Duty

Duty is the moral obligation of the creature toward itself, first, and then toward others. Duty is the law of life. We encounter it in the most trifling particulars, as in the most elevated acts. I wish here to speak only of moral duty and not of the duty that professions impose.

In the order of the sentiments, duty is very difficult to fulfill, because it finds itself in antagonism with the attractions of interest and of the heart. Its victories have no witnesses, and its defeats are not subject to repression. The intimate duty of man is left to his free will. The goad of conscience, guardian of inner probity, warns and sustains him; but, very often, it proves powerless before the sophisms of passion. Faithfully observed, the duty of the heart elevates man; but how is it to be determined with exactness? Where does it begin? Where does it end? Duty begins, for each of you, precisely at the point where you threaten the happiness or the tranquility of your neighbor; it ends at the limit you would not wish anyone to cross with respect to you. God created all men equal for pain. Small or great, ignorant or learned, all suffer from the same causes, so that each may judge in sound conscience the evil he can do. With respect to good, infinitely varied in its expressions, the criterion is not the same. Equality in the face of pain is a sublime provision of God, who wills that all his children, instructed by common experience, do not practice evil, alleging ignorance of its effects.

Duty is the practical summary of all moral speculations; it is a bravery of the soul that confronts the anguishes of the struggle; it is austere and gentle; ready to bend to the most diverse complications, it remains inflexible before their temptations. The man who fulfills his duty loves God more than the creatures and loves the creatures more than himself. He is at once judge and slave in his own cause.

Duty is the most beautiful laurel of reason; it descends from reason as the son from his mother. Man must love duty, not because it preserves life from ills, ills to which Humanity cannot subtract itself, but because it confers upon the soul the vigor necessary to its development. Man cannot turn aside the cup of his trials; duty is painful in its sacrifices; evil is bitter in its results; but these pains, almost equal, have very different conclusions: one is salutary like the poisons that restore health, the other is harmful like the feasts that ruin the body. Duty grows and radiates under a more elevated form in each of the superior stages of Humanity. The moral obligation of the creature toward God never ceases. The creature must reflect the virtues of the Eternal, who does not accept imperfect sketches, because he wills that the beauty of his work shine before his own eyes.

Lazarus.

[1] Translator's note: See The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter XVII, item 7.