Allan Kardec is the author of the five main books of Spiritism.
He was born in Lyon, France, on October 3, 1804, in a traditional family, greatly distinguished in the legal profession and court system. He did not pursue those careers. From his youth, he was inclined toward the studies of science and philosophy.
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Educated in the renowned School of Pestalozzi, in Yverdun (Switzerland), he became one of that celebrated teacher’s most eminent pupils and one of the most zealous propagandists of the Educational system that exercised a great influence in the reform of the Educational system in France and in Germany.
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Endowed with a notable intelligence, he was drawn to teaching, due to his character and his special aptitudes. At fourteen, he had already started to teach what he had previously studied, to some of his schoolmates, who had assimilated less than he. It was at that school that the ideas originated, which would later categorize him in the class of the progressive and free-thinker individuals of the day.
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Although he had been born under the influence of the Catholic religion, he was educated in a Protestant country. The acts of intolerance that he witnessed under these circumstances, led him at an early age to conceive of the idea of a religious reformation, in which he labored silently for many years with the ultimate aim of achieving the unification of the faiths. He lacked, however, the indispensable element for the solution to that immense problem.