25. We cannot omit one other class which we will call the incredulous from
disappointment. This class comprehends those who have passed from an exaggerated
confidence to incredulity, because their expectations have been deceived; discouraged
in consequence, they have abandoned the whole thing, and cast it altogether aside. They
are like people who deny that probity exists, because they have been taken in. This,
also, is the result of an imperfect knowledge of spiritism. When a person is hoaxed by
spirits, it is generally because he has asked them something they could not, or might
not, tell; or because he was not sufficiently enlightened on the subject to discern truth
from imposture. Many people, it is to be remarked, see in spiritism only a new mode of
divination; they fancy that spirits may be made to tell their fortunes, and, accordingly,
flippant and mocking spirits amuse themselves at their expense, preparing for them
mystifications and disappointments to which serious and prudent persons would not
have laid themselves open.
