Spirits of two unbelieving learned men to their former friends on Earth.

— When the most unbelieving, the most obstinate cross the threshold of corporeal life, they are forced to acknowledge that they still live; that they are Spirits, since they are no longer carnal and, consequently, that Spirits exist; that these Spirits communicate with men, since they do so among themselves. But their appraisal of the spiritual world varies according to their moral development, their knowledge or their ignorance, the elevation or the abjection of their soul. While incarnated, the two Spirits of whom we speak belonged to the class of men of science and of high intelligence. Both were unbelievers by nature; but, being enlightened men, their unbelief was offset by eminent moral qualities. Thus, once in the world of the Spirits, they promptly saw things from their true point of view and acknowledge their error. Without doubt there is nothing extraordinary in this and nothing that is not seen every day; if we publish their first impressions, it is because of their eminently instructive side. Both died not long ago. The first, Mr. M. L., was a surgeon at the B… hospital, and brother-in-law of Mr. A. Véron, a member of the Parisian Spiritist Society. The second, Mr. Gui, was a learned economist, an intimate friend of Mr. Colliez, another member of the Society.

— In vain had Mr. Véron tried to bring his brother-in-law to spiritualist ideas; upon dying, he became more accessible to his instructions. Here is one of the first communications he received from him:

(Paris, October 5, 1865. – Medium: Mr. Desliens.)

My dear brother-in-law, since we are, so to speak, on intimate terms, and since I do not fear taking the place of someone who could be more useful to you than I, I come gladly at your call, since you have asked me to.

Do not expect, from today, to see me unfold all my spiritual faculties.

Without doubt I could attempt it, and perhaps with more success than when I was alive; but my prideful presumption is very far from me, and if I deemed myself a luminary on Earth, here I am very small. How many people I disdained and whose protection and teachings I feel happy to find today! The ignorant down here are often the learned up there above; and as for our science, which deems it knows everything and will admit nothing outside its decisions, it is illusory and limited!

O human pride! By force of habit, how long will you yet remain on this Earth, where, after so many centuries, the spirit of routine blocks progress in its incessant march? “I do not know the fact; it is outside my knowledge; therefore it does not exist.” Such is our reasoning down here. For, if we admitted it, or, at least, if we studied this fact, the result of unknown laws, we would have to renounce erroneous systems, supported by great names that constitute our glory and, worse still, be obliged to confess that we were mistaken. No, we deniers find a universal Galileo who comes to tell us: I am a Spirit, I am alive, I was a man and, you yourselves, O men, were Spirits and will become like me, until, through a succession of incarnations, you are purified to climb other steps of the infinite ladder of the worlds… And we deny it!

But, as Galileo said, after his retractions: “And yet it moves,” Spiritism comes to tell us: “And yet, the Spirits are here, they manifest themselves and no denial could overthrow a fact.” The brute fact exists; nothing can be done against it. Time, that great educator, will do justice to everything, sweeping some away, instructing others.

Be among those who instruct themselves. I was cut down in the ripe age of my pride and I suffered the penalty of my denials. Avoid my fall, and may my failings be profitable to those who imitate my past reasoning, so that they may flee the abyss of darkness from which your care withdrew me.

As you see, there is still disturbance in my language. Later I shall be able to speak to you with more logic. Be indulgent toward my spiritual youth.

M… L…

— This communication having been read at the Parisian Society, the Spirit communicated spontaneously, dictating the following:

(Parisian Society, October 20, 1865. – Medium: Mr. Desliens.)

Dear Mr. Allan Kardec: Permit a Spirit, whom your studies led to consider being, existence and God from their true point of view, to bear witness to his gratitude to you. On this Earth I was unaware of your name and your works. Perhaps, if anyone had spoken to me of the one and the others, I would have used my mocking verve, as I did with all things tending to prove the existence of a Spirit distinct from the body. I was blind: forgive me. Today, thanks to you, thanks to the teachings that the Spirits have spread and made widely known through your hand, I am another being, I have consciousness of myself and I see my goal. How much gratitude do I not owe you, you and Spiritism! Whoever knew me and today reads what is the expression of my thought, will exclaim: “This cannot be the one we knew, that radical materialist, who admitted nothing outside the brute phenomena of Nature.” Without doubt and, nevertheless, it is I myself. My dear brother-in-law, to whom I owe sincere thanks, said that I came to good sentiments in a short time. I thank him for his kindness toward me; but without doubt he is unaware how long are the hours of suffering resulting from the unconsciousness of being!… I believed in nothingness and I was punished by a fictitious nothingness. To feel oneself a being and not to be able to manifest one's being; to deem oneself disseminated among all the scattered remains that form the body, such was my position for more than two months!… two centuries!… Ah! the hours of suffering are long; and if they had not busied themselves with drawing me out of that lamentable atmosphere of nihilism, if they had not constrained me to come to those gatherings of peace and love, where I did not understand, did not see and did not hear, but where sympathetic fluids acted upon me and awakened me, little by little, from my heavy spiritual torpor, where would I still be? my God!… God!… what a sweet name to pronounce for one who, for so long, strove to deny that father so great and so good! Ah! my friends, restrain me, because today I fear only one thing: to become a fanatic of those beliefs that I would have repelled as base follies, had they once come to my knowledge!… I shall say nothing today about the works with which you occupy yourselves; I am still too new, too ignorant to dare venture into your learned dissertations. I already feel it but I do not know it! I shall only tell you this, because I know it: Yes, the fluids have an enormous influence as a curative action, if not corporeal, of which I know nothing, at least spiritual, because I experienced their action. I told you and I repeat with joy and gratitude: I went, constrained by an invincible force, without doubt that of my guide, to the Spiritist gatherings. I did not see, heard nothing and, nevertheless, a fluidic action, which I could not fathom, cured me spiritually. I willingly thank all those who acquired eternal rights to my gratitude, drawing me out of the chaos into which I had fallen, and I ask you, my friends, the kindness to permit me to come and attend in silence your learned assemblies, placing later my weak scientific lights at your disposal.

M… L…

Question – Could you tell us, assisted by your guide, how you were able to recognize your earthly errors so promptly, whereas a good number of Spirits, who are not spared spiritual care, remain so long without understanding the counsels given to them?

Answer – Dear sir, I thank you for the question that you have been good enough to address to me and that I think I can resolve myself, with the assistance of my guide.

Without doubt you may see an anomaly in my transformation, for, as you say, there are beings who, despite all the sentiments acting in their favor, remain a long time without letting their eyes be opened. Not wishing to abuse your benevolence, I shall tell you in a few words:

The Spirit who resists the action of those who act upon him is new with respect to moral notions. He may be an instructed individual, but completely ignorant with respect to charity and fraternity; in a word, devoid of spirituality. It is necessary for him to learn the life of the soul which, even in the state of Spirit, was for him rudimentary. For me it was completely different. I tell you that I am old, in the face of your life, although quite young in eternity. I had notions of morality; I believed in spirituality, which remained latent in me, because one of my capital sins, pride, needed this punishment. I, who had knowledge of the life of the soul in a previous existence, was condemned to let myself be dominated by pride and to forget God and the eternal principle that resided in me… Ah! believe it, there is only one kind of cretinism; the idiot who, preserving his soul, cannot manifest his intelligence, is perhaps less lamentable than the one who, possessing all his intelligence, scientifically speaking, lost his soul for some time. It is a truncated idiotism, but a very painful one. M… L…

— The other Spirit, Mr. Gui, manifested himself spontaneously to the Society on the day of the special session, commemorating the dead. [See: Commemorative session of the Parisian Society.] As we said, Mr. Colliez, who had known him personally, had limited himself to inscribing him on the list of Spirits recommended to prayers. Although his opinions were completely different from those he had in life, Mr. Colliez recognized him by the form of the language and, even before his signature was read, he said that it must be Mr. Gui…

(Parisian Society, November 1, 1865. – Medium: Mr. Leymarie.)

Gentlemen…

Permit me to employ this common, but little fraternal expression. I am a newcomer, an unexpected recruit, and without doubt my name never grazed the ears of fervent Spiritists. Nevertheless, it is never too late and when each family weeps for a beloved absent one, I come to you to express to you my very sincere repentance.

Surrounded by Voltairians, living and thinking like them, bringing according to need my mite and my labor for the propagation of liberal and progressive ideas, I believed I was doing good; for everyone says so, but not all do it. Thus, I acted, and I ask you not to forget men of action. In their sphere, they shook off that torpor of so many centuries that, so to speak, had veiled the future. Rending the veil, we too had driven back the night, which is much, when the intolerant enemy is at the door and seeks to strike out in black every ray of light. How many times did we seek within ourselves the solution to this question: “Ah! if the dead could speak!” A profound, absorbing reflection, that killed us in the age of disillusionments, when every man marked by an apparent chance became a light in the multitude. There is the family!… young candid brows ask for our kisses of hope, and we can give nothing, because this hope we sealed it under a great, very cold stone, which we call unbelief. But today I believe, I come to you full of hope and faith, to tell you: “I hope in the future, I believe in God; the Spirits of Béranger, of Royer-Collard, of Casimir Perrier… will not contradict me.”

To you who desire progress, who want light, I shall say: The dead speak, they speak every day; but, blind as you are and as we were! you have a presentiment of the truth without affirming it openly; like Galileo, you say to yourselves every night: “And yet it turns!” but you lower your eyes before ridicule, before respect for the matter adjudged!

All of you who were my faithful, who weekly granted me your afternoon, you know what I have become.

Learned men who scrutinize the secrets of Nature, did you ask the dead leaf, the blade of grass, the insect, what matter they were becoming in the great concert of earthly dead? Did you ask them their functions as dead? could you inscribe in your tomes this great law of Nature, which seems to destroy itself annually only to revive splendid and superb, casting the challenge of immortality at your fleeting and mortal thoughts?

Learned doctor, who daily bend your preoccupied brow over the mysterious diseases that destroy human bodies in manifold ways, why so much toil for the future, so much love for the family, so much foresight to secure the honorableness of a name, by the fortune and by the morality of your children, so much respect for the virtue of your companions?

Men of progress, who labor constantly to transform ideas and make them more beautiful, why so much care, vigils and disappointments, if this eternal law of progress absorbs all your faculties and multiplies them tenfold, in order to render homage to the general movement of harmony and of love, before which you bow?

Ah! my friends, whoever you may be on Earth: mechanics, profound legislators, politicians, artists, or all of you who inscribe on your banner: Political economy [Political organization], believe me, your works defy death; all your aspirations reject it as a denial and when, by your discoveries and your intelligence, you left a trace, a remembrance, an unblemished honorableness, you defied death, like everything that surrounds you! you offered a sacrifice to the creative power and, like Nature, like matter, like everything that lives and wants to live, you conquered death. Like me of old, like so many others, you are tempered anew in the annihilation of the body which is life, you go to the Eternal to conquer eternity!… But you will not conquer it, because it is your friend. The Spirit is eternity, the eternal, and I repeat it to you: everything that dies speaks of life and of light. Death speaks to the living; the dead come to speak. They alone have the key to everything, and it is through them that I promise you other explanations.

Gui.

(Parisian Spiritist Society, November 17, 1865. – Medium: Mr.

Leymarie.)

They fled from the epidemic, and in this singular panic, how many moral bankruptcies, how many shameful defections! For death becomes the most violent expiation for all who violate the laws of the strictest equity. Death is the unknown for vacillating faith. The diverse religions, with paradise and hell, could not establish themselves in those who possess abnegation, vainly taught by earthly goods; no point of reference, no certain bases; diffusion in the divine teaching: this is not certainty. Thus, save for a few exceptions, what terror, what lack of charity, what egoism in that general every-man-for-himself of the contented ones! To believe in God, to study His will in intelligent affirmations, to be certain that the laws of existence are subordinate to higher divine laws, which measure everything with justice, which dispense to all, in diverse existences, suffering, joy, labor, misery and fortune, is, it seems to me, what all wise research seeks, all the questionings of Humanity. Is not having one's certainty the true strength in everything? If the exhausted body gives liberty to the Spirit, so that the latter may live according to the fluidic aptitudes that are its essence, if this truth becomes palpable, evident as a ray of sunlight; if the laws that mathematically link the diverse phases of earthly and extraterrestrial existence, or of erraticity, become for us as clearly demonstrated as an algebraic problem, then would you not hold in hand the long-sought secret, the why of all your objections, the rational explanation of the weakness of your profound studies in political economy, a weakness terrifying for the theory, because practice destroys in one day the work of a man's life? It is for this, friends, that I come to entreat you to read The Spirits' Book; do not stop at the letter, but possess its spirit. Intelligent researchers, you will find new elements to modify your own and the point of view of the men who study you. Certain of the plurality of existences, you will face life better; defining it better, you will be strong. Men of letters, poor and blessed pleiad, you will give to Humanity a seed all the more serious the more true it is. And when they see the strong, the learned believe and teach the strong and consoling maxims, they will love one another better and will no longer flee from the supposed invisible evil; the will of all, a powerful homogeneity, will destroy all those poisoned gaseous fermentations, the sole source of epidemics. The study of the fluids, made from another point of view, will transform Science; new observations will light up the fecund road of our young students, who will no longer go, like proud men, to show the foreigner their intolerance of language and their ignorance; they will no longer be the mockery of Europe, because the beloved dead will have given them faith and that religion of the Spirit, which first moralizes, in order then to elevate to the serene regions of knowledge and of charity. Gui.