HEAVEN AND HELL OR THE DIVINE JUSTICE ACCORDING TO SPIRITISM

1. It is certain that we live, think, and act; it is not less certain that we shall die. But, on leaving Earth, where shall we go? What will become of us? Shall we be better off, or shall we be worse off? Shall we continue to exist, or shall we cease to exist? “To be, or not to be,” is the alternative presented to us; it will be for always, or not at all; it will be everything, or nothing; we shall live on eternally, or we shall cease to live, once and forever. The alternative is well worth the consideration.

Everyone feels a need to live, to love, and be happy. Announce, to one who believes himself to be at the point of death, that his life is to be prolonged, that the hour of death is delayed—announce to him, moreover, that he is going to be happier than he has ever been—and his heart will beat high with joy and hope. But to what end does the human heart thus instinctively aspire after happiness, if an ill wind suffices to scatter its aspirations?

Can anything be more agonizing than the idea that we are doomed to utter and absolute destruction, that our dearest affections, our intelligence, our knowledge so laboriously acquired, are all to be dissolved, thrown away, and lost forever? Why should we strive to become wiser or better? Why should we apply restraints to our passions? Why should we exhaust ourselves with effort and study, if our exertions are to bear no fruit? If, before very long, perhaps tomorrow, all that we have done is to be of no further use to us? Were such really our doom, the lot of humankind would be a thousand times worse than that of the brutes; for the brute lives thoroughly in the present, in the gratification of its bodily appetites, with no torturing anxiety, no tormenting aspiration, to impair its enjoyment of the passing hour. But a secret and invincible intuition tells us that such cannot be our destiny.

2. The belief in annihilation necessarily leads human beings to concentrate all their thoughts on their present life; for what, in fact, could be more illogical than to trouble ourselves about a future which we do not believe will have any existence? And as those whose attention is thus exclusively directed to their present life naturally places their own interests above those of others, this belief is the most powerful stimulant to selfishness, and they who hold it are perfectly consistent with themselves in saying: “Let us get the greatest possible amount of enjoyment out of this world while we are in it; let us secure all the pleasures which the present can offer, seeing that, after death, everything will be over with us; and let us hasten to make sure of our own enjoyment, for we know not how long our life may last.” Such as these are, moreover, equally consistent in arriving at this further conclusion—most dangerous to the well- being of society—”Let us make sure of our enjoyment, no matter by what means; let our motto be: ‘Each for himself;’ the good things in life are prizes for the most adroit.”

If a few are restrained, by respect for public opinion, from carrying out this program to its full extent, what restraint is there for those who stand in no such awe of their neighbors, who regard human law as a tyranny that is exercised only over those who are sufficiently wanting in cleverness to bring themselves within its reach, and who consequently apply all their ingenuity to evading alike its requirements and its penalties? If any doctrine merits the qualifications of pernicious and anti-social, it is assuredly that of annihilation, because it destroys the sentiments of solidarity and fraternity, which are the sole basis for social relations.

3. Let us suppose that an entire nation has acquired, in some way or other, the certainty that, at the end of a week, a month, or a year, it will be utterly destroyed, that not a single individual of its people will be left alive, that they will all be utterly annihilated, and that not a trace of their existence will remain; what, in such a case, would be the line of conduct adopted by the people thus doomed to a certain and foreseen destruction, during the short time which they would still have to exist? Would they work for their moral improvement, or for their instruction? Would they continue to work for their living? Would they scrupulously respect the rights, the property, and the life, of their neighbors? Would they submit to the laws of their country, or to any ascendancy, even to that of parental authority, the most legitimate of all? Would they recognize the existence of any duty? Assuredly not. Well, —the social ruin which we have imagined, by the way of illustration, as overtaking an entire nation, is being effected, individually, from day to day, by the doctrine of annihilation. If the practical consequences of this doctrine are not so disastrous to society as they might be, it is because, in the first place, there is, among the greater number of those whose vanity is flattered by the title of “free- thinker,” more of braggadocio than of absolute unbelief, more doubt than conviction, and more dread of annihilation than they care to show; and, in the second place, because those who really believe in annihilation are a very small minority, and are consequently influenced, in spite of themselves, by the contrary opinion, and held in check by the resistant forces of society and of the State: but, should absolute disbelief in a future existence ever be arrived at by the majority of humankind, the dissolution of society would necessarily follow. The propagation of the doctrine of annihilation would lead, inevitably, to this result.

But * whatever may be the consequences of the doctrine of annihilation, if that doctrine were true, it would have to be accepted; for, if annihilation were our destiny, neither opposing systems of philosophy, nor the moral and social ills that would result from our knowledge that such a destiny was awaiting us, could prevent our being annihilated. And it is useless to attempt to disguise from ourselves that skepticism, doubt, and indifference, are gaining ground every day, notwithstanding the efforts of the various religious bodies to the contrary. But if the religious systems of the day are powerless against skepticism, it is because they lack the weapons necessary for combating the enemy; so that, if their teaching were allowed to remain in a state of immobility, they would, soon, be inevitably defeated in the struggle. What is lacking to those systems—in this age of positivism, when men demand to understand before believing—is the confirmation of their doctrines by facts and by their concordance with the discoveries of Positive Science. If theoretic systems say white where facts say black, we must choose between an enlightened appreciation of evidence and a blind acceptance of arbitrary statements.

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* We knew a young man of eighteen, who was attacked by a disease of the heart, pronounced by the faculty to be incurable. His physicians had declared that he might die in a week, or might live on for a couple of years, but that his life could not possibly be prolonged beyond that period. The young man, on becoming aware of the fate that awaited him, immediately broke off his studies and gave himself up to every sort of debauchery. To the arguments addressed to him upon the dangers of such a life of disorder to someone in his state of health, he invariably replied: “What does it matter, seeing that I have only two years to live? What would be the use of fatiguing myself with study? I am making the most of the remnant of life that is left to me, and am determined to enjoy myself while it lasts.” Such is the logical consequence of a belief in annihilation.

If this young man had been a Spiritist, he would have said to himself: “Death will only destroy my body, which I shall throw aside like a worn-out garment; but my spirit will live forever. I shall be, in my next phase of existence, just what I shall have made of myself by my present life. Nothing that I shall have acquired, in morality or in knowledge, will be lost to me, for every new acquisition I shall have made will be so much added to my advancement. The cure of every imperfection, of which I may have been able to rid myself during my present existence, will take me a step further on my road to felicity; my future happiness or unhappiness will be the result of the good or bad use I shall have made of the life which I am now living. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance for me to make the most of the short time still remaining to me, and to avoid whatever would tend to diminish my strength.”

Which of the two doctrines we are comparing is the preferable one?

4. It is in this state of things that the phenomena of Spiritism are spontaneously developed in the order of Providence, and oppose a barrier against the invasion of skepticism, not only by argument, or by the prospect of the dangers which it reveals, but also by the production of physical facts which render the existence of the soul, and the reality of a future life, both palpable and visible.

Each human being is, undoubtedly, free to believe anything, or to believe nothing; but those who employ the ascendancy of their knowledge and position in propagating, among the masses, and especially among the rising generation, the negation of a future life, are sowing wide the seeds of social confusion and dissolution, and are incurring a heavy responsibility by doing so.

5. There is another doctrine that repudiates the qualification of “Materialist,” because it admits the existence of a principle distinct from matter; we allude to that which asserts that each individual soul is to be absorbed in the Universal Whole. According to this doctrine, all human beings assimilate, at birth, a particle of this principle, which constitutes their souls and gives them life, intelligence and feeling. At death, their souls return to the common source, and are merged in infinity as a drop of water is merged in the ocean.

This doctrine is, undoubtedly, an improvement over that of pure and simple Materialism, in as much as it admits something more than matter; but its consequences are precisely the same. Whether individuals, after death, are dissolved into nothingness, or plunged into a general reservoir, is all one, as far as they themselves are concerned; for if, in the one case, they are annihilated, in the other, they lose their individuality, which is, for them, exactly the same thing as though they ceased to exist: in either case, all social relations are destroyed forever. What is essential for every human being is the preservation of the essential self; without that, what does it matter to them whether they exist, or do not exist? In either case, for them, the future is nil, and the present life is the only thing of any importance to them. As regards its moral consequences, this doctrine is, therefore, just as pernicious, just as devoid of hope, just as powerful a stimulus to selfishness, as materialism properly so called.

6. The doctrine we have been considering is open, moreover, to the following objection. All the drops of water contained in the ocean resemble one another exactly and possess identically the same properties, as must necessarily be the case with the several parts of any homogeneous Whole; how is it, then, that the souls of the human race, if they are only so many drops taken out of a great ocean of intelligence, are so unlike one another? Why do we find genius side by side with stupidity? The most sublime virtues, side by side with the most ignoble vices? Kindness, gentleness, forbearance, side by side with cruelty, violence, and barbarity? How can the parts of a homogenous Whole be so different from one another? Will it be said that they are modified by education? But, if so, whence come the various qualities which they bring with them at birth, the precocious intelligence of some, the good or bad instinct of others, that are not only independent of education, but often altogether out of harmony with the surrounding amidst which they are found?

Education, most undoubtedly, does modify the intellectual and moral qualities of the soul; but here another difficulty presents itself. Who is it that gives, to each soul, the education that causes it to progress? Other souls, who—according to the doctrine that makes them out to be drops of a homogenous ocean of soul—could be no more advanced than themselves! On the other hand, if the soul, after having thus progressed during its life, returns to the Universal Whole from which it came, it gives back an improved element to that Whole; and it would therefore follow that the general Whole will be, in course of time, profoundly modified, and improved, by this educational modification of its parts. How is it, in that case, that ignorant and perverse souls are constantly being produced from it?

7. According to this doctrine, the universal source of intelligence, from which souls are produced, is distinct from the Divinity; it is, therefore, not quite the same as Pantheism. Pantheism, properly so called, differs from this doctrine in as much as it considers the universal principle of life and intelligence as constituting the Divinity. God, according to Pantheism, is both spirit and matter; all the beings, all the bodies of nature, compose the Divinity, of which they are molecules, the constituent elements. God is the total of all that is; each individual, being a part of this total, is himself, or herself, God; the total is not ruled over by any commanding and superior being; the universe is an immense republic without a chief, or, rather, in which each of its members is a chief, endowed with absolute power.

8. This system is open to a variety of objections, of which the principal are the following: — It being impossible to conceive Divinity without the infinitude of God’s perfections, how can a Perfect Whole be formed of parts so imperfect as we see them to be, and having so great a need of progression? These parts being subjected to the law of progress, it follows that God must also progress incessantly; and, if God has been progressing from all eternity, it also follows that God must formerly have been very imperfect. But how is it possible that an imperfect being, made up of wills and ideas so widely divergent from one another, should have been able to conceive the harmonious laws, so admirable in their unity, wisdom, and forethought, that govern the universe? If all souls are portions of the Divinity, all of them must have concurred in establishing the laws of nature; how comes it, then, that they are perpetually murmuring against those laws which, according to this doctrine, are of their own inventing? No theory can be accepted as true unless it can both satisfy our reason and furnish a rational explanation of all the facts with which it deals; if it is belied by a single one of those facts, it cannot be true.

9. Examined from the point of view of its moral consequences, Pantheism is seen to be as unsatisfactory as it is intellectually absurd. In the first place, the destiny of each soul, according to this system, is, as in the system previously examined, its absorption in a general Whole, with the consequent loss of its individuality. If, on the contrary, it were admitted, according to the opinion of certain pantheists, that souls preserve their individuality, then God can have no unitary will, but is an amalgam of myriads of divergent individualities. Besides, each soul being an integral part of the Divinity, no soul is subjected to the sway of any power superior to itself; consequently, no soul incurs any responsibility for its actions, whether good or bad, no soul has any motive for doing right, and each soul is free to do all the wrong it pleases, with perfect impunity, seeing that each soul is the sovereign ruler of the universe.

10. The theories we have been examining not only fail to satisfy either the reason or the aspirations of humankind, but they present to the mind a succession of insurmountable difficulties, of questions in regard to matters of fact, which they are utterly incapable of answering. We have to choose between three theoretic alternatives: annihilation, absorption, and the individuality of the soul before and after death. It is to this last belief that we are led by reason; and it is this belief that has constituted the basis of all religions in all the ages of the world.

If reason leads us to the conviction of the persistence of the soul’s individuality, it also leads us to the admission of the consequence of that persistence, viz., that the fate of each soul must depend on its own personal qualities; for it would be irrational to assume that the backward souls of the savage and the evil-minded are at the same level as those of the scientific and the benevolent. Justice demands that each soul should be responsible for its own actions; but, in order for souls to be thus responsible, they must be free to choose between good and evil. Unless we admit the freedom of the will, we must necessarily assume the existence of fate; and responsibility cannot co-exist with fatalism.

11. All religions have proclaimed the principle of the happiness or unhappiness of the soul after death, in other words, the principle of future rewards and punishments, summed up in the doctrinal idea of “Heaven” and “Hell”, which is common to them all. But those religions differ radically as to the nature of the rewards and punishments of the future, and especially as to the conditions upon which they depend. Hence, there have arisen contradictory beliefs, which have produced various forms of worship, and have led to the imposition of special practices by each of them as a method of honoring God, and thus of gaining admission to “Heaven” and avoiding “Hell.”

12. All the religions of the world were necessarily, at their origin, in harmony with the degree of moral and intellectual advancement of the peoples among whom they emerged, and who, — being still too deeply sunk in materiality to conceive of things purely spiritual — made the greater part of their religious duties to consist in the accomplishment of certain external forms. For a time, forms suffice to satisfy the mind; at a later period, when human beings acquire more light, they feel the emptiness of those forms, and, if the doctrines of their faith do not suffice to supply the void left by the collapse of its forms, they abandon their religion and become philosophers.

13. If that primitive formula had always kept pace with the accessional movement of the human mind, the same harmony would always have existed between them, and there would never have been any unbelievers, because the need of believing is natural to the human heart, and human beings will believe if they are presented with religious ideas in harmony with their intellectual needs. Humanity would joyfully know whence it comes and whither it is going; but if that which is set before men and women as the object of life does not correspond either to their aspirations, to the idea that they have formed to themselves of God, or to the data of physical science, —if, moreover, it is sought to impose on them, as necessary to the attainment of that object, conditions of which the utility is not perceived by their reason, — they naturally reject the whole. Those who embrace Materialism and Pantheism appear to them more rational simply because they reason and discuss. Their reasoning is false, but, at all events, they reason; and those who value rational thinking would rather reason falsely than not reason at all.

But let the doctrine of a future life be presented to them under an aspect that is, at once, satisfactory to their reason, and worthy, in all respects, of the greatness, the justice, and the infinite goodness of God, and they will renounce both Materialism and Pantheism, of which every person feels the hollowness in his or her secret soul, and which are only accepted for lack of something better; and, as Spiritism gives something very much better than those empty and comfortless theories, it is eagerly welcomed by all those who do not find, in the common beliefs and philosophies of the day, the certainty for which they long, and who are consequently undergoing the tortures of doubt. The Spiritist theory is confirmed both by argument and by facts; and it therefore furnishes the broad and solid basis of belief that no other theory is able to supply.

14. The belief in a future life is instinctive in the human mind; but, as human beings have hitherto possessed no clear and sufficient ground for this belief, their imagination has engendered the various religious systems that have given rise to the wide diversities of human worship. As the Spiritist Doctrine of the future life is not a work of imagination more or less ingeniously conceived, but is, on the contrary, deduced from, and confirmed by, the observation of physical facts that are now occurring in front of our eyes, it will continue to attract, as it has hitherto done, those whose convictions, on this most momentous of subjects, are divergent or unsettled, and will gradually establish a unitary belief in regard to it; a belief that will be based, no longer on a mere hypothesis, but on a certainty. This unification of human conviction, in regard to the future existence of the soul, will be the first step towards the unification of the forms of worship; it will thus exercise a most important and decisive influence on all the various religions of the world, and will lead, first, to their mutual tolerance, and, eventually, to their fusion.

1. Human beings, to whatever degree of the scale to which they belong, from the savage state upwards, have an innate presentiment about a future life; they feel an intuitive urging that death is not the end of existence, and that those whose demise they regret are not lost to them forever. This spontaneous belief in a future state is vastly more general than the belief in annihilation. How is it, then, that we find among those who do believe in the immortality of the soul, so strong an attachment to the earthly life and so great a dread of death?

2. The fear of death is at once a proof of the wisdom of Providence and a consequence of the instinct of self-preservation that is common to all living creatures. It is, moreover, essential to the well-being of the human race, so long as men and women are insufficiently enlightened in regard to the conditions of their future life. It serves as a counterpoise to the discouragement which, if not for this fear, would too often lead them to make a voluntary renunciation of their terrestrial existence, and to shirk the labors of this lower sphere, which are necessary to their advancement.

We accordingly see that, among primitive peoples the intuition of a future life is extremely vague, and that it is only in proportion as people advance that this intuition gradually becomes, at first, a mere hope and later, in the fullness of time, a certainty, but still counter balanced by an instinctive attachment to corporeal life.

3. As human beings arrive at a true understanding of a future state, their fear of death diminishes; but at the same time, they also comprehend more clearly the purposes for an earthly life, and they await its ending calmly, without impatience or regret. The certainty of a future life gives another direction to their thoughts, another aim to their activities. Before acquiring this certainty they labored only for the things of the present life; having acquired this certainty they labor for the life to come, yet without neglecting the duties and interests of their present life, because they know that the character of their future lives will be decided by the use they will have made of their present existence. The certainty of again meeting the friends whom they have lost by death, of preserving the relationships they have formed upon the Earth, of not losing the fruit of any effort, of continuing, forever, to grow in intelligence and in goodness, gives them patience to await the appointed term of their earthly sojourn and courage to bear, without complaint, the momentary fatigues and disappointments of terrestrial life. The solidarity which they perceive to exist among spirits and humankind show them the union which ought to exist among all people of the Earth. Thus, they perceive the true basis of human fraternity and the true objective of charity in the present and in the future.

4. In order to free ourselves from the fear of death, we must be able to look at it from the right point of view; that is to say, we must have penetrated the spirit world in thought. We must have formed to ourselves an idea of that world, as exact as can be obtained at the present time: a power of discernment denoting, on the part of our incarnate spirits, a certain amount of intellectual and moral development, and a certain aptitude for freeing ourselves from materiality. Among those who are not sufficiently advanced for the acquisition of this knowledge, the physical life takes precedence over the spiritual life.

The real life of humankind is in the soul; but while humans remain attached to external values, they see life only in the body; and therefore, when the body is deprived of life, they fancy that all is over and abandon themselves to despair. If, instead of concentrating their thoughts on the outer garment of life, they directed their thoughts to the source of life, to the soul which is the real being, and which survives the change of its outer clothing, they would feel less regret at the idea of losing their bodies, the instruments of so much trouble and suffering; but for this, humanity needs a moral strength which is only acquired gradually, and in proportion to its advancement towards maturity.

The fear of death, therefore, results from an insufficient knowledge of the future life. It also denotes aspirations for the continuance of existence, and anxiety lest the destruction of the body should be the end. It is, therefore, evident that it is due to a secret desire for survival which really exists in the soul, although partially hidden under the veil of uncertainty.

The fear of death diminishes in proportion as we obtain a clearer anticipation of the future life; it disappears entirely when that anticipation has become a certainty.

The wisdom of Providence is seen in the progressive march of human convictions with regard to the continuation of life beyond the grave. If the certainty of a future life had been permitted to men and women before their mental vision was prepared for such a prospect, they would have been dazzled thereby. And the seductions of such a certainty, too clearly seen, would lead them to neglect the present life, their diligent use of which is the condition for physical and moral advancement.

5. The fear of death has also been maintained for merely human reasons which will disappear with the progress of the race. The first of these is the aspect under which the idea of the future life has hitherto been presented. This viewpoint sufficed for minds of slight advancement, but could not satisfy the mental requirements of intellects that have learned to reason on the subject. The presentation, as absolute truth, of statements that are both irrational in themselves and opposed to the data of physical science, has necessarily led reasoning minds to the conclusion that such a presentation must be unfounded and erroneous. Hence, there has resulted, in the minds of many, utter skepticism in relation to the reality of a future existence that has been presented under an unacceptable aspect, and in the minds of a yet greater number, a half-belief, so strongly plagued by doubts, that it differs only slightly from utter disbelief. For the latter the idea of a future life is, at best, a vague hypothesis, a probability rather than a certainty. They wish that it may be so and yet notwithstanding that desire, they say to themselves, “But what if, after all, there should be nothing beyond the grave! We are sure of the present, so let us busy ourselves with that. There will be time enough to think of a future life when we have found out whether that future life really exists!”

“And besides,” say the doubters, “what in fact, is the soul? Is it a mathematical point, an atom, a spark, a flame? How does the ‘soul’ feel? How does it see? How and what does it perceive?” The soul, for most people, is not a positive and active reality but a mere abstraction. Those whom they have loved, but from whom they have been separated by death, being reduced, in their thought to the state of atoms, of a spark, or of gas, seem to be separated from them forever and to have lost all the qualities for which they formerly loved them. Most people find it difficult to consider “an atom,” “a spark,” or “a gas” as an object of affection. They fail to derive satisfaction from the prospect of being, themselves, converted into “monads,” and they try to avoid contemplations that are so vague and cheerless, by restricting their thoughts to the interests, pursuits, and enjoyments of terrestrial life, which offers them, at least, the appearance of something real and substantial. The number of those who are swayed by considerations of this kind is very great.

6. Attachment to the things of the earthly life is also kept up, even in the minds of many of those who believe most firmly in the reality of a future life, by the impressions they have retained of the teachings to which they were subjected in their childhood.

The pictures of the future life presented by the Church are not, it must be confessed, either attractive or consoling. On the one hand, we are shown the contortions of the damned, who expiate, in endless tortures and unquenchable flames their momentary errors; ages after ages passing over them without hope of deliverance or pity, and (what is even more incredible,) repentance itself being of no avail in their case. On the other hand, we see the sufferings of the souls who are languishing in purgatory, and who are awaiting their deliverance, not from their own efforts for improvement, but from the compassionate efforts of the living who pray for them or have them prayed for by others.

These two classes are represented as constituting the immense majority of the population of the other world; and above them hovers the very small minority of the elect, absorbed, throughout eternity, in contemplative beatitude. It is an eternal uselessness which—though undoubtedly preferable to annihilation—is nevertheless, only wearisome monotony and, accordingly, in the paintings which represent the blessedness of the elect, the faces of the latter usually wear an expression much more suggestive of dullness than of happiness.

Such a view of the future life corresponds neither to our aspirations, nor to the idea of progressiveness that we instinctively regard as a necessary element of happiness. It is difficult to imagine that ignorant savages, whose moral sense is as yet undeveloped, should find themselves, simply because they have received baptism, on a level with those who, through long years of effort have raised themselves to a high degree of knowledge and of practical morality. Still less conceivable is it that the child who has died in infancy, before acquiring the consciousness of itself and of its actions, should enjoy the same privileges simply as the result of its having undergone a ceremony in which its will took no part. Considerations of this nature cause uneasiness in the minds even of fervent believers, whenever they reflect seriously on the doctrines which, as children, they were drilled into accepting.

7. If the progress which human beings so laboriously accomplish in the earthly life has nothing to do with their future happiness, then the belief that they can easily secure that happiness by means of ceremonies and outward observances—and that they can even purchase their future happiness with money, without any thorough transformation of their character and habits—tends to attach them still more strongly to worldly pleasures. Many who believe in a future life under the guise we are now considering, say to themselves in their secret hearts that, because their future welfare can be secured by observing certain forms or by making bequests that entail no privation during their life time, it would be unnecessary to impose upon themselves any sacrifice for the sake of others, and that the true plan is for the individual, thus they should ensure their own salvation and secure for themselves at the same time, the largest possible share of the good things of the present life.

Assuredly such is not the thought of all people, for there are many grand and noble exceptions to the common rule. However it cannot be denied that such is the thought of the majority of humankind, especially among the unenlightened masses, and that the idea commonly entertained in regard to the conditions of happiness in the other world, tends to keep up the attachment to the things of the present one, and consequently acts as a powerful stimulus to selfishness.

8. It is to be remarked yet further, that all our social usages concur to make people cling to the earthly life, and to cower before the path that leads from this world to the next. Death is surrounded by somber ceremonies, which are far more suggestive of sorrow than of hope. It is always portrayed in a negative light, never as a state of transition. All the symbolism employed to describe it makes reference to the destruction of the body, and portrays it as a hideous fleshless specter; none of the symbols employed for this purpose represent death as the deliverance of the soul, joyous and radiant, from terrestrial bondage. The departure for a happier state of existence is accompanied only by the lamentations of the survivors, as though the greatest possible misfortune had befallen those who are gone before us. Their weeping friends bid them an eternal farewell, as though they would never again be able to behold them, and are filled with grief at the thought that they are deprived of the joys of this lower sphere, as though the other life did not offer enjoyments far greater than those of Earth. “What a misfortune,” it is often said, “to have died when those who were taken were young, rich, happy, and with a brilliant future before them!” The idea that the departed can gain more by the change scarcely crosses the mind of any of those whom they have left, so vague, misty, gloomy, and void of hopefulness is the idea generally entertained in regard to the world of souls. Humanity will doubtless be slow in getting rid of their prejudices concerning death; but they will succeed in doing so as their knowledge of the spirit-life becomes clearer, firmer, and more enlightened.

9. The common belief, moreover, places souls in imaginary regions, scarcely accessible to human thought, where they become strangers to those they have left behind on Earth; the Church itself places an impassable barrier between them and the latter, for it declares that all connections between them have ended, and that all communication between them is impossible. If they are in Hell, all hope of seeing them again is lost forever, unless indeed, for those among the latter who incur the same doom. If they are among the elect, they are entirely absorbed in their own contemplative beatitude. All these suppositions make so wide a separation between the dead and the living that the severance between them seems to be complete and forever; and people would therefore prefer to keep those whom they love beside them on Earth, even though in a state of suffering, rather than see them go away, even though to “Heaven!” Besides, is it conceivable that the “elect” can be truly happy even in “Heaven,” if they have to see their own child, father, mother, or friend, burning forever in unquenchable fire?

10. The Spiritist Doctrine changes entirely our views of the future. The life to come is no longer a hypothesis, but a fact. The state of the soul after death is no longer a matter of theory, but a result of observation. The veil is lifted, and the spirit-world appears to us in all its activity and reality. It is not humankind who have discovered that world, through some ingenious conception of their imagination; it is the inhabitants of that world who come in person to describe to us the state of being in which they find themselves! We see them at every degree of spirit-life, in every phase of happiness or of unhappiness. We contemplate all the incidents of the life beyond the grave. It is this knowledge of the nature and details of life in the spirit-world that enables Spiritists to see death with calmness and gives serenity to their last moments upon the Earth. What sustains them is not a mere hope, but a certainty; they know that the future life is only a continuation of the present life, but under more favorable conditions. And they look forward to it with as much confidence as that with which they look forward to a new sunrise after a dark and stormy night. This confidence of Spiritists is a result of the facts that they have witnessed, and of the accordance of those facts with reason, with the justice and goodness of God, and with the deepest inspirations of the human mind.

For Spiritists the soul is not an abstraction for they know that it possesses an ethereal body, which makes of it a real and definite being, susceptible of being conceived of as such by our thought. This knowledge suffices to correct our ideas in regard to its individuality, aptitudes and perceptions. Our remembrances of those who are dear to us rest, henceforth, upon something real. We no longer represent them to ourselves as so many flickering flames offering nothing of their former personality to our thought. On the contrary, we see them under a concrete form, which shows them to belong to the category of living beings. Moreover, instead of regarding them as being lost to view, as formerly, in the depths of space, Spiritists know that they are beside us and around us; for they have learned that the corporeal world and the spiritual world are in close and perpetual connection. Doubt in relation to the future life being no longer possible to them, they have no longer any reason to be afraid of death. They behold its approach with perfect equanimity; for they know that the dissolution of their fleshly bodies will be for them a deliverance, the opening of a door through which they will pass, not into the yawning abyss of annihilation, but into a higher and happier state of existence.

1. The term heaven is employed, in a general sense, to designate the boundless expanse of space that surrounds the Earth, and, more specifically, that part of the expanse which is above our horizon. The Latin name for that space, coelum (derived from the Greek coilos, hollow, concave), was given to it by the ancients, because heaven, or the sky, appeared to them to be an immense concavity. The Ancients believed in the existence of several “heavens”, placed one above the other, composed of a solid, transparent matter, and forming a succession of hollow, concentric spheres, at the center of which, immovable, stood the Earth. These spheres, turning around the Earth, carried with them the stars that were placed within their several circuits.

This belief, due to the paucity of astronomic knowledge, was the basis of the various theologies that represent those concentric “heavens” thus superposed on one another, as localization of progressively increasing degrees of beatitude, the topmost one being the region of supreme felicity. According to the general opinion, there were seven of these “heavens;” hence the saying, “to be in seventh heaven,” as the expression of the most perfect happiness. Muslims admit nine “heavens,” in each of which the happiness of the true believer is successively increased. The astronomer Ptolemy (who lived in Alexandria, in the second century of the Christian Era), counted eleven of these “heavens”; the uppermost being styled “The Empyrean” (from the Greek word, pur, or pyr, fire), on account of the brilliant light with which it was supposed to be filled: and the term is still employed as the poetic designation of the realm of eternal glory. Christian Theology assumes the existence of three “heavens;” the first is the region of the terrestrial atmosphere and the clouds; the second is the space in which the stars perform their revolutions; the third, above the region occupied by the stars, is the dwelling-place of the Most High, and the abode of the elect, who behold the Almighty “face to face.” It is in accordance with this classification that St. Paul is said to have been “caught up into the third heaven.”

2. These different doctrines, respecting the abode of the blest, are based on two erroneous assumptions, viz.: — first, that the Earth is the center of the universe; and second, that the region of stars is limited. And it is beyond the imaginary limit thus assigned to the starry region, that all those doctrines have placed the blissful realm that is supposed to be the dwelling place of the Almighty. But what a strange anomaly is that which relegates to the outskirts of creation the Author and Ruler of all that is, instead of assigning to Him, at least, a position in the center of the universe, whence His thought might radiate in all directions!

3. Physical science, with the inexorable logic of facts and observations, has carried its torch into the depths of the expanse of space around us, and has shown the emptiness of all these theories. The Earth has been proven to be, not the pivot of the universe, but one of the smallest of the bodies that circle through immensity, and our sun itself is now known to be only the center of our planetary system; every star that shines in the boundless expanse of the sky is ascertained to be itself a sun, the center of a system of dependent worlds; and innumerable systems thus revealed to us as moving in an orderly interdependence throughout the boundless regions of infinity are found to be separated by distances incommensurable by our thought, though, to our eyes, they seem almost to touch one another. In this view of the universe, governed by eternal laws that proclaim the wisdom and omnipotence of the Creator, the Earth is seen to be only an almost imperceptible speck, and one of the least favored — as regards its physical characteristics and its adaptations to human life. Such being the case, the question naturally arises as to why the Almighty should have made it the sole seat of life, the sole habitation of the most favored of God’s creatures? Everything, on the contrary, tends to show that life is everywhere, and that the human family is as infinite as the universe. Science has proven the existence of worlds similar to ours; as God cannot be supposed to have made everything without a purpose, God must necessarily have peopled those worlds with beings capable of administering them.

4. The opinions of human beings are always proportioned to their knowledge; and the discovery of the constitution of the world around them, like all the other great discoveries of the human mind, has necessarily given a new direction to their ideas. It was inevitable that, through the action of their newly-acquired knowledge, their primitive creeds should undergo considerable modification: “heaven” has been displaced from its former position, for the region of stars, being boundless, can no longer be assigned as its locality. Where, then, is “heaven”? To this question none of the religions of the world can furnish an answer.

Spiritism has come to resolve this enigma, showing us the true destiny of human beings. Starting with the nature of humans and the attributes of God, we arrive at the conclusion: that is to say, starting with the known we arrive at the unknown, via logical deduction, without mentioning the direct observations that Spiritism permits us to realize.

5. With the aid of the knowledge thus derived, we have ascertained that humans are compound beings, consisting of a body and a spirit; that the spirit is the principal element of this compound existence, its reasoning and intelligent element; that the body is merely a material envelope which is temporarily assumed by the spirit for the accomplishment of its mission upon the Earth and the execution of the labors that are necessary for its advancement. The body, eventually wearing out, is destroyed, and the spirit outlives its destruction. Without the spirit, the body is only a mass of inert matter, like an instrument deprived of the arm that made it act. Without the body, the spirit is still itself; that is to say, the essential element of the compound being called man, viz., life and intelligence. On quitting its material envelope the spirit returns to the spirit-world, which it had quitted in order to incarnate itself in a corporeal body.

There is, then, the corporeal world, composed of spirits incarnated in corporeal bodies, and the spirit-world, composed of spirits who have put off their corporeal body. The beings of the corporeal world, in virtue of their material envelope, are attached to the Earth or to some similar globe; the spirit world is everywhere, around us and in space, and has no boundaries or limits of any kind. In virtue of the fluidic nature of their bodily envelope, the beings that compose that world, instead of creeping laboriously upon the ground, transport themselves through space with the rapidity of thought. The death of the body is the rupture of the bonds that held them captive.

6. Spirits are created simple and ignorant, but with the aptitude for acquiring all knowledge, and for progressing in every direction, through the exercise of their free will. Through the progress achieved by them, they acquire new knowledge, new faculties, new perceptions, and, as a consequence of these, new enjoyments unknown to spirits of less advancement; they see, hear, feel, and comprehend what more backward spirits can neither see, hear, feel, nor comprehend. The happiness of each spirit is in proportion to the amount of progress accomplished by it; so that, of two spirits, one may be more or less happy than the other, simply as a consequence of its greater or lesser degree of moral and intellectual advancement, and this, without their being in two different places. They may be close to one another, and yet one of them may be in utter darkness, while the other is in the midst of resplendent light; just as a blind man and one who sees may be in the same place, and yet the former will be unconscious of the splendors seen by the latter, who perceives the objects which are invisible for the former. The happiness or unhappiness of spirits being inherent in the qualities possessed by them, they find that happiness or unhappiness wherever they may be, on the surface of the Earth, in the midst of incarnates, or in space.

A commonplace comparison will render this difference of situation more comprehensible. If, of two men who are at a concert, one is a trained musician possessing a good ear for music, while the other knows nothing of music and has only a defective ear, the first will derive enjoyment from the concert, while the other will remain unmoved, simply because one of them perceives and understands that which makes no impression upon the perceptions of the other. It is thus with all the enjoyments experienced by spirits, those enjoyments being proportioned to their aptitude for perceiving them. The spirit-world is full of splendors, harmonies, and sensations that spirits of low degree, who are still under the influence of materiality, do not perceive, and which are only perceptible, and accessible, to spirits of greater purity.

7. Progress, among spirits, is only achieved as the fruit of their own labor; but, as they have their free will, they labor more or less actively for their own advancement, according to their will; they thus hasten or retard their own progress, and, consequently, their own happiness. While some of them advance quickly, others stagnate for long ages in the lower ranks. Thus, spirits are always the artisans of their own situation, whether happy or unhappy, according to the words of Christ, “to each according to his works.” Spirits who remain behind have, therefore, only themselves to thank for their backwardness; in the same way, those who advance have all the merit of their advancement and the happiness they have conquered appears to them all the greater in consequence.

Perfect happiness is the lot only of the spirits who have attained to perfect purity, in other words, of those whom we designate as Pure-Spirits.3 Happiness is only obtained by spirits in proportion as they progress in intelligence and morality. Intellectual progress and moral progress are rarely achieved together, and at the same time; but what a spirit fails to accomplish in one lifetime it accomplishes in another, so that its advancement in each of those two branches of progress is equalized in the long run. It is for this reason that we so often find highly intelligent human beings who are but slightly advanced in morality, and vice versa.

8. Incarnation is necessary to the double progress, intellectual and moral, that has to be accomplished by a spirit; it ensures its intellectual progress by compelling it to employ its activity in the various pursuits of the earthly life, and it ensures its moral progress by making it feel the need which human beings have for one another. Social life is the touchstone that reveals the good or bad qualities of a spirit. Kindness, malevolence, gentleness, violence, charity, selfishness, generosity, avarice, humility, pride, sincerity, hypocrisy, loyalty, and treachery — in a word, all that constitutes human goodness and human badness — find their motive, aim, and stimulus, in the relations of each human being with his or her fellows. If it were possible for a human being to live alone, he or she would have neither vices nor virtues; for, though isolation may preserve from evil, it also annuls the possibility of goodness.

9. A single corporeal existence is manifestly insufficient to enable a spirit to acquire all the goodness it lacks, and rid itself of all the evil that is within it. Would it be possible, for an instant, for a savage to attain, in a single incarnation, to the intellectual and moral level of the most advanced European? It is physically impossible for the savage to do so. Must such a one as this, then, remain eternally in ignorance and barbarism, deprived of the enjoyments that can only be reached through the development of the intellectual and moral faculties? The simplest common sense suffices to show us that such a supposition would be the negation, both of the justice and goodness of God and of the law of progress, which is the law of nature. And it is for this reason that God, being supremely just and good, grants to the spirit of each human being as many successive existences as are needed for attaining to the perfection which is the aim of all.

In each new existence, a spirit brings with it, under the form of natural aptitudes, of intuitive knowledge, of intelligence, and of morality, all the gains that have been made by it in its previous existences. Thus each new existence takes it a step further upon the road of progress. *

Incarnation is inherent to the inferior condition of the spirit. It is no longer necessary when inferiority is overcome and there is continued progress in the spiritual state or in the physical existences of more advanced worlds that do not maintain earthly materialization.

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* See footnote, Chap. I., no. 2

10. In the intervals between its successive incarnations, a spirit returns, for a longer or shorter time, into the spirit-world, where it is happy, or unhappy, according to the good or the evil it has done in its previous lives. The life of the spirit-world is the normal state of the spirit, the definitive state towards which it is tending; for it is its spirit that is undying, while the state of incarnation is one of transition and of passage. It is especially in the spirit-state that the spirit reaps the fruit of the progress accomplished during incarnation; it is also in that state that it prepares for a new struggle with ignorance and evil, and forms the resolutions which it will strive to put into practice in its next return to the discipline of human life.


The spirit progresses also in erraticity,5 in which state it acquires special knowledge that it could not acquire upon the Earth, and modifies the ideas acquired by the spirit through its subjection to the actions of matter. The state of incarnation and the spirit-state are for the spirit the source of two kinds of progress, interdependent one of the other; this is why it passes alternatingly between these two modes of existence.

11. A spirit may be reincarnated upon the Earth or in other material worlds. Among the latter, there are some which are further advanced than others, and in which the conditions of existence, both physical and moral, are less painful than upon the Earth; but, into those happier worlds, only such spirits are admitted as have arrived at a degree of advancement in harmony with that of those worlds.

Incarnation in worlds of higher degree is, of itself, a reward for the spirits whose efforts have fitted them to share the life of those worlds, wherein the inhabitants are exempted from the ills and the vicissitudes to which we are exposed upon the Earth. Their bodies, being more fluidic, are free from the grossness of earthly flesh, and are not subject to diseases, infirmities, or even to the needs of our present bodily state. Spirits of low degree being excluded from those worlds, their people live together in peace, with no other care than that of effecting their advancement by their intellectual activity. True fraternity reigns in those worlds, because selfishness has no existence within them; true equality reigns in them, because no proud or vainglorious spirit could obtain admission; and true liberty reigns in them because there are no disorders to be repressed, no ambitious tyrants seeking to oppress their weaker brothers. In comparison with the Earth, such worlds are paradises, although they are but the temporary resting-places of the spirit, on the road of progress that is leading it up to the attainment of yet higher modes of existence that constitute the true, definitive life of the soul. On Earth, being as yet a world of low degree, and destined to serve as a place of purification for imperfect spirits, evil necessarily predominates, and will continue to do so until the Divine ordering shall make it the abode of spirits of greater advancement than those who are now incarnated in it. It is thus that each spirit, progressing gradually in proportion as it accomplishes its development, arrives at length at the apogee of happiness; but, before attaining to the highest point of perfection, it enjoys increasing degrees of happiness, proportioned to each successive degree of its advancement. It is with the spirit, in this respect, as with a child; in its infancy, the spirit shares the pleasures of childhood, in its youth, those that belong to adolescence, and, when it has attained to adulthood, the riper satisfactions of mature human beings.

12. The happiness of the perfected spirits is not a state of idle contemplation, which would be, as has frequently been pointed out, merely a state of eternal and wearisome uselessness. Spirit-life, at every degree, is, on the contrary, a state of constant activity, though an activity exempt from fatigue. The most perfect felicity of that life consists in the enjoyment of all the splendors of the creation, which human language is incapable of describing, and of which the most exuberant human imagination would fail to form the remotest conception; —in the knowledge and comprehension of all things; in the absence of every sort of suffering, physical and moral, in an interior satisfaction, a serenity of soul that nothing can disturb; in the pure and perfect affection which unites all beings who, through the absence of evil and inferior spirits, are beyond the reach of disappointment or annoyance; and, above all, in the vision of God and in the understanding of the sublime mysteries of existence that are unveiled only to those who have rendered themselves worthy of such initiation. The happiness of fully purified spirits consists also in the joyful exercise of the functions with which they have been charged. They are the Messiahs, the Messengers of God, for the transmission and the execution of God’s volitions; they accomplish great missions, preside over the formation of worlds and the maintenance of the general harmony of the universe, glorious posts at which spirits only arrive as the direct result of their perfection. Only those who have reached the highest grade of perfectibility are admitted to have knowledge of the secrets of God, and receive the direct inspiration of God’s thought, of which they are the immediate representatives.

13. The employments of spirits are proportioned to their advancement, to the knowledge they possess, to their capacities, to their experience, and to the degree of confidence reposed in them by the sovereign Master. In the spirit-world, there is no privilege, no favor that is not the consequence of personal merit; all the arrangements of that higher world are weighed in the scales of absolute justice. The most important missions are confided only to those who are known by God to be, at once, able to fulfill them worthily, and incapable of betraying them or of failing in the accomplishment of the tasks committed to them. While, under the very eye of God, the most worthy that compose the Supreme Council of the Universe are charged with the direction of the various solar systems, and others are charged with the direction of a single planet. After these, in the order of their personal advancement and hierarchical rank, are the spirits who are entrusted with the direction of a single nation, of a single family, of a single individual, are charged to push forward some special branch of progress, or to supervise the various operations of nature, all of which are carried out, to the minutest details, in the work of creation. In the vast and harmonious unity of creation, there are occupations for all varieties and degrees of capacity, of aptitude, of devotion; occupations that are solicited with ardent desire and accepted with joy and gratitude, because devotion and service are means of advancement for the spirits who aspire to the ineffable felicity of the supreme degree.

14. Besides the great missions that are confided only to spirits of the higher degrees, there are others, of every degree of importance, which are entrusted to spirits of corresponding degrees of advancement; so that every spirit, even those who are incarnate, may be said to have its own—that is to say, certain duties to perform for the benefit of its fellows—from the parents of a family, on whom is laid the task of bringing forward their children, to the woman or man of genius who endows society with new elements of progress. It is among the spirits who are charged with these missions of secondary importance that weakness, unfaithfulness, and withdrawals often occur, failures in duty that delay the advancement of the individual who is guilty of them, but that have no disturbing effect on the general course of events.

15. Thus all the intelligent beings of the creation assist in carrying on the general work of the universe, whatever the degree of development at which they have arrived, and each of them according to its possibilities; some of them in the state of incarnation, others in the spirit-state. There is activity everywhere; from the bottom of the ladder to the top, all are learning, aiding one another, mutually supporting each other, and holding out a helping hand to assist each other in reaching the summit.

Solidarity is thus established between the spirit-world and the corporeal world, in other words, between spirits and human beings, between spirits in freedom and spirits in the captivity of the flesh. And thus, too, all true sympathies, all pure and sincere affections are perpetuated, strengthened, and ennobled, through the purification and continuation of the affectionate relationships of spirits.

Life and movement exist everywhere in the Universe. There is no corner in the infinite where someone does not exist; no region that is not constantly traveled by innumerable legions of radiant invisible souls, who are unseen by our coarse senses, but quite visible to those souls who are liberated from the influence of the physical body, and whose sight marvels with overflowing happiness. Everywhere, throughout the universe, there is happiness proportioned to the degree of progress achieved, to the greatness of the tasks accomplished; for each spirit carries within itself the elements of its happiness, according to the category in which it is placed by its degree of advancement.

The happiness of spirits depending on their own personal qualities and not on any physical surroundings, it exists wherever there are spirits who are capable of being happy; but there is not, throughout the universe, any fixed and circumscribed region of happiness. Wherever they may be, the pure spirits are always able to contemplate the Divine Majesty, because God is everywhere.

16. Happiness, nevertheless, is not simply a matter of personal feeling, for, if it were merely individual, if it could not be shared with others, it would be selfish and incomplete; to be perfect, it requires communion of thought and feeling on the part of those who are able to understand and sympathize with one another. The higher spirits, attracted to each other by similitude of ideas, tastes, and sentiments, form vast homogenous groups, or families, in which each individual radiates his or her own qualities and receives the serene and beneficent emanations of all the other individuals in the group, whose members sometimes disperse, to occupy themselves with the missions entrusted to them, sometimes assemble at some given point of space, to inform each other of the result of their labors, sometimes gather round a spirit of higher degree, to receive its counsels or its direction.

17. Although spirits are everywhere, the globes of the universe are centers in which they assemble by preference, according to the similarity existing between themselves and those by whom they are inhabited. Globes of great advancement are surrounded by the shining hosts of the higher spirits; around globes of low degree, low and backward spirits swarm in crowds. The Earth is still one of the latter. Each globe has, so to say, its own population of incarnate and discarnate spirits, supplied, for the most part, by the incarnation and discarnation of the same spirits. The population of the various globes is more stable in proportion to their backwardness, because, the lower the globe, the more closely are its spirits attached to matter; whereas in the globes of higher degree the inhabitants are more freely floating. But the higher spirits voluntarily quit the splendid worlds which are foci of light and joy, and go to worlds of lower degree, in order to sow therein the germs of progress, to bring consolation and hope to the spirits incarnated in them, to raise the courage of those who are sinking under the trials and struggles of corporeal life; — and they sometimes incarnate themselves in the world whose improvement they wish to help forward, in order to accomplish their undertaking with greater efficiency and success.

18. In the boundless immensity around us, where, then, is “Heaven”? “Heaven” is everywhere; it has no fixed site, nor place, nor circumscribing limits; the globes of high degree are the last stations on the road which leads to it; virtue opens the gates of that supreme abode; vice bars its entrance.

In contrast with this grand and magnificent view of the universe, which shows us its remotest regions peopled with intelligent inhabitants, which assigns to all the objects of creation a meaning, a purpose, and an aim, how mean, how petty, is the doctrine that limits the human race to an imperceptible point of space, which represents humankind as beginning at a given time, within the world which it inhabits, the career of the race embracing but a moment in eternity! How sad, dark, and chilling is the doctrine that represents the rest of the universe, before, during, and after, the brief episode of the career of the human race, as devoid of life and movement, an incommensurable desert plunged in eternal silence! How prolific of despair is such a doctrine, presenting to the mind a picture of the small group of the elect, absorbed in perpetual contemplation, while the great majority of God’s created beings, in all the immensity of the universe, are condemned to endless torments! How cruel, for all loving hearts, is such a doctrine, interposing an impassable barrier between the living and the dead! The souls of the elect, in their selfish happiness, think only of their own beatitude; the souls of the damned, in their hopeless eternity of misery, think only of their own despair. Is it strange that selfishness should be rife upon the Earth, when it is presented to mankind as reigning supreme in “Heaven”? And how narrow, how degrading is the idea given by such a doctrine, of the power, the wisdom, and the goodness of God!

How grand, how sublime, on the contrary, is the idea that is given to us by Spiritism! What vast horizons does its doctrine open out to the mind! But what proves it to be true? It is authenticated by reason, in the first place, revelation, in the second place, and, lastly, its accordance with the scientific progress of the day. Between two doctrines, one which debases, while the other exalts our idea of the attributes of God; — one of which is in contradiction, and the other in harmony with the law of progress that is visible in every department of existence; — one of which remains stationary while the other leads us unceasingly forwards, — common sense suffices to show us which is nearest to the truth. In the presence of two doctrines thus diametrically opposed to each other, let all inquirers interrogate their own consciousness, their own aspirations, and an inner voice will reply to their inquiry as to which is the true one. The aspirations of humankind are the voice of God and cannot deceive us.

19. But why, then, it may be asked, has God not revealed all truth to humankind, from the beginning? It is due to the same reason which renders it impossible to impart to an infant, the knowledge that is imparted to an adult. The restricted revelation of former ages was sufficient for the needs of the human race in the period for which it was intended; the Divine revelations are always proportioned to the mental and moral capacities of the spirits to whom they are made. Those who, at the present day, are receiving a fuller revelation are the same spirits who received the more restricted revelation of the earlier ages, but who, since that earlier period, have increased in intelligence.

Before physical science had revealed to humankind the existence of the living forces of nature, the mechanism of the heavens, the true nature and mode of formation of the Earth, could human beings have understood the immensity of space and the plurality of the worlds of the universe? Before geology had shown them the constitution of the Earth, could they have dislodged “hell” from its depths, or understood the allegorical meaning of the six days of creation? Before astronomy had discovered the laws which regulate the universe, could they have seen the sky is neither “high” nor “low” within the framework of the cosmos, and that the sky is neither above the clouds nor bounded by the stars? Before psychological science had come into existence, could they have identified themselves with spiritual life, or have formed to themselves a conception of an existence after death, whether happy or unhappy, otherwise than in connection with some fixed locality and under some physical form? No; comprehending through the senses rather than by thought, the idea of an illimitable universe was too vast for their intelligence; it was needful to reduce the idea of the universe to narrower proportions, in order to bring it within their sphere of vision, deferring its broader presentation to a later period. A partial revelation was useful in the past, and the wisdom of the Providential ordering is shown in this proportioning of its teachings to the needs and capacities of the time in which it was made; but it is insufficient in the present day, and they are wrong who, not taking into account the progress of ideas, imagine that they can hold women and men of mature age in the lead strings of infancy (Vide The Gospel According to Spiritism, Chap. III)

1. In all ages, human beings have intuitively believed that their future lives will be happy or unhappy according to the good or the evil done by them in the earthly life; but the idea they form to themselves of that future state of existence is always in keeping with the development of their moral sense and with more or less enlightened views of right and wrong at which they have arrived. Thus their idea of the rewards and punishments of the future is always the reflex of their predominant tendencies. Warlike nations make the supreme felicity to consist in the honors done to valor; tribes who live by hunting, in an abundance of game; peoples addicted to sensuality, in voluptuous pleasures. While human beings remain under the domination of materiality, they can have only an imperfect comprehension of spirit life; they suppose that they will eat and drink, in the other world, as they do in this one, but of better quality. * At a later period, we find in the beliefs of humankind concerning the future a mixture of spirituality and materiality; and accordingly, juxtaposed with a heaven of contemplative beatitude, humans then place a hell with its array of physical tortures.


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* A little Savoyard, to whom the village priest was describing the delights of the future life, asked him whether everybody “eat white bread there, as they do in Paris?”

2. Being unable to conceive of anything that they do not see, the humans of the primitive period naturally formed their notion of the future based on the present; in order to comprehend the possibility of other modes of existence than those which they saw around them, they would have needed an intellectual development which they could only have acquired in the course of ages. The picture that they imagined to themselves of the chastisements of the future life was, therefore, only a reflex of the ills of human existence, but deepened and intensified. They brought together, into that picture, all the tortures, all the sufferings, all the afflictions that they saw upon the Earth; in hot climates, they imagined a hell of fire, and, in the cold ones, a hell of ice. The special sense which, at a later period, enabled them to comprehend the spiritual world, not being yet developed, they could only conceive of physical penalties; and for this reason, with the exception of some slight differences of form, the “hell” of all religions is the same.

3. The “Hell” of the Pagans, described and dramatized by the poets of antiquity, is the grandest of the forms that have been assumed by the idea of a place of punishments for the souls of humanity, although its principal features have been perpetuated in the “Hell” of the Christians, which, also, has been sung by their poets. On comparing these two conceptions of the infernal regions, we find them to be closely allied, notwithstanding their differences of names and details; in both, physical fire is the basis of the tortures of the damned, because it is the cause of the most excruciating suffering. But, strange to say, Christians have made their hell, in many respects, still more horrible than that of the Pagans. The latter had their hell in the Sieve of the Danaides, Ixion’s Wheel, the Stone of Sisyphus, etc.; but these were merely torments of individuals, whereas the Christian hell has its boiling cauldrons for the vast majority of the human race, and the Christian “angels” lift up the covers of those receptacles to feast their eyes upon the contortions of the damned, * which are also watched by the “elect” with lively satisfaction, ** while their God hears, unmoved, the groans that will ascend, throughout eternity, from the bottomless pit! The Pagans never depicted the dwellers in the Elysian Fields as gloating over the horrors of Tartarus.


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* A sermon preached, in 1860, by an eminent Catholic divine, at Montpellier, seat of a University Faculty.
** 8 “The blessed, without quitting the place they occupy, will yet quit it in a certain manner—through the intelligence and the distinctness of vision with which they are endowed—in order to contemplate the tortures of the damned; and, on seeing these, they will not only not feel any sorrow, but they will be overwhelmed with joy and will give thanks to God for their own happiness in witnessing the unutterable misery of the impious.”—SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS.

4. Like the Pagans, the Christians have their king of the Infernal Regions, Satan; with this difference, viz., that Pluto, while governing the gloomy realm which had fallen to his share, was not malicious; he retained as captives those who had done wickedly, because it was his mission to do so; but he did not seek to draw humans into evil in order to give himself the pleasure of seeing them suffer; whereas Satan recruits his victims everywhere, and takes pleasure in having them tortured by his legions of demons, who are armed with pitchforks for the purpose of stirring them about in the fire. Christian theologians have gravely discussed the nature of the “fire,” which burns the damned incessantly, and yet does not consume them; some of them have even gone so far as to inquire whether that fire may not perhaps be of bitumen.* The Christian hell is, therefore, in no respect less horrible than the Pagan hell.


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* In a sermon preached in Paris in 1861.

5. The same considerations which led the Ancients to localize the realm of felicity led them also to imagine a place of torment, like the former, fixed, localized, and circumscribed; and, having placed their heaven “on high,” they naturally placed their hell “down below,” that is to say, in the center of the Earth, of which certain dark and gloomy caverns were supposed to be the entrance. The Christians, also, for a long time, placed the region of perdition in the center of the Earth. Nor were these the only analogies between the Pagan and the Christian conceptions of hell.

The hell of the pagans contained, on the one hand, the Elysian Fields, on the other, Tartarus; Olympus, the dwelling-place of the gods and of deified men, was in the “upper regions.” According to the letter of the Gospels, Jesus descended into Hell, into a region below the surface of the Earth, on a mission to rescue the souls who were awaiting his coming. The hell of the Christians, like that of the Pagans, was, therefore, in the beginning, not simply a place of torment, but, like the latter, included “the lower regions.” And the Christian heaven, the abode of the angels and the saints, was also, like the Pagan Olympus, up “on high,” somewhere beyond the region of the stars, which, as previously remarked, was supposed to be limited.

6. This mixture of Pagan and Christian ideas should cause us no surprise. Jesus could not, at once, destroy beliefs that had taken firm root in the human mind. The people of this day lacked the scientific knowledge that alone could enable them to conceive of the infinity of space and the infinity of worlds. The Earth was, for them, the center of the universe. They knew nothing of its form or of its internal structure; for them, the universe was limited to what they saw around them, and their notions, in regard to the future, could not extend beyond the narrow circle of their knowledge. It was, consequently, impossible for Jesus to initiate them into the truth of things; and being unwilling, on the other hand, to give the sanction of his authority to the prejudices of his hearers, he abstained from touching on subjects for which they were unprepared. Leaving to time the work of rectifying their ideas, he confined himself to vague allusions to the future happiness of the good, and to the punishments that await the wicked; but we nowhere find, in his teachings, the distinct pictures of corporeal tortures which the Christians churches have made an article of their creed.

We have seen how it is that the ideas of the Pagan hell have been perpetuated to the present day. The diffusion of knowledge, which is the characteristic of modern times, and the general development of human intelligence, were indispensable to the clearing away of those ideas. But as, up to this time, no sound and rational basis of belief has been substituted in place of those old ideas, the long period of blind belief has been followed by a transitional period of unbelief, to which the new revelation is destined to put an end. It was necessary to demolish the old belief before bringing in the new; for true ideas are more readily accepted by those who have no belief and who feel the need of some sound basis of conviction, than by those who cherish a robust belief in absurdities.

7. Owing to their having localized their idea of “Heaven” and of “Hell,” the various Christian sects have been led to admit the existence of only two situations for the souls of the departed—viz., perfect happiness and utter misery. Purgatory, according to the Catholic dogma, is only a temporary and intermediate position, where the soul goes without any other transition into the abode of the Blest. It could not do otherwise, according to the belief that assumes that the fate of the soul is decided forever at death. If there are but two abodes for souls, —viz., that of the elect and that of the damned, —and if the fate of the soul, as belonging to the one or the other category, is definitely settled at death it is impossible to admit the existence of degrees in either of those abodes; for, if such degrees existed, it must be possible for the soul to pass through them, and, consequently, to progress: but, if the soul can progress after death, its state, on dying, is not definitive, since, if it were definitive, progress would be impossible. Jesus settled this weighty question when he said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” *


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* Vide “The Gospel According to Spiritism,” chap. III

8. The Catholic Church admits, it is true, a special position of the soul in certain special cases. Children who have died in infancy, having committed no sin, cannot be condemned to eternal burning; on the other hand, having done nothing good, they have no right to the supreme felicity. They are, therefore, according to the doctrine of that Church, in Limbo, which is a mixed state (that has never been clearly defined), in which, although they do not suffer, they still do not enjoy perfect happiness. But, since their fate is irrevocably fixed at death, they are excluded from the enjoyment of perfect happiness to all eternity; and, consequently, this privation, though incurred through no fault of theirs, practically amounts to the undeserved infliction of an eternal punishment. It is the same with savages, who, having received neither the grace of baptism nor the light of religion, go wrong through ignorance, and through obeying their natural instincts, and who, consequently, can neither have incurred the guilt, nor acquired the merit of those who have acted with a clear discernment of right and wrong. The simplest effort of reasoning suffices to repel such a doctrine as contrary to the justice of God. The justice of God is, in fact, summed up entirely in the words of Christ, “To each, according to the deeds done in the body;” but this law must be understood as referring to deeds whether good or evil, that have been done freely and voluntarily; those being the only ones for which we can justly be held responsible. There can be no responsibility on the part of a child, a savage, or anyone else who, through no fault of his own, has failed to obtain enlightenment.

9. We know little of the Pagan Hell except through the recitals of the ancient poets; the descriptions given by Homer and Virgil are the most complete, but, in these, we have to make allowance for the necessities imposed by the poetic form. On the contrary, the description of the infernal regions given by Fénélon, in his Telemachus—though drawn, as regards the fundamental beliefs of the Ancients, from the same sources—has the greater simplicity and precision of prose. Even while describing the bleak and cheerless aspect of those regions, he takes care to show the kind of suffering endured by the guilty; and, if he gives special prominence to the fate of bad kings, he does so for the sake of impressing the mind of his royal pupil with the gravity of the responsibility that will one day rest upon him. However popular the work referred to, there are doubtless many who have not retained any clear remembrance of its details, or who have not reflected on them with sufficient attention to establish a comparison between the idea of “Hell” thus presented and the “Hell” of the Christians; and we therefore think it useful to reproduce portions of the work referred to which treat directly of the subject we are considering, that is to say, of the punishment of the individuals in the other life.

10. On entering, Telemachus heard the groans of a shade who appeared to be inconsolable. ‘What,’ he inquired, ‘is the cause of you unhappiness? Who were you when upon the Earth?’

‘I was Nabopharzan, king of proud Babylon,’ replied the shade; ‘all the people of the East trembled at the mere sound of my name. I caused myself to be adored by the Babylonians in a marble temple wherein I was represented by a statue of gold, before which were burned, night and day, the most precious perfumes of Ethiopia. Whoever dared to contradict me was immediately punished; and my servants invented new pleasures each day in order to render my life more and more delightful. I was still young and robust; alas! How many kinds of prosperity still remained for me to enjoy upon the throne! But a woman whom I loved, and who did not love me, has shown me very plainly that I was not a god; she has poisoned me; and I am reduced to nothingness. My ashes were placed, with great pomp, yesterday, in a golden urn; the people wept, and tore their hair; they made a pretense of longing to throw themselves into the flame of my funeral pyre, in order to die with me. They will come in crowds to groan and lament at the foot of the superb tomb in which my ashes have been deposited; but no one regrets my death; my memory is detested, even by my own family, and, down here, I am already undergoing horrible treatment.’

Telemachus, touched by this spectacle, asked the shade: ‘Were you really happy during your reign? Did you feel the inner peace without which the heart remains oppressed and blighted in the midst of pleasures?’

‘No,’ replied the Babylonian; ‘I know nothing of the sentiment of which you speak. The sages praise this peace as the only good; but I never felt it; my heart was incessantly agitated by new desires, new fears, and new hopes. I sought to stun myself with the shock of my passions, and I did my utmost to render this sort of intoxication perpetual. The shortest interval of calm reason would have been too bitter an awakening. Such is the only peace I ever enjoyed; any other seems to me to be only a fable and a dream; such are the pleasures I regret.’

While speaking thus, the Babylonian wept like a craven, who, weakened by prosperity, has not accustomed himself to support misfortune with equanimity. Near him were several slaves who had been put to death to honor his funeral; Mercury had delivered them over to Charon with their king, and had given them absolute power over this sovereign whom they had served upon the Earth. These shades of slaves no longer feared the shade of Nabopharzan; they kept him in chains, and wreaked upon him the most galling insults. One of them said to him, ‘Were we not men just as you? How could you be so insensate as to fancy yourself a god, and ought you not to have remembered that you were of the same race as other men?’ Another, to mortify him, said to him, ‘You were right in trying to make people believe that you were not a man; for you were a monster, with nothing human about you!’ A third scornfully asked him, ‘Where are now your flatterers? Wretch! You have no longer anything to give. You can no longer do harm to anyone. You have become the slave of your former slaves. The gods are slow to punish; but they punish at last!’

At these cruel words, Nabopharzan threw himself down with his face upon the ground, tearing his hair in a fit of rage and despair. But Charon said to the slaves, ‘Pull him up by his chain; make him stand up in spite of himself; he shall not even have the satisfaction of hiding his shame. All the shades on the banks of the Styx must witness his punishment in order that they may recognize the justice of the gods, who allowed this impious mortal to reign so long upon the Earth.’

“Soon afterwards Telemachus perceived, near at hand, the gloomy realm of Tartarus that exhaled a thick black smoke, the pestiferous smell of which would have caused death, had it penetrated into the abode of the living. This smoke rose from a river of fire, and was full of masses of flame, the roar of which, like that of the most impetuous torrents when they leap from the summit of the highest rocks into the deepest abysses, rendered it impossible to hear anything distinctly in the dreary place.

Telemachus, secretly urged on by Minerva, entered fearlessly into the yawning gulf. He at once perceived in it a great number of men who had lived on Earth in low conditions, and who were being punished for having sought to obtain wealth through frauds, treasons, and cruelties. He remarked there many impious hypocrites who, feigning to love religion, had made their pretended piety a pretext for serving their ambition and deceiving the credulous; these men, who had thus insulted virtue itself, the greatest gift of the gods, were punished as being the very worst of criminals. Children who had murdered their parents, husbands who had killed their wives, traitors who, breaking their vows, had betrayed their country, underwent punishments less severe than those that were meted out to these hypocrites. The three judges of the infernal regions had thus ordered it, and for this reason, viz., that hypocrites are not satisfied with being wicked, like other impious people, but also seek to pass themselves off as being good, and thus, by their false virtue, make it impossible for men to trust the truest virtue. The gods, whom they have mocked, take pleasure in employing all their power to avenge the insults of these wretches.

Near to these were the shades of other men whom the vulgar scarcely regard as guilty, but who are pitilessly pursued by the Divine vengeance, viz., those who are ungrateful, liars, flatterers of vice, malicious critics who have sought to malign the good, and those who have rashly pronounced judgment on matters of which they had no clear and thorough knowledge, and who have thus injured the reputation of innocent persons.

Telemachus, seeing the three judges seated at their tribunal, in the act of passing sentence on a man, ventured to inquire of them what crimes he had committed, when the condemned immediately exclaimed, ‘I have never done anything wrong; all my pleasure was in doing good. I was magnificent, liberal, just, and compassionate; with what then can I be reproached?’ But Minus replied, ‘You are not reproached with any wrongdoing as regards to men; but did you not owe yet more to the gods than to men? What is the justice of which you boast? You have not failed in any of your duties towards men, who are nothing; you were virtuous, but you took all the credit of your virtue to yourself, instead of attributing it to the gods, who had given it to you, for you wished to enjoy the fruit of your virtue as something of your own and you thus shut yourself up in yourself; you were your own divinity. But the gods, who are the authors of all things, and to whom the honor of all things should revert, cannot renounce their rights; you forgot them, they will now forget you. They now give you over to yourself, since you chose to live for yourself instead of living for them. You must now find your happiness, if you can, in your own heart. You are separated, forever, from those whom you sought to please, and you are left alone with yourself, the self which was your idol; for you have now to learn that there can be no true virtue without the respect and love of the gods, to whom all things are due. Your false virtue, which has so long deceived men, who are easily taken in, will now be seen in its true light. Men, judging of vices and virtues only according to the convenience or inconvenience caused to them thereby, are blind to the real nature of good and of evil. Here, all their superficial judgments are overthrown by the Divine light, for that light often condemns what is admired by men, and shows the excellence of what is condemned by them.’

At these words, the vainglorious philosopher was struck, as though by the thunderbolt, with horror of himself. The pleasure that he had formerly felt contemplating his own moderation, his courage, and his generous tendencies, was changed into despair. The sight of his own heart, as an enemy of the gods, became a torture for him; he saw himself as a spectacle of which he could never escape the sight; he saw the worthlessness of the judgment of men, whose approbation had been the aim and motive of all his actions. An entire revolution took place in his inner being, as though his very entrails had been overturned. He seemed to himself to be no longer the same; his heart failed him; and his conscience—whose flatteries had hitherto been so agreeable to him—now raised its voice against him, reproaching him bitterly with the unsound and illusory nature of his imaginary virtues, that had not had the worship of the Divinity for their motive and aim: he was overwhelmed with confusion, consternation, shame, remorse, and despair. The Furies exercised no torments upon him, because it sufficed, for his punishment, to abandon him to himself, and because the action of his own heart was all that was needed to avenge the gods, whom he had forgotten. He tried to find some dark recess in which to hide himself, at least, from the shades about him, since he could no longer hide himself from himself. He sought for darkness, but could not find it, for an unwelcome and persistent light incessantly accompanied him; wherever he went, the piercing rays of truth went with him, avenging the truth that he had neglected to follow. * All that he had formerly loved became odious to him, as being the source of his misery; —a misery that would have no end!

‘Insensate fool that I have been!’ he cried aloud, speaking to himself; ‘I see that I have never truly known either the gods, my fellow-men, or myself! No, I have never truly known anything, since I did not set my affections on the only real good! Every step of my life was but a wandering out of the right road; my wisdom was only folly; my virtue was only a blind and impious pride; I was my own idol!’

Telemachus next perceived the Kings who had been condemned for having made a bad use of their power. On the one hand, an avenging Fury held up before them a mirror that showed them all the deformity of their vices; they saw, and could not help seeing, their gross vanity and their avidity for the most ridiculous praises; their hardness towards their fellow-men, whose happiness they ought to have ensured; their indifference for the virtuous; their unwillingness to hear the truth; their preference for base and cowardly flatterers; their want of application; their indolence and idleness; their unjust suspicions; their pomp and magnificence based on the ruin of their peoples; their ambition, which caused them to purchase a little empty glory with the blood of their subjects; their cruelty, which sought, each day, for new delights in the tears and despair of their innumerable victims. They beheld themselves incessantly in this mirror; they saw themselves to be more horrible and monstrous than was the Chimaera, vanquished by Bellerophon, or the Hydra destroyed by Hercules, or even Cerberus himself, though, from his three yawning mouths, he vomits streams of black and venomous blood that would poison the whole race of mortals living upon the Earth.

At the same time, on the other hand, another Fury repeated, insultingly, all the praises that had been offered to them by their flatterers during their life, and held up to them a second mirror, in which they beheld themselves as they had been depicted by these flatterers. The contrast between these pictures was torture for their vanity, and all the more excruciating because the kings on whom the most magnificent encomiums are lavished during their life, are usually those who are the most wicked of all; for wicked kings are always more feared than the good ones, and have no scruple in exacting base adulation from the poets and orators of their day.

The groans of these wretches resound through the thick darkness by which they are surrounded, and which allows them to perceive only the insults and mockeries they are condemned to endure. Everything around them repels, contradicts, and confounds them, whereas, when they lived upon the Earth, they sported with the lives of men and imagined that everything existed for their service. In Tartarus, they are abandoned to the caprices of their former slaves, who, in their turn, cause them to feel all the bitterness of slavery; they serve these tormentors in pain and suffering, and without any hope of a mitigation of their misery, for they are subjected to the blows and ill-treatment of their former victims, as completely as is the anvil to the strokes of the hammer of the Cyclops, when Vulcan urges them to their tasks in the fiery furnaces of Etna.


Pale, hideous, filled with consternation, were the countenances of the criminals seen by Telemachus in that abode of retribution. Gnawed by despair, they are objects of horror to themselves, and can no more shake off this sense of self-loathing than they can shake off their own nature; they need no other chastisement, for their former crimes, than those crimes themselves, which are beheld by them incessantly, in all their deformity, glowering on them, and pursuing them, like so many horrible specters. To escape from them, they seek for a death that shall be more potent than that which has separated them from their body. In their despair, they would call to their help a death that should extinguish in them all feeling and all consciousness; they call upon the abyss to swallow them up and hide them from the avenging rays of truth that pierce them like arrows, but they are condemned to suffer the vengeance that falls slowly upon them, drop by drop, as from a spring that will never be dried up. Truth, which they formerly shunned, is now their torment; they see it, and it alone, always standing before them as an accusation: a sight that pierces them through and through, that rends them, as it were, limb from limb, and tears them from themselves. For Truth is like lightning; without destroying them outwardly, it penetrates the most hidden recesses of their being.

Among these woeful spectacles, which caused the hair of his head to stand on end, Telemachus beheld the fate of several of the ancient kings of Lydia, punished for having preferred the pleasures of an idle and luxurious life to nobly laboring for the amelioration of the condition of the mass of their subjects, which is an aspiration that should be inseparable from the concept of royalty.

Those kings reproached each other with their former blindness. One of them, addressing the other, who had been his son, exclaimed, ‘Did I not urge you, repeatedly, in my old age, and before my death, to repair the evils that I had caused by my negligence?’ ‘Ah! Wretched father!’ returned the son, ‘it is you who have been my ruin! It was your example that inspired me with the love of vainglorious pomp and voluptuous delights, with pride, and hard-heartedness for the rest of mankind! It was through seeing you reign with such luxurious indolence and surrounded by base flatterers, that I acquired the love of pleasure and of flattery. I thought that all other men, in relation to kings, were only what horses and other beasts of burden are in relation to men; that is to say, animals valued only for the services they render and the uses they sub-serve. I believed this, because you made me believe it; and now I suffer all this misery for having followed your example!’ To these reciprocal reproaches they added the most frightful curses, and manifested such violent rage against one another that they seemed to be about to tear each other to pieces.

Around these unfaithful kings there hovered, like so many birds of the night, the cruel suspicions, the baseless terrors and mistrust, which avenge, upon them, the sufferings caused to their subjects by their hard-heartedness; —the insatiable thirst for riches, the tyrannous desire for false glory, and the base indolence that intensifies every suffering, and fails to yield any solid satisfaction.

Many of these kings were seen undergoing severe punishment, not for any evil that they had done, but for not having done the good that they might have done. All the wrongdoing, on the part of their subjects, caused by their lax administration of the laws, was laid to the charge of the kings, who only reign in order that the laws may reign through their instrumentality. All the disorders that result from the display of pomp, luxury, and all the other excesses that tempt men to violate the laws in their haste to be rich, were imputed to these unfaithful kings. And those kings, who, instead of being the kind and watchful shepherds of their people, had only sought to devour them, like hungry wolves, were the most severely punished of them all.

But what most astounded Telemachus was to see, in this abyss of darkness and of suffering, a great number of kings who, although they had been reputed, upon the Earth as tolerably good, had been condemned to the sufferings of Tartarus for having allowed themselves to be governed by wicked and artful counselors. They were punished by the evils that they had allowed to be done under their authority. Moreover, the greater number of these kings had been neither good nor bad, weakness having been their distinguishing characteristic. They had never had any desire to know the truth; they had never had any aspirations after virtue; and they had never taken any pleasure in doing good.


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* Vide Chap. VII, “The Punishment of Light.”

11. The opinion of Christian theologians in regard to Hell is summed up in the following quotations. * This description, derived from the writings of the Fathers of the Church and the Lives of Saints, may be presented with all the more confidence as conveying a correct idea of the orthodox belief in regard to the subject we are considering, because it is perpetually set forth, with some slight variations only, in the sermons of Protestant divines, as well as in the pastoral teachings of Catholic priests.


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* Vide “L’Enfer,” by AUG. CALLET.

12. “Demons are purely spiritual beings, and the damned, who are now in hell, may also be considered as purely spiritual beings, because it is only their soul that is in hell, for their bones, returned to dust, are being incessantly transformed into grass, plants, fruit, minerals, and liquids, undergoing, unconsciously, the continual metamorphoses of matter. But the damned, like the Saints, will be resuscitated at the Last Day, and will again put on, nevermore to be cast off, a fleshly body, the same body by which they were known during their earthly life. What will distinguish the one class from the other is that the elect will be raised with a purified radiant body, and the damned, with a body degraded and deformed by sin. There will then be no longer in hell purely spiritual beings only; for there will be in it men, such as we now are. Hell is, therefore, a place, physical, geographical, material, since it will be peopled with terrestrial creatures, having feet, hands, a mouth, a tongue, teeth, ears, eyes, like ours, and veins with blood in them, and nerves capable of feeling pain.

“Where is hell situated? Certain doctors of the Church have placed it in the entrails of the Earth itself; others, in some planet; but the question has never been decided by any Council. We are, therefore, in regard to this point, reduced to conjectures; the only thing that is affirmed in regard to it is that hell, whatever the part of the universe in which it is situated, is a world composed of material elements, but a world without sun, without moon, without stars; more gloomy, more inhospitable, more utterly devoid of every germ and appearance of good, than are the most inhospitable regions of the world in which men are now sinning.

“Christian theologians prudently abstain from painting, after the fashion of the Egyptians, the Hindus, and the Greeks, all the horrors of that abode; they confine themselves to showing us, as a sample, the little that the Scriptures unveiled to us in regard to it; the lake of fire and brimstone of the Apocalypse; the worms of Isaiah, that are forever writhing on the carcasses of Tophel; demons, tormenting the men they have brought to perdition; and men, weeping and gnashing their teeth, according to the statements of the Evangelists.

“Saint Augustine does not admit that these miseries can be regarded as merely physical images of moral sufferings; he sees, in a real lake of sulfur, real worms and real scorpions attacking every part of the bodies of the damned and adding their stings to those of the fire. He asserts, basing this assertion on a verse of Saint Mark, that this wondrous fire, although as material in its nature as the fire we know upon the Earth, and although it will act forever upon material bodies, will preserve the bodies of its victims as salt preserves flesh. But the damned, perpetually sacrificed and yet perpetually living, will feel the agony of this fire that burns without destroying; it will penetrate under their skin; they will be soaked and saturated with it in all their limbs, and in the marrow of their bones, and in the pupils of their eyes, and in the most secret and sensitive fibers of their being. The crater of a volcano, could they throw themselves into it, would be for them, in comparison with the fire of hell, a cool and refreshing resting place.

“Thus speak, with the fullest confidence, the most timid, most discreet, and the most reserved theologians. They do not deny that hell has other kinds of corporeal torments; they only say that they have not a sufficient kind of knowledge of these to warrant their speaking of them, or, at least, as positively as they are able to do in regard to the horrible torture of fire and the disgusting torture of worms. But there are other theologians, bolder, or more enlightened, who give, in regard to hell, descriptions that are more detailed, more varied, and more complete; and, although it is not known in what region of space hell is situated, there are saints who have seen it. They did not enter its gloomy portals carrying a lyre in their hands, like Orpheus, or a sword, like Ulysses; they were transported thither in spirit. Saint Theresa is one of those who have thus beheld it.

“It would seem, according to the recital of that Saint, that there are cities in hell; at all events, she saw a sort of narrow alley, such as those which are so often found in old towns. She entered this alley, stepping, with horror and loathing, upon the muddy, filthy, and stinking ground, covered with monstrous reptiles; but her progress was speedily arrested by a wall which barred the alley, and in this wall was a niche, in which Saint Theresa placed herself, without quite understanding why, or how, she did so. It was, she said, the place reserved for her, if she made ill use, during her earthly life, of the grace so abundantly shed by God, on her cell at Avila. Although she had entered, with wonderful facility, into this niche, she could neither sit, nor lie, nor stand upright in it; still less could she get out of it: the horrible walls had closed in upon her on all sides, enveloping her whole person in a stony shroud, and pressing in upon her, as though they were alive. It was as though she were being stifled, strangled, and, at the same time, flayed alive, and chopped into pieces; she felt as though she were being burned, and experienced, at once, every species of torture and anguish. As for obtaining any help, none was to be hoped for; around her there was nothing but thick darkness, and nevertheless, through this darkness she still, to her utter amazement, beheld the hideous alley in which she was kept a prisoner, and all the vile and filthy creatures about her; a spectacle fully as intolerable for her as the pressure of her prison walls. *

“The alley thus seen was, doubtless, only a little corner of Hell. Other spiritual travelers have been favored with wider views of it, and have seen within its precincts, vast cities all on fire; Babylon, and Nineveh, and Rome itself, with their palaces and temples, wrapped in flames, and all their inhabitants chained, each to his place, in the midst of the burning; the dealer at his counter, priests and courtesans in the halls of festivity, shrieking on the seats from which they could never again get loose, and lifting to their lips, to quench their torturing thirst, wine cups that vomited flames; lackeys on their knees in burning sewers, and princes, upon whom there flowed, from the hands of those lackeys, a devouring lava-stream of molten gold. Others have beheld, in Hell, enormous plains that were being dug and sown by armies of famishing peasants, and as these plains, steaming with their sweat, and this sterile seed produced nothing, the starving peasants devoured one another, after which, as numerous, lean, and famishing as before, they wandered off in bands, towards every part of the horizon, seeking in vain for some more favored region, while their places were taken, at once, by other wandering columns of the damned. Other saints, again, have seen, in Hell, mountains full of precipices, groaning forests, wells without water and fountains fed with tears, rivers of blood, whirlwinds of snow in deserts of ice, boats full of shipwrecked wretches blown hopelessly about, on shoreless seas. In short, all these seers have seen, in Hell, all that the Pagans formerly saw in it, viz., an exaggeratedly dismal reflex of the Earth, a shadow, incommensurably magnified of its miseries, with its natural sufferings rendered infinite and eternal, even to its dungeons and its gallows, and all the instruments of torture that our own hands have forged.

“There are, moreover, in Hell, demons who, in order to more thoroughly torture the fleshly bodies of the damned, take upon themselves bodies of flesh. Some of these have wings like bats, horns, scaled, sharp claws, and pointed teeth; they are described to us as being armed with swords, pitchforks, pincers, red-hot nippers, saws, gridirons, bellows, and clubs, and as discharging throughout eternity the functions of cooks and of butchers of human flesh; others, transformed into enormous lions or vipers, incessantly drag their human prey about in solitary caverns; others, again, changing themselves into crows, peck out, forever, the eyes of some of the guilty, or, taking the form of winged dragons, carry them away upon their backs, terrified, bleeding, shrieking, athwart vast wastes of darkness and then shake them off into the lake of brimstone. Some of these demons present the appearance of clouds of gigantic grasshoppers and scorpions of which the sight causes shuddering, the smell, the nausea, the slightest touch, convulsions; others assume the form of many-headed open- throated voracious monsters, whose hideous faces are surmounted by manes of snakes, that crunch the reprobate in their gory jaws and them vomit them out again crushed and formless, but living, because they are immortal.

“These demons, with forms perceptible to the senses, and that so nearly resemble the gods of the Amenthi, and of Tartarus, and the idols worshipped by Phoenicians, the Moabites, and the other Gentiles around Judea, do not act from their own caprice; each of them has his own function and his own work, and the tortures they inflict in Hell are in close connection with the crimes they have inspired, and caused to be committed upon the Earth. ** The damned are punished in all their senses and in all their organs, because they have offended God by all their senses and by all their organs; they are punished in different ways according to the nature of their sins, they are punished as gluttons by the demons of gluttony, as lazy by the demons of laziness, as fornicators by the demons of fornication, and in as many other ways as there are different ways of sinning. They will freeze in burning and burn in freezing; they will hunger for rest while hungering for movement; they will be always hungry, always thirsty, a thousand-fold more weary than the weariest slave at the close of day, more diseased than the dying, more broken, more bruised, more covered with wounds than the martyrs, and they will continue to exist forever and ever.

“No demon ever yet tired, or ever will tire of his hideous task. All the demons are, in regard to the work appointed to them, thoroughly disciplined and faithful in executing the avenging orders they have received. Were it otherwise, what would become of hell? The victims would obtain relief if their executioners quarreled among themselves or wearied of their work. But there is no relief for the former because there is no quarreling among the latter; however wicked they are, however innumerable, the demons have a perfect understanding with one another throughout the length and breadth of the abyss, and there have never been seen, upon the earth, nations more docile to their princes, armies more obedient to their chiefs, monastic communities more humbly submissive to their superiors, than are the demons to their rulers, from one end of hell to the other. ***

“We know, however, but little of the populace of demons, of the vile spirits who make up the legions of vampires, ghouls, toads, scorpions, crows, hydras, salamanders, and other beasts that have no name for us, and that constitute the fauna of the infernal regions; but we know and have the names of many of the princes who command those legions, among others, Belphegor, the Demon of lust; Abaddon or Apollyon, the Demon of murder; Beelzebub, the Demon of impure desires, Master of the flies that engender corruption; Mammon, the demon of avarice; and Moloch, and Belial, and Baalgad, and Astaroth, and many others; and, above these, their universal chief, the somber archangel who bore, in Heaven, the name of Lucifer, and who bears, in Hell the name of Satan.

“Such, in brief, is the idea which is given us of hell, considered from the point of view of its physical nature and of the physical sufferings of which it is the theater. Open the writings of the Fathers and the ancient Doctors of the Church; interrogate our pious legends; examine the carvings and the paintings of our churches; listen to what is said in our pulpits, and you will learn many particulars in regard to it.”




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* This vision presents, so distinctly, all the characteristics of nightmare, that Saint Theresa’s experience may doubtless be regarded as of that nature.
** A strange sort of punishment, in sooth, which consists in enabling these demons to continue, upon a wider scale, the evil done by them upon the Earth! It would be more reasonable for them to be made to suffer themselves the consequences of that evil than to be allowed to gratify themselves by inflicting suffering on those whom they have led astray.

*** Those demons, rebellious to God’s goodness, present an exemplary mildness to practice evil. None of them display ill will throughout eternity. What a strange metamorphosis took place. They were created pure and as perfect as angels! Is it not odd for the demons to be examples of perfect harmony, comprehension and unalterable agreement, while humans do not know how to live in peace and mutually tear each other apart? Viewing the amount of punishment reserved for the condemned and comparing their situation, which are more deserving of compassion more our pity, the criminals or their victims?

13. The author from whom we are quoting follows up the foregoing picture with the following reflections, the importance of which will be easily perceived by the reader:

“The resurrection of the body is in itself a miracle; but God will work a second miracle in giving to the mortal bodies thus raised—bodies that have already been worn out by the passing trials of life, that have already been annihilated—the power to subsist, without dissolving in a furnace in which all the metals would be converted to vapor. If it be urged that the soul is its own executioner, that God does not persecute the sinner but abandons him to the state of misery he has brought upon himself by his own choice, that statement may be admitted as true, although the eternal abandonment of a lost and suffering being would seem to be but little in conformity with the goodness of the Creator; but what may be admissible in regard to the soul and to spiritual sufferings cannot be, in any degree, admissible in regard to the resuscitated bodies and corporeal suffering of the damned. In order that these sufferings may be perpetuated throughout eternity, it is not enough that God should withdraw His hand; it is necessary, on the contrary, that He should show His hand that He should intervene, that He should act; for, without the constant action of His power in maintaining their existence, those bodies would be immediately destroyed.

“Theologians, therefore, assume that God operates, after the resurrection, the second miracle to which we have just referred. He draws, in the first place, from the sepulcher that has devoured them, our bodies of clay. He raises them, from the grave, such as they were when they were committed to its keeping, with all their original infirmities and all the degradations they have successively undergone from age, vice, and disease; He gives them back to us in that state, decrepit, shivering, gouty, full of physical needs, sensitive to the sting of the minutest insect, covered with the ignoble stains that our life and our death have left in them; this is the first miracle. Next, to these weak wretched bodies, ready to crumble away into the dust from which they have been taken, He imparts a property that they never before possessed; and this is the second miracle: that is to say, He inflicts upon them the gift of immortality, that same gift which, in His anger—or, should we not rather say, in His mercy? — He withdrew from Adam when the latter was driven out of Eden.

“While Adam remained immortal, he was invulnerable; and, when he ceased to be invulnerable, he became mortal: death followed close upon the heels of pain.

“The resurrection, then, does not restore to us either the physical conditions of the innocent man or the physical conditions of the guilty man; it is a resurrection only of our miseries, but with the addition of new miseries infinitely more horrible; it is, in fact, and as regards the immortality of the bodies thus raised, a new creation, and the most malicious act the human imagination has ever dared to conceive of. God alters His mind and, in order to add to the spiritual torments of sinners fleshly torments that shall endure forever, He suddenly changes by an act of His power, the laws and properties that He Himself assigned in the beginning, to all bodies formed from matter: He resuscitates diseased and rotten flesh, and joining in an indestructible union, the material elements which tend spontaneously to separate from each other, He maintains and perpetuates this living rottenness; He throws it into the fire, not in order to purify it, but to preserve it just as it is, sensitive, suffering, burning, horrible, and in this state by His will, He renders it immortal.

“By attributing such a miracle to God, Christian theologians represent Him as one of the executioners of Hell; for, although the damned can only attribute their spiritual sufferings to themselves, they can only attribute their fleshly sufferings to a direct exercise of His power. It is not enough, apparently, for God to abandon the souls of the guilty, after their death, to sorrow, to remorse, to the anguish of knowing that they have shut themselves out from happiness forever; His power, according to theologians, pursues them through the darkest recesses of this abyss of horror, seeks them out from this night of misery and drags them back, for a moment, to the light of day, not to console them, but to clothe them with a hideous, putrid, flaming, but imperishable body, more pestiferous than the robe of Dejanira; and it is only then that He abandons them to their fate.

“But, no; He does not, even then, simply leave them to their fate; for Hell only subsists, like the Earth, like Heaven, in virtue of a permanent action of His will, and, like them, would vanish into nothingness if He ceased to sustain its existence. His hand will therefore be laid upon the damned, throughout eternity, to prevent their fire from burning itself out and their bodies from being consumed; and He will do this, incessantly, in order that the sight of the perennial tortures of these wretched beings, thus cursed by Him with immortality, may intensify the happiness of the elect.”

14. We have said, and with truth, that the Hell of the Christians is more hideous than that of the Pagans. In Tartarus, we see the souls of the guilty, tortured by remorse, perpetually confronted with their crimes and their victims; we see them fleeing from the light which transpierces them, and seeking in vain to hide themselves from the sight of those whose glance follows them wherever they go. Their pride is abased and mortified; each of them bears the stigma of his past; each is punished by the recoil of his own evil deeds, and so certainly that for a great number of them, it is judged to be quite enough to leave them to themselves, without adding any other chastisements. But they are shades, that is to say, souls clothed with their fluidic bodies only, images of their terrestrial existence; we do not see, in the Pagan Hell, men re-clothed with their fleshly body, in order that they may be harrowed with the additional misery of physical suffering, nor any material fire “penetrating under their skin and saturating them with physical agony to the very marrow of their bones,” nor the lavish variety and ingenious refinements of the tortures that constitute the basis of the Christian Hell. We find, in Tartarus, judges who are inflexible but just, and who apportion the severity of the punishment to the degree of the faultiness for which it is inflicted; whereas, in the empire of Satan, all are subjected to the same tortures, and all these tortures are based on physical suffering; everything else is banished, including equity.

Undoubtedly there are, at the present day, and even in the churches themselves, many sensible men who do not accept these descriptions of Hell as literally true, and who regard them as being only allegories which are to be interpreted in a spiritual sense; but the opinion of such persons is merely individual, and is not the rule. The belief in a physical Hell, with all the consequences implied in that belief, is nonetheless, even at the present day, an article of the Christian creed.

15. It may be asked, “If these horrors do not really exist, how can they have been seen by ecstatics, even in a state of trance?” This is not the place for explaining the source of the fantastic images that are sometimes produced to the consciousness of the spirit, with all the appearances of reality. * We can here only remark that the fact of their production proves the truth of the principle laid down by us,** viz., that trance is the least reliable of all the modes of revelation, because this state of super-excitement is not always the result of a complete disengagement of the soul from the body, but is often complicated with reflexes of the subjects with which the mind of the seer has been busied in his waking state. The ideas that have been assimilated by the spirit of the seer, and of which his physical brain, or, rather, the perispiritual envelope corresponding to the brain has preserved the impress, are reproduced in trance but distorted as though in a mirage under vaporous and shadowy forms that cross each other, blend together, and make up unreal and fantastic pictures. The visions of ecstatics of all religions are always conformed to the religious belief with which they are imbued; and it is therefore not surprising that those who, like Saint Theresa, are strongly imbued with theological ideas of Hell, as conveyed by verbal or written descriptions and by paintings, should have visions which are, properly speaking, only the reproduction of these ideas and which partake of the nature of nightmare. A Pagan ecstatic, if he believed in the creed of his day would have seen in trance Tartarus and its Furies, just as in a vision of Olympus he would have seen Jupiter holding the thunderbolts in his hand.




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* Vide “The Mediums’ Book,” No. 113. – Tr. 17
** Vide “The Spirits’ Book,” Nos. 443, 444.

1. The Gospels make no mention of Purgatory, which was not admitted by the Church until the year 593 of our era. The idea of Purgatory is certainly more rational and more in conformity with the justice of God, since it established a penal code of less severity, and provides for the redemption of the minor sorts of wrongdoing.

The idea of Purgatory is, therefore, based on the principle of equity; it is, in the sphere of spirit- life, what temporary imprisonment is in the earthly life, in comparison with perpetual imprisonment. What would be thought of the justice of a code that should punish the greatest crimes and the slightest transgressions, indiscriminately, with the penalty of death? Unless there is a Purgatory, there can be only two alternatives for all souls; supreme happiness, or eternal torment. What, according to this hypothesis, becomes of the souls who have only been guilty of minor transgressions? They must either share the happiness of the elect without having attained perfection, or they must suffer the same punishment as the very greatest criminals without having done anything terribly wrong, which would be neither just nor reasonable.

2. But the notion of Purgatory was necessarily incomplete when it gained importance, for humanity at that time had no other idea of Hell than that of fire and they therefore naturally conceived of Purgatory as a lesser and shorter Hell; they supposed that souls were burned there, but with a burning less intense. And as the idea of progress is irreconcilable with the dogma of eternal punishment, they held that souls are delivered from Purgatory not as a consequence of their own moral improvement, but as an effect of the prayers that are said or paid for, by their friends on Earth for their deliverance.

The primary idea of Purgatory was true and good; but the same cannot be said of the consequences deduced from it, and the abuses of which it has thus become the source. Through the custom of paying for prayers on behalf of the souls in Purgatory, this doctrine has become a mine even more productive to those who work it than that of Hell. *


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* The doctrine of Purgatory has also given rise to the scandalous sale of indulgences, which pretend to enable people to purchase, with money, their entrance into Heaven. This gross abuse was the determining cause of the Reformation, and led to the rejection of the idea of Purgatory by Luther.

3. The site of Purgatory has never been determined, nor has the nature of the punishment endured therein ever been clearly defined. It was reserved for the new revelation to supply this lack by explaining the causes of the miseries of human life, the justice and aim of which can only be shown by the light that is thrown on the subject by the plurality of our existences.

Those miseries are necessarily a consequence of the imperfections of the soul; for, if the soul were perfect it would not do wrong, and would not have to undergo the sufferings which are the consequence of wrongdoing. Those, who, for instance, should be sober and moderate in all things, would not fall a prey to the maladies that are engendered by excess. Those who are unhappy are so, usually, through their own fault; but their imperfections are evidently a quality that they brought with them at birth, and which they must therefore have possessed before they came into the earthly life; they have, consequently, to expiate not only the faults they commit in their present life, but also the faults of their anterior lives for which they have not yet made reparation; they endure, in a life of troubles and trials, the wrongs they have caused others to endure in some previous existence. The vicissitudes that they undergo are for them, both a temporary punishment and a warning against the imperfections of which they must cure themselves, if they would avoid having to undergo similar vicissitudes in the future and advance on the road to perfection. The troubles of human life are so many lessons for the soul; lessons often hard to bear but that are all the more profitable for its future, in proportion to the depth of the impression left by them: they give rise to incessant struggles that develop its moral and intellectual faculties and strengthen it in the pursuit of goodness, and from which it always emerges victorious if it has had the courage to persevere in its efforts to the end. It reaps the reward of its victory in the spirit-life, into which it enters radiant and triumphant, like the soldier who returns from the battlefield to receive the conqueror’s palm.

4. Each successive existence affords the soul an opportunity of advancing a step on the road of progress; the length of the step thus accomplished depends on its own will, for it may make a considerable advance or it may remain stationary. In the latter case, its sufferings will have been sterile; and, as each soul must pay its debt sooner or later, it will have to begin a new existence under conditions still more painful, because, to the stain of its previous lives, which it has failed to efface, it has added a new stain.

It is, therefore, by means of its successive incarnations that the soul gradually works itself clear of its imperfections, that it purges itself from them, so to say, until it is sufficiently purified to have acquired the right to quit the world of expiation and to incarnate itself in worlds of a progressively happier nature, each of which it will subsequently quit so that, eventually, it may enter into the regions of supreme happiness.

Purgatory, when thus explained, is no longer a vague and uncertain hypothesis; it is a physical reality which we see and touch, and to which we are, even now, subjected; for Purgatory is nothing else than the worlds of expiation and the Earth, as yet, is one of those worlds; worlds in which human beings expiate their past and their present, for the advancement of their future happiness. But, contrary to the idea usually entertained in regard to Purgatory, each of us can abridge or prolong our stay in it, according to the degree of progress and purification to which we have attained as the result of our efforts at self-improvement; and we come out of it, not because we have finished our time or through the merits of somebody else, but as the reward of our own individual merits, in virtue of the principle set forth in the declaration of Christ: — “To each, according to his works;” a declaration which sums up the entire code of the Divine justice.

5. Those who suffer in the present life should therefore say to themselves that they suffer because they failed to purify themselves thoroughly in their preceding existence, and that, if they fail to accomplish their purification in their present life, they will suffer again in their next existence. And this is both just and reasonable. Suffering being inherent in imperfection, we suffer as long as we remain imperfect; just as we suffer from disease until we are cured of it. Thus, so long as human beings remain proud, so long will they suffer from the consequences of their pride; so long as they remain selfish, so long will they suffer from the consequences of their selfishness.

6. The guilty spirit suffers, first, in the spirit-life, in proportion to the degree of its imperfections; and, next, in the return to terrestrial life which is granted to it as a means of repairing its past wrongdoing; and it is to this end that it finds itself thrown into the society of those whom it has wronged, or placed in the midst of surroundings similar to those in which it did the wrongdoing that it has to expiate, or in a situation which is its opposite: as, for example, in a state of poverty, if the spirit has made a bad use of riches, or in a humble position, if it has been proud.

As previously remarked, the spirit’s expiation of wrongdoing is effected both in the spirit-world and also upon the Earth; the expiation of the earthly life is only the continuation and complement of the expiation which had been previously begun by it in the spirit-world, and is imposed on it in order to help forward its improvement, by giving it the opportunity of putting into practice the lessons it has learned; it is for the spirit to profit by the opportunity thus afforded it. Is it not better for it to come back to Earth, with the possibility of eventually winning entrance into Heaven, than to be condemned to everlasting misery, on quitting the earthly life? The new opportunity thus given to the spirit of working out its own purification, and consequent happiness, is a proof of the wisdom, the goodness, and the justice of God, who wills that each spirit incarnated in a human body should owe everything to its own efforts, and should be the artificer of its future; if it be unhappy, for a longer or shorter period, it has only itself to blame for it, and, whatever may be the intensity or duration of the suffering it may have brought upon itself, the door of repentance, amendment, and rehabilitation is always open for it.

7. On considering how great is the suffering of certain guilty spirits in the invisible world, how terrible is the situation of some of them, to what harrowing anxieties they are a prey, and how much their sufferings are intensified by their inability to foresee the end of them, we might well apply the term Hell to express the abyss of suffering and horror in which they find themselves, were it not that this word has been adopted as implying the idea of an eternal and physical punishment. Thanks to the light that has been thrown on this subject by the higher spirits, and to the examples that they placed before us by the ostensible communication now being generalized between incarnate and discarnate souls, we know that the duration of expiation is subordinate to the amendment of the wrongdoer.

8. Spiritism, therefore, does not deny the doctrine of the future punishment of the guilty; on the contrary, it asserts, explains, and justifies that doctrine. What Spiritism denies and destroys is the idea of a localized, physical Hell, with its fires and pitchforks, of unpardonable sins and eternal punishment. It does not deny the reality of Purgatory, for it proves that the world in which we now find ourselves is, in fact, a Purgatory, that is to say, a place of punishment and discipline; and, by the explanation it thus furnishes of the sorrows and trials of the earthly life, it defines and gives precision to the vague idea that has been previously put forth in regard to Purgatory, and, by so doing, renders it credible and acceptable to those by whom it was formerly rejected.

Does Spiritism reject the idea of praying for the dead? It does just the contrary, since the suffering spirits earnestly implore of us to pray for them; it shows us that to do so is one of the duties imposed on us by charity, and it also shows us the effectiveness of prayer as a means of bringing them back to goodness, and, thus, of shortening their sufferings. * Addressing its doctrines to our human intelligence, Spiritism gives religious belief to the unbelieving; it proves the value of prayer to those who formerly mocked at it. But Spiritism also shows that the effectiveness of prayer is in the thought it embodies and not in the words in which it is clothed, that the most efficacious prayers are those of the heart and not of the lips, those which are offered of our own volition, and not those which we cause to be said by others for money.


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* Vide “The Gospel According to Spiritism,” chap. XXVII, Action of Prayer.

9. Whether the chastisement of the guilty takes place in spirit-life or upon the Earth, and whatever its duration, it has always a term, more or less near, more or less distant. There are, therefore, for a spirit, only two alternatives, viz., temporary punishment, proportioned to the degree of culpability, and reward, proportioned to merit. Spiritism rejects the third alternative, viz., that of eternal damnation. It regards hell as a symbol of the severest forms of suffering endured by certain spirits, and of which the termination is unforeseen by them; but it regards Purgatory as a reality.

The word Purgatory suggests the idea of a circumscribed locality, and it is therefore more appropriately applied to Earth, considered as a place of expiation, than to the infinity of space in which suffering spirits undergo the expiations of the discarnate state; moreover, the earthly life is, by its very nature, a veritable expiation.

When human beings shall have grown better, they will furnish only good spirits to the invisible world; and these spirits, on incarnating themselves on Earth, will furnish only improved elements to the human race. Earth will then cease to be a world of expiation, and its human inhabitants will no longer have to endure the miseries that are the consequence of their present imperfection. This transformation is being effected at the present day; its accomplishment will raise the Earth to a higher rank in the hierarchy of worlds. (Vide “The Gospel According to Spiritism,” chap. III.)

10. Why did Christ not speak of Purgatory? Because, the idea of Purgatory had not then been conceived by the human mind, and there was, consequently, no word by which to express it. He employed the word hell, the only one then in use, as a generic term, to designate the entire subject of future punishment in general, without reference to details. If, in contradistinction to the word hell he had employed another word equivalent to purgatory, he would have been unable to define its precise meaning without opening up a question that was reserved for the future; and he would also have appeared to declare the existence of two regions especially devoted to punishment. The word hell, in its general acceptation, suggestive of the idea of punishment, necessarily implied the idea of purgatory, which is only one of the modes of penalty. The future, being destined to enlighten humankind in regard to the nature of future punishment, was also destined, in so doing, to reduce the idea of hell to its true proportions.

The fact that the Church, after the lapse of six centuries, considered it necessary to supplement the teaching of Jesus by asserting the existence of Purgatory is an admission, on the part of theologians, that he did not reveal everything during his sojourn upon the Earth. Why, then, should not his teachings be progressively supplemented in regard to other points?

1. The belief in eternal punishment is losing ground so rapidly, from day to day, that the gift of prophecy is not needed to enable us to foresee its extinction at no distant time. It has been combated by arguments so powerful and so unanswerable that it seems almost superfluous to trouble ourselves with disproving a fallacy that is dying out of itself. Nevertheless, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that this doctrine, in spite of its declining influence, is still the rallying-point of the adversaries of progress, the article of their creed which they defend most obstinately, precisely because they feel it to be its most vulnerable aspect, and because they perceive how dangerous a breach its fall will make in the theological edifice. Regarded from this point of view, the doctrine in question may still be held to merit serious examination.

2. The doctrine of eternal punishment, like that of a physical Hell, was useful while the intellectual and moral backwardness of humankind required that they should be held in check by the fear of incurring the doom thus held up before their imagination. While they remained at too low a point of advancement to be efficaciously acted upon by the prospect of merely moral suffering, it is evident that they would have been as little restrained by the idea of any merely temporary punishment; and it is equally evident that they would have been incapable of comprehending the justice of graduated and proportionate penalties, because they could not have appreciated the various shades of right or wrong action, or the relative importance of either extenuating or aggravating circumstances.

3. The nearer humans are to the primitive state, the more closely they are allied to materiality; for the moral sense is precisely the faculty of the human mind, which is the last developed. For this reason, they could only form to themselves a very imperfect idea of God and of God’s attributes, and an equally vague conception of the future life. They molded their idea of the Deity upon themselves. For them, God was an absolute sovereign, all the more formidable because invisible, like a despotic monarch who, hidden within his palace, never allows himself to be seen by his subjects. Having no conception of moral force, they could only conceive of God’s power as being of a physical nature; they imagined God wielding the thunderbolt, moving in the midst of lightning and tempests, and scattering ruin and desolation around Him after the fashion of earthly conquerors. A God of love and of mercy would not have seemed to them to be a God, but a feeble being unable to secure obedience. On the contrary, implacable vengeance, chastisements the most terrific and unending were quite in harmony with the idea they had thus formed to themselves of the Divinity, and offered nothing repugnant to their minds. Being, themselves, implacable in their resentments, cruel to their enemies, pitiless for the vanquished, it appeared to them perfectly natural that God, whose power was superior to their own, should be still more implacable, cruel and pitiless than themselves.

For the influencing of such human beings, a religious belief in harmony with their rude and violent nature was necessary. A religion of spirituality, of love and of charity, would have been impossible with the brutality of their usages and passions. The Draconian legislation of Moses, which represented the Divine Being as a jealous and revengeful God, scarcely sufficed to keep within bounds a stiff-necked people committed to his charge; the gentle doctrine of Jesus would have awakened no echo in their hearts and would have been powerless to influence their action.

4. In proportion as the spiritual sense of humankind has become developed, the veil of materiality has become less opaque, and human beings have become better fitted to understand spiritual things; but this change has only taken place very gradually. At the time when Jesus came among them, it was possible for him to proclaim a merciful God, to speak of his “kingdom” as not being “of this world,” to say to men and women, “Love one another,” and “Return good for evil;” whereas, under the Mosaic Law, God was represented as sanctioning the principle of revenge summed up in the dictum, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

What, then, was the state of the souls who were living upon the Earth at the time of Jesus? Were they souls who had been newly created and were then incarnated for the first time? If so, God must have created in the time of Jesus, souls of better quality than those that God created in the time of Moses. But, if that were the case, what has become of those earlier-created souls? Have they been condemned to languish forever in the brutishness of the primitive era? Simple common sense suffices to show us that such a supposition is untenable. No; the souls incarnated upon the Earth, in the time of Jesus, were the same souls who, after having lived here under the empire of the Law of Moses, had gradually acquired, in successive existences posterior to that period, a degree of development sufficient to enable them to understand a teaching of a higher nature, and who, at the present day, are sufficiently advanced to be able to receive the still higher teaching now being given by Christ’s command, in fulfillment of his promise.

5. At the time of Christ’s appearance, it was impossible for him to reveal to humanity all the truth in regard to their future. He says, expressly, “I have many things to tell you, but you could not understand them; and I am therefore compelled to speak to you in parables.” In regard to all points of morality, that is to say, all the duties of all human beings to their fellows, his teaching was explicit, because, as those duties refer to the relations of daily life, he knew that men and women would be able to understand him; in regard to all other matters, he confined himself to sowing, under the form of allegory, the germs of the truths that were destined to be developed at a later period.

The nature of future rewards and punishments was one of those points which were thus left by him in abeyance. He could not inculcate, especially in regard to future punishment, ideas so diametrically opposed to those held by men and women of his time. He came to trace out new duties for the human race, to inculcate charity and the love of one’s neighbor in place of the spirit of hatred and of vengeance, to substitute abnegation for selfishness, and such a change was, in itself, immense; he could not have gone farther without weakening the dread of the punishment in store for wrongdoing, because it would have weakened the sanction of duty in the minds of his hearers. He promised the Kingdom of Heaven to the righteous; that kingdom was, consequently, closed to the wicked. Whither, then, did the wicked go? It was necessary to suggest an antithesis to the idea of “Heaven” of a nature capable of impressing a salutary terror on minds still too much under the influence of materiality to be able to assimilate the idea of spirit-life; for it should not be forgotten that Jesus addressed his teachings to the multitude, to the least enlightened portion of the society of his day, and that, in order to act upon the minds of those around him, it was necessary to present to them images that should be palpable and not subtle. He therefore abstained from going into details that could not have been appreciated in his day; he contented himself with holding up the opposite prospects of reward and of punishment; and this was all that he could usefully do at that period.

6. While Jesus threatened the wicked with “everlasting fire,” he also threatened them with being thrown into “Gehenna;” but what was “Gehenna?” A place in the outskirts of Jerusalem, into which all the filth and rubbish of the city was habitually thrown. If we take the statement of “everlasting fire” as being a literal truth, why should we not also take the statement about being thrown “into Gehenna” as equally literal? No one has ever supposed the latter statement to be anything else than one of the energetic figures employed by Jesus to strike the imagination of the populace; why should we give a different interpretation to the “fire” with which he threatens the guilty? If he had intended to represent their subjection to that “fire” as eternal, he would have been in contradiction with himself in exalting the goodness and the mercy of God; for mercy and inexorability are contraries that mutually annul each other. The whole teaching of Jesus is a proclamation of the goodness and mercy of the Creator; and it is therefore evident that it is only through an entire misinterpretation of his utterances that the latter can be held to sanction the dogma of eternal punishment.

In The Lord’s Prayer, he tells us to say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us;” but, if the trespasser against the Divine law had no forgiveness to hope for, it would be useless for him or her to ask for it. But is the forgiveness thus alluded to by Jesus as a certainty, unconditional? Is it an act of grace on the part of God, a pure and simple remission of the penalty incurred by the transgressor? No; for the obtaining of this forgiveness by us is made conditional on our having forgiven; in other words, if we do not forgive, we shall not be forgiven. Since God makes our forgiveness of trespasses against ourselves the absolute condition of God’s forgiveness of our trespasses against God, God could not demand of weak humankind to do that which God, with God’s almighty power, refused to do; and the teaching of The Lord’s Prayer is therefore a standing protest against the doctrine which attributes eternal and implacable vengeance to God.

7. For men and women who had but a confused notion of the spiritual nature of the soul, there was nothing absurd in the idea of a region of physical fire, especially as there was a common belief in a Pagan Hell, universally divulged; nor was there, in the idea of punishment prolonged throughout eternity, anything calculated to shock the feelings of those who had been subjected, for centuries, to the penal code of stern and terrible Jehovah. As employed by Jesus, the threat of “everlasting fire” could only be metaphorical. What did it matter that this metaphor would be understood literally, for a time, if it was useful as a curb? He foresaw that time and progress would bring humankind on towards a comprehension of the true meaning of this allegory, and according to his prediction, “The Spirit of Truth” should come to enlighten humankind respecting “all things.”

The essential characteristic of irrevocable condemnation is its implication of the inefficacy of repentance; but Jesus never said that repentance could fail to find favor in the sight of God. On the contrary, he always represents God as clement, merciful, and ready to welcome back the returning prodigal to the spiritual home. He never shows God as inflexible excepting to the unrepentant sinner; but even while insisting on the certainty of the punishment that awaits the guilty, he holds out the prospect of forgiveness as soon as the wrongdoer shall have returned to the path of duty. Such, assuredly, is not the portrait of a pitiless God; and it should never be forgotten that Jesus never pronounced an irremissible sentence against anyone, not even against the most wicked.

8. All the primitive religions, in accordance with the character of the peoples among whom they took their rise, have made to themselves warrior-gods whom they supposed to fight for them at the head of their armies. The Jehovah of the Hebrews furnished the “chosen people,” on innumerable occasions, with the means of exterminating their enemies; Jehovah rewarded them by giving them victories and punished them by allowing them to undergo defeat. Conformably with their idea of God, the primitive nations imagined that such a God was to be honored and appeased by the blood of animals or of human beings; hence the sanguinary sacrifices that have played so prominent a part in so many of the religions of antiquity. The Jews had abolished human sacrifices; the Christians, notwithstanding the teachings of Christ, believed, for many centuries, that they honored the Creator by giving up thousands, of those whom they styled heretics to tortures and to the stake, thus continuing, under another form, the traditions of human sacrifices, for such were really the atrocities in question, since, according to the received formula, they were perpetrated “for the greater glory of God,” and with an accompaniment of solemn religious ceremony. Even at the present day, nations that call themselves “Christian” invoke “the God of Armies” before the battles and glorify this God after their victories; and they do this even when the purpose of their fighting is as unjust and as antichristian as possible.

9. How slow is humankind in getting rid of its prejudices, of its habits, of its early ideas! We are separated from Moses by forty centuries, and yet our Christian generation stills retains traces of the usages of his barbarian time, consecrated, or, at least, approved, by the religions of our day! To put an end to the use of the stake, and to give currency to a more just idea of the true greatness of God, has required all the force of the opinions of the non-orthodox, of those who are considered as heretics by the Church. But although the stake has been abolished, social and moral persecutions are still in full vigor, so deeply rooted in the human mind is the idea of a cruel God. Filled with the notions that have been instilled into them from their infancy, men and women naturally see nothing strange in the statement that God, who is represented to them as being honored by barbarous deeds, should condemn human beings to eternal tortures, and behold, without pity, the sufferings of the damned.

Yes, it is the philosophers, those who are qualified as “impious” by the Church, who have been scandalized at seeing the name of God profaned by being associated with deeds unworthy of God’s goodness; it is they who have presented to humanity a nobler idea of the greatness of the Divine Being, by stripping away from that idea the passions and pettiness attributed to God by the unenlightened beliefs of the primitive ages. The religious sentiment has thereby gained in dignity what it has lost in external show; for, while there are fewer devotees of ecclesiastical formalities, there are a greater number of men and women who are sincerely religious in heart and feeling.

But, besides the latter, how many are there who, going no deeper than the surface, have been led to negation of the idea of Providential action! Through its failure to harmonize its doctrines with the progress of the human mind, the Church has driven some to Deism, others, to absolute unbelief, others, again, to Pantheism; in other words, it has driven humankind to make gods of themselves, for lack of any higher ideal.

10. To return to the dogma of eternal punishment, the principal argument invoked in its favor is the following:

It is admitted, among humankind, that the heinousness of an offence is proportioned to the quality of the offended party. An offence committed against a sovereign, being considered as more heinous than it would be if committed against a private person, is therefore punished more severely. God is greater than any earthly sovereign; since God is infinite, an offence against God is infinite also, and must consequently incur an infinite (that is to say, an eternal) punishment.

Refutation. The refutation of any argument is a reasoning that must have a definite starting- point, a basis on which it rests, in a word, a clear and stable premise. We take, as our premise the necessary attributes of God, that is to say, the attributes without which God could not be God.

God is unique, eternal, immutable, immaterial, all-powerful, sovereignly just and good, infinite in all God’ s perfections.

It is impossible to conceive of God otherwise than as possessing the infinity of God’s perfections; were God otherwise, God would not be God, for there might be some other Being possessing the quality, which God lacked. In order for God to be above all other beings, God must necessarily be such that no other being can surpass or even equal God in any respect. Consequently God must be infinite in all God’s attributes.

The attributes of God, being infinite, are not susceptible of increase or of diminution; otherwise, they would not be infinite, and God would not be perfect. If the smallest particle were taken from any of God’s attributes, God would no longer be God, for there might be some other being more perfect than God.

The infinity of a quality excludes the possibility of the existence of any quality that is contrary to it, and which would be capable of annulling or of lessening it. A being that is infinitely good cannot possess the smallest particle of wickedness, any more than a being that was infinitely bad could possess the smallest particle of goodness; just as no object could be absolutely black if it had the slightest tint of white, or absolutely white, if it had the smallest speck of black.

This basis and starting point being laid down, we oppose, to the proposition brought forward above, the following arguments:

11. It is only an infinite being that can do anything infinite. Humankind, being limited in its virtues, in its knowledge, in its power, in its aptitudes, in its terrestrial existence, can produce only that which is limited.

If humankind could be infinite in what it does amiss, it could also be infinite in what it does aright, and, in that case, it would be equal to God. But, if humankind were infinite in what it does aright, it would do nothing wrong, for absolute goodness is the exclusion of all evil.

On the other hand, even if it were possible to admit that a temporary offence against the Divinity could be infinite, God, if God sought revenge by the infliction of an infinite punishment, would be infinitely vindictive; if God were infinitely vindictive, God could not be infinitely good and merciful, for the former attribute is the negation of the others. If God were not infinitely good, God would not be perfect; and, if God were not perfect, God would not be God.

If God were inexorable towards the repentant sinner, God would not be merciful; if God were not merciful, God would not be infinitely good.

Why would God impose on humankind the law of forgiveness, if God did not also forgive? If such were the case, it would follow that men and women who forgave their enemies and returned good for evil would be better than God, who remains deaf to the repentance of the weak creatures that have sinned against God, and who refuses to grant to those creatures, throughout eternity, the slightest mitigation of the torments which their weakness and their inexperience have brought upon them!

God, who is everywhere and sees everything, must see the tortures of the damned. If God remained insensitive to their groans throughout eternity, God would be eternally devoid of pity; if God were devoid of pity, God would not be infinitely good.

12. To this argument it is replied that the sinner who repents before dying experiences the pity of God, and that, consequently, the very greatest sinner may find favor in God’s sight.

This is admitted on all hands, and it is but reasonable to assume that God forgives only those who repent and that God remains inflexible towards the unrepentant; but, if God is full of pity for the souls who repent before quitting their fleshly bodies, why should God cease to be so for those who repent after death? Why should repentance be efficacious only during an earthly lifetime, which is but an instant, and inefficacious throughout eternity, which has no end? If the goodness and mercy of God are circumscribed within a fixed time, they are not infinite, and, if such is the case, God is not infinitely good.

13. God is supremely just. The most perfect justice is neither that which is utterly inexorable, nor that which leaves wrongdoing uncorrected; it is that which keeps the most exact account of good and evil, which rewards the one and chastises the other with the most perfect equity, and which never makes the slightest mistake.

If, for a temporary fault – which is, always, a result of the imperfection of human nature, and, often, of the surroundings in which the wrongdoer has been placed – the soul were to be castigated eternally, without hope of forgiveness or of any diminution of suffering, there would be no proportion between the fault and its chastisement, and, consequently, no justice in the chastisements of the future.

If those who have committed evil retrace their steps, repent, and demand of God to be allowed to make reparation for their evil deeds, this change of mind constitutes a return to virtue, to rectitude of feeling. But if the castigation of the other life were irrevocable, such a return to virtuous sentiments would remain sterile; and as, in that case, God would take no account of their desire for amendment, God would not be just. Among human beings, convicts who repent and amend obtain a commutation of their punishment, or, sometimes, even a full pardon; so that there would be more equity in human jurisprudence than in the penal code of the Divinity!

If the sentence passed on the sinner were irrevocable, repentance would be useless, and the sinner, being shut out forever from virtue, would be forcibly doomed to remain in evil; so that God would not only condemn the sinner to suffer forever, but would also compel such a one to remain forever in wickedness. But, in that case, God would be neither just nor good; in other words, God would not be God.

14. Being infinite in all things, God must know all things, past, present, and future; and God must therefore know, at the very moment when God creates a soul, whether or not that soul will go widely enough astray to incur eternal damnation. If God does not know, God’s knowledge is not infinite, in which case God is not God; if God knows, and voluntarily creates a being that God foresees to be doomed, from its beginning, to the endurance of eternal misery, God is not good.

If God can be touched by the repentance of the soul that has incurred the penalty of its wrongdoing, and can extend pity to that soul and take it out of Hell, there is no such thing as eternal damnation, and the doctrine which inculcates that idea must be admitted to be of human invention.

15. The doctrine of eternal damnation, therefore, leads inevitably to the negation or the lessening of some of the attributes of God; it is irreconcilable with the infinity and perfection of those attributes, and we are, consequently, forced to the following conclusion:

If God is perfect, there can be no such thing as eternal punishment; if eternal punishment exists, God is not perfect.

16. The advocates of eternal punishment bring forward the following argument:

“The rewards accorded to the good, being eternal, must have their counterpart in an eternity of punishment. Justice demands that the degree of punishment should be proportioned to a similar degree of reward.”

Refutation. — Does God create a soul with a view to rendering it happy or to rendering it unhappy? Evidently, the happiness of the creature must be the aim of its creation, as, were it otherwise, God would not be good. The soul attains to happiness as the consequence of its own worthiness; that worthiness once acquired, its fruition can never be lost by the soul, for such a loss would imply degeneracy on its part, and the soul that has become intrinsically good, being incapable of evil, cannot degenerate. The eternity of happiness of the purified soul is therefore implied in its immortality.

But, before attaining to perfection, the soul has to wage a long struggle, to fight many a battle with its evil passions. God having created the soul, not perfect – but susceptible of becoming such, in order that it may possess the merits of its labors – the soul may err. Its lapses from the right road are the consequence of its natural weakness. If, for a single error, the soul is to be punished eternally, it might fairly be asked why God did not create it strong to begin with? The chastisement that the soul brings upon itself, by its wrongdoing, gives it notice that it has done wrong, and should have for effect to bring it back to the path of duty. If its punishment were irremissible, any desire on its part to do better would be superfluous; and, in that case, the Providential aim of creation would be unattainable, since, although there would be some beings predestined to happiness, there would be other beings predestined to misery. But if we admit that a guilty soul can repent, we must also admit that it can become good; if it can become good, it may aspire to happiness: would God be just if God denied to it the means of rehabilitation?

Good being the final aim of creation, happiness, which is the result and reward of goodness, must, in the nature of things, be eternal; but chastisement, which is only a means for leading the soul to goodness and to happiness, must be only temporary. The most elementary notion of justice, even among humankind, suffices to show us that it would be unjust to inflict perpetual punishment on one who had the desire and the determination to amend.

17. Another argument in favor of eternal punishment is the following:

“The fear of eternal punishment is a curb; if that fear were done away with, human beings would give free course to all their evil tendencies.”

Refutation — This reasoning would be justified if the non-eternal sins implied the elimination of any penal sanction. If the happy or unhappy situation in a future life were a rigorous consequence of Divine Justice, and the future situation of a good individual and a perverse one were equal, there would be no justice even though it was not eternal; the punishment would, nonetheless, be a torment. Moreover, the prospect of future punishment and this reality will necessarily be believed in, and consequently dreaded, in proportion to the reasonableness of the aspect under which it is presented. The threat of a penalty, in the reality of which human beings do not believe, has no restraining effect on their action; and the threat of eternal punishment is of this nature.

The doctrine of eternal punishment, as previously remarked, was natural and useful in the past; at the present day, it is not only inefficacious to restrain humanity from wrongdoing, but it causes them to disbelieve. Before holding up that doctrine before the eyes of men and women as a necessity, its advocates should demonstrate its reality, and they should also, as the most conclusive argument in its favor, show that it exercises a moralizing effect on those who hold it and who endeavor to uphold it. If it is powerless to restrain from wrongdoing those who say that they believe in it, what action can it exert over those who do not believe in it?

18. We have hitherto combated the dogma of eternal punishment by argument only; we shall now show that it is in contradiction with positive facts that we have before our eyes, and that it is, consequently, impossible that it can be true.

According to the dogma we are considering, the fate of the soul is irrevocably fixed at death, so that death constitutes an absolute barrier to progress. The one question, therefore, which has to be decided, is this; – Is the soul capable of progress, or is it not capable of progress? On this question the whole subject must be rested; for, if the soul is capable of progress, eternal punishment is impossible.

And how can we doubt that the soul has such a capability, when we behold the immense variety of moral and intellectual aptitudes existing among the peoples of the Earth, from that of the most savage to that of the most civilized, and when we reflect upon the differences presented by the same people in successive periods of history? If we assume that the souls of a given people, at those successive periods, are not the same souls, we must also assume that God creates souls at every degree of advancement, according to some differences of times and places, thus favoring some, while condemning others to perpetual inferiority; but such an assumption is incompatible with the Divine justice, which must be the same for all the creatures of the universe.

19. It is incontestable that the soul, in the state of intellectual and moral backwardness that characterizes the peoples that have not emerged from barbarism, cannot possess the same aptitudes for enjoying the splendors of infinity as are possessed by the soul whose intellectual and moral faculties are more largely developed. Therefore, if the souls of barbarians do not progress, those souls can never, throughout eternity, and even while influenced by the most favorable conditions, enjoy anything more than the low and negative happiness of the barbarian degree. The conclusion is consequently forced upon us (if we admit the justice of God), that the souls of the most advanced peoples are the very same souls that were formerly at the barbarian degree of backwardness, but that have since progressed; and we are thus brought face to face with the great question of the plurality of existences, as the only rational solution of the difficulty. We will, however, for the time being, set that solution aside, and consider the soul in a single lifetime.

20. Let us suppose – what is so often seen – a young man of twenty, ignorant, vicious, denying alike the existence of God and of the soul, and giving himself up to wickedness of every kind, until he finds himself placed among new circumstances, and influences, that exercise a beneficial effect upon his mind. He, then, relinquishes his former habits, enters upon a course of useful study, gradually surmounts his evil tendencies, and becomes, at length, an enlightened, virtuous, and useful member of society. Is not the fact of such a reformation – and we witness such reformations every day – a positive proof of the progress of the soul during an earthly lifetime? The reformed rake, whose moral advancement we are supposing, dies, at length, full of years and of honors, and no one has the slightest doubt of his salvation. But what would have been his fate if some accident had caused his death some forty or fifty years before? At that time he was, in all respects, just in the right condition for being damned, and all possibility of progress would have been over for him. So that, in such a case, a man, who, according to the doctrine of eternal punishment, would have been lost forever if he had died when he was young – which might have happened as the result of some casualty – is saved, simply because his life has been prolonged. But, as his soul was able to progress during his earthly lifetime, why might it not have achieved an equal amount of progress in the same length of time after his death if some cause, independent of his will, had prevented him from achieving that progress at a later period in his earthly life? Why, then, should God have refused to such a soul the means of progressing after death? Repentance, though tardy, would have been awakened in this individual in the course of time; but if, at the very instant of death, his soul had been met by an irrevocable condemnation, its repentance would have remained sterile throughout eternity, and its aptitude for progressing would have been neutralized forever.

21. The dogma of eternal punishment is therefore irreconcilable with the doctrine of the progress of the soul, to which it would constitute an insuperable obstacle. These two doctrines mutually annihilate each other; if either one of them be true, the other must necessarily be a fiction. Which of them is the true one? That progress is a law of nature, divine, incontrovertible, and not a mere theory, is evident; for progress is a fact, the reality of which is attested by experience; and since, on the one hand, progress exists, while, on the other hand, its existence is irreconcilable with the dogma of eternal punishment, we are compelled to admit that this dogma is false, and that eternal punishment has no existence. Moreover, the utter absurdity of such a dogma becomes at once apparent when we reflect that Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, and half the saints of the ecclesiastical calendar, would never, if that dogma were true, have been admitted into “heaven,” if they had happened to die before the occurrence of the various incidents which led to their conversion!

To this last remark it will be replied by some that the conversion of those saintly personages was a result, not of any progress due to the spontaneous action of their soul, but of divine “grace,” accorded to them from on high, and by which their conscience was miraculously touched.

But such a reply is a mere trifling with words. If they began by doing wrong, and, afterwards, took to doing right, their change of action shows that they had become better, in other words, that they had progressed. Why should such a favor have been granted to them and not granted to everyone else? Why should we attribute to God a favoritism incompatible with God’s justice, and with the equal love, which, being just, God necessarily bears to all God’s creatures?

Spiritism, in accordance with the express teachings of the Gospel, with reason, and with justice, shows us that each soul is the artisan of its fortunes, both during life and after death; that it owes its progress and happiness to its own efforts, and not to any favoritism; that God rewards its endeavors to advance in the path of progress, and chastises its negligence as long as it continues to be negligent.

22. The belief in the physical nature and eternal duration of the future punishment of the wicked has maintained its hold on the human mind, as a salutary restraint, during the ages in which men and women were still too backward to comprehend the force of moral considerations. It has been with the world, in regard to this belief, as with children, who are held in check, for a few years, by the chimerical terrors which are brought to bear on them; but there comes a time when the minds of children has outgrown the empty tales that formerly frightened them, and when it would be simply absurd on the part of those about them to attempt any longer to influence them by any such means, and when, if their parents or guardians pretended that those tales were true and were to be accepted and respected as such, they would necessarily forfeit the confidence of their children.

It is thus with the convictions of humankind at the present day. The human race is passing out of its childhood and shaking itself free of the leading strings of the past. People are no longer either mere tools, yielding passively to the pressure of physical force, or credulous children, believing implicitly whatever is told them.

23. Belief, at the present day, must be based on reason; consequently, no doctrine that is contrary to reason can continue to maintain its hold on the human mind. The doctrine of eternal punishment may have been not only harmless, but also even useful, at a given period of human development; but it has become positively dangerous, now that the period of its usefulness has passed. When the human mind has acquired the power and habit of reasoning, the attempt to impose upon it, as the absolute truth, something that is contrary to reason, must necessarily lead to one of two alternatives; either those whose minds are thus brought face to face with an absurdity wish to believe, and seek out for themselves a more rational conception – in which case they break loose from their official teachers – or they throw the very idea of belief overboard, and become skeptics or atheists. For all who have calmly studied this aspect of the question, it is evident that, at the present day, the dogma of eternal punishment has made more materialists and atheists than the arguments of all the so- called philosophers put together.

The course of human thought is always onward. Humanity can only be led by considerations in harmony with this progressive movement of human ideas; the attempt to arrest this movement or turn it back, or merely to fall into its rear, while the current continues to flow on, must necessarily be fatal to the influence of those who make the attempt. To follow, or not to follow, this onward movement of the human mind is a question of life or death, for creeds as for governments. Is this to be regretted or to be rejoiced in? Assuredly, it must appear regrettable to those who, living upon the past, see the past slipping from under them; but, for those whose eyes are turned towards the future, it is the law of progress, the law of God, against which all resistance is in vain, for those who fight against the Divine Will won’t succeed.

But why should any person be determined to uphold, by main force, a belief that is not only dying out from the convictions of humankind, but which, in point of fact, is far more injurious than useful to the cause of religion? Alas! It is sad to have to make such a confession, but the fact is that, in the desperate efforts now being made to keep up the doctrine we are considering, the question of religion is subordinated to the question of pecuniary gain. The belief in eternal punishment has been made a source of large revenue to those who have inculcated it, because there has been craftily interwoven with it the idea that men, through the giving of money, can procure for themselves admission into Heaven, and thus preserve themselves from Hell. The sums that this doctrine has brought, and still brings, defy all calculation; it is a tax levied on the fear of eternity. This tax being a voluntary one, its amount proportioned to the degree of belief accorded to the doctrine on which it is based; if that belief should cease to exist, the tax to which it gives rise would also cease to exist. The little child, who believes in the existence of the werewolf, willingly gives his cake to the bigger boy who promises to drive the dreaded visitant away; but when the child has ceased to believe in werewolves, he keeps the cake for himself.

24. As the new revelation, inculcating more rational ideas in regard to the future life, has made clear that each soul must work out its own salvation through its own efforts, it has naturally excited an opposition that is all the more bitter in proportion to the importance of the source of pecuniary gain which it destroys. The same angry opposition is always excited by every new discovery or invention that threatens to change the habits of humankind. All those who have been accustomed to gain their living by the old costly ways of the past, cry out in the same voice, and decry the innovations. Is it supposable, for instance, that the art of printing, notwithstanding the immense services it was evidently destined to render to the human race, could have been welcomed, at its commencement, by the enthusiastic acclamations of the numerous body of copyists? Assuredly not; on the contrary, they would naturally receive the new invention with curses. All kinds of laborsaving machinery, railways, and the thousands of other inventions have met with similar opposition.

By the skeptic, the doctrine of eternal punishment is regarded as an absurdity that would be impossible to discuss without a smile; while, in the eyes of the philosophers, it constitutes, through the falsities it implies and the abuses to which it leads, a serious danger for society: the sincerely religious man desires, for the honor of religion and the well-being of society, to see those abuses disappear through the sweeping away of the unfounded and irrational assumption that is their cause.

25. To those who bring forward, in support of the doctrine of eternal punishment, certain Bible- texts that may seem, at first sight, to favor that doctrine, we reply that the Bible contains other texts, of a contrary character, and that are more clearly and decidedly condemnatory of that doctrine. For example, the following passages from Ezekiel are an explicit denial, not only of eternal punishment, but also of the condemnation supposed to have been entailed, by the sin of the father of the human race, on his descendants:

1. The Lord spoke to me again, and said: — 2. How is it that you have among you this parable, and that you have made of it a proverb in Israel, saying: —”The fathers have eaten unripe grapes, and the children’s teeth have thereby been set on edge?” – 3. I swear by myself, said the Lord God, that this parable shall no longer pass among you as a proverb in Israel; — 4. For all souls are mine; the soul of the son is mine as is the soul of the father; the soul that has sinned, that soul, itself, shall die.

5. If a man is righteous, if he acts according to equity and justice; – 7. If he neither grieves nor opposes anyone; if he gives back to his debtor the pledge he had received from him; if he takes nothing from others by violence; if he gives of his bread to the hungry; if he covers with garments those who are naked; – 8. If he does not lend on usury and receives no more than he gave; if he turns away his hand from iniquity, and if he renders a just verdict between two men who plead against one another; – 9. If he walks in the path of my precepts and keeps my commandments, so that he acts according to the truth: he is righteous, and he shall surely live, said the Lord God. 10. If this man has a son who is a robber, and who sheds blood, or who does any evil deeds, – 13. This son shall surely die, because he has done that which is detestable, and his blood shall be on his own hand. – 14. But if this wicked son has a son who, seeing the evil deeds that his father has done, is seized with fear and takes good care not to imitate his wrongdoing, – 17. This son shall not die for the iniquity of his father, but shall surely live. – 18. His father, who had oppressed others by his calumnies, and who had done evil deeds in the midst of his people, is put to death for his own iniquity.

19. If you say: “Why has not the son borne the iniquity of his father?”, it is because the son has acted according to equity and justice; because he has kept all my precepts and has practiced them; for which reason he shall surely live.

20. The soul that has sinned, that soul, itself, shall die: The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, and the father shall not bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous man shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked man shall be upon him.

21. If the wicked man repents of all the sins he has committed; if he keeps all my precepts, and if he acts according to equity and justice, he shall surely live and shall not die. – 22. I will no longer remember the iniquity he had committed; he shall live in the deeds of righteousness that he has done.

23. Do I desire the death of the wicked? Said the Lord God; and do I not, on the contrary, desire that he should be converted, and that he should turn from his evil path, and that he should live? – (Ezekiel, chap. XXXIII v. 11, and on)

The Spiritist Doctrine, in regard to the future punishment of wrongdoing, is no more founded on a pre-conceived theory than are the other elements of that doctrine. Spiritism in all its proportions is based on observation, and it is this fact which constitutes its certainty and its irrefragability. No one had assumed, a priori, that the souls of men, after death, found themselves in such and such a situation; it is those souls themselves, who, having quitted the earthly life, are now entering into communication with us, in order to initiate us into the mysteries of the life beyond the grave, to describe to us the happiness or unhappiness of their present state of existence, their impressions, and the transformation undergone by them at the death of their body; in short, to complete, in regard to this matter, the teachings of Christ.

The information thus arrived at has not been derived from the statements of a single spirit, who might have observed the things of the other life solely from its own point of view under one and the same aspect, or who might still have been under the sway of its earthly prejudices and prepossessions; neither is it derived from a revelation made to a single individual, who might have been deceived by appearances, nor from the visions of an ecstatic which are always more or less illusory, and are often only the mirage of an excited imagination: * It is derived from the observation, and statements, of innumerable spirits, of every category, from the highest to the lowest,32 with the aid of innumerable intermediaries scattered over the entire globe. The new revelation, therefore, is not being made exclusively through any one channel; all inquirers may see, and observe, for themselves; and no one is obliged to base his or her belief on the statements of others.


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* Vide chap. VI, No. 7, “The Spirits’ Book,” Nos. 443, 444

The spiritist doctrine, in regard to the consequences that await those who violate the divine laws, in the life to come, is therefore no arbitrary or fanciful theory, but is a logical deduction from the observation of facts made known to us by the statements of innumerable spirits; its principle points may be summed up as follows:

1. Each discarnate spirit undergoes, in the spirit world, the consequences of the various imperfections of which it has failed to cure itself during its earthly life. Its state in that world, whether happy or unhappy, is the direct consequence of, and inherent in, the degree of its advancement or of its imperfection.

2. Perfect happiness belongs, exclusively, to the state of perfection, that is to say, of the spirit’s complete purification. Every imperfection is at once a source of suffering and the privation of an enjoyment; and every acquisition of knowledge or of goodness brings with it an increase of enjoyment and diminishes the sources of suffering.

3. Every imperfection of the soul produces its own inevitable share of suffering; and every good quality produces, in virtue of the same law, its own natural, certain, share of happiness. The amount of a spirit’s suffering is thus exactly proportioned to the degree of its imperfection; and the amount of a spirit’s happiness is exactly proportioned to the degree of its intellectual and moral advancement.

A spirit who has still, say, ten imperfections to get rid of, suffers proportionately more than one who has only three or four; when it has succeeded in ridding itself of a quarter, or half, of those imperfections, it suffers proportionately less, and, when it has rid itself of the whole of them, the spirit has got rid of every source of suffering, and is perfectly happy. It is just as it is upon the Earth with our bodily ailments and imperfections; a person who has a complication of diseases suffers more than another person who has but one disease; and if a person were perfectly healthy, it is evident that such an individual would suffer no physical pain whatever. In the same way, the spirit who has acquired ten good qualities has a proportionally greater amount of happiness than one who possesses fewer good qualities.

4. In virtue of the law of progress – each spirit having the power to acquire the good qualities which it lacks and to rid itself of its bad ones, according to the spirit’s force of will and the amount of effort it makes for that purpose – the gate of hope and happiness is open to every creature. God repudiates none of God’s children; God receives them all into favor as they attain to the perfection of their being, thus leaving to all of them the merit of their deeds.

5. Suffering being indissolubly connected with imperfection, and enjoyment with excellence, the soul finds its own chastisement in itself, wherever it may be, and needs no circumscribed place as the scene of its suffering. “Hell” is, consequently, wherever there are souls that suffer, as “Heaven” is, wherever there are souls that are happy.

6. The good, or the evil, that we do is the result of the good or evil qualities possessed by our spirit. Not to do all the good which we have the power to do is evidently the result of imperfection on our part; and, consequently, as every imperfection is a source of suffering, a spirit suffers, not only for all the evil it has done, but also for the good which it might have done, but did not do, during its earthly life.

7. A spirit suffers through the evil that it has done, in order that, its attention being concentrated on the consequences of that evil, the spirit may better understand its disastrous nature, and be led to amend itself.

8. The justice of God being infinite, an exact account is kept, for each soul, of the good and the evil done by it in the course of its earthly life. No evil deed, no evil thought, however slight, fails to produce its own appropriate correction; but also, no good deed, however minute, no right feeling, however fugitive, no virtuous aspiration, however faint, is ever overlooked, or ever remains sterile, even in the case of the most depraved spirits; for they are the foundation of its reformation and progress.

9. Every fault committed, every evil deed accomplished, is a debt that must be paid; if it be not paid in the present earthly life it will be paid in the next one or in subsequent ones, because all the lives of a spirit form a consecutive series, a whole, all the phases of which are a part and parcel of each other. A spirit who pays its debt in the present life will not have to pay it in any future one.

10. A spirit undergoes the penalty of its defects both in the spirit world and in the life of the flesh. All the tribulations, all the miseries, which we suffer in the earthly life are at once the consequences of our own defects and expiations of faults that have been committed by us, either in our present life or in some of our former existences.

By the nature of the sufferings and vicissitudes that we have to undergo in our present life, we can judge of the nature of the faults committed by us in a preceding life, and of the imperfections to which those faults were due.

11. The expiation of wrongdoing varies according to the nature and the gravity of the offences committed; consequently, the same offence may entail different kinds and degrees of expiation in different cases, according as it may have been attenuated, or aggravated, by the circumstances under which it was committed.

12. In regard to the nature and duration of future correction, there is no absolute and uniform rule; the only general law is this, viz., that every misdeed shall receive its just and appropriate correction, and that every good deed shall receive its just and appropriate reward, exactly proportioned to the action of which it is the consequence.

13. The duration of correction depends entirely on the more or less rapid self-amendment of the spirit by whom it has been incurred. No spirit is ever condemned to any fixed term of correction. The only conditions required by Providence, for the releasing of a guilty spirit from the sufferings of expiation, are the spirit’s sincere return to a better mind, and its hearty determination to labor steadfastly for the acquisition of wisdom and goodness.

Each spirit is thus, and always, the sole arbiter of its own condition; the spirit may prolong its sufferings by hardening itself in evil, it may lessen them, or may put an end to them by its efforts to advance in the path of rectitude.

The sentencing of spirits to any fixed term of correction would be open to the double objection of prolonging, in some cases, the correction of a spirit after it has entered on a course of amendment, and, in other cases, of relieving a spirit from punishment before it has entered on that course. God, being just, corrects evil only so long as it continues to exist; God ceases to correct when the evil, that had necessitated correction, has ceased to exist. * In other words, moral turpitude being, itself, the cause of a spirit’s suffering, that suffering necessarily lasts as long as the moral turpitude, which is its cause, continues to exist, but, as necessarily, diminishes its intensity as the spirit’s moral state improves.

14. The duration of a spirit’s correction depending solely on its own delay in working out its own inner reform, it follows that, if a spirit persisted forever in remaining wicked, it would remain forever in a state of suffering, and that, consequently, in such a case, the spirit’s correction would be eternal.

15. One of the conditions inherent in a spirit’s moral inferiority is the inability to foresee the end of its suffering, and this inability leads the spirit to believe that it will last forever. Accordingly, guilty spirits are always found to be possessed with the idea that the chastisement they are undergoing will be eternal. **

16. Repentance is the first step towards improvement; but repentance, alone, is not sufficient to deliver the wrongdoer from the consequences of his or her wrongdoing; to effect this result, expiation and reparation are also necessary.

Repentance, expiation, and reparation are the three conditions necessary for the effacing of a fault and the suppression of its consequences.

Repentance mitigates the sufferings of expiation, because it opens the door to hope and paves the way to rehabilitation; but it is only reparation that, by destroying the cause of our suffering, can annul the suffering which is its effect; the granting of a free pardon to the wrong-doer would be merely the granting of a favor and not an annulling of the cause and consequences of the person’s wrong-doing.

17. Repentance may begin in the spirit-life or in the life of the flesh, and at any period; if a spirit’s repentance is tardy, it suffers for a longer time.

Expiation consists in the sufferings, both physical and moral, that are the results of a spirit’s wrong-doing – whether in the course of the same earthly life in which it has done wrong, or in the phase of spirit-life succeeding it, or in a new earthly life – until all traces of the spirit’s wrong-doing have been effaced.

Reparation consists in doing good to those whom we have wronged. Those who, through lack of power or of will, do not make reparation, in a given life, for the wrongs they have done in that life, will be brought again, in a new earthly life, into contact with the parties they have wronged in that former life, and under conditions which they will themselves have chosen beforehand, and which will have been contrived in such a way as to give them the opportunity of proving their devotion to them, and of enabling them to do them as much good as they formerly did them harm.

There are faults of which individuals may be guilty, but which do not cause any direct and personal injury to other people; in such cases, the reparation of a fault is accomplished in one or other of the following ways: – by doing, in a subsequent incarnation, what they ought to have done, but did not do, in a former one, whether by discharging duties which they neglected or did not see to be incumbent on them, or by fulfilling missions which they failed to fulfill in that former life, or by practicing the virtues which are the opposites of the vice in which they then indulged; that is to say, by being humble if they have been haughty; gentle, if they have been harsh; kindly, if they have been unkind; hardworking, if they have been idle; helpful, if they have been useless; temperate, if they have been dissolute; setting a good example, if they have set a bad one; and so on. It is thus that a spirit progresses by turning to profitable account the experiences and the lessons of his past existences ***

18. Spirits of slight advancement are excluded from the happier worlds whose harmony would be impaired by their presence; they therefore remain in worlds of correspondingly low degree – where they expiate their faults, and purify themselves from their imperfections – until they have acquired the moral qualities which enable them to incarnate themselves in worlds of higher moral and physical development.

The conception of a circumscribed place of correction is admissible only as referring to the worlds whose low degree of physical advancement places them, for the time being, in the category of worlds of expiation, around which swarms of discarnate spirits of low degree are always found, awaiting the new existences that will allow them to repair the evil they have done and will help them to advance.

19. A spirit always possesses his free-will, and its improvement is therefore sometimes slow and its persistence in evil very tenacious. The spirit may, if it wills, persist in its wickedness for years or for centuries; but a moment always comes when that spirit’s obstinacy in defying the Divine justice breaks down under the continuance of suffering, and when, despite its foolhardiness, the spirit confesses that the power which masters it is greater than its own. With the first glimmerings of its repentance, a gleam of hope is sent, by the Divine pity, to console and encourage the returning prodigal.

No spirit ever finds itself in the condition of being permanently incapable of improvement; were it otherwise, some spirits would be fatally doomed to remain forever in a state of inferiority, and would thus escape the action of the law of progress that regulates the destiny providentially imposed on all the beings of Creation.

20. Whatever may be a spirit’s inferiority and perversity, God never abandons it. Every spirit has its guardian angel who watches over it, takes note of every movement of its soul, and endeavors to awaken in that spirit’s mind good thoughts and the desire to progress and to make reparation, in a new existence, for the evil it has done. But this protecting guardian usually proceeds in its task occultly, without bringing any pressure to bear on its ward. A spirit must work out its own betterment through the action of its own will, and not as a consequence of any external constraint. The spirit does right, or does wrong, of its free choice, and without its choice being decisively influenced either for good or for evil. If the spirit takes the path of evil, it undergoes the consequences of its error as long as it continues to follow the wrong road; as soon as that spirit takes a single step in the opposite direction, it begins, at once, to experience the beneficial effect of its change of course.

Observation - It would be a mistake to imagine that the certainty of arriving, sooner or later, at the state of perfection and happiness for which all spirits have been created, could encourage any spirit to persevere in evil, with the idea of repenting at some future period, in the first place, because a spirit of low degree is unable to foresee any termination of its present situation, and, in the second place, because each spirit, being the artificer of its own unhappiness, always comes to perceive in the long run, that it depends on itself to procure its cessation, that the longer it persists in evil the longer it will remain unhappy, and that, consequently, its suffering will endure forever unless the spirit, itself, puts an end to it. To go on sinning is, on the part of a spirit, to condemn itself, consciously and willfully, to a continuance of suffering. But if, on the contrary, the gate of hope were irrevocably closed, according to the doctrine of eternal punishment, against the suffering spirit, it would have no motive for repenting and amending, which could be of no avail for it.

The law we are considering triumphantly refutes the objection that the Divine prescience, in creating the souls that subsequently go wrong, cannot be allied to goodness. God, in creating a soul, necessarily foresees whether, in virtue of its free will, it will take the right or the wrong road; God knows that it will incur correction if it goes wrong; but God also knows that this temporary chastisement is only a means for enabling it to understand its error, and for leading it into the right road, by which, sooner or later, it will reach the goal. According to the doctrine of eternal punishment, God, having known beforehand that such and such a soul would go wrong, created it with the knowledge that, by calling it into being, God was condemning it, beforehand, to endless tortures.

21. Each spirit is responsible only for its own wrong-doing; no spirit is punished for the wrong- doing of others, unless that spirit has been the cause of their doing wrong, either by leading them astray, through its evil counsels or example, or by not helping them to do right when the spirit had the opportunity of influencing them for their good.

For instance, those who commit suicide are always chastised for so doing; but those who, by their unkindness, drive their fellow- creatures to despair and to self-destruction, incur chastisement still more severe.

22. Although the chastisements of the spirit-world are infinitely various, there are some which are inherent in the backwardness of the spirits, and which, being the consequences of that state of inferiority, are, in the main, the same for all spirits of that degree.

The correction which is first experienced, especially among those who have attached themselves too closely to the earthly life while neglecting the interests of their spiritual advancement, consists in the slowness with which their soul effects its separation from the body, in the anguish which they feel on dying and which accompanies their awakening in the other life, and in the prolongation of the mental confusion so often attendant on dissolution, and which may continue for months and even for years. In the case of those, on the contrary, whose conscience is clear, who, during their earthly life, have identified themselves with the spiritual life and have detached their interests and affections from the things of this world, the separation of the soul and the body is effected rapidly and without painful shocks, the awakening into the other life is peaceful, and the mental confusion almost null.

23. Spirits of low moral advancement frequently fancy themselves to be still living the earthly life; and this illusion may last for many years, during which they experience all the wants, all the torments, and all the perplexities, incident to life in the flesh.

24. For criminals, the incessant sight of their victims, and of the places and circumstances of their crimes, is the most harrowing of tortures.

25. Some spirits are plunged in utter darkness; others are in a state of complete isolation, alone in the midst of immensity, tormented by the ignorance in which they find themselves with regard to their whereabouts and the fate that may be awaiting them. Those who are the guiltiest are the prey of torments that are all the more overwhelming from their being unable to foresee any termination of their misery. Many are chastised by being deprived of the sight of those they love. All, as a general rule, endure the sufferings they have caused others to endure, and with an intensity proportionate to the intensity of the suffering they have caused; and they continue to endure this retributive suffering until, through repentance and the desire to make reparation for the wrongs they have done, they obtain the relief which comes of their growing perception of the possibility of putting an end, through their own efforts, to the suffering they have brought upon themselves.


26. The torture of the proud is to see above them, surrounded and welcomed by the glorious spirits of the higher spheres, those whose superiority they failed to see, and whose humbler position they despised, when upon the Earth, while they find themselves relegated to the lowest rank; that of hypocrites is to see themselves pierced through and through by the light which lays bare their most secret thoughts, so that all may read them, without their having any means of hiding themselves, or their real quality, from other eyes; that of sensualists is to experience all the temptations, all the desires, without the possibility of satisfying them; that of misers is to see their hoards wasted and scattered, and to be unable to do anything to retain their hold on them; that of the selfish is to be neglected by all about them and to suffer all the hardships and mortifications they have caused to others; they will be thirsty, and no one will give them to drink, they will be hungry, and no one will give them food; no friendly hand will meet theirs, no compassionate voice will console them in their loneliness: they thought only of themselves during their earthly life; no one will think of them, or commiserate them, after their death.

27. The only way to avoid, or to lessen, the painful consequences that our defects may entail upon us in our future life, is to free ourselves from those defects, as far as possible, in our present life; and we must also make reparation now, if we would not have to make that reparation by and by, and in some way that will be far harder to bear for having been delayed. The longer we put off the work of getting rid of our defects and of making reparation for whatever wrongs we have done to others, the more painful will be the consequences of the former, and the more severely shall we have to suffer in accomplishing the latter.

28. The situation in which a spirit finds itself on its entrance into spirit-life is exactly what it has made for itself by its action in the earthly life it has quitted. After a time, another incarnation is granted to it in order that it may expiate and make reparation for the past by undergoing again the trials of the life in flesh; and that spirit will derive more or less profit from this new incarnation, according to the use it makes in it of its free-will. If it fails to make a good use of its new existence, it will have to begin the trial over again, under conditions more and more difficult and painful; so that the spirit who suffers much in the present life may be very sure that it has much to expiate, and, on the other hand, those who enjoy a seemingly prosperous life, notwithstanding their vices and their uselessness, may be equally sure that they will have to pay dear for their defects and their wrong-doing in a future existence. It was to the purifying and reparative effects of the earthly life that Jesus alluded to when he said, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

29. The mercy of God is, undoubtedly, infinite; but it is not blind. The guilty ones whom God forgives are not exonerated from the necessity of making reparation for their evil deeds; and, until they have paid their debt to justice, they continue to undergo the consequences of those misdeeds. The assertion that the mercy of God is infinite must be understood as meaning that the Divine justice is not inexorable, and that it always leaves the door open to the prodigal who has returned into the homeward road.

30. The Providential corrections of wrong-doing being temporary and subordinated to the repentance and reparation which depend on the free-will of the wrong-doer, those corrections are at once the chastisement of wrong-doing and the medicines which will cure the moral malady to which that wrong-doing is due. The spirits who, in the spirit-life or in their new subjection to the trials of the life in flesh, are made to undergo those chastisements, are, therefore, not like galley-slaves, condemned to a fixed term of punishment, but rather like patients in a hospital, who suffer both from the malady they have contracted and also from the course of treatment required for their cure (and which is often extremely painful), but who have the hope of being cured, and whose cure will be all the more rapid in proportion to the fidelity with which they follow the prescriptions of the physician who watches over them with enlightened solicitude. If, from negligence or obstinacy, they prolong their malady, they will also prolong the period of their suffering; but, in that case, this prolongation is not the fault of their physician but their own.



31. To the sufferings of the spirit-world, which wrong-doing brings upon spirits on their return to that world, succeed the sufferings of the life in flesh; sufferings which are, at once, the consequence of humankind’s imperfections, of their passions, of the bad use they make of their faculties, and the expiations of the faults committed by them in their present life and in the past. It is always in the life of flesh that a spirit repairs the evil it has done in its former corporeal existences, and that it puts in practice the resolutions it has formed in the spirit-life; a fact which explains and justifies the sorrows and troubles of human life which, at first sight, seem to be undeserved and uncalled for, but which are seen to be just and necessary, when we have learned that they are both payments of debts contracted by us in the past and the indispensable condition and means of our future advancement. ****

32. “But would not God,” it is sometimes asked, “have given proof of greater love for God’s creatures, if God had created them perfect, and consequently exempted them from the sufferings attendant on imperfection?”

To this query we reply that, in order to have exempted the beings of the universe from suffering, God must have created them perfect to begin with, having nothing to acquire in knowledge or in goodness. Undoubtedly, God could have done so; if God did not do so, it is because, in God’s wisdom, God has willed that the law of progress should be the law of creation.

Human beings are imperfect and, as such, are subject to vicissitudes more or less painful; this is a fact that we must accept, because it exists. But to infer from this that God is neither good nor just, would be to rebel against God.

It would evidently have been unjust to create some beings more favored than others, endowed with privileges denied to those others, and enjoying, without their having worked for it, and as a free gift on God’s part, a degree of happiness that those other beings could only acquire through long and painful effort, or, perhaps, could never acquire at all. But the justice of God is triumphantly vindicated by the explanation of God’s Providential action, which shows us that all spirits are created on a footing of entire and absolute equality; that they all have the same starting-point; that no spirit, at its formation, is more favored than others; that the upward march, which has to be accomplished by all spirits, is not rendered exceptionally easy for any of them; and that the spirits who have reached the highest degree have passed upwards, as all the others are now passing, from the same point of initial imperfection, by the same path of trial and effort.

This view of creation once admitted, what could be more perfectly just than the freedom of action that is accorded to each spirit? The road of happiness is equally open to all; the goals to be reached, and the conditions for reaching it, are the same for all. God has ordained that happiness shall be the result of effort, and not of favor, in order that each may obtain it as the result of his or her own individual merits; each is free to labor diligently, or to do nothing, for his or her own advancement; those who work hard and quickly gain their wage sooner; those who misemploy their energies, or lose their time, are longer in gaining the promised reward, but have only themselves to thank for the delay. The choice between good and evil is free to all; gifted with free will, human beings are not fatally drawn to either.

33. Notwithstanding the diversity of the kinds and degrees of suffering which imperfect spirits undergoes, the penal code of the future life may be summed up in the three following propositions:

1. Suffering is a condition of imperfection.

2. All our imperfections and all our misdeeds (which are the practical outcome of those imperfections) find their appropriate and necessary adjustment in their own natural and inevitable consequences – just as every excess is corrected by the malady which is caused by it, and as idleness is corrected by the disgust of life to which it leads – without the need of any special sentence being passed on each particular fault of each individual.
3. All human beings have the power of freeing themselves from their imperfections through the exertion of their individual wills; all human beings, therefore, are able to avoid the sufferings that are the consequence of those imperfections and to ensure their future happiness.

Such is the law of the Divine justice; “To each, according to the deeds done by his body:” a sentence which receives its execution both in the spirit-world and upon the Earth.






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* Vide chap. VI, No. 25, the quotation from Ezekiel on this point.
** The word eternal is synonymous with perpetual, and both words mean, not an endless duration, but merely a duration of which the end is not foreseen. We say “the region of eternal (or perpetual) snows,” “the eternal (or perpetual) ice of the Poles;” we also say “The Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy,” which does not mean that the scientist occupying that post will continue to occupy it forever, but merely that he has been appointed to it for an unlimited period. The words eternal and perpetual are therefore employed to express the idea of indefinite, undetermined. Thus explained, the future punishment of the wicked may be said to be “eternal” in as much as the punishment has no fixed and defined duration, so that it appears to be “eternal” to the spirit who is undergoing it, and who does not foresee any termination of his suffering. – Vide “The Spirits’ Book,” Nos. 973, 1009.
*** The requiring of the wrongdoer to make reparation for the evil it has done is so evidently just in principle that it may be safely accepted as the true law of moral rehabilitation. Yet the necessity of this reparation has never been proclaimed, as a doctrine, by any of the religions of the world.
The spiritist announcement of this necessity, as a providential law, has met with opposition on the part of persons who think it would be more agreeable to do away with our misdeeds by the mere profession of repentance, at the cost only of a few words and with the aid of certain formulae. Such persons are free to imagine themselves to be able to escape, thus cheaply, the consequences of wrong-doing; they will see, by and by, whether the Divine Justice is satisfied by the mere admission, on the part of the wrong-doer, of having done wrong. Those who reject the spiritist doctrine of expiation should ask themselves whether the principle of expiation is not admitted, and rightly so, by human legislation, and whether the justice of God can be less than that of humankind? They should ask themselves whether they would be satisfied with the person who, having ruined them by a betrayal of their confidence, should simply tell them that he or she is sorry to have ruined them. Why should any one who has wronged another draw back from the obligation – fully accepted as a duty by all honest people – of repairing the wrong that has been done, to the very utmost of his or her power?
When the certainty of having to make reparation for everything we have done amiss shall have become established in the minds of all human beings, it will prove to be a rein far more effectual than the threat of hell-fire and of eternal punishment, both because the idea of Providential retribution, when thus presented, is seen to be altogether just and rational, and also because it explains the painful circumstances in which we find ourselves as being the result of our own wrong-doing, in our present life, or in a former existence.

**** Vide chap, VI. Purgatory, No. 3 and on; and Chap. XX. Instances of earthly expiation: “The Gospel According to Spiritism,” Chap. V, Blessed are they that mourn.

1. Materialism, denying the existence of spirit and admitting no other life than that of the physical organism, has naturally relegated the idea of angels into the category of fiction and allegories. But all religions of the world have proclaimed, under various names, the existence of angels, that is to say, of beings superior to the human race, intermediate between God and humankind. The belief in those beings forms an essential part of the creed of the Christian Church, whose doctrine, in regard to their nature, is summed up in the following statement: *


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* The statement quoted in the text is taken from the Lenten Pastoral of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rheims, Cardinal Gousset, for 1864; but, as the doctrine of the various Christian sects is identical in regard to the nature both of angels and of devils, it may be regarded – like the statement in regard to the latter, drawn from the same source and quoted in our next chapter – as being a summary of the belief of all the Christian sects in reference to the subject we are considering.

2. “We firmly believe,” is the declaration of the Lateran Council, “that there is one sole and only God, eternal and infinite, who, in the beginning of time, drew both together, out of nothing, the two orders of creatures, viz., the Spiritual and Corporeal, the Angelic and the Physical, and who afterwards formed, as a mean between the two, the Human Order composed of body and spirit.”

“Such,” continues the Pastoral from which we are quoting, “is the divine plan in the work of creation; a plan at once majestic and complete, as befits the eternal wisdom. Thus conceived, this plan presents to our mind the beings of the universe at every degree and in all conditions. In the highest sphere appear existence and life of a purely spiritual nature; in the lowest rank appear existence and life of a purely physical nature: and, in the interval which separates the two, a marvelous union of those two substances, a life which is shared by an intelligent spirit and an organized body.

“Our soul is in its nature simple and indivisible; but its faculties are limited. The idea we have of perfection enables us to comprehend that there may be other beings simple and indivisible like our soul, yet superior to it in qualities and in privileges. Our soul is great and noble, but it is associated with matter, served by frail organs, limited in its action and in its power. Why should there not be other natures still nobler, free from this slavery and from these obstacles, gifted with strength and activities incomparably greater? Before God placed human beings upon the Earth to know God, to love God, and to serve God, must God not already have called other creatures into being, to form God’s celestial court and to adore God in the dwelling place of God’s glory? It is from the hands of human beings that God receives the tribute of honor and the homage of the universe; is it strange that God should receive, from the hands of angels, the incense and the prayers of humanity? If the angels did not exist, the grand work of the Creator would lack the crowning perfection of which it is susceptible; this world, which attests the infinity of God’s power, would not be the master-piece of God’s wisdom; our mere human reason, weak and feeble though it may be, might easily conceive of something better and more complete.

“At every page of the sacred books of the Old and New Testaments, mention is made of these sublime intelligences, in pious evocations, or in its historical incidents. Their intervention is manifestly shown in the lives of the patriarchs and the prophets. God employs their ministry, sometimes for the intimation of God’s will, sometimes for the announcement of events to come; God makes them, in almost every case, the organs of God’s justice or of God’s mercy. Their presence is seen in the various circumstances of the birth, the life, and the passion of the Savior; their memory is inseparable from that of the great men and women, and the most important facts of the earliest epochs of the ancient religiosity. It is found even in the bosom of polytheism, and under the fables of mythology; for the belief in their existence is as old and as universal as the world, and the worship paid by the Pagans to good and evil genii was only a false application of a truth, a degenerate reflex of the primitive dogma.

“The declarations of the holy Lateran Council contain a fundamental distinction between the angels and human beings. They teach us that the former are pure spirits, while the latter are composed of a soul and a body; that is to say, that the angelic nature is self-sustained, not only without any intermixture, but also without the possibility of any real association, with matter, no matter how light and how subtle we may suppose the latter to be, while our human soul, though also spiritual in nature, is associated with a material body in such a manner as to constitute, with that body, only a single person; and they teach us that such is essentially the destiny of the human soul.

“As long as this intimate union continues to exist between the soul and the body, these two substances have a common life and exercise a reciprocal influence on each other; the soul cannot disenfranchise itself entirely from the state of imperfection imposed upon it by this union: its ideas reach it through the senses, from the comparison of external objects, and always under images more or less apparent. Hence the impossibility, for the soul, of conceiving of itself or of God otherwise than under the guise of some visible and palpable form. For the same reasons the angels, in order to render themselves visible to the Saints and the Prophets, have necessarily assumed the appearance of corporeality; but these appearances were only aerial bodies which they moved without identifying themselves with them, or symbolical representations in harmony with the mission which they were charged to fulfill.

“Their existence and movements are not localized and circumscribed in any fixed and limited point of space. Not being attached to a body, they cannot be stopped and bounded as we are by other bodies; they occupy no space and fill no void; but, just as our soul is entirely present in our whole body and in each of its parts, so they are in their entirety, and almost simultaneously, on all points and in all parts of the world; more rapid than thought, they can operate themselves everywhere in an instant and can operate of themselves, without any other obstacle to their designs than the will of God and the resistance of human liberty.

“While we are reduced to see, only little by little and within certain limits, the things which are outside of us, and while the verities of the supernatural order appear to us as an enigma and as though seen in a mirror, according to the expression of the Apostle Paul, they see, without effort, everything that they need to know, and are in immediate relationship with the object of their thought. Their knowledge is the result, not of induction and reasoning, but of the clear and profound intuition which embraces at once the principles and the species it contains, the principle and the consequences which flow from it.

“Distances of time, differences of place, multiplicity of objects, can produce no confusion in their minds.

The Divine Essence, being infinite, is incomprehensible; it contains mysteries and abysses that the angels cannot fathom. The private designs of Providence are hidden from them; but the secret of those designs is revealed to them by God, when, under certain circumstances, they are called by God to announce them to humankind.

“The communications of God to the angels, and of the angels to one another are not made, as among us, by means of articulate sounds and other signs perceptible by the senses. Pure intelligences have no need of eyes to see, or of ears to hear, nor have they any vocal organ for manifesting their thought, this habitual intermediary of our communications not being needed by them; but they communicate their sentiments to one another in a way that is peculiar to themselves and altogether spiritual. In order to make themselves understood by one another, an act of their will suffices.

“God alone knows the number of angels. This number, undoubtedly, is not, and could not be, infinite; but, according to the sacred writers and doctors of the Church, it is prodigiously great. If it were natural to proportion the number of inhabitants of a city to its grandeur and extent, we must naturally conclude that, the Earth being only an atom in comparison with the firmament and the immense regions of space, the number of the inhabitants of Heaven and of the air are vastly greater than that of humankind.

“Since the majesty of kings derives its splendor from the number of their subjects, of their officers, and of their servants, what could give us a more fitting idea of the majesty of the King of kings than this innumerable multitude of angels that people Heaven and Earth, the sea and the abysses, and the dignity of those glorious beings who remain forever bowed down, or erect, about God’s throne?

“The Elders of the Church and the theologians teach, in general terms, that the angels are classed in three grand hierarchies or principalities, and each of these hierarchies, in three companies or choirs.

“Those of the first and highest hierarchy are designated according to their functions which they discharge in Heaven. Some of them are called Seraphim, because they burn, so to say, with the flame of charity kindled in their being by their contemplation of the love of God; others are called Cherubim, because they are the luminous reflex of God’s wisdom; others, again, are called Thrones, because they proclaim God’s greatness and are the manifestations of splendor.

“Those of the second hierarchy receive their names from the functions they exercise in the general government of the universe; they are, the Dominations, who assign their various missions and occupations to the angels of the lower degrees; the Virtues, who accomplish the prodigies required by the general interests of the Church and of the human race; and the Powers, who protect, by their strength and their vigilance, the laws which rule the physical and moral worlds.

“To those of the third hierarchy are entrusted the guidance of societies and of persons; they are styled Principalities, the managers of kingdoms, provinces, and dioceses; Archangels, who transmit to the world messages of high importance; and Guardian Angels, who accompany each of us throughout our earthly life, watch over our safety, and aid us in achieving our purification.”

3. The fundamental assumption of the doctrine set forth in the preceding quotation is that the angels are beings purely spiritual, anterior, and superior, to the human race; privileged creatures destined from their formation to absolute and eternal happiness, and endowed by their very nature with the plentitude of virtue and of knowledge, without having done anything to acquire either the one or the other. They constitute the highest rank of the creation, the lowest rank being purely physical life; and between the two, is the human race, composed of souls, that is to say, of beings of a spiritual nature but inferior to the angels, united to physical bodies.

This theory is open to several very serious objections. What, in the first place, is the “purely physical life” referred to? Is it that of inanimate matter? But inanimate matter has no life of its own. Is it that of the plants and animals? But this would be to add a fourth order to the divisions of the creation already established, for it is indisputable that there is, in the intelligent animal, something that there is not in the plant, and equally indisputable that there is in the plant, something that there is not in stone. As for the human soul, it is in direct and immediate union with a body that is merely brute matter, for without a soul, the body has no more life than a clod of earth.

Such a division evidently lacks clearness and does not accord with the results of observation; it resembles the theory of the four elements that has been upset by the progress of physical science. But admitting, nevertheless, the three orders of beings assumed by the theory we are considering, viz., the spiritual, the human, and the physical, we have first to remark that there is no necessary union between these three orders, for they constitute three distinct and successive creations between each of which there is a solution of continuity; whereas everything in nature reveals the existence of an admirable law of unity, the elements of all entities being only transformations of one another, and everything being linked together into a continuous chain. The theory in question is true as regards the existence of the three orders of beings on which it is based, but it is incomplete; for it takes no note of the points of contact between them, as we are about to show.

4. The three orders of created beings are necessary, according to the declaration of the Church, to the harmony of the universe; to suppress any one of them would be to render the work of the Creator incomplete, and to contravene the plan of the eternal wisdom. Nevertheless, one of the fundamental dogmas of the Church declares that the Earth, the animals, the plants, the sun, moon, and stars, and light itself, were created, drawn forth out of nothing, six thousand years ago. Consequently, before that epoch, there existed neither human beings nor any purely physical beings; so that, throughout the whole of the eternity of the past, the work of the Divinity had remained incomplete. The creation of the universe six thousand years ago is so strictly an article of faith among orthodox believers that, only a few years ago, science was anathematized because it had upset the chronology of the Bible by demonstrating the immense antiquity of the Earth and of its inhabitants.

Again; the Lateran Council – an Ecumenical Council whose decisions are accepted as law by the orthodox – says expressly: – “We firmly believe that there is but one sole true God, eternal and infinite, who, in the beginning of time, drew forward together, out of nothing, both orders of creatures, viz., the spiritual and the corporeal.” “The beginning of time” can only be understood, as referring to some epoch in the past, for time is infinite, like space; and “the beginning of time” is therefore merely a figure of speech implying some undefined anteriority. The Lateran Council, then, “firmly believes” that the spiritual and corporeal beings were created simultaneously, and that they “were drawn forth together, out of nothing,” at some undetermined epoch in the past. But, in that case, what becomes of the text of the Bible, which fixes the date of this creation at six thousand (of our) years ago? Even if we admit that date as the beginning of the visible universe, it certainly could not be “the beginning of time.” Which of these two statements are we to believe, that of the Council, or that of the Bible?

5. The same Council, moreover, laid down the following strange proposition: “Our soul,” says the ecclesiastical authority referred to, “equally spiritual (i.e., of a nature equally spiritual as the nature of the angels), is associated with the body in such a manner as to form with it only one and the same person, and such is essentially its destination.” If the soul’s essential destiny is to be united to the body, this union constitutes its normal state, its aim, its end, since such is its “destination.” But the soul is immortal and the body is mortal; its union with the body takes place according to the Church, but once, and even if it were prolonged for a century, what is such a span of time in comparison with eternity? For a great number of human beings, the union of the soul and body is only of a few hours; of what use can so ephemeral a union be to the soul? If, in comparison with eternity, the longest duration of the union of soul and body is a mere nothing, can it be correct to say that its essential destination is to be united with the body? The truth is that the union of the soul and body is but an incident, a speck, in the life of the soul, and not its “essential” state.

If it were the essential destination of the soul to be united to a material body; – if, in virtue of its nature and in accordance with the aim of Providence in its creation, this union is necessary to the manifestation of its faculties – it follows that, without the body, the human soul is an incomplete being; consequently, in order for the soul to remain what it is destined to be, it must necessarily, on quitting its material body, take another body of the same nature, which leads us inevitably to the doctrine of the plurality of existences, in other words, to the doctrine of the reincarnation of the soul, forever, in a succession of material bodies. It is really strange that a Council which is considered to be one of the lights of the Church should have so completely mixed up the spiritual being with the material being that the one cannot be conceived of as existing without the other, since the “essential” condition of their creation is to be united.

6. The hierarchical picture of the angels, informs us that several orders of those beings are charged, in virtue of their attributes, with the government of the physical universe and of the human race, and that they were created for the purpose of doing this work. But, according to the Book of Genesis, the material world and the human race have only been in existence for six thousand years; what then, did the angels do before that epoch, through the eternity of the Past, seeing that the object for which they were created was not in existence? Have the angels existed from all eternity? It is to be supposed so, since we are assured by the Church that they serve for the glorification of the Almighty; for, if they were created at any given epoch in the past, God must have remained, previously to that epoch – that is to say, throughout an eternity – without worshippers.

7. Further on, we find, in the Pastoral referred to, these words: “As long as this intimate union of soul and body lasts.” Does there come, then, a moment when this union exists no longer? But this admission contradicts the declaration of the Lateran Council that this union is the “essential destination” of the soul.

The Prelate, summing up the views of the Christian Church, asserts, still further: “Ideas reach the soul through the senses, by the comparison of external objects.” This is a philosophic doctrine that is true to a certain extent, but not absolutely. According to the eminent theologian, it is a condition inherent in the nature of the soul not to receive any ideas otherwise than through the senses; he forgets the innate ideas, the faculties in some cases so transcendently developed, the intuitive knowledge of certain things, which some children bring with them at birth, and which they manifest without having received any instruction in regard to them. By which of the senses is it that children, who have exhibited the ability of natural arithmeticians and algebraists, and who have excited the wonder of the learned world, acquired the ideas necessary for the almost instantaneous solution of the most complicated problems? The same query has to be answered in regard to the various youthful musicians, painters, and linguists.

“The knowledge possessed by the angels,” says the Pastoral in question, “is not the result of induction and reasoning;” they know because they are angels, without having had any need of learning; God created them like this: the human soul, on the contrary, has to learn. If the soul receives ideas only through the bodily organs, what ideas can be possessed by the soul of an infant who died after a few days of life, if we suppose, with the Church, that he or she will not be born again into the earthly life?

8. We have here to consider a question of vital importance: – Does the soul acquire ideas and knowledge after the death of the body? If the soul can acquire nothing when separated from the body, that of the child, the savage, the idiot, the ignorant, will remain forever just what it was at death; in which case it is condemned to nullity throughout eternity.

If, on the contrary, it acquires knowledge after the close of the earthly life, it is evident that it can progress when separated from the body. The denial of the possibility of the soul’s progress after death leads to absurd consequences; the admission of the soul’s progress after death is the negation of all the dogmas based on the assumption of its stationary condition, of irrevocable condemnation, of eternal punishment, etc. But, if the soul can progress at all after death, what limit is there to its possibilities of progress? If it can go forward a single step, there is no reason why it should not continue to progress until it reaches the degree of angels or Pure Spirits. If the human soul can thus attain to the rank of angelhood, there was no need to create special beings to fill that rank, beings distinguished by special privileges, exempted from all labor, and enjoying eternal happiness without having done anything to earn it, while other beings, less favored only obtain the supreme felicity through long and cruel sufferings, and as the result of heavy trials. God could, doubtless, have created such privileged beings had God chosen to do so; but if we admit the infinity of God’s perfections, without which God would not be God, we must also admit that God does nothing useless, nothing that would contradict God’s sovereign justice and God’s sovereign goodness.

9. “Since the majesty of kings,” continues the Prelate, “derives its splendor from the number of their subjects, of their officers, and of their servants, what could give us a more fitting idea of the majesty of the King of kings than this innumerable multitude of angels that people Heaven and Earth, the sea and the abysses, and the dignity of those glorious beings who remain, forever, bowed down, or erect, about God’ s throne?”

But do we not abase the Divinity by thus assimilating God’s glory to the pomp of earthly sovereigns? The inculcation of such an idea in the ignorant minds of the masses gives them an utterly false impression in regard to God’s greatness; while, to represent that Being as requiring to have millions of worshipers remaining “forever, bowed down, or erect, about God’s throne,” is to attribute to God the weakness, vanity, and haughtiness of Oriental despots. And what is it, in point of fact, that renders even earthly sovereigns veritably great? Is it the number and splendor of their courtiers? No; it is their goodness, their justice, their devotion to the interests of their subjects; it is to earn the title of “Father of their country.” We are asked whether anything “can give us a more fitting idea of the majesty of God, than the multitude of angels composing God’s court?” We reply, Yes, certainly, there is something much better calculated to do so; it is to represent the Divine Being as supremely good, just, and merciful for all God’s creatures, instead of representing God as an angry, jealous, vindictive, inexorable, exterminating, and partial God, creating, for God’s own personal glory one set of creatures whom God loads with the most splendid privileges and favors in every possible way, bestowing on them eternal felicity as their birthright, while God creates another set of creatures under diametrically opposite conditions, compelling them to purchase their eventual happiness at the cost of long and terrible sufferings, and punishing a momentary error on their part with an eternity of torture!

10. Spiritism professes, in regard to the union of the soul and body, a doctrine that is infinitely more spiritualistic, not to say, less materialistic, a doctrine which has, moreover, the merit of being in conformity with what observation has shown us to be the destiny of the soul. According to this doctrine, the soul is independent of the body, which is only its temporary garment; its essence is spirituality; its normal life is the life of the spirit-world. The body is merely an instrument for the exercise of its faculties in connection with the material world; but, when separated from the body, it uses its faculties with greater freedom and wider scope.

11. The union of the soul with a material body, though necessary to its progress in the early stages of its development, only takes place during the period which may be termed its infancy and youth; when it has attained to a certain degree of purification and dematerialization, this union is no longer needed by the soul, which thenceforth continues to progress in spirit-life. However numerous may be the corporeal existences of the soul, those existences are necessarily limited to the life of its successive bodies; and the sum total of those existences only comprises in any case an imperceptible fraction of the life of the soul, which is without end.

12. That there are beings endowed with all the qualities commonly attributed to angels cannot be, for those who admit the existence and progress of the soul, a matter of doubt. The spiritist revelation confirms on this point the belief of all peoples; but it also shows us the nature and origin of those beings.

Souls, or spirits, are created simple and ignorant, that is to say, without knowledge and without the consciousness of good and evil, but with the aptitude of acquiring, in knowledge and in morality, all that they lack, and which they will acquire through effort and labor. The aim of their creation – which is the attainment of perfection – is the same for all; but they attain this aim more or less quickly, in virtue of their free will and in proportion to the amount of their personal effort. All souls have the same degrees to pass through, the same task to accomplish. God does not grant larger means or an easier task to some than to others, because all of them are God’s children, and because, being just, God has no preference for any of them. God says to them all: – “I have established a law that is to be your rule of action; it, alone, can lead you to the aim of your being. Whatever is in conformity with this law is good; whatever is contrary to this law is evil. You are free to obey this law or to violate it; and you will thus be the arbiters of your own fate.” It is not God who has created evil; all God’s laws tend to ensure the happiness of God’s creatures: it is human beings, themselves, who create evil by infringing the laws of God; if they scrupulously obeyed those laws, they would never deviate from the path of rectitude and of happiness.

13. But the soul, in the early phases of its existence, is like a child, lacking experience; it is, therefore, subject to error. God does not give the soul experience, but God gives it the means of acquiring experience; every false step taken by the soul on the road of evil, keeps it back; it undergoes the consequences of this delay, but it is by means of those consequences that it learns, at its own expense, what it must avoid. It is thus that, little by little, the soul acquires development, effects its own improvement, and advances in the spiritual hierarchy, until it has reached the state of fully purified Spirit or Angel. The angels, then, are the souls of human beings who have reached the highest degree of perfection attainable by created existences, and who have entered upon the full enjoyment of the felicity for which they were created. Before attaining to the supreme degree, they enjoy degrees of happiness proportioned to their degree of advancement, but their happiness is never that of idleness, as it consists in the functions to which they are called by the Almighty and which they rejoice to discharge, because the occupations of spirits are, for them, a means of progressing.

14. The human race is not restricted to the Earth; it occupies the innumerable globes that revolve in space. It has occupied those that have already disappeared in the eternity of the past; it will occupy those that will come into existence in the eternity of the future. God has always created, creates incessantly, and will always continue to create. Consequently, long before the Earth existed, however ancient we may suppose it to be, other spirits had already been incarnated on other globes, had accomplished the same stages of development that we, spirits of a later formation, are now accomplishing, and had thus reached the supreme degree before we had issued from the hands of the Creator. From all eternity, therefore, there have always been “angels” or fully purified spirits; but, as the human phase of their development is lost in the night of ages, it seems to us as though they had always been “angels.”

15. Thus the grand law of the unity of the Creation is maintained inviolate. As God has never been inactive, there have always been fully-purified spirits who had already reached the “angelic” degree through trial, effort, and enlightenment, and had thus become fitted to transmit the volitions of the Almighty for the administration of every department of the universe, from the government of worlds to the management of the minutest details of their economy. There was, consequently, no need to create a class of privileged beings, exempted from the vicissitudes, necessities, and occupations imposed upon all the others; all the beings of the universe have won their respective grades through struggle and as the reward of their own merits; finally, all of them, from the oldest to the youngest, are the artisans of their own destiny. Thus is achieved the sovereign justice of God.

1. Demons have played, in all ages, a conspicuous part in the various theogonies; and, although their hold on the general imagination is somewhat loosened at the present day, the influence which so many people still attribute to them suffices to render the question of their existence and nature one of no little importance, because it touches the very groundwork of religious belief; for which reason it behooves us to examine this question with all the carefulness demanded by its scope and bearing.

The belief in a power superior to itself is instinctive in the human mind, and it is consequently found under different forms in all ages of the world. But if, notwithstanding the higher degree of intellectual advancement which men have reached at the present day, they are still disputing about the nature and attributes of that power, how much more imperfect must have been their notions concerning it in the infancy of the human race!

2. The picture that has been drawn of the innocence of the primitive peoples of the globe, absorbed in appreciative contemplation of the beauties of nature, is undoubtedly very poetic, but it lacks truthfulness.

The nearer human beings are to the state of nature, the more completely are they under the sway of instinct, as is still the case with savages and barbarians of the present day; what interests such individuals most, or rather, what interests them exclusively, is the satisfaction of their physical needs, for they have no others. The special sense which alone can render them susceptible of mental pleasures is only developed gradually and in the course of time; the soul has its infancy, its youth, and its maturity, like the human body; but, in order to attain to the maturity which fits it for the comprehension of things of an abstract nature, how many evolutions must it accomplish in the human form! Through how many existences must it work out its progressive development!

Without going back to the earliest ages, we have only to look around us upon the rustics of our rural regions, in order to satisfy ourselves as to the amount of admiration awakened in their minds by the splendors of sunrise, the sublimity of the starry sky, the warbling of the birds, the murmur of the brook, the beauty of the meadows enameled with flowers! Their only thought about the rising of the sun is that it rises because it is in the habit of doing so, and, provided it gives heat enough to ripen the crops and not enough to burn them up, that is all they think about the matter. If they look up in the sky, it is to see what sort of weather they are likely to have on the morrow; whether the birds sing or not is all one to them, so long as they do not devour their grain; they prefer the clucking of their hens and the grunting of their pigs to the song of the nightingale; all they ask of the brook, be it clear or muddy, is not to dry up and not to overflow their fields, and, if these only yield good grass for their cattle and sheep, they care nothing whatever about the flowers; the success of their farming operations is all they ask – it is all they understand – of Nature; and yet they are already very far above the level of the primitive races!

3. If we carry back our thought to the latter, we find them still more exclusively absorbed in the satisfying of their physical wants; what sub-serves this end, and what contravenes it, constitutes for them the entire sum of “good” and of “evil.” They believe in the existence of a superhuman power; but, as they are most impressed by whatever causes them some physical or worldly injury, they attribute all such occurrences to that power, of which, nevertheless, they have only a very vague idea.

Not being yet capable of conceiving of anything beyond the visible and tangible world, they imagine that power to reside in the beings and the things that are injurious to them. They therefore, regard ferocious or mischievous animals as being the direct and natural representatives of the occult power that they recognize without understanding it. For the same reason, whatever is useful to them is regarded as being the personification of a beneficent power; hence the worship rendered to certain animals, to certain plants, and even to inanimate objects. But humankind, as a general rule, are more keenly alive to evil than good; whatever is beneficial seems to them to be perfectly natural, whereas what is injurious seems to them abnormal and consequently affects them more sensibly. For this reason we find, in all the primitive forms of worship, that the ceremonies in honor of the maleficent power are much more numerous than those which are performed in honor of the beneficent one, the empire of fear in the primitive mind, being much stronger than that of gratitude.

For a long time, the human race knew nothing of “good” or “evil” excepting as connected with physical conditions; the awakening of the perception of moral good and moral evil marked the attainment of a new degree of progress by the human intellect. It was only when this step had been made that the human mind obtained a glimpse of spirituality, and began to understand that the superhuman power does not reside in any of the objects of the material universe, but exists outside the boundaries of the visible and the tangible. This conviction was arrived at by the most advanced intelligences of the ancient world; but even those intelligences were unable to carry their speculations and inductions beyond certain narrow limits.

4. As, on the other hand, human beings perceived the fact of an incessant struggle between good and evil and saw that the latter frequently triumphed over the former, and as, on the other hand, they could not rationally admit that evil was the work of a beneficent power, they naturally concluded that there were two rival powers, sharing between them the government of the world. Thence arose the doctrine of the two principles, that of good and that of evil; a doctrine reasonable for the period in which it took its rise, for the human mind had not then acquired the capacity of conceiving of anything higher, and of divining the existence of the Supreme Being as beyond, and above, the strife of opposing principles. How could such primitive humans have possibly understood that evil is only a passing phase from which a greater good is to be developed, and that the evils which afflict the human race must necessarily lead it on to happiness, by compelling it to move forward on the path of progress? The narrowness of their mental horizons prevented them seeing anything beyond their present lives, either before or behind them; they could neither comprehend that they had already progressed nor that they would continue to progress; still less could they see that the vicissitudes of life are the result of the imperfections of the spiritual being which animates the body, which is pre- existent to and survives the external form, and that it is the destiny of this being to refine itself by passing through a series of successive existences until it has attained to the state of perfect purity. In order to comprehend that good can be brought out of evil, it is necessary to see more than a single existence and to contemplate the career of the soul in its totality; for it is only this broad view of the matter that can enable us to comprehend the causes and the effects of the vicissitudes of human existence.

5. The recognition of the two principles of good and evil constituted, during many ages and under different names, the basis of all the religious creeds of the world. These two principles were personified under various names, as Oromaze and Ahriman among the Persians, Jehovah and Satan among the Hebrews, etc. But, as every sovereign must have his Ministers, all those creeds admitted the existence of secondary powers, or genii, of which some were supposed to be good and others to be evil. The Pagans personified these genii in an innumerable multitude of individualities, each of whom possessed special attributes of vice or of virtue, and all of whom were classed under the generic name of “gods.” The Hebrews personified these secondary powers under the designations of “angels” and “devils,” which have been subsequently borrowed from them by the Christians and Muslims.

6. The doctrine of devils or demons, then, has grown out of the ancient belief in the two principles of good and evil. We will examine that doctrine only from the Christian point of view, and inquire whether, as embodied in the creed of Christendom, that doctrine is conformable with the clearer knowledge that, at the present day, we have acquired in relation to the attributes of the Divine Being.

The idea which we form to ourselves of those attributes is necessarily the starting-point, the basis, of our religious belief; dogmas, modes of worship, ceremonies, usages, codes of morality, all are shaped by the idea, more or less true, more or less lofty, which we make to ourselves of God, from the lowest form of fetishism to the purest conception of Christianity. Although the essential nature of the Divine Being is still a mystery unfathomable to our human intelligence, it is nonetheless true that, thanks to the teachings of Christ, we are able to form for ourselves a clearer conception of the moral attributes of that Being than was possible in the earlier period of the world’s development. Those teachings, in accordance with the inductions of reason, assure us that: –

God is one, unique, eternal, unchangeable, non-material, almighty, sovereignly just and good, infinite in His perfections.

As we have shown elsewhere (chap. VI. Eternal Punishment, Item 10), “The attributes of God, being infinite, are not susceptible of increasing or of diminishing; otherwise, they would not be infinite, and God would not be perfect. If the smallest particle were taken from any one of God’s attributes, God would no longer be God, for there might be some other being more perfect than the one we call God.” These attributes, in their most complete and absolute plentitude, are therefore the criteria of all religions, the test of the truth of each of the doctrines taught by them. No doctrine of any religious creed can be true if it were in contradiction with any of the perfections of God. Let us see whether the doctrine of demons, as commonly taught by the various churches of Christendom, can stand the application of this test.

7. According to the Church, Satan, the Chief or King of the Demons (or Devils) is not an allegorical personification of the principle of evil, but is, on the contrary, a real being doing nothing but evil, while God, on the other hand, does nothing but good. Let us, therefore, examine the being thus presented to us, with the characteristics attributed to him by those who represent him as a real, living, active personality. Has Satan existed from all eternity, like God, or is he posterior to God? If he has existed from all eternity, he is increate, i.e. not created, and is consequently equal with God. In that case, God is no longer one, unique; there is the God of Good and the God of Evil.

Is he posterior to God? If so, he is a creature of God, in which case, as he does nothing but evil and is incapable of doing good or of repenting, God has voluntarily created a being doomed to do evil for all eternity. Even admitting that evil is not the work of God, yet, if it be the work of one of God’s creatures who has been predetermined by God to do evil, God is nonetheless the author of evil, and, if so, God is not infinitely good. The same reasoning holds true in relation to all the evil beings designated as “devils” or “demons.”

9. The doctrine thus set forth is open to several objections.

1st. If Satan and the other demons were angels, they must have been perfect; but how, being perfect, could they fail in their allegiance to God and set at naught God’s authority, standing as they did, in virtue of their perfection, in God’s very presence? If they had only reached the supreme degree gradually, and after having passed up through the successive stages of imperfection and of improvement, we might imagine the possibility of a backsliding on their part; but what renders the statement absolutely incomprehensible is that it represents them as having been created perfect.

The consequence of this theory is the following: – God must have supposed, when God created them, that God had created perfect beings, since God lavished upon them all the most splendid of God’s gifts, but God was mistaken; so that, according to the Church, God is not infallible. *

2nd. As neither “the Church” nor “the annals of Sacred History” give us any explanation of the cause which led to the revolt of the angels against God, and as it only “appears to be certain” that this cause was their refusal to acquiesce in the future mission of Christ, what value can we attach to the description, so precise and so detailed, of the scene which is represented as having taken place on that occasion? From what source have been obtained the words so distinctly reported as having been then pronounced, and the knowledge of even the “murmurs” of the host of rebellious angels? Either the scene so minutely described is true, or, it is not true. If it were true there can be no uncertainty as to the cause of the angelic rebellion, and, in that case, why does the Church not settle the question once and for all? If, on the other hand, the Church and the Sacred History are silent on the subject, if it only “appears to be certain” that the cause of that revolt was what it is stated to be, the explanation thus given is only a supposition, and the description of the scene is merely a work of imagination. **

3rd. The words attributed to Lucifer betray a degree of ignorance altogether surprising on the part of an archangel who, in virtue of his nature and the rank assigned to him, ought not to share the errors and prejudices that were common to humankind before science had enlightened them in regard to the nature of the universe. How could so exalted a being give utterance to the declaration “I will establish my dwelling above the stars, I will ascend above the highest clouds?” Such a declaration implies the old belief that the Earth is the center of the universe, that the region of the clouds extends to the stars, that the stars occupy a limited region forming a vault above our heads, whereas astronomy shows us that there is an infinity of stars, sown broadcast over the infinity of space. It is well known, at the present day, that the region of the clouds does not extend farther than a couple of leagues from the surface of the Earth; consequently, to talk of “ascending above the highest clouds” and “the mountains” implies that the speaker is upon the surface of the Earth, and, still further, that the surface of the Earth is the dwelling-place of the angels; for, if they inhabited the higher regions, it would have been superfluous for him to declare that he was going to “ascend above the clouds.” To attribute statements bearing the stamp of ignorance to the angels is equivalent to asserting that human beings, at the present day, know more than angels. The Church has always made the mistake of ignoring the progress of natural science.




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* This monstrous doctrine is affirmed by Moses when he says (Genesis, Chap. VI. 6 and 7), “And the Lord repented that He had made man upon the earth. And, being grieved to the bottom of His heart, He said, ‘I will exterminate man whom I have created from off the face of the earth; I will exterminate every thing, from man to the beasts, every creeping thing, and the birds of the air, for I repent of having made them.’”

And God who “repents” of what he has done is neither perfect nor infallible, and, consequently, is not God. Yet this statement is declared by the Church to be a sacred verity. Moreover, it is not easy to see what the animals had to do with the perversity of mankind, or in what way they could have deserved extermination.

** We find in Isaiah, chap. xiv, 11 and the following verses, this passage: – “All your pomp has been brought down to the grave, along with the noise of your harps; maggots are spread out beneath you and worms cover you. How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit. Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: “Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?””

These words of the prophet do not refer to any revolt of the angels, but are an allusion to the pride and the fall of the king of Babylon who had kept the Jews in captivity, as is shown by the concluding verses. The king of Babylon is designated, figuratively, as Lucifer; but no mention is made of the scene described above. The utterances put into his mouth are those of the king who, in the pride of his heart, placed himself above God, whose “peculiar people” he held in captivity. The prediction of the deliverance of the latter, of the ruin of Babylon and the defeat of the Assyrians, is the only subject treated of in the whole of this chapter.

10. To the first of these objections, the supporters of the legendary assumption we are examining oppose the explanation contained in the following passage of the Pastoral from which we have already quoted: – “Scripture and tradition give the name of ‘Heaven’ to the region in which the angels were placed at the moment of their creation. But this region was not the Heaven of Heavens, the Heaven of the Beatific Vision, in which God shows God’s true nature, face to face, to the elect, and in which the elect behold God without effort and without clouds; for, in that supreme abode, there is neither the danger nor the possibility of sinning; temptation and weakness are therein unknown; righteousness, joy, and peace reign there in absolute security; holiness and glory are native to that clime. Evidently, then, the angels were placed in another celestial region, a luminous and happy sphere, in which these noble creatures, so largely favored with divine communications, were to receive and to hold fast to the intimations of the Divine Will in the humility of faith, before being admitted to behold their full reality in the very essence of God.”

From this quotation it appears that the fallen angels belonged to a category of beings of a less elevated nature than the inhabitants of the supreme abode; that they were less perfect than these, and that they had not yet attained to the supreme degree of perfection in which faultiness is impossible. Granted; but, in that case the assumption we are examining is seen to involve a contradiction, for we are explicitly told, in the preceding quotations, that “God, had created them, in all respects, similar to the sublime spirits;” that, disseminated among all the orders of those glorious spirits and mingled with all their ranks, they were called to the same aim and the same destiny; that their Chief was the most beautiful of the archangels. But if the angels who fell were in all respects similar to the others, they could not have been of a nature inferior to those others; if they were mingled with all the ranks of the other spirits, they could not have been placed in any special region. Our objection, therefore, subsists in all its force.

11. There is, however, another point asserted in the statement we are considering, which is of still greater seriousness and importance.

We are told: “This design (the meditation of Christ), conceived from all eternity, was manifested to the angels long before its accomplishment.” God knew, then, from all eternity, that the angels, as well as human beings, would stand in need of this mediation. God did, or did not, know that some of the angels would fall; that this fall would cause them to be damned to all eternity without any hope of rehabilitation; that they would be destined to tempt human beings to evil, and that those among the latter who allowed themselves to be seduced by their tempting would share the same fate. If God knew this, it follows that God created these angels on purpose that they might bring irreparable ruin upon themselves and upon the greater part of the human race. Let the advocates of this doctrine twist the matter as they will; it is impossible to reconcile the creation of these angels for a fate of misery thus foreseen, with the sovereign goodness. On the other hand, if God did not foreknow the consequences of God’s creative action, God is neither all wise nor all-powerful. In either case, such action on the part of the Deity would be a negation of two of the attributes without which, in their plentitude, God would not be God.

12. If we admit the fallibility of the angels, as well as that of humankind, we can understand their fall as being the consequence of their imperfection, and their punishment as being the just and natural consequence of their wrong-doing; and if we admit, at the same time, the possibility of their redeeming this wrong-doing by a return to rectitude, and their regaining the favor of God through repentance and expiation, there is nothing in such a supposition in any way opposed to the goodness of the Creator. In that case, God knew that they would fail, and that they would thereby incur punishment; but God also knew that the temporary chastisement they would bring upon themselves would be the means of making them understand their fault, and that it would thus turn their advantage, in accordance with the declaration of the prophet Ezekiel: – “God wills not the death of the sinner, but his salvation.” * But the inutility of repentance and the impossibility of a return to the right path would be the negation of this goodness; and, if such a hypothesis were admitted, it would be strictly true to say: – “Since God could not be ignorant of the fate awaiting them, these angels were doomed from their very creation, to do evil forever, and were predestined to become devils and to draw men into evil.”


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* See above, Chap. VII, No. 20.

13. Let us now inquire what the fate of these beings is and what they are doing.

“Scarcely had their revolt broken out in the language of spirits, that is to say, in the outgoings of their thoughts, than they were banished irrevocably from the Celestial City and hurled down into the abyss.

“By these words, we mean that they were driven into a place of torment, in which they undergo the punishment of fire, according to these words which are given in the Gospel as having been spoken by Christ Himself: – ‘Go away, ye accursed, into the everlasting fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.’ Saint Peter says expressly that ‘God has given them up to the chains and tortures of hell,’ but all of them will not remain in it forever; it is only at the end of the world that they will be shut up in it forever, with the reprobate. At the present time, they are still permitted by God to occupy a place in the creation to which they belong, in the order of things to which their existence is attached, and in the relations with men, of which they make a most pernicious misuse. While some of them are in their dark abode, where they serve as instruments of the Divine justice against the unhappy souls that have been seduced by them, there is a multitude of others forming invisible legions under the command of their chiefs, which reside in the lower strata of our atmosphere and move about in every direction throughout the globe. They busy themselves with everything that goes on down here, and take a very active part in almost all the concerns of men.”

Of the words of Christ concerning “everlasting fire,” we have already treated in the Fourth Chapter of the present work, in connection with the question of “Hell.”

14. According to the doctrine we are examining, only a part of the devils are in Hell; the rest of them are roving about in freedom, intermeddling with all that is going on upon the Earth, and gratifying themselves by doing evil; and they will continue to do so until the end of the world, which period, as yet indeterminate, is probably not destined to arrive very speedily. Why this difference in the fate of these two divisions of the race of demons? Is it the least wicked of them that are thus left at liberty to roam through the world of men? Judging from the quality of the actions of those who are left at liberty, this would hardly be the case. Perhaps, however, the two divisions are let out into the world alternately, each in its turn; an arrangement that would seem to be implied in the words “While some of them are in their dark abode, where they serve as instruments of the Divine justice against the unhappy souls that have been seduced by them.”

It appears, therefore, that the appointed function of these fallen angels is to torment the souls they have seduced. They are not charged to punish those who are guilty of faults freely and voluntarily committed, but only those who have done wrong in consequence of the incitements to wrongdoing that they themselves (the devils) have brought to bear on them! They are thus, at once, the cause and the chastisers of the sins of their victims, and moreover – what human jurisprudence, imperfect though it be, would never sanction – the victim who succumbs, through weakness, to the temptation which these devils contrive to throw in his way for the express purpose of leading him astray, is punished as severely as the tempter who employs his or her superior cunning and clearness in inducing the unfortunate individual to do wrong; in fact, the victim of superior cunning and malignity is punished more severely than the tempter who misled that victim, for on quitting the Earth that individual is sent straight to Hell, from which he or she will never be let out for a single minute, and where the victim is made to suffer in its fires without a moment’s relaxation of that individual’s tortures, through all time as well as through all eternity, while the devils, who were the original cause of this person’s wrong- doing, enjoy a respite from punishment, and full liberty to go on in the enjoyment of their evil doings until the end of the world! Is the justice of God, then, still more defective than that of human beings?

15. Nor is this all. We are told that the devils “are still permitted by God to occupy a place in creation to which they belong, and in the relations which they were intended to have with humankind, relations of which they make a most pernicious misuse.” But could God be unaware of the misuse that they would make of the liberty God grants to them? If God foresaw this misuse of their liberty, why did God grant them such liberty? Are we to believe that being fully aware of what God was doing, God abandoned God’s creatures beforehand to the mercy of devils, knowing, in virtue of God’s infinite prescience, that those creatures in their weakness and inexperience would succumb to the temptings of the devils and incur their doom? Must God not have foreknown that their own weakness would be quite enough for God’s creatures to have to struggle against, without God allowing them to be incited to the commission of evil by a foreign enemy, and one that would be all the more dangerous because he or she is invisible? Such an abandonment would be cruel enough, even if the chastisement to which it led were only temporary, and if the wrong-doers could obtain their release by repenting and making reparation for their misdeeds. But, no; they are condemned to all eternity; their repentance, their return to right sentiments, their remorse, and their regrets, all are absolutely unavailing!

According to this doctrine, demons, or devils, are agents specially predestined to recruit souls for Hell, and this, with the permission of God, who foreknew in creating these souls the doom which awaited them. What would be thought, upon the Earth, of a judge who should resort to such an expedient for filling the prisons? And does not such a doctrine give a strange idea of the Divinity of a God whose essential attributes are infinite justice and infinite goodness? And it is in the name of Jesus Christ, of him whose teachings breathed only love, charity, and forgiveness that such a doctrine is proclaimed! There was a time when such an anomaly might pass unnoticed; the contradiction of such a doctrine with the attributes of the Divinity was not understood, and, consequently, not felt as such; men and women, bowed beneath the yoke of despotism, submitted blindly, abdicating their reason; but, at the present day, the era of emancipation has come; the human race has acquired the notion of justice, demanding justice during life and after death; and therefore replies, when this doctrine is set before them, “It is not true, it cannot be true, or God would not be God!”

16. “Chastisement everywhere pursues these fallen and accursed beings; wherever they go, they carry their Hell with them; they know neither peace nor rest; the sweetness of hope is changed for them into bitterness; it is odious to them. The hand of God has smitten them in the very instant of their fault, and their will has hardened itself in evil. Having become perverted, they refuse to cease to be such, and such they will persist in being forever.

“They are, since their fall, such as humanity is after death; their rehabilitation is therefore impossible; their state of perdition is irrevocable, and they persevere in their haughtiness towards God, in their hatred against His Christ, and in their jealousy of the human race.

“Not having been able to take possession of the glory of Heaven through their vaulting ambition, they do their utmost to establish their empire upon the Earth and to banish thence the reign of God. The word made flesh has accomplished, in spite of them, God’s designs for the salvation and the glory of the human race; all their means of action are therefore consecrated to the work of robbing him of the souls he has brought back; cunning and importunity, lies and seduction, they bring them all into play to draw men and women into evil and to consummate their ruin.

“With such enemies, the life of humans, from cradle to grave, can be, alas, nothing but a perpetual struggle, for they are powerful and unwearying in their attacks.

“These enemies, in fact, are the same who, after having introduced evil into the world, have succeeded in covering the Earth with the thick darkness of error and of vice; the same who, during their long ages in the past, caused themselves to be worshipped as gods, and who reigned as masters over the peoples of antiquity; the same who, finally, still hold tyrannous sway over the regions of the Earth that are a prey to idolatry, and who foment discord and scandal even in the bosom of Christian communities.

“To comprehend the vastness of the resources possessed by them for the carrying out of their wickedness, it is sufficient to bear in mind that they have lost nothing of the prodigious faculties which are part and parcel of the angelic nature. Undoubtedly, the future and especially the things of the supernatural order, have mysteries which God keeps to Himself, and that they are unable to discover; but their intelligence is very superior to ours, because they perceive, at a glance, effects of their causes, and causes in their effects. This penetration permits them to announce, beforehand, events which are beyond the reach of our conjectures. Distance and the diversity of places are annihilated by their agility. More prompt than lightning, more rapid than thought, they may almost be said to be present at various points of the surface of the globe at the same time, and they are able to describe things that are taking place at a great distance, but which are seen by them, at the very time of their occurrence.

“The general laws by which God rules and governs this universe are not of their domain; they cannot contravene those laws, and consequently can neither make true predictions nor work real miracles; but they possess the art of imitating, and counterfeiting, within certain limits, the works of God. They know what phenomena result from the combinations of the elements, and they predict with certainty those that occur naturally, as well as those that they have the power of producing by their own action. Hence, the numerous oracles, the extraordinary occurrences, of which history, both sacred and profane, has preserved the remembrance and which have furnished the basis and the sustenance of all superstitions.

“Their simple and immaterial substance renders them invisible to us; they are at our side without being perceived by us; they strike on our soul without striking on our ears; we imagine ourselves to be obeying our own idea, while we are undergoing their temptations and yielding to their fatal influence. Our dispositions, on the contrary, are known to them through the impressions that are made upon us by their wiles; and they usually attack us on our weak side. In order to seduce us more surely, they are accustomed to present to us temptations and suggestions adapted to our individual tendencies. They modify their action according to circumstances and to the special characteristics of each temperament. But their favorite arms are lying and hypocrisy.”

17. “Chastisement,” we are told, “follows them everywhere; they have neither peace nor rest.” But this assertion does not invalidate our observation in regard to the respite enjoyed by those who are not in Hell, respite all the less justifiable because, being out of Hell, they do all the more harm. Undoubtedly, they are not represented as being happy, as are the good angels; but can we count for nothing the liberty they enjoy? Although they have not the moral happiness that results from virtue, they are incontestably less miserable than their accomplices who are given over to the flames of Hell. And besides, for the wicked, there is a sort of enjoyment in doing ill in full liberty. Ask any criminal whether it is all the same to him to be shut up in prison or to be scouring the country and perpetrating every sort of criminal mayhem at his ease? The position of the demons is exactly the same.

“Remorse,” we are told, “pursues them without truce and without mercy.” But the advocates of the doctrine in question forget that remorse is the immediate precursor of repentance, and is, in fact, the beginning of repentance itself; yet the Pastoral on which we are commenting declares, “Having become perverted, they refuse to cease to be such, and such they will persist in being, forever.” But if they refuse to cease to be perverted, it is impossible that they should feel remorse; if they felt the slightest regret for having done evil, they would cease to do it, and would beg for pardon. Consequently, remorse is not any part of their chastisement.

18. “They are, since their fall, such as the human race is after death; their rehabilitation is therefore impossible.” Whence comes this impossibility? It is difficult to understand how it should be a consequence of their similarity to the human race after death, a proposition that, moreover, is not very clear. Is this impossibility a result of their having willed it so, or is it due to the will of God? If it be a result of their own will, such a determination on their part would imply their being utterly and absolutely depraved and hardened in evil; but, if so, it is impossible to understand how beings so entirely and thoroughly bad could ever have been angels of virtue, or how, throughout the eternity during which they were “mingled with all the ranks” of the good angels, they should never have betrayed the least symptom of their horrible nature. If, on the contrary, this impossibility is a result of the will of God, it is still less comprehensible that the Sovereign Goodness should inflict upon them, as a punishment, this impossibility of a return to virtue, after a single fault. The Gospel says nothing of the kind.

19. “Their state of perdition,” it is added, “is henceforth irrevocable, and they persevere in their haughtiness towards God.” But where would be the use of their not persevering in that haughty attitude, since repentance is altogether useless to them? If they had any hope of rehabilitation, no matter at what cost, they would have a motive for returning into the path of virtue; but, that being impossible, they have no motive for reforming. If, then, they persevere in evil, it is because the door of hope is closed against them. But why has God closed that door against them? we are told that this door was closed in order to avenge the offence against God, of which they have been guilty due to their want of submission. Thus, in order to glut God’s resentment against some of God’s creatures who have done wrong, God prefers to see them, not only plunged into horrible sufferings, but doing evil rather than doing good, leading astray and driving into everlasting perdition the majority of God’s creatures of the human race, when a simple act of clemency would have sufficed to prevent this great disaster, a disaster, that was foreseen by God from all eternity!

Does an act of clemency, imply a grant of forgiveness, pure and simple, which might be considered as offering an encouragement to wrongdoing? No, such an act only implies the granting of a conditional pardon, subordinated to a sincere return to virtue. But, instead of a word of hope and mercy, God is represented as saying: – “Perish the entire race of humankind rather than my vengeance!” And those who uphold such a doctrine are astonished that there should be skeptics and atheists! Is it thus that Jesus represents to us his Father? He who expressly lays it down as a law that we must forgive all those who offend us, who tells us to return good for evil, who places the love of our enemies in the first rank of the virtues by which alone we can merit the happiness of Heaven, would he require of humanity to be better, more just, more compassionate, than God Himself?

20. According to the Spiritist doctrine, neither “angels” nor “devils” are beings apart from the rest of the creation; all the intelligent beings of the universe are of one and the same nature. United to material bodies, they constitute the human race which populates the Earth and other inhabited worlds of the universe; freed from those bodies, they constitute the spirit-world, or the spirits who people space. God has created them perfectible; God has given them an aim, viz., the attainment of perfection and of the happiness that is the consequence of perfection; but God has not given them perfection; God has willed that they should owe it to their own personal efforts, so that they might have all the merit of its acquisition. From the first moment of their creation, they progress incessantly, either in the state of incarnation or in the life of the spirit-world; once arrived at the culminating point of their purification they become pure spirits, or angels, according to the common expression; so that, from the embryo of the intelligent being to the angel, there is an uninterrupted chain, each link of which marks a degree in the scale of progress.

It follows, therefore, that there are spirits at every degree of moral and intellectual advancement, according as they are at the top, the bottom, or the middle, of the ladder; and that, consequently, there are, among them, spirits of every degree of knowledge and ignorance, of goodness and of badness. In the lower ranks of spirits there are some who are still deeply imbued with the love of evil and who take pleasure in doing wrong; spirits who may perfectly well be called demons, for they are capable of all the misdeeds attributed to the latter. If Spiritism abstains from giving them that name, it is because the world has attached to it the idea of beings distinct from the human race, of a nature essentially bad, doomed to evil for all eternity, and incapable of progressing in goodness.

21. According to the doctrine of the Church, the demons were created good, and have become bad through their disobedience are “fallen angels;” they were placed by God at the top of the ladder, and they have fallen from that elevation. According to Spiritism, they are imperfect spirits who will grow better in the course of time; they are still at the foot of the ladder, but they will reach the top sooner or later.

Those who, through their carelessness, their obstinacy, or their perversity, remain longer in the lower ranks, incur the penalty of their persistence in evil, for the habit of wrong- doing renders their return to goodness all the more difficult; but there comes a time when they grow weary of the misery of such an existence and of the suffering which is its consequence; they begin to compare their own existence with that of the good spirits, they understand that it is in their own interest to return to the path of rectitude, and they endeavor to become better; but they do this of their own free will, and without being constrained to do so. They are placed under the law of progress by the fact of their being capable of progressing, but they are not compelled to progress in spite of themselves. God furnishes them unceasingly with the means of progressing; but they are free to use or not use the means thus furnished. If progress were obligatory, there would be no merit in progressing, and God wills that each should have the merit of his or her actions; God does not place any one of them on the front rank as a matter of privilege, but that highest rank is open to all, and no one reaches it otherwise than through his or her own efforts. The highest angels have won their grade, like all others, and have traveled up to their present elevation by the same road.

22. Spirits, when they have reached a certain degree of purification, are entrusted with missions proportioned to their advancement; they fulfill all those that have been attributed to angels of different orders. God having created from all eternity, it follows that there have been, from all eternity, spirits competent to the discharge of all the duties involved in the government of the universe. A single species of intelligent beings, all alike submitted to the law of progress, suffices to produce the infinite variety of attainment, aptitude, and usefulness. This unity of the creation – in virtue of which all beings have the same starting-point, follow the same road, and raise themselves to higher and higher elevations as the result of their own merits – is far more in accordance with the justice of God than the creation of different species of beings, more or less favored in the way of natural gifts, which would, practically speaking, be the creation of so many privileges.

23. The common doctrine concerning the nature of angels, demons, and the human soul, not admitting the existence of the law of progress, and observation having shown the existence of beings at different degrees of elevation, human beings have been led to conclude that these differences were the product of so many different creations. This view of the subject portrays God as an unjust and partial father, bestowing all his favors on some of his children, while imposing the hardest labors and privations on the others. It is not strange that during a long period the human race should have seen nothing objectionable in these assumed preferences, for they were guilty of the same injustice through their enforcement of the laws of entitlement and the various privileges accorded to so-called noble birth; could they believe they were capable of committing more errors than God? But, at the present day, the circle of ideas has become wider; human beings see more clearly; they have sounder notions of justice, they demand it for themselves, and, although they do not always find it upon the Earth, they hope, at least, to obtain it in Heaven; and, consequently, any doctrine, which does not show the Divine Justice in all its resplendent purity, is rejected by the human mind as repugnant to both conscience and reason.

1. The modern spirit-phenomena have called attention to the facts of a similar character that have taken place at all epochs, and never has history been so thoroughly ransacked in search of those facts, as during the last few years. From the similarity of effects, men and women have inferred the action of one and the same cause. With regard to all extraordinary facts of which the cause is unknown, ignorance has assumed the supernatural nature of the phenomena referred to, and superstition has amplified them by the addition of various absurdities; hence the mass of legends which, for the most part, are a mixture of a small amount of truth with a much larger amount of falsehood.

2. The doctrines concerning the devil, which have held sway for so long a period over the minds of human beings, so enormously exaggerated the power he was supposed to possess, that they caused humankind to lose sight of God; for which reason, human beings gave the devil the credit for anything that seemed to surpass the possibilities of human power. People saw the hand of Satan in everything; the most excellent innovations, the most useful discoveries, and especially those that tended to draw people out of their ignorance and to enlarge the circle of their ideas, have often been regarded as diabolical. Spirit phenomena, being at once of more frequent occurrence at the present day, and also – with the aid of sharper reason and increased scientific knowledge – more intelligently observed than was the case in former times, have confirmed, it is true, the belief in the intervention of occult intelligences in the affairs of human life, but they have shown us that these intelligences always act within the limits of the laws of nature and reveal, by their action, the existence of a force and of laws hitherto unknown to us. The question is therefore narrowed to the ascertainment of the order to which these intelligences belong.

While men and women possessed only vague or empirical notions regarding the spirit-world, error, as to the nature of that world, was inevitable; but now that careful observation and experimental investigation have thrown new light on the nature of spirits, on their origin and destiny, on the part played by them in the universe, and on their mode of action, the question of their nature is answered by facts, and we know with certainty, that spirits are simply the souls of those who have lived upon the Earth. We also know that the various categories of good and evil spirits are not composed of beings of different species, but of spirits at various degrees of advancement. According to the rank which they occupy in virtue of their intellectual and moral development, those who manifest themselves do so under widely different aspects; but this does not prevent their having all issued from the great human family, as is the case with the savages, the barbarians, and the most highly civilized nations of the Earth.

3. Upon this point, as upon so many others, the Church maintains her ancient beliefs, in regard to demons. As we have already remarked, the mistake of the Church is precisely that of taking no account of the progress of human ideas, and of supposing God to be so deficient in wisdom as to fail to proportion revelation to the development of intelligence, and to continue to address, to the more advanced minds of the present day, the same language as that in which He spoke to the humans of the primitive periods. If, while the human mind is marching onwards, the ministers of religion cling obstinately to past errors, in regard to spiritual matters as in regard to physical science, there necessarily comes a time when they are overwhelmed by the rising flood of incredulity.

4. We have now to see how the Church explains its assertion that the modern spirit- manifestations are exclusively due to the intervention of demons. *


“In their intervention in the things of the outer world, the demons are no less careful to dissimulate their presence, in order to avoid rousing the suspicion of those to whom they address themselves. Always cunning and perfidious, they draw men and women into their snares before binding them in the chains of oppression and servitude. Here, they awaken curiosity by puerile phenomena and feats of little moment; there, they strike with astonishment and subjugate the mind by the attraction of the marvelous. If the supernatural quality of their action betrays itself, if the nature of their power is unmasked, they calm alarm and appease apprehension, solicit confidence and invite familiarity. ,They will, on occasion, pass themselves off as divinities and good genii; and sometimes, they borrow the names and even the traits of those of the dead who have retained a place in the memory of the living. With the aid of these frauds, worthy of the serpent of old, they speak, and are listened to; they dogmatize and are believed; they mingle a few truths with their falsehoods and cause every form of error to be accepted by their victims. This is the aim of the pretended revelations from beyond the grave; it is to obtain this result that wood, stone, forests and fountains, the sanctuary of idols, the legs of tables, the hands of children, deliver oracles; it is for this that the pythoness prophesies in her delirium, and that the ignorant, in his mysterious sleep, is suddenly transformed into a doctor of science. To deceive and to pervert – such is, in all places and at all epochs, the sole aim of these strange manifestations.

“Since it is impossible that the surprising results of these observances or actions, which are, for the most part, eccentric and absurd, should be due either to any intrinsic virtue of their own or to the order established by God, they can only be produced with the help of occult powers. Such are, especially, the extraordinary phenomena obtained, at the present day, through the processes, seemingly inoffensive, of mesmerism and the intelligent organ of talking tables. By means of these operations of modern magic, we now witness the reproduction, among ourselves, of the evocations, oracles, consultations, cures, and other prodigies that formerly gave renown to the temples of idols and the dens of Sybils. As in ancient times, human beings impose their commands on wood, and the wood obeys them; they question it, and it replies to their queries in every tongue and on every subject; they find themselves in the presence of invisible beings who usurp the names of the dead, and whose pretended revelations bear the stamp of contradiction and falsehood; vaporous forms without consistency suddenly appear and show themselves to be endowed with superhuman force.

“What are the secret agents of these phenomena and the real actors in the inexplicable scenes? The angels would not play a part so unworthy, nor lend themselves to the caprices of a vain curiosity. The souls of the dead, whom God has forbidden us to consult, are in the realm of sojourn assigned to them by His justice, and cannot, without God’s permission, subjugate themselves to the commands of the living. The mysterious beings who thus respond to the call of the heretical and the impious as readily as to that of the faithful, and of the criminal as of the innocent, are neither envoys of God nor the apostles of truth and of salvation, but are the tools of error and of Hell. Despite the pains they take to hide their real nature under the most venerable names, they betray themselves by the hollowness of their doctrines, no less than by the baseness of their doings and the incoherence of their utterances. They strive to efface from the sum of religious belief, the dogmas of original sin, of the resurrection of the body, of eternal punishment, and of the Divinity of the Sacred Scriptures, in order to deprive the law of its sanction, and to open the gates to the influx of every vice. If it were possible for their suggestions to obtain the upper hand, they would form a convenient religion, just the thing for socialism and for all those who feel the notion of duty and conscience to be troublesome. The incredulity of our age has prepared the way for this new creed. May all Christian peoples, by a sincere return to the Catholic faith, escape the danger of this new and formidable invasion!”


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* The quotations of the present chapter are taken from the same Pastoral from which we have taken those of the preceding chapters.

5. This explanation of the spirit-phenomena of the present day is based entirely on the assumption that angels and demons are beings distinct from the souls of men, and that the latter are the product of a special creation, inferior, even to the demons, in intelligence, knowledge, and faculties of all kinds; and it attributes, to the exclusive intervention of the “fallen angels,” all the manifestations, both ancient and modern, that spiritists attribute to the souls of the dead.


The possibility for the souls of the departed of entering into communication with the living is a question of fact, and one that is to be decided by observation and experience. Having fully treated of this question elsewhere, we shall not discuss it in this place. But admitting, for argument’s sake, the assumption that constitutes the basis of the argument just quoted, let us see whether it does not destroy itself with its own weapons.

6. Of the three categories of angels, according to the Church, one occupies itself exclusively with Heaven; to another is confided the government of the universe; the third takes charge of the Earth, and in its ranks are found the guardian-angels appointed to the protection of each human being. A portion, only, of the angels of this category took part in the revolt and was changed into demons. If God has granted permission to the latter to urge humanity on to their perdition by suggestions of all kinds and the facts of spirit-manifestation, why, since God is supremely just and good, should God have accorded to these tempters the immense power they possess and a freedom of action of which they make so pernicious a misuse, without also granting permission to the good angels to act as a counterpoise to the evil ones, by means of manifestations of the same kind, directed towards a good end? Admitting that God had given an equal amount of power to the good angels and to the bad ones – which, of itself, would constitute an enormous favor to the latter – human beings would, at least, have been free to choose between them; but, to give to the bad angels the monopoly of temptation, with the faculty of simulating goodness so perfectly as to deceive the most wary, in order the more surely to seduce those whom they seek to influence, would be to lay a snare for human weakness, inexperience, and trustfulness; in addition, it would be to betray humanity’s confidence in God. Reason refutes to admit, on the part of the Divine Being, such a partiality towards evil. Let us look into the facts of the case.

7. The Church attributes to demons the possession of transcendent faculties; “they have lost nothing of their angelic nature;” they possess the knowledge, perspicacity, foresight, clear vision of the angels, and, moreover, keenness, cleverness, and cunning in the highest degree. Their aim is to turn humankind from goodness, and especially to draw them away from God and to draw them down into Hell, of which they are the purveyors and recruiters.

We can understand that the demons should address themselves to those who are pursuing the upward path and who will be lost to them if they continue to follow it; we can understand that the demons should address themselves to such, and that they should employ every imaginable seduction and even the false veneer of goodness to draw them into their nets; but what we cannot understand is that these invisible agents should address themselves to those who are already given up, body and soul, to evil, and should urge them to return to God and to goodness. Can any human beings be more completely and thoroughly within the grip of the Devil’s claw than those who deny and blaspheme God, and who have plunged, headlong, into all the vices and disorders of unbridled passions? Are not such already on the high road to Hell? Is it comprehensible that the demons, when sure of their prey, should incite the latter to pray to God, to submit themselves to God’s will, to renounce evil; that they should hold up before them the delights that await the virtuous in the other life, and should horrify them with frightful pictures of the miseries that await the wicked? Who ever saw a tradesman praising up the wares of his rival to the disparagement of his own and urging his customers to go to that rival’s shop? Who ever heard a recruiting-sergeant lecturing on the hardships of a soldier’s life and the charms of domestic happiness, telling the recruits that, if they enlist, they will have a life of fatigue and privation, and that, ten chances to one they will be killed, or have a leg or an arm shot away in their first battle?

Such, however, is the stupid part which our adversaries make the demons play, by attributing to their intervention the spirit-manifestations of our time, for it is a well-known fact that, every day, through the instructions emanating from the invisible world, skeptics and atheists are brought back to belief in God, those who never prayed before are seen to pray with fervor, and the most vicious are induced to work ardently for their own moral improvement. To say that all this is a piece of cunning on the part of the devil is to make him out to be a conglomeration of multiple idiocies. And as the cases we instance are not suppositions but facts, and as no denial can undo the reality of a fact, we are compelled to conclude, either that the demons are the stupidest of bunglers – in which case they are neither so cunning nor so clever as they are said to be, and, consequently, not so much to be feared as is pretended, seeing that they are working against their own interests – or else that all the manifestations alluded to are not of their producing.

8. “They cause every form of error to be accepted; it is to obtain this result that wood, stone, forests and fountains, the sanctuary of idols, the legs of tables, the hands of children, deliver oracles.” But, if this were so, what weight can be attached to these words of the prophet Joel, quoted in the Acts of the Apostles, chap. II. 17 and 18: – “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your young men shall have visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. In those days I will pour out my spirit on my servants and on my hand-maidens; and they shall prophesy.” Are not these words the prediction of the bestowal of the gift of mediumship upon all, even upon children, a prediction that is being fulfilled at the present time? Did the Apostles hurl an anathema against this faculty? No, they announced its generalization as a favor from God, and not as the work of the Devil. Do the theologians of our day know less of this matter than was known by the Apostles? Should they not recognize the finger of God in the accomplishment of this prediction?

9. “By means of these operations of modern magic, we witness the reproduction among ourselves of the evocations, oracles, consultations, cures, and other prodigies that formerly gave renown to the temples of idols and the dens of sibyls.” What operations of magic are to be found in spiritist evocations? There was a time when certain magical formulae, signs, and modes of proceeding were supposed to possess special efficacy in evoking spirits, but these are now regarded as ridiculous; nobody believes in their supposed power to conjure and control, and Spiritism condemns them. At the period during which magic flourished, the world had but a very imperfect idea of the nature of spirits, who were regarded as beings endowed with superhuman power; they were never evoked excepting by those who wished to obtain from them, were it even at the price of their souls, the favors of fortune, the discovery of hidden treasures, the foreknowledge of future events, or love potions. Magic was supposed to furnish, through its cabalistic signs, formulae, and operations, the means of working prodigies by constraining spirits to put themselves under the orders of human beings and to satisfy their desires. At the present day, we know that spirits are nothing but the souls of men and women; and they are evoked by us only for the sake of obtaining counsel from them, if they are good, for the purpose of moralizing them, if they are ignorant or vicious, or in the interest of continuing our relationship with the souls of those whom we have loved in the earthly life. The following quotations leave no doubt as to the teachings of Spiritism in regard to evocation and the communication between humankind and spirits.

10. It is not possible to compel a spirit to present itself against its will, if the spirit is your superior, or even your equal, in morality, because you have no authority over such a one; but, if that same spirit is your inferior in morality you can constrain it, provided your evocation is intended to promote its welfare, for, in that case, your action will be seconded by other spirits. (“The Mediums’ Book,” Part II, chap. XXV, No. 10)

– The most essential of all states of feeling, when you wish to communicate with spirits of higher degree, is seriousness and concentration of purpose. Faith in God and the aspiration after goodness are the most powerful of all evocations as regards superior spirits. By raising the soul towards the higher spheres, through a few moments of serious thought, before evoking, you identify yourselves with spirits of correspondingly higher degrees, and thus dispose them to come to you. (Idem, No. 12)

– No talisman has the property of attracting or repelling spirits, for matter has no influence over them. Be sure that no good spirit ever inculcated any such absurdity, and that the virtue of talismans has never existed, except in the imagination of the credulous. (Idem, No. 17)


– There is no special formula for the evocation of spirits; and whoever should pretend to give such a formula may be safely charged with charlatanism, for forms are nothing to spirits. But we hold, nevertheless, that evocations should always be made with seriousness and in the name of God. (Idem, chap. XVII)

– Spirits who make appointments in lugubrious places and at unseasonable hours amuse themselves at the expense of those who listen to them. It is always useless, and often dangerous, to conform to such suggestions; useless, because you gain absolutely nothing by so doing, except being hoaxed; dangerous, not from any harm the spirits may do you, but from the effect they may have upon your own weak brains. (Idem, No. 18)

– No days or hours are more propitious than others for evocations. Physical conditions are not considered to be of any importance to spirits, and to believe in the influence of days and hours is mere superstition. The most propitious time is that in which the thought of the evoker is least preoccupied with his daily affairs, and in which he enjoys the greatest calmness of mind and of body. (Idem. No. 19)

– Malevolence has taken pleasure in representing the modern communication of humanity with spirits as being surrounded with the ridiculous and superstitious practices of magic and necromancy. If those who speak thus of Spiritism without understanding it had given themselves the trouble to study the subject before talking about it, they might have spared themselves their outlay of imagination and of allegations which prove only their ignorance or ill-will. For the edification of those who are unacquainted with the subject, we declare that, for communicating with spirits, no days, hours, or places are specially favorable; that, for evoking them, no special formulae, no cabalistic or consecrated signs, no initiation or preparation, are needed; that the employment of any outward sign or material object is powerless to attract or to drive them away, and that, for evoking them, the action of our thought suffices; and, finally, that mediums receive the verbal communications of spirits without quitting their normal state, and as simply and naturally as though they were dictated by a living person. Charlatanism alone could affect, in regard to these communications, to assume airs of eccentricity or to accompany their reception with nonsensical accessories. (“What is Spiritism?” Chap. II, No. 49)

– As a general rule, the future is hidden from human beings; it is only in rare and exceptional cases that God allows it to be foretold. If people knew what the future is destined to bring forth, they would neglect the present, and, moreover, would not act with the same freedom because they would be influenced by the idea that, if a thing is fated to happen, there is no need for them to take any trouble about it, or they would seek to prevent its happening. God has willed that this should not be the case, in order that each may concur in the working out of His designs, even of those that they would have opposed if they had known of them beforehand. God permits the revelation of the future when this foreknowledge will facilitate the accomplishment of a given event instead of hindering it, by leading those, who are to bring it about, to act in some other way than that in which they would otherwise have acted. (“The Spirits’ Book,” Parts I, III, chap. X)

– Spirits cannot guide us, ostensibly, in the work of scientific research and discovery. The ascertainment of scientific truth is the work of genius; knowledge can only be obtained through labor and effort, for it is through work alone that the human race advances on its way. Where would be the merit if they had only to interrogate spirits in order to arrive at the possession of knowledge? Every fool, in that case, might become a beacon of science at small cost to him or herself. It is the same with regard to industrial discoveries and inventions.

When the time for a discovery has come, the spirits charged with the direction of human progress seek out a person capable of seconding their action, and suggest to that individual’s mind the necessary ideas for bringing that discovery to light, but in such a way as to leave to him or her all the merit of the achievement; for it is this person who must elaborate, and bring to bear, the ideas thus suggested. All the great achievements of the human intelligence have been suggested in this way. But spirits leave each human being in his or her own sphere. They do not impart divine secrets to one who is only fit to till the ground; but they draw out of obscurity the one who is capable of seconding the divine designs. You should not allow yourselves to be tempted, by curiosity or ambition, into inquiries that are foreign to the purpose of Spiritism, and that can only lead to mystifications and disappointments. (“The Mediums’ Book,” Part II, chap. XXVI)

– Spirits cannot enable us to discover hidden treasures. Spirits of high degree take no interest in such matters; but mocking spirits often pretend to indicate treasures which do not exist, or which are in some other place than that in which they cause you to see them. Such deceptions, however, are sometimes useful, by showing you that the true source of fortune is work. If Providence designs a hidden treasure to be found by someone, it will be found by that someone in what will appear to him or her as a natural way; otherwise, it will not be found at all. (Idem, chap. XXVI, No. 30)

– Spiritism, by enlightening us in regard to the properties of the fluids that are the agents and means of action of the invisible world, gives us the key to a host of things hitherto unexplained, and that are inexplicable by any other theory; things which in the olden times have passed for prodigies. Spiritism, like magnetism, reveals to us a law which, though not wholly unknown, has been hitherto imperfectly understood; a law of which, while its effects were known, the world was ignorant, and the ignorance of which engendered superstition. This law being known, the marvelous disappears; and phenomena, formerly regarded as miraculous or supernatural, are brought into the category of natural things. Spiritists no more perform miracles by causing a table to rap, or the so-called dead to write, than does a physician when he restores a sick man to health, or the electrician, when he produces artificial lighting. Whoever should pretend to perform miracles by the aid of Spiritism would prove him or herself an ignoramus or a charlatan by the mere fact of such a pretension. (Idem, Part I, chap. II, No. 15)

– Among the many who have formed a very false idea of evocations, there are some who fancy that they consist in bringing back the dead, with all the lugubrious accessories of the grave! But it is only in romances, in fantastic ghost stories, and upon the stage, that the skeletons of the dead are seen coming out of their sepulchers, draped in their winding-sheets, and rattling their fleshless bones. Spiritism, which has never worked miracles, has never brought a dead body to life; when the body is once placed in the grave, there it definitively remains; but the spiritual being, fluidic and intelligent, was not buried with its gross outer envelope; it separated from that envelope at the moment of death, and when once that separation has been effected, it has no further connection with it. (“What is Spiritism?” Chap. II, No. 48)

11. We have multiplied our quotations in order to show that the principles of Spiritism have nothing in common with those of magic. In Spiritism, there are no spirits under the command human beings, no means of constraining them to come to us, no cabalistic signs or formulae, no discoveries of treasures or of means of enriching ourselves, no miracles or prodigies, no divination or fantastic apparitions, nothing, in short, of what constitutes the essential elements and aim of magic. Spiritism not only keeps clear of all these things, but it shows them to be both inefficacious and impossible. There is, then, no analogy whatever between the methods and aim of magic and those of Spiritism; to represent them as similar can only be attempted from ignorance or malevolence; and as there is nothing secret about the principles of Spiritism, which are formulated in terms that are perfectly clear and unambiguous, such misrepresentations can only be short-lived.

As to the cures affected by spirit aid, and acknowledged to be real in the Pastoral that we have been examining, they are ill chosen as evidence of the evils resulting from communication with spirits! The restoration of health is, perhaps, of all the blessings of life, the one which touches us all most nearly, the one which each of us is best able to appreciate at its true value; and very few would be disposed to renounce such a benefit (especially if obtained after all other means of cure have been employed without success), from the fear of being cured by the devil; in fact, most people would rather be inclined to say that, if the devil has cured them, he has done a good deed! *


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* By the endeavor to persuade those who have been cured by spirits that they have been cured by the Devil, a great many persons, who had previously no intention of leaving the Church, have been led to withdraw entirely from it.

12. “What,” asks the author of the Pastoral in question, “are the secret agents of these phenomena and the real actors in these inexplicable scenes? The angels would not play a part so unworthy, nor lend themselves to the caprices of a vain curiosity.”

The author here alludes to the physical manifestations of spirits; among these, there are undoubtedly many that would be but little worthy of spirits of high degree; and if, instead of the word angels, we substitute the term pure spirits, or superior spirits, his assertion is exactly identical with the statements of Spiritism in regard to this point. But it is impossible to place such manifestations on the same level with intelligent communications, made by writing, speaking, or hearing mediums, and which are no more unworthy of good spirits than of eminent men, since these apparitions, cures, and a host of other manifestations of spirit-power are precisely analogous to those which are met with in profusion in Holy Writ, and asserted, therein, to be due to the intervention of “angels” or of “saints.” And if “angels” and “saints” have produced, in former times, phenomena of this character, why should they not produce similar phenomena at the present day? Why should certain facts, occurring at the present day and through the intermediary of certain persons, be set down as being the work of the Devil, when the same facts occurring through the intermediary of other persons are cried up as holy miracles? To sustain such a thesis is to bid defiance to all the rules of logical reasoning.

The author of the Pastoral makes a great mistake in qualifying the phenomena in question as “inexplicable”; at the present day they are, on the contrary, perfectly explicable, and it is for this very reason that they have ceased to be regarded as miraculous or supernatural; but even if they were still unexplained, it would be no more reasonable to attribute them to the devil, than it was, formerly, to do him the honor of attributing to him all the natural phenomena of which science had not yet discovered the cause.

By an “unworthy part” must be understood any absurd or mischievous action on the part of spirits; but such action cannot be attributed to spirits who do good and who bring men and women back to God and to virtue. Spiritism declares expressly that no low or unworthy action can be attributed to spirits of high degree, and presents the following statements as proof:

13. The quality of spirits is known from their language; that of spirits who are truly good and of superior degree is always dignified, noble, logical, free from contradictions; it breathes wisdom, benevolence, modesty, and the purest morality; it is concise and without verbiage. Among inferior, ignorant, and pretentious spirits, the dearth of ideas is almost always accompanied by a superabundance of words. Every false statement, every maxim at variance with true morality, every piece of unwise advice, every gross, trivial, or merely frivolous expression, and, finally, every trace of malevolence, presumption, or arrogance, are incontestable signs of inferiority on the part of the communicating spirit.

Spirits of high degree confine their action to the giving of intelligent communications with a view to our instruction; physical manifestations are more especially the work of spirits of lower degree, commonly designated as rapping spirits; just as, among ourselves, feats of muscular strength and agility are performed by tumblers rather than by scientific men. It would be absurd to suppose that spirits possessing a high degree of elevation would spend their time in performances of that kind. (What is Spiritism? Chap. II, Nos. 37, 38, 39, 40, 60. “The Spirits’ Book,” Book Second, Chap. I, Different Orders of Spirits; Spirit Hierarchy. “The Mediums’ Book,” Part Second, Chap. XXXIV; Identity of Spirits; Distinguishing between Good and Evil Spirits)

What fair-minded man could see in these statements any shred of logic attributing an “unworthy part” to spirits of elevated degree? Spiritism not only does not confound the various ranks of spirit- elevation, but, moreover – while the Church attributes to demons a degree of intelligence equal to that of the angels – it has ascertained from the observation of facts, that the lower orders of spirits are stupid and ignorant, that their moral horizon is narrow, their mental acuity slight, their idea of the economy of things false and incomplete, so that they are incapable of solving certain problems; and that they are consequently unable to perform the marvels with which demons are credited by the Church and by common belief.

14. “The souls of the dead, whom God has forbidden us to consult, are in the realm of sojourn assigned to them by God’s justice, and cannot without God’s permission place themselves at the order of the living.”

Spiritism fully admits that they cannot come without the permission of God; but it goes still further, for – while the Church attributes to the demons the power of doing without that permission – it asserts that no spirit, whether good or bad, can come without having received it, and that, even when spirits are thus permitted to respond to the call of the living, it is not “to place themselves at their orders.”

When a spirit is evoked, does it come voluntarily, or is it constrained to do so? It obeys the will of God, that is to say, the general laws that govern the universe; it judges whether it is useful to come, and, in so doing, exercises its free will. A superior spirit always comes when it is called for a useful purpose; it only refuses to answer those who evoke it as an amusement. (“The Mediums’ Book,” Part Second, chap. XXV)

Can a spirit refuse to come when evoked? Certainly it can; where would be its freewill if it could not? Do you suppose that all the beings of the universe are at your orders? Would you consider yourself bound to reply to everyone who should pronounce your name? When I say that a spirit can refuse to come, I mean, at the demand of the evoker; for an inferior spirit may be constrained by a superior spirit to present itself. (Idem, No. 9)

Spiritists are so fully convinced that they have no direct power over spirits and can obtain nothing from them without the divine permission, that when they desire to make a general evocation, they do so in some such terms as the following: – “I pray Almighty God to permit a good spirit to communicate with me by writing (or otherwise, as the case may be), and I also beg my Guardian- Angel to assist me, and to keep away evil or troublesome spirits;” or, if they wished to evoke a given spirit, fixed on beforehand, they employ some such words as these: – “In the name of Almighty God, I beg the spirit of So-and-so to communicate with me;” or, “I pray Almighty God to permit the Spirit of So-and-so to communicate with me.” (Idem, Part Second, chap. XVII. 203)

15. The accusations hurled by the Church against the practice of evocation do not touch Spiritism, since they are mainly directed against the operations of magic, with which spiritist evocations have nothing in common. Spiritism is in accordance with the Church in condemning those operations and whatever would seem to imply the attributing to superior spirits of a part unworthy of them; and it declares, moreover, that nothing is to be asked, or can be obtained, without the permission of God.

Undoubtedly, there may be those who misuse evocation, who make an amusement of it, who turn it from its Providential aim to serve their own personal ends, and who, through ignorance, frivolity, vanity, or cupidity, depart from the true principles of spiritist doctrine; but true Spiritism disowns them, just as true religion disowns the excesses of bigots and fanatics. It is therefore neither fair nor reasonable to impute to Spiritism the abuses that it condemns, or the misdeeds of those who do not rightly understand its teachings. Before bringing forward an accusation, the accusers should be quite sure that their accusation is just. The blame of the Church is directed against charlatanism, mercenary mediumship, and the practices of magic and sorcery; and in this the church is in the right. When criticism, whether religious or skeptical, condemns abuses and stigmatizes charlatanism, it renders a service to the doctrine that it helps rid of its impurities; by so doing it aids us in the fulfillment of our task. But criticism ceases to be legitimate when it confounds the good with the bad, the thing itself with the improper use that may be made of it, as is done by some from ignorance of the subject criticized, by others, from dishonesty; but this distinction, though the critic may ignore it, is made, in the long run, by the public. Nevertheless, this criticism, which is embraced by every sincere spiritist if applied to evil, cannot harm the doctrine.

16. “The mysterious beings who thus respond to the first call of the heretical and the impious as readily as to that of the faithful, of the criminal as of the innocent, are neither envoys of God nor apostles of truth and salvation, but are the tools of error and of Hell.”


Thus, according to the Church, God does not permit good spirits to approach the heretical, the impious, and the criminal, to win them back from their error and to save them from everlasting perdition! God only sends to them “the tools of Hell,” to drag them down and yet more deeply into the mire of damnation! Furthermore, God sends only the most degraded and malicious of beings to the innocent, to pervert them! But are there, then, among the “Angels,” who are the privileged favorites of the Creator, none who are compassionate enough to come to the assistance of the souls thus being drawn to perdition? What is the use of the brilliant qualities with which they are endowed, if those qualities serve only to secure their own personal enjoyment? Can they really be as good as they are declared to be, if, while immersed in the delights of contemplation, they see all these souls on the road to Hell without hastening to lead them into the road to salvation? Are they not, rather, like the wealthy egotist who, possessing all the elements of physical comfort in abundance, leaves the beggar to die of starvation, without pity, at his door? And is not such a doctrine the exaltation of selfishness into a virtue, and a placing of it, as such, at the very feet of the Eternal?

You are astonished that good spirits should come to seek out the “heretical” and the “impious;” but, if so, you must have forgotten the saying of Christ: – “It is not they who are whole that need the physician, but they who are sick.” Your point of view, then, is no higher than that of the Pharisees of his day? And you, yourselves, if a repentant criminal solicited your assistance, would you refuse to aid him in returning into the path of virtue?

Good spirits only do what is done by the ministers of religion and by all good men and women, who go to the victims of impiety to move them with the eloquence of truth and kindness. Instead of anathematizing the communications from beyond the grave, you should gratefully recognize the channels thus opened by the Providence of the Almighty and should admire this new evidence of God’s infinite power and God’s inexhaustible goodness!

17. The Church admits the existence of Guardian Angels; but, when these angelic guardians are unable to influence their human wards through the mysterious voice of conscience or of inspiration, why should they not make use of other means of action, more direct and more physically capable of striking the senses, since such means exist? Is it credible that God restricts the employment of these means, which are God’s work, – since everything is of God and nothing can happen without God’s permission, – exclusively to evil spirits, refusing to allow good spirits to employ them also? If such were the case, we should be forced to conclude that God gives greater facilities to the demons for compassing the perdition of humankind, than God gives to their Guardian-Angels for securing their salvation!

And, strange to say! What the Guardian-Angels of humankind, according to the Church, are unable to do, the “demons” do for them; for, with the aid of these communications, denounced by the Church as infernal, they bring back to the worship of God those who denied God, to the practice of virtue those who were plunged in vice; and they thus present to us the amazing spectacle of millions of men and women who have been led to believe in God through the power of the Devil, when the Church had proved itself powerless to effect their conversion! How many, as already remarked, who formerly never prayed, now pray with faith and fervor, thanks to the teachings of these same “demons!” How many, who were formerly proud, selfish, and dissolute, have thus been rendered humble, charitable, and less sensual! And we are to be told that this is the work of demons! If this were so, it would have to be admitted that the Devil had rendered them a much greater service, and had given them much more effectual help than the Angels. But those who can imagine that such an idea could be blindly accepted, at the present day, must have a poor opinion of the judgment of humankind in this century. A religion that makes such a doctrine its cornerstone, which declares its foundations to be undermined if it is deprived of its demons, its Hell, its eternal punishment, and its pitiless God, is a religion that is committing suicide.

18. “But, since God has sent Christ to save humankind,” it is asked, “has God not proved God’s love for them, and has God left them without protection?” Undoubtedly, Christ is the Divine Messiah, sent to teach the truth to humankind and to show them their true path; but if we consider only the period of time that has elapsed since his day, counting up the number of those who have died and of those who will die in the future without knowing anything of those teachings; and even considering those who have heard his message, how many are there who have actually put his precepts into practice? Why should not God, out of solicitude for the well-being of God’s children, send them other messengers to come upon the Earth, entering the humblest abodes, going among the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, the skeptical and the believer, to teach the truth to those who know it not, to explain it to those who do not understand it, to make up by their direct and multiple teaching for the insufficiency of the propagation of the Gospel, and thereby to hasten the coming of the kingdom of heaven? And when these messengers are arriving among us in vast numbers, opening the eyes of the blind, converting the irreligious, healing the sick, and consoling the afflicted, after the example of Jesus, you repulse them, you repudiate the good they are doing, and you say they are demons! Such was also the language of the Pharisees in regard to Jesus, for they, too, said that he performed good works through the power of the devil. But what did Jesus reply to their denunciations? “Judge the tree by its fruit; a bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit.”

But, in the estimation of the Pharisees of his day, the fruit produced by Jesus was bad, because he came to destroy abuses and to proclaim the principle of human freedom that was destined to put an end to their authority; had he come to flatter their pride, to sanction their prevarications and to sustain their power, he would have been accepted by them as the Messiah so long awaited by the Jews. He was alone, poor, and defenseless; they killed him and thought they had also killed his message; but his message was divine and has survived him. Nevertheless, that message has been propagated but slowly; after the lapse of eighteen centuries it has become known to scarcely a tenth part of the human family and numerous schisms have broken out among those who call themselves his disciples. It is in this state of things that God mercifully sends spirits to confirm and to complete the message brought by Jesus, to bring it within reach of all, and to spread it abroad over the whole Earth. But the message thus repeated is not incarnated in one single man, whose voice would have reached only to a comparatively short distance; the messengers now being sent to the Earth are innumerable, they go everywhere, and no one can seize them; for which reason their teaching is spreading with the rapidity of lightning; they address themselves to the heart and to the reason, and they are therefore understood by the humblest minds.

19. “But is it not unworthy of celestial messengers,” some will say, “to transmit their teachings, by means of a vehicle so common-place as “talking tables?” Is it not an outrage to their dignity to suppose that they would occupy themselves with trivialities, and that they would leave their brilliant dwelling place to themselves at the disposal of the first person that comes in their way?

Did not Jesus leave the dwelling of his Father to be cradled in a manger? And when has Spiritism ever been known to attribute trivialities to spirits of superior degree? Spiritism asserts, on the contrary, that trivialities can only be the product of trivial spirits. But, by their very simplicity, certain spirit-manifestations have exercised a powerful influence over the minds of a certain class; and, moreover, they have served, while proving the existence of the spirit-world, to show that it is altogether different from what it had hitherto been supposed to be. The phenomena produced with the aid of tables were only the beginning of the great spiritist-movement of our day; this beginning was simple and small, like all beginnings; but though the shoot is small when it issues from the acorn, the oak, nonetheless, sends out its branches widely in course of time. Who would have thought that from the humble manger of Bethlehem would go forth a voice that should shake the world?

Yes; Christ is the Divine Messiah; his word is truth, and the religion founded on that word will be immoveable, provided that those who claim to be Christians follow and practice its sublime teachings, and do not make of the just and good God revealed to us in those teachings, a God who is unjust, vindictive, and without pity.

1. The Church does not deny the facts of spirit- manifestation; on the contrary, it admits their reality, as is shown by the quotations examined in the preceding chapter, but it attributes them entirely to the influence of demons. It has been said that the Gospel forbids our entering into communication with the spirits of the departed, but this is a mistake, for the Gospel says nothing upon the subject. The main argument against it, purported to be taken from the Bible, is derived from the laws of Moses. We will continue to quote, for the examination of this branch of our subject, the statements of the same Pastoral in regard to this prohibition:

“It is not allowable to enter into relations with them (the spirits), either directly, or through the intermediary of those who invoke and interrogate them. The Mosaic Law punished with death these detestable practices, in use among the Gentiles. ‘Go not to seek the Magicians,’ it is said in the Book of Leviticus, ‘and ask no question of the diviners, lest you should incur uncleanness by addressing yourselves to them.’ (Chap. XIX, 31) – ‘If a man or a woman has a spirit of Python or of divination, let them be punished with death; they shall be stoned, and their blood shall fall on their own heads’ (Chap. XX, 27). And in “Deuteronomy” it is written: “Let there be no one among you who consults diviners, or observes dreams and auguries, or makes use of witchcraft, sorceries, or enchantments, or consults those that have the spirit of Python, or practice divination, or interrogate the dead to learn truth; for the Lord has all these things in abomination, and He will destroy, at your coming, the nations which commit those crimes.” (Chap. XVIII, 10, 11, 12)

2. It is needful, in order to ascertain the real meaning of these words of Moses, to recall the full texts of the passages from which they are taken, abridged on the foregoing quotations.

“Turn yourselves not away from your God, and go not to seek after magicians, lest you should incur uncleanness by addressing yourselves to them. I am the Lord your God.” (“Leviticus,” chap. XIX, 31)

“If a man or a woman has a spirit of Python, or a spirit of divination, let them be punished with death; they shall be stoned, and their blood shall fall on their own heads’ (Idem, chap. XX, 27)

“When you shall have entered into the land which the Lord your God will give you, take good care not to wish to imitate the abominations of those peoples; and let no one among you pretend to purify his son or his daughter by making them pass through fire, or consult diviners, or observe dreams and auguries, or make use of witchcraft, sorceries, or enchantments, or consult those that have the spirit of Python, or busy themselves with divination, or interrogate the dead to learn the truth; for the Lord has all these things in abomination, and He will destroy, at your coming, the nations who commit those crimes.” (“Deuteronomy,” chap. XVIII, 9, 10, 11, 12)

3. To those who bring forward these articles of that Mosaic law as obligatory, we reply in the first place, that, if this law is to be rigorously observed in regard to this particular point, it must be held to be equally binding in regard to all other points; for why should its provisions be regarded as good in what concerns evocations and bad in what concerns other matters? We must be consistent; and, if the common sense of Christendom has decided that the legislation of Moses, in many of its provisions, is no longer in harmony with the ideas and the habits of humankind, there is no reason for not admitting that it may be the same in regard to the prohibition we are now considering.

We have in the next place to remark that in regard to the prohibition in question, we must take into account the motives that prompted it, motives which had their weight in the days of Moses, but which, assuredly, are without importance at the present day. The Hebrew legislator wished to make his people break with all the customs acquired by them in Egypt, where the habit of evoking was carried to excess, as is shown by these words of Isaiah: – “The spirit of Egypt shall be annihilated in her, and I will overthrow her prudence; they shall consult their idols, their diviners, their pythons, and their magicians.” (Chap. XIX, 3)


Moreover, the Israelites were not to contract any alliance with the nations around them; and therefore, as they would have found these customs among the nations on whose territories they were about to enter and with whom they were about to fight, Moses found it necessary, for the carrying out of his plans, to instill into the minds of his people a profound aversion for all the customs which, if adopted by them, would have constituted so many points of contact between them and their neighbors. In order to furnish a plausible basis for this aversion, it was necessary to represent those customs as being condemned by God; hence the assertion, “The Lord has all these things in abomination, and He will destroy, at your coming, the nations which commit those crimes.”

4. Moses was all the more justified in inscribing this prohibition among his laws, because the evocations which he forbade were neither prompted by respect or affection for the souls of the departed, nor inspired by any sentiment of piety; they were resorted to simply as a means of divination, and placed on the same footing as the auguries and portents habitually traded in by charlatanism and superstition: an assertion that is justified by the fact that, despite all his efforts, he was unable to root out a habit which had become a matter of traffic, as is shown by the following quotations from the same prophet: –

“And when they say to you, ‘Consult the magicians and the diviners who pronounce their enchantment in whispers,’ reply to them: – ‘Does not each people consult its own God? And do people speak with the dead concerning the affairs of the living?” (Isaiah,” chap. VIII, 19)

“It is I who make manifest the falseness of the prodigies of magic; who sent madness upon those who take upon themselves to divine; who overthrow the minds of the sages and convict of foolishness their useless science.” (Idem, Chap. XLIV, 25)

“Let them come, the augurs who study the sky, who contemplate the stars, and who calculate the months to draw from them the predictions which they profess to give you concerning the future; let them come now, and let them save you. They have become like straw, the fire has devoured them; they will not be able to deliver their souls from the consuming flames; there will not even remain, from their burning, coals at which one can warm oneself, nor a fire by which one can sit. See what will become of all those things about which you have busied yourselves with so much labor! These merchants who have traded with you from your youth up will all flee away from you, some on the one hand, some on the other, without one of them being left to take you out of your troubles.” (Idem, Chap. XLVII, 13, 14, 15)

In this chapter, Isaiah addresses the Babylonians, under the allegorical figure of “the virgin daughter of Babylon, daughter of the Chaldeans.” (v. 1.) He tells them that the enchanters will not prevent the ruin of their monarchy. In the following chapter, he addresses himself directly to the Israelites.

“Come hither, ye children of a sorceress, race born of an adulterer and a prostitute! Whom have you made a mock of? Against whom have you opened your mouths and lashed out with your sharp tongues? Are you not perfidious children and bastard shoots, you who seek your consolation in your gods under every thick tree, who sacrifice your young children in the torrents under the jutting rocks? You have put your confidence in the stones of the torrents; you have poured out drink-offerings in their honor; you have offered sacrifices to them. After this, shall not my indignation be kindled against you?” (Idem, Chap LVII, 3, 4, 5, 6)

These words are clear and explicit; they prove that at the time when they were written evocations were made for purposes of divination, and as a matter of traffic; they were associated with magic and sorcery, and were even accompanied by human sacrifices. Moses was therefore right in forbidding usages of such a character, and in saying that God had them in abomination. Those superstitious practices were perpetuated until the Middle Ages; but, at the present day, human reason has condemned them, and Spiritism has come to show us that the aim of the relations of humankind with the world beyond the grave is exclusively moral, consolatory, and religious. As spiritists neither sacrifice young children nor pour out drink-offerings in honor of heathen gods; as they neither interrogate the stars, nor the dead, nor augurs, to learn the things of the future which God, in God’s wisdom has hidden from humanity; as they repudiate all trafficking in the faculty possessed by some of them of communicating with spirits; as they are prompted neither by curiosity, nor by cupidity, but by a sentiment of piety and by the desire to obtain instruction for themselves and to moralize and relieve the souls who are suffering in the other life, the Mosaic prohibition does not in any way apply to them: a fact which would have been apparent to those who invoke this prohibition against them, if they had acquainted themselves more correctly with the views and the actions of spiritists, on the one hand, and had given a more careful study to the Mosaic prohibition, on the other. They would have seen that there is no analogy between what took place among the ancient Jews and the principles and practice of Spiritism. Furthermore, they would have seen that Spiritism condemns precisely the very things that prompted the Mosaic prohibition; but, blinded by the desire to find an argument against the new ideas, they not have seen how completely their argument misses the mark.

The civil laws of the present day punish all the abuses that Moses aimed at repressing. If Moses pronounced the penalty of death upon the delinquents of his time, it was because rigorous measures were needed for governing the undisciplined people with whom he had to deal, and, consequently, that penalty was lavishly introduced into his code. It should also be remembered that he had no great choice in the means of repression to be employed by him, for in the midst of the desert he had neither prisons nor reformatories, and besides, his people were not of a character that would have been amenable to the threat of merely disciplinary punishment: consequently, it was impossible for him to graduate his punishments as is done at the present day. It is, therefore, a great mistake to insist upon the severity of the chastisement as proving the degree of guilt attributed by the Hebrew lawgiver to the evocation of the dead. Would those who invoke the Mosaic prohibition as condemnatory of spiritist evocation maintain, out of respect for Moses, the application of the penalty of death in all the other cases in which Moses applied it? Why, for instance, do those who manifest so strong a desire to revive this particular provision of the laws of Moses pass over in silence the beginning of the chapter, which forbids priests to possess property and to take any share of any inheritance, “because the Lord Himself is their inheritance?” (“Deuteronomy,” Chap. XXVIII, 1, 2)

5. The law of Moses consists of two distinct parts, viz., the Law of God, properly so called and applicable to all times and to all peoples; and the Civil or Disciplinary Law, adapted to the habits and character of the Hebrew people at the period of its promulgation. The first of these is universal and unchangeable; the other is susceptible of modification, according to the changes which take place in the views and habits of humankind, in the various phases of their development: and it could no more enter into the head of any one to suppose that men and women could be governed, at the present day, by the same regulations as the Hebrews in the desert, than to suppose that the Capitularies of Charlemagne could be put in practice in the France of the nineteenth century. Who would dream, for instance, of reviving at the present time this article of the Mosaic Law: – “If an ox strikes a man or a woman with its horn and they die of the blow, the ox shall be stoned, and no one shall eat of its flesh; but the master of the ox shall be held guiltless.” (“Exodus,” Chap. XXI, 28, 29) Yet this enactment, which seems absurd to us, was really well adapted to the circumstances of the case in the time of Moses; for its aim was not to punish the ox while acquitting its master, but to punish the owner by the confiscation of the animal that had caused the accident, and thereby to compel him to exercise more effectual oversight over his beasts in the future. The loss of the ox was the punishment of its master’s neglect, a punishment which, among a pastoral people, would be sufficiently severe to dispense with the need of supplementing it by the infliction of any additional penalty; but it was necessary that this punishment should not become a source of gain to anyone, and therefore it was forbidden to eat the flesh of the ox. Other articles of the law defined the cases in which the owner of an animal was responsible for injuries caused by it.

There was a reason for every provision of the civil law of Moses, even in its minutest details; but that law, in substance as well as in form, was only adapted to the special circumstances of the time and the people for which it was enacted. Assuredly, if Moses came back to the Earth at the present day and had to frame a code for one of the civilized nations in Europe, he would not give it the same laws that he gave to the Hebrews.

6. To this view of the matter there are persons who urge as an objection that all the laws of Moses were proclaimed in the name of God; those that refer to the common affairs of everyday life, as well as the law given on Mount Sinai. But, if all the enactments of Moses are believed to emanate from a divine source, why are “The Commandments” limited to the Decalogue? If all the laws of Moses are equally binding, why are they not all equally obeyed? Why, for instance, do not the sticklers for the laws of Moses practice circumcision, a rite to which Jesus was submitted and which he did not abolish? Our antagonists forget that all the ancient legislators, in order to render their laws more authoritative, asserted that they had received them from a divinity. More than any other ruler, Moses needed this sort of sanction for his code on account of the peculiarly obstinate character of the Jews; if, in spite of that sanction he found it so difficult to secure their obedience, he would have found it still more difficult, had he promulgated his laws in his own name.

Did not Jesus come to modify the Mosaic Law, and is it not his law that constitutes the code of the Christian? Did he not say, “You know that so and so was said by them of the old times, but I tell you otherwise?” But has he abrogated the law of Sinai? Not at all; on the contrary, he has given that law his sanction, and his own moral law is only the development of that earlier code. But he nowhere speaks of the prohibition to evoke the souls of the dead; yet it is a matter quite too serious to have been omitted in his instructions if he had intended to endorse it, for he has treated explicitly of points of much less importance.

7. To sum up: – the question is, whether the Church puts the Mosaic law above the Evangelical law, in other words, whether the Church is more Jewish than Christian? It is worthy of note that the Jewish religion is the one, of all others, that has made the least opposition to Spiritism, and that the Jews have not invoked, against the lawfulness of entering into communication with the dead, the enactment of Moses on which the Christian sects habitually base their opposition to evocation.

8. Another contradiction has to be pointed out. If Moses forbade the evocation of the spirits of the dead, those spirits must be able to come to us when we evoke them, as otherwise his prohibition would have been superfluous. If they could respond to the call of the living in the time of Moses, they can do so at the present time; and, if those who respond to our evocation are the souls of the dead, it is evident that this response does not emanate exclusively from demons. Besides, Moses makes no mention whatever of the latter.

It is clear, therefore, that the opponents of evocation cannot logically base their opposition on the Law of Moses, and this for two reasons, viz., 1. Because the Mosaic Law is not the law of Christianity, 2. Because it is not adapted to the usages of our epoch. But, even if the Law of Moses were as binding on Christendom as some persons seem to imagine it to be, that law would still be inapplicable to Spiritism.

Moses, it is true, includes the interrogation of the dead in his prohibition; but only as secondary to and as an accessory of, the practice of sorcery. The very expression “to interrogate,” coupled with “diviners” and “augurs,” proves that, among the Hebrews evocations were employed as a means of divination; but spiritists evoke the dead not to obtain from them unlawful revelations, but to receive from them wise counsels and to assist those among them who suffer to obtain relief. Assuredly, if the Hebrews had only employed the power of communicating with spirits for such purposes, Moses, so far from forbidding evocations, would have encouraged them because they would have rendered his people more tractable.

9. If facetious or malevolent critics have thought proper to represent gatherings as assemblies of sorcerers and necromancers, and mediums as fortune-tellers, – if charlatans have sometimes mixed up the name of Spiritism with ridiculous practices which true Spiritism repudiates, – there are plenty of people who are too fully aware of the thoroughly serious and moral character of the latter, and its doctrine, propounded for the whole human race, which protests too strongly against abuses of every kind, for such a calumny not to fall eventually on the right shoulders.

10. “Evocation,” it is sometimes said, “is disrespectful towards the dead, whose ashes we ought not to disturb.” Who brings this objection forward? The adversaries who do so are of two opposing camps, united in their hatred of Spiritism: – the skeptics, who do not believe in the existence of spirits; and those who, though admitting that spirits exist, assert that they cannot come to us, and that the devil is the only agent in the production of the manifestations in question.

When evocation is conducted in a religious frame of mind and with seriousness of purpose, – when spirits are invited to hold communion with us, not for the gratification of curiosity, but from a sentiment of affection and sympathy and a sincere desire to learn, and to become better – it is difficult to see why it should be more disrespectful on our part, towards the spirits whom we thus evoke, to address ourselves to them after their death, than it would have been to address ourselves to them during their life. But there is yet another reply to this objection, – and one that is perfectly unanswerable – viz., that the spirits come to us freely and not from constraint, that, in innumerable cases they present themselves spontaneously, without being called; that they never fail to testify their satisfaction at being able to communicate with us, or to complain of having been forgotten by those whom they have left behind them upon the Earth, as the case may be. If their quiet were disturbed by our evocation, or if they were displeased by our calling them, they would tell us so, or they would not come at all. Being perfectly free to come or not to come, the fact that they respond to our evocation by coming proves that they come willingly.

11. Our adversaries bring forward yet another objection to the practice of evocation: – “The souls of the dead, they say, are in the realm of sojourn assigned to them by the justice of God,” that is to say, in Hell or in Paradise. According to this view of the matter, those who are in Hell cannot get out of their place of torment, although full liberty is granted to the demons in this respect; and those who are in Paradise – being entirely absorbed in their own beatitude, and being raised too high above mortals to take thought for them – are too happy to care to come back to this valley of tears for the sake of the relatives and friends they have left behind them! Are they like rich people who turn their eyes away from the sight of the poor, for fear lest the spectacle of their hungry fellow-mortals should spoil their digestion? But, if such were their sentiments, they would hardly be worthy of their happiness, which in such a case would be the reward of selfishness. As for the souls in Purgatory, they are supposed to be occupied with their own sufferings and to have enough to do to look after their own salvation. Therefore, since everyone is fully employed, it is only the devil who can answer the call of the evoker, and, as no one else is able to come, it is evident that we run no risk of disturbing the souls of the dead!

12. But we have here to point out another contradiction. If the souls who are in Paradise are unable to leave that fortunate abode to bring help to mortals, why do the rituals of the most considerable churches of Christendom invoke the assistance of the “Saints,” who must be in the enjoyment of a still greater degree of beatitude? Why do those churches prescribe to their members to invoke these “Saints,” in sickness and affliction, and to preserve them from misfortunes and from dangers? Why do those churches declare that the “Saints,” and the Virgin Mary herself, render themselves visible to human beings and work miracles in their favor? For, to do this, they must necessarily come out of “Heaven,” and come down to Earth. If those who are at the very summit of celestial glory can thus come down among men and women, why should not those who are less exalted be able to come also?

13. That the skeptic and the materialist should deny the possibility of spirit-manifestations is perfectly natural, for they disbelieve in the existence of the soul; but what is strange is to see those, whose belief is based on the existence and future destiny of the soul, setting themselves angrily against the very means of proving that it exists, and doing their utmost to demonstrate that such proof is impossible. It would seem only natural, on the contrary, that those who are most interested in its existence should joyfully welcome as a boon bestowed by Providence the means of confounding, by positive proof that admits of no gainsaying, the basis of this denial, especially as the denial of this principle implies the denial of the very foundations of all religion. They incessantly deplore the invasion of the unbelief that is decimating the flock of the faithful; and yet, when the most effectual means are presented of combating that unbelief they repel those means with more obstinacy than do the skeptics themselves! And when the proofs of spirit-action are multiplied, on every hand, so abundantly as to leave no doubt concerning its reality, they have recourse as an unanswerable argument against it, to the Mosaic prohibition of interchange with the dead, and, in order to justify this prohibition, they rake up a provision of the Hebrew legislator which everybody had forgotten, and in which they are determined, “by hook, or by crook,” to find an applicability which does not exist. Moreover, our adversaries are so delighted with this discovery that they fail to perceive the testimony it furnishes to the truth of the Spiritist Doctrine.

14. None of the arguments brought forward against communication with spirits can withstand examination; on the other hand, the angry persistence displayed by our adversaries is sufficient evidence of the importance of the subject, for, if only a handful of people were interested in Spiritism, our opponents would hardly give themselves so much trouble about it. To see the crusade undertaken by all the sects against the manifestations in question, one would think they were afraid of them, and that the real motive of their onslaught is fear lest spirits, with their clearer knowledge of the other world, should give men too much light in regard to points which the various churches prefer to leave in obscurity, and should inform them too exactly as to the nature of that other world and the conditions which ensure the happiness or the unhappiness of those by whom it is inhabited. Just as people say to a child, “Don’t go into such and such a place; the Bugaboo is there!” so the churches say to people, “Don’t evoke spirits; it is the devil who answers!” But all such efforts are doomed to fail of their object. Even if it were possible to prevent human beings from evoking spirits, it would be impossible to prevent spirits from presenting themselves spontaneously to them, and bringing the candle out from beneath the bushel under which human prejudice and short-sightedness are striving to hide it.

No true creed has anything to fear from the light; for light only brings out truth into clearer relief, and the superstitious dread of “the devil” will not prevail against truth and reality.

15. To repel communication with the world beyond the grave is to reject the admirable means of instruction that are furnished to each of us by this initiation into the future life and by the examples thus offered to our consideration. And, moreover, as experience has also shown us the good we may accomplish by turning imperfect spirits from the path of evil, and by aiding those who suffer to disengage themselves from the bonds of matter and to advance their self-improvement, to interdict those communications is to deprive the souls who are unhappy in the other life of the assistance which it is in our power to give them. The following extract, from a communication given by a spirit in reference to this point, sums up admirably the effect of evocation when practiced with a charitable aim: –

“Every suffering and sorrowful spirit who comes to you will recount to you the cause of its failure and the evil tendencies to which it succumbed; such a spirit will tell you of its hopes, its combats, its terrors; the spirit will confide to you its remorse, its sorrows, and its despair; it will show you God, justly irritated against the wrongdoer and chastising such a one with all the severity of God’s justice. As you listen to the spirit, you will be moved with compassion for it and with fear for yourselves. But as you follow the outpouring of its experiences, you will behold the God of justice keeping the spirit in view, awaiting the repentance of the sinner, offering help to the spirit as soon as it tries to advance towards God. You will witness the progress of the repentant soul, to which you will have had the happiness and glory of contributing; you will watch its advancement with the solicitude of the surgeon who has dressed, day by day, the wounds of a patient, and with the joy that surgeon feels while witnessing the completion of the cure.” (The Spiritist Society of Bordeaux, 1861)