Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

158
ALLAN KARDEC
hut cannot exercise any physical action. The tissues of the soul cannot be disorganised either
by cold or heat; the soul can neither freeze nor burn. But do we not constantly see that the
remembrance or the apprehension of physical pain may produce all the effect of reality, and
may even occasion death? We know that recently-amputated patients often complain of
felling pain in the limb they have lost: yet it is evident that the amputated limb cannot really
be the seat, nor even the point of departure, of the pain feel, which is due solely to the action
of the brain, that has retained and reproduces the impression of the pain formerly experienced
by them. It may therefore be inferred that the suffering felt by spirits after death is of a similar
nature. A careful study of the perispirit, which plays so important a part in all spiritphenomena,
the indications afforded by apparitions, whether vaporous or tangible, the state of
the spirit at the moment of death, the striking pictures presented by the victims of suicide and
of capital punishment, by the spirits of those who have been absorbed in carnal enjoyments,
and a great variety of other facts, hayed thrown new light on this question, and have given
rise to the explanations of which we offer the following summary
The perispirit is the link which unites the spirit with the material body. It is drawn from the
surrounding atmosphere, from the universal fluid; it participates at once in the nature of
electricity of the magnetic fluid, and of inert matter. It may be said to he the quintessence of
matter; it is the principle of organic life, but it is not that of intellectual life, the principle of
which is in the spirit. It is also the agent of all the sensations of the outer life. Those
sensations are localised in the earthly body by the organs which serve as their channels. When
the body is destroyed, those sensations become general. This explains why a spirit never says
that he suffers in his head or in his feet. But we must take care not to confound the sensations
of the perispirit, rendered independent by the death of the body, with the sensations
experienced through the body; for the latter can only be understood as offering a means of
comparison with the former, but not as being analogous to them. When freed from the body, a
spirit may suffer, but this suffering is not the suffering of the body. And yet it is not a
suffering exclusively moral, like remorse, for example, for he complains of feeling cold or
hot, although he suffers no more in summer than in winter, and we have seen spirits pass
through flames without feeling any painful effect therefrom, temperature