To our correspondents.

Paris, March 1, 1862.

Gentlemen, You know the proverb: No one is obliged to do the impossible. Well, today I avail myself of that principle and come to make an appeal to you. For six months, despite the best will in the world, it has been materially impossible for me to bring up to date the correspondence, which accumulates beyond all expectations. I find myself, thus, in the condition of a debtor who seeks an arrangement with his creditors under penalty of suspending payment. As some debts are paid, new and more numerous obligations arrive, so that the debt, instead of diminishing, increases ceaselessly. At this moment I already find myself in the presence of a liability of more than two hundred letters. Now, the daily average being ten, I see no means of freeing myself, save by obtaining from you an unlimited reprieve.

Far be it from me to complain about the number of letters I receive, for this is an irrefutable proof of the progress of the doctrine, and the majority of them express sentiments that move me deeply, constituting for me archives of inestimable price. Many, moreover, contain useful teachings, which will never be lost and, sooner or later, will be used, according to the circumstances, for they are immediately classified according to their specialty.

The correspondence alone would be sufficient to absorb all my time and, nevertheless, it constitutes only the fourth part of the occupations necessary to the task I have undertaken, a task whose development, at the beginning of my Spiritist career, I was far from foreseeing. Thus, several important publications find themselves at a standstill for lack of the time necessary to work on them; and I have just received, from my spiritual guides, a pressing invitation to occupy myself with them without delay, setting everything aside in favor of the urgent causes. I see myself forced, then, unless I fail in the realization of the work so happily begun, to operate a kind of epistolary liquidation for the past and to limit myself, as regards the future, to the strictly necessary replies, besides asking, collectively, of my distinguished correspondents, that they accept the expression of my keen and sincere gratitude for the testimonies of sympathy that they are good enough to give me.

Among the letters addressed to me, many contain requests for evocations or verifications of evocations made elsewhere; often they request information about aptitude for mediumship, or about things of material interest. Here I will recall what I have already said elsewhere about the difficulty and, even, about the drawbacks of these kinds of evocations, made in the absence of the interested persons, the only ones able to verify their exactness and to ask the necessary questions, to which we must add that Spirits communicate more easily and with better good will to those who are attached to them than to strangers, who are indifferent to them. This is why, setting aside all consideration relating to my occupations, I will attend to requests of this nature only in exceptional circumstances and, in any case, never as regards material interests. Often a number of questions would be avoided if, in this respect, they had attentively read the instructions contained in The Mediums' Book, chapter 26.

On the other hand, personal evocations cannot be made in the sessions of the Society except when they offer a subject of instructive study and of general interest; apart from this, they can take place only in special sessions. Now, to satisfy all the requests, a daily session of two hours would be insufficient. It must be taken into account, moreover, that all the mediums, without exception, who lend us their concurrence, do so out of mere courtesy; they admit no other conditions and, as they have their own obligations, they are not always available, whatever their good will. I understand all the interest that each one attaches to the questions that concern him and I would feel happy if I could correspond to all of them. But if they consider that my position puts me in contact with thousands of persons, they will understand my impossibility of doing so. It must be imagined that certain evocations require no less than five or six hours of work, both to make them and to transcribe them and copy them out fair, and that all those that have been requested of me would form two volumes like The Spirits' Book. Besides, the mediums multiply daily and it is very rare not to find one in the family or among one's acquaintances, when one is not such oneself, which is always preferable for intimate matters. It is only a question of experimenting under good conditions, the first of which is that of becoming well imbued, before any attempt, with the instructions on the practice of Spiritism, if one wishes to avoid disappointments. As the doctrine grows, my relations multiply and the duties of my position increase, which obliges me to neglect the details somewhat, to the benefit of the general interests, because the time and the strength of man have limits and I confess that mine, for some time past, have been failing me and I cannot have the repose that, at times, would be all the more necessary to me inasmuch as I count only on myself to devote myself to my occupations.

I beg you to accept, gentlemen, the renewed pledge of my affectionate devotedness.

Allan Kardec.