Sympathetic relations between the living and the dead

Why is it that, in our conversations with the Spirits of persons who were very dear to us, we feel an awkwardness, even a coldness, that we would never have felt when they were alive?

Reply. – Because you are material and we are so no longer. I am going to make a comparison which, like all comparisons, will not be absolutely exact; nevertheless, it will be exact enough for what I wish to say.

I suppose that you experience for a woman one of those passions that only novelists imagine among you, and that you consider exaggerated, whereas to us they seem to differ little, at least from those we have known in the infinite vastness.

I continue supposing. After having had, for some time, the ineffable happiness of speaking daily with this woman and of contemplating her as much as possible, some circumstance brings it about that you can no longer see her and that you must content yourself merely with hearing her. Do you believe that your love would resist, without any breach, a situation of this kind, prolonged indefinitely? Confess that it would undergo some modification, or what we would call a diminution. Let us go further. Not only will you no longer be able to see this beautiful friend, but you will not even be able to hear her. You are not allowed to approach her. Prolong this situation for some years and see what will happen.

Now, one more step. The woman you love is dead; for a long time she has lain buried in the darkness of the sepulcher. A new change in you. I do not mean to say that the passion is dead with its object, but I maintain that, at least, it has been transformed. And so much so that, if by a heavenly favor, the woman you so lament and for whom you still weep came to present herself before you, not in the odious reality of the skeleton that rests in the cemetery, but in the form that you loved and adored to the point of ecstasy, are you quite sure that the first effect of the unforeseen apparition would not be a feeling of profound terror? As you see, my friend, living passions and affections are not possible in all their fullness except between persons of the same nature, between worldly beings and worldly beings, between Spirits and Spirits. By this I do not mean to say that every affection must be extinguished with death, but that it changes in nature and takes on another character. In a word, I mean that on your Earth you preserve a fond remembrance of those whom you have loved, but that matter, in the midst of which you live, permits you only to understand and to practice material loves; that, such a kind being necessarily impossible between you and us, you are so clumsy and cold in your relations with us. If you wish to convince yourself, reread some Spiritist conversations among relatives, friends, or acquaintances; in them you will find so much ice that it would make the inhabitants of the poles feel cold. n We do not wish it so, nor do we grieve over it, provided that we are sufficiently elevated in the hierarchy of Spirits to perceive and understand; but, naturally, this is not without some influence upon our manner of being toward you.

Remember the story of Hanifa who, being able to enter into communication with the dear daughter she so mourned, puts to her this first question: Is there a hidden treasure in this house? She obtained for an answer only a fine mystification, which she herself provoked!

I think, my friend, that I have said enough for you to feel well the cause of the discomfort that necessarily exists between you and us. I could have said more. For example, that we see all your imperfections and impurities of body and of soul, and that, on your side, you are conscious that we see them. Confess that it is embarrassing for both sides. Place two passionately enamored lovers in that glass box where everything appears, both in the moral and in the physical, and ask yourself what will happen. As for us, animated by a sentiment of charity that you cannot understand, we are, in relation to you, like the good mother, whom the infirmities and the mischief of the whimpering child that robs her of her sleep do not make forget, not even for an instant, the sublime instincts of motherhood. We see you weak, ugly, wicked, and yet we love you, because we strive to improve you. But you do not do us justice, fearing us more than loving us. Désiré Léglise.

Algerian poet, died in 1851.

[1] Translator's Note: At times the Spirit employs the second person singular, at times the second person plural.