QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS.

QUESTION. — Spiritism explains perfectly the cause of individual sufferings, as the immediate consequences of the faults committed in the preceding existence, or as expiation of the past; but, since each one is responsible only for his own faults, it does not satisfactorily explain the collective misfortunes that strike agglomerations of individuals, sometimes an entire family, a whole city, a whole nation, a whole race, and which fall upon the good as well as upon the wicked, upon the innocent as well as upon the guilty.

Answer — All the laws that govern the Universe, whether physical or moral, material or intellectual, have been discovered, studied, and understood by proceeding from the study of the individual and of the family to that of the whole ensemble, gradually generalizing them and proving the universality of their results.

The same is verified today with regard to the laws that the study of Spiritism makes known. The laws that govern the individual can be applied, without fear of error, to the family, to the nation, to the races, to the totality of the inhabitants of the worlds, who form collective individualities. There are the faults of the individual, those of the family, those of the nation; and each one, whatever its character, is expiated by virtue of the same law. The executioner, with respect to his victim, whether by coming to find himself in his presence in space, or by living in contact with him in one or in many successive existences, until the reparation of the evil committed. The same occurs when it is a matter of crimes committed jointly by a certain number of persons. The expiations are likewise joint, which does not suppress the simultaneous expiation of individual faults. There are three characters in every man: that of the individual, of the being in himself; that of member of the family; and, finally, that of citizen. Under each of these three aspects he can be criminal and virtuous, that is, he can be virtuous as a father of a family, at the same time as criminal as a citizen, and reciprocally. Hence the special situations that he creates for himself in his successive existences.

Save for some exception, it may be admitted as a general rule that all those who in one existence come to be united by a common task have already lived together to work toward the same objective, and will yet find themselves united in the future, until they have attained the goal, that is, expiated the past, or fulfilled the mission they accepted.

Thanks to Spiritism, you now understand the justice of the trials that do not arise from the acts of the present life, because you recognize that they are the redemption of the debts of the past. Why should it not be so with regard to the collective trials? You say that the misfortunes of a general order reach the innocent as well as the guilty; but do you not know that the innocent of today may be the guilty of yesterday? Whether he is struck individually or collectively, it is because he has merited it. Then, as we have already said, there are the faults of the individual and those of the citizen; the expiation of the one does not exempt from the expiation of the other, for every debt must be paid to the last coin. The virtues of private life differ from those of public life. One who is an excellent citizen may be a very bad father of a family; another who is a good father of a family, upright and honest in his dealings, may be a bad citizen, may have blown upon the fire of discord, oppressed the weak, soiled his hands in crimes against society. These collective faults are the ones expiated collectively by the individuals who concurred in them, who find themselves again united, to suffer together the penalty of retaliation, or to have the opportunity to repair the evil they committed, demonstrating devotion to the public cause, succoring and assisting those whom they once mistreated. Thus, what is incomprehensible, irreconcilable with the justice of God, becomes clear and logical through the knowledge of this law. Solidarity, therefore, which is the true social bond, is not so only for the present; it extends to the past and to the future, for the same individualities have united, unite, and will unite, to ascend together the scale of progress, mutually aiding one another. Behold what Spiritism renders comprehensible, by means of the equitable law of reincarnation and of the continuity of the relations among the same beings.

Clélia Duplantier. n

NOTE. — Although it is subordinate to the known principles of responsibility for the past and of the continuity of the relations among the Spirits, this communication contains an idea in a certain way new and of great importance. The distinction it establishes between the responsibility arising from individual or collective faults, from those of private life and of public life, explains certain facts still poorly understood and shows in a more precise manner the solidarity existing among beings and among generations.

Thus, often an individual is reborn into the same family, or, at least, the members of a family are reborn together to constitute a new family in another social position, in order to tighten the bonds of affection among themselves, or to repair reciprocal wrongs. By considerations of a more general order, the creature is reborn into the same milieu, the same nation, the same race, whether by sympathy, or to continue, with the elements already elaborated, studies begun, in order to perfect itself, to pursue works undertaken which the brevity of life did not permit it to finish. Reincarnation into the same milieu is the determining cause of the distinctive character of peoples and of races. Even while improving, individuals retain the primary tint, until progress has completely transformed them. The Frenchmen of today are, then, those of the past century, those of the Middle Ages, those of the Druidic times; they are the exactors and the victims of feudalism; those who subjugated other peoples and those who labored for their emancipation, who find themselves in a transformed France, where some expiate, in humiliation, their pride of race, and where others enjoy the fruit of their labors. When one considers all the crimes of those times in which the life of men and the honor of families were held of no account, in which fanaticism kindled pyres in honor of the divinity; when one thinks of all the abuses of power, of all the injustices that were committed with contempt for the most sacred rights, who can be certain of not having participated more or less in all of that, and be astonished at witnessing great and terrible collective expiations? But, from these social convulsions an improvement always results; the Spirits enlighten themselves through experience; misfortune is the stimulant that impels them to seek a remedy for the evil; in erraticity, they reflect, they take new resolutions, and, when they return, they do something better. It is thus that, from generation to generation, progress is effected.

It cannot be doubted that there are families, cities, nations, races that are guilty, because, dominated by instincts of pride, of egoism, of ambition, of cupidity, they venture upon an evil path and do collectively what an individual does in isolation. One family enriches itself at the expense of another; one people subjugates another people, bringing it desolation and ruin; one race strives to annihilate another race. This is the reason why there are families, peoples, and races upon which the penalty of retaliation descends.

“He who has killed with the sword shall perish by the sword,” are words of the Christ, words that may be translated thus: He who has caused blood to flow shall see his own also shed; he who carried the torch of conflagration to that which belonged to another shall see the conflagration set in that which belongs to him; he who has despoiled shall be despoiled; he who enslaves and mistreats the weak shall in his turn be enslaved and mistreated, whether it be a matter of an individual, or of a nation, or of a race, because the members of a collective individuality are jointly responsible in the good as well as in the evil that they have committed in common.

Whereas Spiritism dilates the field of solidarity, materialism restricts it to the petty proportions of the ephemeral existence of man, making of that same solidarity a social duty without roots, without any sanction other than goodwill and the personal interest of the moment. It is a mere theory, a mere philosophical maxim, whose practice nothing imposes. For Spiritism, solidarity is a fact that rests upon a universal law of Nature, which binds together all beings of the past, of the present, and of the future, and from whose consequences no one can withdraw himself. This is something that every man can understand, however little instructed he may be.

When all men understand Spiritism, they will also understand true solidarity and, consequently, true fraternity. The one and the other will then cease to be mere circumstantial duties, which each one preaches most often in his own interest and not in that of another. The reign of solidarity and of fraternity will necessarily be that of justice for all, and that of justice will be harmony among individuals, families, peoples, and races. Will that reign come? To doubt its advent would be to deny progress. If we compare present-day society, in the civilized nations, with what it was in the Middle Ages, we shall recognize the difference to be great. Now, if men have advanced thus far, why should they stop? By observing the course they have traveled in but a single century, one will be able to estimate what they will do a century hence. Social convulsions are revolts of the incarnate Spirits against the evil that goads them, the index of their aspirations and of that reign of justice for which they yearn, without, however, clearly perceiving what they want and the means of attaining it. That is why they bestir themselves, agitate, overturn everything left and right, create systems, propose remedies more or less utopian, even commit countless injustices, out of a spirit, as they say, of justice, hoping that from that movement something may perchance emerge. Later, they will define their aspirations better, and the path will grow clearer for them.

Whoever descends to the core of the principles of philosophical Spiritism, who considers the horizons it unveils, the ideas to which it gives rise, and the sentiments it develops, will not doubt the preponderant part it is to have in the regeneration, for, precisely and by the force of things, it leads to the objective to which Humanity aspires: to the reign of justice, through the extinction of the abuses that have obstructed its progress and through the moralization of the masses. If those who dream of the restoration of the past did not understand it thus, they would not cling so tightly to that dream; they would let it die tranquilly, as has happened to many utopias. This alone ought to give certain mockers something to think about, making them ponder that perhaps there is in this something more serious than they imagine. But there are people who laugh at everything, who would laugh even at God, if they saw Him on Earth. There are also those who are afraid that the soul which they obstinately deny may present itself to their eyes. Whatever influence Spiritism may one day come to exercise over societies, let it not be supposed that it will come to replace one aristocracy with another, nor to impose laws; firstly, because, proclaiming the absolute right to liberty of conscience and to free examination in matters of faith, it desires, as a belief, to be freely accepted, by conviction and not by means of constraint. By its nature, it cannot and must not exercise any pressure. Proscribing blind faith, it wishes to be understood. For it, there are absolutely no mysteries, but a rational faith, which is based upon facts and which desires the light. It repudiates no discovery of Science, given that Science is the collection of the laws of Nature, and that, those laws being of God, to repudiate Science would be to repudiate the work of God. In the second place, the action of Spiritism residing in its moralizing power, it cannot assume any autocratic form, because it would then do what it condemns. Its influence will be preponderant, through the modifications it will bring to the ideas, the opinions, the characters, the customs of men, and to social relations. And that influence will be the greater by the circumstance of not being imposed. Strong as a philosophy, Spiritism could only lose, in this century of reasoning, if it were to transform itself into a temporal power. It will not be it, therefore, that will make the institutions of the regenerated world; it is men who will make them, under the empire of the ideas of justice, of charity, of fraternity, and of solidarity, better understood, thanks to Spiritism. Essentially positive in its beliefs, it repels all mysticism, provided that this denomination is not extended, as is done by those who believe in nothing, to the belief in God, in the soul, and in the future life. It induces men, it is true, to occupy themselves seriously with the spiritual life, but because that is the normal life, it being in it that our destinies have to be fulfilled, for terrestrial life is transitory, fleeting. Through the proofs it presents of the reality of the spiritual life, it teaches men to attribute no more than relative importance to the things of this world, thus giving them strength and courage to bear with patience the vicissitudes of terrestrial life. It teaches them that, in dying, they do not leave this world forever; that they can return to it, in order to perfect their intellectual and moral education, unless they are already sufficiently advanced to merit passing to a better world; that the works and progress they accomplish, or to whose accomplishment they contribute, will profit them, concurring so that their future position becomes improved for them. It shows them in this way that it is wholly in their interest not to scorn it. If it is repugnant to them to return here, since they possess free will, it depends upon them to do what is necessary to become inhabitants of other orbs; but let them not delude themselves about the conditions they must fulfill to merit a change of residence! It will not be by means of a few formulas, expressed in words or acts, that they will attain it, but by the effect of a serious and radical reform of their imperfections, modifying themselves, stripping themselves of evil passions, acquiring day by day new qualities, teaching all, by example, the line of conduct that will jointly lead all men to felicity, through fraternity, through tolerance, through love. Humanity is composed of personalities, which constitute the individual existences, and of generations, which constitute the collective existences. The one and the other advance on the path of progress, through varied phases of trials which, therefore, are individual for the persons and collective for the generations. In the same way that, for the incarnate one, each existence is a step forward, each generation marks a degree of progress for the ensemble. This progress of the ensemble is irresistible and drags along the masses, at the same time that it modifies and transforms into an instrument of regeneration the errors and prejudices of a past that must disappear. Now, as the generations are composed of the individuals who have already lived in the preceding generations, it follows that the progress of the former is the result of the progress of the individuals. But, who will demonstrate, they may say, the existence of solidarity between the present generation and those that preceded it, or between it and those that will succeed it? How could it be proved that I already lived in the Middle Ages, for example, and that I shall return to take part in the events that will be produced in the succession of the times?

In the fundamental works of the Doctrine and in the Review, the principle of the plurality of existences has already been exhaustively demonstrated, so that we need not detain ourselves here to demonstrate it. In the facts of daily life there teem proofs and an almost mathematical demonstration. We limit ourselves, therefore, to urging thinkers to attend to the moral proofs that arise from reasoning and from induction.

Is it, perchance, necessary that we see a thing, in order that we may believe in it? By observing effects, can one not acquire the material certainty of the cause?

Apart from that of experience, the only legitimate path that opens for this investigation consists in mounting back from the effect to the cause. Justice offers us a most notable example of this principle, when it undertakes to discover the indications of the means that served for the perpetration of a crime, the intentions that attach to the culpability of the malefactor. The latter was not caught in the act, and yet he is condemned on the strength of those indications.

Science, which claims to proceed solely by the path of experience, affirms every day principles that are nothing more than inductions of the causes by means solely of the observation of the effects.

In geology, the age of mountains is determined. Did the geologists, perchance, witness their upsurge? Did they see forming the layers of sediment that determine their age?

Astronomical, physical, and chemical knowledge permits the weight of the planets, their densities, their volumes, the velocity that animates them, the nature of the elements that compose them, to be estimated; meanwhile, the savants did not make direct experiments, and it is to analogy and to induction that we owe such beautiful and precious discoveries.

The men of old, basing themselves on the testimony of their senses, affirmed that it was the sun that revolves around the Earth. Nevertheless, that testimony deceived them, and reasoning prevailed.

The same will occur with the principles that Spiritism sustains, as soon as men dispose themselves to study them without prejudices, and, then, Humanity will enter, really and rapidly, into an era of progress and of regeneration, because, no longer feeling themselves isolated between two abysses, the unknown of the past and the uncertainty of the future, individuals will labor with energy to perfect and multiply the elements of the happiness that has to be their own work, because they will recognize that the position they occupy in the world is not due to chance, and that they themselves will enjoy, in the future and in better conditions, the fruit of their labors and of their vigils. For Spiritism will teach them that, if the faults committed collectively are expiated jointly, the progress accomplished in common is equally joint, a principle by virtue of which the dissensions of races, of families, and of individuals will disappear, and Humanity, freed from the swaddling-bands of infancy, will advance, swift and virile, toward the conquest of its true destinies. [1]

[see Clélie Duplantier.]