On the moral influence of mediums in communications

We have already said it: merely as such, mediums exert only a very secondary influence in the communications of the Spirits; their role is that of an electric machine that transmits telegraphic dispatches from one point of the Earth to another distant point. Thus, when we wish to dictate a communication, we act upon the medium as the telegraph employee acts upon the apparatus, that is to say, in the same manner that the tick-tack of the telegraph traces, thousands of leagues away, upon a strip of paper, the signs that reproduce the dispatch, we likewise communicate, by means of the mediumistic apparatus, across the immeasurable distances that separate the visible world from the invisible world, the immaterial world from the carnal world, what we wish to teach you. But, just as atmospheric influences act, often disturbing the transmissions of the electric telegraph, so too the moral influence of the medium acts and sometimes disturbs the transmission of our dispatches from beyond the grave, because we are obliged to make them pass through a medium that is contrary to them. However, that influence is often nullified by our energy and will, and no disturbing act manifests itself. Indeed, dictations of high philosophical import, communications of perfect morality, are frequently transmitted by mediums unsuited to these superior teachings; whereas, on the other hand, little edifying communications also sometimes arrive through mediums who are ashamed to have served them as conductors. As a general thesis, it may be affirmed that Spirits attract Spirits similar to themselves, and that the Spirits of the elevated pleiades rarely communicate through poorly conducting apparatuses, when they have at hand good mediumistic apparatuses, good mediums, in a word.

Frivolous and not very serious mediums therefore attract Spirits of the same nature; this is why their communications show themselves full of banalities, frivolities, truncated ideas, and, not rarely, very heterodox ones, spiritistically speaking. It is true that they can say, and sometimes do say, useful things; but it is in that case, above all, that a severe and scrupulous examination becomes necessary, for, amid useful things, hypocritical Spirits insinuate, with skill and preconceived perfidy, facts of pure fabrication, lying assertions, in order to deceive the good faith of those who pay them attention. One must then strike out, without pity, every word, every equivocal phrase, and keep of the dictation only what logic can accept, or what the Doctrine has already taught. Communications of this nature are only to be feared for Spiritists who work in isolation, for new groups, or for poorly enlightened ones, since, in the gatherings where the adepts are advanced and have already acquired experience, the jackdaw wastes its time adorning itself with the peacock's feathers: it always ends up pitilessly unmasked. I will not speak of the mediums who take pleasure in soliciting and receiving obscene communications. Let us leave them to delight in the company of cynical Spirits. Moreover, the authors of communications of this order seek, of themselves, solitude and isolation, for they can only cause scorn and disgust among the members of philosophical and serious groups. Where, however, the moral influence of the medium really makes itself felt is when he substitutes, for the ideas that the Spirits strive to suggest to him, those that are personal to him, and also when he draws from his own imagination fantastic theories that, in good faith, he believes to result from an intuitive communication. It is then to be wagered a thousand to one that this is nothing but a reflection of the medium's own spirit. There even occurs the curious fact of the medium's hand moving, almost mechanically at times, impelled by a secondary and mocking Spirit. This is the touchstone against which ardent imaginations come to break, for, carried away by the impetus of their own ideas, by the spangles of their literary knowledge, the mediums fail to recognize the modest dictation of a judicious Spirit and, abandoning the prey for the shadow, replace it with a bombastic paraphrase. Against this terrible reef likewise come to dash themselves the ambitious personalities who, in default of the communications that the good Spirits refuse them, present their own works as being those of these Spirits. Hence the necessity for the directors of Spiritist groups to be endowed with fine tact, with rare sagacity, in order to discern authentic communications from those that are not, and in order not to wound those who delude themselves. When in doubt, abstain, says one of your old proverbs. Admit, therefore, only what is, in your eyes, of manifest evidence. Once a new opinion comes to be put forward, however little it may seem doubtful to you, pass it through the crucible of reason and logic, and reject fearlessly what reason and good sense disapprove. It is better to repel ten truths than to admit a single falsehood, a single erroneous theory. Indeed, upon that theory you might build a complete system, which would collapse at the first breath of truth, like a monument erected upon shifting sand, whereas, if you reject today some truths because they are not demonstrated to you clearly and logically, later on a brutal fact, or an irrefutable demonstration, will come to affirm to you their authenticity.

Remember, nevertheless, O Spiritists! that, for God and for the good Spirits, there is only one impossible thing: injustice and iniquity.

Spiritism is already sufficiently spread among men and has already sufficiently moralized the sincere adepts of its holy doctrine, so that the Spirits no longer see themselves constrained to use bad instruments, imperfect mediums. If, then, now, a medium, whoever he may be, becomes the object of legitimate suspicion, by his conduct, by his habits, by his pride, by his lack of love and charity, repel, repel his communications, for there will be a serpent hidden among the grass. This is the conclusion I reach concerning the moral influence of mediums.

Erastus.

[1] Translator's note: See The Mediums' Book — 2nd part, chapter XX, item 230.

[2] [cf.

Thomas Erastus.]