Human law.

Human law, like all things, is subject to progress; progress that is slow, imperceptible, but constant.

However admirable they may be, to certain persons, the ancient legislations of the Greeks and of the Romans are much inferior to those that govern the advanced populations of your age! — Indeed, what do we see at the origin of all peoples? — A code of usages and customs drawing its sanction from force and having as its motive the most absolute egoism. What is the objective of all the primitive legislators? — To destroy evil and its instruments, for the greater peace of society. Do they concern themselves with the criminal? — No. — Do they strike him to correct him and to show him the necessity of a more moderate conduct toward his fellow citizens? Do they have in view his improvement? — Not at all; it is exclusively to preserve society from his attacks — an egoistic society, which pitilessly rejects from its bosom all that may disturb its tranquility. Thus, all the repressions are excessive, and death is, generally, the penalty most applied. This is conceivable when one considers the intimate connection that exists between the law and the religious principle. Both advance in accord toward a single objective, supporting each other mutually.

Does religion consecrate material pleasures and all the satisfactions of the senses? The harsh and excessive law strikes the criminal to rid society of an importunate guest. Does religion transform itself, consecrating the life of the soul and its independence from matter? It reacts immediately upon the legislation, demonstrating to it the responsibility incumbent upon it, in the future, for the violator of the law. Hence the assistance of the minister, whoever he may be, in the last moments of the condemned. They still strike him, but they already concern themselves with this being who does not die entirely with his body, and whose spiritual part is going to receive the punishment that men inflicted upon the material element. In the Middle Ages, and ever since the Christian era, legislation receives from the religious principle an ever more notable influence. It loses little of its cruelty, but its motives, still absolute and cruel, have completely changed direction.

Like science, philosophy, and politics, jurisprudence has its revolutions, which must be effected only slowly, in order to be accepted by the generality of the beings whom they concern. A new institution, in order to bear fruit, must not be imposed. The art of the legislator is to prepare minds in such a way as to make it desired and considered as a benefit… Every innovator, however good the good intentions that animate him, however praiseworthy his designs, will be regarded as a despot whose yoke must be shaken off, if he wishes to impose himself, even by benefits. — By his principle, man is essentially free and wishes to accept without constraint. Hence the difficulties encountered by men too far advanced for their time; hence the persecutions with which they are crushed. Living in the future, with a century or two of advance over the mass of their contemporaries, they can only fail and break themselves against refractory routine. In the Middle Ages, therefore, they already concerned themselves with the future of the criminal. They thought of his soul and, to bring it to repentance, they terrified it with the punishments of hell, with the eternal flames that, for a culpable straying, an infinitely just and infinitely good God would inflict upon it!

Unable to raise themselves to the height of God, men, to aggrandize themselves, lowered Him to their petty proportions! They troubled themselves over the future of the criminal! they thought of his soul, not for its own sake, but by virtue of a new transformation of egoism, which consisted in putting the conscience at rest, by reconciling the sinner with his God.

Little by little, in the heart and in the thought of a small number, the iniquity of such a system appeared evident. Eminent spirits attempted premature modifications, which, nevertheless, bore fruit, establishing precedents upon which is based the transformation that today is being effected in all things.

No doubt for a long time yet, the law will be repressive and will punish the guilty. We have not yet arrived at the moment when only the consciousness of the offense will be the cruelest punishment of the one who committed it. But, as you see every day, the penalties soften; the moralization of the being is kept in view; institutions are created to prepare his moral renewal; his dishonor is made useful to himself and to society. The criminal will no longer be the wild beast to be purged from the world at any price; he will be the strayed child whose reasoning, falsified by evil passions and by the influence of a perverse environment, must be corrected! Ah! the magistrate and the judge are not the only ones responsible and the only ones to act in this case. Every man of heart — prince, senator, journalist, novelist, legislator, professor, and artisan — all must put their hand to the work and bring their mite to the regeneration of Humanity.

The death penalty, infamous vestige of ancient cruelty, will disappear by the force of things. Repression, necessary in the present state, will soften gradually and, in a few generations, the only condemnation, the placing outside the law of an intelligent being, will be the last degree of infamy, until, from transformation to transformation, the conscience of each one remains as the sole judge and executioner of the criminal.

And to whom will all this work be owed? To Spiritism which, since the beginning of the world, acts through its successive revelations, as Mosaism, Christianity, and Spiritism properly so called! — Everywhere, in every period, its beneficent influence shines before all eyes, and yet there are beings blind enough not to recognize it, interested enough to overthrow it and deny its existence! Ah! these are to be pitied, because they struggle against an invincible force: the finger of God!

Bonnamy, the father.

(Medium: Mr. Desliens.)