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[VI]

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As we have said, the beings who thus communicate designated themselves by the name of Spirits or genii, declaring, some of them at least, to have belonged to men who lived on Earth.

They constitute the spiritual world, as we constitute, during our life, the corporeal world.

We shall here summarize, in a few words, the most important points of the doctrine they have transmitted to us, in order more easily to answer certain objections.

God is eternal, immutable, immaterial, unique, omnipotent, supremely just and good.

He created the Universe, which comprises all beings animate and inanimate, material and immaterial.

Material beings constitute the visible or corporeal world, and immaterial beings the invisible or spiritual world, that is, the world of the Spirits.

The spiritual world is the normal, primitive, eternal world, preexistent to and surviving all things.

The corporeal world is secondary; it could cease to exist, or might never have existed, without altering the essence of the spiritual world.

Corporeal beings inhabit the different globes of the Universe.

Immaterial beings or Spirits are everywhere: Space is their domain.

The Spirits temporarily put on a perishable material envelope, whose destruction by death restores their liberty to them.

Among the different species of corporeal beings, God chose the human species for the incarnation of the Spirits, which gives it moral and intellectual superiority over the others.

The soul is an incarnate Spirit, the body being only its envelope.

There are three things in man: 1st, the body or material being analogous to the animals and animated by the same vital principle; 2nd, the soul or immaterial being, a Spirit incarnated in the body; 3rd, the bond that unites the soul to the body, an intermediate principle between matter and Spirit.

Thus man has two natures: through the body, he partakes of the nature of the animals, whose instincts he has; through the soul, he partakes of the nature of the Spirits.

The Spirits belong to different classes and are not equal, neither in power, nor in intelligence, nor in knowledge, nor in morality.

Those of the first order are the superior Spirits, who are distinguished from the others by their perfection, their knowledge, their nearness to God, the purity of their sentiments and their love of the good: they are the angels or pure Spirits.

The other classes grow more and more distant from that perfection. Those of the inferior classes are inclined to most of our passions: hatred, envy, jealousy, pride, etc.; they take pleasure in evil.

Among them there are some who are neither very good nor very bad, blundering and troublesome rather than wicked; mischief and inconsistency seem to be their principal characteristics: they are the giddy Spirits.

The Spirits do not perpetually occupy the same order. All improve themselves by passing through the different degrees of the spirit hierarchy.

This improvement is effected by means of incarnation, which is imposed on some as expiation and on others as a mission.

Material life is a trial to which they must submit several times, until they have attained absolute perfection; it is a kind of filter or purifier from which they emerge more or less purified.

On leaving the body, the soul returns to the world of the Spirits, from which it had departed, in order to begin a new material existence, after a lapse of time more or less long, during which it remains in the state of a wandering Spirit. 65

Since the Spirit must pass through many incarnations, it follows that all of us have had many existences and that we shall have still others, more or less perfected, whether on Earth or in other worlds.

The incarnation of the Spirits always takes place in the human species; it would be an error to believe that the soul or Spirit could incarnate in the body of an animal. 66

The different corporeal existences of the Spirit are always progressive and never retrograde; but the rapidity of its progress depends on the efforts it makes to reach perfection.

The qualities of the soul are those of the Spirit that is incarnated in us; thus, the good man is the incarnation of a good Spirit and the wicked man that of an impure Spirit.

The soul had its individuality before incarnating and preserves it after it separates from the body.

On its return to the world of the Spirits, the soul finds again all those it knew on Earth, and all its previous existences are reflected in its memory, with the remembrance of all the good and all the evil it did.

The incarnate Spirit finds itself under the influence of matter. The man who overcomes that influence, through the elevation and purification of his soul, draws near to the good Spirits, with whom he will one day be.

He who lets himself be dominated by the evil passions, and places all his joys in the satisfaction of gross appetites, draws near to the impure Spirits, giving preponderance to the animal nature.

The relations of the Spirits with men are constant.

The good Spirits incite us to good, sustain us in the trials of life, and help us to bear them with courage and resignation.

The bad ones impel us to evil:

it is a pleasure for them to see us succumb and to identify us with their defects.

The communications of the Spirits with men are occult or overt.

The occult ones occur through the good or bad influence they exert upon us, without our knowledge.

It belongs to our judgment to discern the good inspirations from the bad.

The overt communications take place by means of writing, speech, or other material manifestations, most often through the mediums who serve them as instruments.

The Spirits manifest themselves spontaneously or by means of evocation.

All Spirits can be evoked: those who animated obscure men, as well as those of the most illustrious personages, whatever the epoch in which they lived; those of our relatives, of our friends or enemies, and from them one may obtain, by means of written or verbal communications, counsels, information about their situation beyond the grave, their thoughts concerning us, as well as the revelations they are permitted to make to us.

The Spirits are attracted in proportion to their sympathy for the moral nature of the milieu that evokes them.

The superior Spirits take pleasure in serious gatherings, where the love of good and the sincere desire to be instructed and to improve oneself predominate.

Their presence drives away the inferior Spirits which, on the contrary, find free access and can act with full liberty among frivolous persons or those guided only by curiosity, and everywhere they find evil instincts.

Far from obtaining good counsels, or useful teachings, from them one must expect only futilities, lies, jokes in bad taste, or mystifications, for they often take venerated names, the better to lead into error.

To distinguish the good Spirits from the bad is extremely easy. The language of the superior Spirits is constantly dignified, noble, marked by the highest morality, free from every inferior passion; their counsels reveal the purest wisdom and always have for their object our improvement and the good of Humanity.

That of the inferior Spirits, on the contrary, is inconsistent, often trivial and even gross; 47 if at times they say good and true things, on many others they say falsehoods and absurdities, out of malice or ignorance.

They mock credulity and amuse themselves at the expense of those who question them, flattering their vanity and lulling their desires with false hopes.

In short, serious communications, in the full acceptation of the term, are given only in serious centers, those whose members are united by an intimate communion of thoughts, having the good in view.

The morality of the superior Spirits is summed up, like that of Christ, in this evangelical maxim: Do unto others as we would that others should do unto us, that is, to do good and not evil. Man finds in this principle the universal rule of conduct, even for his smallest actions.

They teach us that egoism, pride, sensuality are passions that bring us near to the animal nature, binding us to matter; 52 that the man who, from this world on, detaches himself from matter through the disdain of worldly futilities and through love for his neighbor, draws near to the spiritual nature; 53 that each one of us must become useful according to the faculties and the means that God has placed in our hands in order to prove us; 54 that the Strong and the Powerful owe support and protection to the Weak, because he who abuses his strength and his power to oppress his fellow transgresses the Law of God.

They teach, finally, that in the world of the Spirits, since nothing can be hidden, the hypocrite will be unmasked and all his baseness uncovered;

that the inevitable presence, at every instant, of those toward whom we acted ill is one of the punishments that are reserved for us; 57 that to the state of inferiority and of superiority of the Spirits correspond pains and joys that are unknown to us on Earth.

But they also teach us that there are no irremissible faults that a sincere repentance and a better conduct cannot efface.

Man finds the means of achieving this in the different existences that allow him to advance, according to his desires and his efforts, on the path of progress, toward perfection, which is his final object.