Selections from Brief Memorials of the Rev. Alphonese Francois Lacroix | Notes by H.P.B.
He hailed every possible evidence of the soul’s life after the body’s dissolution as so much proof on the side of revelation and of right. He was a firm believer in apparitions. To him it was no wild vagary just within the verge of possibility; but an eminently serious question to which he gave his gravest attention. Aware that an apparition of the dead is a phenomenon (or an alleged phenomenon) of which the reality cannot be settled afirmatively or negatively by speculation in the closet, he used to examine witnesses and collect evidence, and the result was, that after rejecting huge masses of what was purely the growth of superstition, credulity or jugglery, there were still thousands of well-accredited facts to prove that the dead have appeared, and so still at times continue to appear to the living.1
1. Undoubtedly—in visions and dreams, as to the objective materialized forms that appear in the séance-rooms, we do not doubt their occasional genuineness, but will always reject the claim that they are the “Spirits” of the deceased, whereas, they are but their shells.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
. . . he set his house in order, years before he was called to go [die]; and though his chief motive for this was to save trouble to his family, yet I know that he also wished to avoid aught that might by any possibility drag his spirit downwards after death, or detain it hovering round the earth, when earthly things had passed away.2
2. A wise man was the Rev. gentleman, since he knew or suspected the truth. The italics are ours.—Ed. [H.P.B.]