Intellectual progress

Nothing is lost in this world, not only in matter, where everything renews itself incessantly, perfecting itself according to immutable laws applied to all things by the Creator, but also in the domain of intelligence. Humanity is similar to a man who lived eternally and continually acquired new knowledge.

This is not an image, but a reality, because the Spirit is immortal; only the body, the envelope or garment of the Spirit, falls away when worn out and is replaced by another. Matter itself undergoes modifications. As the Spirit purifies itself, it acquires new riches and merits, if I may so express myself, a more luxurious, more agreeable, more comfortable raiment, to use your earthly language.

Matter sublimates itself and becomes ever lighter, without ever disappearing completely, at least in the middle regions; whether as body or as perispirit, it always accompanies the intelligence and allows it, through this point of contact, to communicate with its inferiors, its equals, and its superiors, in order to instruct, meditate, and learn.

We have said that nothing is lost in Nature. We add: nothing is useless. Everything, from the most dangerous creatures to the most subtle poisons, has its reason for being. How many things had been judged useless or harmful and whose advantages were recognized later! The same is the case with those you do not understand. Without treating the question thoroughly, I will only say that harmful things oblige you to the attention and vigilance that exercise the intelligence, whereas if man had nothing to fear, he would abandon himself to laziness, to the detriment of his development. If pain teaches one to groan, to groan is an act of intelligence.

God, without doubt, as some object, could have spared you the trials and difficulties that seem to you superfluous; but if obstacles are set against you, it is to awaken in you the dormant resources; it is to set in motion the treasures of the intelligence, which would remain buried in your brain, if a necessity, a danger to be avoided, did not come to force you to watch over your preservation.

Instinct is born; intelligence follows it, ideas link together, and reasoning is invented. If I reason, I judge, well or ill, it is true, but it is by reasoning wrongly that one learns to recognize truth; when one is deceived several times, one ends by getting it right; and this truth, this intelligence, obtained by so much labor, acquire an infinite value and make you regard their possession as an inestimable good. You fear to see lost the discoveries you have made; what do you do, then? You instruct your children, your friends; you develop their intelligence, in order to sow in it and make fruitful what you acquired at the price of intellectual efforts. It is thus that everything links together, that progress is a natural law, and that human knowledge, gradually increased, is transmitted from generation to generation. After this, let them come and tell you that everything is matter! For the most part, the spiritualists reject spirituality only because, without this, they would have to change their kind of life, attack their errors, renounce their habits. It would be too costly, which is why they find it more convenient to deny everything. Pascal. n [1]

[v. Pascal.]