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We would pass lightly over the objection that some skeptics make, concerning the spelling errors committed by certain Spirits, if it did not give rise to an essential observation.

Their spelling, it must be said, is not always impeccable; but one must have a very narrow mind to make of this an object of serious criticism, saying that, since the Spirits know everything, they ought to know spelling.

We could oppose to them countless sins of this kind, committed by more than one learned man of Earth, which in no way diminishes their merit.

However, there is in this fact a more serious question. For the Spirits, principally for the superior Spirits, the idea is everything, the form is nothing.

Freed from matter, their language is rapid as thought, for it is the thoughts themselves that communicate without intermediary.

They must, then, feel very ill at ease when they are obliged, in order to communicate with us, to make use of the long and cumbersome forms of human language and, above all, to struggle with the insufficiency and imperfection of this language in expressing all ideas; this is what they themselves declare.

Besides, it is curious to observe the means they often use to mitigate this inconvenience.

The same would happen to us, if we had to express ourselves in a language richer in words and expressions, and poorer in phrasing than our own.

It is the embarrassment felt by the man of genius, who grows impatient with the slowness of the pen, always far behind his thought.

It is understandable, in view of this, that the Spirits attach little importance to the puerility of spelling, especially when it is a matter of important teaching.

Moreover, is it not already marvelous that they express themselves indifferently in all languages and understand them all? Let it not be concluded from this, however, that the conventional correctness of language is unknown to them, for they observe it when necessary.

It is thus, for example, that the poetry dictated by them would almost always defy the criticism of the most meticulous purist, and this in spite of the ignorance of the medium. >>>