LAW OF PROGRESS.

State of nature.

— 2. March of progress. — 3. Degenerate peoples. — 4. Civilization.

— 5. Progress of human legislation. — 6. Influence of Spiritism on progress.

State of nature.

Are the state of nature and natural law identical things?

“No, the state of nature is the primitive state.

Civilization is incompatible with the state of nature, whereas natural law contributes to the progress of Humanity.”

The state of nature is the infancy of Humanity and the starting point of its intellectual and moral development.

Being perfectible and bearing within himself the germ of his improvement, man was not destined to live perpetually in the state of nature, just as he was not destined to live eternally in infancy.

That state is transitory for man, who leaves it by virtue of progress and civilization. Natural law, on the contrary, governs the whole of Humanity, and man improves himself to the extent that he better understands and practices it.

Since man, in the state of nature, has fewer needs, he is exempt from the tribulations he creates for himself when in a state of greater advancement. In view of this, what should one think of the opinion of those who consider that state to be one of the most perfect happiness on Earth?

“What do you expect! It is the happiness of the brute. There are persons who do not understand any other. It is to be happy in the manner of the animals. Children too are happier than grown men.”

Can man regress to the state of nature?

“No, man must progress incessantly and cannot return to the state of infancy.

Since he progresses, it is because God so wills it. To think that he could regress to his primitive condition would be to deny the law of progress.”

March of progress.

Does man draw the force to progress from within himself, or is progress merely the fruit of teaching?

“Man develops by himself, naturally.

But not all progress simultaneously and in the same way. It then happens that the more advanced aid the progress of the others, by means of social contact.”

Does moral progress always accompany intellectual progress?

“It results from the latter, but does not always follow it immediately.”

a — How can intellectual progress engender moral progress?

“By making good and evil comprehensible. Man, from then on, can choose.

The development of free will accompanies that of intelligence and increases responsibility for one’s acts.”

b — How is it, in that case, that it often happens that the most instructed peoples are also the most perverted?

“Complete progress constitutes the goal. But peoples, like individuals, attain it only step by step. As long as the moral sense has not developed in them, it may even happen that they use intelligence for the practice of evil.

Morality and intelligence are two forces that only with time come to balance each other.”

Does man have the power to halt the march of progress?

“No, but he sometimes has the power to hinder it.”

a — What should one think of those who attempt to stop the march of progress and make Humanity regress?

“Wretched beings, whom God will punish! They will be swept away by the torrent they seek to stop.”

Progress being a condition of human nature, it is not within man’s power to oppose it.

It is a living force whose action may be retarded, but not annulled, by bad human laws. When these become incompatible with it, it shatters them together with those who strive to maintain them.

So it will be, until man has put his laws in concordance with divine justice, which wills that all share in the good, and not the prevailing of laws made by the strong to the detriment of the weak.

Are there not men who in good faith obstruct progress, believing they favor it, because, from the point of view in which they place themselves, they see it where it does not exist?

“They resemble little stones which, placed beneath the wheel of a great carriage, do not prevent it from advancing.”

Does the improvement of Humanity always follow a progressive and slow march?

“There is regular and slow progress, which results from the force of things.

When, however, a people does not progress as quickly as it should, God subjects it, from time to time, to a physical or moral shock that transforms it.”

Man cannot remain indefinitely in ignorance, because he must attain the end that Providence has assigned to him. He instructs himself by the force of things.

Moral revolutions, like social revolutions, infiltrate ideas little by little; they germinate for centuries; then they suddenly burst forth and produce the collapse of the worm-eaten edifice of the past, which has ceased to be in harmony with the new needs and the new aspirations.

In these upheavals, man almost never perceives anything but the momentary disorder and confusion that wounds him in his material interests. But he who raises his thought above his own personality admires the designs of Providence, which from evil brings forth good. They are the squall, the storm that cleanses the atmosphere, after having violently agitated it.

Man’s perversity is quite great. Does it not seem that, at least from the moral point of view, instead of advancing, he walks backward?

“You are mistaken. Observe the whole carefully and you will see that man advances, since he better understands what is evil, and is day by day repressing abuses.

It is necessary for evil to reach excess, in order to make comprehensible the necessity of good and of reforms.”

What is the greatest obstacle to progress?

“Pride and selfishness.

I refer to moral progress, for the intellectual is always effected.

At first sight, it even seems that intellectual progress redoubles the activity of those vices, developing ambition and the taste for riches, which, in their turn, incite man to undertake researches that enlighten his Spirit.

Thus it is that everything is connected, in the moral world as in the physical world, and that from evil itself good can be born.

But short is the duration of this state of things, which will change, in proportion as man better understands that, beyond that which the enjoyment of earthly goods affords, there exists a happiness greater and infinitely more lasting.” (See: On selfishness, chapter XII.)

There are two kinds of progress, which lend each other mutual support, but which, nevertheless, do not march side by side: intellectual progress and moral progress.

Among civilized peoples, the first has received, in the course of this century, every incentive. For that very reason it has attained a degree it had not yet reached before the present epoch. The second is far from being at the same level. Yet, comparing the social customs of today with those of some centuries ago, only a blind man would deny the progress accomplished.

Now, this being so, why should this ascending march stop, with respect to the moral rather than to the intellectual? Why should it be impossible that between the nineteenth century and the twenty-fourth century there be, in this respect, as much difference as between the fourteenth century and the nineteenth century? To doubt it would be to claim that Humanity is at the apogee of perfection, which would be absurd, or that it is not morally perfectible, which experience belies. Degenerate peoples.

History shows us that many peoples, after upheavals that profoundly convulsed them, have relapsed into barbarism. Where, in this case, is the progress?

“When your house threatens to fall into ruin, you have it demolished and you build another more solid and more comfortable. But, while the latter is not ready, there is disturbance and confusion in your dwelling.

“Understand also the following: you were poor and dwelt in a hovel; on becoming rich, you left it, to dwell in a palace. Then, a poor wretch, such as you were before, comes to take the place you occupied and is very content, because he was without anywhere to shelter himself.

Well then! learn that the Spirits who, incarnate, constitute the degenerate people are not those who constituted it in the time of its splendor. Those of that time, having advanced, passed on to more perfect dwellings and progressed, while the others, less advanced, took the place that had been left vacant and which they too, in their turn, will one day have to leave.”

Are there not races rebellious, by their nature, to progress?

“There are, but they are being corporally annihilated, every day.”

a — What will be the future lot of the souls that animate those races?

“They will attain, like all the others, perfection, by passing through other existences. God disinherits no one.”

b — Thus, may it be that the most civilized men were savages and cannibals?

“You yourself were so more than once, before being what you are.”

Peoples are collective individualities which, like individuals, pass through infancy, the age of maturity, and decrepitude. Is not this truth, which History confirms, of a kind to make one suppose that the most advanced peoples of this century will have their decline and their extinction, like those of Antiquity?

“Peoples who live only the life of the body, those whose grandeur rests solely on force and territorial extent, are born, grow, and die, because the strength of a people becomes exhausted, like that of a man.

Those whose selfish laws obstruct the progress of enlightenment and of charity die, because light kills darkness and charity kills selfishness.

But, for peoples as for individuals, there is the life of the soul. Those whose laws harmonize with the eternal laws of the Creator will live and will serve as a beacon to the other peoples.”

Will progress one day make all the peoples of the Earth be gathered together, forming a single nation?

“A single nation, no; that would be impossible, since from the diversity of climates originate different customs and needs, which constitute nationalities, making laws appropriate to those customs and needs always indispensable. Charity, however, knows no latitudes and does not distinguish the color of men.

When, everywhere, the law of God serves as the basis of human law, peoples will practice charity among themselves, as individuals do. Then they will live happy and in peace, because none will care to cause harm to his neighbor, nor to live at his expense.”

Humanity progresses, by means of individuals who little by little improve and instruct themselves. When these preponderate in number, they take the lead and draw the others along.

From time to time, men of genius arise in its midst who give it an impulse; then come, as instruments of God, those who have authority and, in a few years, make it advance by many centuries.

The progress of peoples also highlights the justice of reincarnation.

Praiseworthy efforts are employed by men of good to bring it about that a nation advances, morally and intellectually. Transformed, the nation will be more fortunate in this world and in the other, one can conceive. But, during its slow march across the centuries, thousands of individuals die every day. What is the lot of all those who succumb along the way? Will their relative inferiority deprive them of the happiness reserved for those who arrive last? Or will the happiness that falls to them also be relative? It is not possible that divine justice should have consecrated such an injustice.

With the plurality of existences, the right to happiness is equal for all, because no one remains deprived of progress. Since those who lived in the time of barbarism can return, in the epoch of civilization, to live in the midst of the same people, or of another, it is clear that all draw benefit from the ascending march.

Another difficulty, however, is presented here by the system of the singularity of existences. According to this system, the soul is created at the moment when the human being is born. Then, if one man is more advanced than another, it is that God created for him a more advanced soul. Why this favor? What merit has this man, who has not lived more than another, who has perhaps lived less, to be endowed with a superior soul?

This, however, is not the principal difficulty. If men lived a thousand years, one could conceive that, in that thousand-year period, they had time to progress. But daily creatures die at all ages; they are incessantly renewed on the face of the planet, in such a way that every day a multitude of them appears and another disappears. At the end of a thousand years, there is no longer in that nation any trace of its former inhabitants. Nevertheless, from barbarous, that it was, it has become civilized. What was it that progressed? Was it the individuals once barbarous? But these died long ago. Was it the newcomers? But if their souls were created at the moment when they were born, those souls did not exist in the epoch of barbarism, and one will then be forced to admit that the efforts expended to civilize a people have the power, not of improving imperfect souls, but of making God create more perfect souls.

Let us compare this theory of progress with the one the Spirits have presented.

The souls that have come in the time of civilization had their infancy, like all the others, but had already lived before and come advanced by effect of the progress accomplished previously. They come attracted by an environment that is congenial to them and that is in relation to the state in which they currently find themselves. So that the care bestowed upon the civilization of a people does not have as a consequence the making, in the future, of more perfect souls;

it has, rather, that of attracting those that have already progressed, whether they have lived in the midst of the people one figures, in the time of its barbarism, or whether they come from elsewhere. Here is likewise presented to us the key to the progress of the whole of Humanity.

When all peoples are at the same level, with respect to the sentiment of good, the Earth will be a gathering point exclusively of good Spirits, who will live fraternally united. The bad ones, feeling themselves there repelled and out of place, will go to seek, in inferior worlds, the environment that suits them, until they are worthy to return to ours, then transformed.

From the common theory it further results that the works of social improvement profit only the present and future generations, being of null results for the past generations, which committed the error of coming too soon, and which remain being what they can be, overburdened with the weight of their acts of barbarism.

According to the doctrine of the Spirits, the later progresses profit equally the past generations, which return to live in better conditions and can thus perfect themselves in the focus of civilization.

Civilization.

Is civilization a progress or, as some philosophers understand it, a decadence of Humanity?

“Incomplete progress. Man does not pass suddenly from infancy to maturity.”

a — Would it be rational to condemn civilization?

“Condemn rather those who abuse it, and not the work of God.”

Will civilization one day be refined, so as to make disappear the evils it may have produced?

“Yes, when morality is as developed as intelligence. The fruit cannot appear before the flower.”

Why does civilization not immediately effect all the good it could produce?

“Because men are not yet apt nor disposed to attain it.”

a — Is it not also because, creating new needs, it gives rise to new passions?

“It is, and also because not all the faculties of the Spirit progress simultaneously.

Time is needed for everything. From an incomplete civilization you cannot expect perfect fruits.”

By what signs can a complete civilization be recognized?

“You will recognize it by moral development.

You believe yourselves very advanced, because you have made great discoveries and obtained marvelous inventions; because you lodge and clothe yourselves better than the savages. Nevertheless, you will not truly have the right to call yourselves civilized, except when from your society you have banished the vices that dishonor it and when you live as brothers, practicing Christian charity.

Until then, you will be only enlightened peoples, who have traversed the first phase of civilization.”

Civilization, like all things, presents diverse gradations; an incomplete civilization is a transitory state, which generates special evils, unknown to man in the primitive state. Yet, for all that, it nonetheless constitutes a natural, necessary progress, which brings with it the remedy for the evil it causes.

As civilization perfects itself, it puts an end to some of the evils it generated, evils that will all disappear with moral progress.

Of two nations that have reached the summit of the social scale, only that one can be considered the more civilized in the legitimate acceptation of the term, where there exists less selfishness, less covetousness, and less pride; where the habits are more intellectual and moral than material; where intelligence can develop with greater liberty; where there is more goodness, good faith, benevolence, and reciprocal generosity; where the prejudices of caste and of birth show themselves less rooted, since such prejudices are incompatible with the true love of neighbor; where the laws consecrate no privilege and are the same, both for the last and for the first; where justice is exercised with less partiality; where the weak always finds support against the strong; where the life of man, his beliefs and opinions, are better respected; where there exists a smaller number of unfortunates; in short, where every man of good will is certain of not lacking what is necessary. Progress of human legislation.

Could society govern itself solely by natural laws, without the concurrence of human laws?

“It could, if all understood them well. If men wished to practice them, they would suffice.

Society, however, has its requirements. Special laws are necessary for it.”

What is the cause of the instability of human laws?

“In the epochs of barbarism, it is the strongest who make the laws, and they made them for themselves. In proportion as men came to understand justice better, the modification of them became indispensable. The more they approach true justice, the less unstable human laws are, that is, the more stable they become, as they come to be made for all and identify themselves with natural law.”

Civilization created new needs for man, needs relative to the social position he occupies. One must then regulate, by means of human laws, the rights and duties of that position. But, influenced by his passions, he has not rarely created imaginary rights and duties, which natural law condemns and which peoples strike from their codes as they progress.

Natural law is immutable and the same for all; human law is variable and progressive. In the infancy of societies, only the latter could consecrate the right of the strongest.

In the present state of society, does not the severity of penal laws constitute a necessity?

“A depraved society certainly needs severe laws.

Unfortunately, these laws are more destined to punish evil after it is done, than to dry up its source.

Only education can reform men, who, then, will no longer need such rigorous laws.”

How can man be led to reform his laws?

“This occurs naturally, by the very force of things and the influence of the persons who guide him on the path of progress. Many he has already reformed, and many others he will reform. Wait!”

Influence of Spiritism on progress.

Will Spiritism become a common belief, or will it remain shared, as a belief, only by a few persons?

“Certainly it will become a general belief and will mark a new era in the history of humanity, because it is in nature and the time has come when it will occupy a place among human knowledge.

It will, however, have to sustain great struggles, more against interest than against conviction, for there is no concealing the existence of persons interested in combating it, some out of self-love, others for entirely material causes. But, as they will come to be isolated, its contradictors will feel themselves forced to think like the rest, under penalty of becoming ridiculous.”

Ideas transform themselves only with time; never suddenly. From generation to generation, they weaken and end by disappearing, gradually, with those who professed them, who come to be replaced by other individuals imbued with new principles, as happens with political ideas.

Behold paganism. There is today no one who professes the religious ideas of pagan times. Yet, many centuries after the advent of Christianity, there still remained vestiges of them, which only the complete renewal of the races succeeded in effacing.

So it will be with Spiritism. It progresses much; but, for two or three generations, there will still be a ferment of incredulity, which only time will annihilate. Its march, however, will be more rapid than that of Christianity, because Christianity itself is what opens the way for it and serves as its support. Christianity had to destroy; Spiritism has only to build.

In what manner can Spiritism contribute to progress?

“By destroying materialism, which is one of the plagues of society, it makes men understand where their true interests are found. The future life ceasing to be veiled by doubt, man will better perceive that, by means of the present, it is given to him to prepare his future. Abolishing the prejudices of sects, castes, and colors, it teaches men the great solidarity that is to unite them as brothers.”

Is it not to be feared that Spiritism may not succeed in triumphing over the negligence of men and their attachment to material things?

“He knows men very little who imagines that any cause whatever can transform them as if by enchantment. Ideas modify themselves only little by little, according to the individuals, and it is necessary that some generations pass, in order that the vestiges of old habits be totally effaced. The transformation, then, can only with time, gradually and progressively, be effected. For each generation a part of the veil dissipates. Spiritism comes to tear it from top to bottom. Yet, even were it only to correct in a man a single defect, it would already have forced him to take a step. It would have done him, by that alone, great good, for that first step will facilitate the others for him.”

Why did the Spirits not teach, in all times, what they teach today?

“You do not teach children what you teach adults, and you do not give the newborn a food that he cannot digest. Each thing has its time.

They taught many things that men did not understand or adulterated, but that they can understand now. With their teachings, though incomplete, they prepared the ground to receive the seed that is to bear fruit.”

Seeing that Spiritism must mark a progress of Humanity, why do the Spirits not hasten that progress, by means of manifestations so generalized and patent that conviction may penetrate even the most incredulous?

“You would wish for miracles; but God scatters them in handfuls before your steps and, nevertheless, there are still men who deny him.

Did Christ himself, perchance, succeed in convincing his contemporaries, by means of the prodigies he worked? Do you not know at present some who deny the most patent facts, occurring before their eyes? Are there not those who say they would not believe, even if they saw?

No; it is not by means of prodigies that God wishes to guide men. In his goodness, he leaves them the merit of convincing themselves by reason.”