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

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ALLAN KARDEC
932. How is it that, in this world, the wicked so often have power over the good?
"That is a consequence of the weakness of the good. The wicked are intriguing and
audacious, the good are often timid. When the latter shall be determined to have the upper
hand they will have it."
933. Men are often the artisans of their own worldly sufferings; are they also the artisans of
their moral sufferings?
"Even more so; for their worldly sufferings are often independent of their action; but it is
wounded pride, disappointed ambition, the anxieties of avarice, envy, jealousy, all the
passions, in short, that constitute the torments of the soul.
"Envy and jealousy! Happy are they who know not those two gnawing worms! Where envy
and jealousy exist, there can be no calm, no repose. Before him who is the slave of those
passions, the objects of his longings. of his hatreds, of his anger, stand like so many
phantoms, pursuing him without respite, even in his sleep. The envious and jealous are
always in a fever. Is such a state a desirable one? Can you not understand that, with such
passions, man creates for himself the most terrible tortures, and that the earth really becomes
a hell for him?"
Many of our colloquial expressions present vivid pictures of the effects of the different passions. We say,
"puffed up with pride ;" "dying with envy,"' "bursting with spite;" "devoured by jealousy;" etc.;
pictures that are only too true to their originals. In many cases, these evil passions have no determinate
object. There are persons, for instance, who are naturally jealous of everyone who rises, of everything
that oversteps the common line, even when their own interest is in no way concerned, and simply because
they are not able to command a similar success. Every manifestation of superiority on the part of others is
regarded by them as an offence to themselves ; for the jealousy of mediocrity would always, if it could,
bring everyone down to its own level.
Much of the unhappiness of human life is a result of the undue importance attached by man to the things
of this world ; vanity, disappointed ambition, and cupidity, make up no small part of his troubles. If he
placed his aims beyond the narrow circle of his outer life, if he raised his thoughts towards the infinitude
that is his destiny, the vicissitudes of human existence would seem to him as petty and puerile as the
broken toy over the loss of which the child weeps so bitterly.
He who finds his happiness only in the satisfaction of pride and of gross material appetites is unhappy
when he cannot satisfy them; while he who asks for no superfluities is happy under circumstances that
would be deemed calamitous by others.
We are now speaking of civilised people. for the savage, having fewer wants, has not the same incitements
to envy and anxiety ; his way of looking at things is altogether different. In the civilised state, man reasons
upon and analyses his unhappiness, and is therefore all the more painfully affected by it; but he may also
reason upon and analyse the means of consolation within his reach. This consolation is furnished him by
Christianity, which gives him the hope of a better future, and by Spiritism, which gives him the certainty
of that future.