The flesh is weak.

— There are vicious inclinations which are evidently inherent to the Spirit, because they are owed more to the moral than to the physical; others seem rather to be a consequence of the organism and, for this reason, we judge ourselves less responsible; such are the predispositions to anger, to indolence, to sensuality, etc.

It is today perfectly recognized, by spiritualist philosophers, that the cerebral organs corresponding to the various aptitudes owe their development to the activity of the Spirit; that this development is, thus, an effect and not a cause. A man is not a musician because he has the bump of music, but he has the bump of music because his Spirit is a musician. (Review of July 1860 and April 1862.)

If the activity of the Spirit reacts upon the brain, it must react equally upon the other parts of the organism. Thus, the Spirit is the artificer of its own body, which, so to speak, it shapes, in order to appropriate it to its needs and to the manifestation of its tendencies. This being so, the perfection of the body in the advanced races would be the result of the work of the Spirit, which perfects its tool as its faculties increase. (Genesis According to Spiritism, chapter XI, “Spiritual genesis”.)

— By a natural consequence of this principle, the moral dispositions of the Spirit must modify the qualities of the blood, give it greater or lesser activity, provoke a more or less abundant secretion of bile or other fluids. It is thus, for example, that the glutton feels the saliva coming, or, as is commonly said, his mouth watering at the sight of an appetizing dish. It is not the food that overexcites the organ of taste, for there is no contact; it is the Spirit, whose sensuality is awakened, that acts by thought upon that organ, while the sight of that dish produces nothing upon another Spirit. The same occurs in all covetousness, in all desires provoked by sight. The diversity of emotions cannot be explained, in a number of cases, except by the diversity of the qualities of the Spirit. Such is the reason why a sensitive person weeps easily; it is not the abundance of tears that gives sensitivity to the Spirit, but the sensitivity of the Spirit that provokes the abundant secretion of tears. Under the rule of sensitivity, the organism shaped itself according to this normal disposition of the Spirit, just as it shaped itself according to that of the gluttonous Spirit. Following this order of ideas, one understands that an irascible Spirit must lead to the bilious temperament; whence it follows that a man is not choleric because he is bilious, but that he is bilious because he is choleric. The same occurs with all the other instinctive dispositions; a soft and indolent Spirit will leave its organism in a state of atony in conformity with its character, whereas, if it is active and energetic, it will give to its blood, to its nerves, qualities entirely different. The action of the Spirit upon the physical is so evident that, many times, one sees grave organic disorders produced as the effect of violent moral commotions. The common expression: The emotion made his blood rise, is not so devoid of meaning as one might believe. Now, what could alter the blood, if not the moral dispositions of the Spirit? This effect is sensible above all in great sorrows, in great joys, in great terrors, whose reaction can even cause death. One sees persons who die from the fear of dying. Now, what relation exists between the body of the individual and the object that causes him terror, an object that, most of the time, has no reality whatever? It is said that it is the effect of imagination; so be it; but what is imagination, if not an attribute, a mode of sensitivity of the Spirit? It seems difficult to attribute imagination to the muscles and to the nerves, for then one could not explain why these muscles and these nerves do not always have imagination; why they do not have it after death; why that which in some causes a mortal terror, overexcites courage in others.

— Whatever subtlety may be used to explain moral phenomena exclusively by the properties of matter, one inevitably falls into an impasse, at the bottom of which one perceives, with all evidence, and as the only possible position, the independent spiritual being, for whom the organism is nothing more than a means of manifestation, as the piano is the instrument of the manifestations of the musician's thought. Just as the musician tunes his piano, one may say that the Spirit tunes its body to set it in the diapason of its moral dispositions.

— It is truly curious to see materialism speak incessantly of the necessity of redeeming the dignity of man, when it strives to reduce him to a piece of flesh, which rots and disappears without leaving any trace; to claim for him liberty as a natural right, when it transforms him into a mechanism, acting like an automaton, without responsibility for his acts.

With the independent spiritual being, preexistent and surviving the body, responsibility is absolute. Now, for the greater number, the first, the principal motive of the belief in nihilism, is the terror caused by this responsibility, outside human law, and which one believes one can escape by covering one's eyes. Until today this responsibility had nothing well defined about it; it was nothing but a vague fear, founded, it must be recognized, on beliefs not always admissible by reason; Spiritism demonstrates it as a patent reality, effective, without restriction, as a natural consequence of the spirituality of the being. This is why certain persons are afraid of Spiritism, which would disturb them in their quietude, raising before them the formidable tribunal of the future. To prove that man is responsible for all his acts is to prove his liberty of action, and to prove his liberty is to redeem his dignity. The prospect of responsibility outside human law is the most powerful moralizing element: it is the goal to which Spiritism leads by the force of things.

— According to the physiological observations that precede, one may, then, admit that the temperament is, at least in part, determined by the nature of the Spirit, which is cause and not effect. We say in part, because there are cases in which the physical evidently influences the moral: this is when a morbid or abnormal state is determined by an external cause, accidental, independent of the Spirit, such as temperature, climate, hereditary defects of constitution, a passing malaise, etc. The moral of the Spirit may then be affected in its manifestations by the pathological state, without its intrinsic nature being modified.

To excuse one's bad actions with the weakness of the flesh is nothing but a subterfuge to escape responsibility. The flesh is weak only because the Spirit is weak, which overturns the question and leaves to the Spirit the responsibility for all its acts. The flesh, which has neither thought nor will, never prevails over the Spirit, which is the thinking and willing being. It is the Spirit that gives to the flesh the qualities corresponding to its instincts, as an artist imprints upon his material work the stamp of his genius. Freed from the instincts of bestiality, the Spirit shapes a body which is no longer a tyrant to its aspirations toward the spirituality of its being; it is then that man eats to live, because living is a necessity, but no longer lives to eat.

— The moral responsibility for the acts of life remains, then, entire; but reason says that the consequences of this responsibility must be in proportion to the intellectual development of the spirit; the more enlightened, the less excusable, because, with intelligence and the moral sense, are born the notions of good and evil, of the just and the unjust. The savage, still neighbor to animality, who yields to the instinct of the animal, eating his fellow, is, without contradiction, less culpable than the civilized man who commits a simple injustice.

— This law also finds its application in Medicine and gives the reason for its failure in certain cases. Since the temperament is an effect and not a cause, the efforts attempted to modify it may be paralyzed by the moral dispositions of the Spirit, which opposes an unconscious resistance and neutralizes the therapeutic action. It is, then, upon the first cause that one must act; if one does not succeed in changing the moral dispositions of the Spirit, the thought will modify itself by itself, under the rule of a different will or, at least, the action of the medical treatment will be seconded, instead of being thwarted. If possible, give courage to the coward, and you will see the physiological effects of fear cease; the same occurs with other dispositions. But, it will be asked, can the physician of the body make himself physician of the soul? Is it within his attributions to make himself the moralizer of his patients? Yes, without doubt, within certain limits; it is even a duty, which a good physician never neglects, from the moment he sees in the state of the soul an obstacle to the reestablishment of the health of the body. The essential thing is to apply the moral remedy with tact, prudence, and to the purpose, according to the circumstances. From this point of view, his action is necessarily circumscribed, since, besides exercising over his patient only a moral ascendancy, at a certain age a transformation of character is difficult. It is, then, to education, and above all to the first education, that the cares of this nature pertain. When, from the cradle, education is directed in this sense; when one applies oneself to smothering, in their germs, the moral imperfections, as one does with the physical imperfections, the physician will no longer find, in the temperament, an obstacle against which his science is often powerless. As one sees, it is a whole study; but a study completely sterile, so long as one does not take into account the action of the spiritual element upon the organism. The incessantly active participation of the spiritual element in the phenomena of life, such is the key to the greater part of the problems against which Science collides. When the latter takes into consideration the action of this principle, it will see open before it horizons entirely new. It is the demonstration of this truth that Spiritism leads to.

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[See: Heaven and Hell — 1st Part: The flesh is weak.]