Answer to Abeille Agénaise by Mr. DombreWe found the following in the
Abeille Agnaise on May 25
th, 1862:
“We have in hand a remarkable article by the title Spiritist Conversations. The author, Mr. Cazenove de Pradines, former president of Agen Agriculture, Science and Arts Society, tasked Mr. Magen with the pleasure of reading it in our Academy. It is not important to mention how much interest it has drawn. Mr. Cazenove summarizes the doctrines of the new sect taken from The Spirits’ Book as below:
- The Spirits of a superior order do generally have a short passage on Earth.
- The vulgar Spirits are in a sedentary mode here, so to speak, and constitute the mass of the population of the invisible world. They more or less preserve the same tastes and inclinations as when they embodied the corporeal envelope. Since they can no longer satisfy their passions they take advantage of those who enjoy them and, hence, exciting such passions upon them.
- It is only the inferior Spirits that can regret the pleasure that stems out of the impurity that is in line with their nature.
- The Spirits cannot decline; they can remain stationary but cannot regress.
- Every spirit is prone to perfection.
- The imperfect Spirits try to control and dominate people; they feel happy for the failure of others.
- The Spirits are attracted in proportion to their sympathy by the moral stage of those who evoke them. The inferior Spirits sometimes take fake names to better deceive and manipulate.
According to these concepts Mr. Cazenove, with his habitual talent and sagacity, composed two conversations in which both extremes of the social fabric are touched. Through a hypothetical medium on one side he evokes inferior Spirits, impersonated by a celebrity swordsman from Cartouche, bringing them to a singular conversation that demonstrates the perversity of such a doctrine. On another hand there are Spirits of a superior order that enter communication with contemporary people. The contrast is undoubtedly sharp and nobody could translate it in a better and more faithful way everything that the Epicureanism summarized in the spirit of Horace and Lucretius. We are very sorry for not being able to reproduce the whole work of Mr. Cazenove here. We are certain that our readers would not only applaud the impeccable and perfectly academic work of the text but also the elevated moral thought that it contains for it straightforwardly condemns a system that is full of seduction and true dangers.
J. Serret”
