145. Let us here correct the wide-spread error which confounds all spirits who
communicate by tilts or raps with "rapping-spirits". Typtology is a means of
communication like any other; and is no more unworthy of elevated spirits than writing
or speaking. All spirits, good or bad, may employ this method as well as any other.
What characterises superior spirits is the elevation of their thought, and not the
instrument they may use for its transmission; they no doubt prefer the more convenient
and rapid methods, but, in the absence of these, they willingly employ the table, as is
shown by the fact that some of the grandest
communications yet received have been made in this way. If we do not usually employ
the table, it is not because we despise it, but merely because, as a phenomenon, it has
given us all that it was capable of giving, so that it can add nothing to our convictions,
while the length of the communications we receive has compelled us to have recourse
to more expeditious methods.
All spirits who rap are not, then, what are commonly called "rapping-spirits;"
which designation should be reserved for those who may be styled professional
rappers, and who take pleasure in going their rounds, amusing some, and boring others.
Smart things are sometimes said by them, hut never anything really profound. It would
be a loss of time to ask scientific or philosophical questions of ignorant pretenders, who
are classed by higher spirits as the quacks and mountebanks of the spirit-world. They
are, nevertheless, often employed by superior spirits as their instruments for the
production of physical manifestations.
