Various questions and problems.

— Mr. Jobard, of Brussels, sends us the following letter, as well as the answers obtained to various questions.

“My dear President, “Brussels being as far from Paris as the Moon from the Sun, the rays of Spiritism have not yet warmed it. Nevertheless Mr. Nicolas B…, having devoted two days to me, gave word of a first-rate writing medium, who surprises us daily, all the more so as he himself is amazed at the magnificent dictations given to him by the Spirit Tertullian, who wishes him to write a book explaining the picture of the creation of the worlds, from chaos to God. I read it yesterday to the great painter Wiertz, who understood it and wishes to devote a 100-foot page to it. I do not dare send you these sublime dictations before you have assured yourself of the identity of the personage. I enclose only two or three fragments that I have just extracted from the mediumistic drafts that I preciously preserve. “We call Cabanis the materialist, who is as unhappy as your atheist and all the other pencil-breakers. Call, then, upon Henri Mondeux, n to learn the long line of mathematicians he must have inhabited. Everyone wants Jud, the assassin of Mr. Poinsot, to be discovered. The surrender of Gaeta was announced to us eight days in advance. I too have the order to write a book, but I do not know where to begin, being neither able to become, nor able to make myself, a writing medium, under the pretext that it is no longer necessary. Your discourse at Lyon is admirable; I had them read by the most advanced human-animals of our Moon. There are not many here, unfortunately. When shall I go to warm myself at your sun? Farewell, dear master.” Jobard.

— [Questions addressed to Tertullian.]

Q. Were not the magi, the sages, the great philosophers, and the ancient prophets mediums?

Answer. – Evidently, yes. The bond that united them to the superior intelligences acted upon them and inspired in them new thoughts, not to mention their own superiority, which allowed them to make more exact appraisals. They communicated to incarnate Spirits ideas that seemed prophecies, because these are nothing more than communications coming from the great Spirits. And as they possessed a part of the divine attributes, the ideas announced had a character of divination, and necessarily came to pass in the times and epochs indicated.

Q. Is mediumship, then, a favor to those who possess it?

Answer. – The true medium, who does not make a profession of this sublime gift, evidently must become better. How could it be otherwise, when at every instant he can receive impressions so favorable to his progress on the path of good? The philosophical ideas he emits, not only through his own Spirit, but also, and principally through us, are rectified in that which his intelligence, too weak, might understand poorly and poorly enunciate.

Remark by Mr. Jobard. – From these answers full of correctness it follows that good mediums multiply, the human race improves, and will end by bringing, in a given time, the kingdom of God to Earth.

Q. In the statistics of crime it is noted that the workers who work iron rarely figure in them. Does iron have some influence over them?

Answer. – Yes, because in this work of transforming matter there is something that must elevate the least gifted Spirit; a magnetic influence acts upon it. Iron is the father of all minerals; it is the most useful to man, representing for him everyday life, whereas the metals you call precious represent, for Spirits at a low stage, the source of the satisfaction of all human passions. They are the instruments of the Spirit of evil.

Q. Can all metals be transformed into one another, as certain sages maintain?

Answer. – Yes, but this transformation will be accomplished only with time.

Q. And the diamond?

Answer. – It is carbon released from the source that produced it in a gaseous state and that crystallized under pressures you cannot appraise. But enough of questions; I cannot answer them.

Tertullian. n Remark by Mr. J. – Generally the Spirits refuse to answer questions that could make the fortune of a man without labor. It falls to him to seek, because researches are part of the trials he must undergo, in the penitentiary we must cross. It is probable that the Spirits know no more than we do regarding the discoveries to be made. Like us, they can have a presentiment of them; they can guide us in our researches, but they cannot spare us the pleasure or the labor of researching. It is none the less agreeable, when we believe we have a solution, to obtain their approval, which we may consider as a confirmation. Note. – On the subject of the above remark, see The Spirits' Book, no. 532 and following; The Mediums' Book, the chapter On Evocations; On the questions that may be put to the Spirits, no. 78 and following. n Remark by Mr. A. K. – The letter of our honored colleague is prior to the publication of the March issue of the Review, in which we inserted an article about Mr. Poinsot. As for Henri Mondeux, several explanations were given at the Society; circumstances, however, have not yet permitted the completion of his evocation, which is why we have not yet expressed ourselves [see Henri Mondeux, the calculator]. Regarding the request made to us by Mr. Jobard, to assure ourselves of the identity of the Spirit who communicated under the name of Tertullian, we have already answered him in due time what we said about it in our The Mediums' Book. There could be no materials for the identity of the Spirit of ancient personages. Above all when it is a matter of a superior teaching, most often the name is merely a means of fixing ideas, considering that among the Spirits who come to instruct us, the number of those unknown on Earth is incontestably greater. The name is rather a sign of analogy than of identity, and one should attach to it only a secondary importance. What must be considered, above all, is the goodness and the rationality of the teaching. If it in no way belies the character of the Spirit whose name it takes, if it is at its level, that is the essential thing. If it is inferior, the origin must be suspected, because a Spirit can do better, but not worse than when alive, since it can gain, but not lose what it had acquired. Considered from this point of view, the following answers seem to us attributable to Tertullian, whence we conclude that it may be he, without being able to affirm it, or a Spirit of his category, who took this name to indicate the position he occupies.

— The following questions and answers were addressed to us by one of our correspondents from Saint Petersburg.

I wished to give myself an account of what the destiny of beauty in the Universe may be; is it not a pitfall that serves the trials?

Answer. – One believes in all that one hopes for; one hopes for all that one loves; one loves all that is beautiful. Therefore, beauty contributes to strengthening faith. If, often, it becomes a temptation, it is not because of beauty itself, one of the attributes of the works of God, but because of the passions which, like the Harpies, wither all that they touch.

And what will you say of love?

Answer. – It is a good thing from God, when it germinates and develops in a heart that is not corrupted, chaste and pure; it is a calamity, when the passions mingle with it. It elevates and purifies as much in the first case as it perturbs and agitates in the second. It is always the same admirable law of the Eternal: beauty, love, memory of another existence, talents you bring at birth. All the gifts of the Creator can become poisons at the exciting breath of the passions, which free will can contain or develop.

I beg a good Spirit the kindness to enlighten me regarding the questions I am about to submit to it, concerning the facts related on pages 223 and following of The Mediums' Book, about transfiguration. n Answer. – Ask.

If, in the increase of volume and weight of the young girl from the vicinity of Saint-Étienne, the phenomenon was produced by the condensation of her perispirit, combined with that of her brother, how is it that her eyes, which must have remained in the same place, could see through the thick layer of a new body that was forming before them?

Answer. – As the somnambulists see with their eyelids closed: through the eyes of the soul.

In the cited phenomenon the body increased. At the end of chapter VIII n it is said to be probable that if the transfiguration had occurred under the aspect of a little child, the weight would have diminished proportionally. I cannot give myself an account, according to the theory of the radiation and transfiguration of the perispirit, of how it could become smaller than a solid body. It seems to me that the latter should exceed the two combined perispirits.

Answer. – As the body can become invisible by the will of a superior Spirit, that of the young girl also becomes invisible, by the force of a power independent of her will. At the same time, combining with that of the boy, her perispirit can form and really does form the image of that child. The theory of the change of specific weight is known to you.

After having dissipated my doubts one by one and reaffirmed my faith in its foundation, Spiritism leaves me one unresolved question; here it is: How is it that the new Spirits, whom God creates, and who are destined one day to become pure Spirits, after having passed through the sieve of a multitude of existences and trials, come forth so imperfect from the hands of the Creator, who is the source of all perfection, and do not improve gradually except by moving away from their origin?

Answer. – That is a mystery which the Eternal does not permit us to penetrate, before we, wandering or incarnate Spirits, have attained the perfection that is indicated to us, thanks to divine goodness, perfection that will again bring us closer to our origin and will close the circle of eternity.

— Remark – Our correspondent does not tell us which Spirit answered him, but the wisdom of his answers proves that it is not a vulgar Spirit. This is the essential thing, since, as is known, the name matters little. We have nothing to say regarding his first answers, which agree on all points with what has been taught to us, proving that the theory we gave of the Spiritist phenomena is not the product of our imagination, seeing that it is given by other Spirits, in diverse times and places and outside of our personal influence. Only the last answer does not resolve the question put. Let us try to remedy this. Let us say, first, that the solution can be easily deduced from what is said, with some developments, in The Spirits' Book, about the progression of the Spirits, no. 114 and following. We shall have little to add. The Spirits come forth from the hands of the Creator simple and ignorant, but they are neither good nor bad: otherwise, from their origin God would have devoted some to good and to happiness, and others to evil and to misfortune, which would be neither in conformity with his goodness, nor in accord with his justice. At the moment of their creation, the Spirits are imperfect only from the point of view of intellectual and moral development, like the child at birth, like the germ contained in the seed of the tree; but they are not bad by nature. At the same time, there develops in them reason, free will, by virtue of which they choose, some the good path, others the bad, causing some to reach the goal sooner than others. But all, without exception, must pass through the vicissitudes of corporeal life, in order to acquire experience and to have the merit of the struggle. Now, in this struggle some triumph, others succumb, although the vanquished can always rise again and redeem their failures. This question raises another, more serious, which has often been presented to us. It is the following: God, who knows everything, the past, the present, and the future, must know that such a Spirit will follow the bad path, will succumb, and will be unhappy. In this case, why did he create it?

Now, God certainly knows perfectly the line a Spirit will follow, for, otherwise, he would not have sovereign science. If the bad path on which the Spirit ventures had to lead it fatally to an absolute eternity of pains and sufferings; if, because it had failed, it were always denied the chance to rehabilitate itself, the above objection would have an incontestable force of logic, and perhaps therein would reside the most powerful argument against the dogma of eternal torments. In this case, it is impossible to escape the dilemma: either God does not know the fate reserved for his creature, and then he does not have sovereign science; or, if he knows it, He created it to be eternally unhappy and, therefore, does not have sovereign goodness. With the Spiritist Doctrine, everything agrees perfectly and there is no longer any contradiction: God knows that a Spirit will take a bad path; he knows all the dangers with which it is strewn, but he knows, also, that it will come out of it, and that there will be for it only a delay. And, in his goodness and to facilitate things for it, he multiplies along its route the salutary warnings, of which unfortunately it does not always take advantage. It is the story of two travelers who wish to reach a beautiful country, where they will live happily; one knows how to avoid the obstacles, the temptations that would make him stop on the way; the other, through imprudence, collides with the same obstacles, takes falls that delay him, but he will arrive in his turn. If, on the way, charitable persons warn him of the dangers he runs and if, through presumption, he does not listen to them, he will be the more reprehensible for it. The dogma of the absolute eternity of pains is violently attacked on all sides, not only by the teaching of the Spirits, but by the simple logic of common sense. To uphold it is to fail to recognize the most essential attributes of the Divinity; it is to contradict oneself, affirming on one side what one denies on the other; it falls, and the ranks of its partisans thin day by day, so much so that, if it is absolutely necessary to believe in it in order to be Catholic, soon there will be no more true Catholics, just as today there would be none if the Church had persisted in making an article of faith of the movement of the Sun and the six days of Creation. To insist upon a thesis that reason repels is to strike a fatal blow at religion and to give weapons to materialism; Spiritism, on the contrary, comes to revive the religious sentiment, which bends under the blows dealt by incredulity, giving on the questions of the future a solution that the most severe reasoning can admit. To reject it is to do away with the plank of salvation. [1]

[see Henri Mondeux – 1826-1862. See also the evocation of this Spirit in the Review of June.]

[2] [see Tertullian.]

[3] Translator's note: A probable proofreading slip. Instead of item 78 and following, of The Mediums' Book, consider items 291 (Questions on moral and material interests); 294 (Questions on interventions and discoveries); and 295 (Questions on hidden treasures) of the cited book. (Item 78 refers to the phenomenon of the suspension of tables – Part Two, chapter IV: On the theory of physical manifestations).

[4] Translator's note: Cited book, second part, chapter VII: On bicorporeity and transfiguration.

[5] Translator's note: Corresponds to item 124, second part, chapter VII (The Mediums' Book).