The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863

Allan Kardec

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Spiritist Group of Sétif, Algeria



You are frequently surprised when finding mental or physical mediumistic faculties that, in your opinion, should be a proof of personal merit in people that, given their moral character, are placed at a level below such a gift. That is due to the false idea you have about the laws that regulate such things and you want to consider them constant. The question is what is constant. The means vary to infinity so that your freedom may be respected. This one has a skill, the other has another one; one is led by pride, the other by greed and a third one by fraternity. God employs the capabilities and passions of each one, in their respective spheres and from evil itself He knows how to produce good. The actions of men that seem so important to you are nothing to God. It is the intention that carries merit or demerit to His eyes. Hence fortunate is the one that is guided by fraternal love.

Providence has not created badness. Everything was made aiming at the good. Badness only exist by the ignorance of man and the bad use made of passions, tendencies and the instincts acquired by the contact with matter. Great God! When you have them inspired by the wisdom of having in their own hands the direction of this powerful instrument – passion – how much badness will disappear! How much good will be produced by that power that today he only knows the bad side, his own work! Eagerly continue your work my friends! Finally, may humanity foresee the route that one day it will follow in order to achieve the happiness that is allowed on Earth!

Don’t be surprised if the communications that you are given by the elevated Spirits, entirely supported by the moral of the Savior, confirming and developing it, offer you so many points of contact and similarity with the mysteries of antiquity. The former peoples had the intuition of things of the invisible world and of what was to come and several of them were assigned with the mission of paving the way.

Observe and study carefully the received communications; accept what is not rejected by reason; repel what shocks it; request clarification about those who leave doubts. You have here the guidelines to be followed and to transmit to future generations, without fear of seeing the truths denatured, truth that you will separate effortlessly from its unavoidable entourage of mistakes.


Work, become useful to your brothers and to yourselves. You cannot envisage the happiness that the future spares you after the contemplation of your works.

Saint Augustine

OBSERVATION: This communication was obtained by a young man, an illiterate somnambulist. It was sent to us by Mr. Dumas, a dealer in Setif, member of the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, informing that the sensitive person ignores the meaning of most words and provide us with the names of ten renowned persons that attended the session.

Illiterate mediums that receive messages above their intellectual reach are freqent. A short while ago we were shown a message that was received in Lyon by a lady that cannot read or write and does not know a single word of what she writes. Her husband, who is almost like her, deciphers it out of intuition during the session but that becomes impossible on the following day. The other persons read them without much difficulty.

Isn’t that the application of Jesus’ words: “Your wives and your daughters will prophesize and make prodigies?” Isn’t that a prodigy to write, paint, draw and compose music and poetry without the skills?

You demand material signs? Here you have them. Will the unbelievers say that it is the result of imagination? If it is they should know that such persons have imagination in their hands and not in their brains. Still once more a theory is only good with the condition that it can explain all the facts. If it is contradicted by a single one it means that it is false or incomplete.

Allan Kardec[1]



[1] Paris, typography Cosson & Co., Rue de Four-Saint-Germain, 43



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