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TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

THE second volume of the Kardec series, which the translator has now the satisfaction of placing within the reach of English readers, treats of the experimental application of the theoretic principles laid down in The Spirits’ Book, the first volume of that series.

Not only do these two books mutually elucidate each other, but each of them may be said to imply the other as its necessary complement. For, if the principles laid down in The Spirits’ Book are true, the phenomena treated of in The Mediums’ Book must occur as a matter of course; while, if the phenomena treated of in The Mediums’ Book really occur, their occurrence proves the truth of the principles laid down in The Spirits’ Book, because those phenomena are, at once, inexplicable by any other theory, and easily explicable with the aid of the theoretic principles laid down in that work.

The Mediums’ Book is not addressed to Materialists, who must be brought from Materialism to Spiritualism, if at all, by their personal ascertainment of the reality of the modern spiritist "manifestations" and by the proof they give of the

continued existence of the souls of the deceased men and women by whom they are produced. It is addressed exclusively to those who already believe that there is, in man, a principle of conscious individuality which survives the body, and who consequently admit, 1st, the action of LAW in the evolution of human life, and, 2nd, the existence of the Inscrutable Ordainer of the universe, of whose Wisdom and Will that LAW is the expression, and who are therefore prepared to admit. Still further, that the Providential Ordaining may be expected to proceed, for the advancement of our knowledge of our extraterrestrial relations, as it does for that of the sciences which deal with the various departments of our terrestrial life.

The science of mathematics, for instance, is open to every human being; yet it is only through the mind of a Euclid that its fundamental principles are given to the world.

Astronomy, Chemistry, Electricity, etc., are open to the study and investigation of all men; yet the basis of each of those sciences, as of all others, has been furnished, not by the multitude of seekers, but by the insight of some master-mind, on whose foundations succeeding inquirers have continued to build. And this for a very simple reason.

The most superficial glance at the world around us suffices to show us that the people of the earth are, as yet, in point of intelligence as of morality, of very slight average attainment; and they therefore need to be helped forward, in every department of intellectual inquiry, by spirits from worlds of greater advancement, who are incarnated among them, from time to time, for the purpose of assisting them to progress more rapidly in some given direction.

Owing to their mental and moral backwardness, men are slow to recognise the superiority of these Providentially given pioneers, and prone to resent, as offensive to their self-love, the suggestion that any such superiority can exist. They therefore usually "stone the prophets," before accepting their clearer insights; but as they always end by perceiving that those insights are the true ground on which the further development of each branch of science must be worked out, the progress of human knowledge, though slow, is sure. But at what rate would that progress be accomplished if every student, ignoring the ground-work furnished by the master-minds of the past, undertook to build up his own department of science, ab initio, for himself? If every tyro in mathematics, for instance, regarded it as derogatory to his mental dignity to accept the help of a riper intellect than his own, and considered it incumbent upon him to evolve for himself, from his own cogitation, his own "Euclid?"

Applying this reasoning to the system of religious philosophy contained in the Kardec books, it is to be remarked that, although the domain of thought and experiment, in regard to the existence of spirits and the information they may have to give us, is open to all, the aid of some Providentially-given basis of truth is even more imperatively needed in this new department of inquiry than in any other; and for the following reasons.

In the first place, because the spirits who communicate most frequently and habitually with men are precisely those who are nearest to them in ideas and in feeling, and who, consequently, knowing little more than the human beings with

whom they are in sympathy, can only put forth short-sighted, discrepant, and erroneous statements; and, in the second place, because the true explanation of human life to which the phenomena of spirit-intercourse are intended to lead us, is to be found in its connexion with other modes and realms of existence that can only be made known to us by intelligences who have reached a higher degree of knowledge and purity, and who - not being at the command of men - will only transmit their teaching according to Providential ordering, in a centre already prepared for its reception, and with the aid of the master-mind selected by themselves as the channel of that teaching; a teaching which will necessarily differ from the various discrepant statements of the great mass of less enlightened spirits. And the proof that such teaching is what it claims to be, viz., information given by superior spirits in regard to matters essential to our progress, but which, in the nature of things, we could not find out for ourselves - and which they have therefore been charged by Providence to bring to our knowledge - can only be found in the light which it throws on the nature and aim of human life, on the ways of Providence, on duty, and on destiny.

All those who have made a serious study of the theory of existence which Allan Kardec was employed to elaborate, have arrived at the conviction that it presents the proofs of authenticity and superiority just set forth as conclusive; and they therefore accept it, as the fundamentals of all sciences are accepted by students: that is to say, not as exhaustive, but as the true basis of further discovery; - not as a matter of arbitrary authority, but on the broad ground of its intrinsic reasonableness, and the satisfactory solutions

it gives of the great problems of life, insoluble by any other theory.

The high moral tone of The Mediums’ Book, as of all the writings of Allan Kardec, is in unison with the assertion so often repeated by the spirits whose communications he has co-ordinated with such exceptional clearness and reach of thought, that the aim of the open intercourse which is now being established between spirits and men is not the mere gratification of curiosity, not the mere enlargement of the sphere of interesting inquiry, not even the mere giving of the certainty of our continued existence beyond the grave; but that the sole aim of this intercourse is the moral improvement of the human race, which it will accomplish through the new light it will throw on the nature and purpose of human life. By showing us that our present is always the result of our past and the arbiter of our future, and that the acquisition of wisdom and benevolence is the sole condition of happiness, this intercourse will furnish us with the most powerful incentive to the pursuit of knowledge and the practice of kindness; and it will thus effect the gradual amelioration of mankind that is destined to transform the earth from a world of punishment and discipline, as it now is, into a portal of the happier realms of existence to which we can only attain as the result of our intellectual and moral improvement.

No serious and intelligent student of the works of Allan Kardec has ever doubted that the theory of human progress, of which that early pioneer of the great spiritualistic movement of the present day was made to lay the foundations, will eventually be accepted as the basis of a reasoned

out religious belief, not only by all those who are interested in spirit-manifestations, but by the world at large. And this conviction of the Providential character of the works in question - abundantly justified by the reception they have eventually commanded wherever they have been introduced, - will doubtless be still further strengthened by the gradual acceptance of The Mediums’ Book in England and in the United States, in proportion as its scope and character become known in those countries; for, while the progressive development of spirit-manifestation has constantly brought new confirmation to the explanations of the phenomena given in this book at so early a stage of the great movement - and often in advance of the occurrence of the phenomena themselves - not a single phenomenon has occurred to disprove or invalidate those explanations.

The innumerable Contradictory "theories" that are put forth, ad nauseam, by ignorant and pretentious spirits of the Borderland - "theories" that explain neither the facts of life nor those of spirit-manifestation, and that cannot even account for their own production - are proved, by their emptiness, to be mere figments of prejudice and imagination, that will collapse through their own hollowness. On the other hand, the facts of spirit-manifestation, even the most admirable and important, if observed, as is too often the case, mainly as matters of personal interest or curiosity, and without being connected by a theory that can unite them into a homogeneous and living whole, are as incapable of yielding intellectual and moral fruit as are the sands of the sea-shore of producing a harvest. But a theory that coincides with, and explains, all these facts, and that

deduces from them the noblest intellectual and moral consequences, offers a firm and fruitful ground of truth and reality; and the general acceptance of such a theory can only be a question of time.

ANNA BLACKWELL.

PARIS, 1876.