Progress in the first incarnations.

Question – Two souls, created simple and ignorant, who know neither good nor evil, come to the Earth. If, in a first existence, one follows the path of good, and the other that of evil, since, in a certain way, it is chance that leads them, they merit neither punishment nor reward. This first earthly journey ought to have served only to give each of them the consciousness of their existence, a consciousness they did not previously have. To be logical, one would have to admit that punishments and rewards would only begin to be inflicted or granted from the second incarnation onward, when the Spirits would already know how to distinguish between good and evil, an experience that would be lacking to them at the time of their creation, but which they would acquire by means of their first incarnation. Has such an opinion any foundation?

Answer – Although this question is already resolved by the Spiritist Doctrine, we shall answer it, for the instruction of all.

We are absolutely ignorant of the conditions under which the first incarnations of the soul take place; it is one of those principles of things that lie in the secrets of God. We only know that they are created simple and ignorant, all thus having the same point of departure, which is in conformity with justice; what we further know is that free will develops only little by little and after numerous evolutions in corporeal life. It is, then, neither after the first nor after the second incarnation that the soul has a sufficiently clear consciousness of itself to be responsible for its acts; it is only after the hundredth, perhaps after the thousandth. It is the same with the child, who does not enjoy the fullness of its faculties one or two days after birth, but after years. And, again, when the soul enjoys free will, responsibility grows in proportion to the development of its intelligence; it is thus, for example, that a savage who eats his fellow men is less punished than the civilized man who commits a simple injustice. Without doubt our savages are very backward in relation to us, and yet they are already quite far from their point of departure. During long periods, the incarnate soul is subjected to the exclusive influence of the instincts of self-preservation; little by little these instincts transform themselves into intelligent instincts or, better said, they balance themselves with intelligence; later, and always gradually, intelligence dominates the instincts. Only then does serious responsibility begin. Moreover, the author of the question commits two grave errors: the first is to admit that chance decides the good or bad path the Spirit follows at its beginning. If there were chance or fatality, all responsibility would be unjust. As we have said, the Spirit remains in an unconscious state during numerous incarnations; the light of intelligence is made only little by little, and real responsibility only begins when the Spirit acts freely and with knowledge of cause.

The second error is to admit that the first human incarnations occur on the Earth. The Earth once was, but is no longer, a primitive world; the most backward human beings found upon its surface have already stripped off the first swaddling clothes of incarnation, and our savages are in progress, comparatively to what they were before their Spirit came to incarnate on this globe. Let one now judge the number of existences necessary for these savages to traverse all the steps that separate them from the most advanced civilization; all these intermediate steps are found on the Earth without break in continuity, and one can follow them by observing the nuances that distinguish the different peoples; only the beginning and the end are not found there; for us the beginning is lost in the depths of the past, which it is not given to us to penetrate. Besides, this matters little, for such knowledge would advance us in nothing. We are not perfect, that is what is positive; we know that our imperfections are the sole obstacle to our future happiness; therefore, let us study ourselves, in order to perfect ourselves. At the point where we are, intelligence is sufficiently developed to permit man to judge good and evil sensibly, and it is also from this point that his responsibility is most seriously engaged, since one can no longer say what Jesus said: “Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.”