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

59
PROLEGOMENA
PHENOMENA which are inexplicable by any known laws are occurring all over the world,
and revealing the action of a free and intelligent will as their cause.
Reason tells us that an intelligent effect must have an intelligent force for its cause; and facts
have proved that this force is able to enter into communication with men by the employment
of material signs.
This force, interrogated as to its nature, has declared itself to belong to the world of spiritual
beings who have thrown off the corporeal envelope of men. It is thus that the existence of
spirits has been revealed to us.
Communication between the spirit world and the corporeal world is in the nature of things,
and has in it nothing supernatural. Traces of its existence are to be found among all nations
and in every age; they are now becoming general and evident to all. Spirits assure us that the
time appointed by Providence for a universal manifestation of their existence has now come;
and that their mission, as the ministers of God and the instruments of His will, is to
inaugurate, through the instructions they are charged to convey to us, a new era of
regeneration for the human race.
This book is a compilation of their teachings. It has been written by the order and under the
dictation of spirits of high degree, for the purpose of establishing the bases of a rational
philosophy, free from the influence of prejudices and of preconceived opinions. It contains
nothing that is not the expression