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

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THE SPIRITS' LOOK
action of temptation, and thus to give him the merit of resistance, for God, though knowing
beforehand whether he will triumph or succumb, cannot, being just, either reward or punish
him other wise than according to the deeds he has done." (258.)
The same principle is practically admitted among men. Whatever may be the qualifications of a candidate
for any distinction, whatever may be our confidence of his success, no grade can be conferred on him
without his having undergone the prescribed examination-that is to say, without his desert having been
tested by trial, just as a judge only condemns the accused for the crime he has actually committed, and
not on the presumption that he could or would commit such crime.
The more we reflect on the consequences that would result from our knowledge of the future, the more
clearly do we see the wisdom of Providence in hiding it from us. The certainty of our future good fortune
would render us inactive that of coming misfortune would plunge us in discouragement in both cases our
activities would be paralysed. For this reason, the future is only shown to man as end which he is to attain
through his own efforts, but without knowing the sequence of events through which he will pass in
attaining it. The foreknowledge of all the incidents of his journey would deprive him of his initiative and
of the use of his freewill; he would let himself be drawn, passively, by the force of events, down the slope
of circumstances, without any exercise of his faculties. When the success of a matter Is certain, we no
longer busy ourselves about it.
Theoretic Summary of the Springs of Human Action.
872. The question of free-will may be thus summed up: Man is not fatally led into evil; the
acts he accomplishes are not written down beforehand; the crimes he commits are not the
result of any decree of destiny. He may have chosen, as trial and as expiation, an existence in
which, through the surroundings amidst which he is placed, or the circumstances that
supervene, he will be tempted to do wrong; but he always remains free to do or not to do.
Thus a spirit exercises free-will, in the spirit-life, by choosing his next existence and the kind
of trials to which it will subject him, and, in the corporeal life, by using his power of yielding
to, or resisting, the temptations to which he has voluntarily subjected himself. The duty of
education is to combat the evil tendencies brought by the spirit into his new existence duty
which it will only be able to thoroughly fulfil when it shall be based on a deeper and truer
knowledge of man's moral nature. Through knowledge of the laws of this department of his
nature education will be able to modify it, as it already modifies his intelligence by
instruction, and his temperament by hygiene. Each spirit, when freed from matter, and in the
state of erraticity, chooses his future corporeal existences according to the degree of
purification to which he has already attained; and it is in the power of making this choice, as
we have previously pointed out, that his free-will principally consists This free-will is not
annulled by incarnation,