During the whole XVIII century, France was as a rose or an intellectual light of the western civilization. For there went artists, teachers, philosophers and scientists from many countries of Europe. In spite of the waste and of the corruption of the aristocracy, Paris was, since a long time, the more attractive European capital for the intellectuals of the continent. Together with Germany, its largest rival, France was who drove the directions of the human intellect, and it was with Iluminismo that Paris passed to be known as "the City of Lights", because, after so much time at the mercy of the ditames of the clergy and of the aristocracy, the man was motivated to be independent, to think with his own head. " All the men are the same under de law", it was the slogan of Iluminismo, that was born and had a largest consequences in French soil.

Although that this has been, actually, a resounded bourgeois movement and a mark in the capitalismo evolution, with its lamentable ones and excesses, the The French Revolution had the merit to contradict the pseudo-superiority of the privileged classes (the corrupt aristocracy and the hypocritical Catholic clergy), lifting the flag of the " Freedom, Equality and Fraternity ", and of the " Declaration of the Man's Rights and of the Citizen ". Evidently, the effervescence of the period ended in a paradox: the Napoleonic empire appears. But the intellectual fruits of the Revolution allowed to clean Europe of the old aristocratic rancidity, forcing the improvement of the social rights in all the nations of the occident, fortifying, more than never, the paper of the Law.
It was amid that climate of changes and of reconstruction of a new world, where it avenged, for every part, the springest perfum of the romantism, that is born, in October 03, 1804, in full Napoleonic epoch, in the city of Lyon, Hippolite Léon Denizard Rivail, that later would adopt the pseudonym by Allan Kardec. He was a judge's son, called Jean Baptiste-Antoine Rivail, and his mother was called Jeanne Duhamel.
It is counted that the father began it with every care in the first letters and it motivated it to the classic reading, already in tender age. Denizard Rivail was always shown very interested in sciences and in languages. After completing the first studies in Lyon, Denizard left to Switzerland, to complete its secondary studies in the celebrated teacher's Pestalozzi school, in the city of Yverdun. Well early the youth of Lyon gets the master's attention, that places it as its auxilar in the academic works that it exercised, having sometimes substituted Pestalozzi in the direction of the school, while this undertook some trip of popularization of its teaching methodology or it was invited to create, in another places, an insitutution in the molds of Yverdun. Denizard also exercised with pleasure teacher's paper, teaching to his colleagues the lessons that he had learned. Him, in spite of so responsible, it was seen as a kind and spirituous, but very disciplined youth. There are not registrations that has been evil-cyst in any phase of their student period.

Denizard Rivail was graduated in Letters and Sciences, being granted a doctorate, later on, in Medicine. He spoke several languages. After being released of the military service, it decides to found, in Paris, a school in the molds of the one of Yverdun, that was called Plolimatic Lyceum. He was determined in the pedagogic improvement of the French education, and, that, he wrote several books in the subject, having been rewarded, in 1831, for its work, for the Real Academy of Arras. For this same time he marries a teacher called Amélie Gabrielle Boudet.
When everything seemed to go well, the partner of Rivail in teh Lyceum, that was his uncle, takes Liceu to the ruin, for dissipating, in the game, vast sums. Nothing remained Rivail that to ask the liquidation of the Institute the one that had been devoted with so much love. With the resulting money of the partition, Rivail suffers another reverse of the luck. After having applied the money in the commercial house of one of his friends, this soon declares bankruptcy, for accomplishing bad business, and Denizard sees himself in the constraining situation of nothing else to have.

To survive, Rivail rushes freneticaly to write didactic books and to work as accountant of three commercial firms, what facilitated it, after the fright and the despair initials, to recover part of its old life pattern. It got to organize, also, courses of Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy and Compared Anatomy, that were very popular among the youths of that time.

After some time, Denizard Rivail already had the necessary to live with certain comfort and to be devoted again to the teaching.
For this time, in Paris, was in vogue a new "fashion" (as it was said at that time). It was calls of " speakers tables " or " moving tables ", that consisted of doing questions about something for a table or other piece of furniture any that answered through blows to the formulated questions. This was just seen as a subtle and inexplicable living room amusement, when it was not faced as a game or spirituous hoax. But there was who took such things seriously, because a lot of times the tables gave correct answers and not without nobody got to prove, in great part of the cases, who what made the tables answer the subjects. In 1854, Deinzard hears to speak for the first time on such " phenomenons ", but its first attitude is the one of skepticism: " I will believe when to come, and when they get to prove me that a table has brain and nerves, and that can become somnambulistic; until that that gives he/she/it, give me the non enxeragar permission in that more than a story to provoke the rest ".
For isistence of his friends, Rivail witnesses some of the physical manifestations of the tables. After the strangeness and of the initial disbelief, Rivail begins to cogitate seriously in the validity of such phenomenons. Eis that he tells us: " Suddenly I was inside in the middle of a fact very strange, contrary, to the first view, to the laws of the nature, happening in honest people's presence and worthy of faith. But the a speaker's table idea didn't still fit in my mind ". It is still: " For the first time I could testify the phenomenon of the tables that you/they rotated and they jumped in such conditions that difficultly could be believed they be hoax fruits or friar (...) My ideas far were of they have suffered a modification, but in all that that he/she/it happened it should have an explanation ". It was in 1855 that Rivail testifies the phenomenon of the tables girantes for the first time. It starts then to observe these facts; he researches them carefully and, thanks to its investigation spirit, that always him out peculiar, it resists to elaborate any preconceived theory. He wants, at every cost, to discover the causes. As Henri Sausse said: " (...) Its reason repels the revelations, it only accepts objective observations and you controlled. (...) Several friends that accompanied five years ago the study of the phenomenons, (...) they place at your disposal more than fifty notebooks, contends the communications done by the Spirits (...). The study of those notebooks constituted, for Rivail, the deepest and more decisive work. It was for that study that him if (...) it convinced of the existence of the invisible world and of the Spirits ".

He used the material of the notebooks, with the answers given by the suppositions spirits, making again the same questions for another mediuns, of unknown of the first ones preference. With base in the new answers, Rivail compared the content of both, and it was perplexed with the similarities frequentily among the them. He reformulated the questions, and he asked the friends' help for you make them the other mediuns, in another places. He received the answers and it compiled them in organization for topics and subjects. How would it can people that one never saw to give the same answers for the same questions, to the ones which did possess a great philosophical weight they? The only logical answer would seriate the that intelligent agents would give them through the mediuns. For they be in a dimension different from ours, these agents would have to living an own reality that would explain to them restored given. But Rivail didn't let to take for the enthusiasm. He also noticed that a lot of answers were foolish and infantile, and another had to do a lot with the knowledge or the faiths of the own spiritual medium, although, during he/she understands one another it, he was not aware than he said or he wrote. Thus, Rivail reached the following conclusions: if they are not intelligent agents physical that give the answers, nor that they seem to be very different from the men, because its answers are similar to restored them that any man would give, besides inside of the instruction level the one that has arrived, because there are very well answers elaborated with many other very futile. And, second, the answers are sometimes given in a no-conscious way, for the own spiritual medium. Then, it would be the intelligent agent of the own spiritual medium that would give certain answers, in certain occasions. These restored they are not deprived of value. They can present an extraordinary degree of maturity. Thus, Denizard Rivail recognized that the entities, for they be you be beyond corporal, nor that they were necessarily more wise persons than commoun men. Them same they said that were nothing else than the men's Spirits that already died, and for that reason, so human and full flaws continued as before. And more. Rivail was early in more than forty three years Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) when recognizing an action personal unconscious acting on the medianimic manifestation, sometimes. Thus, we can wonder, would not Rivail have been a precursor of the skeptical Psychoanalysis?

With the meticulous study of the answers given by the spirits, by means of several médiuns and in several places, in several countries, Rivail had enough material to compose a book. He makes a lucid introduction on its work in the foreword of the work that made to be born the modern Spiritism: The Book of the Spirits, thrown in Paris, on April 18, 1857. In the layer of the work, it is the author's name, or better, its pseudonym, Allan Kardec. Rivail preferred for this name in its more important work, to differentiate its thematic one of the one of its previous works. And why Allan Kardec? Well, certain occasion, and later countless times, a spirit, that it was denominated of Z, had said Rivail that they had been friends in a previous life! They had lived among Druids, in the old Franch, and the name of Rivail was, in the occasion, Allan Kardec. It is incredible, but once again an old certainty, from Socrates, Plato, Plotino and enter Britain Adult's original people, as the one of the Celtic ones, as well as as called us heretical movements as the one of Catars and the one of Templars, vineyard to the tona again in Europe: the idea of the Reincarnation.
On January 1, 1858, Allan Kardec publishes the first number of the Revue Espirite, that served as powerful auxiliary for the ulterior works and for Spiritualist's Douctrine popularization in Europe and America.
As says Henri Sausse, " in less than one year (...), the Revue Espirite (...) was dispersed for all the continents of the Globe. (...)". " In such a way it increased the number of subscribers, that Kardec, at the request of these, reprinted the collections of 1858, twice 1859 and 1860 (...)."
On April 1, 1858, Allan Kardec founds The Spiritualists' Parisian Studies Society, that had for objective " (...) the study of all the relative phenomenons to the manifestations spiritualists and its applications to the moral sciences, physics, historical and psychological(...)."
In October 1861 it happened a pathetic event, for not saying repulsive. It is the famous " Solemnity-of-faith ", promoted by the Catholic Church in the city of Barcelona, Spain, where it forms burned in public square about three hundred publications spiritualists. These works, ordered Allan Kardec for the librarian and bookseller Maurício Lachâtre, was correspondents in a common way, in the conditions normal alfandegárias, tends the import rates you pay for the destintário to the Spanish authorities; even so the delivery of the indent was not accomplished. They were confiscated by the Bishop from Barcelona, with the following vindicative: " The Catholic Church is universal, and these books are contrary to the Catholic faith, not being able to not the government (as us can see, we had the mixture of the temporary power with the religious person again, being this last one stronger) to allow them to start to pervert the morals and religion of another countries ".
Perhaps with longings of the golden times of absolute domain of the human consciences, to the base of iron and fire, the learned Bishop from Barcelona, in typical feeble snobbery demonstration of who is in the right to belong to the only representatives' of the will of God select institution in the Earth, made to relight the bonfires that so much innocent victims had done in previous centuries, where, for the hands of a torturer, the works were burned, certainly in the people's place that there should be: the French spiritualists in general, and a man in particular: Allan Kardec. In everything the pantomime followed the rules of an execution inquisitorial, as we can read for the solemnities of the process:
" There was on the solemnity-of-faith:
" A priest, with its priestly habits, catching, in one of the hands, the cross and, in the other, a torch;
" A public notary entrusted of writing the verbal process of the solemnity-of-faith;
The notary public auxiliar;
" A superior employee of the administration of the customs;
" Three servants of the customs, with the function of feeding the fire;
" An agent of the customs, representing the proprietor of the condemned works;
" An incalculable crowd made herself present, filling the walks, covering the esplanade where the bonfire burned;
" After the fire to have consumed the three hundred volumes and papers spiritualists, the priest and its assistants left place settings for the you catcall and curses of the countless assitentes, that cried: lower the Inquisition!
" Then, a lot of people, in protest, approached and they caught the ashes ".

And, thanks to this demonstration of brutality of the religion of Rome, the spiritism ended tends a great repercussion in the whole Spain, granjeando countless followers. In a certain way, this act raised the Spiritism to the same landing of another martyrs of the spirit freedom, including Jacques DeMolay, Galileu, Giordano Bruno and that that, with all the papal infallibility, it was condemned as witch to the bonfire for, four centuries then, to be elevated to saint's category, Jeanne D'Arc (it delayed enough for the infallibility to recognize the correct).
Kardec passed the rest of the life trying to disclose the results of its study. It undertook countless trips for France and for Belgium among 1859 to 1868, and he/she wrote several brochuras and small goods for the popularization of the Spiritism.
Kardec still wrote many other books, among them stand out The Mediuns' Book, 1861; in 1864, The Gospel According to the Spiritism ; in 1865, the wonderful The Heaven and the Hell, or the Divine Justice According to the Spiritism; in 1868, Genesis ; besides other books and goods for the Revue Espirite, in that hestayed ahead until his death, happened on March 31, 1869, at 65 years of age.

Basic beginnings of the Doutrina Espírita

- God -

1. A Supreme, Absolute Intelligence, non inteligible, exists as Primary Causes of all the things, that the men calls God, Jeova, Iavé, Allah, Brahman, Unites IT, Big-spirit, etc. there is not causeless effect. The cause of an orderly universe is, therefore, a cause above the universe. God, therefore.

2. God is above and beyond from any definition. As speaks to us Plotinus, God is, for being Absolute, above any definition, because He/She is infinite in their attributes and perfections. Beyond, therefore, of the limitations of the human intellectual thought. Any that is the word used to have an idea of God, she will always be expressing something limited, human. But, nevertheless, we can say, in a didactic stage of possible analogy to the man, that God is eternal, unalterable, immaterial, only, just and good soberanamente and Infinite in whole its perfections.

- The Spirit -

3. There is in the man, or better, is the man, in its essence, an intelligent beginning, the one that usually called " Soul " or " Spirit ", independent of the matter, in close friend contact with the body, that is it orchestrate of improvement, that possesses all the inherent moral and psychic abilities to the human being.

4. The materialistic doctrines are, largely, responsible for the state of nauseum and it discourages that afflicts, largely, the humanity. See him the topic on Holism for a larger deeply about this statement.

5. The Spiritism, while a Science proves the existence of the soul by means of the man's intelligent acts and for the intelligent acts of the medianmic manifestations.

6. The human soul, or spirit, survives the body, although it swallows in itself lines of this body, and it conserves its individuality after the death of this.

7. The man's soul is blissful or unhappy after the death in direct ligation of its acts during the life, that they register in its moral counciouss

8. There is an existence of a to Be Supreme, God, the soul and the survival and individuality of the soul after the death of the body, as well as the state of happiness or future misery, they constitute fundamental basic beginnings of, practically, all the religions. That all the religions are valid. They represent states of the human being conscience in search of the transcendência.

I think Allan Kardec's precious work must still be recognized by the coming generations. The success that its work achieved to have in the second half of the century XIX, was, in a certain way, obscured by the crises and successive wars why Europe, that ended for entering in a phase of existential disbelief passed, with the loss of its more spiritual ideas, well exemplified by the nihilism and mecanicismo of the twenty century, as well as for the appearance of another more occult spiritual currents, and, for that reason, more atrantes for some persons, like the Blavatsk's Theosophy, and anothers. But only the time, I eat now it seems to happen, will say what in fact it is the work of one of the most universal men of the XIX century.

Suggested bibliography

Kardec, Allan The Book of the Spirits.
Kardec, Allan That is the Spiritism.
Kardec, Allan The Heaven and the Hell.

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João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil in 01/02/1997

Translated in 07-11-1997

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Copyright (C) 1997 by Carlos Antonio Fragoso Guimarães

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