XI
"The medianimic faculty is as old as the world. The prophets were mediums ; the mysteries of Eleusis were founded on medianimity; the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Egyptians, and all the peoples of antiquity, had their mediums Socrates was directed by a spirit whose voice he heard, and who inspired him with the admirable principles of his philosophy; the inspirations of Joan of Arc were the voices of the beneficent spirits who guided her. This faculty, which is now becoming generalised, was comparatively rare in the Middle Ages; but it has never ceased to exist. Swedenborg has had many successors.
"The France of the last few centuries - irreverent, carried away by philosophical systems which, aiming at the destruction of the abuses of religious intolerance, stifled under ridicule all aspiration after the ideal - could not but repel spiritism, which, nevertheless, did not cease to maintain itself in the North. This struggle of Positivism against Spiritualism was permitted by Providence, because Spiritualism had become fanatical; but now that the progress of industry and science has developed the arts of life to such a point that material tendencies have become predominant, God wills that interest in the soul should be re-awakened in the minds of the spirits incarnated upon the earth, and that the perfecting of the moral being should become, as it ought to be, the recognised end and object of human life. The human spirit follows a foreordained and necessary line of march, image of the gradations undergone by all the beings that people the visible and invisible universe. Each new step of progress is accomplished at the appointed time; the epoch fixed for the moral elevation of the human race has now come; and, although this elevation will not be fully accomplished in your present life-time, you may be thankful that you are permitted to witness the dawn of the glorious new day." "PIERRE JOUTY." (The Medium's Father.)
