26. At the corporeal and purely anatomical point of view, man belongs to the mammals, from which he differs only slightly in outward from. Beyond that he is of the same chemical composition as all animals, has the same organs, functions, modes of nutrition, respiration, secretion and reproduction. He is born, lives and dies in the same conditions; and at his death his body is decomposed like that of all other beings. There is not in his blood, flesh or bone, an element more or less than in those of the lower animals. Like the latter, in dying he renders to the Earth oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon, which were combined in order to form him, and go towards forming new combinations, new mineral, vegetable and animal bodies. The analogy is so perfect that man can study his own organic functions in certain animals when experiments cannot be made with himself.

         29. Although it is humbling to his pride, man must be resigned to behold in his material body only the last link of animality upon the Earth. The inexorable argument of facts compels him thus to regard himself, against which all protestation is vain.

         But the more the body diminishes in value in his eyes, the more the spiritual principle increases in importance. If the first puts him on a level with the brute, the second elevates him to an immeasurable height. We can see the point where the animal stops; but, we cannot see the limit to which the human spirit can attain.

         1. The existence of the Spiritual Principle is a fact needing no more demonstration than does the existence of the material principle. It is sort of axiomatic truth; it affirms itself by its effects as matter by those which are peculiar to it.

         According to the maxim, ‘all effects have a cause; all intellectual effects must have an intelligent cause’. There is no one who would not see a difference between the mechanical effect of a bell agitated by the wind and the movement of this same bell destined to give a signal, a notice, attesting by that a thought, an intention. Now, as it can occur to no one to attribute the thought to a bell, one concludes that it is moved by an intelligence to which it serves as an instrument of manifestation.

         For the same reason no one thinks of attributing thought to the body of a deceased man. If a living man thinks, it is because there exists something in him that is not destroyed by his death. The difference between him and the simple bell is that the intelligence that makes the bell ring is outside of it, whereas that which makes a man act comes from within.



         Excerpt from ’The Genesis According to Spiritism’ by Allan Kardec; Chapter XI, items 02 and 03.
         Translation: Spiritist Alliance for Books / Spiritist Group of New York.