3.6 Destruction and Renewal
Necessary Destruction and Abusive Destruction
Destruction is one of the laws of nature, but not in an absolute sense.
What appears to perish is transformed so that life may be renewed and beings may be regenerated. In this sense, destruction serves restoration and improvement. It clears the way for new forms and new conditions of development.
Living beings also carry within themselves an instinct of destruction for providential purposes. Creatures destroy one another in order to sustain themselves, preserve the balance of reproduction that might otherwise become excessive, and make use of the remains of the outer bodily form. Yet only the outer form is destroyed.
The body is an envelope, useful but secondary. It is not the essential being. The true principle, the intelligent principle, is indestructible. It continues to develop through the many transformations and metamorphoses it undergoes.
Nature therefore joins two apparently opposite tendencies: the means of preservation and the agents of destruction. Both are necessary to the balance of life.
Self-Preservation and the Proper Time of Death
If destruction is necessary to regeneration, why are beings equipped with means of self-preservation and conservation?
Because destruction must not come before its proper time. Premature destruction delays the development of the intelligent principle. Every being has therefore been given the instinct to preserve life and to reproduce.
The same wisdom appears in the human response to death. Even if death opens the way to a better state and frees the soul from earthly suffering, human beings generally recoil from it. That instinctive fear is not meaningless. It supports the work of earthly life.
Human beings are meant to seek the prolongation of life so that they may fulfill what remains for them to do. The instinct of self-preservation sustains them through hardship. Without it, discouragement would often overcome them.
When danger threatens, the impulse to avoid death acts as an inner warning: time still remains, and it should be used well. Life endures because progress is still possible.
Destruction According to the State of Worlds
The need for destruction is not the same on all worlds.
It exists in proportion to the material condition of each world. The more material the world, the more destruction belongs to its mode of existence. As worlds become more physically and morally refined, the need for destruction diminishes.
On more advanced worlds, the conditions of life are different. There, destruction loses the role it plays in denser and less developed realms.
The same law applies within humanity on earth. The need for destruction lessens as spirit gains ascendancy over matter. As human beings become more intellectually and morally developed, they acquire a stronger aversion to destruction. Horror at needless killing grows with inward progress.
The Limits of Human Destruction
In humanity's present condition, there is no unlimited right to destroy animals.
That right extends only as far as necessity: food and safety. Beyond those limits, destruction becomes abuse. Necessity can justify; excess cannot.
This is why needless killing, such as hunting pursued only for the pleasure of destroying, is morally degraded. It reveals the predominance of the animal nature over the spiritual nature.
Animals destroy only to satisfy their needs. Human beings, endowed with free will, can destroy without need. When they do so, they misuse their freedom and submit themselves to lower instincts. Such actions are contrary to divine law and carry moral responsibility.
False Scruples and True Humaneness
Excessive scrupulousness regarding the destruction of animals does not by itself constitute higher merit.
A reluctance to cause suffering can be worthy in itself, but when it becomes exaggerated, its value is diminished, especially if it is accompanied by other forms of abuse. In such cases, the motive is often not true humaneness but superstition or fear.
What matters is neither cruelty nor empty scruple, but a just and disciplined use of life. Respect for living beings must be guided by necessity, compassion, and moral responsibility.
Destructive Calamities
Destructive calamities have a purpose within the larger order of human progress.
They hasten advancement. Destruction is sometimes necessary for the moral regeneration of spirits, who reach a new degree of perfection through new stages of existence. What appears, from an individual and bodily point of view, to be pure disaster may serve a broader end: bringing about a better order more quickly and accomplishing in a few years what might otherwise take centuries.
This does not mean that hardship is the only means of progress. The means of improvement are given daily through the knowledge of good and evil. Human beings are already equipped with the capacity to choose, learn, and advance. Yet when these means are neglected, suffering may become a corrective. Pride is humbled, and human weakness is made evident.
A difficulty immediately arises: the upright suffer in calamities along with the guilty. Measured only by bodily life, this seems unjust. But bodily life is brief, almost nothing beside the continuity of spiritual existence. A century on earth is only an instant in relation to eternity. Sufferings that last days or months are temporary experiences whose effects may extend into the future life of the spirit.
The enduring reality is not the body but the spirit, which existed before earthly life and survives it. Bodies are temporary coverings through which spirits appear in the world. In great disasters, those who die are not lost in the ultimate sense. The comparison is that of an army in wartime: uniforms may be torn, worn out, or discarded, while the true concern is for the soldiers themselves. In the same way, divine care is directed toward spirits, not merely toward the fragile forms they temporarily inhabit.
Even so, those who perish in calamities are still victims in the human sense. Yet if life is considered in its true proportion, and if earthly existence is seen against the infinite, death takes on a different meaning. Those who endure suffering without complaint will find abundant compensation in another life. Whether death comes through a public disaster or an ordinary cause, it cannot be escaped when the appointed hour has come. The difference is only that, in calamity, many depart at once.
Seen from a wider perspective, the great convulsions that terrify human communities resemble passing storms in the history of the world.
Physical Usefulness
Destructive calamities are not without physical usefulness, despite the suffering they cause.
They can alter the conditions of a region and reshape the material circumstances of life. Often, however, the benefits that follow are not enjoyed by those who endure the event itself, but by future generations. The immediate experience may be painful and devastating, while its long-term effects may prepare healthier, more stable, or more favorable conditions later.
Moral Trials
Calamities also serve as moral trials.
They place human beings in situations of severe need and suffering, and in doing so offer occasions to exercise intelligence, courage, patience, and resignation before the will of God. They can awaken self-denial, detachment from material things, and love of neighbor. Under such pressure, the deeper tendencies of the heart become visible.
Whether these trials elevate a person depends on the spirit in which they are met. If selfishness dominates, the opportunity is lost. If generosity and humility prevail, suffering can become a means of genuine moral growth.
May We Avert the Calamities That Afflict Us?
Many calamities may be averted, at least in part.
This is not usually accomplished by superstition or by imagining that every disaster can simply be prevented by wish or fear. A great number of human sufferings arise from improvidence. As knowledge and experience increase, people become more capable of studying causes and preventing certain harms before they occur.
Yet not every affliction can be avoided. Some troubles belong to a wider providential order and affect all people, each according to the share for which they are responsible. In such cases, resignation before the divine will is necessary. Even then, human carelessness often worsens what might otherwise have been less severe.
Among the destructive calamities that arise independently of human action are plagues, famine, floods, and destructive weather conditions that ruin the earth's production. Even here, however, human intelligence has been given real power to reduce suffering. Science, engineering, agriculture, irrigation, crop rotation, and attention to hygiene all provide means of preventing or lessening disaster. Regions once ravaged by terrible calamities have, over time, been made more secure.
The lesson is clear: material well-being advances as human beings learn to use the resources of intelligence rightly. But intelligence alone is not enough. Lasting protection also requires true charity toward others. Care for self-preservation must be joined to concern for one's fellow beings. Where knowledge and charity work together, much suffering can be prevented or softened.
War
War arises from the dominance of the animal nature over the spiritual nature and from the drive to satisfy passions.
Where people remain in a state of barbarity, they recognize only the right of the strongest. Under those conditions, war appears as a normal feature of collective life. As humanity advances, war becomes less frequent because its causes are better understood and more carefully avoided. Even when conflict still occurs, moral progress makes it possible to conduct it with greater humanity.
War will disappear from the earth when men and women understand justice and live according to God's law. Then nations will regard one another as brothers and sisters rather than rivals or enemies.
Freedom and Progress
Even in the harsh reality of war, Providence may permit effects that contribute to freedom and progress.
This does not mean that violence is good in itself, nor that domination is a worthy aim. Yet temporary subjugation can, in some cases, hasten the development of a people by forcing conditions under which civilization advances more rapidly. Such outcomes do not justify the passions that give rise to war, but they show that a higher order can draw progress even from human wrongdoing.
The Guilt of Those Who Provoke War
Those who deliberately stir up war for personal advantage bear a grave responsibility.
Their guilt is real and severe because they seek bloodshed to satisfy ambition, interest, or pride. They must answer for every life taken through the conflicts they have provoked. The deaths caused by their designs are not lost in anonymity. Each one carries moral consequences, and those consequences demand reparation.
For that reason, those who incite war for their own gain will have much to atone for. The suffering they unleash returns to them as a burden they must expiate, life by life, according to the full extent of the harm they have caused.
Murder
Taking another person's life is a grave wrong.
The life that is destroyed is not merely a physical existence. It may be a life of expiation, repair, learning, or mission. To cut it short by violence is therefore a serious offense against the order of justice.
Guilt, however, is not measured only by the outward act. Intention matters. Divine justice does not judge in the same way human laws often do, by considering only the visible deed. It weighs the purpose, the motive, and the inner disposition of the one who acted.
Legitimate Defense
Necessity alone can excuse killing in self-defense.
Even in danger, the duty remains to preserve one's own life without taking the aggressor's life whenever that is possible. If escape, restraint, or any other means can prevent the attack, those means should be chosen. The taking of life is excused only where there is true necessity.
Murder in War
Those who kill in war under coercion are not judged in the same way as those who act freely from personal malice.
Compulsion lessens responsibility, but it does not remove all moral accountability. Acts of cruelty still remain blameworthy. By contrast, any humanity shown amid violence is also taken into account. Even in war, the spirit is judged not only by obedience to force, but by the degree of cruelty or mercy it displays.
Parricide and Infanticide
No form of murder becomes less serious because of the age or relationship of the victim.
Parricide and infanticide are equally culpable. Crime does not cease to be crime because one society treats one kind of killing as more shocking than another. Before divine justice, the violation of life remains the essential wrong.
Infanticide in Intellectually Advanced Societies
A people may advance in intelligence without advancing in morality.
For that reason, practices such as infanticide may be accepted by societies that appear refined in knowledge, organization, or technical achievement. Intellectual progress alone does not purify the conscience. Great intelligence can exist alongside moral corruption.
This helps explain how cruel customs can survive among populations that seem highly developed in other respects. Spirits may acquire sharp intellect through many lives and yet fail to improve morally. Knowledge by itself does not make a being good.
Cruelty
Cruelty may be linked to the instinct of destruction, but it is that instinct in its worst form. Destruction can sometimes have a necessary place within the order of things. Cruelty never does. It is always the expression of an evil nature.
Among primitive peoples, matter predominates over spirit. They give themselves over more fully to animal instincts, and because their concerns rarely extend beyond bodily needs, self-preservation becomes their chief aim. From this narrowness, cruelty often arises. Peoples of imperfect development also remain under the influence of spirits of a similar order. These imperfect spirits are drawn to them and sustain those tendencies until more advanced peoples come to weaken or break that influence.
Cruelty does not come from a complete absence of moral sense. Moral sense exists in principle in every human being. What differs is its degree of development. In the primitive person, it is present only in a latent state, like fragrance enclosed within a flower bud before it opens. In time, that hidden principle unfolds and becomes the source of goodness, compassion, and humanity.
All human faculties exist first in a rudimentary or dormant state and develop according to how favorable circumstances are. When some faculties are exaggerated, they hinder or neutralize others. Excessive stimulation of material instincts stifles the moral sense, while moral development gradually weakens the purely animal tendencies.
For this reason, even in the most advanced civilizations, some individuals still appear as cruel as barbarians. Their outward refinement may only conceal a deeply backward nature, like a wolf beneath the clothing of gentleness. Spirits of a low and undeveloped order may incarnate among more advanced peoples in the hope of progressing. But when the test proves too difficult, their barbarous tendencies regain the upper hand.
Humanity, however, is moving forward. Those who are still governed by the instinct of evil, and who no longer fit among peoples of greater moral development, will little by little disappear from such environments, much as poor grain is separated from good grain in threshing. Their disappearance is not annihilation. They return in new bodily forms, and through further experience they come to understand good and evil more clearly.
The process resembles what can be seen in nature when new qualities are gradually developed in plants and animals. Improvement does not become complete in a single generation. It emerges only across many generations. So it is with human beings across successive lives. Progress is slow, but it is real, and cruelty gives way as the moral sense awakens and grows.
Dueling
Dueling is not a form of lawful self-defense. It is murder, sustained by an irrational custom more fitting to barbaric times than to a morally developed society. As human beings advance, they come to see dueling as no wiser than the ancient combats once treated as if they revealed divine judgment.
When a person enters a duel knowing their own weakness and expecting almost certain death, the act is also suicide. If the chances are equal, it remains both murder and suicide.
In every case, the dueler bears responsibility. The wrong is twofold: deliberately attempting the life of another person, and at the same time needlessly exposing one's own life without any real benefit to anyone.
The So-Called Point of Honor
What is often called the "point of honor" in dueling is usually nothing more than pride and vanity, two deep moral afflictions.
Customs may differ from one country to another and from one age to another, and people may persuade themselves that honor is at stake or that refusing a duel would be cowardice. Yet moral progress changes the way such matters are judged. With greater enlightenment, it becomes clear that true honor stands above violent passions.
A wrong is not repaired by killing another person, nor by allowing oneself to be killed. Real greatness and genuine honor are shown in admitting one's fault when one has done wrong, or in forgiving when one is right. In every case, there is dignity in refusing to give importance to insults that do no real harm.
The Death Penalty
The death penalty will disappear from human legislation.
Its abolition marks moral progress. As human beings become more enlightened, they recognize more clearly that no person should take upon themselves the final judgment of another's life. A time comes, though still far off for many societies, when such punishment is no longer accepted at all.
Even now, the movement of civilization can be seen in the gradual restriction of capital punishment among more advanced nations. Progress appears not only in reducing the number of crimes for which it is imposed, but also in the legal protections granted to the accused and in the more humane treatment of the condemned. Compared with earlier ages, when justice was often harsh, careless, and cruel, these changes reveal a real advance in human conscience.
Self-Preservation and Society
The right of self-preservation does not justify killing a dangerous member of society when other means of protection exist.
A community may defend itself, but defense does not require execution. Safer and more just remedies can be found. To kill the offender is also to close the door that repentance might have left open. Justice should protect society without extinguishing the possibility of moral renewal.
Was It Ever Necessary?
What is called necessary is often only what people have not yet learned to replace.
In less advanced times, many practices seemed indispensable simply because no better solution was understood. As societies become more enlightened, they gain a clearer sense of what is just and unjust. Then they reject the excesses once committed in the name of justice during ages of ignorance.
Civilization and the Restriction of Capital Punishment
The narrowing of the cases in which the death penalty is applied is itself a sign of civilization's growth.
History is filled with judicial slaughters once carried out as though they were righteous acts, and often even presented as service to the Divine. The condemned, and sometimes even the merely accused, were subjected to torture to force confessions, including confessions to crimes they had not committed. What one age accepts as normal, another later recognizes as barbaric.
This change of judgment reveals an important truth: human laws are not fixed. They change as humanity progresses. Only divine law is eternal. Human law becomes better as it slowly comes into harmony with that higher law.
The Meaning of "Whoever Kills by the Sword"
The words, "Whoever kills by the sword shall perish by the sword," do not authorize human vengeance or the legal killing of the murderer.
Retaliation in the deepest sense belongs to divine justice, not to human courts as an absolute right over life. Every person undergoes the consequences of wrongdoing according to a law that reaches beyond a single lifetime. Those who have caused suffering may themselves come to endure similar suffering. In that way they are instructed, corrected, and made to understand the pain they inflicted.
This is the true meaning of retribution: not a human license to kill, but the inevitable moral consequence of evil.
These words must also be read alongside the command to forgive one's enemies and to ask forgiveness in the same measure that one forgives others. Justice without mercy distorts the spirit of that teaching.
The Death Penalty in the Name of God
To impose the death penalty in the name of God is to claim a place that belongs to divine justice alone.
Such a practice shows a profound misunderstanding of the divine nature. It mistakes human severity for sacred authority. When killing is justified as an act done for God, the wrongdoing becomes even graver, because violence is cloaked in religious legitimacy.
Where the death penalty is applied in God's name, it becomes a crime for which those responsible bear moral accountability. No one may rightly sanctify execution by attributing it to the will of God.
Justice, Progress, and Mercy
Humanity advances by moving away from cruelty and toward laws shaped by respect for life, moral responsibility, and the possibility of repentance.
The death penalty belongs to a less enlightened stage of social development. As understanding grows, justice becomes less violent, more careful, and more consistent with divine law. The future of civilized society points not toward perfected execution, but toward its complete abolition.