XV

            There are persons who see danger in everything that is new to them, and who have therefore not failed to draw an unfavourable conclusion from the fact that some of those who have taken up the subject of Spiritism have lost their reason. But bow can sensible people urge that fact as an objection? Does not the same thing often happen to weak heads when they give themselves up to any intellectual pursuit? Who shall say how many have gone mad over mathematics, medicine, music, philosophy, etc.? But what does that prove? And are those studies to be proscribed on that account? Arms and legs, the instruments of physical activity, are often injured by physical labour; the brain, instrument of thought, is often impaired by intellectual labour, to which, in fact, many a man may be said to fall a martyr. But, though the instrument may be injured, the mind remains intact, and, when freed from matter, finds itself again in full possession of its faculties.

            Intense mental application of any kind may induce cerebral disease; science, art, religion even, have all furnished their quota of madmen. The predisposing cause of madness is to be found in some tendency of the brain that renders it more or less accessible to certain impressions; and, where the predisposition to insanity exists, its manifestation takes on the character of the pursuit to which the mind is most addicted, and which then assumes the form of a fixed idea. This fixed idea may be that of spirits, in the case of those who have been deeply absorbed by spiritist matters; as it may be that of God, of angels, the devil, fortune, power, an art, a science, a political or social system. It is probable that the victim of religious mania would have gone mad on spiritism, if spiritism had been his predominant mental occupation; just as he who goes mad over spiritism would, under other circumstances, have gone mad over something else.

            We assert, therefore, that spiritism does not predispose to insanity; nay, more, we assert that, when correctly understood, it is a preservative against insanity.

            Among the most common causes of cerebral disturbance must be reckoned the disappointments, misfortunes, blighted affections, and other troubles of human life, which are also the most frequent causes of suicide. But the enlightened spiritist looks upon the things of this life from so elevated a point of view, they seem to him so petty, so worthless, in comparison with the future he sees before him – life appears so short, so fleeting – that its tribulations are, in his eyes, merely the disagreeable incidents of a journey. What would produce violent emotion in the mind of another affects him hut slightly; besides, he knows that the sorrows of life are trials which aid our advancement, if borne without murmuring, and that he will be rewarded according to the fortitude with which he has borne them. His convictions, therefore, give him a resignation that preserves him from despair, and consequently from a frequent cause of madness and suicide. He knows, moreover, through spirit communications, the fate of those who voluntarily shorten their days; and as such knowledge is well calculated to suggest serious reflection, the number of those who have thus been arrested on the downward path is incalculable. Such is one of the results of Spiritism. The incredulous may laugh at it as much as they please; we only wish them the consolations it affords to those who have sounded its mysterious depths.

            Fear must also be reckoned among the causes of madness. Dread of the devil has deranged many a brain; and who shall say how many victims have been made by impressing weak imaginations with pictures of which the horrors are enhanced by the hideous details so ingeniously worked into them? The devil, it is sometimes said, frightens only little children, whom it helps to make docile and well-behaved. Yes; but only as do nursery-terrors and bugaboos in general; and when these have lost their power, they who have been subjected to this sort of training are apt to be worse than before; while, on the other hand, those who have recourse to it overlook the risk of epilepsy involved in such disturbing action upon the delicate child-brain. Religion would be weak indeed if its power could only be sustained by fear. Happily such is not the case, and it has other means of acting on the mind. Spiritism furnishes the religious element with a more efficient support than superstitious terror. It discloses the reality of things, and thus substitutes a salutary appreciation of the consequences

of wrong-doing for the vague apprehensions of unreasonable fear.