For new ideas new words are needed, in order to secure clearness
of language by avoiding the confusion inseparable from the employment
of the same term for expressing different meanings. The words
spiritual, spiritualist,
spiritualism, have a definite acceptation;
to give them a new one, in order to apply them to the doctrine
set forth by spirits, would be to multiply the causes of amphibology,
already so numerous. Strictly speaking, Spiritualism is the opposite
of Materialism; every one is a Spiritualist who believes that
there is in him something more than matter, but it does not follow
that he believes in the existence of spirits, or in their communication
with the visible world. Instead, therefore, of the words SPIRITUAL,
SPIRITUALISM, we employ, to designate this latter
belief, the words SPIRITIST, SPIRITISM,
which, by their form, indicate their origin and radical meaning,
and have thus the advantage of being perfectly intelligible; and
we reserve the words spiritualism, spiritualist, for the expression
of the meaning attached to them by common acceptation. We say,
then, that the fundamental principle of the spiritist theory,
or Spiritism, is the relation of the material world with spirits,
or the beings of the invisible world; and we designate the adherents
of the spiritist theory as spiritists.
In a special sense, "The Spirits' Book" contains the
doctrine or theory of spiritism; in a general sense, it appertains
to the spiritualist school, of which it presents one of the phases.
It is for this reason that we have inscribed the words Spiritualist
Philosophy on its title page.
From the introduction of the "The Spiritist'
Book"
