1. God being the first cause of all things, the starting point of all, the pivot upon which the edifice of creation reposes, is the subject to be considered before any other.

         2. It’s by elementary principle that one judges a cause by its effect, when one sees not the cause. If a bird cleaving the air received a deadly shot, one judges that a ball, sent by a skilful hand, struck it, although one may not have seen the marksman. Is it then always necessary to have seen a thing before knowing that it exists? In everything it is by observing effects that we arrive at the knowledge of causes.

         3. Another principle, also elementary, and passed into an axiom by force of truth, is that an intelligent effect must have an intelligent cause. If one inquired who was the inventor of such an ingenious piece of mechanism, the architect of such a monument, the sculptor of such a statue, or the painter of such a picture, what would one think of him who should reply that it was done without the help of anyone? When one sees a superior work of art or of industry, they say that is probably the work of a man of genius, because it is evident that a high intelligence has presided at its conception. One judges, nevertheless, that a man has done it, because one knows that it is not above human capacity; but no one will say that it proceeded from the brain of an idiot or of an ignorant, and still less that it is the work of an animal, or the product of chance.



         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.