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

55
THE SPIRITS’ BOOK
verging in the brain of a single individual, to the exclusion of all the others.
We repeat (and this is a point of such importance that we cannot insist too strongly upon it),
that the somnambulic theory, and that which may be called the theory of reflection, have been
devised by the imagination of men; while, on the contrary, the theory of spirit-agency is not a
conception of the human mind, for it was dictated by the manifesting intelligences
themselves, at a time when no one thought of spirits, and when the opinion of tile generality
of men was opposed to such a supposition. We have therefore to inquire, first, from what
quarter the mediums can have derived a hypothesis which had no existence in the thought of
any one on earth? and, secondly, by what strange coincidence. can it have happened that tens
of thousands of mediums, scattered over the entire globe, and utterly unknown to one another,
all agree in asserting the same thing? If the first medium who appeared in France was
influenced by opinions already received in America, by what strange guidance was he made
to go in search of ideas across two thousand leagues of sea, and among a people whose habits
and language were foreign to his own, instead of taking them in his own immediate vicinity?
But there is yet another circumstance to which sufficient attention has not been given. The
earliest manifestations, in Europe, as in America, were not made either by writing or by
speech, but by raps indicating the letters of the alphabet, and forming words and sentences. It
is by this means that the manifesting intelligences declared themselves to be spirits; and
therefore, even though we should admit an intervention of the medium's mind in the
production of verbal or written communications, we could not do so in regard to raps, whose
meaning could not have been known beforehand.
We might adduce any number of facts proving the existence of a personal individuality and
an absolutely independent will on the part of the manifesting intelligence; and we therefore
invite our opponents to a more attentive observation of the phenomena in question, assuring
them that, if they study these without prejudice, and refrain from drawing a conclusion until
they have made themselves thoroughly acquainted with the subject, they will find that their
theories are unable to account for all of them. We will only propose to such antagonists the
two following queries :-