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

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masses on its side, while its only adversaries would be those who profit by the abuses against
which it protests. So far from Governments having anything to dread from the spread of
spiritist ideas, the tendency of those ideas being to render men more benevolent towards one
another, less greedy of material things, and more resigned to the orderings of Providence, they
constitute, for the State, a guarantee of order and of tranquillity.
VII
Spiritism presents three different aspects, viz., the facts of spirit-manifestation, the
philosophic and moral principles deducible from those facts, and the practical applications of
which those principles are susceptible; hence three classes into which its adherents are
naturally divided, or rather, three degrees of advancement by which they are distinguished:
1st, Those who believe in the reality and genuineness of the spirit-manifestations, but confine
themselves to the attestation of these, and for whom Spiritism is merely an experimental
science; 2d, Those who comprehend its moral bearings; 3d, Those who put in practice, or, at
least, endeavour to put in practice, the system of morality which it is the mission of Spiritism
to establish. Whatever the point of view experimental, scientific, or moral, from which these
strange phenomena are considered, every one perceives that they are ushering in an entirely
novel order of ideas, which must necessarily produce a profound modification of the state of
the human race; and every one who understands the subject also perceives that this
modification can only be for good.
As for our adversaries, they may also be grouped into three categories:1st, Those who
systematically deny whatever is new, or does not proceed from themselves, and who speak
without knowing what they are talking about. To this class belong all those who admit
nothing beyond the testimony of their senses they have not seen anything, do not wish to see
anything, and are still more unwilling to go deeply into anything; they would, in fact, be
unwilling to see too clearly. for fear of being obliged to confess that they have been mistaken;
they declare that Spiritism is chimerical insane. utopian. and has no real existence, as the
easiest way of settling the matter; they are the wilfully incredulous. With them may be classed
those who have condescended to glance at the subject, in order to be able to say, "I