LAW OF LIBERTY.

Natural liberty.

— 2. Slavery.

— 3. Liberty of thought. — 4. Liberty of conscience. — 5. Free will. — 6. Fatality.

— 7. Knowledge of the future. — 8. Theoretical summary of the mainspring of man's actions.

Natural liberty.

Are there situations in the world in which man may boast of enjoying absolute liberty?

“No, for you all need one another, the small as well as the great.”

Under what conditions could man enjoy absolute liberty?

“In those of the hermit in the desert.

As soon as two men are together, there exist between them reciprocal rights that they must respect; no longer, therefore, does either of them enjoy absolute liberty.”

Does the obligation to respect the rights of others take from man the right to belong to himself?

“By no means, for this is a right that comes to him from nature.”

How can the liberal opinions of certain men be reconciled with the despotism they are accustomed to exercise in their own home and over their subordinates?

“They have the understanding of natural law, but counterbalanced by pride and selfishness.

When they are not calculatedly playing a comedy by upholding liberal principles, they understand how things ought to be, but they do not make them so.” a — Will the principles they professed in this world be taken into account for them in the other life?

“The more intelligence a man has to understand a principle, the less excusable is he for not applying it to himself.

In truth I tell you that the simple but sincere man is further advanced on the path of God than one who would seem what he is not.” Slavery.

Are there men who are by nature destined to be the property of other men?

“All absolute subjection of one man to another man is contrary to the law of God.

Slavery is an abuse of force. It disappears with progress, as gradually all abuses will disappear.”

The human law that sanctions slavery is contrary to Nature, for it likens man to the irrational animal and degrades him physically and morally.

When slavery forms part of the customs of a people, are those who profit from it to be censured, even though they do so only in conformity with a usage that seems natural to them?

“Evil is always evil, and there is no sophism that can make a bad action become good.

The responsibility for the evil, however, is relative to the means a man has of understanding it.

He who profits from the law of slavery is always guilty of violating the law of Nature. But here, as in everything, culpability is relative.

Slavery having been introduced into the customs of certain peoples, it became possible for man, in good faith, to profit from it as from a thing that seemed natural to him.

However, once his reason, more developed and, above all, enlightened by the lights of Christianity, showed him that the slave was his equal before God, he has no further excuse.”

Does not the natural inequality of aptitudes place certain human races under the dependence of the more intelligent races?

“Yes, but in order that these may raise them up, not to brutify them still more by enslavement.

For a long time men have considered certain human races as beasts of labor, furnished with arms and hands, and have deemed themselves to have the right to sell those of these races like beasts of burden. They consider themselves of purer blood, those who act thus. Senseless! they see nothing but matter.

It is not the blood that is more or less pure, but the Spirit.”

There are, nevertheless, men who treat their slaves with humanity; who let them lack nothing and believe that liberty would expose them to greater privations. What do you say of this?

“I say that these understand their own interests better. They bestow the same care upon their oxen and horses, so as to obtain a good price for them in the market.

They are not as guilty as those who mistreat their slaves, but they none the less dispose of them as of a merchandise, depriving them of the right to belong to themselves.” Liberty of thought.

Is there in man anything that escapes all constraint and by which he enjoys absolute liberty?

“In thought man enjoys unlimited liberty, for there is no way to put fetters on it.

Its flight may be arrested, but it cannot be annihilated.”

Is man responsible for his thought?

“Before God, he is. God alone being able to know it, He condemns or absolves it, according to His justice.”

Liberty of conscience.

Is liberty of conscience a consequence of liberty of thought?

“Conscience is an intimate thought, which belongs to man, like all other thoughts.”

Has man the right to put any hindrance on liberty of conscience?

“He lacks that right as much as with reference to liberty of thought, since it belongs to God alone to judge the conscience.

Just as men, by their laws, regulate the relations from man to man, so God, by the laws of nature, regulates the relations between Himself and man.”

What results from the hindrances that may be opposed to liberty of conscience?

“To constrain men to act in disagreement with their way of thinking is to make them hypocrites.

Liberty of conscience is one of the characteristics of true civilization and of progress.”

Is every belief whatsoever respectable, even when notoriously false?

“Every belief is respectable when it is sincere and conducive to the practice of good.

Condemnable are the beliefs that lead to evil.”

Is he reprehensible who scandalizes with his belief another who does not think as he does?

“That is to fail in charity and to encroach upon liberty of thought.”

Is it an encroachment upon liberty of conscience to set obstacles to beliefs capable of causing disturbances to society?

“Acts may be repressed, but the intimate belief is inaccessible.”

To repress the exterior acts of a belief, when they bring any harm to others, is not to encroach upon liberty of conscience, for that repression in no way takes from the belief the liberty that it retains intact.

In order to respect liberty of conscience, should one allow pernicious doctrines to spread, or may one, without encroaching upon that liberty, seek to bring back to the path of truth those who have gone astray in obedience to false principles?

“Certainly you may, and even must; but teach, after the example of Jesus, making use of gentleness and persuasion and not of force, which would be worse than the belief of the one you would wish to convince.

If anything can be imposed, it is good and fraternity. But we do not believe that the best means of making them accepted is to act with violence. Conviction is not imposed.”

By what signs may one recognize, among all the doctrines that cherish the pretension of being the sole expression of truth, the one that has the right to present itself as such?

“It will be the one that makes the most men of good and the fewest hypocrites, that is to say, by the practice of the law of love in its greatest purity and its widest application. This is the sign by which you will recognize that a doctrine is good, seeing that every doctrine that has for its effect the sowing of disunion and the establishing of a line of separation between the children of God cannot fail to be false and pernicious.” Free will.

Has man free will in his acts?

“Since he has the liberty to think, he has equally the liberty to act. Without free will, man would be a machine.”

Does man enjoy free will from his birth?

“There is liberty to act as soon as there is the will to do so.

In the first phases of life, liberty is almost nil, developing and changing its object with the development of the faculties.

Its thoughts being in accord with what its age requires, the child applies its free will to that which is necessary for it.”

Do not the instinctive predispositions that man already brings with him at birth constitute obstacles to the exercise of free will?

“The instinctive predispositions are those of the Spirit before incarnating. According as this is more or less advanced, they may drag it into the practice of reprehensible acts, in which it will be seconded by the Spirits who sympathize with those dispositions.

There is, however, no irresistible compulsion, once there is the will to resist. Remember that to will is to be able.”

Does the organism exert no influence over the acts of life? And, if that influence exists, is it not exerted to the detriment of free will?

“It is undeniable that matter exerts an influence over the Spirit, which may hamper its manifestations.

Hence it comes that, in the worlds where the bodies are less material than on Earth, the faculties unfold more freely.

But the instrument does not give the faculty. Moreover, the moral faculties must be distinguished from the intellectual ones.

When a man has the instinct of murder, it is his own Spirit, undoubtedly, that possesses that instinct and that gives it to him; it is not his organs that give it to him.

Like the brute, and even worse than it, becomes the one who nullifies his thought, in order to occupy himself only with matter, for he no longer takes care to guard himself against evil. In this he falls into fault, since he acts thus by his own will.” (See no. 367 and following — Influence of the organism.)

Does the aberration of the faculties take from man free will?

“He is no longer master of his thought whose intelligence is disturbed by some cause, and from then on he no longer has liberty.

That aberration often constitutes a punishment for the Spirit which, perhaps, was, in another existence, frivolous and proud, or made bad use of its faculties. Such a Spirit may, in such a case, be reborn in the body of an idiot, as the despot in that of a slave and the wicked rich man in that of a beggar. But the Spirit suffers from the effect of that constraint, of which it has perfect consciousness. There is the action of matter.” (no. 371 and following.)

Will it serve as an excuse for reprehensible acts that the aberration of the intellectual faculties is due to drunkenness?

“No, because it was voluntarily that the drunkard deprived himself of his reason, in order to satisfy brutal passions.

Instead of one fault, he commits two.”

Which is the predominant faculty in man in a state of savagery: instinct or free will?

“Instinct, which does not prevent him from acting with entire liberty in regard to certain things. But he applies, like the child, this liberty to his needs, and it broadens with intelligence.

Consequently, you who are more enlightened than a savage are also more responsible for what you do than a savage is for his acts.”

Does not the social position sometimes constitute, for man, an obstacle to the entire liberty of his acts?

“It is beyond doubt that the world has its exigencies. God is just and takes everything into account.

He leaves you, however, the responsibility of employing no effort to overcome the obstacles.”

Fatality.

Is there fatality in the events of life, according to the sense given to this word? That is to say: are all events predetermined? And, in this case, what becomes of free will?

“Fatality exists solely through the choice that the Spirit made, on incarnating, of this or that trial to undergo. In choosing it, it instituted for itself a kind of destiny, which is the very consequence of the position in which it comes to find itself placed.

I speak of the physical trials, for as regards the moral trials and temptations, the Spirit, retaining its free will as to good and evil, is always master to yield or to resist.

On seeing it falter, a good Spirit may come to its aid, but cannot influence it in such a way as to dominate its will.

An evil Spirit, that is, an inferior one, by showing it, by exaggerating in its eyes a physical danger, may shake and frighten it.

None the less, however, does the will of the incarnate Spirit cease to keep itself free of any fetters.”

There are persons who seem persecuted by a fatality, independent of the manner in which they act. Is not the misfortune in their destiny?

“They are, perhaps, trials that fall to them to undergo and that they chose.

But here again you charge to destiny what is most often only the consequence of your own faults.

Strive to have a pure conscience in the midst of the ills that afflict you, and you will already feel yourself sufficiently consoled.”

The exact or false ideas that we form of things lead us to succeed or to fail, according to our character and our social position.

We find it simpler and less humiliating to our self-love to attribute the failures we experience to chance or to destiny rather than to our own fault.

It is certain that the influence of the Spirits sometimes contributes to this, but it is also certain that we can always shield ourselves from that influence by repelling the ideas they suggest to us when they are bad.

Some persons escape one mortal danger only to fall into another. It seems they could not escape death. Is there not in this a fatality?

“Fatal, in the true sense of the word, only the instant of death is. When that moment has come, in one form or another, you cannot evade it.”

a — Thus, whatever danger may threaten us, if the hour of death has not yet come, we shall not die?

“No; you will not perish, and you have thousands of examples of this.

But when the hour of your departure strikes, nothing can prevent you from departing.

God knows beforehand of what kind man's death will be, and often his Spirit also knows it, this having been revealed to it when it chose such or such an existence.”

From the fact that the hour of death is infallible, may one deduce that the precautions we take to avoid it are useless?

“No, seeing that the precautions you take are suggested to you with the aim of your avoiding the death that threatens you. They are one of the means employed so that it does not occur.”

With what aim does Providence make us run dangers that are to have no consequence?

“The fact that your life is put in danger constitutes a warning that you yourself desired, in order to turn yourself away from evil and to make yourself better.

If you escape that danger, while still under the impression of the risk you ran, you consider, more or less seriously, bettering yourself, according as the influence of the good Spirits over you is more or less strong.

The evil Spirit supervening (I say evil, understanding the evil that still exists in it), 4 you begin to think that you will likewise escape other dangers and you let your passions break loose anew.

By means of the dangers you run, God reminds you of your weakness and the fragility of your existence.

If you examine the cause and the nature of the danger, you will find that, almost always, its consequences would have been the punishment of a fault committed or of negligence in the fulfillment of a duty. God, in that manner, exhorts the Spirit to come to itself and to amend.”

Does the Spirit know beforehand of what kind its death will be?

“It knows that the kind of life it chose exposes it more to dying in this way than in that.

It likewise knows what struggles it will have to sustain to avoid it and that, if God permits, it will not succumb.”

There are men who face the dangers of combat, persuaded in a certain way that the hour has not come for them. Is there any foundation for that confidence?

“Very often man has the presentiment of his end, as he may have that of his not yet dying.

That presentiment comes to him from the Spirits his protectors, who thus warn him so that he may be ready to depart, or strengthen his courage in the moments when he most needs it.

It may also come to him from the intuition he has of the existence he chose, or of the mission he accepted and that he knows he must fulfill.”

Why is it that those who have a presentiment of death generally fear it less than others?

“It is the man who fears death, not the Spirit.

He who has a presentiment of it thinks more as a Spirit than as a man. He understands that it is his liberation and awaits it.”

With all the accidents that befall us in the course of life, does the same hold as with death, which cannot be avoided when it has to occur?

“These are ordinarily very insignificant things, so that we can forewarn you of them and make you avoid them sometimes, by directing your thought, for material sufferings displease us. This, however, has no importance in the life you chose.

Fatality, truly, exists only as regards the moment in which you are to appear and to disappear from this world.” a — Are there facts that must necessarily occur and that the Spirits cannot avert, even though they wish to?

“There are, but which you saw and foresaw when, in the state of Spirit, you made your choice.

Do not believe, however, that all that happens is written, as is commonly said.

Any event may be the consequence of an act you performed by your own free will, in such a way that, if you had not performed it, the event would not have occurred.

Imagine that you burn your finger. That is nothing other than the result of your imprudence and the effect of matter.

Only the great sorrows, the important facts capable of influencing the moral being, does God foresee, because they are useful to your purification and your instruction.”

Can man, by his will and by his acts, make events that ought to take place not occur, and reciprocally?

“He can, if that apparent change in the order of facts has a place in the sequence of the life he chose.

Moreover, in order to do good, as is his duty, since that constitutes the sole object of life, it is granted to him to prevent evil, above all that which may contribute to the production of a greater evil.”

Does the man who kills [another man] know that, in choosing a new existence, he will become a murderer in it? n

“No. In choosing a life of struggles, he knows that he will have occasion to kill one of his fellow men, but he does not know whether he will do it, seeing that the crime will almost always be preceded, on his part, by the deliberation to commit it.

Now, he who deliberates upon a thing is always free to do it or not.

If he knew beforehand that, as a man, he would have to commit a crime, the Spirit would be predestined to it. But know that no one is predestined to crime and that every crime, like any other act, always results from the will and from free will.

“Besides, you always confound two very distinct things: the material occurrences of life and the acts of the moral life.

The fatality that sometimes exists, exists only in relation to those material occurrences, whose cause lies outside of you and which are independent of your will.

As for the acts of the moral life, these always emanate from man himself who, consequently, always has the liberty to choose. With regard, then, to those acts, there is never fatality.”

There are persons who never meet with good success in anything, who seem persecuted by an evil genius in all their undertakings. May this not be called fatality?

“It will be a fatality, if you wish to give it that name, but one that proceeds from the kind of existence chosen. It is that those persons wished to be tried by a life of disappointments, in order to exercise patience and resignation; do not believe, however, that this fatality is absolute.

It often results from the false path that such persons take, in discordance with their intelligence and aptitudes.

Great are the probabilities of drowning for one who would try to swim across a river without knowing how to swim. The same holds with regard to the majority of the events of life. Almost always man would obtain good success if he attempted only that which was in relation with his faculties.

What loses him are his self-love and his ambition, which divert him from the path proper to him and make him consider as a vocation what is no more than a desire to satisfy certain passions. He fails through his own fault.

But, instead of blaming himself, he prefers to complain of his star. One, for example, who would be a good workman and would honestly earn his living, sets himself up as a bad poet and dies of hunger. There would be a place in the world for everyone, provided each one knew how to place himself in the place that befits him.”

Do not social customs often oblige man to enter upon one path in preference to another, and is he not subject to the direction of general opinion as to the choice of his occupations? Does not what is called human respect constitute an obstacle to the exercise of free will?

“It is men and not God who make social customs.

If they submit to these, it is because it suits them. Such submission, therefore, represents an act of free will, for, if they wished, they could free themselves from such a yoke. Why, then, do they complain?

They lack reason to accuse social customs. The fault of everything they must charge to the foolish self-love with which they live filled, and which makes them prefer to die of hunger rather than to infringe them.

No one takes into account for them that sacrifice made to public opinion, whereas God will take into account for them the sacrifice they make of their vanities.

This does not mean that man should affront that opinion without necessity, as some do in whom there is more originality than true philosophy. There is as much folly in seeking to be pointed at with the finger, or considered a curious animal, as there is wisdom in descending voluntarily and without murmuring, as soon as one can no longer keep oneself at the top of the scale.”

Just as there are persons to whom fortune is contrary in everything, others seem favored by it, for everything turns out well for them. To what is this to be attributed?

“Ordinarily, it is that those persons know how to conduct themselves better in their enterprises.

But it may also be a kind of trial. Success intoxicates them; they trust in their destiny and often pay later for that success, by means of cruel reverses that prudence would have made them avoid.”

How is it explained that fortune favors some persons in circumstances with which neither will nor intelligence has anything to do: in gambling, for example?

“Some Spirits have chosen beforehand certain kinds of pleasure. The fortune that favors them is a temptation.

He who, as a man, gains, loses as a Spirit. It is a trial for his pride and his cupidity.”

Then the fatality that seems to preside over the material destinies of our life is also a result of our free will?

“You yourself chose your trial. The harder it is and the better you bear it, the more you will raise yourself.

Those who pass life in abundance and in human felicity are pusillanimous Spirits, who remain stationary.

Thus, the number of the unfortunate is far superior to that of the happy of this world, seeing that the Spirits, in the majority, seek the trials that would be most profitable to them. They see perfectly well the futility of your grandeurs and enjoyments.

Moreover, the happiest existence is always agitated, always disturbed, if by nothing else, by the absence of sorrow.” (525 and following.)

Whence comes the expression: To be born under a good star?

“An ancient superstition, which bound the destinies of men to the stars. An allegory that some persons are foolish enough to take literally.”

Knowledge of the future.

Can the future be revealed to man?

“In principle, the future is hidden from him, and only in rare and exceptional cases does God permit it to be revealed.”

With what aim is the future kept hidden from man?

“If man knew the future, he would neglect the present and would not act with the liberty with which he does, because he would be dominated by the idea that, if a thing has to happen, it would be useless to occupy himself with it, or else he would seek to prevent its happening.

God did not will it to be so, in order that each one may contribute to the realization of things, even of those he would wish to oppose. Thus it is that you yourself often prepare the events that are to befall in the course of your existence.”

But, if it is fitting that the future remain hidden, why does God permit it to be revealed sometimes?

“He permits it when the foreknowledge of the future facilitates the execution of a thing, instead of hindering it, by obliging man to act differently from the way in which he would act if the revelation were not made to him.

Not seldom, too, it is a trial. The prospect of an event may suggest thoughts more or less good. If a man comes to learn, for example, that he is going to receive an inheritance on which he does not count, it may happen that the revelation of that fact awakens in him the sentiment of covetousness, through the prospect of greater earthly enjoyments becoming possible to him, through the eagerness to possess the inheritance sooner, perhaps desiring, in order that this may come about, the death of him from whom he will inherit. Or else, that prospect will inspire in him good sentiments and generous thoughts.

If the prediction is not fulfilled, there is another trial, consisting in the manner in which he will bear the disappointment. None the less, however, will the merit or demerit of the good or bad thoughts that belief in the occurrence of that fact made arise within him belong to him.”

Since God knows all things, He is not ignorant whether a man will succumb or not in a given trial. This being so, what is the necessity of that trial, since it will add nothing to what God already knows concerning that man?

“This is equivalent to asking why God did not create man perfect and finished ;

why man passes through childhood before reaching the condition of adulthood.

“The trial has not for its aim to give God enlightenment about man, for God knows perfectly what he is worth, but to give man all the responsibility of his action, since he has the liberty to do or not to do.

Endowed with the faculty of choosing between good and evil, the trial has for its effect to put him in struggle with the temptations of evil and to confer on him all the merit of resistance.

Now, although He knows beforehand whether he will acquit himself well or not, God cannot, in His justice, punish, nor reward, for an act not yet performed.”

So it happens among men. However capable a student may be, however great the certainty one may have that he will achieve good success, no one confers any degree on him without examination, that is, without trial.

In the same way, the judge does not condemn an accused except on the ground of a consummated act and not on the foresight that he might or should consummate that act.

The more one reflects on the consequences that the knowledge of the future would have for man, the better one sees how wise Providence was in hiding it from him. The certainty of a fortunate event would cast him into inaction. That of an unhappy event would fill him with discouragement. In both cases, his forces would be paralyzed. Hence the future is not shown to him except as a goal he must attain by his efforts, while ignorant of the channels through which he will have to pass to reach it. The knowledge of all the incidents of the journey would hinder his initiative and the use of free will. He would let himself slide down the fatal slope of events, without exercising his faculties. When the happy success of a thing is assured, no one occupies himself with it any longer. Theoretical summary of the mainspring of man's actions.

The question of free will may be summed up thus: Man is not fatally led to evil; the acts he performs were not previously determined; the crimes he commits do not result from a sentence of destiny.

He may, by way of trial and of expiation, choose an existence in which he is dragged toward crime, whether by the environment in which he finds himself placed or by the circumstances that supervene, but he will always be free to act or not to act.

Thus, free will exists for him, when in the state of Spirit, in making the choice of the existence and of the trials, and, as an incarnate being, in the faculty of yielding to or resisting the compulsions to which we have all voluntarily submitted ourselves.

It falls to education to combat those bad tendencies. It will do so usefully when it is based on the profound study of the moral nature of man. By the knowledge of the laws that govern that moral nature, one will come to modify it, as one modifies the intelligence by instruction and the temperament by hygiene. n

Disengaged from matter and in the state of erraticity, the Spirit proceeds to the choice of its future corporeal existences, according to the degree of perfection it has reached, and it is in this, as we have said, that consists above all its free will.

This liberty, incarnation does not annul. If it yields to the influence of matter, it is that it succumbs in the trials it itself chose.

In order to have someone to help it overcome them, it is granted to it to invoke the assistance of God and of the good Spirits.

Without free will, man would have neither guilt in practicing evil, nor merit in practicing good.

And this is so far recognized that, in the world, blame or praise is given to the intention, that is, to the will.

Now, whoever says will says liberty. No excuse, therefore, can man seek for his offenses in his physical organization, without abdicating his reason and his condition as a human being, in order to put himself on a level with the brute.

If it were so as regards evil, it could not but be so as regards good. But, when man practices good, he takes great care to enter the fact to his account, as merit, and does not think of crediting his organs for it, which proves that, by instinct, he does not renounce, despite the opinion of some systematizers, the most beautiful privilege of his species: the liberty to think.

Fatality, as it is commonly understood, supposes the previous and irrevocable decision of all the occurrences of life, whatever their importance.

If such were the order of things, man would be like a machine without will. Of what use would his intelligence be to him, since he had to be invariably dominated, in all his acts, by the force of destiny? Such a doctrine, if true, would contain the destruction of all moral liberty; there would no longer be, for man, responsibility, nor, consequently, good, nor evil, crimes or virtues.

It would not be possible that God, sovereignly just, should punish His creatures for faults whose commission did not depend on them, nor that He should reward them for virtues of which they would have no merit.

Moreover, such a law would be the negation of that of progress, since man, expecting everything from chance, would attempt nothing to better his position, seeing that he could be neither more nor less.

Nevertheless, fatality is not an empty word. It exists in the position that man occupies on Earth and in the functions he performs there, in consequence of the kind of life that his Spirit chose as trial, expiation, or mission.

He fatally undergoes all the vicissitudes of that existence and all the tendencies, good or bad, that are inherent to it. There, however, fatality ends, for it depends on his will to yield or not to those tendencies.

The details of the events, these remain subordinate to the circumstances that he himself creates by his acts, and in those circumstances the Spirits may influence by the thoughts they suggest.

There is fatality, therefore, in the events that present themselves, these being the consequence of the choice that the Spirit made of its existence as a man.

There may cease to be fatality in the result of such events, seeing that it is possible for man, by his prudence, to modify their course. There is never fatality in the acts of the moral life.

As regards death, man finds himself submitted, absolutely, to the inexorable law of fatality, since he cannot escape the sentence that marks for him the term of his existence, nor the kind of death that is to cut its thread.

According to the common doctrine, man would draw from himself all his instincts, which would then proceed either from his physical organization, for which no responsibility touches him, or from his own nature, in which case it would be lawful for him to seek to excuse himself with himself, saying that the fault of being made as he is does not belong to him.

Much more moral, unquestionably, shows itself the Spiritist Doctrine. It admits in man free will in all its fullness, and, if it tells him that, in practicing evil, he yields to a foreign and evil suggestion, it in no way diminishes his responsibility, for it recognizes in him the power to resist, which is evidently much easier for him than to struggle against his own nature.

Thus, according to the Spiritist Doctrine, there is no irresistible compulsion: man can always close his ears to the hidden voice that speaks to him within, inducing him to evil, as he can close them to the material voice of one who speaks to him openly. He can do so by the action of his will, asking of God the necessary strength and claiming, for that end, the assistance of the good Spirits. This is what Jesus taught us by means of the sublime prayer that is the Lord's Prayer, when he bids us say: “Let us not succumb to temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

This theory of the determining cause of our acts stands out with evidence from all the teaching that the Spirits have given. Not only is it sublime in morality, but also, we will add, it raises man in his own eyes. It shows him free to withdraw himself from an obsessing yoke, as he is free to close his house to the importunate. He ceases to be a mere machine, acting by the effect of an impulse independent of his will, in order to be a rational being who hears, judges, and freely chooses one of two counsels.

Let us add that, in spite of this, man is not deprived of initiative, does not cease to act of his own impulse, for, in the end, he is only an incarnate Spirit who retains, under the corporeal envelope, the qualities and the defects he had as a Spirit.

Consequently, the faults we commit have for their primary source the imperfection of our own Spirit, which has not yet conquered the moral superiority it will one day attain, but which, none the less, does not lack free will.

The corporeal life is given to it in order to cleanse itself of its imperfections, by means of the trials it undergoes — imperfections that, precisely, make it weaker and more accessible to the suggestions of other imperfect Spirits, who take advantage of them to try to make it succumb in the struggle in which it has engaged. If from that struggle it comes forth victorious, it raises itself; if it fails, it remains what it was, neither worse nor better. It will be a trial it must begin again, and it may happen that it spends a long time in that alternation. The more it purifies itself, the more the reasons for its elevation diminish, its moral strength grows, causing the evil Spirits to withdraw from it.

All the Spirits, more or less good, when incarnate, constitute the human species, and, as our world is one of the least advanced, there is counted in it a greater number of evil Spirits than of good ones. Such is the reason why we see in it so much perversity.

Let us make, then, every effort not to return to this planet after the present sojourn, and to merit going to rest in a better world, in one of those privileged worlds, where we shall remember our passage here only as a temporary exile. Note: [Justification for the correction in the translation of question no. 861, stated thus in the printed book: “In choosing his existence, did the Spirit of the one who commits a murder know that he would come to be a murderer?” This question appears absolutely identical in the original French of Heaven and Hell: “L'homme qui commet un meurtre sait-il, en choisissant son existence, qu'il deviendra assassin ?” , and was thus translated by M. Quintão: “Does the man who kills know that, in choosing a new existence, he will become a murderer in it?” (Heaven and Hell, Part II, Chap. VI.) — K. J.] [1] [by moral hygiene and education.]