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A fact demonstrated by observation and confirmed by the Spirits themselves is that inferior spirits often present themselves with known and respected names.

Who, then, can assure us that those who say they were, for example, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Fénelon, Napoleon, Washington, etc., truly animated those personages?

This doubt exists even among some fervent adherents of the Spiritist Doctrine; they admit the intervention and the manifestation of the Spirits, but ask what control one can have over their identity.

Such control is, in fact, very difficult to establish.

Although it cannot be done in a manner as authentic as by a certificate of civil registry, it can at least be done by presumption, according to certain indications.

When the Spirit of someone we knew personally manifests itself, a relative or a friend, for example, especially if he died a short time ago, it generally happens that his language bears a perfect relation to the character we knew in him. This already constitutes an indication of identity.

But there is hardly any longer room for doubt when this Spirit speaks of private matters, recalls family affairs that only the interlocutor knows.

A son will surely not be deceived by the language of his father or his mother, nor the parents by the language of their children.

Sometimes surprising things occur in these kinds of intimate evocations, capable of convincing the greatest unbeliever.

The most hardened skeptic is, not infrequently, terrified by the unexpected revelations made to him.

Another very characteristic circumstance comes as proof of identity. We said that the handwriting of the medium generally changes with the evoked Spirit, and that this handwriting is reproduced exactly the same every time the same Spirit manifests itself.

It has been observed countless times, especially in the case of persons recently deceased, that the writing shows a striking resemblance to the one this person had in life; 13 signatures of perfect exactness have been obtained.

We are far, however, from giving this fact as a rule, and still less as a constant rule; we mention it only as worthy of note.

Only the Spirits that have attained a certain degree of purification find themselves freed from all corporeal influence; but 16 when they are not completely dematerialized — this is the expression they use — they retain most of the ideas, the inclinations, and even the manias they had on Earth, which is also a means of recognizing them, a means likewise arrived at through an immensity of minute facts that only attentive, careful observation can reveal.

We see writers discussing their own works or doctrines, approving or condemning certain parts of them; other Spirits recalling unknown or little-known circumstances of their lives or their deaths; in short, all the things that are at least moral proofs of identity, the only ones that can be invoked when dealing with abstract things.

Now, if the identity of an evoked Spirit can, to a certain extent, be established in some cases, there is no reason why it should not be in others; and if we do not have the same means of control with respect to persons whose death occurred longer ago, there always remains that of language and character, because, surely, the Spirit of a good man will not speak like that of a perverse or dissolute man.

As for the Spirits that appropriate respectable names, these soon betray themselves by their language and their maxims.

He who said he was Fénelon, for example, and who offended, even accidentally, good sense and morality, would show, by this simple fact, the deception.

If, on the contrary, the thoughts he expresses are always pure, without contradictions and constantly worthy of the character of Fénelon, there is no reason to doubt his identity.

Otherwise, it would be necessary to admit that a Spirit who preaches only good is capable of lying consciously, and that without any usefulness.

After all, what does it matter whether a Spirit is really that of Fénelon? Provided that it says only good things, it is a good Spirit, the name under which it presents itself being indifferent. >>>