9. "If the fact be proved," some may say, "we accept it as such ; we even accept
the cause which you assign to it, viz., that of an unknown fluid; but what proves the
intervention of spirits? That would indeed be marvellous; that would be supernatural!"
To meet this objection, we should have to enter upon a demonstration that
would be out of place in the present book, and that would, in fact, be a work of
supererogation, since the action of disincarnate spirits, as the cause of the phenomena in
question, is affirmed in every branch of its teachings. Nevertheless, to sum up these in
a few words, we will say that they are founded, in theory, on this principle, viz., that
every intelligent effect must have an intelligent cause, and, in practice, on the fact that
the phenomena called spiritist having given proofs of the action of intelligence, must
have their cause in something outside of matter; that this intelligence, not proceeding
from those who are present at the sitting,-a point fully proved by experience,-must be
extraneous to the sitters, and that, as no active agent is visible, this intelligence must be
that of some invisible being. It is, then, through repeated observation that we have
arrived at the certainty that this invisible being, to which the name of "spirit" has been
given, is nothing else than the soul of one who has lived in the body, one whom death
has deprived of his gross, visible envelope, leaving him with an ethereal envelope
invisible to us in its normal state.
The existence of invisible beings once proved, their power over matter results
from the very nature of their fluidic envelope; and the action of this power is intelligent,
because, at death, those invisible beings only lost their body, but retained their
intelligence, which is, in fact, their essence. The existence of spirits is therefore no
preconceived theory, no mere hypothesis, invented to explain certain facts; it is a result
of experience and of observation, and is the natural consequence of the existence of the
soul: to deny their existence is to deny the soul and its attributes. If any one thinks he
can give a more rational explanation of the phenomena in question, let him do so,
taking care, however, to give a rational explanation of all the facts of the case ; and,
when this has been done, we can discuss the merits of both sides of the question.
