On the principle of the non-retrogradation of the Spirit.

— Since questions have been raised several times concerning the principle of the non-retrogradation of Spirits, a principle variously interpreted, we shall attempt to resolve them. Spiritism wishes to be clear to all and to leave to its future adherents no motive for disputes over words. For this reason all points susceptible of interpretation will be elucidated one after another.

Spirits do not retrograde, in the sense that they lose nothing of the progress they have realized. They may remain momentarily stationary, but from good they cannot become wicked, nor from wise, ignorant. Such is the general principle, which applies only to the moral state and not to the material situation, which from good may become bad if the Spirit has deserved it.

Let us make a comparison. Let us suppose a man of the world, learned, but guilty of a crime that leads him to the galleys. There is certainly for him a great descent in social position and in material well-being. To esteem and consideration have succeeded contempt and abjection. And yet he has lost nothing as regards the development of his intelligence; he will carry to prison his faculties, his talents, his knowledge. He is a fallen man, and it is thus that fallen Spirits must be understood. God can therefore, after a certain time of trial, withdraw from a world where they will not have progressed morally those who have misunderstood Him, who have rebelled against His laws, in order to send them to expiate their errors and their hardening in an inferior world, among beings still less advanced. There they will be what they were before, morally and intellectually, but in an infinitely more painful condition, by the very nature of the globe and, above all, by the milieu in which they will find themselves. In a word, they will be in the position of a civilized man forced to live among savages, or of a very distinguished man condemned to the society of convicts. They have lost their position and their advantages, but they have not regressed to the primitive state. From adult men they have not become children. This is what must be understood by non-retrogradation. Having not turned the time to account, it is for them a labor to begin again. In His goodness, God does not wish to leave them any longer among the good, whose peace they disturb. This is why He sends them among men whom they will have the mission of making progress, by teaching them what they know. By this labor they will be able themselves to advance and to redeem their debts, expiating their past faults, like the slave who little by little saves up to one day buy his freedom. But like the slave, many save only money, instead of laying up treasures of virtue, the only ones that can pay the ransom. Such is the situation, until now, of our Earth, a world of expiation and of trial, where the Adamic race, an intelligent race, was exiled among the inferior primitive races that inhabited it before. This is the reason why there are so many bitternesses here, bitternesses that the savage peoples are far from feeling to the same degree.

There is certainly retrogradation of the Spirit in the sense that it delays its progress, but not from the point of view of acquisitions, by reason of which, and of the development of its intelligence, its social decadence is more painful. It is thus that the man of the world suffers more in an abject milieu than the one who has always lived in the mire.

— According to a system that has something specious about it at first sight, Spirits would not have been created in order to incarnate, and incarnation would be solely the result of their fault. Such a system falls by the mere consideration that if no Spirit had failed, there would be no men on Earth, nor in other worlds. Now, since the presence of man is necessary for the material improvement of the worlds; since by his intelligence and activity he contributes to the general work, he is one of the essential gears of Creation. God could not subordinate the realization of this part of His work to the eventual fall of His creatures, unless He counted for that on an always sufficient number of guilty ones, so as to supply the created and to-be-created worlds with workers. Good sense rejects such an idea.

Incarnation is, then, a necessity for the Spirit who, in realizing his providential mission, works at his own advancement through the activity and the intelligence that he must develop, in order to provide for his life and his well-being. But incarnation becomes a punishment when the Spirit, not having done what he ought, is constrained to begin his task again, multiplying painful corporeal existences through his own fault. A student is not graduated until he has passed through all the classes. Are these classes a punishment? No: they are a necessity, an indispensable condition of his progress. But if, through laziness, he is obliged to repeat them, there is the punishment. To be able to pass through some of them is a merit. What, then, is certain is that incarnation on Earth is a punishment for many of those who inhabit it, because they could have avoided it, whereas they have perhaps doubled, tripled, and hundredfold their existence through their own fault, thus delaying their entry into better worlds. What is wrong is to admit in principle incarnation as a punishment.

— Another question often raised is this: Since the Spirit was created simple and ignorant, with the liberty to do good or evil, would there not be a moral fall for the one who took the evil path, since he comes to do the evil that he did not do before?

This proposition is no more sustainable than the preceding one. There is a fall only in the passage from a relatively good state to a worse one. Now, created simple and ignorant, the Spirit is, in his origin, in a state of moral and intellectual nullity, like the child who has just been born. If he has not done evil, neither has he done good. He is neither happy nor unhappy. He acts without conscience and without responsibility. Since he has nothing, he can lose nothing, just as he cannot retrograde. His responsibility does not begin until the moment when his free will develops. His primitive state is not, then, a state of intelligent and reasoned innocence. Consequently, the evil that he does later, infringing the laws of God, abusing the faculties that were given to him, is not a return from good to evil, but the consequence of the evil path into which he has plunged.

This leads us to another question. For example: Is it possible that Nero, in his incarnation as Nero, may have done more evil than in his preceding existence? To this we answer yes, which does not imply that in the existence in which he did less evil he was better. Above all, evil can change its form without being worse or less evil. The position of Nero, as emperor, having put him in the limelight, what he did was more noticed; in an obscure existence he may have committed acts equally reprehensible, though on a smaller scale, which passed unnoticed. As sovereign, he could have a city set on fire; as a private individual he could burn a house and cause a family to perish. Some common assassin, who kills a few travelers to despoil them, if he were on the throne would be a bloodthirsty tyrant, doing on a grand scale what his position allows him to do only on a reduced scale.

— Considering the question from another point of view, we shall say that a man may do more evil in one existence than in the preceding one, may show vices that he did not have, without this implying a moral degeneration. Often it is the occasions that are lacking for doing evil, when the principle exists latent; the occasion arises and the evil instincts are revealed. Ordinary life offers us numerous examples: a certain man, who was held to be good, suddenly exhibits vices that no one suspected, and which cause astonishment; it is simply because he knew how to dissimulate, or because some cause provoked the development of the evil germ. It is indubitable that the one in whom good sentiments are firmly rooted does not even have the thought of evil; when such a thought exists, it is that the germ exists: often only the execution is lacking.

Then, as we have said, although under different forms, evil does not cease to be evil. The same vicious principle can be the source of an immensity of diverse acts, proceeding from one and the same cause. Pride, for example, can cause one to commit a great number of faults, to which one is exposed, so long as the radical principle is not extirpated. A man may, then, in one existence, have defects that had not manifested themselves in another and that are only varied consequences of one and the same vicious principle. To us, Nero is a monster, because he committed atrocities. But do you believe that those men — perfidious, hypocritical, true vipers who sow the venom of calumny, who despoil families through cunning and abuse of confidence, who cover their vile deeds with the mask of virtue in order to reach their ends with more security and to receive praise, when they deserve only execration — are worth more than Nero? Certainly not. To be reincarnated as a Nero would not be for them a setback, but an occasion to show themselves under a new face. As such, they will exhibit the vices that they concealed; they will dare to do by force what they did by cunning, that is all the difference. But this new trial will make the punishment still more terrible for them if, instead of taking advantage of the means given to them to repair, they use them for evil. And nevertheless, however bad it may be, every existence is an opportunity for progress for the Spirit: he develops his intelligence, he acquires experience and knowledge that, later, will help him to progress morally. [1]

Translator's note: See The Spirits' Book, part 2, chapter IV, questions 193 and 194.

[2]

Translator's note: See The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter IV, item 25.