Spiritist Aphorisms

I. — The good Spirits approve of what they find good, but they do not make exaggerated praises. Such praises, like everything that denotes flattery, are signs of inferiority on the part of the Spirits.

II. — The good Spirits do not flatter prejudices of any kind, neither political nor religious; they may not attack them abruptly, because they know that this would increase resistance. Nevertheless, there is a great difference between these attitudes, which we might call oratorical precautions, and the absolute approval of the most false ideas, which obsessing Spirits often make use of in order to gain the confidence of those whom they wish to subjugate, exploiting their weak point. III. — There are people who have a singular mania; they come upon an idea completely worked out by another; it seems good to them and, above all, profitable; they appropriate it, give it out as their own, and end up so deluded as to believe themselves truly its authors, asserting that it was stolen from them.

IV. — One day a man saw an experiment in electricity being performed and tried to reproduce it. Because he did not have the required knowledge, nor the necessary instruments, he failed. Then, without going any further and without seeking to know whether the cause of the failure might not lie in himself, he declared that electricity did not exist and that he was going to write to demonstrate it. What would you think of the logic of one who reasoned thus? Would he not resemble a blind man who, being unable to see, set about writing against light and the faculty of vision? Yet this is the reasoning we hear with regard to the Spirits, from a man who passes for being witty; that he has wit, yes; but the capacity to judge is another thing. He tries to write as a medium and, because he does not succeed, he concludes that mediumship does not exist. Now, according to him, if mediumship is an illusory faculty, the Spirits cannot exist except in diseased brains. What sagacity! Allan Kardec.

Note – With the issue of the month of January 1860, the Spiritist Review will begin its third year.

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