Various questions and problems.

In a superior world, such as Jupiter or another, does the incarnated Spirit have the remembrance of its past existences, as well as that of its wandering state?

Answer. – No; from the moment the Spirit clothes itself in the material envelope, it loses the remembrance of its previous existences.

However, the corporeal envelope being rarefied on Jupiter, would not the Spirit there be freer?

Answer. – Yes, but still sufficiently dense to extinguish, in the Spirit, the remembrance of the past.

Then the Spirits who inhabit Jupiter and who have communicated with us were plunged in sleep?

Answer. – Certainly. In that world, the Spirit being much more elevated, it better understands God and the Universe; but its past is erased for the time being, without which its intelligence would be obscured. It would not understand itself; would it be the man of Africa, that of Europe, or that of America? that of the Earth, of Mars, or of Venus? No longer remembering, it is itself, the man of Jupiter, intelligent, superior, understanding God; that is all. Observation. – If the forgetting of the past is necessary in a world as advanced as Jupiter, with all the more reason must it be so in our material world. It is evident that the remembrance of our preceding existences would cause a lamentable confusion in our ideas, not to speak of all the other inconveniences already pointed out in this regard. All that God does bears the seal of His wisdom and of His goodness; it is not for us to criticize, even when we do not understand the purpose.

Mademoiselle Eugénie, one of the mediums of the Society, offers a notable particularity, in a certain way exceptional, which is the prodigious facility with which she writes and the incredible promptness with which the most diverse Spirits communicate through her intermediation. There are few mediums with such great flexibility. To what is this due? Answer. – It is due rather to the medium than to the Spirit; the latter would write less swiftly through another medium, for the reason that the nature of the instrument would no longer be the same. Thus, there are drawing mediums, others are more apt for Medicine, etc.; the Spirit acts according to the mediumship. It is due, then, to a physical cause, rather than to a moral cause. The Spirits communicate the more easily through a medium, the more rapidly the combination takes place between the fluids of the latter and those of the Spirit; more than the others, this one lends itself to the rapidity of thought, of which the Spirit takes advantage, as you take advantage of a swift carriage when you are in a hurry. This vivacity of the medium is purely physical; her own Spirit has no participation in this process.

Will the moral qualities of the medium not have some influence?

Answer. – They exert a great influence on the sympathies of the Spirits, inasmuch as you should know that some have such an antipathy for certain mediums that it is only with the greatest repugnance that they communicate through them.

Saint Louis.

[1]

[see Saint Louis.]