114. Are spirits good or bad by nature, or are they the same spirits made better through their own efforts?

"The same spirits made better through their own efforts. In growing better they pass from a lower to a higher order."

 

115. Are some spirits created good and others created bad?

"God has created all spirits in a state of simplicity and ignorance; that is to say, without knowledge. He has given to each of them a mission, with a view to enlighten them and to make them gradually arrive at perfection through the knowledge of the truth, and thus to bring them nearer and nearer to Himself. This perfection is, for them, the condition of eternal and unalloyed happiness. Spirits acquire knowledge by passing through the trials imposed on them by God. Some of them accept these trials with submission, and arrive more quickly at the aim of their destiny; others undergo them with murmuring, and thus remain, through their own fault, at a distance from the perfection and the felicity promised to them."

 

– According to this statement, it would appear that spirits, at their origin, are like children, ignorant and without experience, but acquiring, little by little, the knowledge which they lack, by passing through the different phases of human life?

"Yes; the comparison is correct. The child, if rebellious, remains ignorant and faulty; he profits more or less according to his docility. But the life of man has a term; whereas that of spirits stretches out into infinity."

 

116. Do any spirits remain for ever in the lower ranks?

"No; all become perfect. They change in course of time, however long may be the process of amendment; for, as we have already said, a just and merciful parent cannot condemn his children to eternal banishment. Can you suppose that God, so great, so good, so just, is less kind than you are?"

 

117. Does it depend on the spirits themselves to hasten their progress towards perfection?

"Certainly; they reach the goal more or less quickly according to the strength of their desire and the degree of their submission to the will of God. Does not a docile child learn faster than one who is obstinate and idle?"

 

118. Can spirits degenerate?

"No; in proportion as they advance, they understand what has retarded their progress. When a spirit has finished with any given trial, he has learned the lesson of that trial, and never forgets it. He may remain stationary; but be never degenerates."

 

119. Could God exonerate spirits from the trials which they have to undergo in order to reach the highest rank?

"If they had been created perfect, they would not have merited the enjoyment of the benefits of that perfection. Where would be the merit without the struggle? Besides, the inequality which exists between spirits is necessary to the development of their personality; and, moreover, the mission which each spirit accomplishes at each step of his progress is an element of the providential plan for ensuring the harmony of the universe."

Since, in social life, all men may reach the highest posts, we might as well ask why the sovereign of a country does not make a general of each of his soldiers, why all subaltern functionaries are not made heads of departments, why all scholars are not schoolmasters. But there is this difference between the life of the social and the spirit worlds, viz., that the first is limited, and does not afford to every one the possibility of raising himself to the highest rank; whereas the second is unlimited, and ensures to every one the possibility of attaining to the supreme degree.

 

120. Do all spirits pass by the road of evil to arrive at good?

"Not by the road of evil, but by that of ignorance."

 

121. How is it that some spirits have followed the road of good, and others the road of evil?

"Have they not their free-will? God has not created any spirits bad; He has created them simple and ignorant, that is to say, possessing an equal aptitude for good and for evil. Those who become bad become so of their own free-will."

 

122. How can spirits, at their origin, when they have not yet acquired self-consciousness, possess freedom of choice between good and evil? Is there in them any principle, any tendency, which inclines them towards either road rather than towards the other?

"Free-will is developed in proportion as the spirit acquires the consciousness of himself. Freedom would not exist for the spirit if his choice were solicited by a cause independent of his will. The cause which determines his choice is not in him, but is exterior to him, in the influences to which he voluntarily yields in virtue of the freedom of his will. It is this choice that is represented under the grand figure of the fall of man and of original sin. Some spirits have yielded to temptation; others have withstood it."

 

– Whence come the influences that act upon him?

"From the imperfect spirits, who seek to take possession of him and to dominate him, and who are happy to see him succumb. It is this temptation that is allegorically pictured as Satan."

 

– Does this influence act upon a spirit only at its origin?

"It follows him through all the phases of his existence as a spirit, until he has acquired such thorough self-command that evil spirits renounce the attempt to obsess him."

 

123. Why has God permitted it to be possible for spirits to take the wrong road?

"The wisdom of God is shown in the freedom of choice which He leaves to every spirit, for each has thus the merit of his deeds."

 

124. Since there are spirits who, from the beginning, follow unswervingly the right path, and others who wander into the lowest depths of evil, there are, no doubt, many degrees of deviation between these two extremes?

"Yes, certainly; and these degrees constitute the paths of the great majority of spirits."

 

125. Will the spirits who have chosen the wrong road be able to reach the same degree of elevation as the others?

"Yes; but the eternities will be longer in their case."

 

This expression, "the eternities," must be understood as referring to the belief of spirits of inferior degree in the perpetuity their sufferings, resulting from the fact that it is not given to them to foresee the termination of those sufferings, and that this conviction of the perpetuity of the latter is renewed after every new trial to which they have succumbed.

 

126. Are spirits who have reached the supreme degree after wandering into the wrong road less meritorious than the others in the sight of God?

"God regards the wanderers who have returned to the right road with the same approval and the same affection as the others. They have been classed, for a time, as evil spirits, because they succumbed to the temptation of evil; but, before their fall, they were merely neutral in regard to good and evil, like all other spirits."

 

127. Are all spirits created equal in point of intellectual capacity?

"They are all created equal, but not knowing from whence they come; for their free-will must have its fling. They progress more or less rapidly in intelligence as in morality."

 

The spirits who, from the beginning, follow the right road, do not thereby attain at once to the state of perfection; for, although they are free from evil tendencies, they have none the less to acquire the experience and the varied knowledge indispensable to their perfection. They may be compared to children who, however good their natural instincts, need to be developed and enlightened, and who cannot attain to maturity without transition. But, just as some men are good and others bad from their infancy, so some spirits are good and others bad from their beginning; with this radical difference, however, that the child possesses instincts already formed, whereas the spirit, at his formation, is neither bad nor good, but possesses all possible tendencies, and strikes out his path, in the direction of good or evil, through the action of his own free-will.