Every human being carries within him, in his conscience, in his reason, the rudiments of the moral law. This law receives in this very world a beginning of sanction. A good deed gives its author an intimate satisfaction, a kind of expansion, a spreading out of the soul. Our faults, on the other hand, often produce bitterness and sorrow. However, this sanction, so variable according to the individual, is too vague, too insufficient, from the point of view of absolute justice. That is why religions have placed in the future life, in the punishments and rewards it has in store for us, the ultimate sanction for our acts. However, since their information lacks a positive basis, it is doubted by the majority. After having exercised an important influence on the societies of the Middle Ages, they are no longer sufficient to turn man away from the path of sensuality.

Before the drama of Golgotha, Jesus had announced to men another comforter - the Spirit of Truth - who was to re-establish and complete His teaching. This Spirit of Truth has come and spoken to earth; everywhere He makes His voice heard. Eighteen centuries after the death of Christ, freedom of speech and thought having spread over the world, science having probed the heavens, human intelligence having developed, the hour has been deemed favourable. Spirits have flocked to teach their earthly brethren the law of infinite progress, and to realise the promise of Jesus by re-establishing His doctrine and commenting upon His words.

Spiritism gives us the key to the Gospel. It explains its obscure or hidden meaning; it gives us the higher morality, the ultimate morality, whose grandeur and beauty reveal its superhuman origin.

In order that the truth may spread at once to all peoples, in order that no one may distort or destroy it, it is no longer a man, no longer a group of apostles, who is charged with making it known to mankind. The voices of the spirits proclaim it in the various parts of the civilised world, and because of this universal and permanent character, this revelation defies all hostilities and all inquisitions. A man's teaching may be suppressed, his works may be falsified and annihilated; but who can attack and refute the inhabitants of Space? They know how to undo all misinterpretations and to carry the precious seed to the most backward regions. To this we owe the power, the rapidity of the spread of Spiritism, and its superiority over all the doctrines which have preceded it and prepared its advent.

The basis of spiritist morality is therefore the testimonies of thousands of souls who come everywhere to describe, by means of mediums, the life beyond the grave and their own sensations, their joys and their pains.

The independent morality, which the materialists have tried to build up, wavers in every wind, lacking a solid foundation. The morality of the churches has fear as its main resource, fear of hellish punishment; a false sentiment that demeans and diminishes us. The Philosophy of the Spirits comes to offer humanity a higher moral sanction, a nobler and more generous ideal. There are no more eternal tortures, but only the just consequence of the acts that fall upon their perpetrator.

The Spirit is everywhere as he has made himself. If he violates the moral law, he darkens his conscience and his faculties; he materialises, he chains himself with his own hands. By practising the law of good, by mastering the brutal passions, he becomes aggrandised and draws nearer and nearer to the happy worlds.

From this point of view, the moral life imposes itself as a rigorous obligation on all those who are concerned with anything in their destiny; hence the necessity of a hygiene of the soul which applies to all our acts, now that our spiritual forces are in a state of equilibrium and harmony. If it is necessary to subject the body - a mortal envelope, a perishable instrument - to the prescriptions of the physical law which ensures its maintenance and its functioning, it is even more important to see to the perfection of the soul, which is our imperishable self, and to which our future destiny is bound up. Spiritism has provided us with the elements of this hygiene of the soul.

The knowledge of the real object of existence has incalculable consequences for the betterment and elevation of man. Knowing where he is going has the effect of firming his steps, of giving his actions a vigorous impulse towards the ideal he has conceived.

The doctrines of nothingness make this life a dead end, and lead logically to sensualism and disorder. Religions, by making existence a very problematic work of personal salvation, consider it from a selfish and narrow point of view.

With the Philosophy of Spirits, this point of view is changed and the perspective widened. What we must seek is no longer earthly happiness; happiness on earth is scarce and precarious, but continual improvement; and the means of realising this is by the observance of morality in all its forms.

With such an ideal, a society is indestructible; it defies all vicissitudes and all events. It is made great by misfortune and finds in adversity the means of rising above itself. Devoid of ideal, lulled by the sophistry of the sensualists, a society can do nothing but corrupt and weaken; its faith in progress and justice is extinguished with its virility; it soon becomes a body without a soul, and, fatally, the prey of its enemies.

Blessed is the man who in this life full of darkness and obstacles constantly walks towards the lofty goal which he distinguishes, which he knows and of which he is sure! Blessed is the man whose works are inspired by a breath from on high and which impels him onward! Pleasures leave him indifferent; the temptations of the flesh, the deceptive illusions of fortune, do not seize him. Traveller on the march, the end calls him, and he hastens to reach it.

León Denis – The Straight Path ┃ Spiritist concept of the moral law