INTRODUCTION

TO THE STUDY

OF THE SPIRITIST DOCTRINE

I

For new things, new words are needed; such is the requirement for clarity of language, in order to avoid the confusion inseparable from the multiple meanings of the same terms. The words spiritual, spiritualist, and spiritualism have a well-defined meaning; to give them a new one in order to apply them to the doctrine of Spirits would be to multiply the already numerous causes of ambiguityoriginal: "amphibologie." This refers to a grammatical structure or term that can be interpreted in more than one way, leading to confusion.. Indeed, spiritualism is the opposite of materialismThe philosophical belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.; anyone who believes they have something within themselves other than matter is a spiritualist; but it does not follow that they believe in the existence of Spirits or in their communications with the visible world. Instead of the words SPIRITUAL and SPIRITUALISM, we use, to designate this latter belief, the words spiritist and spiritism, the form of which recalls their origin and root meaning, and which for that reason have the advantage of being perfectly intelligible, reserving for the word spiritualism its own proper meaning. We shall say, then, that the spiritist doctrine or spiritism has as its principles the relations of the material world with Spirits or beings of the invisible world. The followers of spiritism will be spiritists, or if one prefers, spiritism-adherents.

As its specialty, The Spirits' Book contains the doctrine...