Truth

Truth, my friend, is one of those abstractions toward which the human Spirit tends incessantly, without ever being able to attain it. It is necessary that it tend toward it, for this is one of the conditions of progress; but, for the simple reason of the imperfection of its nature, it could not reach it. Following the direction that truth follows in its ascending march, the human Spirit is on the providential path, but it is not given to it to see its end.

You will understand me better when you know that truth is, like time, divided into two parts by that inappreciable moment called the present, namely: the past and the future. Thus, there are two truths: relative truth and absolute truth; relative truth is what is; absolute truth is what ought to be. Now, since what ought to be rises by degrees up to absolute perfection, which is God, it follows that, for created beings and following the ascensional route of progress, there are only relative truths. But from the fact that a relative truth is not immutable, it does not follow that it is any less sacred for the created being.

Your laws, your customs, your institutions are essentially perfectible and, for that very reason, imperfect; but their imperfections do not release you from the respect you owe them. It is not permitted to anticipate time and to make laws outside of social laws. Humanity is a collective being that must march, if not in its entirety, at least by groups, toward the progress of the future. He who breaks away from human society to advance like a lost child always suffers, on your Earth, the penalty due to his impatience. Leave to the initiators inspired by the Spirit of Truth the care of proclaiming the laws of the future, while submitting to those of the present. Leave to God, who measures your progress by the efforts you have made to become better, the care of choosing the moment He judges useful for a new transition; but never evade a law except when it has been repealed.

Because Spiritism has been revealed among you, do not believe in a cataclysm of social institutions; until now it has carried out an underground and unconscious work for those who were its instruments. Today, now that it comes to the surface and appears in the light, the march of progress need not for that reason cease to be of slow regularity. Beware of impatient Spirits, who drive you toward the dangerous paths of the unknown. The eternity that is promised to you should lead you to have pity on the so ephemeral ambitions of life. Be reserved even to the point of often suspecting the voice of the Spirits who manifest themselves.

Remember this: The human Spirit renews itself and is stirred under the influence of three causes, which are: reflection, inspiration, and revelation. Reflection is the wealth of your memories, which you stir voluntarily. In it, man finds what is strictly useful to him, to satisfy the needs of a stationary position. Inspiration is the influence of extraterrestrial Spirits, who mingle more or less with your own reflections in order to compel you toward progress; it is the intrusion of the better into the insufficiency of the passage, a new force that joins an acquired force, to carry you further than the present, the irrefutable proof of a hidden cause that propels you forward, and without which you would remain stationary. For it is a physical and moral rule that the effect could not be greater than its cause, and when this happens, as in social progress, it is because an unknown, unperceived cause has joined the first cause of your impulse. Revelation is the highest of the forces that stir the Spirit of man, because it comes from God and manifests itself only by His express will; it is rare, sometimes even inappreciable, sometimes evident to the one who experiences it to the point of feeling himself involuntarily seized with holy respect. I repeat, it is rare and given ordinarily as a reward to sincere faith, to the devoted heart; but do not take as revelation everything that may be given to you as such. Man boasts of the friendship of the great, the Spirits display a special permission from God, which they often lack. Sometimes they make promises that God does not ratify, because He alone knows what is and what is not necessary. This, my friend, is all I can tell you about truth. Humble yourself before the great Being, by whom all things live and move in the infinity of the worlds that His power governs; meditate that if in Him is found all wisdom, all justice, and all power, in Him also is found all truth.

Pascal. n [1]

[v. Pascal.]