There are vicious inclinations that are obviously inherent in the Spirit, because they are more moral than physical; others seem rather the consequence of the organism, and for that reason, one believes to be less responsible; these are the predispositions to anger, laziness, sensuality, etc.
It is perfectly recognized today, by spiritualist philosophers, that the cerebral organs corresponding to the various abilities owe their development to the activity of the Spirit; that this development is thus an effect and not a cause. A man is not a musician, because he has the
hump of music, but he has the
hump of music only because his Spirit is a musician
(Spiritist Review, July 1860, and April 1862).
If the activity of the Spirit reacts onto the brain, it must also react onto other parts of the body. The Spirit is thus the artisan of his own body, which he shapes, so to speak, to appropriate it to his needs and the manifestation of his tendencies. This being the case, the perfection of the body in advanced races would be the result of the work of the Spirit who perfects his tools as his faculties increase (
Genesis According to Spiritism,
Chapter XI,
Spiritual genesis). By a natural consequence of this principle, the moral dispositions of the Spirit must modify the qualities of the blood, give it more activity or less activity, cause a more abundant secretion of bile or other fluids or a lesser secretion. That is how, for example, the gourmand feels the saliva coming, or as they vulgarly say, the water in the mouth at the sight of an appetizing dish. It is not the
dish that can overexcite the organ of taste, since there is no contact; it is therefore the Spirit whose sensuality is awakened, who acts by thought on that organ, while on another Spirit, the sight of the dish produces nothing. The same is true of all lusts, of all desires caused by sight. The diversity of emotions can only be explained, in a host of cases, by the diversity of the qualities of the Spirit. That is the reason why a sensitive person easily sheds tears; it is not the abundance of tears that gives sensitivity to the Spirit, but the sensitivity of the Spirit that causes the abundant secretion of tears. Under the influence of sensitivity, the organism has modeled itself on this normal disposition of the Spirit, as it has modeled itself on that of the glutton Spirit.
Following this order of ideas, one understands that an irascible Spirit must lead to the bilious temperament; hence it follows that a man is not angry because he is bilious, but that he is bilious because he is angry. That is how it is with all other instinctive dispositions; a lazy and indolent Spirit will leave his organism in a state of atony in relation to his character, while if he is active and energetic, he will give his blood, his nerves much different qualities. The action of the Spirit on the physical is so obvious that we often see serious organic disorders occur through the effect of violent psychological concussions. The vulgar expression:
Emotion has gotten his blood up, is not as meaningless as one might think; who could turn the blood, if not the moral dispositions of the Spirit?
This effect is especially noticeable in great pains, joys and fears, whose reaction can go as far as causing death. We see people dying for fear of dying; But what is the relationship between the individual's body and the object that causes his fear, an object that often has no reality? It is said that it is the effect of imagination; be it, but what is imagination, if not an attribute, a mode of sensitivity of the Spirit? It seems difficult to attribute imagination to muscles and nerves, because then one would not explain why these muscles and nerves do not always have imagination; why they no longer have them after death; why what causes a mortal fear in some, overexcites courage in others.
Whatever subtlety one may use to explain psychological phenomena by the sole properties
of matter, one inevitably falls into a dead end, at the bottom of which one sees, in all its evidence, and as the only possible solution, the independent spiritual being, to whom the organism is only a means of manifestation, as the piano is the instrument of the manifestations of the musician's thought. Just as the musician tunes his piano, it can be said that the Spirit tunes his body to tune it up with his moral dispositions.
It is truly curious to see materialism constantly speak of the need to raise the dignity of man, as it strives to reduce him to a piece of flesh that rots and disappears, without leaving any vestige; to claim freedom as a natural right for him, while turning him into a mechanism walking like a spindle, without responsibility for his actions.
With the independent spiritual being, pre-existing and surviving the body, the responsibility is absolute; yet, for the majority, the first, the main motive for the belief in nothingness, is the fear caused by such responsibility,
outside human law, and from which one believes to escape by closing one's eyes. Until now, that responsibility has not been well defined; it was only a vague fear, and it must be admitted, based on beliefs that were not always admissible by reason;
Spiritism demonstrates it as a positive, effective, unrestricted reality, as a natural consequence of the spirituality of the being; that is why some people are afraid of Spiritism that would disturb them in their tranquility, setting the formidable tribunal of the future before them. By proving that man is responsible for all his actions is to prove his freedom of action, and to prove his freedom is to raise his dignity. The perspective of responsibility beyond human law is the most powerful moralizing element: it is the goal to which Spiritism necessarily leads to.
From the above physiological observations, it can therefore be admitted that disposition is, at least in part, determined by the nature of the Spirit, which is cause and not effect. We say in part, because there are cases where the physical obviously influences the psychological: it is when a morbid or abnormal state is determined by an external, accidental, independent cause of the Spirit, such as temperature, climate, hereditary vices of constitution, temporary malaise, etc. The morale of the Spirit can then be affected in its manifestations by the pathological state, without its intrinsic nature being altered.
To apologize for one's misdeeds by the weakness of the flesh is therefore only an evasion to escape responsibility.
The flesh is weak only because the Spirit is weak, which reverses
the question, and leaves to the Spirit the responsibility for all his actions. The flesh, that has neither thought nor will, never prevails over the Spirit who is the
thinking and
willing being; it is the Spirit who gives the flesh the qualities corresponding to his instincts, as an artist imprints on his material work the stamp of his genius. The Spirit, freed from the instincts of bestiality, shapes a body that is no longer a tyrant to its aspirations towards the spirituality of his being; it is then that man eats to live, because it is a necessity, but he no longer lives to eat.
The moral responsibility for the acts of life, therefore, remains intact; but reason says that the consequences of that responsibility must be in proportion to the intellectual development of the Spirit; the more enlightened it is, the less excusable it is, because with intelligence and moral sense, the notions of good and evil, of the just and the unjust, are born. The savage, still close to animality, who yields to the instinct of the brute by eating his fellow man, is undoubtedly less guilty than the civilized man who commits a simple injustice.
This law still finds its application in medicine and provides the reason for its failure in some cases. Considering that temperament is an effect and not a cause, efforts to modify it can be paralyzed by the psychological dispositions of the Spirit, that opposes an unconscious resistance and neutralizes the therapeutic action. Hence it is on the root cause that we must act; if one succeeds in changing the psychological dispositions of the Spirit, the disposition will change itself under the influence of a different will, or at the very least, the action of the medical treatment will be helped, instead of being undermined. Give courage to the coward if possible, and you will see the physiological effects of fear disappear; the same shall be true of the other dispositions.
But it will be said, can the doctor of the body make himself the doctor of the soul? Is it in his mandate to be the moralizer of his patients? Yes, no doubt, within a certain limit; it is even a duty that a good doctor never neglects, as soon as he sees in the state of the soul an obstacle to the restoration of the health of the body; the main thing is to apply the psychological remedy with tact, caution, and appropriateness, depending on the circumstances. From this point of view, his action is necessarily circumscribed,
because in addition to having only a moral ascendant over his patient, a transformation of character is difficult at a certain age; it is therefore up to education, and especially to primary education, to provide care of this nature. When education is directed in this direction from the cradle; when we try to stifle moral imperfections in their germ, as we do for physical imperfections, the doctor will no longer find in temperament an obstacle against which his science is too often powerless.
It is, as we can see, quite a study; but a completely sterile study while we do not consider the action of the spiritual element on the physical. The incessantly active participation of the spiritual element in the phenomena of life is the key to most of the problems facing science; when science brings into account the action of this principle, it will see the opening of completely new horizons. It is the demonstration of this truth that Spiritism brings.
