The Spirits' Book

Allan Kardec

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717. What should we think of those who in order to secure excess, hoard the goods of the Earth to the detriment of others who lack what is necessary to survive?
“They overlook God’s law, and will have to answer for the poverty they have caused others to suffer.”


There is no finite boundary between what is necessary and what is superfluous. Civilization has created necessities that do not exist for savages. The spirits who have dictated the aforementioned principles are not saying that civilized human beings should live as savages do. Everything is relative, and reason must determine how things should be divided. Civilization develops both the moral sense and the sentiment of charity, which leads people to support one another mutually. Those who live at the expense of others, depriving them of even the barest necessities and hoarding the benefits of civilization for their own profit, only wear the mask of civilization, just as others only wear the mask of religion.

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