SPIRITS 
Text resulting from the book of the spirits of Allan Kardec.  
 
The Spirits are not, like one often appears it, of the be separate in creation; they are the hearts of those which lived on the ground or in other worlds, stripped of their body envelope. Whoever admits the existence of the heart surviving the body, admits by that even that of the Spirits; to deny the Spirits would be to deny the heart.  
 
One generally has a very false idea of the state of the Spirits; it is, as some believe it, of the vague and indefinite beings, neither of the flames like the will-o'-the-wisps, nor of the phantoms as in the tales of ghosts. They are beings similar to us, having a body like ours, but fluidic and invisible in the normal state.  
 
When the heart is plain with the body during the life, it has a double envelope: one heavy, coarse and destructible, which is the body; the other fluidic, light and indestructible, called périsprit.  
 
There are thus in the man three essential things: 1° the heart or Spirit, intelligent principle in which reside the thought, the will and the moral direction; 2° the body, wraps material, which puts the Spirit in connection with the external world; 3° the périsprit, envelope fluidic, light, imponderable, being used of bond and intermediary between the Spirit and the body.  
 
When the outer jacket is worn and cannot function any more, it falls and the Spirit is stripped some, like the fruit strips its hull, the tree of its bark, the snake of its skin, in a word like one takes off an old dress out of service: it is what is called death.  
 
Death is only the destruction of the material envelope; the heart gives up this envelope like the butterfly leaves its chrysalis; but it preserves its fluidic body or périsprit.  
 
The death of the body disencumbers the Spirit of the envelope which attached it to the ground and made it suffer; once delivered of this burden, it has nothing any more but its éthéré body, which enables him to traverse space and to cross the distances with the speed of the thought.  
 
The union of the heart, the périsprit and the material body constitutes the man; the heart and the périsprit separated from the body constitute it to be called Esprit.  
 
Extract of What the Spiritism of Allan Kardec  
 
 
 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SPIRITS 
 
 
 
The classification of the spirits is based on the degree of their advance, on qualities which they acquired and on the imperfections of which they have still to be stripped.  
 
Still let us add to this consideration that one should never lose nuve, it is that among the spirits, as well as among the men, he is strong ignoramuses and than one could not be too much warned against the tendency to believe that all must all know because they are spirits.  
 
The spirits generally recognize 3 principal categories or 3 great divisions.  
 
In the last, that which is with the bottom of the scale are the imperfect spirits, characterized by the prevalence of the matter on the spirit and propensity with the evil.  
 
Those of the second are characterized by the prevalence of the spirit on the matter and by the desire of the good, they are the good spirits.  
 
The first, finally, include/understand the pure spirits, those which reached the supreme degree of perfection.  
 
THIRD ORDER: IMPERFECT SPIRITS  
 
Prevalence of the matter on the spirit. Propensity with the evil. Ignorance, pride, selfishness and all bad passions which are the continuation. They have the intuition of God, but they do not include/understand it.  
All are not bad forcéments; at some, there is more lightness, of inconsistency and mischievousness that of true spite. The ones make neither well nor badly; but by that only that they do not make of good, they indicate their inferiority. Others, on the contrary, are liked the evil, and are satisfied when they find the occasion to do it. They can combine the intelligence with spite or the mischievousness; but whatever their intellectual development, their ideas are relatively low and their more or less contemptible feelings.  
Their knowledge on the things of the spiritistic world is limited, and the little that they know some confuses with the ideas and the prejudices of the body life. They can give us only false and incomplete concepts of them; but the attentive observer often finds in their communications, same imperfect, the confirmation of the great truths taught by the higher spirits.  
Their character appears by their language. Any spirit which, in its communications, betrays impure thoughts, can be arranged in the 3rd order. Consequently, very impure thoughts which are suggested to us us come from a spirit of this kind.  
They see the happiness of the goods, and this sight is for them a ceaseless torment, because they test all the anguishes which the desire and the jealousy can produce.  
They preserve the memory and the perception of the sufferings of the body life, and this impression is often more painful than reality. They thus suffer truly, and of the evils which they endured and of those that they made endure with the others; and as they suffer a long time, they believe to always suffer. God, to punish them, wants that they believe it thus.  
 
One can divide them into 5 principal classes:  
 
10 - IMPURE SPIRITS: They are inclined with the evil and are the subject of their concerns of it. Like spirits, they give perfidious councils, blow the discord and the distrust and take all the masks for better misleading. They stick to the weak characters to yield to their suggestions in order to push them with their loss, satisfied to be able to delay their advance by them making succumb in the tests that they undergo.  
In the demonstrations, one recognizes them with their language; the commonplace and the coarseness of the expressions, at the spirits as at the men, are always an indication of moral, if not intellectual inferiority. Their communications detect the lowness of their inclinations, and if they want to make take the exchange while speaking in a judicious way, they cannot support their role a long time and always end up betraying their origin.  
Certain people made of them divinities malfaisantes, others indicate them under the names of demons, evil geniuses, evil spirits.  
The alive beings which they animate, when they are incarnated, are inclined with all the defects which generate passions cheap and degrading: sensuality, cruelty, cheating, hypocrisy, cupidity, sordid avarice. They make the evil for the pleasure of doing it, generally without reasons, and by hatred of the good they almost always choose their victims among the decent people. They are plagues for humanity, with some row of the company which they belong, and the varnish of civilization does not guarantee them opprobrium and ignominie.  
 
9 - LIGHT SPIRITS: They are ignoramuses, malignant, inconsistent and mockers. They are mèlent of all, answer all without worrying about the truth. They enjoy to cause small sorrows and small joys, to make annoyances, to induce malicieusement in error by mystifications and espiègleries. With this class belong the spirits vulgarly indicated under the names of will-o'-the-wisp, imps, gnomes, goblins. They are under the dependence of the higher spirits which often employ them as we do it servants.  
In their communications with the men, their language is sometimes spiritual and facetious, but almost always without depth; they seize them through and the ridiculous ones that they express in corrosive and satirical features. If they borrow supposed names, it is more often by mischievousness than by spite.  
 
8 - SPIRITS FAUX-SAVANTS: Their knowledge is extended enough, but they believe it more than they actually do not know. Having achieved some progress from various points of view, their language is serious which can give the exchange on their capacities and their lights; but it is often only one reflection of the prejudices and the systematic ideas of the terrestrial life; it is a mixture of some truths beside the absurdest errors, in the medium of which the presumption, pride, the jealousy and the stubbornness bore of which they could not be stripped.  
 
7 - NEUTRAL SPIRITS: They are neither enough good to make the good, nor enough bad to make the evil; they lean as much towards one as towards the other and do not sélèvent above the vulgar condition of humanity both for the moral one the intelligence. They are held with the things of this world of which they regret the coarse joys.  
 
6 - SPIRIT-RAPPERS AND DISTURBERS: These spirits do not form, to be strictly accurate, a distinct class have regard with their personal qualities; they cannot belong to all the classes of the 3rd order. They often express their presence by significant and physical effects, such as the blows, the movement and the abnormal displacement of the solid bodies, the agitation of the air, etc...  
They appear, more than others, attached to the matter; they seem to be the principal agents of the vicissitudes of the elements of the sphere, that is to say that they act on the air, water, fire, the bodies hard or in the entrails of the ground.  
All the spirits can produce these phenomena, but the high spirits leave them general in attributions of the spirits subordinates, more suited to the material things than with the intelligent things. When they judge that demonstrations of this kind are utilies, they are useful of these spirits like auxilliaires.  
 
SECOND ORDER - GOOD SPIRITS  
 
General characters: prevalence of the spirit on the matter, desire of the good.  
Their qualities and their capacity to make the good are because of the degree to which they arrived: the ones have science, the others wisdom and kindness. Most advanced join together the knowledge with morals qualities. Not being yet completely dematerialized, they more or less preserve, according to their row, the traces of the body existence, either in the form of the language, or in their practices or one finds even some their manias. Otherwise they would be perfect spirits.  
They include/understand the infinite one and God, and enjoy the happiness of the goods already. They are happy bine that it make and of the evil that they prevent. The love which links them is for them the source of an ineffaceable happiness that deteriorate neither the desire, neither remorses, nor none bad passions which make the torment of the imperfect spirits. But all have still tests to undergo until they reached the absolute perfection.  
Like spirits, they cause good thoughts, divert the men of the way of the evil, protect in the life those which are made worthy from there, and neutralize the influence of the imperfect spirits at those which do not take pleasure to undergo it.  
Those in which they are incarnated are good and benevolent for their similar; they are driven neither by pride, neither by selfishness, nor by the ambition. They test neither hatred, neither resentment, neither desire, nor jealousy and make the good for the good.  
With this order the spirits indicated in the vulgar beliefs under the names of good geniuses belong, protective geniuses, spirits of the good. In times of supersitions and ignorance, one made beneficial divinities of them. One can divide them into 4 principal groups:  
 
5 - BENEVOLENT SPIRITS: Their qualities dominant is kindness; they enjoy to render service to the men and to protect them, but their knowledge is limited: their progress was achieved more in the moral direction than in the intellectual direction.  
 
4 - ERUDITE SPIRITS: What distinguishes them especially, the extent of their knowledge. They are worried less morals questions than scientific questions, for which they have more aptitude. But they consider science only from the point of view of the utility and mèlent there none passions which are clean imperfect spirits.  
 
3 - WISE SPIRITS: Morals qualities of the highest order form their distinctive character. Without having unlimited knowledge, they are endowed with an intellectual ability which gives them a healthy judgement on the man and the things.  
 
2 - SPIRITS SUPERIEURS: They join together science, wisdom and kindness. Their language breathes only the benevolence; it is constantly worthy, high, often sublimates. Their superiority returns them more than the other ready ones to give us the rightest notions on the things of the incorporeal world within the limits of what it is allowed to the man to know. They are communicated readily to those which seek the truth in good faith, and whose heart is disengaged enough from the terrestrial bonds to include/understand it.  
But they move away from those which only curiosity animates, or which the influence of the matter diverts of the practice of the good.  
When, by exception, they are incarnated on the ground, it is to achieve a mission of progress, and they then offer the type of the perfection to us to which humanity can aspire ici-bas.  
 
FIRST ORDER - PURE SPIRITS  
 
General characters: influence null matter. Intellectual superiority and absolute morals compared to the spirits of the other orders.  
First class. Single class: they traversed all the degrees of the scale and stripped all the impurities of the matter. Having reached the sum of perfection whose the creature is likely, they have to undergo neither tests any more nor atonements. Not being more prone to the reincarnation in perishable bodies, it is for them the eternal life that they achieve in the centre of God.  
They enjoy an inalterable happiness, because they are prone neither to the needs nor with the viscissitudes for the material life. But this happiness is not that of a monotonous idleness last in a perpetual contemplation. They are the messengers and the ministers of God of which they carry out the orders for the maintenance of the universal harmony. They order from all the spirits which are lower to them, help them to improve and assign their mission to them. To assist the men in their distress, to excite them with the good or the atonement of the faults which move away them from the supreme happiness, is for them a soft occupation. Sometimes one indicates them under the names of angels, archangels or seraphes.  
The men can enter in communication with them, but quite presumptuous would be that which would constantly claim to have them with its orders.