Example 1 - THE SUICIDE OF THE SAMARITAINE.

— On April 7, 1858, at 7 o'clock in the evening, a man of about 50 years and decently dressed presented himself at the establishment of the Samaritaine, in Paris, and ordered a bath to be prepared for him. After about 2 hours had passed, the attendant on duty, surprised at the customer's silence, decided to enter his cabinet, in order to verify what was happening. There then appeared before him a horrifying scene: the unfortunate man had cut his own throat with a razor and all his blood was mingling with the water of the bathtub. And since the identity of the suicide could not be ascertained, the corpse was removed to the morgue. The Spirit of this man, evoked at the Society of Paris six days after his death, gave the following answers:

Evocation. (Answer of the medium's guide.) — Wait, here he is.

Where do you find yourself today? — A. I do not know… tell me.

You are in a gathering of people who study Spiritism and who are benevolent toward you. — A. Tell me whether I am alive, for this atmosphere suffocates me.

His soul, although separated from the body, is still completely immersed in what might be called the whirlwind of corporeal matter; 3 the earthly ideas are so lively in him that he believes himself incarnate.

Who impelled you to come here? — A. I feel relieved.

What was the motive that drove you to suicide? — A. Dead? I? No… for I dwell in my body… You do not know how I suffer!… I suffocate… Would that a compassionate hand might annihilate me once and for all!

Why did you leave no clues that might make you recognizable? — A. I am abandoned; I fled from suffering to give myself over to torture.

Do you still have the same reasons to remain unknown? — A. Yes; do not stir with a red-hot iron the wound that bleeds.

Could you give us your name, age, profession and dwelling? — A. Absolutely not.

Did you have a family, a wife, children? — A. I was a despised man, no one loved me.

And what did you do to be thus repudiated? — A. How many there are like me!… A man can live abandoned within the bosom of his family, when no one prizes him.

At the moment of taking your own life, did you not experience any hesitation? — A. I yearned for death… I hoped to rest.

How is it that the idea of the future did not make you renounce such a project? — A. I did not believe in it at all. I was disillusioned.

The future is hope.

What reflections occurred to you on feeling the extinction of life? — A. I did not reflect, I felt… But life was not extinguished in me… 2 my soul is bound to the body…

I feel the worms gnawing at me.

What sensation did you experience at the decisive moment of death? — A. Then it has been completed?

Was the moment in which life was extinguished in you painful? — A. Less painful than afterward.

Only the body suffered.

(To the Spirit Saint Louis.) — What does the Spirit mean by affirming that the moment of death was less painful than afterward? — A. The Spirit unloaded the burden that oppressed it; it felt the voluptuousness of pain.

Does such a state always follow suicide? — A. Yes.

The Spirit of the suicide remains bound to the body until the term of that life.

Natural death is the liberation of life: suicide breaks it off completely.

Does the same occur in accidental deaths, though involuntary, but which shorten existence? — A. No.

What do you understand by suicide? The Spirit answers only for its own acts.

— This doubt of death is very common in persons recently disincarnated, and chiefly in those who, during life, do not raise the soul above matter. It is a phenomenon that seems singular at first sight, but which is explained naturally.

If we ask an individual, somnambulized for the first time, whether he is sleeping, he will almost always answer no, and this answer is logical: it is the questioner who puts the question badly, making use of an improper term.

In common language, the idea of sleep is connected to the suspension of all the sensory faculties; now, the somnambulist who thinks, who sees and feels, who is aware of his freedom, does not believe himself asleep, and in fact does not sleep, in the vulgar sense of the word. This is the reason why he answers no, until he becomes familiar with this manner of apprehending the fact.

The same happens with the man who has just disincarnated; for him death was the annihilation of the being, and, like the somnambulist, he sees, feels and speaks, and thus does not consider himself dead, and this he affirms until he acquires the intuition of his new state.

This illusion is always more or less painful, since it is never complete and gives the Spirit a certain anxiety.

In the example above it constitutes a true torment through the sensation of the worms gnawing the body, not to speak of its duration, which must equal the time of life cut short.

This state is common in suicides, although it does not always present itself under identical conditions, varying in duration and intensity according to the attenuating or aggravating circumstances of the fault.

The sensation of the worms and of the decomposition of the body is not exclusive to suicides: it likewise befalls those who lived more by matter than by the spirit.

In principle, there is no fault exempt from penalties, but neither is there an absolute and uniform rule in the means of punishment.