Spiritist aphorisms and miscellaneous thoughts.

I. — When you wish to study the aptitude of a medium, do not immediately evoke, through him, the first Spirit that appears, for we have never affirmed that the medium is fit to serve as interpreter to all Spirits, nor that frivolous Spirits cannot usurp the name of the one you call. Evoke preferably his familiar Spirit, because this one will always come; then you will judge him by his language and you will be better able to appreciate the nature of the communications that the medium receives. II. — Incarnate Spirits act of themselves, according as they are good or bad. They can also act under the impulse of disincarnate Spirits, who make them an instrument for good or for evil, or for the accomplishment of certain facts. We are thus, in spite of ourselves, the agents of the will of the Spirits for what takes place in the world, both in the general interest and in the individual one. In this way, we encounter someone who leads us to do or to refrain from doing something; we think that it is chance that sends him to us, while most often it is the Spirits who impel us toward one another, because this encounter must lead to a determined result. III. — Incarnating in different social positions, Spirits are like actors who, off the stage, dress like everyone else, and on the stage make use of all costumes, playing all the roles, from the king to the ragpicker.

IV. — There are creatures who do not fear death, who have faced it a hundred times and who experience a certain dread in the darkness. They do not fear thieves and yet, in isolation, in a cemetery, at night, they are afraid of something. They are the Spirits who are at their side, whose contact produces in them an impression that results in a dread of which they are not aware.

V. — The origins that certain Spirits give us, by the revelation of supposed previous existences, are often a means of seduction and a temptation for our pride, which is flattered at having been such or such a personage.

Allan Kardec.

Imprimerie de H. Carion, rue Bonaparte, 64.