872. The issue of free will may be summed up 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 can choose an existence in which they will feel induced to crime, whether through the surroundings in which they are placed, or whether through the circumstances that supervene; but they will always be free to act as they wish. Free will exists in the spirit state in the choice of trials, and in the corporeal life in the ability of yielding to or resisting the temptations to which they have voluntarily submitted themselves. It is the duty of education to combat evil tendencies and it will effectively do so when it is based on an in-depth study of the human moral nature. Through the knowledge of the laws that govern this moral nature, humans will manage to modify it, as intelligence is modified through education, and physical constitution through bodily care.
When disconnected from matter and in the errant state, the spirit makes the choice of its future corporeal existence according to the degree of perfection it has reached. It is in this, as we have stated, that its free will especially 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. In order to help overcome them, however, it can invoke the assistance of God and good spirits. (See no. 337)
Without free will, humans would be neither guilty in evil nor meritorious in goodness. This is so true that in the world censure or praise always depends on intent, that is, on the will of individuals. Those who say will actually mean freedom. Therefore, people could not seek excuses in their physical makeup for their wrongs without abdicating reason and the human condition itself, and without equating themselves with the brute. If this can be applied to evil, it applies to the good as well. But whenever people practice the good, they take great care to attribute the merit to their favor. They do not attribute it to their organs, a fact which, notwithstanding the opinion of a few theoreticians, proves 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 may be. If that were the order of things, human beings would be like machines deprived of will. Of what use would their intelligence be if they were invariably overruled in all their actions by the force of destiny? Such a doctrine, if true, would represent the destruction of all human freedom.
Individuals would have no responsibility for their actions, and as a result, there would be no evil, no crime, no virtue. God, being supremely just, could not chastise God’s creatures for wrongs that did not depend on them to start with, or reward them for virtues for which they had no merit. Such a law would be a further negation of the law of progress, because people who would depend on fate for everything would try to do nothing to improve their position since they could make it neither better nor worse.
However, fatalism is not a meaningless word. It really does apply in regard to the position of individuals on the earth and the functions they perform on it as a consequence of the kind of existence that their spirit had chosen as a trial, an expiation or a mission. They fatally undergo all the tribulations of that existence and all the good or bad tendencies inherent to it. But at this point fatalism ceases, for it depends on their will to yield or not to yield to those tendencies. The details of events depend on the circumstances that humans themselves create with their deeds, and on those that spirits influence through the thoughts they suggest to them. (See no. 459)
There is fatalism, therefore, in the events that are presented to people as a consequence of the choice of existence made by their spirit. However, there can be no fatalism in the results of such events, because it may depend on them to modify the course of things through their own prudence. Furthermore, fatalism never applies to the acts of moral life.
It is in death that people 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 of their instincts from themselves. These would proceed either from their physical organization, for which they would not be responsible, or from their own nature, in which they could seek an excuse for themselves by saying that it is not their fault for having been made like that. The Spiritist Doctrine obviously looks at it from a moral standpoint by admitting free will for humans in all its fullness. It tells them that if they practice evil, or if they yield to an evil suggestion that comes from outside themselves, they are still fully responsible because the Doctrine recognizes their power to resist, something obviously easier than to struggle against their own nature. Thus, according to the Spiritist Doctrine there are no irresistible temptations. People can always close their ears to the secret voice that induces them to commit evil, just as they can close them to the physical voice of someone who speaks to them. They can do so through their will, asking God for strength and pleading for the assistance of good spirits. This is what Jesus teaches in the sublime plea of the Lord’s Prayer, commanding us to say, “Do not let us fall into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
This theory of the driving force behind our acts obviously stands out among all the teachings given by the Spirits. It is not only sublime as to morality, but we will add that it also elevates humans in their own eyes, leaving them free to shake off the yoke of an obsessor, just as they are able to close their door to intruders. Thus, they are no longer machines acting on an impulse foreign to their own will, but instead they are rational beings, who listen, judge and freely choose between two counsels. Let us add that in spite of this, humans are not deprived of initiative; they do not fail to act except on their own impulse, because in reality they are still incarnate spirits who preserve under the corporeal envelope the qualities and defects they had as spirits. Therefore, the wrongs we commit have their primary origin in the imperfections of our own spirit, who has not yet reached the moral superiority to which it is destined, but who nevertheless does not lack free will. Corporeal life is given to it so that it may purge itself of its imperfections through the trials it undergoes during life, and it is precisely such imperfections that weaken it and render it more accessible to the suggestions of other imperfect spirits, who take advantage of the fact in order to make it succumb in the struggle that it has undertaken. If the spirit emerges victorious from this struggle, it evolves; if it fails, it remains as it was – no worse, no better. It is a trial which it will have to start over and which it may have to endure for a long time. The more it purifies itself, the more it decreases its weaknesses and the less accessible it becomes to those who tempt it to evil. Its moral strength increases due to its progress and evil spirits withdraw from it.
All spirits, who are more or less good when incarnate, comprise 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. So let us make every effort not to have to return to this world after our present sojourn and to deserve repose on a better world, one of those privileged worlds, where goodness reigns completely and where we will remember our stay on this planet as merely a time of exile.
Site Espírita 