Cruelty

  1. May we link the sentiment of cruelty to the instinct of destruction?
    “It is the destruction instinct in its worst form because, even though destruction is sometimes necessary, cruelty never is. It is always the result of an evil nature.”
  2. Why is cruelty the dominant characteristic of primitive peoples?
    “Among primitive peoples – as you call them – matter dominates spirit. They abandon themselves to their animal instincts, and since they do not have any other needs beyond those of the body, they care only about their own self-preservation. This is what usually makes them cruel. Moreover, peoples of imperfect development are under the dominion of equally imperfect spirits. These imperfect spirits remain sympathetic to them until more highly advanced peoples come to destroy or weaken their influence.”
  3. Doesn’t cruelty result from an absence of moral sense?
    “You may say that the moral sense is not developed, but do not say that it is absent, since it exists in principle in all human beings. This moral sense is what later transforms them into good and humane beings. It exists in the primitive like the onset of the aroma in the bud of the flower that has not yet opened.”

All faculties exist in humans in a rudimentary or latent state and develop according to how favorable the circumstances are. The excessive development of some impedes or neutralizes that of others. The overexcitement of the material instincts stifles (so to speak) the moral sense, as moral development gradually weakens the purely animal faculties.

  1. Why is it that in the most advanced civilizations there are individuals who are at times as cruel as barbarians?
    “For the same reason that on a tree loaded with good fruit there is always some that is rotten. Such individuals have, if you wish, only the appearance of civility, like wolves in sheep’s clothing. Low order, very backward spirits, may incarnate among advanced people in the hope of their own progress. However, if the trial is too difficult, their barbaric nature prevails.”
  2. Will the society of moral individuals someday be purged of evildoers?
    “Humankind is evolving. Those who are dominated by the instinct of evil and who are out of place among moral people will disappear little by little – like bad grain being separated from the good when threshed – but they will be born again in other envelopes. Then, with more experience, they will comprehend good and evil better. You have an example in the plants and animals that you have learned how to perfect by developing new qualities in them. Very well, it is only after many generations that perfection becomes complete. This is a picture of the different existences of human beings.”

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