The Spiritist review — Journal of psychological studies — 1858

Allan Kardec

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General characteristics: Prevalence of matter over the spirit. Have tendency towards evil. Show ignorance, arrogance, egotism and all their consequent passions.

Have the intuition of God but do not understand Him.

Not all of them are essentially bad; some show more levity, inconsequence and wickedness than evilness. Others neither practice good nor evil but by simply not being good they reveal inferiority. Others still rejoice with iniquity and are delighted by the very opportunity of practicing it. These can associate their intelligence to meanness or malevolence but whatever their intellectual development may be, their ideas are not much elevated and their feelings more or less abject.

Their comprehension about the spiritual world is limited and their little knowledge is mixed with their preconceived ideas from their corporeal life. They can only give us false and incomplete notions but the thoughtful observer many times discovers in their communications, though imperfect, the confirmation of the immense truths taught by the superior spirits.
Their character is revealed by their language. Every spirit who, in the communications, betrays one thought may be classified in the third order; thus every bad thought which is suggested to us comes from a spirit of that order.


They see the happiness of the good spirits and this is an inexorable distress to them, as they experience all anguishes produced by envy and jealousy.

These spirits keep the memory and perception of the sufferings of their corporeal life and those perceptions are sometimes harder than reality. They really suffer by the ill deeds they had to endure and by those they had imposed to others. As they suffer for a long time they judge their suffering as eternal. God allows them to think so in order to help them seek a better way.

These spirits may be divided in four main groups:

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