A. No; jealousy, because higher spirits mix themselves up in it. Q. Can you describe one of these scandals? A. Not through the table. Write. Q. You will give it as automatic writing? A. Yes. One of the automatists left the circle to fetch pencil and paper. Then we resumed. The power appeared to be instantly forthcoming, and the writing stated that: “Benedetta Chiesole was the mistress of Théodule Affra and several other spirits on our plane. “This intimacy became obnoxious to a spirit called du Paits Herbault, who was a monk of Montpellier in the sixteenth century. He was not on our plane but higher up, but was permitted to come down to us for certain purposes. Being on a higher plane, there was no way of keeping him out when he was not wanted, for he had the power of passing through all psycho-material substances that serve us as material substances serve you. “His persecution of Benedetta was remarkable, for he was astonishingly enamoured of her. At length matters got to such a pitch that the others protested through the guides. But they got cold comfort. They were told not to interfere with the higher spirits or it would be the worse for them, and Benedetta was told that it was natural for her to have to expiate her earthly shortcomings in this manner.” The results of other sittings at which other spirits have made communications are in some cases quite as detailed and a great deal more startling than the above. In addition, a great mass of what may be definitely termed abnormal sex literature has come from the pens of people practising automatic writing--and it is an indubitable fact that some of these writings have been written under control by people of irreproachable life and character. The common-sense explanation is that these writings and communications have nothing whatever to do with spirits and that these are, so to speak, a seething up of illegal desires and ideas which have been repressed by the conscious mind into the censorship of the subliminal self. This theory is only tenable if the whole basic doctrine that these things are communicated by spirits is given up. If, on the other hand, we hold that there is anything at all in Spiritualism we are faced with the inevitable conclusion that, however much we may desire to get rid of it, sex is as troublesome in the next world as in this.[24] FOOTNOTES: [22] “People live in communities as one would expect if like attracts like, and the male spirit still finds his true mate though there is no sensuality in the grosser sense and no childbirth.” Sir A. Conan Doyle, Chapter III, _The New Revelation_. [23] The word “gallant” carries rather different implications in French than are covered by the literal English rendering of “gallant.”