225. The following dissertation, dictated spontaneously by a disincarnate intelligence, who has constantly shown his superiority by the excellence of his communications, gives a clear and complete summary of the explanations hitherto made, by our friends in the other life, in regard to the part performed by the medium in the work of spirit manifestation.

"Whatever may be the specialty of writing-mediums - whether mechanical, semi-mechanical, or merely intuitive, - our mode of communicating through them does not essentially vary. In point of fact, we communicate with incarnate spirits, just as we do with disincarnate ones; that is to say, solely by the radiation of our thoughts.

"Our thoughts have no need to be clothed in words in order to be understood by spirits, for all spirits perceive the thought which we desire to communicate, through the mere direction of that thought towards them, and they perceive it in the ratio of the development of their own intellectual faculties; that is to say, such and such a thought will be understood by such and such spirits, because their own advancement enables them to understand it, while that same thought will not be perceived by other spirits, because it awakens no remembrance, no answering consciousness, in their feeling or their mind, and is therefore not perceptible by them. This being the case, an incarnate spirit, even if of slight advancement, is better fitted to serve as our intermediary, for the transmission of our thought to other spirits in flesh, than a disincarnate spirit of the same degree of advancement could be; for the incarnate spirit lends us a fleshly body as an instrument, which cannot be done by a disincarnate spirit.

"But, when we find a medium with a brain well-furnished with knowledge acquired in his present life, and a spirit rich in latent acquisitions, derived from his anterior existences, and of a nature to facilitate our communication, we naturally prefer to make use of such a one; because, with such a medium, we communicate much more easily than with a medium of narrow intelligence, and whose stock of anterior knowledge is small.

"We will try to illustrate our meaning by a few concise explanations.

"Through a medium whose intelligence has been sufficiently developed by the experiences of present and anterior lives, we are able to flash our thought, instantaneously, from our soul to his, by a faculty inherent in the very nature of the soul. We are able to do this, in such a case, because we then find, in the medium's brain, the elements fitted to give to our thought its appropriate clothing of words, whether the medium be intuitive, semi-mechanical, or purely mechanical. Thus, whatever may be the diversity of the spirits who communicate through a given medium, the communications obtained by him, though proceeding from various spirits, usually present a characteristic peculiarity of form and colour due to his own personal individuality. Although the thought transmitted may be entirely foreign to him, although the subject treated of may be beyond his usual range of ideas, although what he says may not have proceeded in any way from his own mind, the form of our communication will, nevertheless, be modified by the influence of the qualities and properties which constitute his own personal individuality. It is precisely as when you look at landscapes or other objects through coloured spectacles, whether green, white, blue, or red; though the landscapes or other objects thus seen are altogether different from one another, they all assume, nevertheless, a uniform tint imparted to them by the colour of the glasses through which you see them. We are the light, lighting up those landscapes or other objects, moral or philosophical, through glasses of various colours; so that our luminous rays (forced, as they are, to pass through media more or less colourless and translucent, that is to say through mediums more or less intelligent and manageable) cannot reach the object we desire to light up, without borrowing the tint, that is to say, the peculiar personal form, of the medium. Let me illustrate my meaning by yet another comparison: - We, spirits, are like musicians who wish to play an air of our composing, and who may have, at hand, either a piano, a harp, a violin, a bassoon, or a flute. It is evident that we might execute our air on either of these instruments, and that it would be understood by our auditors, no matter on which instrument we played it although the various instruments differ greatly in the quality of the sound they emit, our composition, on whichever instrument we played it, would be identically the same, except in the special quality of the tone derived from the nature of the instrument employed. But if we had at our disposal only a penny whistle, we should find it very much more difficult to execute our air so that our audience could comprehend it.

"In the same way, when we are obliged to make use of unadvanced mediums, our work is much more complicated, difficult, and tedious, because, in such a case, we are forced to employ inadequate means; and because we are then compelled, so to say, to set up our thoughts, as though putting them into type, communicating them, not only word by word, but letter by letter, which is tiresome and fatiguing for us, and constitutes a restraint on the rapidity and completeness of our manifestations.

"We therefore rejoice when we find mediums who are already prepared, well furnished with the requisite tools, and provided with materials ready for use; in a word, good instruments, for then our perispirit, acting instantaneously on the perispirit of him whom we medianimise, has only to give an impulsion to the hand which serves us for holding the pen or the pencil; while with inferior mediums, we are obliged to perform a task similar to that which we perform when we communicate by raps, that is to say, by pointing out, letter by letter, each word of the sentences which constitute the translation, into human language, of the thought we desire to impress upon you.

"This is why we have preferred to address ourselves, for the promulgation of spiritism and the development of medianimity, mainly to the educated classes, although it is in those classes that we find the greatest number of the incredulous, the recalcitrant, the immoral. But, just as we leave the production of tangible manifestations, rappings, carryings, etc., to backward and juggling spirits, so the less serious among you prefer those phenomena which strike the eyes or the ears, to communications which are purely intellectual and spiritual.

"When we desire to dictate a spontaneous communication, we act upon the brain of the medium, upon the materials that we find therein; and we blend our own materials with the fluidic elements which we thus procure from him: and we do this without his knowing anything about it. It is as though we took from his purse the money it contains, and arranged the different pieces in the order that suits ourselves.

"But when a medium wishes to consult us on any particular subject, he should reflect on that subject beforehand, in order to be able to question us methodically; thus facilitating for us the work of answering his questions. For, as you have already been told, your brain is often in inextricable disorder; and it is then both troublesome and difficult for us to move in the maze of your thoughts. When questions are to be asked by a third party, they should be communicated beforehand to the medium, so that he may identify himself with the spirit of the person who is to evoke us, thus impregnating himself, so to say, with his thought; and we are then enabled to reply with much greater ease, because, through the affinity existing between our perispirit and that of the medium, we are thus brought into a nearer relation with the party by whom we are to be questioned.

"It is true that we are sometimes able to treat, say, of mathematics, or some other subject, through a medium who appears to be ignorant of it but, in such cases, the knowledge required is often possessed by the medium's spirit, in a latent state, that is to say, stored up in the personality of his fluidic being, although it is not included in the consciousness of his human personality, for the reason that his present human body is an instrument ill-adapted, or even antagonistic, to that particular branch of knowledge. It is the same with our communications in regard to astronomy, poetry, medicine, your various languages, and all the other branches of knowledge in your world. But when we have to employ mediums who are really ignorant of the subject to be treated of; we are obliged to resort to the troublesome method alluded to just now, viz., that of putting together the letters of each word, as is done by the type-setter.

"As I have already said, spirits, among themselves, have no need to clothe their thoughts in words; thought is perceived and communicated by spirits, simply because thought exists, in them, as an attribute of their spiritual being. Corporeal beings, on the contrary, can only perceive a thought when it is clothed upon with words, or some other forms of expression. While you need letters and words, the substantive, the verb, the sentence, in order that a thought may thus be conveyed to your understanding, no visible or tangible sign is needed by us.

"ERASTES AND TIMOTHY"