THE MEDIUMS’ BOOK

Allan Kardec

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45. Somnambulic System. This system has had more partisans, and even yet counts some. Like the preceding it admits that all the intelligent communica tions have their source in the soul or spirit of the me dium ; but in order to explain his aptitude to treat of subjects beyond his knowledge, instead of supposing a multiple soul, it attributes his power to a temporary excitement of the mental faculties, to a kind of. som nambulistic or ecstatic state, which exalts and devel ops his intelligence. It cannot be denied that some cases are influenced by this cause ; but after having seen a great number of mediums, any one will be con vinced that it will not solve all the facts, and that it forms the exception, and not the rule. It might be thought so if the medium had always the air of an inspired or ecstatic person —an appearance that he certainly could always simulate, if he wished to act a part ; but how believe in inspiration, when the medium writes like a machine, without having the least con sciousness of what he is writing, without the least emotion, without thinking of what he is doing, laugh ing or talking of one thing and another. Excite ment may be imagined in the case of ideas, but it is not easy to understand how it can make a person write who does not know how to write, and still less when the communications are transmitted by rappings, or by the aid of a planchette or a basket. We shall see, at the end of this work, the part we must assign to the influence of the medium's ideas ; but the cases in which a foreign intelligence is revealed by incontesta ble signs, are so numerous and so evident, that they can leave no doubt in this respect. The defect of the greater number of the theories broached by spiritists is the drawing of general conclusions from isolated cases.


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