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descended for a moment into our obscure world to glorify it with their rays of genius, criticism hesitates and
becomes silent. During eight years we received, here in Tours, messages of this order. They touched on all the
great problems, all the important questions of moral philosophy, and comprise several volumes of manuscripts.
It is the résumé of this work, too long and too involved to publish entirely, which I wish to present here.
Jerome de Prague, my friend, my guide of the present and the past, the magnanimous spirit who
directed the first flights of my infantile intelligence in the far off ages, is the author. How many other eminent
spirits have thus spread their teachings over the world, in the intimacy of various groups, almost always
anonymously, revealing themselves only by the high value of their conceptions.
It has been given to me to lift some of the veils, which hide the true personalities. But I must guard
their secrets, for the choice spirits are particular in this respect, and wish to remain unknown; the celebrated
names which one often finds attached to empty and fleet communications are but a decoy. By all this details I
wish to demonstrate one thing - this work is not exclusively mine, but rather the reflection of a higher thought
which I seek to interpret. I have considered it a duty to endow my earthly brothers with these teachings, a
worthy work of itself. Whatever one may think of the revelation of spirits, I am not ready to admit that because
our universities teach immense systems of metaphysics, built by human thought, that we should regard as
negligible, and reject the principles divulged by the noble intelligences of space. Though we love the human
masters of reason and knowledge, it is not an excuse for disdaining the superhuman masters, who represent a
higher and more serious knowledge. The spirit of man, limited by the flesh, deprived of the fullness of his
perceptions and his resources, cannot attain by mortal powers alone a full acquaintance with the invisible
world and its laws. The circle in which our life and thoughts struggle is restricted, our point of view limited,
the insufficiency of the ideas we acquire render all generalization impossible, or improbable; we must have
guides to penetrate the unknown domain and its laws. It is by the collaboration of the eminent thinkers of the
two worlds - the two humanities - that the highest truths are attained, or at least perceived, and the noblest
principles established. Better and surer than our earthly masters, those of Space know how to present to us the
problem of life and the mystery of the soul, and how to aid us to realize the grandeur of our future. There is
another question presented to us, and a new objection made by the critics. In presence of the infinite variety of
communications received from the Invisible Realms, and the liberty given each mind to interpret them
according to will, what, asks the questioner, becomes of the verity of doctrine, this powerful verity which has
produced the force and the grandeur, and assured the devotion of sacerdotal religions? We have said that
spiritism is not a dogma - it is not an orthodox sect. It is a living philosophy, open to every mind, and which
progresses in evolving. It imposes nothing, it ‘proposes’, and what it offers leans upon facts of experience and
moral proofs.
It excludes no other beliefs, but lifts itself above them all, and embraces them in vaster formulae,
higher and more extended expressions of truth. Superior intelligences open the way; they reveal eternal
principles, which each one of us adopts and assimilates in the measure of his comprehension, following the
degree of development attained by his faculties in his succession of lives.
Generally the verity of doctrine is only obtained by the price of blind and passive submission to an
ensemble of principles fixed in a rigid mould. It is the petrification of thought, the divorce of religion from
science, which does not know how to exist without liberty and movement. This immobility, this fixed rigidity
of dogma, deprives religion of all the benefits of evolution of thought; in considering itself as the only source
of truth, it arrives at proscribing all which is outside of itself, and so ripens in a tomb, where it would carry all
with it, all the intellectual life and genius of the human race. The greatest solicitude of the spiritual world is to
prevent the funereal consequences of orthodoxy; its revelation is a free and sincere exposition of doctrines
which are not unchanging, but which constitute new stations in the climb toward infinite and eternal truth.
Every one has the right to analyze those principles, and they require no anchor but that of the conscience and
reason, yet in adopting them one should conform his life and perform the duties, which are the result. Those
who fail to do this cannot be considered serious. Allan Kardec always tells us to be on guard against a
dogmatic and sectarian attitude. Constantly in his works he warns us against the unfortunate methods, which
undermine other religions. Psychic research is a neutral territory where we meet one another and clasp hands
with all. No more dogmas! No more mysteries! Open our hearts to all the whispers of the Spirit, draw from all
the sources of the past and present; let us say that in every doctrine there are portions of truth, but that no one
contains it all! For truth in its plenitude is vaster than the human spirit. It is only in the accord of sincere hearts
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