872. The question of free-will may be thus summed up: Man is not fatally led into evil; the acts he accomplishes are not written down beforehand; the crimes he commits are not the result of any decree of destiny. He may have chosen, as trial and as expiation, an existence in which, through the surroundings amidst which he is placed, or the circumstances that supervene, he will be tempted to do wrong; but he always remains free to do or not to do. Thus a spirit exercises free-will, in the spirit-life, by choosing his next existence and the kind of trials to which it will subject him, and, in the corporeal life, by using his power of yielding to, or resisting, the temptations to which he has voluntarily subjected himself. The duty of education is to combat the evil tendencies brought by the spirit into his new existence – a duty which it will only be able to thoroughly fulfil when it shall be based on a deeper and truer knowledge of man's moral nature. Through knowledge of the laws of this department of his nature, education will be able to modify it, as it already modifies his intelligence by instruction, and his temperament by hygiene. Each spirit, when freed from matter, and in the state of erraticity, chooses his future corporeal existences according to the degree of purification to which he has already attained; and it is in the power of making this choice, as we have previously pointed out, that his free-will principally consists. This free-will is not annulled by incarnation; for, if the incarnated spirit yields to the influence of matter, it is always to the very trials previously chosen by him that he succumbs, and he is always free to invoke the assistance of God and of good spirits to help him to surmount them. (337.)

Without free-will there would be for man neither guilt in doing wrong, nor merit in doing right – a principle so fully recognised in this life, that the world always apportions its blame or its praise of any deed to the intention – that is to say, to the will of the doer; and will is but another term for freedom. Man, therefore, could not seek an excuse for his misdeeds in his organisation, without abdicating his reason and his condition as a human being, and assimilating himself to the condition of the brute. If he could do so in regard to what is wrong, he would have to do the same in regard to what is wrong, he would have to do the same in regard to what is right; but, whenever a man does what is right, he takes good care to claim the merit of his action, and never thinks of attributing that merit to his organs, which proves that he instinctively refuses to renounce, at the bidding of certain theory-builders, the most glorious privilege of his species, viz., freedom of thought.

Fatality, as commonly understood, supposes an anterior and irrevocable ordaining of all the events of human life, whatever their degree of importance. If such were the order of things, man would be a machine, without a will of his own. Of what use would his intelligence be to him, seeing that he would be invariably overruled in all his acts by the power of destiny? Such pre-ordination, if it took place, would be the destruction of all moral freedom; there would be no such thing as human responsibility, and consequently neither good nor evil, neither virtues nor crimes. God, being sovereignly just, could not chastise His creatures for faults which they had not the option of not committing, nor could He reward them for virtues which would constitute for them no merit. It would be, moreover, the negation of the law of progress; for, if man were thus dependent on fate, he would make no attempt to ameliorate his position, since his action would be both unnecessary and unavailing.

On the other hand, fatality is not a mere empty word; it really exists in regard to the position occupied by each man upon the earth and the part which he plays in it, as a consequence of the kind of existence previously made choice of by his spirit, as trial, expiation, or mission, for, in virtue of that choice, he is necessarily subjected to the vicissitudes of the existence he has chosen, and to all the tendencies, good or bad, inherent in it; but fatality ceases at this point, for it depends on his will to yield, or not to yield, to those tendencies. The details of events are subordinated to the circumstances to which man himself gives rise by his action, and in regard to which he may be influenced by the good or bad thoughts suggested to him by spirits. (459.)

There is a fatality, then, in the events which occur independently of our action, because they are the consequence of the choice of our existence made by our spirit in the other life; but there can be no fatality in the results of those events, because we are often able to modify their results by our own prudence. There is no fatality in regard to the acts of our moral life.

It is only in regard to his death that man is placed under the law of an absolute and inexorable fatality; for he can neither evade the decree which has fixed the term of his existence, nor avoid the kind of death which is destined to interrupt its course.[1]

According to the common belief, man derives all his instincts from himself; they proceed either from his physical organisation, for which he is not responsible, or from his own nature, which would furnish him with an equally valid excuse for his imperfections, as, if such were the case, he might justly plead that it is through no option of his own that he has been made what he is.

The doctrine of spiritism is evidently more moral. It admits the plenitude of man's free-will, and, in telling him that, when he does wrong, he yields to an evil suggestion made by another spirit, it leaves him the entire responsibility of his wrong-doing, because it recognises his power of resisting that suggestion, which it is evidently more easy for him to do than it would be to fight against his own nature. Thus, according to spiritist doctrine, no temptation is irresistible. A man can always close his mental ear against the occult voice which addresses itself to his inner consciousness, just as he can close it against a human voice. He can always withdraw himself from the suggestions that would tempt him to evil, by exerting his will against the tempter; asking of God, at the same time, to give him the necessary strength, and calling on good spirits to help him in vanquishing the temptation.

This view of the exciting cause of human action is the natural consequence of the totality of the teaching now being given from the spirit-world. It is not only sublime in point of morality; it is also eminently fitted to enhance man's self-respect. For it shows him that he is as free to shake off the yoke of an oppressor, as he is to close his house against unwelcome intrusion; that he is not a machine, set in motion by an impulsion independent of his will; that he is a reasoning being, with the power of listening to, weighing, and choosing freely between, two opposing counsels. Let us add that, while thus counselled, man is not deprived of the initiative of his action; what he does, he does of his own motion, because he is still a spirit, though incarnated in a corporeal envelope, and still preserves, as a man, the good and bad qualities he possessed as a spirit.

The faults we commit have their original source, therefore, in the imperfection of our own spirit, which has not yet acquired the moral excellence it will acquire in course of time, but which, nevertheless, is in full possession of its free-will. Corporeal life is permitted to us for the purpose of purging our spirit of its imperfections through the trials to which we are thus subjected; and it is precisely those imperfections that weaken us and render us accessible to the suggestions of other imperfect spirits, who take advantage of our weakness in trying to make us fail in the fulfilment of the task we have imposed upon ourselves. If we issue victorious from the struggle, our spirit attains a higher grade; if we fail, our spirit remains as it was, no better and no worse, but with the unsuccessful attempt to be made over again: a repetition of the same trial that may retard our advancement for a very long period. But, in proportion as we effect our improvement, our weakness diminishes, and we give less and less handle to those who would tempt us to evil; and as our moral strength constantly increases, bad spirits cease at length to act upon us.

The totality of spirits, good and bad, constitute by their incarnation the human race; and as our earth is one of the most backward worlds, more bad spirits than good ones are incarnated in it, and a general perversity is visible among mankind. Let us, then, do our utmost not to have to come back to it, but to merit admission into a world of higher degree; one of those happier worlds in which goodness reigns supreme, and in which we shall remember our sojourn in this lower world only as a period of exile.