Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1868

The journal La Mahouna, on June 26^th, 1868 published the following letter, that we reproduce with pleasure, sending the author our most sincere congratulations.



“Mr. Director,



I have just read an article in the Independent, from Constantine, on the 20th of this month, appreciating the not very delicate role that a certain Mr. Home would have played, according to that newspaper (in England), beginning with these lines: "The Spiritists, successors of the sorcerers of the Middle Ages, no longer limit themselves to indicating hidden treasures to their imbecile followers; they manage to discover them for their benefit.” Appreciation follows, etc...



Allow me, Mr. Editor, to make use of your honorable journal to protest energetically against the author of these lines that are so little literary and so offensive to the followers of these new ideas, ideas most certainly unknown, since they are so falsely appreciated.



Spiritism succeeds sorcerers, as astronomy succeeded astrologers. Does it mean that this science so widespread today, that has enlightened man by making him know the sidereal immensities, that primitive religions had shaped to their ideal and to serve their interests, has embraced all the imaginary and grotesque rants of ancient astrologers? You don't think so.



In the same way, Spiritism, so much criticized by those who do not know it, comes to destroy the errors of sorcerers and to reveal a new science to humanity. It comes to explain these phenomena misunderstood until now, that popular ignorance attributed to miracle.



Far from espousing the superstitions of another age, like wizards, magicians, etc., like all that crowd of outcasts rebelling against civilization, using such means to exploit ignorance and to speculate on vices, it comes, I say, to destroy them, and at the same time to bring to the service of man an immense force, far superior to all those brought by ancient and modern philosophies.



“That force is the knowledge of the past and of the future reserved to man, answering these questions: Where do I come from? Where am I going to?



The terrible doubt that weighed on the human conscience, Spiritism comes to explain it; not only theoretically and by abstraction, but materially, that is by proofs accessible to our senses, and apart from any aphorism and theological sentence.



Old opinions, often born out of ignorance and fantasy, gradually disappear to make room for new convictions, founded on observation, and the reality of which is most obvious; the traces of old prejudices are effaced, and the more thoughtful man, studying with more attention these supposedly supernatural phenomena, has found in them the product of a will, manifesting outside himself.



By the fact of this manifestation, the universe appears, for the Spiritist, as a mechanism driven by an infinite number of intelligences, an immense government where each intelligent being has its share of action under the eye of God, be it in the state of man or the state of soul or Spirit. Death for him is not a scarecrow that shivers, nor the emptiness; it is only the extreme point of a phase of the being and the beginning of another, that is quite simply a transformation.



I stop, for I do not have the pretension of doing a Spiritism course, even less that of convincing my adversary; but I cannot allow a doctrine, proclaiming freedom of conscience and the maxims of the purest Christianity as a principle, to be offended, without protesting with all my soul.



Spiritism has for enemies those who have not studied it, neither in its philosophical part nor in its experimental part; that is why the first comer, without taking the trouble of learning, arrogates to himself the right, a priori, to treat it as absurd.



But, unfortunately for man, it has always been so, whenever a new idea has arisen; history is there to prove it.



“Spiritism agrees with the sciences of our time (see Genesis, Miracles and Predictions according to Spiritism), and its most authorized representatives, and all their writings have declared that it was ready to accept all ideas based on scientific truths and reject all those found to be tainted with error; in short, that it wants to walk at the vanguard of human progress.



The followers of this doctrine, instead of hiding in the shadows and meeting in the catacombs, proceed in a very different way; it is in full light and publicly that they express their ideas and exercise the practice of their principles. The Spiritist opinion in France is represented by five reviews or journals; in England, Germany, Italy, and Russia, by fifteen weekly papers; in the United States of America, that country of freedom and progress of all kinds, by numerous journals or reviews, and the followers of Spiritism in that country are already counted by the millions, that involuntarily and without more thoughts, the author of article, in The Independent, calls fools.



On this day and age, so far distanced from acts of religious intolerance, that laughs at theological disputes and the wrath of the Vatican, should better inspire respect for contrary opinions.



Respectfully, etc.

Jules Monico”



On July 17^th, the same newspaper carries another article by Mr. Monico, announcing that he will have to publish a series, in response to some attacks by the antagonists of Spiritism. It also shows the announcement, as being in press, of a pamphlet by the same author, entitled: Freedom of Conscience, and due to appear in the first half of August. Price: 1 franc.