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

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THE SPIRITS’ BOOK
"Those peoples that only live the life of the body, those whose greatness is founded only upon
physical force and territorial extension, are born, grow, and die, because the strength of a
people becomes exhausted like that of a man; those whose selfish laws are opposed to the
progress of enlightenment and of charity die, because light kills darkness, and charity kills
selfishness. But there is for nations, as for individuals, the life of the soul; and those whose
laws are in harmony with the eternal laws of the Creator will continue to live, and will be the
guiding-torch of the other nations."
789. Will progress ultimately unite all the peoples of the earth into a single nation?
"No, not into a single nation; that is impossible, because the diversities of climate give rise to
diversities of habits and of needs that constitute diverse nationalities, each of which will
always need laws appropriate to is special habits and needs. But charity know nothing of
latitudes, and makes no distinction between the various shades of human colour; and when
the law of God shall be every-where the basis of human law, the law of charity will be
practised between nation and nation as between man and man, and all will then live in peace
and happiness, because no one will attempt to wrong his neighbour, or to live at his expense."
The human race progresses through the progress of individuals, who gradually become enlightened and
improved, and who, when they constitute a majority, obtain the upper hand, and draw the rest forward.
Men of genius arise from time to time and give an impulse to the work of advancement; and men having
authority, instruments of God, effect in the course of a few years what the race, left to itself, would have
taken several centuries to accomplish.
The progress of nations renders still more evident the justice of rein-carnation. Through the efforts of its
best men, a nation is made to advance intellectually and morally; and the nation thus advanced is happier
both in this world and in the next. But during its slow passage through successive centuries, thousands of
its people have died every day. what will be the fate of those who have thus fallen on the way? Does their
relative inferiority deprive them of the happiness reserved for those who came later? Or will their
happiness be always proportioned to that inferiority? The divine justice could not permit so palpable an
injustice. Through the plurality of existences, the same degree of happiness is obtainable by all, for no one
is excluded from the heritage of progress. Those who have lived in a period of barbarism, come back in a
period of civilisation among the same people or among another one; and all are thus enabled to profit by
the ascensional movement of the various nations of the earth, from the benefits of which movement they
are excluded by the theory which assumes that there is only a single life for each individual.
Another difficulty presented by the theory referred to may be conveniently examined in this place.
According to that theory, the soul is crested at the same time as the body; so that, as some men are more
advanced than others, it follows that God creates for some men souls more advanced than the souls He
creates for other men. But why this favouritism? How can one man, who has lived no longer than another
man, often not so long,