RENE GUENON 3

Rene Guenon, The Spiritist Fallacy (Collected Works of Rene Guenon), translated from the French by Alvin Moore,Jr. & Rama. P. Coomaraswamy (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 1923, 2003) ("[T]he fundamental postulate of spiritsm is that communication with the dead is not only a possibility but it is a fact. If one admits this only as a possibility, one is not on that account a spiritist." Id. at 9. "Let the separatists gp ad search their theories to Easterners; they will see how they are received! The truth is that spiritism addresses itself exclusively to modern Westerners, for it is only among them that it can make itself accepted, both because it is a product of their mentality and because the tendencies spiritism expresses are precisely those that distinguish this mentality form every other. The search for ;phenomena', belief in progress, sentimentalism and humanitarian 'moralism', the absence of all tree intellectually, in these lie the entire reason for the success of spiritism; its very stupidity is its greatest strength [], and gains it such a great number of adherents. Moreover, the apostles of the new 'revelation' insist particularly on its 'consoling', 'moralizing', and sentimental character: 'This teaching can give satisfaction to everyone,' says Leon Denis." Id. at 309-310.).