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

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CHAPTER XI
X. THE LAW OF JUSTICE, OF LOVE, AND OF CHARITY
1. NATURAL RIGHTS AND JUSTICE - 2. RIGHT OF PROPERTY;
ROBBERY - 3. CHARITY;LOVE OF THE NEIGHBOUR
- 4. MATERNAL AND FILIAL AFFECTION.
Natural Rights and Justice.
873. Is the sentiment of justice natural, or the result of acquired ideas?
"It is so natural that your feeling spontaneously revolts at the idea of an injustice. Moral
progress undoubtedly develops this sentiment, but it does not create it. God has placed it in
the heart of man, and for this reason you often find, among simple and primitive people,
notions of justice more exact than those of others who are possessed of a larger amount of
knowledge."
874. If justice be a law of nature, how is it that men understand it so differently, and that the
same thing appears just to one, and unjust to another?
"It is because your passions often mingle with this sentiment and debase it, as they do with
the greater part of the natural sentiments, causing you to see things from a false point of view.
875. How should justice be defined?
"Justice consists in respect for the rights of others."
- What determines those rights?
"Two things: human law and natural law. Men having made laws in harmony with their
character and habits, those laws have established rights that have varied with the progress of
enlightenment. Your laws, at this day, though still far from perfect, no longer consecrate what
were considered as rights in the Middle Ages; those rights, which appear to you monstrous,
appeared just and natural at that epoch. The rights established by men are not, therefore,
always conformable with justice; moreover, they only regulate certain social relations, while
in private life there are an