76- How may we define spirits?
“We can say that spirits are the intelligent beings of creation. They populate the universe beyond the material world.”
77- Are spirits beings distinct from the Divinity or are they only emanations or portions of the Divinity – the reason why they are called the children of God?
“Good gracious! Of course they are God’s work. It is like a man who builds a machine, for example; the machine is the man’s work but it is not the man himself. You know that when individuals make nice and useful things they call them their children, their creation. Well then, it is the same with God. We are God’s children because we are products of the divine work.”
78- Did spirits have a beginning or have they existed from all eternity like God?
“If spirits had no beginning, they would be equal to God; on the contrary, they are God’s creation and subject to the divine will. God has existed from all eternity – that is incontestable – but we know nothing as to when and how we spirits were created. You could say that we had no beginning if you mean that since God is eternal, then God must have always and unceasingly created spirits. Nevertheless, when and how each of us was created individually, I will repeat: no one knows. It is a mystery.”
79- Since there are two general elements in the universe, i.e. the intelligent element and the material element, could we say that spirits are formed from the intelligent element, while inert bodies are formed from the material element?
“Obviously. Spirits are individualizations of the intelligent principle, just as bodies are individualizations of the material principle. It is the time and manner of this formation that we do not know.”
80- Is the creation of spirits continuous or did it only occur at the beginning of time?
“It is continuous, which means that God has never ceased creating them.”
81- Are spirits formed spontaneously or do they proceed from one another?
“Like all other creatures, God creates them by the divine will; but let me repeat once more: their origin is a mystery.”
82- Is it correct to say that spirits are immaterial?
“How can we define something when we have no terms for comparison, and when we only have an insufficient language at our disposal? Can one who is born blind define light? ‘Immaterial’ is not the right word; ‘incorporeal’ would be more precise, because you should understand that, since it is a creation, a spirit must be something. A spirit is quintessentialized matter27; thus, you have no analogies for describing it. It is also so etherealized that your senses cannot perceive it.”
27 Quintessence means 5th essence: the pure and concentrated essence of a substance (Webster’s, op. cit.) – Tr.
We say that spirits are immaterial because their essence differs from everything we label as “matter.” A nation of blind people would not have any words for expressing light and its effects. Those who are in fact born blind imagine that they perceive everything through their hearing, smell, taste and touch, but they would not be able to comprehend ideas that came to them through the sense they lack. In the same way, we too are “blind” regarding the essence of supra-human beings. We cannot define them except by an effort involving our imagination or by making comparisons that will always be imperfect.
83- Do spirits have an end? We can understand that the principle from which they emanate is eternal, but what we are asking is whether or not their own individuality will come to an end and whether or not, like material bodies, at some given time in the near or distant future the element from which they have been formed will disintegrate and return to the mass from which it came. It is difficult to understand how something that had a beginning would not also have an end.
“There are many things that you do not understand because your intelligence is limited, but that is no reason to reject them. A child does not understand everything that its parents understand, nor does an uneducated person understand all that a scholar understands. We are saying that spirits’ individual existences never come to an end – that is all that we can say for now.”
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