The farewells.

(Society of Paris, August 16, 1867. – Medium: Mr. Morin, in spontaneous somnambulism.)

(Summary)

Spontaneous communication from several Spirits (eight manifestations) received successively through psychophony, by the medium Mr. Morin at the leave-taking of yet another year of activities of the Spiritist Society of Paris: With each interlocutor who presented himself, the interpreter changed his tone, his attitude, his expression, his physiognomy and, by the language, one recognized the Spirit who was speaking, before he was named. It was indeed he who was speaking, making use of the organs of an incarnate one, and not his thought, translated more or less faithfully in passing through an intermediary; thus, the identity was patent and, except for the physical resemblance, one had before oneself the Spirit as in his life. After each address the medium remained absorbed for a few minutes; that was the time for the substitution of one Spirit by another; then, coming back to himself little by little, he took up the word again in another tone.

Communication from Mr. Leclerc.

Communication from Ernestine Dozon.

The beautiful, the infinite, the impalpable, all the purest sentiments, such is the prerogative of those who scorn human treasures, wishing to march on the holy path of good, of charity and of duty.

Communication from a Spirit disincarnated by suicide, signed D.

Communication from a suffering Spirit, signed X.

Communication from Mr. E. Quinemant.

Mr. Quinemant explains how he manipulates the fluids of the assembly.

Communication from Saint Louis, spiritual president of the Spiritist Society of Paris.

Communication from Dr. Demeure about the cholera epidemic.

Communication from the medium's own Spirit, Mr. Morin, in a trance of spontaneous somnambulism, referring to his task in relation to this type of mediumship.

An authentic phenomenon of animism in mediumship.

— Note – Among the communications obtained in the last session of the Society, before the holidays, this one presents a particular character, which departs from the usual form. Several Spirits of those who are assiduous at the sessions and who manifest themselves there sometimes, came successively to address a few words to the members of the Society before their separation, by means of Mr. Morin, in spontaneous somnambulism. It was like a group of friends coming to take their leave and to bear witness of sympathy, at the moment of departure. With each interlocutor who presented himself, the interpreter changed his tone, his attitude, his expression, his physiognomy and, by the language, one recognized the Spirit who was speaking, before he was named. It was indeed he who was speaking, making use of the organs of an incarnate one, and not his thought, translated more or less faithfully in passing through an intermediary; thus, the identity was patent and, except for the physical resemblance, one had before oneself the Spirit as in his life. After each address the medium remained absorbed for a few minutes; that was the time for the substitution of one Spirit by another; then, coming back to himself little by little, he took up the word again in another tone. The first who presented himself was our former colleague Leclerc, who died in December of last year:

— Some of your brothers who have departed come to take the opportunity to manifest to you their sympathy, at the moment of your separation.

Death is nothing, when it has as its result the giving birth to a life much greater, much broader, much more useful than human life!… A daze comes over one, a prostration follows (an allusion to the manner in which he died) and I rise more free and happy upon entering this invisible world, which my soul had foreseen, which my whole being desired!… Free!… to soar in space!… I saw, I observed, and my delirious joy was tempered only by the excessive grief of my own, by the absence of my material personality; but today, when I have been able to prove to them my existence, and when I have demonstrated that if my body was no longer there, my Spirit was there all the more, I am happy, very happy; because what the incarnate one could not do, he was able to obtain in the state of spirituality. Today I am useful, very useful, and thanks to the kindly affection of those who knew me, my usefulness is more effective. How good it is to be able to serve one's brothers and thus be useful to all Humanity! How good, how sweet it is to the soul to be able to make Humanity share in the little knowledge that one acquired through suffering! I, who, once imprisoned in this obtuse body, am today great, and were it not for the fear of your ridicule, I would admire myself; because, you see, to be good is to partake of God; and this goodness, did I possess it? oh! answer me; your testimony will be one happiness more, joined to the happiness I enjoy; but, do I need your words? can I not read in your hearts and see your most intimate sentiments? Today, thanks to my dematerialization, can I not see your most secret thoughts? Oh! God is great and His goodness is sublime! My friends, bow down, as I do, before His majesty; work for the realization of His designs, doing more and better than I myself was able to do.

Leclerc.

— For the soul that aspires to liberty, how long is the time on Earth, and how the so-dreamed-of moment makes itself awaited! But, also, once the bond is broken, with what rapidity the Spirit runs and flies to the celestial kingdom, which in life it saw in dreams and to which it aspired without cease! The beautiful, the infinite, the impalpable, all the purest sentiments, such is the prerogative of those who scorn human treasures, wishing to march in the holy life of good, of charity and of duty. I have my reward and I am very happy, because now I no longer await the visits of those who are dear to me; now there are no more limits to my sight, and that suffering, that long wasting away of the body has ended; I am joyful, content, full of vivacity. I no longer await the visitors: I shall go to visit them. Ernestine Dozon.

— Very happy are those who today can come without shame into your midst, to communicate to you their joy, their pleasure upon entering here! But I, who took the path of cowards to avoid the trodden path; I, who entered by surprise into a world that was not unknown to me; I, who broke the door of the prison, instead of waiting for it to be opened wide to me, it is by reason of that very shame that covers my face that I come to this table, because here I find the means to say to you: Thank you for your sincere pardon, thank you for your prayers, for the interest you lavished upon me and which shortened my sufferings! Thank you, also, for the thoughts of the future, which I see germinating in your hearts, for the fraternal collectivity of your sympathies, from which I shall benefit! Today, the gleam barely glimpsed has become a luminous beacon, with broad and brilliant rays; from now on I see the path, and if your prayers sustain me, as I foresee, if my humility and my repentance do not belie themselves, you may count on one more traveler on this broad road that is called the good.

D.

— I failed… I sinned… I sinned much!… And yet, if God places in the brain of a man an intelligence and beside it puts desires to satiate, inclinations impossible to overcome, why would He make the Spirit bear the consequences of those obstacles that he could not conquer?… But I lose myself, I blaspheme!… because, since He had given me an intelligence, it was the instrument with the help of which I could conquer the obstacles… The greater that intelligence was, the less excusable I am…

My own intelligence, above all my presumption, ruined me… I suffered morally all my disappointments, far more than physically, and that is not saying little!… In making to you these confessions, I suffer the past and all the sufferings of my own, which come to increase the baggage of the ills that already crush me… Oh! pray for me! Today is a day of indulgence. Well then! I claim yours. May those whom I offended and scorned forgive me!

X.

— An invisible spectator, for some time I have been attending your studies with a very great happiness! Your labors absorb my intellectual faculties even more than when I was alive. I see, I observe, I study, and today that my cerebral fibers are no longer obstructed by matter, I have opened my spiritual eyes and I can see the fluids, which in vain I had sought to perceive in life.

Well then! if you could see that immense web, that fluidic tangle, your visual rays would be so annihilated that you would perceive only darkness. I see, I feel, I feel anew!… and in those fluidic molecules, impalpable atoms, I distinguish the different propelling forces; I analyze them, from them I form a whole that I still employ for the benefit of the poor suffering bodies; I gather, I agglomerate the sympathetic fluids, and I go simply, freely, to pour them out upon those who have need of them.

Ah! the study of fluids is a beautiful thing! And you would understand how precious all these mysteries are to me, if, like me, you had consecrated in vain your whole existence to penetrating them. Thanks to Spiritism, the apparent chaos of these branches of knowledge has been put in order; Spiritism distinguished what is of the physical domain from that which belongs to the spiritual world; it recognized two quite distinct parts in magnetism; it made its effects easy to recognize, and God knows what the future holds in store for it!

But, I perceive that I am absorbing all your time for my benefit, when other Spirits still wish to speak to you. I shall return, through writing, to continue developing for you my ideas about these studies with which, in life, I so loved to occupy myself.

E. Quinemant.

— My dear children: The Spiritist social year was profitable for your studies, and I come with pleasure to bear witness to all my satisfaction. Many facts were analyzed, many things misunderstood were elucidated, and you touched upon certain questions that will not be slow to be admitted in principle. I am, or rather, we are satisfied.

Notwithstanding all the ardor employed up to now, in your midst and by your enemies, against your good intentions, your phalanx was the strongest; if evil made some victims, it is because in them the leprosy already existed. But already the wound is healing over; the good come in, and the wicked go away. And for the wicked, who remain in your midst, later the remorse will be terrible, because to their vices they add that of hypocrisy. But those who are sincere, those who today join you, those who bring their devotion to the truth and the desire to communicate it to all, these, my children, I tell you that they will be blessed, because they will bring happiness not only to themselves, but to all those who listen to them. Look at your ranks and you will see that the voids created by the defections are very quickly filled, with advantage, by new individualities, and these will enjoy the benefits that will be the prerogative of the future generation. Go, my children! your studies are still very rudimentary; but each day brings the means to deepen them further and, for this, new instruments will come to join those you already have. You will have more extensive instructions and this for the greater glory of God and for the greater well-being of Humanity.

There are among you several of these instruments, who will take their place at your table, at the reopening; they do not yet dare to declare themselves; but encourage them; bring to your side the timid and the proud, who think they do better than the others, and then we shall see whether the timid are afraid and whether the proud will not have to curb their pretensions.

Saint Louis. n

— The epidemic that comes to decimate the world at certain moments, and which you have agreed to call cholera, strikes anew and with redoubled blows at Humanity; its effects are prompt and its action rapid. Without any warning, man passes from life to death, and those, more privileged, spared by its fulminating hand, remain stupefied, trembling, before the frightful consequences of an ill unknown in its causes, and whose remedy is completely unknown.

In those sad moments, fear takes hold of those who regard only the action of death, without thinking of the beyond, and who, by this very fact, more easily offer their flank to the ill. But as the hour of each one of us is marked, one must depart, in spite of everything, if it has sounded. The hour is marked for a good number of the inhabitants of the terrestrial universe; they depart every day; little by little the scourge spreads and will extend over the whole surface of the globe.

This ill is unknown and perhaps it is even more so today, because, to its own constitution, there are daily added other elements that confound human knowledge and prevent the finding of the remedy necessary to halt its march. Thus, in spite of their science, men must suffer its consequences, and that destroying scourge is quite simply one of the means to activate the humanitarian renewal, which must come about.

But do not be troubled; for you Spiritists, who know that to die is to be reborn, if you are stricken and depart, will you not go to happiness? If, on the contrary, you are spared, give thanks for it to God, who will thus permit you to increase the sum of your sufferings and to pay more by the trial.

On the one side as on the other, whether death strikes you or spares you, you have only to gain; or else, do not call yourselves Spiritists.

Doctor Demeure.

— This is for him (the medium speaks of himself in the third person). — See, it was said that a moment would come when he could see, hear and rest in his turn. Well then! that moment has come, for you and not for the others; at the reopening he will no longer fall asleep, except in some exceptional cases, in which his usefulness makes itself felt; at this moment he laments it, but, in a little while, when he awakens and learns of it, he will be very content… the egoist!… Yet, he still has much to do; from now until then, he will sleep; rarely will he congratulate and often will he chastise: that is his task. Pray that it may be easy for him, that his word may bring peace, consolation and conciliation, wherever they may be needed. Help him with your thought; upon returning he will put all his good will into seconding you, and he will do it with all his heart; but sustain him, for he needs it greatly. Moreover, the exceptional circumstances in which he will fall asleep will perhaps not, unfortunately, often be warranted. In short, say as he does: May the will of God be done! Morin.

Allan Kardec.

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

[1] [see Saint Louis.]