592- If we compare human beings with animals in relation to intelligence, it seems difficult to establish a line of demarcation, because certain animals on this earth have an obvious superiority over certain humans. Can such a line of demarcation be established in any precise manner?
“Your philosophers are not in much agreement about this subject. Some would want for humans to be animals, and others for animals to be human. Both are wrong. Humans are beings apart, who sometimes sink very low, or who may sometimes ascend very high. In their physical nature, humans are like the animals and less well-endowed than many of them. Nature has given the animals everything that humans are obligated to invent with their intelligence in order to provide for their own needs and self-preservation. Their body is destroyed like that of the animals – that is certain – but their spirit has a destiny that they alone can comprehend because they alone are completely free. Poor humans, who debase yourselves more than wild animals! Don’t you know how to distinguish yourselves from them? Recognize human beings through their ability to think about God.”
593- Could we say that animals act only through instinct?
“That again is a theory. It is quite true that instinct dominates most animals, but don’t you see some that act from a determined will? It is because they have limited intelligence.”
One could not deny to certain animals the practice of complex actions that denote the will to act in a determined sense beyond instinct and according to circumstances. Therefore, there is in them a kind of intelligence, but in exercising it they are concentrating it more on the means of satisfying their physical needs and providing for their self-preservation. Among them there is no creation, no improvement. Whatever may be the skill that we admire in their labors, that which they did yesterday is the same as what they do today, neither better nor worse, according to constant and unvarying forms and proportions. Offspring separated from their species do not fail to build their nest in accordance with the same model without having been taught. If some animals are capable of a certain amount of learning, such intellectual development is always restricted within narrow limits and is due to human action on a flexible nature. They cannot make any progress by themselves, and when they do make progress, it is ephemeral and purely individual, because if abandoned to themselves, they quickly return to the limits traced out for them by nature.
594- Do animals have language?
“If you mean a language formed of words and syllables, no, but if you mean a way of communicating amongst themselves, then yes. They say many more things than
you might suppose, but their language is limited to their needs, as are their thoughts.”
– There are animals that possess no voice. Aren’t they deprived of language?
“They understand one another by other means. Don’t you human beings use more than speech to communicate with one another? And mutes, what about them? Since animals are endowed with a life of relationships, they have means of warning each other and of expressing the sensations they experience. Do you think that fish do not understand each other? Human beings do not have the exclusive privilege of language, but the language of animals is instinctive and limited exclusively to the circle of their own needs and thoughts, while that of humans is perfectible and lends itself to all the conceptions of their intelligence.”
Actually, fish, like swallows, which migrate en masse obeying the lead, must have means of warning and understanding one another and grouping together. Perhaps they do so amongst themselves, or perhaps the water is a vehicle that transmits certain vibrations to them. Whatever the case may be, it is undeniable that they have the means available to understand one another, in the same way as all animals deprived of voice perform activities in common. In light of this, must one wonder at spirits’ being able to communicate with one another without recourse to articulated speech? (See no. 282)
595- Do animals have free will?
“They are not simple machines as you might suppose, but their freedom of action is limited to their needs and cannot be compared to human freedom. Since they are far less evolved than human beings, they do not have the same duties. Their freedom is restricted to the actions of their material life.”
596- Where do certain animals get their aptitude to imitate human language, and why is this aptitude found more among birds than among apes, for example, whose body structure is more analogous to the human structure?
“The particular conformation of the vocal organs, aided by the instinct of imitation. Apes imitate gestures; certain birds imitate the voice.”
597- Since animals have an intelligence that gives them a certain freedom of action, is there in them a principle independent of matter?
“Yes, and it survives their body.”
– Is this principle a soul similar to that of humans?
“It is a soul, if you’d like; it depends on the meaning you attach to the word. It is much less evolved than that of humans, however. Between the souls of animals and humans there is as great a difference as there is between the human soul and God.”
598- Does the animal’s soul retain its individuality and self awareness after death?
“Its individuality, yes, but not its self-awareness. Its intelligent life remains in a latent state.”
599- Can an animal soul choose the species in which it prefers to incarnate?
“No. It does not possess free will.”
600- Since the animal’s soul survives its body, does it remain in an errant state like the human soul after death?
“It remains in a type of errant state because it is not united to a body, but it is not an errant spirit. The errant spirit is a being who thinks and acts of its own free will. Animal spirits do not have the same faculty. Self-awareness is what comprises the principal attribute of the human spirit. After its death, an animal’s soul is classified by the spirits in charge of doing so and it is utilized almost immediately. It is not given time to enter into relations with other creatures.”
601- Do animals follow a law of progress like humans?
“Yes, and that is why on higher worlds, where humans are more advanced, the animals are also more advanced and possess more developed means of communication. However, they are always lower than humans and subject to them – they are their intelligent servants.”
There is nothing extraordinary about this. Let us imagine that our more intelligent animals, such as the dog, the elephant and the horse were endowed with a physical conformation appropriate for manual labor. What mightn’t they do under human direction?
602- Do animals progress by their will, like human beings, or by necessity?
“By necessity. That is why there is no expiation for them.”
603- On highly evolved worlds, do the animals know about God?
“No. Human beings are gods to them, as spirits use to be gods to humans.”
604- Since the animals – even the perfected ones of the higher worlds – are always beneath humans, wouldn’t this result in God having created intelligent beings perpetually condemned to inferiority? If so, wouldn’t this seem to be in disagreement with the unity of design and progress discernible in all of God’s works?
“Everything in nature is linked together by ties that you cannot yet perceive, and the most apparently discrepant things have points of contact that humans will never manage to comprehend in their present state. They may glimpse them through an effort of their intelligence, but it is only when that intelligence has reached its full development and frees itself from the prejudices of pride and ignorance that they will be able to see clearly into the works of God. Until then, their limited ideas will cause them to look at everything from a petty and limited point of view. Rest assured that God cannot be self-contradictory and that everything in nature is harmonized through general laws that never deviate from the sublime wisdom of the Creator.”
– Then intelligence is a common property, a point of contact between the souls of animals and humans?
“Yes, but animals only have the intelligence of material life; in humans, intelligence produces moral life.”
605- If we considered all the points of contact between humans and animals, mightn’t we believe that humans possess two souls: an animal soul and a spiritual soul, and that if they did not have the latter, they would live only as animals? In other words, isn’t the animal a being similar to the human, minus the spiritual soul? If so, wouldn’t it follow that the good and evil instincts of humans would be the effect of the predominance of one or other of these two souls?
“No, humans do not have two souls, but the body has its instincts, which result from the sensations of its organs. There is nothing in humans except a dual nature: the animal nature and the spiritual nature. Through their body and instincts, they participate in the nature and instincts of animals. Through their soul, they participate in the nature of spirits.”
– Thus, besides getting rid of its own imperfections, must the spirit also struggle against the influence of matter?
“Yes, the less evolved it is, the tighter are the bonds between the spirit and matter. Can’t you see that? No, humans do not have two souls; the soul is always one in each individual. The soul of animals and that of humans are so very different from each other that the soul of one cannot animate the body created for the other. But if humans do not possess an animal soul, whose passions would place it on the level of the animals, they nonetheless have an animal body, which often drags them down to that level – a body endowed with vitality, but unintelligent and possessed of the limited instincts required for its self-preservation.”
When a spirit incarnates into a human body, it transmits to it the intellectual and moral principle that places it on a higher order than the animals. The two natures in humans give two distinct sources to their passions: some spring from the instincts of nature; others, from the impurities of the incarnate spirit, which sympathizes to a greater or lesser degree with the baseness of the animal appetites. In purifying itself, a spirit frees itself from the influence of matter little by little. Under such influence, it approaches the animals; freed from such influence, it rises toward its true destiny.
606- Where do the animals get the intelligent principle that comprises the particular kind of soul with which they are endowed?
“From the universal intelligent element.”
– Then the intelligence of both humans and animals emanates from a single principle?
“Of course, but in humans it goes through a development that elevates it above that of the animals.”
607- It has been stated that the human soul at its origin resembles the state of human infancy in the corporeal life, that its intelligence is only beginning to unfold, and that it is preparing itself for life (see no. 190). Where does the soul accomplish this primary phase?
“In a series of existences preceding the period you call humanity.”
– Then it would seem that the soul had been the intelligent principle of the lower beings of creation; correct?
“Haven’t we stated that everything in nature is linked together and tends toward unity? It is in those beings, whom you are far from knowing about entirely, that the intelligent principle is developed, is gradually individualized and is prepared for life, as we have stated. In a certain way, it is a preparatory work like that of germination, after which the intelligent principle undergoes a transformation and becomes a spirit. It is then that the period of humanity begins for it, and with it the consciousness of its future, the distinction between good and evil and the responsibility for its acts – the same way that childhood comes before adolescence, then youth and finally adulthood. There is nothing humiliating about this origin. Do the greatest geniuses feel humiliated at having been shapeless fetuses in the maternal womb? If anything ought to humiliate them, it is their low status before God and their powerlessness to probe the depths of the divine designs and the wisdom of the laws regulating the harmony of the universe. Strive to realize the greatness of God in the admirable harmony that establishes the solidarity of all things in nature. To believe that God could have made anything without a purpose, and have created intelligent beings without a future, would be to blaspheme God’s goodness, which extends over all creatures.”
– Does this period of humanity begin on our earth?
“The earth is not the starting point of a human’s first incarnation. The period of humanness usually begins on worlds even less evolved. This, however, is not an absolute rule and it may happen that a spirit at its human beginning may be suited to live on the earth. Such a case is not frequent and would be an exception rather than a rule.”
608- After death, does a human spirit have any awareness of the existences that preceded its period of humanness?
“No, because it is only after that period that its life as a spirit began. It even has difficulty in remembering its first existences as a human, exactly as humans no longer remember the earliest days of their childhood, and still less the time they spent in the maternal womb. That is why spirits tell you that they do not know how they began.” (See no. 78)
609- Having entered the period of humanness, does a spirit retain traces of what it had previously been; that is, of the state in which it found itself in the period that could be called non-human?
“That depends on the distance separating the two periods and the progress it has accomplished. For a few generations it may preserve a more or less pronounced reflection of the primitive state, for nothing in nature occurs through an abrupt transition. There are always links connecting the end of the chain of beings or events. However, such traces disappear with the development of free will. The first steps of progress are accomplished slowly because they are not yet aided by the will; but they follow a more rapid progress as the spirit acquires a more perfect consciousness of itself.”
610- Then are the spirits who have said that humans are beings apart in the order of creation mistaken?
“No, but the issue has not been fully developed and there are things that can only come in their time. Humans are in fact beings apart, for they have faculties that distinguish them from all others and they have another destiny. The human species is the one God has chosen for the incarnation of the beings who can know God.”
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