Note IV.

Some persons see, in the necessity of suffering anew the tribulations of life, something painful, and they think that God, in His justice, saw fit to fill up His measure of them here. Thus, they believe that our destiny is fixed in an irrevocable manner after our departure from the Earth. It seems to us more rational, on the contrary, that God, in His justice, has left to men the means of accomplishing in another existence what it did not always depend upon them to do in this life.

We invite those who do not share this opinion to deign, in soul and conscience, to answer the following questions:

Let us suppose that a man has three workmen, one working well and much, because he is industrious and has experience in his trade; the second, little and mediocrely, because he is not yet skillful enough; the third, almost nothing or badly, because he is no more than an apprentice. Should this man remunerate the three workmen in the same way? — Let us suppose that you are one of the laborers and that you were prevented from doing your task by illness or another cause independent of your will; would you then find it just that the employer should put you out on the street? — What would you think of that employer if, on the contrary, he said to you: My friend, what you could not do today you will do tomorrow, and you will make up for the lost time; I do not dismiss you because you did not work as well as your comrade, who has more experience; work, instruct yourself, begin again what you did badly, and when you are as skillful as he is, I will pay you as I pay him?

Do you believe you have attained all the moral perfection of which man is susceptible on the Earth? In other words, do you believe there are persons who are worth more than you, and others worth less? — Among all the men who have lived on the Earth since it has been inhabited, will there be many who have attained perfection? — As many others who could not attain perfection because of causes independent of their will, that is, for having lacked the conditions to be enlightened about good and evil? — If the condition of men after death is the same for all, what is the need of doing good, instead of evil? — If, on the contrary, that condition is relative to the merit acquired, would you find it just that the creatures whose perfection did not depend upon their will should be deprived forever of future happiness? — If you admit that there are men better than you, would you judge it just to be rewarded as they are, without having done equal good? — If God proposed to you the following alternative: either to see your lot irrevocably fixed after the present existence, thus depriving you forever of the blessedness of those who are worth more than you, or to be able to enjoy happiness, granting you for that purpose the means of improving yourself in new existences, which of the two would you choose? — If, in the presence of eternity, you saw before you beings better endowed, would you not be the first to ask God that He might deign to permit you to begin again, in order to act better? And thus, by logical deduction, we shall come to recognize that the dogma of reincarnation is, at the same time, more just and more consoling, for it leaves to man hope. It is, moreover, explicitly expressed in the Gospel:

When they came down from the mountain (after the transfiguration) Jesus commanded them: Tell no one of what you have just seen, until the Son of man has risen from among the dead. His disciples then asked him: Why do the scribes say that Elias must come first? And Jesus answered them: It is true that Elias is to come and that he will restore all things. But I declare to you that Elias has already come, and they did not recognize him; rather, they did with him whatever they wished. So also the Son of man shall suffer at their hands. Then the disciples understood that it was of John the Baptist that He was speaking to them (Matthew, 17: 9 to 13).

If John the Baptist was Elias, there was, therefore, the reincarnation of the Spirit or of the soul of Elias in the body of John the Baptist.

The progress that it falls to us to accomplish comprises the development of all the faculties. In each new existence, whether in this world or in another, we take one step further in the perfecting of some of those faculties. We need all knowledge and all the moral virtues in order to attain perfection, which is why we must successively traverse all the phases of life in order to gain experience in all things. Corporeal life is no more than an instant in the spiritual life, which is the normal life, and in that brief time we can do very little for our betterment; this is why God permitted such instants to be repeated like the days in earthly life. For the Spirits, the different worlds are like the different countries for earthly man; they traverse them all, fixing residence in this one or that, according to what their state permits, in order to instruct themselves in everything.

A man whose life was long enough to be able to pass through all the degrees of the social scale, to exercise all the professions, to live among all the peoples of the Earth, to deepen all the arts and all the sciences, would have, without a shadow of doubt, knowledge and experience without equal. Well then! What man cannot do in a single existence, he will accomplish in as many existences as are necessary for it. It is in those existences that he learns what he is ignorant of, that little by little he perfects himself, purifies himself, and, when he has traversed the whole cycle, he will enjoy eternal life and supreme happiness in the bosom of God. [Question 222.]