The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863

Allan Kardec

Back to the menu
If someone continues to believe in the ability of a medium to have first-hand knowledge of information, lik the production of verses awarded by the Academy of Toulouse, then the same would not apply to things that are physically impossible for the medium to know. Among the many examples, the following fact is a peremptory response to the objection. We took it from a second letter of Mr. Sabò. He says:

“On May 4th, after the delegation left, I remained another day in Toulouse and, during a visit to Mr. Jaubert, he proposed an experiment that I gladly accepted as I had never seen him in action. There was a heavy four-legged table in his room. We positioned ourselves facing one another and after several evolutions of the table that obeyed his commands he asked me to mentally evoke a Spirit after the table had returned to the normal position. Here are the questions he asked the Spirit and the answers:


  • Can you tell us your gender? – A. Female (true).
  • How old were you when you left Earth? – A. Twenty two years old (also true).
  • What is your name? – A. The Spirit answered with six letters forming Félici.
  • What is your relationship with Mr. Sabò: – A. I was his wife.


Mr. Jaubert thought that he knew the name and advanced by saying: it must be Félicie or Félicité. Not responding to his observation, I asked him to continue. The Spirit then indicated letter “a”. I was moved and the medium was afraid of a mystification. Once he was certified that the name was Felicia, he continued.


Mr. Jaubert then thought that it was a real mystification because he knew that my wife was alive. I cannot deny the fact that I was really happy since I had just touched, if I can say so, the soul of my Felicia. I then explained to Mr. Jaubert – a fact that he did not know – that I was a widow and had married again a few months ago the sister of the Spirit that had just given us an irrefutable proof of the manifestation of the soul. He was as happy as I was with the result saying that he used to obtain results of such a nature and that gladly or not it should convince the most absolute disbelief. Whoever tells me: this does not exist, I will respond like Mr. Jaubert: This does exist, you unbelievers! Seek in good faith and you shall find out.


From our side, we tell these persons that they have the absolute doubters in high account believing that they will yield to evidence. There are those that were born unbelievers and will die like that; it does not mean that they could not believe but they did not want to believe. There isn’t a worse blind person than the one that does not want to see.

A wise officer recently told one of our friends that spoke to him about these phenomena:

  • I will never believe that a table can move and rise up but through the muscles of the operator.
  • But if you saw a table floating in space without any contact or support what would you say?
  • I would not believe either because I know that it is impossible.

You must understand that not even all the rapping Spirits of Carcassonne and in the whole world are enough to surpass such absolute and preconceived disbelief. The best thing to do is to leave them alone. When in a hundred people, ninety believe then what are the other ten going to do? As in the current situation they will still insist that they are the only ones with common sense and that it is necessary to arrest the mad ones, the ninety nine percent of the population. Leave them with that innocent satisfaction then and let us move on with our lives, not worrying about the ones that are late.

The expression “I know that it is impossible” brings to mind an anecdote:

A Dutch ambassador discussing specifics about Holland with Sian and about what the Prince was learning, he said, among other things, that the water got so hard during the coldest period of the year that people would walk on that and, with such a hardness, even elephants could walk it. The king then responded: “Mr. Ambassador, I believed in the extraordinary things that you told me so far because I saw you as an honored and noble person, but now I am certain that you are lying to me.” Isn’t that the same as “I know that it is impossible”?

The fact reported above proves nothing, certain unbelievers will say, because if the medium ignored the situation, Mr. Sabò knew it very well. It was his thought that was replicated then. Thus, it was the thought of the one that was not the medium that reflected on the table, agitating it intelligently to make it hit with knocks indicative of the letters that followed his thought.

What an incredible property of the mind! Only this phenomenon, admitting your theory, wouldn’t that be prodigious and deserve attention? Why do you disdain it then? Think about the composition of a grain of sand; carefully calculate the proportions of its elements and you only have disdain to show to a manifestation strange to a thought? If a new beam of light of the solar spectrum is identified you will promptly study its properties, its chemical action, its angle of reflection and the refraction index. A beam of thought is isolated, agitates matter, reflects like light and that does not attract your attention! You then say: “What is the point of being bothered with that? It is just a thought!”

But with such a theory, how can you explain the numerous facts of revelations, be it by typology, by writing, of things completely ignored by the attendees and whose accuracy was attested, among others that of Mr. Simon Louvet, reported in the Spiritist Review of March 1863? Whose thought would have reflected that if they had to resource to a six year old journal to verify it? Is it simpler to admit that it was the thought of the journalist than that of the Spirit of Simon Louvet?

You are then very much afraid to be forced to believe that the soul outlives the body! And the idea of annihilation after death smiles to you more than that of reviving in happier conditions and that of meeting again in the spiritual world the loved ones left behind on Earth!

If you are satisfied with the sweet quietness of disappearing forever at the bottom of the tomb and that of sleeping in the rottenness of the body, what bad do those who think the opposite do to you and why persecuting them like the enemies of mankind?

You try to do them harm in proportion to your belief; they don’t do that in proportion to yours even if they had the feeling of revenge from your calumnies. That is the condemnation of the social consequences of your doctrines.

We don’t refuse to believe, say some among you, but we cannot see because we are precluded even from entering the sessions where we could be convinced and where only the already convinced people are allowed.

The access to the meetings is denied to you for a very simple reason: you do not wish to do what is necessary to learn or to follow the path that is indicated to you. You come to the meetings with a hostile feeling, not to study cold and seriously, with the thought of having your preconceived ideas prevailing there and that in the majority of the cases you bring disturbance. Without the due respect to the private character, although not secretive, of the meetings, you try to enter through gimmicks in order to satisfy a useless curiosity and to find subject for sarcasm and frequently to denature what you had just seen. These are the reasons for your exclusion that would never be excessively strict because you are harmful to some and useless to yourself. Those who consciously want to enlighten themselves must demonstrated it through a patient and perseverant good-will and there will be no lack of means for that. But such a good will could not be found in your desire to submit things to your requirements instead of you yourself submit to the requirements of the thing. Having said that let us leave the unbelievers alone waiting that time will come when they will see light. The first answer given by the Spirit of Félicia could seem contradictory to certain persons. She says that she is a female whilst it is well known that the Spirits have no gender. It is true that they have no gender but in order to allow themselves to be recognized they show up in the form that we knew them when alive. Félicia continues to be female to her former husband. She could not present herself in any other way for it would have disturbed his memory. There is more: when he enters the spiritual world he will meet her as she was on Earth otherwise he would not recognize her. The purely physical characters, though, disappear gradually allowing for the permanence of the purely moral features. It is how the mother meets the child in an early age although in reality the Spirit is no longer a child. We must still add that the purely moral characters are the more persistent the less dematerialized the Spirits, that is, less elevated in the hierarchy of creatures. That is why the inferior Spirits, still attached to Earth, are in the invisible world more or less what they were in their lives, with the same tastes and inclinations.

We will make a final observation about this chapter. It is about the qualification of the rapping Spirit, wrongly given to the Spirit that communicates with Mr. Jaubert in our opinion. Such a classification is not adequate, as we said elsewhere, but to the Spirits that we would call rappers by profession and that always belong to the inferior echelons, by their little elevation of ideas and knowledge. Hence this would not apply to this one that demonstrates at the same time the superiority of his moral and intellectual qualities. For him typology is not an entertainment. It is a means of transmission of his thoughts that he utilizes for not having found in the medium the faculty necessary to act differently. His objective is serious whilst the rapping Spirits properly speaking is almost always futile, when not malevolent. We prefer the qualification of “tiptor” to that of rapping Spirit, since it can be taken in a bad sense, and tiptor is a term that refers to the language of typology.

Related articles

Show related items