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Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1866 > March > Spiritism and the Magistrature
Spiritism and the Magistrature
Instruction of Mr. Bonnamy, Father
Human Law
Human law, as with everything else, is submitted to progress; slow, oblivious but constant progress. However remarkable they may be, to certain persons, the former legislations of the Greeks and Romans are far inferior to those that govern the advanced populations of your time! In fact, what is it that we see at the origin of each people? A code of use and social mores drawing its sanction from force and having by driver the most absolute egotism. What was the objective of every primitive legislator? Destroy evil and its instruments for the greater peace of society. Do we care about the criminal? No. Is he spanked to be corrected and to be shown the need for a more moderate behavior with respect to his fellow citizens? Is it for his betterment? Not at all. It is exclusively to preserve society against their actions, a selfish society that mercilessly rejects from its bosom everything that may disturb its tranquility. All the repressions are therefore excessive, and the death penalty is the more generally applied. This is conceivable when the intimate relationship that does exist between the law and the religious principle is considered. Both advance in agreement, towards a unique objective, helping one another.
Does religion sanction all material pleasures, and every satisfaction of the senses? The tough and excessive law wounds the criminal to untangle society from an unwelcome guest. Does religion change, sanctions the life of the soul and its independence of matter? It also reacts upon legislation, demonstrating its responsibility in the future of the transgressor of the law. Hence the assistance of the priest, whatever it is, at the final moments of the condemned man. We hit him again, but we are worried with the being that does not die entirely with the body, and whose spiritual part will receive the punishment that was inflicted to the material element by men.
In the Middle Ages, and since the Christian era, legislation receives from the religious principle an ever more remarkable influence. It loses little of its cruelty, but the absolute and still cruel drives changed completely in direction. Just like science, philosophy and politics, jurisprudence has its revolutions that must not occur but slowly, to be accepted by the generality of the beings they interest. A new institution, to be fruitful, should not be imposed. The art of the legislator is to prepare the minds in such a way as to have it desired and have it considered a benefit… Any innovator, whatever their driving intentions, and however commendable their designs, will be considered a tyrant, of whom it will be necessary to shake out the weight, if willing to impose himself, even if with benefits. Man is essentially free and wants to accept without constraints. Hence the difficulties encountered by men that are too advanced for their time; and hence the persecutions that overwhelm them. They live in the future! With one or two centuries of advancement with respect to the mass of their contemporaries, they can only fail and break against the refractory routine. Thus, in the Middle Ages, they were concerned with the future of the criminal. They thought of their soul, and to facilitate regret, they were threatened with the punishments of hell, the eternal flames inflicted to the guilty ones by an infinitely just and good God! Since they cannot rise to the level of God, and to aggrandize themselves, men reduced God to their meager proportions! They were unease with the future of the criminal; thought of their soul, not for the sake of it, but for a new transformation of egotism, that meant to be appeased with their conscience by reconciling the sinner with God. Bit by bit the inequity of such a system became evident, in the heart and thoughts of a small group. Imminent minds tried premature changes, that nonetheless yielded fruits, creating precedents upon which the transformations that happen in all things today are based.
The law will undoubtedly still be repressive and punish the guilty ones for a long time. We have not arrived yet at the time when the awareness of the fault will be the toughest punishment to the sinner. But, as you see daily, the penalties get lighter; the moralization of the creature is considered; institutions are created to prepare their moral renovation; the correction becomes useful to oneself and to society. The criminal will no longer be the beast to be purged from the world at any price. He will be the stray child whose reason, deviated by the bad passions and by the influence of tough surroundings, will be corrected!
Ah the magistrate and the judge are not the only ones responsible and the only ones to act in such cases. Every heartful man, prince, senator, journalist, writer, legislator, professor, and artisan, all must put hands on and bring their alms to the regeneration of humanity.
Death penalty, an infamous vestige of former cruelty, will disappear by the force of things. Repression that is necessary to the current state, will ease up day by day; and, in a few generations, the only condemnation, the condition of outlaw of an intelligent being will be the last degree of infamy, until the time when, from transformation to transformation, the conscience of each one will be the only judge and executioner of the criminal. And who should we thank for all that work? To Spiritism, that acts through its successive revelations since the beginning of the world, with Islamism, Christianity and Spiritism properly speaking! Its benevolent influence is blindly obvious everywhere, in each period, and there are still creatures blind enough not to recognize it, self-interested enough to take it down and deny its existence. We must feel sorry for them since the fight against an invisible power: the hand of God!
Bonnamy, Father (Medium: Mr. Desliens).
Human Law
Human law, as with everything else, is submitted to progress; slow, oblivious but constant progress. However remarkable they may be, to certain persons, the former legislations of the Greeks and Romans are far inferior to those that govern the advanced populations of your time! In fact, what is it that we see at the origin of each people? A code of use and social mores drawing its sanction from force and having by driver the most absolute egotism. What was the objective of every primitive legislator? Destroy evil and its instruments for the greater peace of society. Do we care about the criminal? No. Is he spanked to be corrected and to be shown the need for a more moderate behavior with respect to his fellow citizens? Is it for his betterment? Not at all. It is exclusively to preserve society against their actions, a selfish society that mercilessly rejects from its bosom everything that may disturb its tranquility. All the repressions are therefore excessive, and the death penalty is the more generally applied. This is conceivable when the intimate relationship that does exist between the law and the religious principle is considered. Both advance in agreement, towards a unique objective, helping one another.
Does religion sanction all material pleasures, and every satisfaction of the senses? The tough and excessive law wounds the criminal to untangle society from an unwelcome guest. Does religion change, sanctions the life of the soul and its independence of matter? It also reacts upon legislation, demonstrating its responsibility in the future of the transgressor of the law. Hence the assistance of the priest, whatever it is, at the final moments of the condemned man. We hit him again, but we are worried with the being that does not die entirely with the body, and whose spiritual part will receive the punishment that was inflicted to the material element by men.
In the Middle Ages, and since the Christian era, legislation receives from the religious principle an ever more remarkable influence. It loses little of its cruelty, but the absolute and still cruel drives changed completely in direction. Just like science, philosophy and politics, jurisprudence has its revolutions that must not occur but slowly, to be accepted by the generality of the beings they interest. A new institution, to be fruitful, should not be imposed. The art of the legislator is to prepare the minds in such a way as to have it desired and have it considered a benefit… Any innovator, whatever their driving intentions, and however commendable their designs, will be considered a tyrant, of whom it will be necessary to shake out the weight, if willing to impose himself, even if with benefits. Man is essentially free and wants to accept without constraints. Hence the difficulties encountered by men that are too advanced for their time; and hence the persecutions that overwhelm them. They live in the future! With one or two centuries of advancement with respect to the mass of their contemporaries, they can only fail and break against the refractory routine. Thus, in the Middle Ages, they were concerned with the future of the criminal. They thought of their soul, and to facilitate regret, they were threatened with the punishments of hell, the eternal flames inflicted to the guilty ones by an infinitely just and good God! Since they cannot rise to the level of God, and to aggrandize themselves, men reduced God to their meager proportions! They were unease with the future of the criminal; thought of their soul, not for the sake of it, but for a new transformation of egotism, that meant to be appeased with their conscience by reconciling the sinner with God. Bit by bit the inequity of such a system became evident, in the heart and thoughts of a small group. Imminent minds tried premature changes, that nonetheless yielded fruits, creating precedents upon which the transformations that happen in all things today are based.
The law will undoubtedly still be repressive and punish the guilty ones for a long time. We have not arrived yet at the time when the awareness of the fault will be the toughest punishment to the sinner. But, as you see daily, the penalties get lighter; the moralization of the creature is considered; institutions are created to prepare their moral renovation; the correction becomes useful to oneself and to society. The criminal will no longer be the beast to be purged from the world at any price. He will be the stray child whose reason, deviated by the bad passions and by the influence of tough surroundings, will be corrected!
Ah the magistrate and the judge are not the only ones responsible and the only ones to act in such cases. Every heartful man, prince, senator, journalist, writer, legislator, professor, and artisan, all must put hands on and bring their alms to the regeneration of humanity.
Death penalty, an infamous vestige of former cruelty, will disappear by the force of things. Repression that is necessary to the current state, will ease up day by day; and, in a few generations, the only condemnation, the condition of outlaw of an intelligent being will be the last degree of infamy, until the time when, from transformation to transformation, the conscience of each one will be the only judge and executioner of the criminal. And who should we thank for all that work? To Spiritism, that acts through its successive revelations since the beginning of the world, with Islamism, Christianity and Spiritism properly speaking! Its benevolent influence is blindly obvious everywhere, in each period, and there are still creatures blind enough not to recognize it, self-interested enough to take it down and deny its existence. We must feel sorry for them since the fight against an invisible power: the hand of God!
Bonnamy, Father (Medium: Mr. Desliens).