Updated into Modern English
by the Translators
Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, better known by his pen name, ALLAN KARDEC, was born in Lyons on October 4, 1804 into an old family of Bourg-en-Bresse, which for many generations had been honorably distinguished in the magistracy and at the bar.
His father, like his grandfather, was an attorney of good standing and high character; his mother, who was remarkably beautiful, accomplished, elegant and amiable, was the object, on his part, of a profound and worshipping affection that remained unchanged throughout his entire life.
Educated at the Institution of Pestalozzi in Yverdun (Canton de Vaud), he acquired at an early age the habit of investigation and the freedom of thought of which his later life was destined to furnish so striking an example. Endowed by nature with a passion for teaching, he devoted himself from the age of fourteen to aiding the studies of those of his schoolfellows who were less advanced than himself. He was so fond of botany that he would often spend an entire day in the mountains, walking twenty or thirty miles with a backpack in search of specimens for his herbarium. Born in a Catholic country but educated in a Protestant one, as a mere boy he began to meditate on the means of bringing about a unity of belief among the various Christian sects – a project of religious reform at which he labored in silence for many years but necessarily without success, since the elements of the desired solution were not in his possession at the time.
Having finished his studies at Yverdun, he returned to Lyons at age 24 with the intention of devoting himself to law; however, various acts of religious intolerance, to which he unexpectedly found himself subjected, led him to renounce the idea of preparing for the bar, and to take up residence in Paris, where he occupied himself for some time in translating Telemachus and other standard French books for youth into German. Having finally determined what his career would be, in 1828 he purchased a large and flourishing educational establishment for boys and devoted himself to the work of teaching, for which, by his tastes and acquirements, he was peculiarly suited. In 1830 and at his own expense he rented a large hall on Rue de Sèvres, where he offered courses consisting of free lectures on chemistry, physics, comparative anatomy, and astronomy. He continued these lectures over a period of ten years.
They were highly successful and were attended by an audience of over five hundred persons of every social class, many of whom have since attained eminence in the scientific world.
Always desirous to make education attractive as well as profitable, he invented an ingenious method of computation, and constructed a mnemotechnic table of French history for enabling students to remember the remarkable events and discoveries of each reign.
Some of the numerous educational works he published were: A Plan for the Improvement of Public Instruction, which he submitted in 1828 to the French Legislative Chamber, which praised it highly but took no action with regards to it; A Course of Practical and Theoretic Arithmetic, on the Pestalozzian System, for the use of Teachers and Mothers (1829); A Classical Grammar of the French Tongue (1831); A Manual for the use of Candidates for Examination in the Public Schools with Explanatory Solutions of various Problems of Arithmetic and Geometry (1848); Normal Dictations for the Examinations of the Hotel de Ville and the Sorbonne with Special Dictations on Orthographic Difficulties (1849). These works were highly regarded at the time of their publication and are still in use in many French schools. Their author continued to produce new editions of some of them at the time of his death.
He was a member of several scholarly societies such as: The Royal Society of Arras, which awarded him with the Prize of Honor in 1831 for a remarkable essay on the question, “What is the System of Study most in Harmony with the Needs of the Epoch?” For several years, he was Secretary to the Phrenological Society of Paris, and took an active part in the labors of the Society of Magnetism, giving much time to the practical investigation of somnambulism, trance, clairvoyance, and the various other phenomena connected with mesmerism. The following brief outline of his labors will suffice to show his mental activity, the variety of his knowledge, the eminently practical turn of his mind, and his constant endeavor to be useful to his fellow humans.
Around 1850, when the phenomenon of “table-turning” was grabbing the attention of Europe and ushering in the other phenomena since known as “Spiritist”, he quickly divined the real nature of those phenomena as being evidence for the existence of an order of relationships that had until then been suspected rather than known; i.e., those that unite the visible and invisible worlds.
Foreseeing the vast importance to both science and religion of such an extension of the field of human observation, he immediately began a careful investigation of the new phenomena. A friend of his had two daughters, who had become what are now called “mediums”. They were carefree, lively, amiable girls, who were fond of socializing, dancing, and amusement. When “sitting” by themselves or with their young companions, they habitually received “communications” in harmony with their worldly and somewhat frivolous dispositions. However, to the surprise of all concerned it was discovered that whenever Kardec was present, the messages transmitted through these young ladies acquired a very grave and serious character. When he asked the invisible intelligences what caused this change, he was told that, “spirits of a much higher order than those who habitually communicate through the two young mediums have come expressly for you and will continue to do so in order to enable you to fulfill an important religious mission.”
Much astonished at such an unexpected announcement, he immediately proceeded to test its truthfulness by drawing up a series of progressive questions in relation to the various problems of human life and the universe in which we find ourselves, and submitted them to his unseen interlocutors. He received their answers to these questions through the instrumentality of the two young mediums, who willingly consented to devote a couple of evenings every week to this purpose, and who thus obtained, through table-rapping and planchette-writing, the replies that have become the basis of the Spiritist theory, and which they were as little capable of appreciating as of inventing.
When these conversations had been going on for nearly two years, he remarked to his wife one day, in reference to the unfolding of these views, which she had followed with intelligent sympathy: “It is a most curious thing! My conversations with the invisible intelligences have completely revolutionized my ideas and convictions. The instructions thus transmitted constitute an entirely new theory of human life, duty, and destiny, which appears to me to be perfectly rational and coherent, admirably lucid and consoling, and intensely interesting. I have a great mind to publish these conversations in a book, for it seems to me that what interests me so deeply might very likely prove interesting to others as well.” His wife warmly approved of the idea, and so he then submitted it to his unseen interlocutors, who replied in the usual way that it was they who had suggested it to his mind; that their communications had been made to him, not for himself alone, but for the express purpose of being given to the world as he proposed to do; and that the time had now come for putting this plan into action. “To the book in which you will embody our instructions”, continued the communicating intelligences, “you will give, as being our work rather than yours, the title Le Livre des Esprits (THE SPIRITS’ BOOK). You shall not publish it under your own name, but under the pseudonym ALLAN KARDEC. (1) Keep your own name Rivail for your own books already published, but take and keep the name we have now given you for the book you are about to publish under our orders, and, in general, for all the work that you will have to do to fulfill the mission, which as we have already told you, has been confided to you by Providence, and which will gradually open before you as you proceed in it under our guidance.”
The book thus produced and published sold very quickly, winning converts not only in France, but all over the Continent, and making the name of ALLAN KARDEC “a household word” to the readers who knew him only in connection with it. From that time onwards, he was called only by that name, except by his old personal friends, with whom both he and his wife always retained their family name. Soon after its publication, he founded The Parisian Society of Psychological Studies, of which he was President until his death, and which met every Friday evening at his house for the purpose of obtaining from spirits, through writing mediums, instructions in the elucidation of truth and duty.
Until his death, he also founded and edited a monthly magazine, entitled La Revue Spirite, which was devoted to advocating the views set forth in The Spirits’ Book.
Similar associations were quickly formed all over the world.
Many published periodicals of varying degrees of importance in support of the new doctrine, and all of them transmitted to the Parisian Society the most remarkable of the spirit-communications they received. An enormous mass of spirit-teaching, unique both in quantity and in the variety of the sources from which it was obtained, thus found its way into the hands of Kardec, who studied, collated and coordinated it with unwearied zeal and devotion over a period of fifteen years. From the materials thus furnished to him from every quarter of the globe he enlarged and completed The Spirits’ Book under the direction of the Spirits, by whom it was originally dictated. The “Revised Edition” of the book, which he published in 1857 (see “Preface to the Revised Edition”) has become the recognized textbook of the school of Spiritualist Philosophy so intimately associated with his name.
From the same materials he subsequently compiled four other works: The Mediums’ Book (a practical treatise on Mediumship and Evocations), 1861; The Gospel according to Spiritism (an exposition of morality from the Spiritist point of view), 1864; Heaven and Hell (a vindication of the justice of the divine government of the human race), 1865; and Genesis (showing the concordance of the Spiritist theory with the discoveries of modern science and with the general tenor of the Mosaic record as explained by the Spirits), 1868. He also published two short treatises, entitled What is Spiritism? and Spiritism Reduced to its Simplest Expression.
It is to be remarked, in connection with the works just mentioned, that Kardec was not himself a “medium”, and was therefore obliged to avail himself of the mediumship of others in obtaining the spirit-communications from which they were evolved. The theory of life and duty, so immediately connected with his name and labors that it is often erroneously supposed to have been the product of his single mind or of the spirits in immediate connection with him, is therefore far less the expression of a personal or individual opinion than are any of the other spiritualistic theories propounded thus far. This is because the basis of the religious philosophy laid down in his works was not in any way the product of his own intelligence, but was as new to him as to any of his readers.
It was progressively educed by him from the concurrent statements of a legion of spirits through many thousands of mediums, who were unknown to each other and belonged to different countries and to every variety of social position.
In person, Kardec was somewhat under middle height and strongly built, with a large, round, massive head, well-marked features, and clear grey eyes; he looked more German than French. Energetic and persevering, but of a temperament that was calm, cautious, and unimaginative almost to coldness, incredulous by nature and by education, a close, logical reasoner and eminently practical in thought and deed, he was equally free from mysticism and enthusiasm. Devoid of ambition, indifferent to luxury and display, the modest income he had acquired from teaching and from the sale of his educational works sufficed for the simple style of living he had adopted, and allowed him to devote all the profits arising from the sale of his Spiritist books and from the Revue Spirite to propagating the movement he initiated. His excellent wife relieved him of all domestic and worldly cares, and thus enabled him to consecrate himself entirely to the work to which he believed himself to have been called, and which he pursued with unswerving devotion to the exclusion of all extraneous occupations, interests, and companionships from the time he first began it until he died. He made no visits beyond a small circle of intimate friends and very rarely left Paris, spending his winters in the heart of the town in the rooms where be published his Revue, and his summers at the Villa Ségur, a little semi-rural retreat which he had built and planted to be his home in his and his wife’s old age, and which was located in the suburban region behind the Champ de Mars. The area is now crossed in every direction by broad avenues and is quickly being built over, but at that time it was a sort of waste land that might still pass for “the country”.
Grave, slow of speech, unassuming in manner, yet not without a certain quiet dignity resulting from the earnestness and single-mindedness which were the distinguishing traits of his character, neither courting nor avoiding discussion, but never volunteering any remark upon the subject to which he had devoted his life, he gracefully received the innumerable visitors from every part of the world who came to converse with him in regard to the views of which he was the recognized exponent. He answered questions and objections, explained difficulties and provided information to all serious inquirers, with whom he talked with freedom and animation, his face occasionally lighting up with a genial and pleasant smile, though his habitual sobriety of demeanor was such that he was never known to laugh.
Among the thousands by whom he was thus visited were many of high rank in the social, literary, artistic, and scientific worlds. The Emperor Napoleon III, whose interest in Spirit phenomena was no mystery, sent for him several times and held long conversations with him at the Tuileries concerning the doctrines of The Spirits’ Book.
Having suffered for many years from heart disease, Kardec drew up the plans in 1869 for a new Spiritist organization that would carry on the work of spreading the Doctrine after his death. In order to assure its existence he gave it a legal and commercial status and was determined to make it a regularly comprised jointstock limited liability publishing and bookselling company to be constituted for a period of ninety-nine years with power to buy and sell, to issue stock, to receive donations and bequests, etc. To this society, which was to be called “The Joint Stock Company for the Continuation of the Works of Allan Kardec”, he intended to transfer the copyright of his Spiritist writings and of the Revue Spirite.
Allan Kardec, however, was not destined to witness the realization of the project in which he took so deep an interest, and which has since been carried out with entire exactitude by his widow.
On March 31, 1869, having just finished drawing up the constitution and rules of the society from which he foresaw that he would soon be removed, he was seated in his usual chair at his desk in his rooms on Rue Sainte Anne, and was tying up a bundle of papers when his busy life was suddenly brought to an end by the rupture of an aneurysm from which he had so long suffered. His passage from the earth to the spirit world, with which he had so closely identified himself, was instantaneous, painless and without a sigh or a tremor; a most peaceful falling asleep and reawakening – a fit ending for such a life. His remains were interred in the cemetery of Montmartre in presence of a great concourse of friends, many hundreds of whom assemble there every year on the anniversary of his decease, during which a few commemorative words are spoken and fresh flowers and wreaths, as is usual in Continental graveyards, are laid upon his tomb. It is impossible to precisely ascertain the number of those who have adopted the views set forth by Allan Kardec. They are estimated by themselves to be many millions, but they are at the least incontestably very numerous. The periodicals devoted to the advocacy of these views in various countries already number over forty, and new ones are constantly appearing. Kardec’s death has not slackened the acceptance of the views set forth by him, and which are believed by those who hold them to be the basis, but the basis only, of the new development of religious truth predicted by Christ; the beginning of the promised revelation of “many things” that have been “kept hidden since the foundation of the world”, and for the knowledge of which the human race was “not ready” at the time of that prediction.
1 An old Breton name in his mother’s family.
Anna Blackwell
Paris, 1876.
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