866. Whatever want of ability may be shown, by Dr. Bell, to exist in the communications alleged to come from Paine, Swedenborg, and Bacon, or from spirits personating those distinguished men, it cannot do away the valuable information which I have obtained from my spirit father and others, sanctioned by a convocation of spirits. It has been shown that in a few pages of that communication, there is vastly more knowledge of our happy prospects in the future world, than all that can be found in the Scriptures. 867. Dr. Bell will not, I am sure, suspect me of any want of truthfulness, and will hardly flatter the media and myself with an unconscious origination of ideas, which had never before occurred to either. 868. If he finds that in the case of Swedenborg and Bacon the spirits are below their medial instruments in capacity, he will find that in the instance of my spirit friends this estimate must be inverted. 869. My experience does not tend to establish that there is less folly or more wisdom in the inhabitants of the spirit world than in this. I concur with Dr. Bell in the opinion that the work to which he alludes, attributed to the spirit of Paine, merits all the denunciation which he bestows on it. I concur that it must be the work of a mind, whether celestial or mundane, ignorant of the rudiments of chemical philosophy. But if such a work coming from a mortal would not disprove the author’s claim to be a mortal human being, wherefore then should a foolish book coming from a foolish, ignorant spirit, personating Paine, disprove the author to be a spirit? It only shows that low, ignorant, foolish spirits personate the spirits of eminent authors; but does that disprove the existence of spirits? Does madness or idiocy annihilate the victim of these afflictions? But in all cases where communications are obtained through speaking or writing media, the minds of the media are liable, unconsciously, to pervert or repress the sentiments of the spirits, and therefore are not trusted by me, unless corroborated by communications through the alphabet. 870. By their existence in the spheres, it seems to me that spirits improve as to their talents, not as to their reasoning powers. They have a superior knowledge to that which we possess of their own world, but not of our sciences, as far as I have had means of judging. Having no great objects to effect, they have no great incentive to thought or contrivance. It is by learning, more than by invention, that they rise in the spheres. 871. These inferences are not, however, admitted by the spirits. They allege that as their medial instruments improve, they will give me reason to change my opinion. They assume to go deeper and farther into the nature of things than mortals. 872. To me it seems that their happiness is due in part to self-felicitation and seeing every thing under a rosy hue. They often advert to the superior height upon which they stand, without showing that they see more in consequence.