3.10 Freedom of Choice
Natural Freedom
There are no conditions in the world in which persons can flatter themselves with the belief that they enjoy absolute freedom, because all people, the least as well as the greatest, need one another.
The only condition in which a human being could enjoy absolute freedom would be that of a hermit in the desert. As soon as two individuals are brought together, there are rights to respect, and they no longer possess absolute freedom.
The duty of respecting the rights of others does not deprive individuals of the rights that belong to them, for those rights have been granted by nature.
Although some people intellectually understand natural law, the despotism they often exercise in their own homes and over those under their authority arises from pride and selfishness. They know what they ought to do, but they do not put it into practice; they make their principles into a calculated farce.
The principles they have professed during this life will be taken into account in the next. The more intelligence individuals have for understanding a principle, the less excusable they are if they have not applied it to themselves. Simple but sincere persons are more advanced on God’s path than those who try to appear to be what they are not.
Slavery
Every instance of one human being subjected to another is contrary to the law of God. Slavery is an abuse of power and will gradually disappear with progress, as all abuses do.
Any human law that establishes slavery is a law against nature, because it reduces persons to the level of animals and degrades them physically and morally.
Evil is always evil. No sophistry can make an evil action good. However, responsibility for evil is relative to the means available for understanding it. Those who make use of slavery are always guilty of violating the law of nature, but here, as in all things, guilt is relative. Because slavery was a custom among certain peoples, it was practiced in good faith as something that seemed natural to them. But once reason, more developed and especially enlightened by the teachings of Christianity, showed them that the slave was their equal before God, they no longer had any excuse.
The natural inequality of aptitudes places certain peoples under the guidance of more advanced ones so that they may develop, not so that they may be further demeaned through slavery. Human beings long regarded certain races as domesticated beasts of burden equipped with arms and hands, and believed they had the right to sell them as such. They considered themselves of purer blood. This is the folly of those who do not look beyond matter. It is not the blood that is more or less pure, but the spirit.
There are those who treat their slaves humanely, allow them to lack nothing, and believe that freedom would expose them to even greater deprivation. They understand their own interests very well. They show the same care for their cattle and horses in order to obtain more profit at market. They are less culpable than those who mistreat their slaves, but they still use them as merchandise, depriving them of the right to belong to themselves.
Freedom of Thought
In human beings, it is through thought that they enjoy unlimited freedom, for thought knows no obstacles. Its outward expression may be hindered, but thought itself cannot be erased.
Humans are responsible for their thoughts before God. God alone can know those thoughts and condemn or absolve according to divine justice.
Freedom of Conscience
Freedom of conscience is a consequence of freedom of thought. Conscience is an inward thought that belongs to each person, as all other thoughts do.
Humans have no more right to place barriers around freedom of conscience than around freedom of thought, because God alone has the right to judge conscience. If human laws regulate relations between individuals, the laws of God regulate relations between individuals and God.
Barriers placed against freedom of conscience constrain individuals to act against their own way of thinking and thus make hypocrites of them. Freedom of conscience is one of the marks of true civilization and progress.
Every belief is respectable when it is sincere and leads to the practice of good. Reproachable beliefs are those that lead to evil.
To use our own beliefs to scandalize someone who does not think as we do shows a lack of charity and offends freedom of thought.
It does not violate freedom of conscience to restrain beliefs whose outward acts may disturb society, because acts may be restrained while inner belief remains inaccessible.
Restraining the external acts of a belief when those acts cause harm to others does not violate freedom of conscience, for such restraint leaves the belief itself entirely free.
Out of respect for freedom of conscience, harmful doctrines need not be allowed to spread unchecked, and those led astray by erroneous principles may and should be guided back to the path of truth. But, following the example of Jesus, this must be done through gentleness and persuasion, not through force, which would be worse than the belief one seeks to correct. If anything is to be imposed, it is goodness and fraternity; but the means must never be violence, since conviction cannot be forced.
Among doctrines that all claim to be the sole expression of the truth, the one that truly has the right to present itself as such will be the one that produces the fewest hypocrites and the greatest number of moral persons—that is, persons who practice the law of love and charity in its greatest purity and widest application. By this sign the good doctrine is recognized, because any doctrine that sows disunion and establishes division among God’s children can only be erroneous and harmful.
Free Will
Humans act with free will. Since they have freedom of thought, they also have freedom of action. Without free will, human beings would be machines.
People have freedom to act from the moment they have the will to act. During the first phases of life, freedom is almost nonexistent. It develops and changes its aims as the faculties develop. Since the thoughts of children are in proportion to the needs of their age, they apply their free will to what is necessary for them.
The instinctive predispositions individuals bring at birth arise from the spirit’s condition before incarnation. Depending on the degree of the spirit’s advancement, these predispositions may incline the individual toward reprehensible acts, and spirits who sympathize with such tendencies may assist in that direction. However, there is no irresistible impulse when the individual has the will to resist. Remember: where there is a will, there is a way.
The organism certainly influences actions in earthly life. The spirit is undoubtedly affected by matter, which may hinder its manifestations. That is why, on worlds where bodies are less material than on Earth, the faculties develop with greater freedom; however, the instrument does not give faculties to the spirit. In this matter, it is necessary to distinguish between moral faculties and intellectual faculties. If individuals have an instinct for murder, it is assuredly their own spirit that possesses it and transmits it to them; it never arises from bodily organs. Those who suppress thought in order to immerse themselves in matter become like animals, and even worse, because they no longer think to guard themselves against evil. In this they become culpable, because they act in this way by their own free will.
A distortion of the faculties can deprive humans of free will. Those whose intelligence is impaired by any cause are no longer in full control of their thought, and therefore no longer possess complete freedom. Such impairment is often a punishment for the spirit, which may have been vain and proud and may have made bad use of its faculties in another existence. It may be reborn in the body of a person with mental impairment, as the despot may be reborn in the body of a slave, and the spiteful rich person in that of a beggar. The spirit, however, remains perfectly conscious of this constraint and suffers from it. In this constraint one sees the action of matter.
The distortion of the intellectual faculties through drunkenness does not excuse reprehensible acts, because drunkards intentionally deprive themselves of reason in order to satisfy crude passions; instead of one wrong, they commit two.
In humans in the primitive state, instinct is the dominant faculty, yet this does not prevent them from acting with full freedom in certain things. Like children, they first apply this freedom to their needs; it develops later with intelligence. Consequently, those who are more enlightened than primitive peoples are more responsible for their acts.
Social position is sometimes an obstacle to the full exercise of freedom of action. The world undoubtedly has its demands. God is just and takes everything into account, but still holds human beings responsible for the small efforts they make to overcome such obstacles.
Fatalism
Fatalism, in the usual meaning attached to the word, does not govern all the events of life in such a way that free will disappears. Fatalism exists only in relation to the choice made by spirits before incarnation to undergo this or that trial. By choosing a particular trial, they trace for themselves a kind of destiny, which is the natural consequence of the position in which they place themselves. This applies only to trials of a physical nature. As for moral trials and temptations, spirits retain free will to choose good or evil and are always able either to yield or to resist. When good spirits see individuals losing courage, they may hasten to help, but they cannot influence them to the point of eclipsing their will. An evil spirit, that is, one of a low order, may trouble and frighten them by exaggerating a physical danger. Whatever the circumstances, however, the incarnate spirit always retains full freedom of choice.
There are persons who seem pursued by fatality no matter what they do. These may indeed be trials that they themselves have chosen to endure. Yet once again, destiny is blamed for what is most often only the consequence of one’s own actions. In the midst of the hardships that afflict them, they should make sure their conscience is clear; they will then feel partly consoled.
The right or wrong ideas formed about things lead to success or failure according to character and social position. It is easier, and less humiliating to vanity, to attribute failures to fate or destiny rather than to one’s own fault. If the influence of spirits sometimes contributes to this, one can always free oneself from it by rejecting the evil ideas they suggest.
There are persons who escape one mortal danger only to fall into another and seem unable to avoid death. Fatalism, in the true meaning of the word, applies only to the moment of death. When that moment has come, in one form or another, it cannot be escaped.
Whatever danger threatens, one will not die if one’s hour has not come. There are thousands of examples of this. But when the hour of departure comes, nothing can save a person. God knows beforehand what kind of death will mark each departure, and often the spirit also knows, because it was revealed when it chose that particular existence.
From the certainty of the hour of death it does not follow that the precautions taken to avoid it are useless. Such precautions are suggested in order to prevent the death that might result from the dangers that threaten. They are among the means employed so that it does not occur.
Providence permits dangers that have no fatal result so that, when life is in danger, the experience may serve as a warning the individual has desired, in order to turn away from evil and become better. Once the danger has passed, and while still under the impression of the risk incurred, the individual thinks more or less seriously—according to the strength of the action of good spirits—about becoming a better person. But when evil spirits return, evil being understood here as the evil still within the individual, the person thinks that other dangers can likewise be avoided and once more lets the passions loose. Through the dangers encountered, God reminds each person of weakness and of the fragility of existence. If one examines the cause and nature of such dangers, one will see that in most cases their consequences are the punishment of some wrong committed or some duty neglected. God thus warns individuals to reflect on and correct their faults.
The spirit knows beforehand that the kind of life chosen will expose it to dying more probably in one way than in another. But it also knows what struggles it must sustain in order to avoid that death, and that, if God wills, it will not succumb.
There are soldiers who face the perils of combat with a certain conviction that their hour has not yet come. Quite often, individuals have a presentiment of their end, and they may likewise have a presentiment that they will not yet die. This presentiment is given by their protecting spirits, who wish to warn them so that they may be ready to depart, or to strengthen their courage when necessary. It may also come from their own intuition of the life they have chosen or of the mission they have accepted and know they must fulfill.
Those who foresee their death generally dread it less than others, because it is the human being who dreads death, not the spirit. Those who foresee it think more as spirit than as bodily being. They understand their deliverance and await it.
If death cannot be avoided when its hour has come, it is not the same with all the accidents that occur in the course of life. These are generally minor enough that spirits can warn individuals by directing their thoughts in a way that helps them avoid such events, for spirits do not like physical suffering. However, this matters little in relation to the course of the life chosen. Strictly speaking, fatalism applies only to the times when one must enter and depart this world.
There are events that must necessarily occur and that the will of spirits cannot avert. These are events that, in the spirit state, individuals foresaw and anticipated when they made their choice. But not everything that happens is written, as some say. An event is almost always the consequence of something done through an act of free will, so that if it had not been done, the event would not have occurred. If one burns a finger, it is merely the consequence of imprudence and of the nature of matter. Only the great sorrows, those important events capable of influencing moral advancement, are foreseen by God because they are useful for purification and instruction.
Humans can, through their own will and efforts, avoid events that were to occur, and vice versa, if this apparent deviation fits within the general order of the life they have chosen. Moreover, by doing good—which is their duty and the sole purpose of life—they can prevent evil, especially evil that might contribute to a greater evil.
When choosing their existence, those who commit a murder do not know at that time that they will become murderers. They know only that, in choosing a life of struggle, they incur the possibility of killing one of their fellow beings, but they do not know whether they will actually do so. Murderers almost always deliberate before committing the crime, and whoever deliberates is always free to act or not to act. If spirits knew beforehand that, as human beings, they would have to commit a murder, this would mean they were predestined to it. No one is ever predestined to commit a crime, and every crime, like every other act, is always the result of will and free choice. Two very distinct things are often confused: the material events of existence and the moral acts of life. If there is sometimes fatalism, it applies only to material events whose cause lies outside the individual and is independent of the will. As for the acts of moral life, they always proceed from the individual, who therefore always retains freedom of choice. There is never fatalism in such acts.
There are people who never seem to succeed and who appear pursued by a bad influence in all their undertakings. This may be called a kind of fatalism, but it results from the choice of the kind of existence. Such individuals wanted to experience a life full of disappointments in order to exercise patience and resignation. Yet this fatalism is not always unavoidable. It is often only the result of having taken a wrong path that does not accord with one’s intelligence and aptitudes. One who tries to swim across a river without knowing how to swim stands a great chance of drowning. So it is in most of the events of life. If people undertook only what suited their faculties, they would almost always succeed. What causes failure are self-love and ambition, which turn them from their proper path and make them mistake a vocation for the mere desire to satisfy certain passions. They fail, and it is their own fault; but instead of recognizing their error, they prefer to blame their horoscope. A person might have been a good worker, earning an honorable living, but became a poor poet instead and died of hunger. There would be a place for everyone if each knew how to occupy the place suited to them.
Social customs often seem to oblige people to follow one path rather than another, and individuals appear subject to the opinions of others in their choice of occupation. What is called human respect is nevertheless no obstacle to the exercise of free will. Social customs are made by humans, not by God. If people submit to them, it is because such customs suit them; this too is an act of free will, because they could reject them if they wished. They should not accuse social customs, then, but their own foolish vanity, which leads them to prefer dying of hunger to violating those customs. No one credits this sacrifice to public opinion, though God takes account of the sacrifice made to vanity. This does not mean they should needlessly oppose public opinion, like certain persons who possess more eccentricity than true philosophy. It is as absurd to parade oneself as an oddity as it is wise to descend willingly in social position without complaint when one cannot remain at the top.
If there are people whom fate seems to oppose, others seem favored by it because everything succeeds for them. Usually this is because they are better at guiding themselves. Yet it may also be a kind of trial: success intoxicates them; they trust in their destiny, and later they often pay for success through cruel reversals that a little prudence might have avoided.
The luck that seems to favor certain individuals in circumstances depending neither on will nor intelligence, such as games of chance, may be explained by the fact that certain spirits have chosen these kinds of pleasures beforehand, and the luck that favors them is a temptation. Those who win materially may lose spiritually. It is a trial for pride and greed.
The fatalism that appears to govern destinies in material life is likewise the result of free will. Individuals themselves have chosen their trials. The more difficult these are, and the better they endure them, the more they advance. Those who spend their lives in the selfish enjoyment of abundance and personal well-being are cowardly spirits who remain stationary. Thus the number of the unfortunate greatly exceeds that of the fortunate, because most spirits have sought the trials that would be most useful to them. They see too clearly the vanity of earthly greatness and pleasures. Besides, the happiest life is still full of disturbances and troubles to be resolved, even apart from suffering.
The expression “born under a lucky star” comes from an old superstition according to which the stars were connected with each human destiny—an allegory that some are foolish enough to take literally.
Foreknowledge of the Future
In principle, the future is hidden from human beings, and only in rare and exceptional cases does God permit it to be revealed.
The future is hidden because, if people knew it, they would neglect the present and would not act with the same freedom, since they would be dominated by the thought that, if a certain thing must happen, there is no use concerning themselves with it. Or else they would try to prevent it. God has willed it this way so that each person may contribute to the accomplishment of events, even those they would prefer to thwart. Thus, human beings themselves unknowingly prepare the events that will take place in the course of their lives.
If it is useful for the future to remain hidden, God nevertheless sometimes allows it to be revealed when the foreseen event will facilitate the accomplishment of things rather than prevent it, and when it leads individuals to act differently than they would have acted without the revelation. Moreover, it is often a trial. The anticipation of an event may awaken thoughts that are more or less virtuous. For example, if a man knows that he will receive an unexpected inheritance, he may be seized by greed or by exultation at the prospect of increasing his earthly enjoyments. In order to obtain the inheritance sooner, he may even desire the death of the one who is to leave it to him. Or, on the contrary, the anticipation may awaken good sentiments and generous thoughts in him. If the prediction is not fulfilled, that too becomes a trial: the trial of how he bears disappointment. Yet he will still have acquired the merit or the blame for the good or evil thoughts the prediction aroused.
Since God knows everything, God knows whether a person will or will not fail in a given trial. The purpose of a trial is not to inform God of what a person deserves—God knows perfectly well—but to leave the individual wholly responsible for personal conduct, since the person remains free to act or not to act. Because each one can choose between good and evil, a trial places the person before the temptation of evil and leaves the full merit of resistance. Thus, although God knows very well in advance whether the person will triumph or fail, divine justice can neither punish nor reward for an act not yet committed.
The same is true among humans. However capable candidates may be, and however certain one may be of their success, they cannot be granted a diploma without first being tested—that is, without undergoing trial. Likewise, a judge does not condemn the accused except on proof that a crime has actually been committed, not on the prediction that the accused might commit such an act in the future.
The more one reflects on the consequences that knowledge of the future would have for human beings, the more one sees how wise Providence was to conceal it. The certainty of a happy event would lead to inaction; the certainty of an unhappy event, to discouragement. In either case, effort would be paralyzed. This is why the future is shown only as a goal to be reached through one’s own efforts, without revealing the tribulations that must be undergone in order to reach it. To know all the incidents one might encounter along the way would deprive a person of initiative and of the use of free will. One would allow oneself to be carried down the fatal slope of events without exercising one’s faculties. When the success of some undertaking is assured, no one worries about it any longer.
A Theoretical Summary on the Driving Force behind Human Actions
The question of free will may be summarized as follows: humans are not fatally led into evil; their acts are not written beforehand; the crimes they commit are not the result of any decree of destiny. As a trial and an expiation, they may choose an existence in which they will feel drawn toward crime, whether through the surroundings in which they are placed or through the circumstances that arise; but they are always free to act as they wish. Free will exists in the spirit state in the choice of trials, and in bodily life in the ability to yield to or resist the temptations to which they have voluntarily exposed themselves. It is the duty of education to combat evil tendencies, and it will do so effectively when based on a deep study of human moral nature. Through knowledge of the laws that govern that moral nature, humans will be able to modify it, just as intelligence is developed through education and physical constitution through bodily care.
When separated from matter and in the errant state, the spirit chooses its future bodily existence according to the degree of perfection it has attained. It is chiefly in this, as already stated, that its free will consists. This freedom is not annulled by incarnation. If the spirit yields to the influence of matter, it fails in the trials it has chosen for itself. To help overcome them, however, it may invoke the assistance of God and of good spirits.
Without free will, humans would be neither guilty in evil nor deserving in goodness. This is so true that in the world blame or praise always depends on intention, that is, on the will of the individual. And whoever says will says freedom. Therefore, people cannot seek excuses for their wrongs in their physical makeup without abdicating reason and the human condition, and without putting themselves on the level of brute creatures. If this applies to evil, it applies equally to good. Yet when people do good, they take great care to attribute the merit to themselves. They do not assign it to their organs—a fact that proves, despite the opinion of some theorists, that they instinctively do not renounce the most glorious privilege of their species: freedom of thought.
Fatalism, as commonly understood, implies a prior and irrevocable ordaining of all the events of life, whatever their importance. If such were the order of things, human beings would be like machines deprived of will. What use would intelligence be if, in all actions, it were invariably overruled by the force of destiny? Such a doctrine, if true, would destroy all human freedom. Individuals would bear no responsibility for their actions, and consequently there would be no evil, no crime, and no virtue. God, being supremely just, could not chastise creatures for wrongs that did not depend on them, nor reward them for virtues in which they had no merit. Such a law would moreover be a denial of the law of progress, because people who depended on fate for everything would attempt nothing to improve their condition, since they could make it neither better nor worse.
Fatalism, however, is not an empty word. It truly applies to the position of individuals on Earth and to the functions they perform there, as a consequence of the kind of existence their spirit chose as a trial, an expiation, or a mission. They inevitably undergo all the tribulations of that existence and all the good or bad tendencies inherent in it. But there fatalism ends, because it depends on their will whether they yield or do not yield to those tendencies. The details of events depend on circumstances that human beings themselves create by their actions, and on those that spirits may influence through the thoughts they suggest.
There is fatalism, therefore, in the events presented to individuals as a consequence of the existence chosen by their spirit. But there can be no fatalism in the results of those events, because it may depend on the individual to alter the course of things through prudence. Furthermore, fatalism never applies to the acts of moral life.
It is in death that human beings are subjected absolutely and inexorably to the law of fatalism, for they cannot evade the decree that has fixed the term of their existence or the kind of death that must interrupt its course.
According to common belief, human beings derive all their instincts from themselves. These instincts would proceed either from their physical organization, for which they would not be responsible, or from their own nature, in which they might seek an excuse by saying it is not their fault they were made that way. The Spiritist Doctrine is clearly more moral in its view, because it admits free will in all its fullness. It tells human beings that if they practice evil, or if they yield to an evil suggestion coming from outside themselves, they remain fully responsible, because it recognizes in them the power to resist—something obviously easier than struggling against one’s own nature. Thus, according to Spiritist Doctrine, there are no irresistible temptations. People can always close their ears to the secret voice that urges them toward evil, just as they can close them to the physical voice of someone speaking to them. They can do so by an act of will, asking God for strength and appealing for the assistance of good spirits. This is what Jesus teaches in the sublime plea of the Lord’s Prayer, when he teaches us to say: “Do not let us fall into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
This theory of the driving force behind our acts stands out clearly among all the teachings given by the Spirits. It is not only sublime in its morality, but also elevates human beings in their own eyes, showing them free to shake off the yoke of an obsessor just as they can close their door to intruders. They are no longer machines acting under an impulse foreign to their own will, but rational beings who listen, judge, and freely choose between two counsels. Even so, humans are not deprived of initiative; they do not fail to act except by their own impulse, because in reality they remain incarnate spirits who preserve, beneath the bodily envelope, the qualities and defects they possessed as spirits. Thus, the wrongs we commit have their primary origin in the imperfections of our own spirit, which has not yet attained the moral superiority for which it is destined, yet which still possesses free will. Bodily life is given to the spirit so that it may purge itself of its imperfections through the trials it undergoes, and it is precisely those imperfections that weaken it and make it more accessible to the suggestions of other imperfect spirits, who take advantage of this in order to make it succumb in the struggle it has undertaken. If the spirit emerges victorious from this struggle, it advances; if it fails, it remains what it was—no worse, no better. It is a trial that will have to be begun again and may endure for a long time. The more the spirit purifies itself, the more it diminishes its weaknesses and the less accessible it becomes to those who tempt it toward evil. Its moral strength increases with progress, and evil spirits withdraw from it.
All spirits, more or less good when incarnated, make up the human species, and since Earth is one of the least advanced worlds, there are more evil spirits here than good ones. That is why we see so much wickedness. Let us therefore make every effort not to return to this world after our present sojourn, and to deserve rest in a better world, one of those privileged worlds where goodness reigns fully, and where we will remember our stay on this planet as no more than a time of exile.