"
We see, it has a reply to everything, it takes every name that we
wish and there is nothing to limit it, because it lives in a
world wherein bounds are as illusory as the useless words which
we employ on earth.
4
While it has a reply to everything, certain manifestations which
it deliberately ascribes to the spirits have brought upon it a
not undeserved reproach. To begin with, as Dr. Maxwell observes,
it has no absolutely fixed doctrine. In nearly every country in
the world, when it speaks in the name of the spirits, it declares
that they undergo reincarnation and readily relates their past
existences. In England, on the contrary, it usually asserts that
they do not become reincarnated. What does this mean? Surely this
ignorance or this inconsistency on the part of that which appears
to know everything is very strange! And worse, sometimes it
attributes to the spirits, sometimes to itself or any one or
anything the revelations which it makes to us. When exactly is it
speaking the truth? At least on two occasions out of three, it
deludes itself or deludes us. If it deceive itself, if it is
mistaken about a matter in which it should be easy for it to know
the truth, what can it teach us on the subject of a world of
whose most elementary laws it is ignorant, since it does not even
know whether it is itself or another that speaks to us in the
name of that world? Are we to believe that it was in the same
darkness as our poor superficial ego, which it pretends so often
to enlighten and which it does in fact inspire in most of the
great events of life? If it deceives us, why does it do so? We
can see no object: it asks for nothing, not for alms, nor
prayers, nor thoughts, on behalf of those whose mantle it assumes
for the sole purpose of leading us astray.
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