Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

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ALLAN KARDEC
lowest depths of evil, there are, no doubt, many degrees of deviation between these two
extremes?
"Yes, certainly; and these degrees constitute the paths of the great majority of spirits."
125. Will the spirits who have chosen the wrong road be able to reach the same degree of
elevation as the others?
"Yes; but the eternities will be longer in their case."
This expression, "the eternities," must be understood as referring to the belief of spirits of inferior degree
in the perpetuity their sufferings, resulting from the fact that it Is not given to them to foresee the
termination of those sufferings, and that this conviction of the perpetuity of the latter is renewed after
every new trial to which they have succumbed.
126. Are spirits who have reached the supreme degree after wandering into the wrong road
less meritorious than the others in the sight of God?
"God regards the wanderers who have returned to the right road with the same approval and
the same affection as the others. They have been classed, for a time, as evil spirits, because
they succumbed to the temptation of evil; but, before their fall, they were merely neutral in
regard to good and evil, like all other spirits."
127. Are all spirits created equal in point of intellectual capacity ?
"They are all created equal, but not knowing from whence they come; for their free-will must
have its fling. They progress more or less rapidly in intelligence as in morality."
The spirits who, from the beginning, follow the right road, do not thereby attain at once to the state of
perfection for, although they are free from evil tendencies, they have none the less to acquire the
experience and the varied knowledge indispensable to their perfection. They may be compared to children
who, however good their natural instincts, need to be developed and enlightened, and who cannot attain
to maturity without transition. But, just as some men are good and others bad from their infancy, so some
spirits are good and others bad from their beginning; with this radical difference, however, that the child
possesses instincts already formed, whereas the spirit, at his formation, is neither bad nor good, but
possesses all possible tendencies, and strikes out his path, in the direction of good or evil. through the
action of his own free-will.
128. Do the beings whom we call angels, archangels, seraphim, form a special category of a
nature different from that of other spirits?
"No; the spirits who have purified themselves from all imperfection, have reached the highest
degree of the scale of progress, and united in themselves all species of perfection."