ON RELATIONS WITH THE SPIRITS.

On meetings.

— On the place.

— On evocations.

— Spirits that may be evoked.

— The language to be used with the Spirits.

— On the questions that may be put to the Spirits.

— Paid mediums.

The manner of placing ourselves in communication with the Spirits is not one of the points of lesser importance. If we consider the distance that separates the two extremities of the Spiritual Scale, we shall understand without effort the necessity of certain precautions, according to the class of the Spirits and their habits. It is not enough that we be in good conditions; we must also know the most favorable course for attaining the objective with greater certainty. We shall therefore have to examine the one that should be followed for meetings, for evocations, the language to be used with the Spirits, and the nature of the questions we may address to them.

On meetings.

We are referring to meetings that have a serious objective. As for those held with a view to amusement and curiosity, we leave them to themselves; full liberty to the attendees to request that the future be unveiled to them, to discuss their little secrets in them: they will have, beforehand, the certainty of having well spent their money. We shall observe, however, that these frivolous meetings have a grave inconvenience: it is that certain persons may take seriously what, most of the time, is no more than a jest on the part of the frivolous Spirits, who amuse themselves at the expense of those who lend them an ear. As for the persons who have never seen anything whatever, it is not there that they should receive their first lessons, nor draw their convictions; they could singularly deceive themselves about the nature of the beings that compose the spirit world, much as one who would judge the entire population of a great city by the inhabitants of its suburbs. From all that we have said, it is understood that silence and recollection are conditions of the first order. Yet no less important is the regularity of the meetings. To all of them come Spirits whom we may call habitual customers, and as such, we are not referring to those Spirits who are found everywhere and meddle in everything. They are either familiar Spirits, or they are those whom we habitually interrogate. We must not suppose that these Spirits have nothing else to do but listen to us. They have their occupations and, moreover, they may find themselves in unfavorable conditions for being evoked. When the meetings are held on fixed days and hours, the Spirits adjust their schedules and it is rare that they fail to come. Some even carry punctuality to excess; they take offense at a delay of fifteen minutes, and if they themselves set a certain hour, it will be useless to evoke them a few minutes earlier. Outside the consecrated hours, they may come, no doubt, and even come willingly, if the objective is useful. However, nothing is more prejudicial to good communications than to call them this way and that, moved by fancy and, above all, without serious motive. As they are not obliged to submit to our caprices, they might very well not trouble themselves, and it is then, principally, that others may take their place and their name. There is no cabalistic hour for evocations. The choice is therefore completely indifferent. The best are those in which our temporal occupations afford the most calm and repose. The Spirits who would prescribe, for any thing whatever, the hours that, in fantastic tales, are consecrated to the beings of hell, would be, without any doubt, mystifying Spirits. The same holds with regard to the days to which superstition attributes an imaginary influence.

Likewise, nothing would prevent the meetings from being daily. But there would be an inconvenience, by reason of their too intense frequency. If the Spirits censure excessive attachment to the things of this world, they recommend that we not neglect the duties that our social position imposes upon us. This is part of our trials. Moreover, for the sake of the body's health, our own Spirit ought not to devote itself entirely to a single objective, above all to abstract things. Its attention is more intense when it is not fatigued. Weekly or twice-weekly meetings are sufficient. They are held with more solemnity and recollection when they are not too close together. We speak of the sessions in which we occupy ourselves with regular work, and not of those that a beginning medium devotes to the exercises necessary to develop; these are not, properly speaking, sessions, but lessons, which will yield results all the more rapidly the more they are multiplied. Once the faculty is developed, however, it is essential not to abuse it, for the reasons we have just set forth. The satisfaction that the possession of this faculty affords certain initiates excites, in some of them, an enthusiasm that it is very important to moderate. They must bear in mind that it is given to them for good and not to satisfy vain curiosity. And when we say good, we mean that of our fellow beings and not only our own. Just as the medium who wishes to maintain serious relations with the Spirits must avoid lending himself to the curiosity of friends and acquaintances who come to importune him with idle questions, so too he must lend a solicitous and disinterested assistance with regard to useful things. To proceed otherwise would be to act selfishly, and selfishness is a vice. On the place.

Neither are there fateful places for spirit communications. One should even avoid those that, by their nature, are capable of impressing the imagination. The good Spirits go everywhere that a pure heart solicits them for good, and the bad ones have no predilection except for the places where they find sympathies. Cemeteries exert more influence over our thought than over the Spirits, and experience demonstrates that these visit the most simple room, without any diabolical apparatus, just as much as they visit tombs and chapels in ruins, in broad daylight as well as by moonlight.

If the choice of the place is indifferent, it should not be changed without necessity. The vital fluid of each Spirit, wandering or incarnate, is, in a certain way, a focus that radiates around it through thought. It is understood, then, that in a habitual place there must be an effluvium of this fluid which, properly speaking, forms a moral atmosphere with which the Spirits identify themselves. A place exclusively consecrated to these practices and not profaned by vulgar preoccupations would be the preferred address, for it would constitute a true sanctuary, from which the bad Spirits would be excluded; moreover, the elements of the moral atmosphere there would not be so mixed as in a common place.

The best material arrangement is the one that proves most convenient and that can occasion the fewest disturbances and distractions. As for the objects that serve as decoration, everything that can elevate the thought and recall the subject with which we occupy ourselves is useful. Let it be clear, however, that any arrangement or ornamentation that recalls magic is absurd, we say even dangerous, by the superstitious ideas that it must necessarily nourish. We repeat here what we said before regarding the hours: the Spirits who recommend things of this kind, or any mystical practices whatever, are inferior Spirits who amuse themselves with credulity or who find themselves, perhaps, under the sway of the ideas they had in life. We have said, and it would never be too much to repeat it: for the Higher Spirits, thought is everything, form is nothing. It is by good thoughts that we attract them, and not by useless formulas. Those who attach importance to material things prove, by that very fact, that they are still under the influence of matter. If, in other times, evocation was surrounded by mysteries and symbols, it is because they wished to conceal it from the common people and to give it importance in the eyes of the ignorant. Today the light is made for everyone, and it would be useless to cover it with a shade. All that we have said of the meetings that deal with spirit communications applies naturally to individual communications, which is why we shall make no special mention of them. The same will hold with what still remains for us to examine. We take meetings as a model, since they comprise more complex conditions, from which each one may profit and apply them to particular cases. We shall add that meetings, when held in good conditions, have the advantage of counting on many persons who, united by a common thought, have greater force to attract the good Spirits, who appreciate finding themselves in a congenial environment, where they can spread the light through their teachings. Nevertheless, there are circumstances in which they prefer, and even prescribe, isolated communications. The best thing we have to do, in that case, is to conform ourselves to their wish. On evocations.

Some persons think that we should abstain from evoking such or such a Spirit, above all when it is a matter of general teachings, and that it is preferable to wait for whoever wishes to communicate. They base this on the fact that, in calling a particular Spirit, we cannot be assured that it is he who presents himself, whereas the one who comes spontaneously, of his own accord, better proves his identity, since he better evidences the desire he has to converse with us.

In our opinion, this is an error. In the first place, because there are always Spirits around us, most often of inferior condition, who desire nothing other than to communicate. In the second place, and even for this last reason, to call none in particular is to open the door to all who wish to enter. In an assembly, to give the floor to no one is to leave it free to everyone, and one knows what results from that. The direct call to a particular Spirit constitutes a bond between him and us; we call him by our desire and thus oppose a kind of barrier to intruders, who likewise may lead us into error as to their identity. Without a direct call, a Spirit would often have no motive to come to us, unless it be our familiar Spirit. Moreover, experience proves that, in any situation, evocation is preferable. As for the question of identity, we shall speak of it shortly. This rule, however, is not absolute. In regular meetings, principally in those in which we occupy ourselves with continuous work, there are always, as we have said, Spirits who attend assiduously, who are present without being called, forewarned as they are by reason of the regularity of the sessions. Often they spontaneously take the floor to prescribe what we should do, or to develop a subject of the conversation; in this case, it is easy to recognize them, whether by the form of the language, which is always identical, whether by certain habits that are peculiar to them, or, finally, by the very names that they indicate, now at the beginning, now at the end of the session.

As for foreign Spirits, the manner of evoking them is most simple: there is no sacramental or mystical formula. It suffices to do it in the name of God, in the following terms or in others equivalent: I beg Almighty God to permit the Spirit… (designate it precisely) to communicate with us; or else: In the name of Almighty God, I ask the Spirit… to deign to communicate with us. If he can come, one generally obtains, in reply: Yes; or: Here I am! Or again: What do you wish?

Sometimes we are surprised by the promptness with which an evoked Spirit presents himself, even the first time: one would say that he was forewarned. This is, in effect, what occurs when we concern ourselves, beforehand, with his evocation. This preoccupation is a kind of anticipated evocation and, as we always have with us our familiar Spirits or others who identify themselves with our thought, they prepare the ways in such a manner that, if no obstacle arises, the Spirit we wish to call is already present at the moment of being evoked. In the contrary case, it is the familiar Spirit of the medium, or that of the interrogator, or, again, one of those who usually attend the meetings, who goes to fetch him, and for that he does not need much time. If the evoked Spirit cannot come at once, the messenger — Mercury, the pagans would say — sets a delay, sometimes of five minutes, a quarter of an hour, an hour, or even several days. When he arrives he says: He is here! The questions we wish to address to him may then begin to be put. When we say that the evocation should be made in the name of God, we wish our recommendation to be taken seriously and not lightly. Those who see in it only the use of a formula without consequence would do better to abstain.

Spirits that may be evoked.

We may evoke all Spirits, whatever the degree at which they find themselves on the spiritual scale: the good as well as the bad, those who left life a short time ago as well as those who lived in the most remote epochs, those who were illustrious men as well as the most obscure, our relatives and friends as well as those who are indifferent to us. This, however, does not mean that they will always wish or be able to respond to our appeal. Independently of their personal will, or of the permission, which may be refused them by a higher power, it is possible that they find themselves prevented from doing so, for reasons that it is not always given us to penetrate.

Among the causes that may oppose the manifestation of a Spirit, some are personal to him and others are foreign. Among the first must be placed the occupations or missions that he is performing, and from which he cannot withdraw to yield to our desires. In this case, his visit is only postponed.

There is also his own situation. Although the state of incarnation is not an absolute obstacle, it can represent an impediment, on certain occasions, above all when it occurs in the inferior worlds and when the Spirit himself is little dematerialized. In the superior worlds, in those in which the bonds between the Spirit and matter are very weak, manifestation is almost as easy as in the wandering state, and, in any case, easier than in the worlds where corporeal matter is more compact.

The foreign causes reside principally in the nature of the medium, in that of the person who evokes, in the environment in which the evocation is made and, finally, in the objective that one has in view. Some mediums receive more particularly communications from their familiar Spirits, who may be more or less elevated; others are apt to serve as intermediaries to all Spirits, this depending on the sympathy or antipathy, on the attraction or repulsion that the personal Spirit of the medium exerts over the foreign Spirit, who may take him as interpreter, with pleasure or with repugnance. This also depends, leaving aside the intimate qualities of the medium, on the development of the mediumistic faculty. The Spirits come with more pleasure and, above all, are more explicit with a medium who offers them no material obstacle. Moreover, all else being equal in moral conditions, the more facility the medium has for writing or for expressing himself, the more his relations with the spirit world become generalized. We must also take into account the facility that should result from the habit of communicating with such or such a Spirit. With time, the foreign Spirit identifies himself with that of the medium and also with the one who calls him. Setting aside the question of sympathy, semi-material relations are established between them that render the communications more rapid; this is why a first conversation is not always as satisfactory as one might wish, and it is for this reason also that the Spirits themselves frequently ask to be called again. The Spirit who comes habitually is as if in his own home: he becomes familiar with his listeners and with his interpreters, he speaks and acts with more liberty.

In summary, from what we have just said it results: that the faculty of evoking any Spirit whatever does not imply for him the obligation to be at our orders; that he may come at one moment and not at another, with such a medium or such an evoker who pleases him and not with another; say what he wishes without being able to be compelled to say what he does not wish; go away when it pleases him; in short, that by causes dependent or not on his will, after having shown himself assiduous for some time, he may suddenly cease to come.

From the possibility of evoking incarnate Spirits results that of evoking the Spirit of a living person. He then responds as a Spirit and not as a man, and often his ideas are no longer the same. These kinds of evocations require prudence, for there are circumstances in which there could be inconveniences.

As is known, the emancipation of the soul occurs almost always during sleep. Now, evocation provokes it if the person is not sleeping, or, at the least, it provokes a numbness and a momentary suspension of the sensitive faculties. There would be, then, danger if at that moment the person found himself in a situation in which he had need of all his reasoning. The danger would also subsist if he were very ill, for the malady could be aggravated. As for the rest, the danger is attenuated by the fact that the Spirit knows the needs of his body and conforms to them, not absenting himself beyond the necessary time. Thus, for example, when he sees that his body is going to awaken, he announces that he will be obliged to withdraw. As the Spirits may be reincarnated on Earth, it often happens that we evoke living persons against our will; this can occur with us without our suspecting it. But then the circumstances are no longer the same, and nothing disagreeable can result from it. We may be astonished to see the Spirit of the most illustrious men, of those to whom we would scarcely dare speak during their life, answer the call of the most common of men. This can surprise only those who do not know the nature of the spirit world. Whoever has studied that world knows that the position we occupy on Earth gives us, there, no supremacy, and that there the powerful man may be below the one who was his servant. Such is the meaning of these words of Jesus: “The great shall be humbled and the small exalted,” and of these others: “Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted, and whoever exalts himself shall be humbled.” A Spirit may, then, not occupy among his fellows the position that we suppose for him; but, if he is truly superior, he must have divested himself of all pride and all vanity, and then he looks at the heart and not at the appearance. Language to be used with the Spirits.

The degree of superiority or inferiority of the Spirits naturally indicates in what tone it is fitting to speak with them. It is evident that, the more elevated they are, the more they have a right to our respect, to our attentions, and to our submission. We owe them, then, no less deference than we would show them, though for other motives, were they alive; on Earth, we would have considered their rank and their social position; in the world of the Spirits, however, our respect is directed only to their moral superiority. Their very elevation places them above the puerilities of our flattering forms. It is not with words that one can captivate their benevolence, but by the sincerity of our sentiments. It would, then, be ridiculous to give them the titles that our customs consecrate to the distinction of classes, and which, in life, might have flattered their vanity. If they are really superior, not only will they attach no importance to them, but they will even be displeased. A good thought is more agreeable to them than the most flattering epithets; if it were not so, they would not be above Humanity. The Spirit of a venerable ecclesiastic, who on Earth was a prince of the Church, a man of good, a practitioner of the law of Jesus, answered one day to someone who had evoked him giving him the title of Monsignor: “You should, at least, say: ex-Monsignor, for here there exists only one Lord: God. Know this: I see many of those who on Earth knelt in my presence, before whom today I bow.”

As for the question of whether or not one should address the Spirits familiarly, it is of very little importance. Respect is in the thought and not in the words. Everything depends on the intention that moves us, for the usages are not the same in all languages. One may, then, address the Spirits familiarly or not according to their position or the degree of familiarity that exists between them and us, as we would do with our fellow beings.

If the Spirits do not let themselves be led by vain words, they like, on the contrary, that we thank them for their condescension, whether because they came, or because they answered us. We should, then, thank them, as we do those who become attached to us and protect us; it is the means of inducing them to continue. It would be a grave error to believe that the imperative form could exert over them any influence; it is, on the contrary, an infallible means of driving away the good Spirits. We beseech them, but we do not give them orders, since they are not at our orders, and everything that denotes pride repels them. The familiar Spirits themselves abandon those who despise them and show themselves ungrateful toward them.

Not being in the first class, the Spirits do not for that reason merit our attentions any less, above all when they reveal to us a relative superiority. As for the inferior Spirits, their character indicates to us the language that it is fitting to use with them. Among their number there are those who, though harmless and even benevolent, are frivolous, ignorant, scatterbrained; to treat them as equals with the serious Spirits, as certain persons do, would amount to kneeling before a schoolboy or before an ass decked out in a doctor's cap. A tone of familiarity would not be out of place, for they take no offense at it; on the contrary, they lend themselves willingly to this treatment.

Among the inferior Spirits there are unhappy Spirits. Whatever the faults they expiate may be, their sufferings are greater titles to our commiseration, since no one can boast of escaping these words of the Christ: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” The benevolence we show them is a relief for them; in the absence of sympathy, they should merit the indulgence that we would wish them to have toward us.

The Spirits who reveal their inferiority by the cynicism of their language, by their lies, by the baseness of their sentiments, by the perfidy of their counsels, are, certainly, less worthy of our interest than those whose words attest repentance.

We owe them at least the pity that we accord to the greatest criminals, and it is by showing ourselves superior to them that we shall reduce them to silence. They are at ease only with persons from whom they judge they have nothing to fear. It is the occasion to speak to them with authority in order to drive them away, which is always achieved through a firm will, enjoining them, in the name of God and with the help of the good Spirits. They bow before moral superiority, as the guilty one before the judge.

In sum, it would be as disrespectful to treat the Higher Spirits as equals as it would be ridiculous to treat any Spirit whatever, without exception, with the same deference. Let us venerate those who merit it, let us be grateful to those who protect and assist us, and let us act, toward all, with the same benevolence that one day, perhaps, we ourselves shall need. Penetrating into the incorporeal world, we learn to know it, and that knowledge should guide us in our relations with those who inhabit it. The Ancients, in their ignorance, raised altars to them; for us, they are no more than creatures more or less perfect, and we raise altars to none but God. (See Polytheism in the “Spiritist Vocabulary.”)

On the questions that may be put to the Spirits.

Whoever is well imbued with the principles we have developed up to now will understand, without difficulty, the importance, from the practical point of view, of the subject we are about to treat; it is the consequence and application of them and, to a certain extent, one could foresee its conclusion from the knowledge that the Spiritual Scale gives us of the character of the Spirits, according to the position they occupy. That scale offers us the measure of what we can ask of them and of what we can expect on their part. A foreigner who came to our country with the belief that all men here are equal in science and in morality would encounter many anomalies; but everything would be explained the moment he understood that each one speaks and writes according to his aptitudes. The same holds in the spirit world. Since we see the Spirits so distanced from one another, in all respects, we understand, without difficulty, that not all are apt to resolve all difficulties, and that a poorly directed question may lead to more than one disappointment. This principle established, is it fitting to address questions to the Spirits? Some persons think we should abstain and that it is necessary to leave to them the initiative of what they wish to say. They base this on the fact that the Spirit, speaking spontaneously, expresses himself with more liberty, says only what he wishes, and thus we are more certain of having the expression of his own thought. They imagine that it is even more respectful to await the teaching that they may see fit to give us.

Experience contradicts that theory, like so many others that arose at the beginning of the manifestations. The knowledge of the different categories of Spirits establishes the limit of the respect that is due them and proves that, unless we are certain of dealing only with superior beings, their spontaneous teaching would not always be very edifying. But, setting aside this consideration and supposing the Spirit sufficiently evolved to say only good things, often his teaching would be very limited if it were not nourished by questions. We have frequently attended drowsy and even wholly unimportant sessions, for lack of a determined subject. Now, as the Spirits, in the final analysis, answer only what suits them, if we act fittingly, we shall in no way do violence to their free will. Often they themselves provoke the questions, saying: “What do you wish? Interrogate and I will answer you.” It is also frequent that they themselves interrogate us, not to instruct themselves, but to put us to the test or to lead us to express our thought more clearly. To reduce ourselves, in their presence, to a merely passive role would be an excess of submission that they do not require; what they desire is attention and recollection. When they spontaneously take the floor, without awaiting questions, as we said above in speaking of evocations, it is then the case not to divert them and to follow the line they trace. But as this does not always occur, it is well to have at our disposal a prepared subject, in default of initiative from the Spirits. General rule: when a Spirit speaks, one should not interrupt him; and when he manifests, by any sign whatever, the intention to speak, it is necessary to wait and not to interrupt him until we are certain that he has nothing more to say. If, in principle, questions do not displease the Spirits, there are some that are supremely antipathetic to them and from which we should abstain completely, under penalty of not obtaining a reply or obtaining them in an unsatisfactory manner. When we say that certain questions are antipathetic, we wish to refer to the elevated Spirits; the inferior Spirits are not so scrupulous; one may ask them anything one wishes, without offending them, even the most absurd things. They answer everything, but, as they themselves say: “To a foolish question, a foolish answer,” and quite mad would be the one who took them seriously.

The Spirits may abstain from answering for several motives: 1st) the question may displease them; 2nd) they do not always have the necessary knowledge; 3rd) there are things that it is forbidden them to reveal. If, then, they do not satisfy a question, it is because they do not wish to, cannot, or should not. Whatever the motive may be, it is an invariable rule that every time a Spirit categorically refuses to answer, one should never insist; otherwise, the answer is given by one of those frivolous Spirits, always ready to meddle in everything and who little trouble themselves with the truth. If the refusal is not absolute, we may ask the Spirit to condescend to our desire; he does so sometimes, but never yields to demands. This rule does not apply to the explanations that one asks and that one should ask about a point not sufficiently explicit. When a Spirit wishes to close a conversation, he generally indicates it by a word, such as: Farewell, that is enough for today. — It is very late. — Until another time, etc. That word is almost always without appeal. The immobility of the pencil is the proof that the Spirit has departed, and then one should not insist. Two essential points must be considered when we put questions: the substance and the form. As for the form, they should, though without ridiculous phraseology, demonstrate the attentions and the condescension owed to the Spirit who communicates, if he is superior; and our benevolence, if he is our equal or inferior to us. From another point of view, they should be clear, precise, and without ambiguity. It is necessary to avoid those that have a complex meaning; if necessary, it is preferable to formulate two questions. When the subject requires a series of questions, it is important that they be classified with order, that they be linked together and follow one another methodically. This is why it is always useful to prepare them beforehand, which, moreover, as we have said, is a kind of anticipated evocation that prepares the ways. By meditating on them with thoughtfulness, we formulate and classify them better, and we obtain more satisfactory answers. This does not prevent adding, in the course of the conversation, complementary questions that one had not thought of, or that may be suggested by the answers; but the framework is always traced, and that is the essential thing. What should be avoided is passing abruptly from one subject to another by disconnected questions thrown in amid the principal subject. It also happens, often, that some questions prepared beforehand, in anticipation of certain answers, become useless; in that case, we pass on to others. A fact that also presents itself very frequently is the answer anticipating the question, that is, scarcely has the interrogator pronounced the first words when the Spirit answers without letting him finish. Sometimes the Spirit even answers a thought expressed in a low voice by some of the attendees, without a question having been put and without the medium knowing it. If at every instant one did not have the manifest proof of the absolute neutrality of the intermediary, facts of this kind could leave no doubt in this respect.

With regard to the substance, the questions merit particular attention, according to their objective. Frivolous questions, of mere curiosity and to put the Spirits to the test, are those that most displease them; they drive away the serious Spirits, or these do not answer them. The frivolous Spirits amuse themselves with them.

Questions of testing are ordinarily put by those who have not yet acquired conviction and who seek, in this way, to assure themselves of the existence of the Spirits, of their perspicacity, and of their identity. This is, no doubt, very natural on their part, but they completely miss their aim; their insistence in this respect results from their ignorance of the bases on which the spiritist science rests, bases completely different from the foundations of the experimental sciences. Those, then, who wish to instruct themselves in the spiritist science must resign themselves to follow a completely different path and set aside the habitual procedures of our schools. If they judge that they can do it only by experimenting in their own manner, they will do better to abstain. What would a professor say to a certain pupil who pretended to impose his method on him, who wished to prescribe to him to act in this or that way and to perform the experiments in his own fashion? Once again, the spiritist science has its principles. Those who wish to know it must conform to them; without this they cannot say themselves apt to judge it. These principles are the following, with regard to questions of testing: 1st) — The Spirits are not machines that we set in motion at will. They are intelligent beings who only do and say what they wish, and we cannot subject them to our caprices;

2nd) — The proofs we desire to have of their existence, of their perspicacity, and of their identity, they themselves give, spontaneously and of their own accord, on many occasions; but they give them when they wish and in the manner they wish. It behooves us to wait, to see, to observe, and these proofs will not be lacking to us: it is necessary to seize them as they pass. If we wish to provoke them, it is then that they escape us, and in this the Spirits prove to us their independence and their free will.

Moreover, this principle governs all the sciences of observation. What does the naturalist do who studies the habits of an insect, for example? He follows it in all the manifestations of its intelligence or its instinct; he observes what happens, but he waits for the phenomena to present themselves, not contemplating provoking them, nor diverting their course. He knows, on the other hand, that if he did so, he would no longer have them in their natural simplicity. The same holds with respect to spiritist observations.

According to what we now know, it is understood that it is not enough for a Spirit to be serious in order to resolve ex professo every serious question; it is not even enough, as we have seen, for him to have been cultured on Earth in order to resolve a question of science, since he may still be imbued with terrestrial prejudices. It is necessary that he be either sufficiently elevated, or that his progress, as a Spirit, has been realized in the circle of ideas that we wish to submit to him, that progress being at times quite different from what we were able to observe in him during life. But, often, it also happens that other more elevated Spirits come to the aid of the one we interrogate, supplying his insufficiency, principally when the intention of the interrogator is good, pure, and without ulterior motives. In short, the first thing to do when we address a Spirit for the first time is to learn to know him, in order to judge the nature of what we can direct to him with more certainty. In general, the Spirits attach little importance to questions of purely material interest, to those that concern the things of private life. We would deceive ourselves, then, if we judged we would find in them infallible guides, who may be consulted at any hour, about the course or the result of our affairs. We repeat once more: the frivolous Spirits answer everything. They will even predict, if we wish, the rise or the fall of the Stock Exchange, they will say whether the husband one awaits will be dark or fair, etc., and so much the better if chance makes them right.

We do not place among the number of frivolous questions those that have a personal character: we should have good sense to appreciate them. But the Spirits who can best guide us in this respect are our familiar Spirits, those who are charged with watching over us and who, by the habit they have of following us, are identified with our needs. These, without any shadow of doubt, know our problems better than we ourselves; it is therefore to them that we should address ourselves for these kinds of counsels, and even so, it is necessary to do it with calm, recollection, by a serious appeal to their benevolence and not lightly. But to ask these things point-blank and to the first Spirit that presents himself would amount to addressing ourselves to the first individual we met on our way. Our familiar Spirits can, then, enlighten us and, in many circumstances, do so in an effective manner; but their assistance is not always patent and material; most of the time it is hidden. They help us by a quantity of indirect warnings that they provoke and which, unfortunately, we do not always take into account, whence it results that often we should complain of none but ourselves in our tribulations. When we interrogate them they can, in certain cases, give us positive counsels, but, in general, they limit themselves to showing us the way, recommending that we not stumble, and this for a double motive. In the first place, the tribulations of life, when they do not result from our own errors, are part of the trials that we must undergo; they can help us to bear them with courage and resignation, but it does not fall to them to divert them. In the second place, if they guided us by the hand, to avoid all the reefs, what would we make of our free will? We would be like children led by the hand until adulthood. They say to us: “Here is the way, follow the good path; I will inspire in you the best you should do, but make use of your own judgment, as the child makes use of its legs to walk.” Can the Spirits predict the future? Such is the question that no beginner fails to ask. On this, we shall say but a word: Providence was wise in concealing the future from us. From how many torments has this ignorance not spared us! Without counting that, if we knew it, we would abandon ourselves blindly to our destiny, abdicating all initiative. The Spirits themselves do not know it except by reason of their elevation. This is the reason why the inferior Spirits, in their sufferings, believe they suffer forever. Those who know the future do not reveal it at all; they can, however, lift a corner of the veil that covers it. But, then, they do so spontaneously, when they judge it useful, and never by our solicitation. The same holds with our past. To insist on this point, as on the others, when they refuse to answer, is to make oneself the plaything of mystifying Spirits. We could not, without reproducing here what The Spirits' Book contains, pass in review all the varieties of questions that it is possible to put. To it, then, we refer the one interested in the explanation of all the questions that concern the future, anterior existences, discoveries, hidden treasures, the sciences, Medicine, etc.

Paid mediums.

We do not yet know of writing mediums who give consultations at so much per session. This may perhaps come to pass; for this reason it seems to us useful to say a few words on this subject. We shall say, to begin with, that nothing would lend itself more to charlatanism and to deceit than such a trade. If false somnambulists have already been seen, far more false mediums would be seen, and this reason alone would be a well-founded motive for distrust. Disinterestedness, on the contrary, is the most peremptory answer that can be opposed to those who see in spiritist facts only a skillful maneuver. There is no disinterested charlatanism. What, then, would be the objective of persons who used trickery without profit? And with all the more reason when their notorious honorability places them above all suspicion. If the profit that a medium drew from his faculty may be a motive of suspicion, it would by no means be a proof that this suspicion is well-founded. He could, then, have a real aptitude and act in very good faith, even if he had himself remunerated. Let us see, in this case, whether we can rationally expect a satisfactory result. If it has been well understood what we said about the necessary conditions required of whoever wishes to serve as interpreter to the good Spirits; about the numerous causes that may drive them away; about the circumstances independent of their will, which are, often, an obstacle to their coming; in short, about all the moral conditions that may exert an influence on the nature of the communications, how could we suppose that a Spirit, however little elevated he might be, could be, at any hour of the day, at the orders of a dealer in consultations and submitted to his demands to satisfy the curiosity of the first comer?

Knowing the aversion of the Spirits for everything that denotes cupidity and selfishness, the little case they make of material things, would it be reasonable that they would help men to traffic? This is repugnant to reason, and one would have to know very little of the nature of the spirit world to believe that this could be so. But, as the frivolous Spirits are less scrupulous and seek only occasions to amuse themselves at our expense, it results from this that, if we are not mystified by a false medium, we have every probability of being so by some among them. These few reflections give the measure of the degree of confidence that should be accorded to communications of this kind. Moreover, of what use would paid mediums be today, since we ourselves, in case we are not endowed with this faculty, can find it in our own family, among our friends or acquaintances? The inconvenience we have just pointed out is not the same when it is a matter of purely physical manifestations. The nature of the Spirits who communicate in these circumstances makes it easily understandable. Nevertheless, as the faculty of mediums of physical effects is not always at their disposal, it could often fail, precisely at the hour set to satisfy the demands of the public. The mediumistic faculty, even limited, was not granted for exhibitions on stages, and anyone who pretended to have Spirits at his order, even those of the most lowly order, to make them act rapidly, could, with all reason, be suspected of charlatanism and of more or less skillful sleight of hand. Let this be well understood every time one sees advertisements of supposed sessions of Spiritism or of spiritualism at so much per seat.