On the instincts

I will teach you the true knowledge of good and evil, which the spirit so frequently confuses. Evil is the revolt of the instincts against the conscience, that inner and delicate sense, which is the moral sense. What are the limits that separate it from the good, which it skirts on every side? Evil is not complex: it is one and emanates from the primitive being, who wants the satisfaction of the instinct at the cost of duty. The instinct, primitively destined to develop in animal man the care of his preservation and of his well-being, is the sole origin of evil, because, persisting more violent and more severe in certain natures, it impels them to seize hold of what they desire or to hoard what they possess. The instinct, which the animals obey blindly, and which is their very virtue, must be ceaselessly fought by the man who wishes to elevate himself and to substitute the coarse implement of necessity with the finely chiseled weapons of intelligence. Nevertheless, you will have to concede that the instinct is not always evil, Humanity owing to it, not rarely, sublime inspirations, as in maternity and in certain acts of abnegation, in which it substitutes reflection with promptness and sureness. My daughter, your objection is precisely the cause of the error into which men fall, ready to misrecognize the truth, always absolute in its consequences. Whatever the results of an evil cause may be, the examples must never lead one to conclude against the premises established by reason. The instinct is evil because it is purely human and Humanity must think only of divesting itself, of leaving the flesh in order to rise to the Spirit. And if evil walks alongside the good, it is because its principle often has results opposed to itself, and which cause it to be misrecognized by the man who is frivolous and carried away by sensation. Nothing truly good can emanate from the instinct: a sublime impulse is not devotion, just as an isolated inspiration is not genius. The true progress of Humanity is its struggle and its triumph against the very essence of its being. Jesus was sent to Earth to prove it humanly. He laid bare the truth, a beautiful spring hidden in the sand of ignorance. Do not trouble any more the limpidity of the divine lymph with the compounds of error. And, believe it, the men who are good and devoted only instinctively are so badly, because they undergo a blind domination which, suddenly, may cast them into the abyss. Lazarus.

Observation. – Despite our respect for the Spirit of Lazarus, who has favored us with so many and such beautiful dissertations, we permit ourselves to disagree with his opinion as regards the last propositions. One may say that there are two kinds of instinct: animal instinct and moral instinct. The first, as Lazarus says very well, is organic; it is given to living beings for their preservation, as well as that of their progeny; it is blind and almost unconscious, because Providence wished to give a counterweight to their indifference and their negligence. It is no longer thus with moral instinct, which is the privilege of man and which may be thus defined: An innate propensity to do good or evil. Now, that propensity is connected to the state of greater or lesser advancement of the Spirit. The man whose Spirit is already purified does good without premeditation and as something quite natural; this is why he is astonished at being praised. Thus, it is not just to say that “the men who are good and devoted only instinctively are so badly, because they undergo a blind domination which, suddenly, may cast them into the abyss.” Those who are instinctively good and devoted denote a progress accomplished; in those who are so intentionally, the progress is yet to be accomplished, which is why there is labor and struggle between the two sentiments. In the first, the difficulty is overcome; in the second, it must be overcome. The first is like the man who knows how to read, and reads without difficulty, almost without perceiving it; the second is like the one who spells out the letters. Because one arrived later, will he have less merit than the other? Allan Kardec.

Paris. — Typ. of Cosson et Ce rue du Four-St-Germain, 43.