Essay of interpretation on the doctrine of the fallen angels.

— The question of origins has always excited curiosity, above all with respect to the provenance of man, and to such a degree that today it is impossible for sensible creatures to accept the biblical account literally, seeing in it merely one of those allegories in which the oriental style is so prodigal. Moreover, Science comes to offer it proof by demonstrating, through irrefutable means, the material impossibility of the formation of the globe in six times twenty-four hours. In the face of the evidence of the facts, written in unimpeachable characters in the geological strata, the Church had to submit to the opinion of the learned and to agree with them that the six days of creation represent six periods of indeterminate length, as it had once done with regard to the movement of the Earth. If, then, the biblical text is susceptible of interpretation on this capital point, it may also be so with respect to other points, notably as to the epoch of the appearance of man on Earth, his origin, and the meaning that must be attributed to the designation of fallen angels. Since the principle of things lies in the secrets of God, who reveals it to us only insofar as He judges it fitting, we are reduced to conjectures. Many systems have been imagined to resolve this question, but none, until today, fully satisfies reason. We too shall attempt to lift a corner of the veil. Shall we be more fortunate than our predecessors? We do not know; only the future will tell. The opinion we present is, therefore, a personal opinion; it seems to agree with reason and logic, which, in our eyes, gives it a certain degree of probability.

First of all, we observe that it is only possible to discover some portion of the truth with the aid of the Spiritist theory; it has already resolved an immensity of problems hitherto insoluble, and it is with the help of the markers it offers us that we shall attempt to ascend the chain of time. The literal sense of certain passages of the sacred books, contradicted by science, repelled by reason, has produced far more unbelievers than is thought, given the obstinacy in making of it an article of faith. If a rational interpretation made them accept it, it would evidently draw back to the Church those who have departed from it.

— Before proceeding, it is essential that we come to an understanding about words. How many disputes have owed their perpetuation to the ambiguity of certain expressions, which each took in the sense of his own ideas! We demonstrated this, in The Spirits' Book, with regard to the word soul. By saying clearly in what acceptation we took it, we cut short any controversy at the root. The word angel is in the same case; it is employed indifferently, in the good and the bad sense, saying: the good and bad angels, the angel of light and the angel of darkness, from which it follows that, in its general acceptation, it signifies merely Spirit. It is evidently in this latter sense that it must be understood when speaking of fallen angels and of rebel angels. According to the Spiritist Doctrine, in this agreeing with several theologians, the angels are not beings of privileged creation, exempt, by a special favor, from the labor imposed upon the others, but Spirits who have arrived at perfection through their efforts and their merits. If they were beings created perfect, revolt against God being a sign of inferiority, those who revolted could not be angels. The doctrine also tells us that Spirits progress, but do not regress, for they never lose the qualities they have acquired. Now, rebellion on the part of perfect beings would be a regression, since it can be conceived only as proceeding from still backward beings. To avoid any misunderstanding, it would be fitting to reserve the designation of angels for the pure Spirits and to call the others simply good or bad Spirits. Since, however, the use of this word for the fallen angels has prevailed, we shall take it only in its general acceptation. It will be seen, in this case, that the idea of fall and of rebellion is perfectly admissible.

— We do not know, and probably shall never know, the point of departure of the human soul. All that we know is that Spirits are created simple and ignorant; that they progress intellectually and morally; that, by virtue of free will, some took the good path, others a wrong path; that, once their foot was set in the mire, they sank into it ever more deeply; that, after an unlimited succession of corporeal existences, carried out on Earth and in other worlds, they purify themselves and attain the perfection that brings them near to God.

A point difficult to comprehend is the formation of the first living beings on Earth, each in its species, from the plant up to man. In this respect, the theory contained in The Spirits' Book appears to us the most rational, although it resolves only incompletely and in a hypothetical manner this problem, which we deem insoluble, both for us and for the majority of Spirits, to whom it is not given to penetrate the mystery of origins. If we question them about it, the wisest answer that they do not know it; but others, less modest, take the initiative and the posture of revealers, dictating systems, the product of personal ideas, which they present as absolute truth. It is against the mania for systems on the part of certain Spirits, in relation to the principle of things, that we must guard ourselves. What, in our eyes, proves the wisdom of those who dictated The Spirits' Book is the reserve they knew how to keep on questions of this nature. In our opinion it is not proof of wisdom to decide these questions in an absolute manner, as some do, without troubling themselves over material impossibilities resulting from the data furnished by Science and observation. What we say of the appearance of the first men on Earth extends to the formation of bodies, because, once the body is formed, it is easier to conceive that the Spirit comes to take charge of it. Considering bodies, what we propose to examine here is the state of the Spirits that animated them, in order to arrive, if possible, at defining, in a more rational manner than has been done until now, the doctrine of the fall of the angels and of paradise lost.

— If we do not admit the plurality of corporeal existences, we are forced to agree that the soul is created at the same time as the body. For, of two things one: either the soul that animates the body at birth has already lived, or it has not yet lived; between the two hypotheses there is no middle term. Now, the second hypothesis, that the soul has not lived, gives rise to a host of insoluble problems, such as the diversity of aptitudes and instincts, incompatible with the justice of God, the fate of children who die at a tender age, that of cretins, of idiots, etc., whereas everything is explained naturally if we admit that the soul has already lived and brings, when incarnating in a new body, what it had previously acquired. It is thus that societies progress gradually; without this, how to explain the difference existing between the present social state and that of the times of barbarism? If souls were created at the same time as bodies, those born today would be absolutely new, as primitive as those who lived thousands of years ago; add to this that among them there would be no connection, no necessary relation; that they would be completely independent of one another. Why, then, would the souls of today be better favored by God than the ancestral ones? Why would they understand better? Why have they more refined instincts, gentler habits? Why have they the intuition of certain things without having learned them? We defy anyone to get out of this difficulty, unless one admits that God created souls of diverse qualities, according to the times and the places, a proposition inconceivable with the idea of a sovereign justice. Say, on the contrary, that the souls of today have already lived in remote epochs; that they were barbarous like their century, but progressed; that in each new existence they bring the acquisitions of previous existences; that, consequently, the souls of civilized times were not created more perfect, but perfected themselves with time. Only thus will you have the sole plausible explanation of the cause of social progress. Drawn from the theory of reincarnation, these considerations are essential for the comprehension of a fact of which we shall speak in a moment.

— Although Spirits may reincarnate in different worlds, it seems that, in general, they carry out a certain number of corporeal migrations on the same globe and in the same milieu, in order to be able to make better use of the experience acquired; they leave that milieu only to enter a worse one, as punishment, or a better one, as reward. From this it results that, during a certain period, the population of the globe is composed more or less of the same Spirits, who reappear there at different epochs, until they attain a sufficient degree of purification to deserve to inhabit more advanced worlds.

According to the teaching given by the superior Spirits, these emigrations and immigrations of the Spirits incarnate on Earth occur from time to time, individually; but, at certain epochs, they take place en masse, as a consequence of the great revolutions that make them disappear in considerable quantities, being replaced by other Spirits who, in some fashion, on Earth or in a part of the Earth, constitute a new generation.

The Christ pronounced a remarkable phrase which, like many others taken literally, was not understood, for He almost always spoke through images and parables. Announcing the great transformations in the physical world and in the moral world, He said: Verily I say unto you that this generation shall not pass until all these things come to pass. n Now, the generation of the time of Christ passed more than eighteen centuries ago without these things having come to pass. From this we must conclude either that Christ was mistaken — which is not admissible — or that His words had a hidden sense and were ill interpreted.

If we now refer to what the Spirits say, not only to us, but through the mediums of all countries, we arrive at the fulfillment of the times foretold, at an epoch of social renewal, that is to say, at an epoch of one of those great emigrations of the Spirits who inhabit the Earth. God, who had sent them to better themselves, left them here the time necessary to progress. He made His laws known to them, first through Moses, then through Christ; He warned them through the prophets; in their successive reincarnations they were able to profit from these teachings; now the times are come, and those who did not profit from the light, who violated the laws of God and ignored His power, will leave the Earth, where, henceforth, they would be out of place in the milieu owing to the moral progress that is taking place and to which they could bring nothing but obstacles, whether as men or as Spirits. The generation to which Christ referred, not being able to be that of the men who lived in His time, corporeally speaking, must be understood as the generation of the Spirits who on Earth traversed the various periods of their incarnations and who are about to leave it. They will be replaced by a new generation of Spirits who, more morally advanced, will make reign among themselves the law of love and of charity taught by Christ, and whose happiness will not be disturbed by the contact of the wicked, the proud, the selfish, the ambitious, and the impious. It would even seem, according to the Spirits, that among the children being born at present, many are the incarnation of Spirits of this new generation. As for those of the old generation who shall have well merited it, but who, nevertheless, have not yet attained a sufficient degree of purification to reach the more advanced worlds, they will be able to continue to inhabit the Earth and to pass here yet a few more incarnations; but, rather than this being a punishment, it will be a reward, since they will be happier in progressing. The time when one generation of Spirits disappears to give place to another may be considered as the end of the world, that is to say, of the moral world. What will become of the Spirits expelled from the Earth? The Spirits themselves tell us that they will go to inhabit new worlds, where they will find beings still more backward than those here, whom they are charged with making progress, transmitting to them the product of the knowledge they have already acquired. The contact of the barbarous milieu in which they find themselves will be for them a cruel expiation and a source of incessant sufferings, physical and moral, of which they will have all the more consciousness the more developed their intelligence is; but this expiation will be, at the same time, a mission that will offer them the means of redeeming the past, according to the manner in which they perform it. There they will undergo a series of incarnations, during a period of time more or less long, at the end of which those who have merit will be withdrawn to better worlds, perhaps the Earth, which, then, will be an abode of happiness and peace, while those of the Earth, in their turn, will ascend gradually up to the state of angels or pure Spirits. It is very slow, some will say. Would it not be more agreeable to go directly from the Earth to Heaven? Without a doubt, but with that system you have the alternative of going, at a single stroke, from the Earth to Hell, and for the eternity of eternities; or else, of admitting that the sum of virtues necessary to go directly from the Earth to Heaven being very rare, few men will be sure of possessing them. From this it results that the probability of going to hell is greater than of going to paradise. Is it not preferable to make a longer journey and to be sure of arriving at the end? In the present state of the Earth no one is concerned with returning to it, and nothing obliges one to it, for it depends on each one, while he is here, to progress in such a way that he may deserve to ascend to more advanced orbs. No prisoner, on leaving prison, is concerned with returning to it; the means is very simple: only not to fall into a new fault. The soldier too would find it very convenient to become a marshal at a single stroke; nevertheless, even had he been raised to the highest post, he would not for that be dispensed from winning his spurs.

— Let us now ascend the course of time; and from the present, as a known point, let us seek to deduce the unknown, at least by analogy, if we do not have the certainty of a mathematical demonstration.

The question of Adam, as the sole stem of the human species on Earth, is, as is known, much controverted, because the anthropological laws demonstrate its impossibility, not to mention the authentic documents of Chinese history, which prove that the population of the globe goes back to an epoch much anterior to that attributed to Adam by biblical chronology. Then is the history of Adam pure fabrication? It is not probable; it is an image which, like all allegories, must enclose a great truth, the key to which can be given only by Spiritism. In our opinion, the principal question is not to know whether the personage of Adam really existed, nor in what epoch he lived, but whether the human race, designated as his posterity, is a fallen race. The solution of this question is not destitute of moral content, because, by enlightening us as to the past, it can orient our conduct toward the future. First of all, let us note that, applied to man, the idea of the fall, without reincarnation, is a contradiction, as is the responsibility we would bear for the fault of our first father. If the soul of each man is created at birth, it is that it did not exist before; it will thus have no relation, neither direct nor indirect, with the one that committed the first fault, which leads us to inquire how it could be responsible for its own fall. Doubt on this point leads naturally to doubt, or even to incredulity, on many others, for, if the point of departure is false, the consequences must equally be false. Such is the reasoning of many people. Well then! this reasoning will fall if we consider the spirit, and not the letter, of the biblical text, and if we refer to the very principles of the Spiritist Doctrine, destined, as has already been said, to revive the faith that is being extinguished.

— Let us note, further, that the idea of rebel angels, of fallen angels, and of paradise lost is found in almost all religions and, as a tradition, among almost all peoples. It must, then, be founded upon a truth. To understand the true sense that must be attached to the designation of rebel angels, it is not necessary to suppose a real struggle between God and the angels, or Spirits, since the word angel is here taken in a general acceptation. Admitting that men are incarnate Spirits, what are the materialists and the atheists if not angels or Spirits in revolt against the Divinity, since they deny its existence and recognize neither its power nor its laws? Is it not out of pride that they claim that all of which they are capable comes from themselves, and not from God? Is it not the height of rebellion to preach nothingness after death? Are not those who use the intelligence of which they boast to drag their fellows into the precipice of incredulity very culpable? Up to a certain point, do not those also commit an act of revolt who, without denying the Divinity, misconceive the true attributes of its essence? Those who cover themselves with the mask of piety to commit evil deeds? Those whom faith in the future does not detach from the goods of this world? Those who in the name of a God of peace do violence to the first of His laws: the law of charity? Those who sow disturbance and hatred through calumny and slander? Finally those whose life, voluntarily useless, slips away in idleness, without profit to themselves or to their fellows? Of all an account will be demanded, not only of the evil they shall have done, but of the good they shall have failed to do. Well then! all those Spirits, who so ill employed their incarnations, once expelled from the Earth and sent to inferior worlds, among hordes still in the infancy of barbarism, what will they be, if not fallen angels, remitted to expiation? Will not the earth they leave be for them a paradise lost, in comparison with the ungrateful milieu where they will remain relegated for thousands of centuries, until the day when they shall have deserved deliverance?

— If we now ascend to the origin of the present race, symbolized in the person of Adam, we shall find all the characteristics of a generation of Spirits expelled from another world and exiled, for similar reasons, on the Earth, already peopled by primitive men, plunged in ignorance and barbarism, and that such exiles had as their mission to make them progress, bringing into their milieu the lights of an already developed intelligence. Is this not, in effect, the role hitherto represented by the Adamic race? In relegating it to this earth of labor and of suffering, would God not have reason to say: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread." n If, for causes similar to those we see today, it deserved such a chastisement, will it not be just to say that it was lost through pride? In His gentleness, could He not promise it that He would send it a Savior, that is to say, the one who was to illuminate the path to be followed in order to attain the felicity of the elect? This Savior was sent in the person of Christ, who taught the law of love and of charity as the true anchor of salvation. Here an important consideration presents itself. The mission of Christ is easily comprehended by admitting that they are the same Spirits who lived before and after His coming, and who were able to profit from His teaching, or from the merit of His sacrifice; without reincarnation, however, it is more difficult to comprehend the usefulness of that same sacrifice for Spirits created subsequently to His coming, for God would have created them stained by faults committed by those with whom they had no relation.

This race of Spirits seems to have completed its time on Earth. Among that number, some profited from the time to progress and deserved to be rewarded; others, through their obstinacy in closing their eyes to the light, exhausted the gentleness of the Creator and deserved chastisement. Thus will be fulfilled this precept of Christ: "The good shall be on my right and the wicked on my left." n A fact seems to support the theory that attributes a preexistence to the first inhabitants of this race on Earth: that of Adam, held as the stem, being represented with a peculiar intellectual development, far superior to that of the present savage races; that within a short time his first descendants showed aptitude for very advanced works of art. Now, what we know of the state of Spirits in their origin indicates what Adam would have been, from the intellectual point of view, had his soul been created at the same time as his body. Admitting, by exception, that God had given him a more perfect soul, it would remain to explain why the savages of New Holland, for example, since they come from the same stem, are infinitely more backward than the common father. On the contrary, everything proves, both physically and morally, that they belong to another race of Spirits closer to their origin and that they still need a great number of corporeal migrations before attaining the less advanced degrees of the Adamic race. The new race that is about to arise, making the law of Christ — law of justice, of love, and of charity — reign everywhere, will hasten their advancement. Those who wrote the history of terrestrial anthropology attached themselves principally to the physical characteristics; the spiritual element was almost always neglected, and necessarily so by the writers who admit nothing outside of matter. When this is taken into account in the study of the sciences, an entirely new light will be cast upon a host of questions still obscure, for the spiritual element is one of the living forces of Nature, playing a preponderant role both in physical phenomena and in moral phenomena.

— Here, in miniature, is a striking example of analogy with what takes place, on a larger scale, in the world of Spirits, and which will help us to comprehend it: n On the 24th of May, 1861, the frigate Iphigénie 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:

"In setting foot on this distant land, you have surely already understood the role that is reserved for you.

"After the example of the brave soldiers of our navy, who serve before 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 noble and beautiful 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 noncommissioned officers and corporals constitutes a sure guarantee that every effort will be attempted to make of 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 must be so. Placed in our hands, it will be firm and inflexible, rest assured, in the same way that, just and paternal, it will know how to distinguish error from vice and degradation…"

There you have a handful of men expelled, for their bad conduct, from a civilized country, and sent, as 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 disturbance and scandal and you were expelled; you are sent 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 beautiful mission to fulfill: to carry civilization to these savage tribes. The discipline will be severe, but just, and we shall know how to distinguish those who conduct themselves well."

For those men, exiled in the bosom of savagery, is not the mother-country a paradise that they lost through their own faults and through 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, 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 deserve pardon and to reconquer the homeland that you lost through your fault, that is to say, Heaven"?

At first sight, the idea of fall seems in contradiction with the principle according to which Spirits cannot regress. One must, however, consider that it is not a matter of a regression 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 in which 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 becomes neither more stupid nor more ignorant.

Is it credible, we now ask, that those men sent to New Caledonia will suddenly transform themselves into models of virtue? That they will suddenly abjure their past errors? To suppose such a thing, one would have to be ignorant of Humanity. For the same reason, the Spirits who are about to be expelled from the Earth, once transplanted to the land of exile, will not instantaneously strip themselves of their pride and their bad instincts; for a long time yet they will conserve the tendencies they brought, a remnant of the old leaven. The same happened with the Spirits of the Adamic race exiled on the Earth. Now, is this not original sin? The stain they bring at birth is that of the race of culpable and punished Spirits to which they belong, a stain that they can efface through repentance, through expiation, and through the renewal of their moral being. Considered as the responsibility for a fault committed by another, original sin is an absurdity and the negation of the justice of God. On the contrary, considered as the consequence and vestige of the initial imperfection of the individual, not only does reason admit it, but the responsibility deriving from it is considered to be in full justice. This interpretation gives an entirely natural reason for being to the dogma of the immaculate Conception, at which skepticism so much scoffed. The dogma established that the mother of Christ was not stained by original sin. How can this be? It is very simple: God sent a pure Spirit, who did not belong to the culpable and exiled race, to incarnate on the Earth and perform its august mission, in the same way that, from time to time, He sends superior Spirits who incarnate in order to impel progress and hasten the development of the orb. On Earth such Spirits act like the true shepherd, who goes to moralize the condemned in their prisons and to show them the path of salvation.

Certainly some persons will find this interpretation a little too orthodox. Some, even, may protest that it is a matter of heresy. But is it not a proven fact that many see in the account of Genesis, in the history of the apple and the rib of Adam, only a simple image? That, not being able to attach a precise sense to the doctrine of the fallen angels, of the rebel angels, and of paradise lost, they consider all these things as fables? If a logical interpretation leads us to see a truth disguised beneath the allegory, is it not better than absolute negation? Admitting that such a solution were not, in all points, in the most rigorous orthodoxy, would it not be preferable to believe in something rather than to believe in nothing? If belief in the literal text turns man away from God and belief in the interpretation brings him near to Him, is the latter not worth more than the former? We have not, then, come to destroy the principle, to undermine it in its foundations, as some philosophers have done; we seek to discover its hidden sense and, on the contrary, we have come to consolidate it and to give it a rational basis. Be that as it may, one cannot deny to this interpretation a character of grandeur that the literal text certainly does not possess.

This theory embraces, at the same time, the universality of worlds, the infinite in the past and in the future; it gives to everything its reason for being through the linking of all things, through the solidarity that it establishes among all the parts of the Universe. Is it not more in conformity with the idea we form of the majesty and the goodness of God, than the understanding that circumscribes Humanity to a point of space and to an instant in eternity? [see the article: Answers to the question of the fallen angels.]

[1] Translator's Note: This theory is here presented as a simple hypothesis and by way of essay, with a view to provoking the examination of the question. Allan Kardec then lacked sufficient elements for a peremptory affirmation. Later, having already passed through the test of universal control, it was inserted in Genesis, chapter XI, item 43 and following, definitively integrating the doctrinal body of Spiritism. It is for this reason that we said, in the introduction to volume I (1858 — Translator's Notes), that the Spiritist Review was a kind of free tribune, in which Allan Kardec sounded out the reaction of men and the impression of the Spirits concerning certain subjects, still hypothetical and ill understood, while awaiting their confirmation.

[2] Translator's Note: Matthew, 24:34; Mark, 13:30; and Luke, 21:32.

[3] Translator's Note: Genesis, 3:19.

[4] Translator's Note: Matthew, 25:33.

[5] Translator's Note: See Genesis, chapter XI, items 47 to 49.