Regeneration.

For long centuries the humanities have continued uniformly their ascending march through time and space. Each one of them traverses, stage by stage, the route of progress, and although they differ by the infinitely varied means that Providence has placed in their hands, they are all called to merge together, to become identified in perfection, since all set out from ignorance and unconsciousness of themselves to approach indefinitely the same end: God; to attain supreme happiness through knowledge and through love.

There are universes and worlds, as there are peoples and individuals. The physical transformations of the earth, which sustains the body, may be divided into two forms, just as may the moral and intellectual transformations that enlarge the spirit and the heart.

The earth is modified by cultivation, by clearing, and by the persevering efforts of its owners and those who have an interest in it; but to that incessant improvement we must add the great periodic cataclysms, which are, for the supreme regulator, what the hoe and the plough are for the husbandman.

The humanities transform and progress through persevering study and through the exchange of thoughts. By instructing themselves and instructing others, intelligences grow richer, but the moral cataclysms that regenerate thought are necessary to bring about the acceptance of certain truths.

The consequences of accepted truths are assimilated without upheaval and progressively. An immense concourse of persevering efforts is needed for new principles to be accepted. One walks slowly and without fatigue upon a level road, but it is necessary to gather all one's strength to cross a rugged path and destroy the obstacles that arise. It is then that, in order to advance, man must necessarily break the chain that binds him to the pillory of the past, by habit, by routine, and by prejudice; otherwise the obstacle always remains standing, and he will turn in a circle with no way out until he has understood that, in order to overcome the resistance that obstructs the route of the future, it is not enough to break old and damaged weapons: it is indispensable to create others. To destroy a ship that takes on water from all sides, before undertaking a sea crossing, is a measure of prudence, but it will still be necessary, in order to make the voyage, to create new means of transport. Yet, this is precisely where a certain number of men of progress now find themselves, both in the moral and philosophical world and in the other worlds of thought! They have undermined everything, they have attacked everything! The ruins are spread everywhere, but they have not yet understood that upon such ruins it is necessary to build something more serious than a free-thought and a moral independence, independent only of morality and of reason. The nothingness upon which they lean is not a word that is very profound merely because it is empty. Just as God no longer creates the worlds out of nothing, so man cannot create new beliefs without foundations. These foundations lie in the study and observation of facts. Eternal truth, like the law that consecrates it, does not wait for the acceptance of men in order to exist; it is, and it governs the Universe, in spite of those who close their eyes so as not to see it. Electricity existed before Galvani, and steam before Papin, just as the new belief and the philosophical principles of the future existed before the publicists and the philosophers had consecrated them.

Be persevering and tireless pioneers!… If they call you madmen as they did Salomon de Caus, if they repel you as they did Fulton, march on always, for time, that supreme judge, will know how to draw out of the darkness those who feed the beacon that must, one day, illuminate the whole of Humanity.

On Earth, the past and the future are the two arms of a lever that has its fulcrum in the present. As long as routine and prejudices hold sway, the past will be at its apogee. When the light is made, the balance tips, and the past, which was already growing dark, disappears to give place to the future that radiates.

Allan Kardec.