new edition of The Spirits' Book

In the first edition of this work, we announced a supplementary part. It was to be composed of all the questions that could not enter there, or that subsequent circumstances and new studies would give rise to. But since they all refer to some one of the parts already treated, and of which they are the development, their isolated publication would have presented no continuity. We preferred to await the reprinting of the book in order to incorporate the whole, and we took the opportunity to give the distribution of the matters a much more methodical order, while at the same time suppressing everything that had a double meaning. This reprinting can, therefore, be considered as a new work, although the principles have not undergone any alteration, save for very few exceptions, which are complements and clarifications rather than true modifications. This conformity with the principles set forth, in spite of the diversity of the sources from which they were drawn, is an important fact for the establishment of the Spiritist science. Our own correspondence proves that communications entirely identical, if not in form, at least in substance, were obtained in different localities, and that long before the publication of our book, which came to confirm them and to give them a regular body. For its part, History attests that the majority of these principles have been professed by the most eminent men, of ancient and modern times, thus lending their sanction.