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April 14th, 1918
Received by:James Padgett
Washington D.C.
I am here, Spinoza.
I desire to write a few lines, if you will permit. I need not say
that I have never written you before, for you will know from the
difficulty that I have in writing that such must be the case. No,
I am a stranger to this method of communication, and to you, and
to me it has come in very recent days as a wonderful revelation.
I do not intend to write upon a subject of any great truth connected
with our spirit life, but merely to say sufficient to introduce
myself, in the hope that when I am better acquainted with the laws
governing this method, I may be permitted to come to you and write
of those things which I have learned since becoming a spirit, and
which to learn when on earth would have been not only very desirable
but very important.
I was, when on earth, a philosopher, so-called, and gave many years
of my life to the search for truth relating not only to the natural
world, but to what I conceived to be truth connected with that world
or existence outside of and beyond the sense world; and in my researches
I was guilty of many speculations which I now see have no foundation
upon which I had built many conclusions and postulates. I had only
the intellect, supplied in its workings by the knowledge that came
from the phenomena of the purely physical and, as I thought, by
that great faculty called reason, which, as a fact, is a wonderful
faculty, but in its exercise it is dependent upon, first, its own
development, and next, whether that development has been along the
lines of and in accord with truth.
A reason merely because it is a reason is not a guide that can
be depended on, for reasoning in an erroneous way must necessarily
lead to conclusions of error, and merely calling or believing that
these conclusions are the results of reason does not justify the
belief that the conclusions must be correct and veracious. Reason
can be mistaken and featured by error, just as can the senses; and,
hence, if you read the writings of the philosophers and metaphysicians,
and also scientists, you will find that things declared and accepted
by these men at one age have been repudiated and rejected by the
successors of these men in later ages.
And so, when I wrote, and I wrote considerably, and was very largely
read by what was considered to be the thinking class of men, and
especially those whose researches led them along a similar line
of study and subject matter as my own, I declared certain doctrines
or principles connected with these metaphysical and philosophical
matters that I now know to be wholly erroneous, but which at the
time I firmly believed to be things of verity, because largely they
were based on what I thought was the true workings of reason, together
with some little empirical knowledge.
From this I do not mean to decry the value and importance of the
faculty of reason, for it has been the great factor operating progress
of mankind, but like other finite faculties it is subject to erroneous
exercise and cannot be depended on as a thing infallible. The common
experience of men has shown that men who have sincerely and earnestly
and constantly exercised their reasoning faculties have arrived
at different and contradictory conclusions as to the same principles
or subject matter, and those conclusions have been entirely satisfactory
and convincing to the respective persons. Now it is apparent that
in such instances all of these men could not possibly be correct
in their conclusions, and in many cases not any of them were correct,
yet they were all founded on the reason, properly and intelligently
exercised, as they supposed.
No, reason is fallible, and it is not a thing of itself, but dependent
upon environments and sometimes inherited or preconceived ideas
of what truth must be. It is the great friend and defender of speculation,
and without it speculation could not exist, and so often is speculation
deceived by its friend. Truth is that which exists as an unchangeable
condition or fact, and speculation can neither create nor destroy
truth; and reason is a means which may be used to reach truth when
knowledge does not exist. But the fact that reason exists does not
mean that it is always used in that way that leads to the discovery
of truth. Reason, as I am now justified in saying, is but a creature
of God, just as is everything else in His universe; and when given
to man with the freedom of exercising it as man wills, is subject
to all the possibilities of defective exercise that every other
faculty possessed by man is subject to, and is no more infallible
in its nature than are these other faculties.
But it is the greatest faculty that man has as a creature of the
Almighty, and without it, some of the wise of earth have said man
would be no better than or different from the brute animal. But
this is not quite true, for man is possessed with that which is
really man himself that the brute animal does not have, and that
is a soul made in the image of its Creator. It may be said that
reason is merely an appendage of the soul; and I have justification
in asserting that the soul in its progress can do without or cast
aside this reason without doing harm to itself because, as I have
learned in progressing in the spirit life, the soul may and does
arrive at that degree of development where reason is not necessary
or even used by it in its acquirement of truth.
I now believe, and without speculation, that reason is a gift to
man to be useful to him only in his earth life and in a portion
of this spirit life, until the soul comes into a knowledge of truth
by the exercise of the mere desire to know. A knowledge of the whys
and wherefores is not required, but it knows because it knows, just
as in your earth life you have a knowledge of the sunlight even
if you do not know the why and the wherefore that produce that light.
Well, my new-found friend, I have written more than I intended,
but as I continued I found the desire to write increase, and I fear
that I have trespassed too long and pray your forgiveness. Sometime
I should like to come and write of the errors of some of the teachings
of earth, or rather of the truths along the line of the subject
matter of my earthly writings, as I now know them to be.
I am in what is called the intellectual planes of the Fifth Sphere
and very near the entrance to the Sixth Sphere, in which I hope
to be in a short time. It has been a long time since I left the
earth life, and the early period of my existence in the spirit world
was one of stagnation, and, as I now see, merely because I brought
with me many of the doctrines of the philosophy of my earth life,
and as a consequence I continued my research along the ideas and
ways that I had pursued as a mortal. The time thus spent was long
and continued until I became convinced that speculation in the spirit
life is not very different and arrives at no more satisfactory end
than speculation on earth, and then I stopped speculating and waited
for something, I know not what. And strange to say, that which came
to me was from a spirit who had never heard of my philosophy or
any other philosophy on earth, but merely accepted truth as it gradually
came to him, without knowing why or how. And I soon learned that
he had a greater knowledge of the verities than had I, and so I
adopted his way of receiving truth, and since then I have been progressing
and am now advancing with accelerated speed - all to my happiness
and intellectual enjoyment. Good-bye,
Your friend,
Spinoza
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