The following article, dealing with the principle of the non-retrogradation of the Spirit and eliminating the idea of reincarnation as a punishment, was obtained from the article “On the principle of the non-retrogradation of the Spirit”, from the Spiritist Magazine of June 1863. It contradicts what was included in the adulteration of Heaven and Hell, as we demonstrated “The strongest evidence of tampering with Allan Kardec's Heaven and Hell“.

Since questions have been raised several times about the principle of the non-retrogression of spirits, a principle that has been interpreted differently, we will try to resolve them. Spiritism wants to be clear to everyone and not leave its future followers any reason to argue about words, so all points susceptible to interpretation will be elucidated successively.

Spirits do not retrograde, in the sense that they lose nothing of the progress they have made. They may remain momentarily stationary, but they cannot become evil from being good, nor ignorant from being wise. This is the general principle, which only applies to the moral state and not to the material situation, which from good can become bad, if the Spirit has deserved it.

Let's make a comparison. Suppose a man of the world, educated, but guilty of a crime that leads him to Wales. Certainly there is for him a great decline as a social position and as a material well-being. Appreciation and consideration were followed by contempt and abjection. Meanwhile, he has lost nothing in terms of the development of intelligence. He will take his faculties, his talents, his knowledge to prison. He is a fallen man, and this is how fallen spirits must be understood. God can therefore, after a certain time of trial, withdraw from a world where they have not advanced morally, those who have not known him, who have rebelled against his laws, ordering them to atone for their errors and their hardening in a lower world, among even less advanced beings. There they will be as they were before, morally and intellectually, but in an infinitely more painful condition, by the very nature of the globe, and above all by the environment in which they are. In a word, you will be in the position of a civilized man forced to live among the savages, or a polite man condemned to the society of the forced. They have lost their position and their advantages, but have not regressed to the primitive state. From adults, they didn't become children. This is what you mean by regression. Al no have taken advantage of their time, it is up to them to start again. In his goodness, God does not want to leave them more time among the good, whose peace disturb, and therefore sends them to live among men whose mission will be to make them progress teaching them what they know. Through this work they will be able to advance and regenerate themselves, atoning for past faults, like the slave who saves little by little to buy a day of his freedom. But, like the slave, many only save money instead of accumulating virtues, the only ones that can pay for their ransom.

This has so far been the situation on our Earth, a world of atonement and trials, where the Adamic race, an intelligent race, was exiled among the inferior primitive races that inhabited it before it. That is why there is so much bitterness here, bitterness that is far from being felt to the same degree by savage peoples.

There is certainly a retrogression of the Spirit in the sense that it slows down its progress, but not from the point of view of its acquisitions, because of which and the development of its intelligence, its social degradation is more painful. This is why the man of the world suffers more in an abject environment than someone who has always lived in the mud.

According to a system that is somewhat specious at first glance, spirits were not created to incarnate and incarnation would only be the result of their lack. Such a system is undermined by the mere fact that if no spirit had failed, there would be no human beings on Earth or on other worlds. Now, since man's presence is necessary for the material improvement of the worlds; since he contributes by his intelligence and activity to the general work, he is one of the essential cogs in Creation. God could not subordinate the accomplishment of this part of his work to the eventual fall of his creatures, unless he counted on an ever-sufficient number of guilty people to provide laborers for the worlds created and yet to be created. Common sense rejects such an idea.

Incarnation is therefore a necessity for the Spirit who, in carrying out its providential mission, works for its own advancement through the activity and intelligence it must develop in order to provide for its life and well-being.

But incarnation becomes a punishment when, having not done what it should, the Spirit is forced to start again and multiplies its painful corporeal existences through its own fault. A student only graduates after having passed all the classes. Are these classes a punishment? No. They are a necessity, an indispensable condition for their progress. But if, due to laziness, you are forced to repeat them, then it is a punishment. Passing some of them is a merit. What is certain, therefore, is that incarnation on Earth is a punishment for many who inhabit it, because they could have avoided it, whereas they may have doubled, tripled, centupled it, through their own fault, thus delaying their entry into better worlds. What is wrong is to admit, in principle, the incarnation as a punishment.

Another question that is often discussed is this: Since the Spirit was created simple and ignorant, with the freedom to do good or evil, wouldn't it have a moral fall when it takes the wrong path, considering that it ends up doing evil that it didn't do before?

This proposition is no more tenable than the previous one. There is only a fall when passing from a relatively good state to a worse one. Now, created simple and ignorant, the Spirit is, in its origin, in a state of moral and intellectual nullity, like the child that has just been born. If it hasn't done evil, it hasn't done good either; it is neither happy nor unhappy; it acts without conscience and without responsibility. Since it has nothing, it can lose nothing and cannot retrograde. Its responsibility only begins when its free will develops. Its primitive state is therefore not one of intelligent, reasoned innocence. Consequently, the evil it does later on, by breaking God's laws and abusing the faculties it has been given, is not a return from good to evil, but the consequence of the bad path it entered on.

This brings us to another question. Could Nero, for example, while incarnated as Nero, have committed more evil than in his previous incarnation? To this we answer "yes", which does not imply that in the existence in which he had done less evil he would have been better. To begin with, evil can change form without being a greater or lesser evil. Nero's position as emperor, having put him in the spotlight, allowed his actions to be noticed more. In an obscure existence, he may have committed equally reprehensible acts, albeit on a smaller scale, which went unnoticed. As a ruler, he could have ordered the burning of a city. As an ordinary person, he could burn down a house and cause his family to perish. An ordinary murderer who kills a few travelers to dispossess them, if he were on the throne, would be a bloodthirsty tyrant, doing on a large scale what his position only allows him to do on a small scale.

Looking at the question from another point of view, we can say that a man can do more evil in one existence than in the previous one, show vices that he didn't have, without this implying moral degeneration. It is often the occasions that are lacking to do evil. When the principle exists in a latent state, the occasion comes and the bad instincts are revealed.

Ordinary life offers us numerous examples of this: A man who was thought to be good suddenly reveals vices that no one suspected, and which cause admiration. It's simply because he knew how to conceal it, or because a cause provoked the development of a bad germ. It is quite certain that those in whom good feelings are strongly rooted do not even have the thought of evil. When such a thought exists, the germ exists. Often all that is missing is the execution.

Then, as we said, evil, even in different forms, is still evil. The same vicious principle can be the source of many different acts stemming from the same cause. Pride, for example, can cause a great number of faults to be committed, to which one is exposed as long as the radical principle is not extirpated. A person can therefore have faults in one life which he would not have shown in another, and which are nothing more than the various consequences of the same vicious principle.

For us, Nero is a monster because he committed atrocities. But is it believable that these perfidious, hypocritical men, real vipers who sow the poison of slander, despoil families through cunning and abuse of trust, who cover their misdeeds with the mask of virtue in order to reach their ends more safely and receive praise when they only deserve execration, is it believable, we said, that they are better than Nero? Certainly not. Being reincarnated in a Nero would not be a regression for them, but an opportunity to show themselves in a new light. In this condition, they will display the vices they used to hide. They will dare to do by force what they used to do by cunning - that's all the difference. But this new trial will only make their punishment more terrible if, instead of taking advantage of the means given to them to make amends, they use them for evil. However, every existence, no matter how bad, is an opportunity for the Spirit to progress. It develops its intelligence and acquires experience and knowledge that will later help it to progress morally.

We are not all imperfect. This is a false idea, when understood from a certain angle, as we will demonstrate.

Spiritism demonstrates, complementing Rational Spiritualism, that imperfection is something developed by the conscious repetition (habit) of error. When it becomes an imperfection (it is called “acquired imperfection”), it can even become an addiction, which will require autonomous and conscious effort to be overcome, through the choice of tests and opportunities in new incarnations.

This is what evil consists of: moving away from the good, which is the morality of divine laws, through the development of imperfections. And not everyone does. The Spirit who has not developed imperfections, or the one who is bravely fighting to overcome them, is in the good or walking towards it... And this strengthens him enough to overcome, too, outside influences, and even to repel them.

But there is also the aspect of imperfection from the point of view that we are all perfectible. Thus, until we become relatively perfect Spirits (because only God can be perfect), we will be imperfect.

Both aspects of the term are treated by Kardec in the Spiritist Doctrine, and we can prove:

Those who are not only interested in facts and understand the philosophical aspect of Spiritism, admitting the morality that arises from it, but without practicing it. The influence of the Doctrine on your character is insignificant or null. They do not change their habits in any way and would not deprive themselves of any of their pleasures. The miser remains insensitive, the proud person full of self-love, the envious and jealous person always aggressive. For them, Christian charity is nothing more than a beautiful maxim. They are the imperfect spiritists.

KARDEC, Allan. The Book of Mediums, 23^The Edition. LAKE Publisher

The excerpt is part of the part in which Kardec is classifying the types of spiritualists. Ora, não haveria porque classificar uma parte deles como “imperfeitos” se somos todos imperfeitos. Isso demonstra que, nesse ponto, Kardec está tratando das imperfeições adquiridas, conforme explicadas acima.

We also talked about this in the recent article Intimate reform and Spiritism and, in the study below, the topic was addressed in groups.

It is a fact: we are far from perfection. In fact, we will never reach absolute perfection, for if we did, we would be like God. We will reach relative perfection… However, this does not make us imperfect, but only relatively simple and ignorant, that is, still developing will and conscience.

Em O Céu e o Inferno, na versão original e não adulterada (vide a edição produzida pela editora FEAL), essa filosofia está claramente exposta, em toda a sua racionalidade inatacável; contudo, desde o início da formação da Doutrina, essa informação já era conhecida. Basta verificar a Escala Espírita, em O Livro dos Espíritos, e veremos que, na Terceira Ordem – Espíritos Imperfeitos, estão apenas os Espíritos que desenvolveram imperfeições: “Predominância da matéria sobre o espírito. Propensão para o mal. Ignorância, orgulho, egoísmo e todas as paixões que lhes são consequentes”. E basta raciocinar: nem todo mundo desenvolve essas imperfeições, porque alguns podem escolher não repetir os erros, como já se encontra expresso em O Livro dos Espíritos:

133. The Spirits who From the beginning they followed the path of good?

“All are created simple and ignorant and are instructed in the struggles and tribulations of bodily life. God, who is just, could not make some happy, without toil and work, therefore without merit.”

The) - But, then, what is the use of spirits to have followed the path of good, if this does not exempt them from the sufferings of bodily life?

"They reach the end faster. Furthermore, the afflictions of life are often the consequence of the imperfection of the Spirit. The fewer imperfections, the less torment. He who is not envious, nor jealous, nor avaricious, nor ambitious, will not suffer the tortures that originate from these defects.”

The Spirits' Book. Emphasis added.

But how can this happen?

To understand this foundation of natural law, we need to understand that the simple and ignorant Spirit is the one in its first conscious incarnation, in the human kingdom. In this state, having just left the animal kingdom, it still retains all the remnants of instinct, which governed it unconsciously until then, in good, because good is being in the natural law, and the animal that kills another to feed itself is following the natural law, acting only to meet their instinctive needs, with intelligence, but without conscience. Upon entering the kingdom of man, the conscious Spirit begins to make choices — not between good and evil, but between acting in this or that way. These choices will produce results, which may be correct — they are within divine law — or an error — they are outside divine law, that is, they exceed rational necessity. The individual can then choose not to repeat this mistake, but they can also choose to repeat it, as it is something that, in some way, pleases their emotions or gives them pleasure. It is at this moment that imperfection develops, the error is repeated constantly. But he can also choose not to repeat the mistake, as he realizes that it has a bad effect on him. In this sense he is happy in his simplicity and ignorance, this happiness being relative to his present ability..

This is also in Kardec, in A Genesis:

“If we study all passions, and even all vices, we see that they have their principle in the instinct of conservation. This instinct, in all its strength in animals and in the primitive beings that are closest to animal life, dominates alone, because, among them, there is still no counterbalance to the moral sense. The being has not yet been born for intellectual life. Instinct weakens, on the contrary, as intelligence develops, because it dominates matter. With rational intelligence comes free will that man uses at will: then only, for him, does the responsibility for his actions begin.”

In the original version of this work, as presented in the FEAL edition, Kardec adds that:

“All men experience passions. Those who have overcome them, and are not, by nature, proud, ambitious, selfish, spiteful, vindictive, cruel, wrathful, sensual, and do good without effort, without premeditation and, so to speak, involuntarily, it is because they have progressed in the sequence of their previous existences, having freed themselves from this uncomfortable weight. It is unfair to say that they have less merit when they do good, compared to those who fight against their tendencies. It turns out that they have already achieved victory, while the others have not yet. But when they achieve it, they will be like the others. They will do good without thinking about it, like children who read fluently without needing to spell. It is as if there were two sick people: one cured and full of strength while the other is still convalescing and hesitates to walk; or like two runners, one of which is closer to the finish than the other.”

So, is one who has developed an imperfection inferior to those who have not? Is it a bad spirit? Should he be punished for that? No no and no!

He who developed an imperfection did so because he did not really know the good, otherwise he would have acted adversely. It's just a mistake — consciously repeated — and that's it. It is not a characteristic of the Spirit. God does not create anyone evil, nor does he create evil. Evil does not exist! It's just the absence of good. It is clear, therefore, that God would not punish his child for making mistakes. No: he gives him the ability to reason and autonomy, so that he himself can realize that the results of his mistakes cause him suffering and, realizing this, repent and demand correction of these imperfections.

It is at this point that modern spiritualism and the current spiritist movement diverge from the original spiritist morality: for these, when understanding the error, the Spirit is obliged to repair THE EFFECTS, while, for the latter, the Spirit is left free to choose how and when it will attempt to repair THE IMPERFECTION (in itself), which may or may not involve remediation of harmful effects that you have performed.

Here, a conclusion is in order: the doctrine of the “law of return” or karma, which has never been part of Spiritism, states that, when we do harm to a person, we will have to reincarnate with them to repair this error. However, it has already been established that we only do harm to ourselves – if, when making a mistake with someone, that person chooses to cultivate a feeling of anger, hatred or revenge, they are doing harm to themselves. It is, therefore, up to each person's autonomy to detach themselves from such feelings. If the executioner were forced to reincarnate with his victim to repair a mistake and, no matter how much he tried to have an irreproachable attitude towards good, the victim chose not to let go of such feelings, it means that the mistake would not have been paid for and would demand as many were incarnations necessary for this, linking the progress of the other, which has already returned to good, to the other's choice? What if, on the other hand, the victim didn't get attached, he moved on, but the tormentor continues with his imperfections? Will she have to reincarnate with him so that he, who still doesn't even understand her suffering, can “pay off his debts”? Does not make sense!

Returning to our point, we were talking about the return of the Spirit to good. In O Céu e o Inferno (FEAL publisher, based on the original, unadulterated version), we have the following:

“8th) The duration of the punishment is subject to the perfection of the guilty spirit. No sentence for a fixed time is pronounced against him. What God requires to put an end to suffering is repentance, atonement and reparation – in short: a serious, effective improvement, as well as a sincere return to goodness.”

Since punishment – or punishment, as we do not know for sure what the intention of the original word was – is a consequence of the error made, the suffering inherent to imperfections will be a true punishment. It is not an arbitrary divine punishment, but a consequence of natural law. There is no condemnation: everything depends on the individual's willingness to repent and demand reparation for the imperfection, thus returning to good.

We conclude by reproducing, once again, Paul Janet's recommendation ((In Small Elements of Moral, available on here for download.)) regarding habits:

It is true that habits become, over time, almost irresistible. It is a frequently observed fact; but, on the one hand, if an inveterate habit is irresistible, the same is not true of a habit that begins; and thus man remains free to prevent the invasion of bad habits. That is why moralists advise us above all to watch the origin of our habits. “Be especially careful with the beginnings.”

Janet was a contemporary of Allan Kardec. His works demonstrate, with excellence, the philosophical context in which the coder was inserted, making use of his concepts.

Many, when reading Kardec, suppose that he, due to the words he used in his works, was just reproducing ideas and concepts originating from the Catholic Church. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we will see below, because Kardec was, in fact, using the concepts widely widespread and understood in the midst of French cultured society, which, by the way, was the class that was most interested in the study of Spiritism.

Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo explains:

During the nineteenth century, what we call the human sciences were established from a spiritualist assumption for their constitution. Meanwhile, in the natural sciences, such as Physics and Chemistry, materialism predominated. This condition is very different from what we are used to today, when the university is almost completely guided by materialistic thinking.

This current of thought was known as Rational Spiritualism. For it was completely independent of formal religions and their dogmas. The fundamental basis was psychology, science of the soul, which had as a guideline: “The human being is an incarnate soul”.

As is explained at length in the book Autonomy, the untold story of Spiritism, Allan Kardec made psychology the conceptual basis for developing the Spiritist Doctrine. His monthly newspaper was the Spiritist Magazine, journal of psychological studies.

Rational Spiritualism was taught, since 1830, at the University of Paris, also at the Ecole Normale, where teachers were trained, and also at the Lyceums, in the education of young people. For these, there were manuals, like Paul Janet's. This manual has been translated into several languages and adopted in many countries, including Brazil.

This manual is of fundamental importance to understand the conceptual basis of Kardec's studies, especially regarding spiritist morals.

FIGUEIREDO, Paulo Henrique de. Paul Janet's Treatise on Philosophy. Portal do Espírito, July 22, 2019. Available at . Accessed on May 19, 2022.

Using, we said, the concepts of Rational Spiritualism, which was taught at the University of Paris and at the Escola Normal Superior in Paris, Kardec develops the most diverse philosophical concepts of the Spiritist Doctrine, in the light of the agreed teachings of the Spirits. Thus, it will give a deep development to the ideas of moral treated by these scholars, approaching the concepts of pain and pleasure, good and bad, to owe, disinterested charity, freedom, merit, punishment and reward. Let us, by way of illustration, demonstrate the construction of these last two concepts:

The reward and the punishment

in your work Small Elements of Morals, available for download, in PDF, in this link, Janet builds the various philosophical concepts that will support those of the reward and gives punishment. He expresses himself thus: "pleasure, considered as the consequence due to the accomplishment of good, is called reward, and pain, considered as the legitimate consequence of evil, is called punishment".

Pleasure, for him, is the quest to experience what life allows, and there would thus be good pleasures and bad pleasures, varying, in this interval, according to certainty, purity, intensity, duration, etc. Thus, the fugitive pleasure of drunkenness would be a bad pleasure, while the lasting pleasure of health would be a good pleasure:

There are pleasures that are very lively, but fleeting and fugitive, such as the pleasures of passion ((This is how the Oxford dictionary defines it: “in the Kantianism, violent emotional inclination, capable of completely dominating human behavior and moving it away from the desirable capacity for autonomy and rational choice. This is the meaning of passion, used by Kardec and the philosophers of his time)). There are others that are durable and continuous, such as health, safety, convenience, consideration. Will those pleasures that last a lifetime be sacrificed for pleasures that last only an hour?

JANET, 1870((JANET, Paul. Small Elements of Moral. Translation by Maria Leonor Loureiro. Paris, 1870))

Therefore, morally, the human being should always seek the good pleasures, that do not produce regrets, passing them over to the bad pleasures, which generate regrets and complications:

Experience teaches us that pleasures must not be sought without discernment and without distinction, that it is necessary to use reason to compare them with each other, to sacrifice the uncertain and fleeting present for a lasting future, to prefer simple and peaceful pleasures, not followed. of regrets, to the tumultuous and dangerous pleasures of passions, etc., in a word, to sacrifice the pleasant to the useful.

ibid.

It is clear, therefore, that the concept of reward, used in this context, is linked to the understanding of the joy of having performed an action linked to the good, while the punishment is the pain generated as legitimate consequence from evil. There is no attribution, therefore, to a mechanical imposition of a supposed “law of return” or “law of reparation”, by God or by the “Universe”, for bad action, as many insist on proclaiming, nor are there any rewards given for good action. Everything is a consequence moral, from the individual to himself, which necessarily depends on the knowledge of the Law:

In morals, as in legislation, no one takes advantage of ignorance of the law. There is, therefore, in every man a certain knowledge of the law, that is, a natural discernment of good and evil: this discernment is what is called conscience or sometimes the moral sense.

ibid.

However, for the individual to act morally, he must have free will:

It is not enough for man to know and distinguish between good and evil, and to experience different feelings from one to the other. It is also necessary, to be a moral agent, that man is capable of choosing between one and the other((Here the studies of Spiritism lead us to another understanding: in truth, man does not choose between good and evil, because, deep down , if you choose poorly, it is because you do not yet know the law. The Spirit that really knows and understands the Law of God only does good, always.)); You cannot order him what he could not do, nor prohibit him what he would be forced to do. This power to choose is freedom, or free will.

ibid.

But it is important to remember that man, as an incarnate soul, is a basic concept of Rational Spiritualism, as defined by Janet, in the same work:

Every law presupposes a legislator. The moral law will therefore presuppose a moral lawgiver: this is how morality elevates us to God. Every human or earthly sanction being shown to be insufficient by observation, the moral law needs a religious sanction. This is how morality leads us to the immortality of the soul.

From all this, the understanding of vice and virtue is born:

Human actions, we said, are sometimes good and sometimes bad. These two qualifications have degrees, because of the importance or difficulty of the action. This is how an action is convenient, estimable, beautiful, admirable, sublime, etc., on the other hand, bad action is sometimes a simple fault, sometimes a crime. It is reprehensible, base, hateful, execrable, etc.

If, in an agent, the habit of good deeds be regarded as a constant tendency to conform to the law of duty, that constant habit or tendency is called virtue, and the contrary tendency is called vice.

ibid.

Evil, however, is a judgment of oneself (no one can do harm to another((According to the rational principle of autonomy, developed so far, the individual can only commit physical harm against another, but never moral harm. A subject can stealing someone else's belongings, which will cause him some difficulties, but, in truth, he does harm to himself, as he violates the moral law, for which he will suffer depending on his state of consciousness. The victim, for his Once, apart from the material setback, she may or may not do harm to herself, depending on whether or not she clings to what happened and generates some suffering for herself. This will also depend on her awareness of the moral law))), which depends on the awareness of what one does:

The judgment that is made from yourself It differs according to the principle of action that is admitted. He who lost at the game may feel distressed about himself and his recklessness ((In other words: he may realize that he did himself wrong by losing money at the game)); but he who is conscious of having cheated in the game (even though he has won by that means) must despise himself when he judges himself from the point of view of the moral law ((Because, when he becomes aware of what he has done, he realizes that he has harmed the another, and this makes him remorse)).

ibid.

And then, a little further on, still in the same work, Janet develops the understanding of moral satisfaction and repentance:

Regarding our own actions, feelings change depending on whether the action is to be done or already done. In the first case, we feel, on the one hand, a certain attraction to the good (when the passion is not strong enough to suffocate it), on the other, a repugnance or aversion to evil (more or less attenuated according to circumstances by the habit or violence of the desire). These two feelings were not usually given particular names.

When, on the contrary, the action has been performed, the pleasure that results from it, if we act well, is called moral satisfaction, and if we act badly, remorse or regret..

Remorse is the burning pain, and, as the word indicates, the wound that tortures the heart after a reprehensible action. This suffering can be found in the very ones who have no regrets for having done wrong and would do it again.. It has, therefore, no moral character, and must be regarded as a kind of punishment inflicted on crime by its very nature. “Malice, said Montaigne, poisons itself with its own poison. Addiction leaves as it were an ulcer in the flesh, a regret in the soul, which is always scratching and bleeding itself.”

Repentance is also, like remorse, a suffering born of wrongdoing; but there is added to it the regret for having carried it out, and the desire (or the firm resolution) not to carry it out any more..

For Janet, then, remorse would not yet be the suffering generated by regret, but just a certain torture for carrying out the reprehensible action. In other words, one does not suffer because evil has been done, but only because what has been done is reprehensible. And then, Kardec, in Heaven and Hell ((Always remembering that this work was tampered with and mutilated starting from the fourth French edition, which served as the basis for all other editions and translations. The topics covered in this article were those that suffered most from these adulterations)), speaking of punishment, which has, for Janet, the same meaning as punishment ((Says Janet: “The idea of punishment or punishment would also not be explained if the good were only the useful. You don't punish a man for having been unskillful; you punish him for having been guilty”)), it is expressed as follows:

The duration of the punishment is subject to the improvement of the guilty spirit. No condemnation for a fixed time is pronounced against him. What God requires to put an end to suffering is the repentance, expiation and reparation – in short: a serious, effective improvement, as well as a sincere return to the good.

KARDEC, Allan. Heaven and hell. Translation by Emanuel G. Dutra, Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo and Lucas Sampaio. 2021.

In other words: God does not pronounce punishments or punishments against the individual. It is he himself who punishes himself, through legitimate consequences of the evil done. So, to end this suffering, you need to repent, in the first place, that is, identify that you have done something reprehensible (remorse) and add to that the regret of having done it (repentance, which is moral), as well as the desire to no longer do it. In order to reach this understanding, it is necessary for the Spirit to advance in intelligence and, in order to repair the harm done (which it is already clear that he has committed against himself, and not against others, from which it follows that he must repair in itself the origin of this evil), Spiritism demonstrates, without the possibility of error, the existence of the law of reincarnation.

All this, in short, to understand the concepts of punishment and reward. Behold, in accordance with all the above, Kardec says, in an excerpt prior to the one mentioned above:

Punishment is always the natural consequence of the fault committed. The spirit suffers for the evil it has done, so that, as its attention is incessantly focused on the consequences of this evil, it better understands its inconveniences and is motivated to correct itself.

And then, because of all this, Kardec thus begins chapter IV of this work - The hell:

Man has always intuitively believed that the future life should be more or less happy in the ratio of good and evil practiced in this world. But the idea he has of this future life is in proportion to the development of his moral sense and the more or less just notion he has of good and evil. The penalties and rewards are a reflection of the instincts that predominate in him..

But it is worth remembering that, using these philosophical concepts of his time, Kardec, at the same time, developed them for the moral consequences of spirit science.

O spiritualism in Kardec

It is worth, before closing, to remember that Allan Kardec several times used the word spiritualism in your work. It is to Rational Spiritualism that he refers:

Whoever believes that there is something more in himself than matter is a spiritualist. It does not follow from this, however, that he believes in the existence of spirits or in their communications with the visible world. instead of the words spiritual, spiritualism, we use, to indicate the belief to which we refer, the terms spiritist and spiritualism, whose form recalls the origin and the radical meaning and which, for that very reason, have the advantage of being perfectly intelligible, leaving the word spiritualism its own meaning. We will say, therefore, that the doctrine spiritist or the spiritism its principle is the relations of the material world with the Spirits or beings of the invisible world. The adepts of Spiritism will be the spiritists, or, if you like, the spiritists.

As a specialty, the Book of Spirits contains the doctrine spiritist; in general, it is linked to the doctrine spiritualist, one of whose phases presents. This is the reason why it has the words in the header of its title: spiritual philosophy.

KARDEC, Allan. The Spirits' Book. 1857

This is, finally, proved by the following excerpt from the Spiritist Magazine of 1868:

The work of Mr. Chassang is the application of these ideas to art in general, and to Greek art in particular. We are happy to reproduce what the author of the Patrie review says about it, because it is further proof of the energetic reaction that takes place in favor of spiritualist ideas and which, as we said, every defense of rational spiritualism opens the way to Spiritism, which is its development, fighting its most tenacious adversaries: materialism and fanaticism.

KARDEC, Allan. Spiritist Magazine, November 1868

Conclusion

Here is clearly presented proof that we cannot know and understand Kardec's philosophy without understanding the philosophy and morals of his time, fully inserted in the context of French Rational Spiritualism, just as we cannot fully understand the spiritist science without understanding the sciences of Magnetism [by Mesmer] and Psychology (the latter also included in the ER, under the division of moral sciences).

It was clearly evidenced that Kardec no he used dogmatic religious concepts, but only words that, found in these concepts, were first re-signified under the philosophy of the time and, later, under the spiritist philosophy.

Therefore, it is very necessary to study and disseminate this knowledge. Once again, we invite the reader to study and distribute, in all possible spiritist media, the work referred to in this article, as well as the present text, which is the result of an effort made in this direction as well.