me still: "It is no longer in fashion to defend somnambulism. I will answer that I do not want to be fashionable, and that, if so, few men dare to profess truths that still attract ridicule, I am one of those whom ridicule cannot reach, and who willingly face it in good will, courageously saying what they believe to be the truth. If each of us acted like that, skepticism would soon lose all the ground that it has gained for some time and be replaced by faith; not the faith that is the daughter of revelation, but a more solid faith, the daughter of science, observation, and reason.”
The speaker cites numerous examples of somnambulism and ecstasy, that gave him proof, in some way material, of the existence of the soul, of its action isolated from the carnal body, of its individuality after death, and, finally, of his ethereal body, that is no other but the fluidic envelope or perispirit.
The existence of the perispirit, suspected by elites of intelligences since the highest antiquity, but ignored by the masses, demonstrated, and popularized in recent times by Spiritism, is a whole revolution in psychological ideas, and consequently in philosophy. Having this starting point admitted, we inevitably arrive, from deduction to deduction, to the individuality of the soul, to the plurality of existences, to indefinite progress, to the presence of Spirits among us, in a word, to all the consequences of Spiritism, up to the fact of the manifestations that can be explained in a very natural way.
On the other hand, we have demonstrated in time that by speaking of the principle of the plurality of existences, accepted today by several serious thinkers, even outside Spiritism, we arrive precisely at the same consequences.
If, therefore, men whose knowledge is authoritative, openly profess, verbally or by their writings, even without speaking of Spiritism, some of the doctrine of the perispirit, by any given name, others to the plurality of existences, it is professing Spiritism, since these are two roads that inevitably lead to it. If they drew these ideas from themselves and from their own observations, it only proves that those are part of nature and how irresistible their power is. Thus, perispirit and reincarnation are now two open doors for Spiritism, in the field of philosophy and popular beliefs.
Mr. Chavée's conferences are therefore true Spiritist lectures, minus the word; and in this last aspect, we will say that they are, for the moment, more beneficial to the doctrine than if they openly raised the flag. They popularize its fundamental ideas, without offending those who by ignorance of the matter, would have prejudices against the name. A clear proof of the sympathy that these ideas meet in public opinion is the enthusiastic reception given to the doctrines professed by Mr. Chavée, by the large public that flock to his conferences.
We are convinced that more than one writer, who makes fun of the Spiritists, applauds Mr. Chavée and his doctrines, finding it perfectly rational, without suspecting that they are nothing other than the purest Spiritism.
The journal La Solidarité, in the issue of May 1st, that we cited above, gives a report of these conferences, to which we draw the attention of our readers, in that it completes the information given above from other points of view.
Note: The abundance of material obliges us to hand over to the next issue the review of two very interesting feuilletons by Mr. Bonnemère, the author of the Novel of the future, published in the Siècle of April 24th and 25th, 1868, with the title Paris somnambulist; Spiritism is clearly defined there.
Bibliographic News
Religion and politics in modern society
by Frédéric Herrenschneider.[1]
Mr. Herrenschneider is a former Saint-Simonian, and it was there that he drew his keen love for progress. Since then, he has become a Spiritist, and yet we are far from sharing his point of view on all points, and from accepting all the solutions he gives. His work is a work of high philosophy where the Spiritist element holds an important place; we will only examine it from the point of view of the agreement and divergence of his ideas regarding Spiritism. Before moving into the examination of his theory, some preliminary considerations seem essential to us.
Three great doctrines divide the spirits, with the names of different religions and very distinct philosophies; they are materialism, spiritualism, and Spiritism; however, one can be a materialist and believe or not believe in the free will of man; in the second case, one is an atheist or a pantheist; in the first, one is inconsistent, and still takes the name of pantheist or that of naturalist, positivist, etc.
One is spiritualist from the moment that one is not a materialist, that is one admits a spiritual principle, distinct from matter, whatever the idea that one has of its nature and its destiny. Catholics, Greeks, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Deists are all spiritualists, despite the essential differences in dogma that divide them.
The Spiritists have a clearer and more precise idea of the soul; it is not a vague and abstract being, but a defined being that takes some concrete, limited, circumscribed form. Regardless of intelligence, that is its essence, it has special attributes and effects, which are the fundamental principles of their doctrine. They admit: the fluidic body or perispirit; the indefinite progress of the soul; reincarnation or plurality of existences, as a necessity for progress; the plurality of inhabited worlds; the presence in our midst of souls or Spirits who have lived on Earth and the continuation of their care for the living; the perpetuity of affections; the universal solidarity that links the living and the dead, the Spirits of all the worlds, and hence the efficacy of prayer; the possibility of communicating with the Spirits of those who are no more; in man, the spiritual or psychic sight, that is an effect of the soul.
They reject the dogma of eternal, irremediable penalties, as irreconcilable with the justice of God; but they admit that the soul, after death, suffers and endures the consequences of all the evil that she has done during life, all the good that she could have done and that she did not do. One’s sufferings are the natural consequence of one’s actions; they last as long as the perversity or moral inferiority of the Spirit lasts; they diminish as he improves and cease by repairing the evil; this repair takes place in successive bodily existences. The Spirit, always having his freedom of action, is thus the own maker of his happiness and his unhappiness, in this world and in the next. Man is fatally inclined neither to good nor to evil; he accomplishes both by his will and perfects himself by experience. As a consequence to that principle, the Spiritists admit neither the demons, predestined to evil, nor the special creation of angels, predestined to infinite happiness, without having had the trouble of deserving it; demons are still imperfect human Spirits, but who will improve over time; the angels are Spirits that arrived at perfection after having passed, like the others, through all the degrees of inferiority.
Spiritism admits, for each one, only the responsibility for his own acts; the original sin, according to that, is personal; it consists of the imperfections that everyone brings when is reborn, because one has not yet shed them in one’s previous existences, and of which one naturally suffers the consequences in the present life.
Neither does it admit, as a supreme final reward, the useless and blissful contemplation of the elected ones during eternity; but, on the contrary, an incessant activity, from the top to the bottom of the scale of beings, where each one has assignments in proportion to their degree of advancement.
Such is, in a very short summary, the basis of the Spiritist beliefs; one is a Spiritist from the moment that one enters this order of ideas, even when one does not admit all the points of the doctrine in their integrity or all their consequences. Although not a complete Spiritist, one is nonetheless a Spiritist, meaning that one is often a Spiritist without knowing it, sometimes without wishing to admit it to oneself, and that among the followers of the different religions, many are in fact Spiritists, even if not by name.
The common belief to spiritualists is to believe in a creator God, and to admit that the soul, after death, continues to exist, in the form of a pure Spirit, completely detached from all matter, and that she will be able, with or without the resurrection of her material body, to enjoy an eternal happy or unhappy existence.
Materialists believe, on the contrary, that force is inseparable from matter and cannot exist without it; consequently, God is for them only a gratuitous hypothesis, unless he is matter itself; the materialists deny, with all their force, the conception of an essentially spiritual soul and that of a personality surviving death.
Regarding the soul as the spiritualists accept it, their criticism is based on the fact that since force is inseparable from matter, a personal, active and powerful soul cannot exist as a geometric point in space, dimensionless of any kind, neither length, nor width, nor height. What force, what power, what action can such a soul have on the body during life; what progress can it achieve, and in what way does it keep its individuality if it is nothing; how could she be susceptible to happiness or unhappiness after death? They ask the spiritualists.
We must not hide it from ourselves, this argument is specious, but it is without value against the doctrine of the Spiritists; they admit the soul distinct from the body, like the spiritualists, with an eternal life and an indestructible personality, but they consider this soul as indissolubly united to matter; not the matter of the body itself, but another more ethereal, fluidic and incorruptible that they call perispirit, a fortunate word expressing well the thought that is the origin and the very basis of Spiritism.
If we summarize the three doctrines, we will say that, for materialists, the soul does not exist; or if it exists, it merges with matter without any distinct personality apart from present life, where this personality is even more apparent than real.
For the spiritualists, the soul exists in the state of Spirit, independent of God and of all matter.
For the Spiritists, the soul is distinct from God who created it, inseparable from a fluidic and incorruptible matter that we can call the perispirit.
This preliminary explanation will make it possible to understand that there are Spiritists without knowing it.
Indeed, from the moment when one is neither a materialist nor a spiritualist, one can only be a Spiritist, despite the disgust that some seem to feel for this qualification.
Here we are a far away from the fanciful appreciations of those who imagine that Spiritism rests only on the evocation of the Spirits; there are, however, some Spiritists who have never made a single evocation; others who have never seen it and do not even want to see it, their belief not needing this resource; and for relying only on reason and study, this belief is nonetheless complete and serious.
We even think that it is in its philosophical and moral form that Spiritism meets the most firm and convinced supporters; the communications are only means of conviction, of demonstration and above all of consolation; we should only resort to it with caution, and when we already know what we want to obtain.
It is not that the communications are the exclusive sharing of the Spirits; they often take place spontaneously and, sometimes even, in environments hostile to Spiritism, from which they are independent; they are, in fact, only the result of laws and natural actions that Spirits or men can use, one or the other, either independently or in agreement between them.
But just as it is wise to put instruments of physics, chemistry, and astronomy only in the hands of those who know how to use them, so it is advisable to initiate communications only when they can have a real utility, and not with the aim of satisfying a foolish curiosity.
Having said that, we can examine the remarkable work of Mr. Herrenschneider; it is the work of a deep thinker and a convinced, if not complete Spiritist, but we do not agree with all the conclusions he reaches.
Mr. Herrenschneider admits the existence of a Creator God, present in creation everywhere, penetrating all bodies with his fluidic substance and being in us as we are in him; this is the remarkable solution that Mr. Allan Kardec presented in his Genesis as a hypothesis.
But, according to the author, God filled all the space in the beginning; he would have created each being by withdrawing from the place that he conceded, allowing his free development under his unstoppable protection; this progressive development takes place, first of all, under the necessary effect of the laws of nature, and by the coercion of evil; then, when the Spirit has already progressed sufficiently, it can combine its own action with the fatal action of natural laws to activate its progress.
Throughout this phase of the existence of beings that begins by the molecule of the mineral, continues in the plant, develops in the animal, and is determined in man, the Spirit collects and preserves knowledge through its perispirit; it thus acquires a certain experience. The accomplished progress is very slow, and the slower it is, the more the incarnations are multiplied.
As we can see, the author adopts the scientific principles of the progress of beings, issued by Lamarck, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Darwin, with the difference that the moderating action of the animal forms and organs is no longer only the result of selection and vital competition, but it is also, and primarily, the effect of the intelligent action of the animal Spirit, incessantly modifying forms and matter that it takes on to achieve an appropriation more in accordance with the acquired experience.
It is in this order of ideas that we would like to have seen the author insisting on the beneficent and kind action of the superior beings, contributing to the advancement of the weakest, guiding, and protecting them by a feeling of sympathy and solidarity, the development of which is fortunately presented in the book of Genesis and in all the works of Mr. Allan Kardec.
Mr. Herrenschneider does not speak of the reciprocal action of beings on each other, except from the sad point of view of the bad action and the necessary progress that results from the evil in nature. About this point, he understood well that evil is only relative, and that it is one of the conditions of progress; this part of his work is well developed.
“Created,” he said, “in extreme weakness, in extreme laziness and having to be the means of our own end, we are obliged to arrive at perfection and power, happiness and freedom by our own efforts; our destiny is to be the children of our works in everything and everywhere, to create for us our unity, our personality, our originality as well as our happiness.”
“These, in my opinion, are the designs of God for us; but to succeed, the creator obviously cannot abandon us to ourselves, since being created in this tiny and molecular state, we are naturally plunged into a deep numbness; we would have even remained there in perpetuity, and we would never have taken a step forward if, in order to awaken us, to make our inert substance sensitive and to activate our force deprived of initiative, God had not subjected us to a system of coercion, that takes us from our origin, never leaves us, and forces us to deploy our efforts to satisfy the needs and the moral, intellectual and material instincts, to which he has made us slaves, as a result of the system of incarnation that he has arranged for this purpose."
Going further than the Stoics who claimed that pain did not exist and was only a word, we see that the Spiritists manage to pronounce this strange formula that evil itself is good, in the sense that it inevitably and necessarily leads to that.
On everything that precedes, we criticize the author for having forgotten that the closest solidarity binds all beings, and that the best of all are those who, having best understood this principle, constantly put it into action, so that all beings in nature contribute to the general goal and to the progress of one another: some without knowing it and motivated by their spiritual guides; others by understanding their duty to elevate and educate those around them, or who depend on them and by helping themselves with the support of the more advanced ones. Everyone understands today that parents owe their children a proper education, and that those who are happy, educated, and advanced must help the poor, the sufferers and the ignorant.
Consequently, we must understand the usefulness of prayer that puts us in relation with the Spirits that can guide us. Don’t we, sometimes, pray to those who live like us; who are our superiors or our equals, and can our life pass without this perpetual appeal that we make to the assistance of others? It is, therefore, not surprising that, hearing us, those who are no longer, are likewise sensitive to our prayers to the extent of what they can do, as in fact they would have done during their lifetime; sometimes we give to those who have not asked, but we give especially to those who ask; knock and it will be opened to you; pray, and if possible, you will be heard.
Do not think that everything is due to you and that you have to wait for the benefits without asking for them or deserving them; do not believe that everything happens inevitably and necessarily, but think, on the contrary, that you are in the midst of free and voluntary beings, as many as the sand of the sea, and that their action can join yours, at your request and following their sympathy that you have to know how to deserve.
Praying is a way of acting on others and on oneself, but this is not the time to develop this important subject; let us say only that prayer is only valid when it follows effort or work, and can do nothing without it, while work and generous efforts can very well substitute prayer; it is especially among the Spiritists that we admit this old saying: “To work is to pray.”
The most interesting part of Mr. Herrenschneider's book is that in which he does what one might call the psychology of the soul, conceived as such that the Spiritists understand it, and from this point of view his work is new and most curious.
The author clearly determines the phenomena that depend on the perispirit, and how he keeps at the disposal of the mind, the entire sum of his previous progress, while keeping track of the efforts and new progress attempted and realized by the being, at any given time.
According to these data, the nature of the soul or perispirit is to be considered as an acquired treasure, preserved in us, and containing all that concerns our being in the moral, intellectual, and practical order.
We will avoid using the terms adopted by the author who, to express that the soul can act, either by the effect of its acquired treasure or its intimate nature (perispirit), or by a new effort or voluntary action, uses the expression duality of the soul, although pointing out that the soul is one; this is an unfortunate expression that does not express the true thought of the author and that could be confusing to a careless mind.
Mr. Herrenschneider believes in the unity of the soul, like the Spiritists; like them, he admits the existence of the perispirit, which allows him to make a very fine critique of the psychology of the spiritualists, that he studies more specifically from the works of Mr. Cousin.
Starting from the same point as Socrates and Descartes: knowledge of oneself, the author establishes the primordial fact from which all our knowledge results, that is to say, the affirmation of ourselves made each time we use the words: I or me; the affirmation of the ego is therefore the true basis of psychology; now, there are several manifestations of this self that are presented to our observation, without one having any priority over the others and without their being reciprocally generated: I feel, - I know myself, - I am conscious of my individuality - I want to be satisfied. These last two facts of consciousness are self-evident and clear; they constitute the principle of unity of the being and that of our final cause or destiny, namely: to be happy.
In order to feel and to know oneself, it should be noted that one is perfectly aware of feeling without needing to make any effort; on the contrary, the perception of feeling is an act that results from an effort of the same order as attention; as soon as I stop trying, I no longer think or pay attention, and then I feel all the external things that make an impression on me, until one of them hits me hard enough that I examine it with my attention; so I can think or feel, be impressed or perceive, and judge my impression when I want to.
There are two different, heterogeneous psychological orders here, one of which is passive and is characterized by sensitivity and permanence: it is the feeling; and the other is active and is distinguished by the effort of attention, and by its intermittence: it is the voluntary thought.
It is from this observation that the author concludes on the existence of the perispirit, by a series of very interesting deductions, but too long to report here.
For Mr. Herrenschneider, the perispirit, or substance of the soul, is a simple, incorruptible, inert, extended, solid and sensitive matter; it is the potential principle that, by its subtlety, receives all impressions, assimilates them, preserves them, and is transformed, under this incessant action, to contain all our moral, intellectual, and practical nature.
The strength of the soul is of virtual, spiritual, active, voluntary, and reflective order; this is the principle of our activity. Wherever our perispirit is, our strength is also found. Our sensitivity, our sensations, our feelings, our memory, our imagination, our ideas, our common sense, our spontaneity, our moral nature, and our principles of honor, as well as dreams, passions, and madness itself, depend on the perispirit or the acquired treasure of our nature.
Attention, perception, reason, memory, fantasy, humor, thought, judgment, reflection, will, virtue, conscience, and vigilance, as well as somnambulism, elation, and monomania derive from our strength, as virtual qualities.
Considering that these qualities can be substituted by one another, without being mutually exclusive, and because the same organs must be used both by the perception and by the sensation that are equivalent, by the feeling as much as by reason, etc., it follows that each Spirit seldom uses both orders of its faculties with the same facility. From this observation, it follows for the author that the individuals who function more easily by virtue of the so-called potential faculties will have them more developed than the others, and will use them more willingly, and vice versa.
From this point of view and from an observation regarding the greater or lesser virtual power of certain clusters of individuals, generally grouped under the same race identification, the author concludes that there are Spirits that can be called French, English, Italian, Chinese or Black Spirits, etc.
Despite the explanatory difficulties that would result from such an idea, it must be admitted that the very careful studies made by Mr. Herrenschneider, on the different peoples, are very remarkable and in any case very interesting; but we would have liked the author to have indicated more clearly his thought that is obviously the following: Spirits are grouped in general according to their affinities; this is what causes Spirits of the same order and of the same degree of elevation to tend to incarnate on the same point of the globe, and from there results this national character, a phenomenon so singular in appearance. We will, therefore, say that there are no French or English Spirits, but that there are Spirits whose state, their habits, their traditions lead them to incarnate, some in France, others in England, like we see them during their life grouping themselves according to their sympathies, their moral value, and their characters. As for the individual progress, it always depends on the will, and not on the already acquired value of the perispirit that only serves, so to speak, as a starting point, intended to allow a new elevation of the Spirit, new conquests, and new progress.
We will leave aside the part of the book that deals with social order and the need for an imposed religion, because the author, still imbued with the principles of authority that he drew from Saint-Simonism, he departs too much, at this point, from the principles of absolute tolerance that Spiritism prides itself of professing. We think it is fair to teach, but we would be afraid of an imposed and necessary doctrine, because even if it were excellent for the present generation, it would inevitably become a hindrance for the following generations when they would have progressed.
Mr. Herrenschneider does not understand that morality can be independent of religion; in our opinion, the question is badly put, and each one discusses it precisely from the point of view where he is right. Independent moralists are right in saying that morality is independent of religious dogmas, in the sense that, without believing in any of the existing dogmas, many of the ancients were moral, and among the moderns there are many who have the right to boast about it. But what is true is that morality, and above all its practical application, is always dependent on our individual beliefs, whatever they may be; now, even if it is most philosophical, a belief constitutes the religion of the one who possesses it.
This is easily demonstrated by the daily facts of existence, and moralists, who claim to be independent, believe that one must respect oneself and respect others, by developing as much as possible, in oneself and in others, the elements of progress. Their morality will, therefore, depend on their belief; their actions will necessarily be affected, and this morality will be independent only of religions, beliefs, and dogmas in which they have no faith, that we find very fair and very rational, but also very elementary.
What we can say is that, in the present state of our society, there are moral principles that agree with all individual beliefs, whatever they may be, because individuals have modified their religious beliefs on certain points by virtue of scientific and moral progress, fortunately conquered by our ancestors.
We will end by saying that the author is, on many points, the disciple of Jean Reynaud. His book is the summary of studies and serious thoughts expressed clearly and powerfully; it is done with a care that must be praised, and this care goes even to the minutia in the material details of printing, that is of great importance for the clarity of such a serious book.
Despite the deep disagreement that separates us from Mr. Herrenschneider, both about his way of seeing to impose religion, as on his ideas regarding authority and family, that he has forgotten, as well as prayer, the benevolent solidarity of Spirits that he did not know how to appreciate, etc., ideas that Jean Reynaud himself had already disapproved of, it is impossible not to be touched by the merit of the book, and the value of the man who knew how to find strong thoughts, often right and always clearly expressed.
Spiritism is squarely affirmed there, at least in its fundamental principles, and considered in the elements of the philosophical science; there is this difference, however, in the point of departure, that the author arrives at the result by induction, while Spiritism, proceeding by experimentation, has based its theory on the observation of the facts. He is a very serious writer, that gives him the right of citizenship.
Emile Barrault, engineer.
[1] 1 vol. in-12; 600 pages. Price 5 francs; by mail, 5.75 francs. Dentu, Palais-Royal.