The supernatural

My children, your father did well to call your attention seriously to the phenomena produced in the sessions that have occupied you for some days. Judging them according to the instructions of certain sectarian, ignorant, or domineering Spirits, these effects are supernatural. Do not believe this, my children; nothing that happens is supernatural; if it were so, good sense says that it would happen only outside of Nature and, in that case, you would not see it. For your eyes or your senses to perceive a thing, it is altogether necessary that that thing be natural. With a little reflection there is no serious Spirit who would consent to believe in supernatural things. By this I do not mean that there are no things that appear so to your intelligence, but the only reason for this is that you do not understand them. When some fact seems to you to go beyond what you judge to be natural, guard against that laziness of spirit which would lead you to believe that it is supernatural; seek to understand it, for it is for this that intelligence was given to you. Of what use would it be to you, if you had to content yourselves with learning and believing what your predecessors taught? It is necessary that each one put his intelligence at the service of progress, which is the collective work of all. Since you are endowed with thought, think; since you have reason, which was not given to you without cause, examine and judge. Do not accept finished judgments save after submitting them to the sieve of reason. Doubt at length if you are not certain, but never deny that which you do not understand. Examine, examine seriously. Only the lazy, the unintelligent, and the indifferent accept as true or false everything they hear affirmed or denied. In short, my children, put forth every effort to become serious and useful, so as to fulfill well the mission that is entrusted to you. It is never too early to occupy yourselves with good and with what is good. Begin, then, early, to occupy yourselves with serious things. The time of frivolities is always very long: it is useless for your progress, which you must not lose sight of for a single instant. The things of the Earth are nothing; they serve only for your passage to another state, which will be all the more perfect the better prepared you are. Your grandmother.

Allan Kardec.

Paris. — Typ. H. CARION, rue Bonaparte, 64.