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

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ALLAN KARDEC
him so petty, so worthless, in comparison with the future he sees before him-life appears so
short, so fleeting-that its tribulations are, in his eyes, merely the disagreeable incidents of a
journey. What would produce violent emotion in the mind of another affects him hut slightly;
besides, he knows that the sorrows of life are trials which aid our advancement, if borne
without murmuring, and that he will be rewarded according to the fortitude with which he has
borne them. His convictions, therefore, give him a resignation that preserves him from
despair, and consequently from a frequent cause of madness and suicide. He knows,
moreover, through spirit communications, the fate of those who voluntarily shorten their
days; and as such knowledge is well calculated to suggest serious reflection, the number of
those who have thus been arrested on the downward path is incalculable. Such is one of the
results of Spiritism. The incredulous may laugh at it as much as they please; we only wish
them the consolations it affords to those who have sounded its mysterious depths.
Fear must also be reckoned among the causes of madness. Dread of the devil has deranged
many a brain; and who shall say how many victims have been made by impressing weak
imaginations with pictures of which the horrors are enhanced by the hideous details so
ingeniously worked into them? The devil, it is sometimes said, frightens only little children,
whom it helps to make docile and well-behaved. Yes; but only as do nursery-terrors and
bugaboos in general; and when these have lost their power, they who have been subjected to
this sort of training are apt to be worse than before; while, on the other hand, those who have
recourse to it overlook the risk of epilepsy involved in such disturbing action upon the
delicate child-brain. Religion would be weak indeed if its power could only be sustained by
fear. Happily such is not the case, and it has other means of acting on the mind. Spiritism
furnishes the religious element with a more efficient support than superstitious terror. It
discloses the reality of things, and thus substitutes a salutary appreciation of the consequences
of wrong-doing for the vague apprehensions of unreasonable fear.
XVI
Two objections still remain to be examined, the only ones really deserving of the name,
because they are the only ones founded