The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1859

Allan Kardec

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Diogenes

1. Evocation
- Ah! I come from far away!

2. Can you show up to Mr. Adrien with the same looks you had in your existence which is familiar to us?
- Yes. And if you want I can bring the lantern.

Mr. Adrien: Wide forehead, pronounced frontal bones; aquiline and long nose; large and serious mouth; suspicious black eyes. It shows a little elongated, skinny and wrinkled face; yellow skin; coarse beard and mustache; gray and rare hair. It wears white, very dirty clothes; naked arms and legs; skinny and bony body.

3. You said you came from far away. From which world have you come?
- You don’t know it.

4. Would you kindly answer some questions?

- With pleasure.


5. Was the existence from which we know you by the name Diogenes, the cynic, useful to your future happiness?
- A lot. You are wrong by ridiculing it like my contemporary did. I am actually surprised by the fact that History knows so little about my existence and that posterity, one may say, is unfair to me.

6. What good were you able to do since your existence was so much self-serving?

- I worked for me but others could have learned a lot from me.

7. Which qualities would you like to have found in the man you looked for with your torch?
  • - Firmness.
8. Had you encountered Chaudruc-Duclos, the man we have just evoked, would you have taken him by the man you were looking for? He also voluntarily renounced to everything that seemed superfluous.
  • - No.
9. What do you think about him?
- His soul was corrupted on Earth. How many are like him and don’t know it! At least he knew.

10. Did you think that you had the qualities which you were looking for in man?

- No doubt. I had my criterion.

11. Which philosopher of your time had your preference?
  • - Socrates.
12. Who do you prefer now?
  • - Socrates.
13. How about Plato?
  • - Too harsh. His philosophy is too strict. I admitted the poets, he didn’t!

14. Is it true what they say about your interview with Alexander? - Very true. History has even truncated it.


15. What is it that history has truncated?
- I refer to other conversations between the two of us. Do you really think that he came to see me to tell me one word only?

16. Is the statement attributed to him true that if he were not Alexander he would be Diogenes?
- He might have said that but not in my presence. Alexander was a crazy, vain and proud young man. In his eyes, I was nothing more than a beggar. How could the tyrant be educated by the miserable?

17. Have you reincarnate on Earth after your life in Athens?
- No, but in other worlds. I currently belong to a world in which we are not slaves. It means that if you were evoked in a state of vigil you could not attend the request, as I do tonight.

18. Could you delineate to us the qualities that you were looking for in man, how you conceived it then and how you conceive it now?
- In the past: courage, boldness, self-confidence and power over people by intelligence. Now: abnegation, kindness and power over people by heart.

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