THE PATHWAY OF LIFE.

The question of the plurality of existences has long preoccupied philosophers, and more than one has recognized in the pre-existence of the soul the only possible solution to the most important problems of psychology. Without this principle, they found themselves stopped at every step, cornered in a blind alley from which they could escape only with the aid of the plurality of existences.

The greatest objection that can be raised against this theory is the absence of any recollection of previous existences. Indeed, a succession of existences unconscious of one another—to leave one body in order to take up another without any memory of the past—would amount to nothingness, since it would be nothingness as far as thought is concerned; it would be a multiplicity of new points of departure, with no connection between them; it would be the ceaseless rupture of all the affections that make the charm of the present life and the sweetest and most consoling hope of the future; it would, in short, be the denial of all moral responsibility. Such a doctrine would be as inadmissible and as incompatible with divine justice as that of a single existence with the prospect of an eternity of punishments for a few temporary faults. One can therefore understand that those who form such an idea of reincarnation reject it; but this is not how Spiritism presents it to us.

The spiritual existence of the soul, says Spiritism, is its normal existence, with an indefinite retrospective recollection. The corporeal existences are merely intervals, brief stopovers in the spiritual existence, the sum of all the stopovers being only a minute fraction of the normal existence, exactly as if, during a journey of many years, the traveler were to halt from time to time for a few hours. Although it may seem that, during the corporeal existences, there is a break in continuity owing to the absence of recollection, the connection is in fact established in the course of the spiritual life, which suffers no interruption. The break in continuity, in reality, exists only for the outward, relational corporeal life, and the absence of recollection there proves the wisdom of Providence, which thus prevented man from being too greatly diverted from the real life, in which he has duties to fulfill; but when the body is at rest, during sleep, the soul takes flight in part and the chain, interrupted only during waking, is then re-established.

To this an objection may still be raised, by asking what profit man can derive from his previous existences for his own improvement, given that he does not remember the faults he may have committed. Spiritism answers, first, that the recollection of wretched existences, added to the miseries of the present life, would make this latter even more painful. In this way God has spared His creatures an increase of suffering. Were it otherwise, how great would be our humiliation when we thought of what we had once been! For our improvement, that recollection would be useless. During each existence, we always take a few steps forward, acquire some qualities, and divest ourselves of some imperfections. Each of these existences is therefore a new point of departure, in which we are such as we have made ourselves, in which we take ourselves for what we are, without concerning ourselves with what we may have been. If, in a previous existence, we were cannibals, what does that matter, since we are so no longer? If we had some defect of which we no longer retain a trace, there is an account settled, with which we need no longer concern ourselves. Let us suppose, on the contrary, that it is a matter of a defect only half corrected: the remainder will be left for the following life, and to correct it is what we must attend to in this one. Let us take an example: a man was a murderer and a thief, and was punished, whether in the corporeal life or in the spiritual life; he repents and corrects himself of the first propensity, but not of the second. In the following existence, he will be only a thief, perhaps a great thief, but no longer a murderer. One more step forward, and he will be no more than an obscure thief; a little later he will no longer steal, but he may have the fleeting impulse to steal, which his conscience will neutralize. Then, a final effort, and, all trace of the moral infirmity having disappeared, he will be a model of probity. What then does it matter to him what he was? Would not the recollection of having ended on the scaffold be a constant torture and humiliation?

Apply this reasoning to all the vices, to all the aberrations, and you will be able to see how the soul improves itself by passing and passing again through the crucibles of incarnation. Will God not have been more just in making man the arbiter of his own destiny, through the efforts he makes to improve himself, than if He had caused his soul to be born at the same time as his body and condemned it to perpetual torments for transient errors, without granting it the means of purifying itself of its imperfections? Through the plurality of existences, his future lies in his own hands. If he takes a long time to improve himself, he suffers the consequences of that way of proceeding: this is supreme justice; hope, however, is never forbidden to him.

The following comparison is apt to render comprehensible the vicissitudes of the life of the soul:

Let us suppose a long road, along whose length there are found, at intervals, but at unequal distances, forests that must be crossed, and at the entrance to each one, the road, broad and magnificent, breaks off, to continue only at the exit. The traveler follows this road and enters the first forest. There, however, he finds no open path; on the contrary, he is met by an inextricable maze in which he loses himself. The light of the sun has disappeared beneath the thick foliage of the trees. He wanders, not knowing where he is heading. At last, after untold fatigue, he reaches the edge of the forest, but exhausted, torn by the thorns, bruised by the boulders. There he discovers the road again and continues his journey, seeking to heal his wounds.

Further on, a second forest looms before him, where the same difficulties await him. But he already possesses a little experience, and he comes out of it less battered. In another, he comes upon a woodcutter who indicates to him the direction he must follow so as not to go astray. With each new crossing, his skill increases, so that he surmounts the obstacles more and more easily. Sure that at the exit he will find the good road again, he relies on that certainty; and then he already knows how to orient himself so as to find it more easily. The road ends at the summit of a very high mountain, from which he beholds the whole way he has traveled since his point of departure. He also sees the different forests he crossed and remembers the vicissitudes he passed through, but that recollection is not painful to him, because he has reached the end of the march. He is like an old soldier who, in the calm of his home, recalls the battles he took part in. Those forests that dotted the road are to him like black points upon a white ribbon, and he says to himself: “When I was in those forests, in the first ones above all, how long they seemed to me to cross! It seemed to me that I would never reach the end; everything around me appeared gigantic and insurmountable. And when I think that, but for that kindly woodcutter who set me on the right path, perhaps I would still be there! Now that I contemplate those same forests from the point where I stand, how small they appear to me! It seems to me that I could have crossed them in a single step; even more, my sight penetrates them and I distinguish their smallest details; I perceive even the missteps I took.” An elder then says to him: — “My son, here you have arrived at the end of the journey; but an indefinite repose would cause you mortal tedium, and you would come to long for the vicissitudes you experienced, which gave activity to your limbs and to your spirit. You see from here a great number of travelers on the road you have traveled, who, like you, run the risk of going astray; you have experience, fear nothing more: go to meet them and seek with your counsel to guide them, so that they may arrive more quickly.”

“I will go gladly,” replies our man; “however, I ask: why is there no direct road from the point of departure to here? That would spare the travelers from having to cross those abominable forests.”

“My son,” the elder rejoins, “look closely and you will see that many avoid the crossing of some of them: they are those who, having more promptly acquired the necessary experience, know how to take a more direct and shorter way to arrive here. That experience, however, is the fruit of the labor that the first crossings imposed upon them, so that they arrive here by virtue of their own merit. What would you know, if you had not passed through there? The activity you had to develop, the resources of imagination you needed to employ in order to open a way, increased your knowledge and developed your intelligence. Had that not happened, you would be as much a novice as you were at the departure; moreover, in seeking to extricate yourself from the difficulties, you contributed to the improvement of the forests you crossed. What you did was a small thing, imperceptible even; consider, however, the thousands of travelers who do as much and who, working for themselves, work, without perceiving it, for the common good. Is it not just that they should receive the wages of their labors in the repose they enjoy here? What right would they have to that repose, if they had done nothing?” “My father,” the traveler answers, “in one of the forests I met a man who said to me: ‘At the edge there is an immense abyss to be cleared in a single leap; but of a thousand, only one succeeds; all the others fall to the bottom of it, into a burning furnace, and remain lost without remission. That abyss I did not see.’”

“My son, it is because it does not exist, for otherwise it would be an abominable snare, set for all who make their way here. I well know that it falls to them to overcome difficulties, but I likewise know that sooner or later they will overcome them. Had I created impossibilities for even a single one, knowing that this one would succumb, I would have committed a cruelty, which would loom immense if it struck the majority of the travelers. That abyss is an allegory, the explanation of which you are about to receive. Look at the road and observe the intervals between the forests. Among the travelers, you see some who walk with slow step and joyful countenance; see those friends, who had lost sight of one another in the labyrinths of the forest, how happy they feel at having found each other again on leaving it. But alongside them there are others who drag themselves along painfully; they are crippled and implore the compassion of those who pass, for they suffer atrociously from the wounds with which, by their own fault, they covered themselves in crossing the thickets of thorns. They will heal, however, and this will constitute for them a lesson from which they will draw profit in the following forest, from which they will come out less bruised. The abyss symbolizes the ills they experience, and in saying that of a thousand only one crosses it, that man was right, for the number of the imprudent is enormous; he was wrong, however, when he said that he who falls there will come out no more. To reach me, the one who has fallen always finds a way out. Go, my son, go and show that way out to those who are at the bottom of the abyss; go and support the wounded who drag themselves along the road, and show the way to those who have plunged into the forests.” The road is the image of the spiritual life of the soul, in the course of which it is more or less happy. The forests are the corporeal existences, in which it works for its own advancement, at the same time as for the general work. The wayfarer who reaches the end and who turns back to help those who come behind represents the guardian angels, the missionaries of God, who feel blessed in seeing Him, as also in unfolding their activities to do good and to obey the supreme Lord.