Note XIV.

For many people, the fear of the revelation of intimate secrets is a cause of apprehension and repulsion against somnambulism and Spiritism. According to such people, there is in this revelation a social danger and, that being so, it is necessary to proscribe what some call superstitious practices, and others diabolical practices. Such individuals do not realize that to recognize the danger of a thing is equivalent to recognizing that thing. Either the fact exists or it does not exist; if it does not exist, why concern oneself with it? It will fall of its own accord; if it does exist, were it a thousand times dangerous, and were it even to make the world tremble, there would be no proscription capable of annihilating it. If ever Nature should furnish man with a means of laying bare his most intimate thoughts, it will be a new order of things and a transformation in customs, in habits, and in character; with it we must become accustomed, as we accepted the social transformation produced by the press, by the new political doctrines, by steam, by the train, etc. It will be, we must agree on this, the annihilation of hypocrisy, and only those who have an interest in remaining in the shadow could lament it; not, however, whoever can say like the sage: I would like my house to be of glass, so that everyone might see what I do.