Genius.

Q. – Is genius conferred upon each Spirit according to its conquest, or according to a divine law, in relation to the needs of a people or of Humanity?

Answer. – Genius, dear children, is the radiation of previous conquests. This radiation is the state of the Spirit in detachment or in the higher incarnations: there are, then, two distinctions to be made. The most common genius among you is simply the state of a Spirit, of which one or two faculties have remained unveiled and in a state of acting freely; it received a body that permits its expansion in the plenitude acquired. The other kind of genius is the Spirit who comes from the happy and advanced worlds, where acquisition is universal on all points; where all the faculties of the soul have reached an eminent degree, unknown on Earth. These kinds of genius are distinguished from the first by an exceptional aptitude for all talents, for all studies. They conceive all things by a sure intuition, which confounds the science taught by the most learned. They are distinguished in goodness, in greatness of soul, in true nobility, in excellent works. They are beacons, initiators, examples. They are men of other lands, come to make the light from on high shine forth in an obscure world, just as one sends among the barbarians, to instruct them, certain learned men from a civilized capital. Such were among you the men who, in various epochs, made Humanity advance, the learned men who widened the limits of knowledge and dispelled the darkness of ignorance. They came and foresaw the earthly destiny, however far they were from the realization of this destiny. All laid the foundations of some science, or were its culminating point. Genius is not, then, gratuitous and is not subordinate to a law; it issues from man himself and from his antecedents. Reflect that the antecedents are the whole man. The criminal is such by his antecedents; the man of merit, the man of genius is superior by the same cause. Not everything is veiled in incarnation to the point that nothing of our previous being shows through. Intelligence and goodness are lights too vivid, hearths too ardent, for earthly life to reduce them to obscurity. The trials to be suffered may well veil, attenuate some of our faculties, lull them to sleep, but if they have reached a high degree, the Spirit cannot entirely lose their possession and exercise; it has within itself the assurance that it keeps them always at its disposal; often it cannot even consent to deprive itself of them. This is what causes the lives, so painful, of certain advanced men, who would rather suffer for their high faculties than let these be extinguished for some time. Yes, we are all by hope, and some by remembrance, citizens of those high celestial spheres, where thought radiates pure and powerful. Yes, we shall all be Platos, Aristotles, Erasmuses; our Spirit shall no longer see its acquisitions grow pale under the weight of the life of the body, or be extinguished under the weight of old age and infirmities. Friends, here truly is the most sublime hope. What are, beside all this, the dignities and the treasures that were laid at the feet of these men! Sovereigns begged for their works, disputed for their presence. — Do you believe that those vain honors flattered them? No; the remembrance of their glorious homeland was too vivid. They returned happy upon the ray of their glory, to the worlds that their Spirits incessantly desired. Earth! Earth! cold, obscure, agitated region; blind, ungrateful, and rebellious land! you could not make them forget the celestial homeland where they lived, where they would live again.

Farewell, friends! be assured that every man of good will become a citizen of those happy worlds, of those splendid Jerusalems, where the Spirit lives free in an ethereal body, possessing without clouds and without veils all its conquests. Then, you will know all that you aspire to know, you will understand all that you seek to understand, even my name, dear medium, which I do not wish to tell you. A Spirit.

Allan Kardec.

Paris. – Typ. de Rouge frères, Dunon et Fresné, rue du Four-Saint-Germain, 43.