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

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THE SPIRITS’ BOOK
infallibility is the surest sign of the existence of this defect. Many persons, too, regard spirit
manifestations as being only a matter of curiosity. Let us hope that the reading of this book
will show them that the wonderful phenomena in question are something else than a pastime.
Spiritism consists of two parts: one of these, the experimental, deals with the subject of the
manifestations in general; the other, the philosophic, deals with the class of manifestations
denoting intelligence. Whoever has only observed the former is in the position of one whose
knowledge of physics, limited to experiments of an amusing nature, does not extend to the
fundamental principles of that science. Spiritist philosophy consists of teachings imparted by
spirits, and the knowledge thus conveyed is of a character far too serious to be mastered
without serious and persevering attention. If the present book had no other result than to show
the serious nature of the subject, and to induce inquirers to approach it in this spirit, it would
be sufficiently important; and we should rejoice to have been chosen for the accomplishment
of a work in regard to which we take no credit to ourselves, the principles it contains not
being of our own creating, and whatever honour it may obtain being entirely due to the spirits
by whom it has been dictated. We hope that it will achieve yet another result-viz., that of
serving as a guide to those who are desirous of enlightenment, by showing them the grand
and sublime end of individual and social progress to which the teachings of Spiritism directly
tend, and by pointing out to them the road by which alone that end can be reached.
Let us wind up these introductory remarks with one concluding observation. Astronomers, in
sounding the depths of the sky, discovered seemingly vacant spaces not in accordance with
the general laws that govern the distribution of the heavenly bodies and they therefore
conjectured that those spaces were occupied by globes that had escaped their observation. On
the other hand, they observed certain effects the cause of which was unknown to them; and
they said to themselves, "In such a region of space there must be a world, for otherwise there
would be a void that ought not to exist; and the effects we have observed imply the presence
in that seeming void of such a world as their cause." Reasoning, then, from those effects to
their cause they calculated the elements of the globe whose presence they had inferred, and
facts subsequently justified their inference. Let us apply the