On the value of spiritist communications.

— Religious orthodoxy confers a role of excessive importance upon Satan and his supposed satellites, who should only be called malign, ignorant, vain spirits, almost all of them stained with the sin of pride that ruined them. In this they in no way differ from men, of whom they were a part during a very short period, in relation to the eternity of their pneumatic existence, which may be compared to that of a body passed into the volatile state. The error lies in the belief that, by the fact of being spirits, they must be perfect, as if vapor and gas were more perfect than the water or the liquid from which they came; as if a malefactor could be a peaceful man after escaping from prison; as if a madman could be reputed wise after having passed over the walls of the asylum; as if a blind man, come out of the Quinze-Vingts, n could pass himself off as a clairvoyant.

Imagine, gentlemen mediums, that you had to deal with all those people and that there is as much difference among spirits as among men. Now, you are not unaware that there are as many men as there are different sentiments; as many bodies as there are diverse properties, both before and after their change of state. You can judge, by their errors, the bad quality of spirits, as one judges the bad quality of a body by the odor it exhales. If, at times, they are in agreement on certain points, among themselves and with you, it is because they copy each other and copy you, for they know, better than you, what was written, in the past and presently, about this or that doctrine that they repeat to you, often like parrots, but at other times with conviction, if they are studious and conscientious spirits, like certain philosophers or scholars who would do you the honor of coming to converse and discuss with you. But be persuaded that they answer you only when they sense that you are in condition to understand them. Without this they tell you nothing but commonplaces and nothing that surpasses the reach of your intelligence and of your acquired knowledge. As much as you, they know that pearls are not cast before swine; they cite the Gospel, if you are a Christian, the Koran, if you are a Muslim, and they easily put themselves in unison with you, because in the pneumatic state they have the intelligence that volatilized material bodies do not possess; only in this respect the preceding comparison is not exact. If you like to laugh, to make plays on words, and you deal with a serious spirit, he will send you jokers, stronger than you in jests and puns. If you have a weak brain, he abandons you to the mystifiers, who will lead you further than you would like. In general spirits like to entertain themselves with men; it is a distraction and at times a study for them, as they all say. Thus, do not fear to tire them, for you will always be so before them; but they will teach you nothing beyond what they could have told you in life. This is the reason why so many people ask what advantage there is in losing time consulting them, since one cannot expect extraordinary revelations, unexpected inventions, panaceas, philosophers' stones, transmutations of metals, perpetual motions, since they know no more than you about the results not yet obtained by human science. And if they encourage you to make experiments, it is because they themselves would be curious to see their effects, for, otherwise, they give you only confused explanations, like the pseudo-scholars and certain lawyers, who let themselves get entangled in their own words. If it is a matter of a treasure, they tell you: dig; of an alloy, they say: blow. It is possible that, seeking, you may find. They will be as astonished as you and will boast of having given you good advice. Human vanity does not abandon them. The good spirits do not affirm to you that you will find treasures, as the bad ones do, who have no scruple about ruining you. It is in this that you must never make abstraction of your judgment, of your free will, of your reason. What do you say when a man instigates you to a bad piece of business? That he is an infernal, diabolical spirit. Well then! The spirit who advises you badly is no more diabolical, no more infernal; at most he is an ignoramus, a mystifier; but he has no special mission, nor superhuman power, nor great interest in deceiving you; he likewise uses the free will that God gave him, as he gave it to you, being able, like you, to make good or bad use of it; that is all. It is foolishness to believe that he attaches himself to you for years and years to try to enlist your own soul in the army of Satan. What good does it do Satan to have one recruit more or less, when they arrive, spontaneously, by the thousands of millions, without his taking the trouble to summon them? The elect are rare, but innumerable are the volunteers of evil. If God and the devil each have their army, only God needs recruiters; the Devil can spare himself the trouble of filling his ranks. As victory is always on the side of the great battalions, judge of his greatness and of his power, and of the ease of his triumphs over all points of the Universe. And, without going very far, look around you. But all this has no sense. Since today one easily knows how to converse with the creatures of the other world, one must accept them as they are and for what they are. There are poets who can dictate good verses, philosophers and moralists who can give good maxims, historians who can give clarifications about their epoch, naturalists who can teach what they know, or rectify the errors they committed, astronomers who can reveal certain phenomena that you are unaware of, musicians, authors capable of writing posthumous works and who even go so far as to ask that they be published under their name. One of them, who thought he had invented something, was indignant on learning that the patent would not be delivered to him personally; others make no more case of earthly things than do certain scholars. There are also those who attend with childish pleasure the inauguration of their statue and others who do not take the trouble to go see it and who profoundly despise the imbeciles who render them that honor, after having despised and persecuted them in life. Concerning his statue, Humboldt answered but one word: Derision! Another gave the inscription of the statue they are preparing for him and which he knows he has not deserved: To the great thief, the robbed, grateful.

In sum, we must consider as certain that each one carries with him his character and his moral and scientific acquisitions; the fools here are still the fools there. Only the pickpockets, who have no more pockets to empty; the gluttons, nothing more to fry; the bankers, nothing more to discount, suffer such privations. It is for this that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, recommends to us the disdain of earthly things, which we can neither carry nor assimilate, so as to think only of spiritual and moral goods, which accompany us and will serve us for eternity, not only as a distraction, but as steps to elevate ourselves incessantly on the great ladder of Jacob, in the immeasurable hierarchy of spirits.

Thus, see how little case the good spirits make of the goods and gross pleasures that they lost on dying, that is, on entering their country, as they say. Like a wise prisoner, suddenly torn from his cell, it is not his clothes, his furniture, his money that he laments, but his books and manuscripts. The butterfly that shakes the dust from its wings before resuming flight cares little for the remains of the caterpillar that served it as a dwelling. In the same way, a spirit like that of Buffon will no longer lament his castle of Montbard, as Lamartine will not lament his Saint-Point, of which he made so much account in life. It is for this that the death of the wise man is so calm and that of the humanimal n so horrible, for the latter feels that, in losing earthly goods, he loses everything; there he clings as the miser to his strongbox. His spirit cannot even withdraw; it clings to matter and continues to haunt the places that were dear to it and, instead of making incessant efforts to break the bonds that retain it to the Earth, it clings to it like a desperate man. He truly suffers like one damned, at no longer being able to enjoy them; this is hell, this is the fire that these reprobates strive to make eternal. Such are the bad spirits, who repel the counsels of the good ones and who need the succor of reason and of human wisdom itself, in order to decide to abandon the prey. The good mediums must take the trouble to make them think, to indoctrinate them and pray for them, for they confess that prayer relieves them; and for that very reason they bear witness to their gratitude, in terms sometimes very touching. This proves the existence of a solidarity among all spirits, free or incarnate, because, evidently, incarnation is nothing but a punishment, and the Earth a place of expiation, where, as the psalmist says, we are not placed for our entertainment, but to perfect ourselves and to learn to adore God, studying his works. From which it follows that the most unhappy is the most ignorant; the most savage becomes the most vicious, the most criminal and the most miserable of beings, to whom God granted a spark of his divine soul, and talents to make them bear fruit and not to bury them until the arrival of the master, or, rather, until the appearance of the one guilty of sloth or negligence before God. This is what the spirit world truly is for some and for others, which to some inspires so much fear and others so much enchants, and which deserved neither that excess of homage nor that indignity.

When, by dint of study and experience, we have familiarized ourselves with the phenomenon of manifestations, as natural as any other, we shall recognize the veracity of the explanations we have just given. The power of evil, which is granted to spirits, has as its antithesis the power of good that can be expected from the others. These two forces are commensurate, like all those of Nature, without which equilibrium would break and free will would be replaced by fatality, the blind fatum, the brute, intelligent fact, the death of all, the catalepsy of the Universe, chaos.

To forbid the questioning of spirits is to recognize that they exist; to designate them as agents of the devil is to make one think that there exist those who are agents and missionaries of God. That the bad ones are more numerous, we are in agreement; but there is of everything, as on Earth. Yet, because there are more grains of sand than nuggets of gold, must one condemn the prospectors?

When spirits tell you that it is forbidden to them to answer certain questions of merely personal importance, it is a convenient way of concealing their ignorance of the things of the future. All that depends on our own efforts, on our intellectual researches, cannot be revealed to us without violating the divine law, which obliges man to work. It would be very convenient for any medium, taken up by a complaisant familiar spirit, to acquire without effort all the treasures and all imaginable power, ridding himself of all the obstacles that others overcome with so much difficulty. No, spirits do not have such power and they do well in saying that all that you ask of them which is illicit is interdicted to them. Nevertheless, they exercise great influence over the incarnate, for good or for evil; happy are those whom the good spirits counsel and protect: all goes well for them, if they obey the good inspirations, which, moreover, they receive only after having merited them and accomplished the effort equivalent to the success that is given to them in addition.

Whoever, lying in bed, awaits fortune, will not have much chance of acquiring it. Everything here depends on intelligent and honest work, which procures for us a great intimate satisfaction and frees us from physical ill, communicating to us the gift of relieving the ills of others, for there does not exist a well-intentioned medium who is not a magnetizer and healer by nature. But, unaware of possessing such a treasure, they do not attempt to use it. It is in this that they should be better counseled and more powerfully aided by their good spirits. There have been seen miracles analogous to that which happened to the Duke of Celeuza, Prince Vasto, in the Nocera café, in Naples, last June 13, who has just published that he was instantly cured of an illness reputed incurable, from which he had suffered for ten years, solely by the word of an old French gentleman, to whom he had narrated his sufferings. There are others who do such things in diverse countries, in Holland, in England, in France, in Switzerland. But they will multiply with time: the germs are sown.

The mediums duly warned as to the nature, the uses and customs of earthly spirits, have nothing more to do than to conduct themselves accordingly. As for the celestial spirits or those of a transcendent order, it is so rare that they communicate with individuals, that it is not yet time to speak of them. They preside over the destinies of nations and over the great catastrophes, over the great evolutions of globes and of humanities; at the moment they are working. Let us await, in recollection, the great things to come:

Renovabunt faciem terrae. [They shall renew the face of the Earth.]

Jobard.

OBSERVATIONS.

Mr. Jobard had given his article the title of Counsels to Mediums. We thought it our duty to give it a less exclusive title, in view of the fact that his observations apply, in general, to the manner of appreciating spiritist communications. The mediums being only instruments of the manifestations, these may be given to all persons, whether directly, or through an intermediary. All evokers can, then, profit from them, as much as the mediums.

We approve this manner of judging communications because it is rigorously true and can only contribute to guarding us against the illusion, to which are exposed those who accept too easily, as the expression of truth, all that comes from the world of spirits. Nevertheless, we think that Mr. Jobard is perhaps somewhat absolute on certain points. In our opinion, he does not take much into account the progress accomplished by the spirit in the wandering state. Without doubt – a fact confirmed by experience – the spirit carries beyond the tomb the imperfections of earthly life. However, as he finds himself in a completely different milieu; as he no longer receives his sensations through the material organs; and since he no longer has over his eyes the thick veil that obscured ideas, his sensations, perceptions and conceptions must experience a sensible modification. This is why we see, every day, men who think, after death, in a manner completely different from what they did in life, because the moral horizon for them has expanded; authors criticizing their own works; men of the world censuring their own conduct; scholars recognizing their errors. If the spirit did not progress in the spiritual life, he would return to corporeal life as he had left it, neither more advanced nor more backward, which, positively, is contradicted by experience. Certain spirits can, then, see more clearly and more justly than when they were on Earth; thus, some are seen giving excellent counsels, by which we are edified. But among spirits, as among men, one must know to whom we address ourselves and not believe that any one of them possesses infused knowledge, nor that a scholar is freed of his earthly prejudices, simply because they are spirits. In this respect Mr. Jobard is entirely right in saying that we must not accept their theories and systems except with extreme reserve; one must do with them what one does with men, that is, give them credit only when they have given irrecusable proofs of their superiority, and not for the false name with which they sometimes present themselves, but for the constant wisdom of their thoughts, the irrefutable logic of their reasonings and the unalterable goodness of their character. The judicious observations of Mr. Jobard, setting aside what they may contain of exaggeration, will no doubt disappoint those who think to find in spirits a sure means of knowing everything, making lucrative discoveries, etc. Really, in the eyes of certain persons, what good are spirits, if they do not help us make a fortune? We think it suffices to have studied the Spiritist Doctrine a little to understand that they teach us a host of things more useful than knowing whether we shall gain on the stock exchange or in the lottery. Yet, even admitting the most rigorous hypothesis, in which it would be completely indifferent to address oneself to spirits or to men for the things of this world, would it signify nothing that they give us proof of the existence beyond the tomb? that they inform us of the happy or unhappy state of those who preceded us? that they prove to us that those whom we love are not lost to us; and that we shall find them again in that world which awaits us all, rich or poor, powerful or slaves? Because, in the final analysis, there is one certain thing: that, sooner or later, we shall have to die. What will exist beyond that barrier? behind that curtain that veils the future from us? Something or nothing? Well then! Spirits teach us that there is something; that, when we die, not all is ended. Far from it; it is only then that true life begins, the moral life. Even if they taught us only this, their conversations would not be useless. They do more: they teach what we must do here in order to find ourselves in better conditions in the other world. And as we shall have to remain there a very long time, it is well to assure ourselves the best place possible. As Mr. Jobard says, in general spirits attribute little importance to the things of the Earth, for a very simple reason: it is that they have better than this; their objective is to teach us what we must do in order to be happy there. They know that we attach ourselves to the joys of the Earth, like children with their toys; they want to advance our reasoning: such is their mission. If we are deceived by some, it is because we want to draw them out of the sphere of their attributions. To ask them what they do not know, what they cannot or must not say, is to be mystified by the throng of mocking spirits, who amuse themselves with our credulity. The error of certain mediums is to believe in the infallibility of the spirits who communicate with them and seduce them with fine phrases, propped up by an imposing name that, most of the time, does not belong to them. To recognize the fraud is a result of study and experience. In this sense, Mr. Jobard's article can only help them to open their eyes. [1] Translator's Note: Allusion to an old Parisian hospital, founded by Saint Louis (Louis IX) and intended for the blind.

[2] Translator's Note: Coined by Jobard, the word humanimal is not part of the French lexicon, although, in the context of the sentence in which it is found, we can easily guess its meaning.