752. Is the sentiment of cruelty connected with the instinct of destruction?

"It is the instinct of destruction in its worst form, for, though destruction is sometimes

necessary, cruelty never is; it is always the result of an evil nature."

753. How comes it that cruelty is the dominant characteristic of the primitive races?

"Among the primitive races, as you call them, matter has the ascendancy over spirit. They abandon themselves to the instincts of the brute; and as they care for nothing but the life of the body, they think only of their personal preservation, and this generally renders them cruel. And besides, peoples, whose development is still imperfect, are under the influence of spirits equally imperfect, with whom they are in sympathy, until the coming among them of some other people, more advanced than themselves, destroys or weakens that influence."

754. Is cruelty a result of the absence of the moral sense?

"Say that the moral sense is not developed, but do not say that it is absent; for its principle exists in every man, and is this sense which, in course of time, renders beings kind and humane. It exists, therefore, in the savage; but in him it is latent, as the principle of the perfume is in the bud, before it opens into the flowers."

All faculties exist in man in a rudimentary or latent state; they are developed according as circumstances are more or less favourable to them. The excessive development of some of them arrests or neutralises that of others. The undue excitement of the material instincts stifles, so to say, the moral sense; as the development of the moral sense gradually weakens the merely animal-faculties.

755. How is it that, in the midst of the most advanced civilisation, we sometimes find persons as cruel as the savages?

"Just as, on a tree laden with healthy fruit, you may find some that are withered. They may be said to be savages who have nothing of civilisation about them but the coat; they are wolves who have strayed into the midst of the sheep. Spirits of low degree, and very backward, may incarnate themselves among men of greater advancement, in the hope of advancing themselves; but, if the trial be too arduous, their primitive nature gets the upper hand."

756. Will the society of the good be one day purged of evil-doers?

"The human race is progressing. Those who are under the dominion of the instinct of evil, and who are out of place among good people, will gradually disappear, as the faulty grain is separated from the good when the wheat is threshed; but they will be born again under another corporeal envelope, and, as they acquire more experience, they will arrive at a clearer understanding of good and evil. You have an example of this in the plants and animals which man has discovered the art of improving, and in which he develops new qualities. It is only after several generations that the improvement becomes complete. This is a picture of the different existences of each human being."