Spiritist DissertationsWomen’s education
Joinville, Haute-Marne – March 10th, 1868 – medium Mrs. P…
The education of women is a most serious question at this time, because it will not contribute little to realizing the great ideas of freedom that lie dormant in the depths of hearts.
Honor to the courageous men who took the initiative! They can be assured in advance of the success of their work. Yes, the hour has struck for the woman’s emancipation; she wants to be free, and for that it is necessary to free her intelligence from the errors and prejudices of the past. It is through study that she will widen the circle of her narrow and petty knowledge. Free, she will base her religion on morality, that is of all times and of all countries. She wants to be, and she will be the intelligent companion of man, his counselor, his friend, the teacher of his children, and not a toy that one uses and then throw away to take another one.
She wants to contribute to the social edifice that is rising at this moment, before the powerful breath of progress.
It is true that once educated, she escapes from the hands of those who turn her into an instrument; like a captive bird, she breaks her cage and flies away into the vast fields of infinity. It is true that, by knowing the immutable laws that govern the worlds, she will understand God differently than she is taught; she will no longer believe in a vengeful, partial, and cruel God, because her reason will tell her that vengeance, partiality, and cruelty cannot be reconciled with justice and goodness; her God will be all love, clemency, and forgiveness.
Later, she will know the bonds of solidarity that unite peoples among themselves, and will apply them around her, by spreading with abundance treasures of charity, love, and benevolence for all. Whatever sect she belongs to, she will know that all men are brothers, and that the strongest received strength only to protect the weak and elevate them in society to the true level they should occupy.
Yes, woman is a perfectible being like man, and her aspirations are legitimate; her thought is free, and no power in the world has the right to enslave her according to their interests or passions. She claims her share of intellectual activity, and she will obtain it, because there is a law more powerful than all human laws, it is that of progress to which all creation is subject.
A Spirit.
Observation: - We have said it and repeated it many times, the emancipation of women will be the consequence of the diffusion of Spiritism, because it bases its rights, not on a generous philosophical idea, but on the very identity of the nature of the Spirit. By proving that there are no male and female Spirits, that all have the same essence, the same origin, and the same destiny, it blesses the equality of rights. The great law of reincarnation also comes to sanction this principle. Considering that the same Spirits can incarnate, sometimes men and sometimes women, it follows that the man who enslaves the woman can be in turn enslaved; that in this way, by working for the emancipation of women, men are working for general emancipation, and consequently for their own benefit. Women, therefore, have a direct interest in the propagation of Spiritism, because it provides the most powerful arguments that have yet been invoked to support their cause. (See the Spiritist Review, January 1866, and June 1867).
Allan Kardec
