Posthumous Works · Allan Kardec
Chapter 51 of 64
INSTRUCTION CONCERNING THE HEALTH OF MR. ALLAN KARDEC.
As the health of Mr. Allan Kardec weakens daily, in consequence of excessive labors beyond his strength, I find myself obliged to repeat once again what I have already told you so many times: You need rest; human strength has limits which your desire for the progress of the teaching often leads you to overstep. You are mistaken, for, by proceeding thus, you will not hasten the march of the Doctrine but will ruin your health and place yourself in the material impossibility of completing the task you came to carry out in this world. Your present infirmity is nothing more than the result of an unceasing expenditure of vital forces, without allowing time for the necessary repair to take place, and of an overheating of the blood produced by the absolute lack of rest. Without doubt, we sustain you, but on condition that you do not undo what we do. What is the use of rushing? Have we not already told you many times that each thing will come in its own time, and that the Spirits appointed to the movement of ideas know how to bring about favorable circumstances when the moment to act has sounded? When it becomes necessary for every Spiritist to concentrate his forces for the struggle, do you think it your duty to exhaust yours? No. In all things you must set the example, and your place is at the breach, in the moment of danger. What would you do there if, through weakening, your body no longer permitted your spirit to make use of the weapons that experience and revelation have placed in your hands? — Listen to me: leave for later the great works destined to complete that which is sketched out in your first publications; your ordinary labors and a few small urgent pamphlets are enough to absorb your time and must constitute the sole objects of your present concerns.
I do not speak to you in my name alone; I am here the delegate of all the Spirits who have so powerfully contributed to the propagation of the teaching, through their wise instructions. They tell you, through me, that this delay, which you consider prejudicial to the future of the doctrine, is a necessary measure from more than one point of view, whether because certain questions are not yet completely elucidated, or in order to prepare the Spirits to better assimilate them. It is necessary that others should have cleared the ground, that the untenability of certain theories should be proven, and that a greater vacuum should be produced. In a word: the moment is not opportune; spare yourself, therefore; when the time comes, you will need all the vigor of body and spirit. Until now, Spiritism has been the target of many diatribes, has raised many tempests. Do you think, however, that all this agitation has subsided, that all the hatreds have calmed down and become powerless? Undeceive yourself, the purifying crucible has not yet expelled all the impurities; the future holds other trials in reserve for it, and the last crises will not be the least painful and difficult to bear. I know that your particular situation imposes upon you an immensity of secondary labors that consume most of your time. Requests of every kind rain down upon you, and you believe it your duty to attend to them as far as possible. I will do here what you would not dare to do for yourself: addressing the generality of Spiritists, I will ask them, in the very interest of Spiritism, to spare you all overload of work capable of consuming moments that you must devote almost exclusively to the completion of the work. If your correspondence should suffer somewhat from this, in compensation the teaching will gain.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to sacrifice individual satisfactions to the general interest. It is an urgent measure that all sincere adepts will know how to understand and approve.
The voluminous correspondence you receive is for you a precious store of documents and information; it enlightens you about the true march and the real progress of the Doctrine; it is an impartial thermometer; it provides you, moreover, with moral satisfactions that have more than once sustained your courage, showing you the adherence your ideas meet with at every point of the globe. In this respect, the superabundance is a good and not an inconvenience, but on condition that it assists your labors and does not hamper them, creating for you an increase of occupations.
Dr. Demeure.
Good Dr. Demeure, I thank you for your considered counsels. Thanks to the resolution I have taken to send, save in exceptional cases, the habitual correspondence to a substitute, it now suffers less and in the future will suffer nothing; but what shall I do with that which has accumulated, more than five hundred letters, which, despite all my goodwill, I cannot manage to bring up to date?
Answer. — It is necessary, as they say in commercial language, to throw them in a block into the account of profit and loss. By announcing this measure in the Review, your correspondents will know what to do; they will understand its necessity and will consider it justified by the counsels we have just given. I repeat, it would be impossible for things to continue as they have gone. Everything would suffer from it: your health and the Doctrine. It is fitting, when necessary, to know how to make the indispensable sacrifices. Reassured henceforth on this point, you will be able to give yourself more freely to your ordinary labors. Such is the counsel of one who will always be your devoted friend.
Demeure.
Yielding to such wise counsel, we asked those of our correspondents with whom we had long been in arrears to accept our apologies and the expression of our regret at not having been able to reply in detail, as we had wished, to their attentive letters, and to deign to receive, collectively, the expression of our fraternal sentiments.