"Let me urge upon you the necessity of conducting your meetings with as much order as possible, so that you may avoid confusion and divergence of ideas, which furnish evil spirits with facilities for substituting themselves for the good ones, and for replying to the questions brought forward for consideration. When a meeting is composed of persons unknown to each other, how is it possible for them to avoid contradictoriness of ideas, inattention, or indifference? I would fain discover some efficacious means of doing this. Possibly, it might be done by the concentration of fluids around the mediums. It is they alone, and especially those who are most beloved, who keep good spirits in the assembly; but their influence hardly suffices to repel the mob of foolish and fantastic ones who seek to find ingress. Examine carefully all the communications you receive; weigh well beforehand all the questions you propose to ask, and meditate no less thoughtfully on the answers you receive. Error is frequent, even on the part of well-intentioned spirits. The slowness of the operation of writing is wearisome to the spirit, who is apt to turn from a subject which, for him, is exhausted as soon as he has brought his thought to bear on it. His mobility and indifference to the ordinary conventionalisms of human life, and many other conditions of which you are already aware, make it your duty to accord only a limited confidence to the communications you receive, and to submit them all to the test of examination and reason, even when presenting the most satisfactory appearances of authenticity." "GEORGE (A familiar spirit)."
