The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1864

Allan Kardec

Back to the menu
Passy, October 4th, 1864 – medium Mr. Rul.



Note: The medium wanted to evoke Latour since the time of the execution. He asked his spiritual guide about it who then answered that he should wait for the appropriate time that would be indicated to him. The authorization was only given on October 3rd after he led the article of the Spiritist Review about the case.

Q. – Have you heard my prayers? A. – Yes, despite my confusion I heard them and thank you for that. I was evoked soon after my death and could not communicate promptly but many frivolous Spirits took my name. I took the opportunity of the presence of the President of the Parisian Society in Brussels and with the permission of superior Spirits I was able to communicate. I will communicate at the Society and will make revelations that will be the beginning of the reparation of my faults and that will serve as teachings to all criminals that read me or think about the report of my sufferings. The discourses about the penalties of hell produce little effect upon the Spirit of the guilty that do not believe in all of those images that are scaring to children to the weak. Well, a big criminal is not a pusillanimous soul and the fear of police has a greater impact on them than the punishments of hell. That is why all of those that read me will be touched by my words, my sufferings that are not suppositions. There isn’t a single priest that can say: “I saw it and I tell you; I saw the sufferings of the condemned.” But when I come to say: This is what happened after the death of my body; that was the size of my disappointment when I saw that I was not dead as I expected, and what I had considered to be the end of my sufferings was just the beginning of tortures that are impossible to describe, then more than one will stop at the edge of the cliff in which they are about to fall. Each miserable one that I can stop like that will serve in the preparation of one of my faults. That is how good comes out of bad and how God’s benevolence manifests everywhere, on Earth as in space. I was freed from the vision of my victims that became my executioners, so that I could communicate with you. When I leave you I will see them again and that simple thought makes me suffer more than I can tell you. I am happy when you evoke me because I then leave my hell behind for a few moments. Always pray for me; ask God to have me freed from the vision of my victims. Yes, let us pray together. Prayer helps so much… I am more relieved; I no longer feel the weight of the burden that crushes me. I see a flash of light sparking in my eyes and full of regret I say: Blessed be the hand of God. His will be done!

J. Latour



The spiritual guide of the medium writes the following:

Do not take the first screams of a regretful Spirit as an infallible sign of his resolutions. He may have his promises in good faith since the first impression that he had on returning to the spiritual world is so much fulminating that before the first testimony of charity that he receives from an incarnate Spirit he throws himself to the effusions of recognition and regret. But the reaction, sometimes, is like the action and frequently this guilty Spirit that dictated so good words to a medium may return to his perverse nature, to his criminal tendencies. Like a child that tries to walk, he needs help to avoid falling again.”



The Spirit of Latour was evoked on the very next day.

Medium: Instead of asking God to free you from the vision of your victims I invite you to pray with me to ask him to give you strength to withstand such a torturous atonement.

Latour: I would rather be freed from the vision of my victims. If you only knew what I suffer! The most insensitive man would be touched if he could see the sufferings of my soul printed on my face like fire. I will do what you advise me to. I understand that it is a kind of faster way of atonement for my faults. It is like a painful surgery that must bring health back to my very sick body. Ah! If the sinners of Earth could see me how scared they would be with the consequences of their crimes, hidden to the eyes of men, seen by the Spirits! Oh ignorance is so fatal to so many miserable people! What a responsibility of those that deny education to the poor. They believe to be able to prevent crimes with police and guards. Oh How wrong! If they doubled, quadrupled the number of law enforcement the same crimes would be committed because it is necessary that the bad incarnate Spirits commit crimes. I recommend myself to your charity.



Observation: It is no doubt for a rest of earthly prejudice that Latour says: “it is necessary that the bad incarnate Spirits commit crimes”. That would be fatality in the actions of people, a doctrine that would excuse everybody. In fact it is very natural that a Spirit leaving similar existence does not understand moral freedom yet without which mankind would be at the level of the animals. We should be surprised by the fact that he does not say worse things.

The following communication by the same Spirit was obtained spontaneously in Brussels by Mrs. C…, the same medium that served as instrument to the scene report in our October issue.

Fear nothing from me. I am more appeased but I still suffer. God have mercy on me for he saw my repentance. Now I suffer this regret that shows me the enormity of my faults. Had I been well driven in life I would not have done the harm that I did however my instincts were not repressed and I obeyed them since there was not brake to me! If all mankind gave enough thought to God or at least believed in God similar atrocities would no longer take place. But the justice of men is poorly understood. Sometimes for a slight mistake a person is thrown in jail that is always a place of perversion. She then comes out completely lost by the bad advices and examples collected there. Even if good natured and strong enough to resist to the bad examples when the person leaves prison all doors are closed, all hands retrieved and all honest hearts remain away. What is left? Misery and abandonment. The good resolutions are met by disdain and despair; misery leads to everything. Rejected the person then also despises the neighbor, hates and loses any consciousness of good and bad, despite the previous resolution of becoming honest. To find the necessary the person steals and sometimes kills. Then comes the guillotine!

My God, when my hallucinations are supposed to come back I feel your hand on me; I feel your goodness that surrounds and protect me. Thank you my God! In my next life I will employ my intelligence and all of my efforts to help those miserable ones that have succumbed and to preserve them from the fall.

Thank you all that are not disgusted by communicating with me. Have no fear for you can see I am not bad. When you think of me do not form the image that you have of me but of a poor devastated soul thankful to your indulgence. Good-bye. Evoke me again and pray to God on my behalf.”

Latour

Observation: The Spirit refers to the fear that he inspired on the medium. In addition he says: “I suffer this regret that shows me the enormity of my faults”. There is a lot behind this thought. The Spirit does not really understand the seriousness of the mistakes but when there is true regret. Regret brings sorrow and remorse, this painful feeling that is the transition from bad to good, from moral disease to moral health. It is to escape that the perverse Spirits resist to the voice of their consciences, like those patients that repeal the medicine that can cure them. They try to delude themselves and get intoxicated, persisting on the error. Latour entered the phase in which the hardening ends up yielding and remorse reaches the heart. Then came regret. He understand the reach of what he did, sees his abjection and suffers. That is why he says: “I suffer this regret.” In his preceding life he must have been worse than this because if he had regretted as he did now his life would have been better. His current resolutions will influence his future earthly life. The one that he has just left, however criminal it may have been, marked a stage of his progress. It is more than likely that before initiating that life, in erraticity, he was one of those rebellious bad Spirits obstinate by evil, like many others that we see.

Many people asked what would be the benefit that could be taken from past lives taking into account the fact that we don’t remember what we did or what we were. This question is completely resolved by the fact that if our bad actions are totally erased; if there is no trace in our hearts their memory would be useless since we no longer have to worry about them. As for what we have not completely cured we know that from our current tendencies; there is what we have to put all of our attention. It is enough to know what we are without the need to know what we were.

When we consider in this life the difficulty of rehabilitation of the most regretful criminal, the reproach that he suffers one must thank God for having cast a veil upon the past. If Latour had been condemned in time and even if he had been recovered his antecedents would have him repealed by society. Despite his regret who would have given him a chance in their intimacy? The feelings that as a Spirit he manifests today give us hope that in the next earthly life he will be an honest, esteemed and considered man. But now suppose that he knows that he had been Latour! The reproach will still follow him. The veil thrown onto the past opens up the rehabilitation door to him. He will be able to share the same space with the most decent persons without any embarrassment. How many persons would not like to erase from people’s memories, at any price, certain years of their life?

Where is a doctrine that better harmonizes with the justice and benevolence of God? As a matter of fact this Doctrine is not a theory but the result of observation. It was not the Spiritists that imagined it; they saw and observed the multiple situations presented by the Spirits; they sought the explanations and from that the Doctrine was born. If the Doctrine was accepted it is because it results from the facts and because it seemed more rational to them than all others produced up until now about the future of the soul.



Latour was evoked many times and that was very natural but as it happens in similar cases there was many apocryphal communications and frivolous Spirits did not let this opportunity go. Latour’s situation itself precluded him from manifesting in so many places almost simultaneously since ubiquity is only given to superior Spirits.

Are the communications that we reported more authentic? We believe so and wish the best to that Spirit. In the absence of material proofs that attest the identity in a more absolute way, like many times they do, we at least have the moral proofs that result both from the circumstances in which the manifestations took place and their agreement. From the communications that we know coming from different sources at least three quarter parts are coherent with respect to the bottom line; there are others that do not resist examination such is the amount of errors and in flagrant contradiction with what experience teaches us about the Spirits and the spiritual world.

At any rate one cannot deny an elevated moral teaching in those that we mentioned. The Spirit may have been helped in his thoughts and in particular in the choice of expressions by more advanced Spirits. But in similar cases the latter only help in the form and not in the content and never put the inferior Spirit in contradiction with himself. They were able to give Latour’s regret a poetic form but they would not have led him to express regret against his own will because the Spirit has free-will. They saw in him the embryo of good feelings and for that reason helped him to express them and by that they contributed to have them developed and at the same time attracted people’s commiseration to him.

Is there anything more exciting, more moralizing and more impressive than the image of that regretful criminal, manifesting his desperation and remorse that amidst tortures and persecuted by the permanent eyes of his victims elevates his thoughts to God imploring for mercy? Isn’t that a healthy example to the sinners? Everything in his words is sensible; everything is natural in the situation whereas what is attributed to him in certain communications is ridiculous. We can understand the nature of his anguishes; they are rational, terrible although simple and without any phantasmagoric apparatus. Why wouldn’t he have regretted? Why wouldn’t there be a vibrating cord in him? That is precisely the moral side of his communications; it is his understanding of the situation; his sorrow, his resolution, his projects of reparation that are eminently instructive. What would have been seen as extraordinary if he had sincerely regretted before his death, if he had said before what he said afterwards?

A return to the good path before his death would have felt like an act of weakness to the eyes of his peers. His voice from beyond the grave is the revelation of the future that waits form them. He is absolutely right when he says that his example is more adequate to lead the guilty ones that the flames of hell and even the guillotine. Why then it is not given in prisons? That would lead more than one to think according to many examples that we have. How to believe in the efficacy of words of a dead person when one believes that it is all over after death? One day will come, however, when the truth will be acknowledged: the dead can come to educate the living ones.

Related articles

Show related items