The wandering spirits

Spirits are divided into several categories. First the embryos, who possess no distinct faculty; who float in the air like insects that one sees whirling in a ray of sun; who flit about without objective and incarnate without having made a choice. They become ignorant and gross human beings.

Above them are the frivolous spirits, whose instincts are not bad, but only mischievous; they amuse themselves with men and cause them frivolous annoyances. They are children, retaining from them the caprices and the puerile malice.

The bad spirits are not all of the same degree; some do no other harm than slight deceptions; they do not attach themselves to a being and limit themselves to committing faults of little gravity.

The malefactor spirits impel toward evil and take pleasure in it, but still have some glimmer of pity.

The perverse spirits do not have it. All their faculties tend toward evil. They do it by calculation and with perseverance; they enjoy the moral tortures they provoke. They correspond, in the world of spirits, to the criminals in yours. They reach such perversity because they are ignorant of the laws of God; in their carnal lives, they succumb from fall to fall and centuries pass before a thought of renewal comes to them. Evil is their element; they plunge into it with pleasure; but, obliged to reincarnate, they pass through such sufferings and these sufferings grow in such a way in their spirit lives that the passion for evil consumes itself in them; they end by understanding that they must yield to the voice of God, who does not cease to call them. Rebel spirits have been seen to ask ardently for the most terrible expiations and to bear martyrdom with joy. This return to good is an immense happiness for the pure spirits. The word of the Christ about the strayed sheep is radiant truth. The wandering spirits of the second order are the intermediaries between the superior spirits and mortals, because it is rare that spirits communicate directly, it being necessary that they be impelled to it by a particular solicitude. These intermediaries are the spirits of mortals who have no grave wrong to reproach themselves with and whose intentions were not bad. They receive missions and, when they accomplish them, with zeal and love, they are rewarded by a more rapid progress. They have fewer migrations to undergo. Thus, spirits ardently desire these missions, which are granted to them only as a reward and when they are judged capable of fulfilling them. It is the superior spirits who direct them and choose their functions. The superior spirits are not all of the same degree. If they are exempted from the migrations in your worlds, they are not so from the conditions of progress in the more elevated spheres. In short, there exists no gap in the visible world and in the invisible; an admirable order has provided for all; no being is idle or useless; all concur in the measure of their faculties toward the perfection of the work of God, which has neither term nor limit. [See:

Preliminary Observations.]

Georges.