The Spirits’ Book was published in 1857 while slavery was still legally practiced in many parts of the world, including the United States and Brazil. The U.S. State Department publishes an annual report entitled Trafficking in Persons that at present (2006) discloses the fact that 14 nations are not doing enough to stop international human trafficking.
This report covers “severe forms of trafficking in persons” defined as: “a) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or b) the recruitment, harboring, transporting, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.” – Tr.
Any human law that establishes slavery is a law against nature because it equates people with animals and physically and morally degrades them.
829. Are there human beings who are meant by nature to be the property of others?
“Every instance of subjection of one human being to another is contrary to the law of God. Slavery is an abuse of power and will gradually disappear with progress, as will all other abuses.”
830. When slavery belongs to the customs of a culture, are those who practice it reprehensible since they are doing nothing more than following a usage that seems natural to them?
“Evil is always evil. All your sophistry will not render an evil action good. However, the responsibility for evil is relative to the means at your disposal to comprehend it. Those who use the law of slavery are always guilty of violating the law of nature; but in this, as in all things, the guilt is relative. Because slavery was a custom among certain cultures, people practiced it in good faith as something that seemed natural to them. But their reason, more developed and especially enlightened by the teachings of Christianity, eventually showed them that the slave was their equal before God. Then, they had no more excuses.”
831. Doesn’t the natural inequality of aptitudes place certain peoples under the subjection of the more intelligent ones?
“Yes, in order to enable them to develop, but not to demean them still further by slavery. Human beings have long regarded certain races as domesticated beasts of burden equipped with arms and hands, and have thought that they had the right to sell them as such. They have considered themselves to be of purer blood. The folly of those who do not look beyond matter! It is not the blood that must be purer or less pure, but the spirit.” (See nos. 361-803)
832. There are those who treat their slaves humanely, who allow them to lack nothing, and who think that freedom would expose them to even greater deprivations. What do you say about them?
“I say that they understand their own interests very well. They also show the same care for their cattle and horses in order to get more profit at market. They are not as culpable as those who mistreat their slaves, but they nonetheless use them as merchandise, depriving them of the right to belong to themselves.”
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