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CHAPTER II
THE CRITERION OF THE SPIRITIST DOCTRINE 4
Modern Spiritualism is based on a complete set of facts. Those simply physical reveal to us the
existence and mode of action of forces long time unknown. Others have an intelligent character and these are:
direct or automatic writing, tiptology, and speeches delivered through trance communication or psychophony.
We have already reviewed and analyzed these manifestations in another work. 5 We have seen that they are
frequently accompanied by signs and proofs that establish the identity and the intervention of human souls that
once lived upon the earth, and to whom death gave freedom.
It was through these phenomena that the Spirits 6 diffused their teachings throughout the world. As we
will see, these teachings were confirmed by experience, on many points.
The new spiritualism, then, is directed both to the senses and the intelligence. It is experimental, when
it studies the phenomena that serve as its basis; it is rational, when it verifies the teachings derived from them
and constitutes a powerful instrument for the inquiry of the truth, as it can be employed simultaneously in all
dominions of knowledge.
The Spirits’ revelations, as we have said, are confirmed by experience. Since 1850 7 the Spirits taught
us theoretically and demonstrated in practices the existence of imponderable forces that Science till then
rejected “a priori.” The Spirits refer to these forces as fluids. Later on Mr. W. Crooks, who amongst the
intellectuals enjoyed great authority, was the first to verify the reality of these forces. Present day Science is
gradually starting to recognize the importance and the variety of these forces, thanks to the celebrated
discoveries of Roentgen, Hertz, Becquerel, Curie, G. Le Bon, and others.
The Spirits affirmed and demonstrated the possible action of one soul over another, from any distance
and without the benefit of the physical organs. Notwithstanding, that order of facts has raised opposition and
incredulity.
Nevertheless, the phenomena observed and widely performed today of telepathy, mental suggestion,
and transmission of thoughts came by the thousands to confirm these revelations.
The Spirits taught us about the preexistence, the survival, and the successive lives of the soul. The
experiences of F. Colavida, E. Marata, and the ones from Colonel de Rochas, mine, etc., establish that not only
the memory of the smallest peculiarities of the current life, regressing far back to the most tender moments of
childhood, but also remembrances of past lives are recorded in the inner recesses of our consciences. An entire
past, which is protected in a vigilant state, resurfaces and comes to life during a trance state. This recollection
can effectively be reconstituted in a certain number of sleeping patients, as we will establish later on, when we
deal especially with that question. 8
You see that modern Spiritualism cannot be considered purely as a metaphysical conception, as an
example of the ancient spiritualistic doctrines. Rather, it presents a distinct character that suits the
requirements of a generation educated in the schools of criticism and rationalism, and that was once rendered
skeptical by the exaggerations of the morbid and agonizing mysticism.
4 This chapter was left out when this book was first translated and published in English. The translator of this chapter is: Eliene Sherman; final editing:
Louis Albert Day; revision against the French original (Nouvelle Edition - Conforme a l’edition de 1922 - Union Spirite Française et Francophone):
Jussara Korngold.
5 See Dans l’Invisible - “Spiritisme et Médiumnité,” 2nd part. Here we speak only of spiritist facts instead of animism or distant manifestations from the
living.
6 We call the spirit a soul when clothed with its subtle body.
7 See Allan Kardec – The Spirits’ Book, The Mediums’ Book.
You can read in the Spiritist Magazine of 1860, pg 81, a message from the spirit of Dr. Vignal declaring that the body radiates obscure light. Isn’t
this the radioactivity verified by current Science, but until then ignored?
In 1867 Allan Kardec wrote in his book Genesis, Chap. XIV (concerning fluids), the following: “Who knows the inner constitution of a tangible
matter? Maybe it is in solid form only in relation to our senses. The proof of that is the ease with which it is crossed by spiritual fluids and by the Spirits
themselves, as it offers no more obstruction than transparent bodies do to rays of light.
Since tangible matter has the ethereal cosmic fluid as its primitive element, upon its disintegration, it should be able to return to its ethereal state -
much like the diamond, the hardest of all bodies, can evaporate into impalpable gas. In reality the solidification of matter is no more than a transitory
state of the universal cosmic fluid, which can return to its primitive state, when the condition of cohesion ceases to exist.
8 See Compte rendu du Congrès Spirite of 1900 pgs. 349 and 350 and Scientific and Moral Magazine of Spiritism, July and August of 1904. See also:
A. de Rochas, The Successive Lives, Chacornac, ed. 1911.
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