for communicating with spirits, no days, hours, or places are specially favorable; that, for evoking them, no special formulae, no cabalistic or consecrated signs, no initiation or preparation, are needed; that the employment of any outward sign or material object is powerless to attract or to drive them away, and that, for evoking them, the action of our thought suffices; and, finally, that mediums receive the verbal communications of spirits without quitting their normal state, and as simply and naturally as though they were dictated by a living person. Charlatanism alone could affect, in regard to these communications, to assume airs of eccentricity or to accompany their reception with nonsensical accessories. (What is Spiritism? Chap. II, No. 49.) – As a general rule, the future is hidden from men; it is only in rare and exceptional cases that God allows it to be foretold. If men knew what the future is destined to bring forth, they would neglect the present, and, moreover, would not act with the same freedom because they would be influenced by the idea that, if a thing is fated to happen, there is a no need for them to take any trouble about it, or they would seek to prevent its happening. God has willed that this should not be the case, in order that each may concur in the working out of His designs, even of those that they would have opposed if they had known of them beforehand. God permits the revelation of the future when this foreknowledge will facilitate the accomplishment of a given event instead of hindering it, by leading those, who are to bring it about, to act in some other way than that in which they would otherwise have acted. (The Spirits’ Book, Parts I., III, chap. X.) – Spirits cannot guide us, ostensibly, in the work of scientific research and discovery. The ascertainment of scientific truth is the work of genius; knowledge can only be obtained through labor and effort, for it is through work alone that man advances on his way. Where would be his merit if he had only to interrogate spirits in order to arrive at the possession of knowledge? Every fool, in that case, might become a man of science at small cost to himself. It is the same with regard to industrial discoveries and inventions. When the time for a discovery has come, the spirits charged with the direction of human progress seek out a man capable of seconding their action, and suggest to his mind the necessary ideas for bringing that discovery to light, but in such a way as to leave to him all the merit of the achievement; for it is he who must elaborate, and bring to bear, the ideas thus suggested. All the great achievements of the human intelligence have been suggested in this way. But spirits leave each man in his own sphere. They do not impart divine secrets to one who is only fit to till the ground; but they draw out of obscurity the man who is capable of seconding the divine designs. You should not allow yourselves to be tempted, by curiosity or ambition, into inquiries that are foreign to the purpose of Spiritism, and that can only lead to mystifications and disappointments. (The Mediums’ Book, Part II, chap. XXVI.) – Spirits cannot enable us to discover hidden treasures. Spirits of high degree take no interest in such matters; but mocking spirits often to pretend to indicate treasures which do not exist, or which are in some other place than that in which they cause you to see them. Such deceptions, however, are sometimes useful, by showing you that the true source of fortune is work. If Providence designs a hidden treasure to be found by some one, it will be found by him in what will appear to him as a natural way; otherwise, it will not be found at all. (Idem, chap. xxvi, No. 30.) – Spiritism, by enlightening us in regard to the properties of the fluids that are the agents and means of action of the invisible world, gives us the key to a host of things hitherto unexplained, and that are inexplicable by any other theory; things which in the olden times have passed for prodigies. Spiritism like magnetism reveals to us a law, the effects of which of not wholly unknown, have been hitherto imperfectly understood; a law of which, while its effects were known, the world was ignorant, and the ignorance of which endangered superstition. This law being known, the marvelous disappears; and phenomena, formerly regarded as miraculous or supernatural, are brought into the category of natural things. Spiritists no more perform miracles by making a table to rap, or the so-called dead to write, than does a physician when he restores a sick man to health, or the electrician, when he produces artificial lightning. Whoever should pretend to perform miracles by the aid of Spiritism would prove himself an ignoramus or a charlatan by the mere fact of such a pretension. (Idem, Part I., chap. II, No. 15.) – Among the many who have formed a very false idea of evocations, there are some who fancy that they consist in bringing back the dead, with all the lugubrious accessories of the grave! But it is only in romances, in fantastic ghost stories, and upon the stage, that the skeletons of the dead are seen coming out of their sepulchers,
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