SPIRITUAL GENESIS.

Spiritual principle. — Union of the spiritual principle and matter.

— Hypothesis about the origin of the human body. — Incarnation of Spirits.

— Reincarnations. — Emigrations and immigrations of Spirits.

— Adamic race.

— Doctrine of the fallen angels and of paradise lost.

SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE.

— The existence of the spiritual principle is a fact that, so to speak, needs no demonstration, just as does that of the existence of the material principle. It is, in a certain way, an axiomatic truth. It asserts itself by its effects, as matter does by those proper to it.

According to this principle: “Every effect having a cause, every intelligent effect must have an intelligent cause,” 3 there is no one who does not distinguish between the mechanical movement of a bell shaken by the wind and the movement of that same bell to give a signal, a warning, attesting, by that alone, that it obeys a thought, an intention.

Now, since the idea of attributing thought to the matter of the bell can occur to no one, one must conclude that an intelligence moves it, which serves as its instrument in order to manifest itself.

For the same reason, no one will have the idea of attributing thought to the body of a dead man. If, then, when alive, man thinks, it is because there is in him something that is not there when he is dead.

The difference that exists between him and the bell is that the intelligence which makes the latter move is outside it, whereas the one which makes man act is within him.

— The spiritual principle is a corollary of the existence of God; 2 without that principle, God would have no reason for being, since one could not conceive of the sovereign intelligence reigning, throughout eternity, solely over brute matter, just as one could not conceive of an earthly monarch reigning, during his whole life, exclusively over stones.

Since God cannot be admitted without the essential attributes of the Divinity—justice and goodness—those qualities would be useless if he were to exercise them only over matter.

— On the other hand, one could not conceive of a God supremely just and good, creating intelligent and sentient beings, only to cast them into nothingness after a few days of suffering without compensation, taking delight in the contemplation of that indefinite succession of beings who are born without having asked for it, who think for an instant only to know pain, and who are extinguished forever at the end of an ephemeral existence.

Without the survival of the thinking being, the sufferings of life would be, on God's part, a cruelty without purpose.

This is why materialism and atheism are corollaries of one another; denying the effect, they cannot admit the cause.

Materialism is, then, consistent with itself, although it is not so with reason.

— The idea of the perpetuity of the spiritual being is innate in man; that idea is found in him in a state of intuition and aspiration. Man understands that only therein lies the compensation for the miseries of life. That is the reason why there have always been, and there will increasingly be, more spiritualists than materialists and more devout people than atheists.

To the intuitive idea and to the force of reasoning, Spiritism adds the sanction of facts, the material proof of the existence of the spiritual being, of its survival, its immortality, and its individuality. It makes precise and defines what that idea had of the vague and the abstract. It shows the intelligent being acting outside matter, whether after or during the life of the body.

— Are the spiritual principle and the vital principle the same thing?

Starting, as always, from the observation of facts, we shall say that, if the vital principle were inseparable from the intelligent principle, there would be a certain reason for us to confound them. But, since there are, as there are, beings that live and do not think, such as plants; human bodies that still reveal themselves animated by organic life when there is no longer any manifestation of thought;

since in the living being vital movements are produced independently of any intervention of the will; since during sleep organic life is maintained in full activity, while intellectual life is manifested by no external sign, it is admissible to admit that organic life resides in a principle inherent to matter, independent of spiritual life, which is inherent to the Spirit.

Now, since matter has a vitality independent of the Spirit and the Spirit has a vitality independent of matter, it becomes evident that this double vitality rests upon two different principles.

(Chap. X, no. 16 to 19.)

— Does the spiritual principle have its source of origin in the universal cosmic element? Is it merely a transformation, a mode of existence of that element, like light, electricity, heat, etc.?

If it were so, the spiritual principle would undergo the vicissitudes of matter; it would be extinguished by disaggregation, like the vital principle; the existence of the intelligent being would be momentary, like that of the body, which then, on dying, would return to nothingness, or, what would amount to the same thing, to the universal whole. It would be, in a word, the sanction of the materialist doctrines.

The sui generis properties recognized in the spiritual principle prove that it has an existence of its own, for, if its origin were in matter, those properties would be lacking to it.

Since intelligence and thought cannot be attributes of matter, one arrives, going back from effects to the cause, at the conclusion that the material element and the spiritual element are the two constitutive principles of the Universe.

Individualized, the spiritual element constitutes the beings called Spirits, just as, individualized, the material element constitutes the different bodies of Nature, organic and inorganic.

— The spiritual being being admitted, and since it cannot proceed from matter, what is its origin, its point of departure?

Here the means of investigation fail absolutely, as for everything that concerns the origin of things.

Man can only verify what exists; about all the rest, it is given to him only to formulate hypotheses, whether because that knowledge is beyond the reach of his present intelligence, or because it would be useless or harmful to him at present, for which reason God does not grant it to him, not even through revelation.

What God permits his messengers to tell him, and what, moreover, man himself can deduce from the principle of sovereign justice, an essential attribute of the Divinity, is that all proceed from the same point of departure; 5 that all are created simple and ignorant, with equal aptitude to progress through their individual activities; 6 that all will attain the highest degree of perfection through their personal efforts; 7 that all, being children of the same Father, are the object of equal solicitude; 8 that none is more favored or better endowed than the others, nor exempted from the labor imposed on the rest to attain the goal.

— At the same time that he created, from all eternity, material worlds, God created, from all eternity, spiritual beings; if it were not so, material worlds would lack a finality.

It would be easier to conceive of spiritual beings without material worlds than of the latter without the former.

It is the material worlds that would have to furnish spiritual beings with elements of activity for the development of their intelligences.

— To progress is the normal condition of spiritual beings, and relative perfection the end that it behooves them to attain; 2 now, God having created from all eternity, and creating ceaselessly, also from all eternity there have been beings who attained the culminating point of the scale.

Before the Earth existed, countless worlds had succeeded worlds, and when the Earth emerged from the chaos of the elements, space was peopled with spiritual beings of all degrees of advancement, from those that were arising into life to those that, from all eternity, had taken their place among the pure Spirits, commonly called angels.

UNION OF THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE AND MATTER.

— Matter having to be the object of the Spirit's labor for the development of its faculties, it was necessary that the Spirit be able to act upon it, for which reason it came to inhabit it, as the woodcutter inhabits the forest.

Matter having to be, at the same time, the object and the instrument of the labor, God, instead of uniting the Spirit to rigid stone, created, for its use, organized bodies, flexible, capable of receiving all the impulses of its will and of lending themselves to all its movements.

The body is, then, simultaneously the envelope and the instrument of the Spirit, and, as the latter acquires new aptitudes, it dons another covering appropriate to the new kind of labor that falls to it to carry out, just as is done with the workman, who is given a less crude instrument in proportion as he shows himself apt to execute more carefully wrought work.

— To be more exact, it must be said that it is the Spirit itself that models its covering and adapts it to its new needs;

it perfects it and develops and completes the organism, in proportion as it experiences the need to manifest new faculties; 2 in a word, it shapes it in accordance with its intelligence; God furnishes it the materials; it falls to the Spirit to employ them; 3 it is thus that the advanced races have an organism or, if you will, a cerebral apparatus more perfected than the primitive races.

In this way is likewise explained the special stamp that the character of the Spirit imprints upon the features of the physiognomy and the lines of the body. (Chap. VIII, no. 7: Soul of the Earth.)

— From the moment a Spirit is born into spiritual life, it has, in order to advance, to make use of its faculties, rudimentary at first; this is why it dons a covering suited to its state of intellectual infancy, a covering that it abandons to take on another in proportion as its forces increase.

Now, as in all times there were worlds, and these worlds gave birth to organized bodies suited to receive Spirits, in all times the Spirits, whatever the degree of advancement they had attained, found the elements necessary to their carnal life.

— Being exclusively material, the body undergoes the vicissitudes of matter. After functioning for some time, it becomes disorganized and decomposes. The vital principle, no longer finding an element for its activity, is extinguished, and the body dies. The Spirit, for whom this body, lacking life, becomes useless, leaves it, as one leaves a house in ruins, or a worthless garment.

— The body, consequently, is nothing more than a covering destined to receive the Spirit; from then on, its origin and the materials that entered into its construction matter little.

Whether or not the body of man is a special creation, what suffers no doubt is that it is formed by the same elements as that of the animals, animated by the same vital principle, or, in other words, warmed by the same fire, just as it is illuminated by the same light and is subject to the same vicissitudes and the same needs. This is a point that suffers no contestation.

Considering, then, only matter, abstracting from the Spirit, man has nothing that distinguishes him from the animal. Everything, however, changes aspect as soon as a distinction is established between the dwelling and the dweller.

Whether in a hut, or wearing the garments of a peasant, a noble lord does not cease to be one. The same happens with man: it is not his vesture of flesh that places him above the brute and makes of him a being apart; it is his spiritual being, his Spirit.

HYPOTHESIS ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN BODY.

— From the resemblance, which exists, of exterior forms between the body of man and that of the ape, some physiologists concluded that the first is merely a transformation of the second. There is nothing impossible in that, nor anything that, if it be so, affects the dignity of man.

It may well be that bodies of apes served as vesture to the first human Spirits, necessarily little advanced, who came to incarnate on the Earth, that vesture being more appropriate to their needs and more suited to the exercise of their faculties than the body of any other animal.

Instead of a special covering being made for the Spirit, it would have found one already ready. It then clothed itself in the skin of the ape, without ceasing to be a human Spirit, just as man not infrequently clothes himself in the skin of certain animals, without ceasing to be a man.

Let it be well understood that here it is solely a question of a hypothesis, in no way posited as a principle, but presented only to show that the origin of the body in no way prejudices the Spirit, which is the principal being, and that the resemblance of the body of man with that of the ape does not imply parity between his Spirit and that of the ape.

— Admitting that hypothesis, it may be said that, under the influence and by the effect of the intellectual activity of its new dweller, the covering was modified, beautified itself in particulars, preserving the general form of the whole (No. 11).

Improved, the bodies, through procreation, reproduced themselves under the same conditions, as happens with grafted trees; they gave rise to a new species, which little by little drew away from the primitive type, in proportion as the Spirit progressed.

The Spirit of the ape, which was not annihilated, continued to procreate, for its use, bodies of apes, in the same way that the fruit of the wild tree reproduces trees of that species, and the human Spirit procreated bodies of men, variants of the first mold into which it had inserted itself. The trunk forked: it produced a branch, which in its turn became a trunk.

As in Nature there are no abrupt transitions, it is probable that the first men who appeared on the Earth differed little from the ape in exterior form and not much, either, in intelligence.

In our days there are still savages who, by the length of their arms and feet and by the conformation of the head, have such a resemblance to the ape that they need only be hairy for the likeness to become complete.

INCARNATION OF SPIRITS.

— Spiritism teaches in what manner the union of the Spirit with the body is effected, in incarnation.

By its spiritual essence, the Spirit is an indefinite, abstract being, which cannot have direct action upon matter, an intermediary being indispensable to it, which is the fluidic covering, which, in a certain way, forms an integral part of it; 3 this covering is semi-material, that is, it belongs to matter by its origin and to spirituality by its ethereal nature; 4 like all matter, it is extracted from the universal cosmic fluid which, in this circumstance, undergoes a special modification.

This covering, called the perispirit, makes of an abstract being, of the Spirit, a concrete, defined being, apprehensible by thought; it renders it apt to act upon tangible matter, as happens with all the imponderable fluids, which are, as is known, the most powerful motors.

The perispiritic fluid constitutes, then, the connecting link between the Spirit and matter; while the former is united to the body, it serves as a vehicle for thought, to transmit movement to the various parts of the organism, which act under the impulsion of its will, and to cause the sensations that exterior agents produce to reverberate in the Spirit.

The nerves serve it as conducting wires, just as, in the telegraph, the metallic wire serves as a conductor for the electric fluid.

— When the Spirit has to incarnate in a human body in process of formation, a fluidic bond, which is nothing more than an expansion of its perispirit, links it to the germ which attracts it by an irresistible force, from the moment of conception.

As the germ develops, the bond shortens; under the influence of the vito-material principle of the germ, the perispirit, which possesses certain properties of matter, unites, molecule by molecule, to the body in formation, whence it may be said that the Spirit, by means of its perispirit, takes root, in a certain manner, in that germ like a plant in the earth; when the germ reaches its full development, the union is complete; the being is then born into the exterior life.

By a contrary effect, the union of the perispirit and the carnal matter, which had been effected under the influence of the vital principle of the germ, ceases as soon as that principle stops acting, in consequence of the disorganization of the body; maintained as it was by an acting force, that union dissolves as soon as that force ceases to act; then the perispirit detaches itself, molecule by molecule, just as it had united, and liberty is restored to the Spirit.

Thus, it is not the departure of the Spirit that causes the death of the body; it is the latter that determines the departure of the Spirit.

Given that, an instant after death, the integration of the Spirit is complete; that its faculties acquire even greater power of penetration, whereas the principle of life is extinguished in the body, it is evidently proved that the vital principle and the spiritual principle are distinct.

— Spiritism, by the facts whose observation it affords, makes known the phenomena that accompany that separation, which is sometimes rapid, easy, gentle, and imperceptible, whereas at other times it is slow, laborious, horribly painful, according to the moral state of the Spirit, and may last whole months.

— A particular phenomenon, which observation likewise points out, always accompanies the incarnation of the Spirit. From the moment it is caught in the fluidic bond that fastens it to the germ, it enters into a state of perturbation, which increases as the bond tightens, the Spirit losing, in the last moments, all consciousness of itself, so that it never witnesses its own birth.

When the child breathes, the Spirit begins to recover its faculties, which develop in proportion as the organs that are to serve their manifestations are formed and consolidated.

— But, at the same time that the Spirit recovers consciousness of itself, it loses the remembrance of its past, without losing the faculties, the qualities, and the aptitudes previously acquired, which had remained temporarily in a state of latency and which, returning to activity, will help it to do more and better than before; it is reborn just as it had made itself by its previous labor; its rebirth is for it a new point of departure, a new step to climb.

Even here the goodness of the Creator is manifested, for, added to the bitterness of a new existence, the remembrance, often afflicting and humiliating, of the past, could disturb it and create embarrassments for it; it remembers only what it has learned, because that is useful to it.

If at times it is given to it to have an intuition of past events, that intuition is like the remembrance of a fleeting dream.

Here it is, then, a new man, however ancient it may be as a Spirit; it adopts new methods, aided by its preceding acquisitions.

When it returns to spiritual life, its past unfolds before its eyes, and it judges how it employed its time, whether well or badly.

— There is, therefore, no break in continuity in spiritual life, notwithstanding the forgetting of the past; each Spirit is always the same self, before, during, and after incarnation, the latter being only a phase of its existence.

The forgetting itself occurs only in the course of the exterior life of relation. During sleep, disengaged, in part, from the carnal bonds, restored to liberty and to spiritual life, the Spirit remembers, for then its vision is no longer so obscured by matter.

— Taking humanity at the lowest degree of the spiritual scale, as it is found among the most backward savages, one will ask whether that is the initial point of the human soul.

In the opinion of some spiritualist philosophers, the intelligent principle, distinct from the material principle, individualizes and elaborates itself, passing through the various degrees of animality; it is there that the soul rehearses for life and develops, by exercise, its first faculties; that would be for it, so to speak, the period of incubation. Having reached the degree of development that this state allows, it receives the special faculties that constitute the human soul. There would thus be a spiritual filiation from the animal to man, as there is a corporeal filiation.

This system, founded on the great law of unity that presides over the Creation, corresponds, it must be granted, to the justice and the goodness of the Creator; it gives an outcome, a finality, a destiny to the animals, which then cease to form a category of disinherited beings, having, in the future reserved for them, a compensation for their sufferings.

What constitutes spiritual man is not his origin: it is the special attributes with which he presents himself endowed upon entering humanity, attributes that transform him, making him a distinct being, as the savory fruit is distinct from the bitter root that gave it origin.

For having passed through the channel of animality, man would not cease to be man; he would no longer be an animal, just as the fruit is not the root, just as the sage is not the formless fetus that brought him into the world.

But this system raises multiple questions, the pros and cons of which it is not opportune to discuss here, just as it is not opportune to examine the different hypotheses that have been formulated on this subject. Without, then, investigating the origin of the Spirit, without seeking to know the channels through which it may, perchance, have passed, we take it upon its entry into humanity, at the point where, endowed with moral sense and free will, the responsibility for its acts begins to weigh upon it.

— The obligation that the incarnate Spirit has to provide for the nourishment of the body, for its security, for its well-being, forces it to employ its faculties in investigations, to exercise and develop them.

Useful, therefore, to its advancement is its union with matter; whence incarnation constitutes a necessity.

Moreover, by the intelligent labor that it carries out for its own profit, upon matter, it aids the transformation and the material progress of the globe that serves as its dwelling; it is thus that, progressing, it collaborates in the work of the Creator, of which it becomes an unconscious factor.

— Nevertheless, the incarnation of the Spirit is neither constant nor perpetual: it is transitory. Leaving one body, it does not immediately take up another. During a more or less considerable lapse of time, it lives the spiritual life, which is its normal life, in such a way that insignificant becomes the time that its incarnations last, when compared to that which it passes in the state of free Spirit.

In the interval of its incarnations, the Spirit likewise progresses, in the sense that it applies to its advancement the knowledge and the experience it gained in the course of corporeal life; it examines what it did while it inhabited the Earth, reviews what it learned, recognizes its faults, traces plans and takes resolutions by which it intends to guide itself in a new existence, with the idea of conducting itself better. In this way, each existence represents a step forward on the path of progress, a kind of school of application.

— Normally, incarnation is not a punishment for the Spirit, as some think, but a condition inherent to the inferiority of the Spirit, and a means for it to progress. (Heaven and Hell, Chap. III, no. 8 and following.)

In proportion as it progresses morally, the Spirit dematerializes itself, that is, it purifies itself, by withdrawing from the influence of matter; its life spiritualizes itself, its faculties and perceptions expand; its happiness becomes proportional to the progress accomplished.

However, since it acts in virtue of its free will, it can, through negligence or ill will, retard its advance; it consequently prolongs the duration of its material incarnations, which then become a punishment for it, since, through its own fault, it remains in the inferior categories, obliged to begin the same task over again.

It depends, then, on the Spirit to shorten, by the work of purification carried out upon itself, the extent of the period of incarnations.

— The material progress of a planet accompanies the moral progress of its inhabitants; 2 now, the creation of worlds and of Spirits being incessant, as it is, and these progressing more or less rapidly according to the use they make of free will, it follows that there are worlds more or less ancient, at diverse degrees of physical and moral advancement, where incarnation is more or less material and where, consequently, the labor, for the Spirits, is more or less harsh.

From this point of view, the Earth is one of the least advanced. Peopled with relatively inferior Spirits, corporeal life is here more painful than in other orbs, there being also more backward ones, where existence is even more painful than on the Earth and in comparison with which this would be, relatively, a fortunate world.

— When, in a world, the Spirits have realized the sum of progress that the state of that world allows, they leave it to incarnate in another more advanced one, where they will acquire new knowledge, and so on, until, incarnation in material bodies no longer being of any profit to them, they pass to living exclusively the spiritual life, in which they continue to progress, but in another sense and by other means.

Having reached the culminating point of progress, they enjoy supreme happiness. Admitted into the councils of the Omnipotent, they know his thought and become his messengers, his direct ministers in the government of worlds, having under their orders the Spirits of all degrees of advancement.

Thus, whatever the degree at which they find themselves in the spiritual hierarchy, from the lowest to the most elevated, they have their attributions in the great mechanism of the Universe: all are useful to the whole, at the same time as to themselves; 4 to the less advanced, like simple servants, falls the performance, at first unconscious, then increasingly intelligent, of material tasks.

Everywhere, in the spiritual world, activity; in no point useless idleness.

The collectivity of Spirits constitutes, in a certain way, the soul of the Universe; it is the spiritual element that everywhere acts in everything, under the influx of the divine thought.

Without that element, there is only inert matter, lacking finality, lacking intelligence, having as its sole motor the material forces, the exclusivity of which leaves an immensity of problems insoluble; with the action of the individualized spiritual element, everything has a finality, a reason for being, everything is explained; dispensing with spirituality, man collides with insuperable difficulties.

— When the Earth found itself in climatic conditions suited to the existence of the human species, human Spirits incarnated on it. Whence did they come?

Whether they were created at that moment; whether they proceeded, completely formed, from space, from other worlds, or from the Earth itself, their presence on it, from a certain epoch onward, is a fact, for before them there were only animals; they clothed themselves in bodies suited to their special needs, to their aptitudes, and which, physiologically, had the characteristics of animality; under their influence and by means of the exercise of their faculties, those bodies were modified and perfected: this is what observation confirms.

Let us then set aside the question of origin, insoluble for the time being; let us consider the Spirit, not at its point of departure, but at the moment when, the first germs of free will and of moral sense manifesting themselves in it, we see it performing its humanitarian role, without inquiring into the milieu where the period of its infancy, or, if you prefer, of its incubation, may have elapsed.

In spite of the analogy of its covering with that of the animals, we will be able to differentiate it from these latter by the intellectual and moral faculties that characterize it, just as, beneath the same coarse garments, we distinguish the rustic from the civilized man.

— Although the first ones that came must have been little advanced, by the very reason of their having to incarnate in very imperfect bodies, perceptible differences would certainly exist between their characters and aptitudes. Those who resembled one another naturally grouped themselves by analogy and sympathy.

The Earth found itself, thus, peopled with Spirits of diverse categories, more or less apt or rebellious to progress. The bodies receiving the impression of the character of the Spirit, and these bodies procreating themselves in conformity with the respective types, there resulted from this different races, whether as to the physical, whether as to the moral (No. 11).

Continuing to incarnate among those who resembled them, the similar Spirits perpetuated the distinctive character, physical and moral, of the races and of the peoples, a character that disappears only with time, through the fusion and the progress of them. (Spiritist Review, July 1860: Phrenology and Physiognomy.)

— The Spirits that came to people the Earth may be compared to those bands of emigrants of diverse origins, who go to establish themselves in a virgin land, where they find wood and stone to raise dwellings, each giving to his a special stamp, in accordance with the degree of his knowledge and with his particular genius. They group themselves then by analogy of origins and of tastes, the groups ending by forming tribes, then peoples, each with its own customs and characters.

— Progress was not, therefore, uniform throughout the human species; as was natural, the more intelligent races advanced ahead of the others, even without taking into account that many Spirits newly born into spiritual life, coming to incarnate on the Earth together with the first ones to arrive there, made the difference in matter of progress even more perceptible.

It would, in effect, be impossible to attribute the same antiquity of creation to the savages who are scarcely distinguished from the ape and to the Chinese, just as little to the Europeans.

Nevertheless, the Spirits of the savages also form part of Humanity and will one day attain the level at which their elder brothers find themselves;

but, without doubt, it will not be in bodies of the same physical race, unsuited to a certain intellectual and moral development.

When the instrument is no longer in correspondence with the progress they may have attained, they will emigrate from that milieu, to incarnate in another more elevated one, and so on, until they have conquered all the terrestrial gradations, the point at which they will leave the Earth, to pass to more advanced worlds. (Spiritist Review, April 1862: Spiritualist and Spiritist Phrenology — Perfectibility of the black race.)

REINCARNATIONS.

— The principle of reincarnation is a necessary consequence of the law of progress.

Without reincarnation, how would the difference that exists between the present social state and that of the times of barbarism be explained? If souls are created at the same time as bodies, those that are born today are as new, as primitive, as those that lived a thousand years ago; let us add that there would be no connection between them, no necessary relation; they would be entirely strangers to one another. Why, then, would those of today have to be better endowed by God than those that preceded them?

Why do the former have a better understanding? Why do they possess more refined instincts, gentler customs? Why do they have the intuition of certain things, without having learned them? We doubt that anyone may extricate himself from these dilemmas, unless he admits that God creates souls of diverse qualities, according to the times and places, a proposition irreconcilable with the idea of a sovereign justice. (Chap. II, no. 19.)

Admit, on the contrary, that the souls of now have already lived in distant times;

that possibly they were barbarous like the centuries in which they were in the world, but that they progressed; that for each new existence they bring what they acquired in the preceding existences; that, consequently, those of the civilized times are not souls created more perfect, but ones that perfected themselves on their own with time, and you will have the only plausible explanation of the cause of social progress. (The Spirits' Book: Part 2, chaps. IV and V.)

— Some think that the different existences of the soul are effected by their passing from world to world and not on a same orb, where each Spirit would come only a single time.

This doctrine would be admissible if all the inhabitants of the Earth were at the same intellectual and moral level. They could then only progress by going from one world to another, and no utility would come to them from incarnation on the Earth; now, God does nothing useless.

Since here intelligence and morality are noted in all degrees, from the savagery that borders on the animal to the most advanced civilization, it is evident that this world constitutes a vast field of progress; one would ask, why would the savage have to go and seek elsewhere the degree of progress just above the one at which he is, when that degree is found alongside him, and so on successively? 4 why would the advanced man not have been able to make his first stages except in inferior worlds, when around him there are beings analogous to those of such worlds? when, not only from people to people, but in the bosom of the same people and of the same family, there are different degrees of advancement?

If it were so, God would have done a useless thing, placing side by side ignorance and knowledge, barbarism and civilization, good and evil, when precisely that contact is what makes the laggards advance.

There is, then, no need for men to change worlds at each stage of perfecting, just as there is none for the student to change colleges to pass from one class to another; far from that being an advantage for progress, it would be a hindrance to it, for the Spirit would be deprived of the example offered to it by the observation of what occurs in the higher degrees and of the possibility of repairing its errors in the same milieu and in the presence of those whom it offended, a possibility that is, for it, the most powerful means of realizing its moral progress.

After a short cohabitation, the Spirits dispersing and becoming strangers to one another, the bonds of family would be broken, for lack of time to consolidate themselves.

To the moral inconvenience would be joined a material inconvenience. The nature of the elements, the organic laws, the conditions of existence vary, according to the worlds; under this aspect, there are no two perfectly identical.

The treatises of Physics, of Chemistry, of Anatomy, of Medicine, of Botany, etc., would serve for nothing in the other worlds; however, what is learned in them is not lost; not only does that develop the intelligence, but also the ideas gathered from such works aid the acquisition of others. (Chap. VI, no. 61 and following.)

If the Spirit made its appearance only a single time, frequently very brief, on a same world, in each immigration it would find itself in conditions entirely diverse; it would operate each time upon new elements, with a force and according to laws that it would not know, before having had time to elaborate the known elements, to study them, to apply them. It would have to make, each time, a new apprenticeship, and these continual changes would represent an obstacle to progress.

The Spirit, therefore, has to remain on the same world, until it has acquired the sum of knowledge and the degree of perfection that this world allows. (No. 31.)

That the Spirits leave, for a more advanced world, the one from which they can derive nothing more, is as it should be and is; such is the principle.

If there are some who leave in advance the world in which they were incarnating, this is due to individual causes that God weighs in his wisdom.

Everything in the Creation has a finality, without which God would be neither prudent nor wise. Now, if the Earth were destined to be a single stage of progress for each individual, what utility would there be, for the Spirits of the children who die at a tender age, in coming to pass here a few years, a few months, a few hours, during which they can draw nothing from it? The same occurs, if one ponders, with reference to idiots and cretins.

A theory is only good on the condition of resolving all the questions to which it relates. The question of premature deaths has been a stumbling block for all the doctrines, except for the Spiritist Doctrine, which resolved it in a rational and complete manner.

For the progress of those who fulfill on the Earth a normal mission, there is real advantage in returning to the same milieu to continue there what they left unfinished, often in the same family or in contact with the same persons, in order to repair the evil they may have done, or to suffer the penalty of retaliation.

EMIGRATIONS AND IMMIGRATIONS OF SPIRITS.

— In the interval of their corporeal existences, the Spirits find themselves in the state of erraticity and form the spiritual population surrounding the Earth.

Through deaths and births, these two populations, terrestrial and spiritual, are incessantly exchanged; there are, then, daily, emigrations from the corporeal world to the spiritual world and immigrations from the latter to the former: this is the normal state.

— At certain epochs, determined by the divine wisdom, these emigrations and immigrations are effected by more or less considerable masses, in virtue of the great revolutions that occasion their simultaneous departure in enormous quantities, soon replaced by equivalent quantities of incarnations.

The destructive scourges and the cataclysms must, therefore, be considered as occasions of collective arrivals and departures, providential means of renewing the corporeal population of the globe, of its retempering itself by the introduction of new, more purified spiritual elements.

In the destruction, which is verified by these catastrophes, of a great number of bodies, there is nothing more than a rending of vestures; no Spirit perishes; they merely change Planes; instead of departing in isolation, they depart in bands, that being the only difference, since, for one cause or another, they fatally have to depart, sooner or later.

The rapid, almost instantaneous renewals that are produced in the spiritual element of the population, by the effect of the destructive scourges, hasten social progress; without the emigrations and immigrations that from time to time come to give it a violent impulse, only with extreme slowness would that progress be realized.

It is to be noted that all the great calamities that decimate populations are always followed by an era of progress of a physical, intellectual, or moral order and, consequently, in the social state of the nations that experience them. It is that they have for their purpose to operate a remodeling in the spiritual population, which is the normal and active population of the globe.

— That transfusion, which is effected between the incarnate and disincarnate population of a planet, is likewise effected between the worlds; whether individually, under normal conditions, whether by masses, in special circumstances.

There are, then, collective emigrations and immigrations from one world to another, whence results the introduction, into the population of one of them, of entirely new elements; new races of Spirits, coming to mix with the existing ones, constitute new races of men.

Now, as the Spirits never again lose what they have acquired, they always bring with them the intelligence and the intuition of the knowledge they possess, which makes them imprint the character that is peculiar to them upon the corporeal race that they come to animate; for that, they need only that new bodies be created to be used by them; since the corporeal species exists, they always find bodies ready to receive them. They are, therefore, simply new inhabitants; on arriving on the Earth, they integrate themselves, at first, into its spiritual population, then incarnate, like the others. ADAMIC RACE.

— According to the teaching of the Spirits, it was one of those great immigrations, or, if you will, one of those colonies of Spirits, come from another sphere, that gave origin to the race symbolized in the person of Adam and, for that very reason, called the Adamic race.

When it arrived here, the Earth was already peopled from time immemorial, like America, when the Europeans arrived there.

More advanced than those that had preceded it on this planet, the Adamic race is, in effect, the most intelligent, the one that impels all the others toward progress.

Genesis shows it to us, from its very beginnings, industrious, apt at the arts and the sciences, without having passed here through spiritual infancy, which does not happen with the primitive races, but agrees with the opinion that it was composed of Spirits who had already progressed considerably.

Everything proves that the Adamic race is not ancient on the Earth, and nothing opposes its being considered as inhabiting this globe for only a few thousand years, which would not be in contradiction either with the geological facts or with the anthropological observations, but would rather tend to confirm them.

— In the present state of knowledge, the doctrine according to which the whole human race proceeds from a single individuality, only six thousand years ago, is not admissible. Taken from the physical order and the moral order, the considerations that contradict it may be summed up in the following:

From the physiological point of view, some races present particular typical characteristics, which do not permit a common origin to be assigned to them. There are differences that are evidently not a simple effect of climate, for the whites who reproduce in the countries of the blacks do not become black, and reciprocally. The ardor of the Sun toasts and browns the epidermis, but it has never transformed a white into a black, nor flattened his nose, nor changed the form of the features of the physiognomy, nor made woolly and kinky the long and silky hair. It is known today that the color of the black comes from a special subcutaneous tissue, peculiar to the species.

One must, then, consider the black, Mongolian, Caucasian races as having their own origin, as having been born simultaneously or successively in diverse parts of the globe. Their crossing produced the secondary mixed races. The physiological characters of the primitive races constitute an evident indication that they proceed from special types. The same considerations apply, consequently, both to men and to the animals, as concerns the plurality of stocks. (Chap. X, no. 2 and following.)

— Adam and his descendants are presented in Genesis as men exceedingly intelligent, for, from the second generation, they build cities, cultivate the earth, work the metals. Their progress in the arts and the sciences is rapid and lasting.

It would not be conceivable, therefore, that this stock had, as branches, numerous peoples so backward, of so rudimentary an intelligence, that even in our days they crawl in animality, who have lost all traces, and even the slightest remembrance, of what their fathers did. So radical a difference in the intellectual aptitudes and in the moral development attests, with no less evidence, a difference of origin.

— Independently of the geological facts, from the population of the globe is drawn the proof of the existence of man on the Earth, before the epoch fixed by Genesis.

Without speaking of the Chinese chronology, which goes back, they say, thirty thousand years, more authentic documents prove that Egypt, India, and other countries were already peopled and flourished at least three thousand years before the Christian era, a thousand years, therefore, after the creation of the first man, according to the biblical chronology.

Recent documents and observations allow today no doubt whatever as to the relations that existed between America and the ancient Egyptians, whence one must conclude that that region was already peopled at that epoch. It would then be necessary to admit that, in a thousand years, the posterity of a single man could people the greater part of the Earth. Now, such fecundity would be in antagonism with all the anthropological laws. n

— The impossibility becomes even more evident as soon as one admits, with Genesis, that the deluge destroyed the whole human race, with the exception of Noah and of his family, which was not numerous, in the year 1656 of the world, that is, 2,348 years before the Christian era. In reality, then, it is from that patriarch that the peopling of the Earth would date. Now, when the Hebrews established themselves in Egypt, 612 years after the deluge, Egypt was already a powerful empire, which would have been peopled, without speaking of other countries, in less than six centuries, solely by the descendants of Noah, which is not admissible.

Let us note, in passing, that the Egyptians received the Hebrews as foreigners. It would be astonishing that they should have lost the remembrance of so close a community of origin, when they religiously preserved the monuments of their history.

Rigorous logic, with the facts corroborating it in the most peremptory manner, shows, then, that man has been on the Earth since an indeterminate time, much anterior to the epoch that Genesis marks. The same occurs with the diversity of the primitive stocks, since to demonstrate the impossibility of a proposition is to demonstrate the contrary proposition. If Geology discovers authentic traces of the presence of man before the great diluvian period, the demonstration is even more complete. DOCTRINE OF THE FALLEN ANGELS AND OF PARADISE LOST. n

— Worlds progress, physically, by the elaboration of matter and, morally, by the purification of the Spirits that inhabit them.

Happiness in them is in direct ratio to the predominance of good over evil, and the predominance of good results from the moral advancement of the Spirits.

Intellectual progress does not suffice, for with intelligence they can do evil.

As soon as a world has reached one of its periods of transformation, in order to ascend in the hierarchy of worlds, mutations are operated in its incarnate and disincarnate population; it is then that the great emigrations and immigrations occur. (Nos. 34, 35.)

Those who, in spite of their intelligence and their knowledge, persevered in evil, always in revolt against God and his laws, would thenceforth become a hindrance to the ulterior moral progress, a permanent cause of perturbation for the tranquility and the happiness of the good, for which reason they are excluded from the humanity to which until then they belonged and driven to less advanced worlds, where they will apply the intelligence and the intuition of the knowledge that they acquired to the progress of those among whom they pass to live, at the same time as they will expiate, by a series of painful existences and by means of arduous labor, their past faults and their voluntary hardening.

What will such beings be, among those other populations, new to them, still in the infancy of barbarism, but angels or fallen Spirits, come there in expiation?

Is not, precisely, for them, a paradise lost the land whence they were expelled? Was not that land for them a place of delights, in comparison with the ungrateful milieu where they are going to be relegated for thousands of centuries, until they have merited to free themselves from it? The vague intuitive remembrance that they keep of the land whence they came is like a distant mirage recalling to them what they lost through their own fault.

— But, at the same time that the wicked withdraw from the world in which they dwelt, better Spirits replace them there, come either from the erraticity concerning that world, or from a less advanced world, which they merited to abandon; Spirits for whom the new dwelling is a recompense.

The spiritual population being thus renewed and purified of its worst elements, at the end of some time the moral state of the world finds itself improved.

These mutations are at times partial, that is, circumscribed to a people, to a race; at other times, they are general, when the period of renewal arrives for the globe.

— The Adamic race presents all the characters of a proscribed race; the Spirits that integrate it were exiled to the Earth, already peopled, but with primitive men, immersed in ignorance, whom they had as a mission to make progress, bringing them the lights of a developed intelligence. Is that not, in effect, the role that this race has performed until today?

Its intellectual superiority proves that the world whence came the Spirits that compose it was more advanced than the Earth; that world having entered a new phase of progress, and such Spirits not having wished, through their obstinacy, to place themselves at the height of that progress, they would there be out of place and would constitute an obstacle to the providential march of things; they were, in consequence, banished from there and replaced by others who merited it.

Relegating that race to this land of labor and of sufferings, God had reason to say to it: “From it you shall draw your food with the sweat of your brow.”

In his clemency, he promised it that he would send it a Savior, that is, one who would enlighten it about the path it ought to take, to leave that place of misery, that hell, and gain the happiness of the elect. That Savior he, in effect, sent it, in the person of the Christ, who taught it the law of love and of charity that it knew not and which would be the true anchor of salvation.

It is likewise with the object of making Humanity advance in a determined direction that superior Spirits, although without the qualities of the Christ, incarnate from time to time on the Earth to perform special missions, profitable, simultaneously, to their personal advancement, if they fulfill them in accordance with the designs of the Creator.

— Without reincarnation, the mission of the Christ would be a nonsense, just as the promise made by God. Let us suppose, in effect, that the soul of each man is created at the occasion of the birth of the body and does no more than appear and disappear from the Earth: there would be no relation between those that came, from Adam to Jesus Christ, nor between those that came afterward; all are strangers to one another.

The promise that God made of a Savior could not concern the descendants of Adam, since their souls were not yet created.

In order for the mission of the Christ to be able to correspond to the words of God, it would be necessary that it apply to the same souls. If these are new, they cannot be stained by the fault of the first father, who is only a carnal father and not a spiritual father; otherwise, God would have created souls with the stain of a fault that could leave no trace in them, since they did not exist.

The common doctrine of original sin implies, consequently, the necessity of a relation between the souls of the time of the Christ and those of the time of Adam; it implies, therefore, reincarnation.

Say that all those souls formed part of the colony of Spirits exiled on the Earth at the time of Adam and that they were stained with the vices that brought upon them their being excluded from a better world, and you will have the only rational interpretation of original sin, a sin peculiar to each individual and not the result of the responsibility for the fault of another whom he never knew; say that those souls or Spirits are reborn several times on the Earth into corporeal life, in order to progress, purifying themselves; that the Christ came to enlighten those same souls, not only about their past lives, but also with relation to their ulterior lives, and then, but only then, will you give to the mission a real and serious meaning, which reason can accept.

— A familiar example, but striking by its analogy, will render still more comprehensible the principles that have just been expounded.

On the 24th of May 1861, the frigate Iphigenia transported to New Caledonia a disciplinary company composed of 291 men. On arrival, the commander issued to them an order of the day conceived thus:

“Setting foot on this distant land, you have, without doubt, already understood the role that is reserved for you.

“Following the example of the brave soldiers of our navy, who serve under your eyes, you will help us to carry with brilliance the torch of civilization into the bosom of the savage tribes of New Caledonia. Is it not a fine and noble mission, I ask? You will perform it worthily.

“Listen to the word and the counsels of your chiefs. I am at their head. Understand my words well.

“The choice of your commander, of your officers, of your sub-officers and corporals constitutes a sure guarantee that all efforts will be attempted to make you excellent soldiers, I say more: to raise you to the height of good citizens and to transform you into honored colonists, if you so wish.

“Our discipline is severe, and thus it has to be. Placed in our hands, it will be firm and inflexible, know it well, just as, just and paternal, it will know how to distinguish error from vice and from degradation…”

There you have a handful of men expelled, for their bad conduct, from a civilized country and sent, as a punishment, into the midst of a barbarous people. What does the chief say to them? — “You infringed the laws of your country; in it you became a cause of perturbation and scandal and you were expelled; they send you here, but here you can redeem your past; you can, through labor, create for yourselves here an honorable position and become honest citizens. You have a fine mission to fulfill: to carry civilization to these savage tribes. The discipline will be severe, but just, and we will know how to distinguish those who conduct themselves well. You have your fate in your hands; you can improve it, if you so wish, because you have free will.”

For those men, cast into the midst of savagery, is not the mother country a paradise that they lost through their own faults and by rebelling against the law? In that distant land, are they not fallen angels? Is not the language of the chief identical to that which God used in speaking to the Spirits exiled on the Earth: “You disobeyed my laws and, for that reason, I expelled you from the world where you could live happy and in peace. Here, you will be condemned to labor; but, you will be able, through your good conduct, to merit pardon and reconquer the homeland that you lost through your fault, that is, Heaven?”

— At first sight, the idea of falling seems in contradiction with the principle according to which Spirits cannot retrograde; one must, however, consider that it is not a question of a retrocession to the primitive state; the Spirit, even though in an inferior position, loses nothing of what it acquired; its moral and intellectual development is the same, whatever the milieu where it finds itself placed.

It is in the situation of the man of the world condemned to prison for his offenses. Certainly, that man finds himself degraded, fallen, from the social point of view, but he does not become more stupid, nor more ignorant.

— Is it credible, we ask now, that those men sent to New Caledonia [no. 47] will be suddenly transformed into models of virtue? That they will abruptly abjure their errors of the past? To suppose such a thing, it would be necessary to be unacquainted with humanity.

For the same reason, the Spirits of the Adamic race, once transplanted to the land of exile, did not instantly divest themselves of their pride and of their bad instincts; for a long time still they preserved the tendencies they brought, a remnant of the old leaven. Now, is that not original sin?

[1] At the Universal Exposition of 1867, antiquities of Mexico were presented which leave no doubt about the relations that the peoples of that country had with the ancient Egyptians. Mr. Léon Méchedin, in a note posted in the Mexican temple of the Exposition, expressed himself thus: “It is not appropriate that the discoveries made, from the point of view of the history of man, by the recent scientific expedition to Mexico, be published prematurely. However, nothing opposes the public knowing, from now on, that the exploration pointed out the existence of a great number of cities disappeared with time, but which the pickaxe and the fire can withdraw from their shrouds. The excavations laid bare, everywhere, three layers of civilizations, which give to the American world a fabulous Antiquity.” It is thus that every day Science opposes the contradiction of facts to the doctrine that limits to 6,000 years the appearance of man on the Earth and claims to make him derive from a single stock. [2] When, in the Spiritist Review of January 1862, we published an article on the interpretation of the doctrine of the fallen angels, we presented that theory as a simple hypothesis, without other authority besides that of a debatable personal opinion, because we then lacked elements sufficient for a peremptory affirmation. We expounded it by way of an essay, with a view to provoking the examination of the question, decided, however, to abandon it or modify it, if it were necessary. At present, that theory has already passed through the test of universal control. Not only was it well accepted by the majority of the Spiritists, as the most rational and the most concordant with the sovereign justice of God, but it was also confirmed by the generality of the instructions that the Spirits gave on the subject. The same was verified with the one that concerns the origin of the Adamic race.