Perfectibility of Spirits.

Q. — If, according to Spiritism, Spirits or souls improve themselves indefinitely, they must become infinitely perfected or pure. Having reached that degree, why are they not equal to God? This does not accord with justice.

Reply. — Man is a truly singular creature! He always finds his horizon too limited; he wants to understand everything, grasp everything, know everything! He wants to penetrate the unfathomable and disdains the study of what touches him immediately; he wants to understand God, to judge his acts, to make him just or unjust; he says how he would have him be, without suspecting that he is all this and more still!… But, miserable worm, have you ever understood in an absolute manner anything of what surrounds you? Do you know by what law the flower colors itself and perfumes itself at the vivifying kisses of the Sun? Do you know how you are born, how you live, and why your body dies?… — You see facts, but, for you, the causes remain wrapped in an impenetrable veil, and you would judge the principle of all causes, the first cause, God, in short! — There are many other studies more necessary to the development of your being, which deserve all your attention!…

When you solve an algebra problem you go from the known to the unknown and, in order to understand God, that insoluble problem for so many centuries, you wish to address yourself to him directly! Then do you possess all the elements necessary to establish such an equation? Are you not lacking some document to judge your creator in the last instance? Will you not believe that the world is limited to that grain of dust, lost in the immensity of the spaces, where you stir about, more imperceptible than the least of the infusoria, for which the Universe is a drop of water? — Nevertheless let us reason and see why, according to your present knowledge, God would be unjust in never letting himself be reached by his creature.

In all sciences there are axioms or irrefutable truths, which are admitted as fundamental bases. The mathematical sciences and, in general, all sciences, are based on the axiom that the part could never equal the whole. Man, creature of God, according to this principle, could never reach the one who created him.

Suppose that an individual must traverse a road of infinite extent; of an infinite extent, weigh the expression well. Such is the position of man in relation to God, considered as his end.

You will say to me that, however little one advances, the sum of the years and of the centuries of marching will permit reaching the end. Therein lies the error!… What you accomplish in a year, in a century, in a million centuries, will always be a finite quantity; another equal span will allow you to furnish only an equally finite quantity, and so on. Now, for the most novice mathematician, a sum of finite quantities could never form an infinite quantity. The contrary would be absurd and, in this case, one could measure the infinite, which would make it lose its quality of being infinite. — Man will progress always and incessantly, but in finite quantity; the sum of his progress will never be other than a finite perfection, which could not reach God, the infinite in all things. There is, then, no injustice on God's part in his creatures never being able to equal him. The nature of God is an insurmountable obstacle to such an end of the Spirit; his justice also could not permit it, because if a Spirit reached God, it would be God himself. Now, if two Spirits are such that they both have an infinite power under all aspects and one is identical to the other, they will merge into one and there will be no more than one God; one would, then, have to lose his individuality, which would be a much more evident injustice than not being able to reach an end infinitely distanced, even while approaching it constantly. God does well what he does, and man is too small to allow himself to weigh his decisions. Mokí.

Observation. – If there is a mystery unfathomable for man, it is the beginning and the end of all things. The sight of the infinite gives him vertigo. To understand it, knowledge is necessary, and an intellectual and moral development that he is still far from possessing, despite the pride that leads him to judge himself arrived at the top of the human ladder. In relation to certain ideas, he is in the position of a child who would wish to do differential and integral calculus before knowing the four operations. As he advances toward perfection, his eyes will open to the light and the fog that covers them will dissipate. By working on his present improvement, he will arrive sooner than by losing himself in conjectures.