“As I divine the purposes of higher orders of beings here, they care relatively little for phenomena, and often lament much connected with phenomena; but they do care a great deal for whatever agency can reach human minds and cause them to think, even for ever so few minutes, of what is gentle, humane, kind, considerate, unselfish and affectional. These are the doors by which higher, gentler spirits reach human understandings, and by these means they exert a power far greater than is generally suspected. “For the production of ordinary phenomena a high grade of intelligence is not necessary. You do not need a professor to teach a child its alphabet. The better developed spirits find more subtle ways of imparting knowledge, and select more advanced minds to receive it than those that are satisfied with rudimentary phenomena. But that is necessary to begin with. “Here as on earth--remember I use a term implying locality for your better understanding, though the spirit knows no locality--all who enjoy a larger light than the multitude are anxious to share it with those less favored. By helping others into it they receive more of it themselves. This is a law. Selfish, indeed, would be the soul who had a faith that supported him through every trial, and yet did not want others to have it. The heart’s desire of every prophet, genius and savior, is to make others see as he sees that which illumines his own soul. For this cause the noblest and best have often perished--that is, given up their physical life--to perish in reality being impossible. Therefore, communion between spirits still in the body and those out of it is one of the most important means of education known--the chief occupation of some who are here. “Toying with phenomena for the sole purpose of gratifying curiosity--mere wonder-mongering--is always to be deprecated. “Often, as in my case, the opportunity of communicating with friends left behind sets a spirit free from his own unhappy thought-limitations. It lifts a burden from him. My desire to prove to you that I was not dead held me in bondage until I bridged the gulf. Intense love for one is always a kind of bondage. The perfect love we shall know, when the truth has freed us, is all-embracing, universal, like unto the love of God--it is the love of God. “When I read these words of Condillac I laughed at them: ‘Though we should soar into the heavens, though we should sink into the abyss, we never go out of ourselves; it is always our thought that we perceive.’ “Now I can affirm their truth. We can never run away from ourselves. We take our own world with us wherever we go, for it is made of our thought--‘it is always our own thought that we perceive.’ We are our own thought--and the smallest insect or strongest and fiercest beast or greatest genius is no less and no more.