Destruction of the aborigines of Mexico
We got the text below from Bordeaux:
“Reading in the Civilisateur the letters of Christopher Columbus about the condition of Mexico at the time of discovery, by Lamartine, the following passage has particularly drawn our attention:
“Nature, says Columbus, is so rich there that private property did not create a feeling of avarice or greed. Those men seem to live the golden age, happy and tranquil amidst open and limitless gardens that are not surrounded by moat, divided by fences or protected by walls. They are loyal to one another, without laws, books or judges. A person that rejoices harming another is considered evil. Their whole legislation seems to be in the horror that good feels towards evil. Their religions seems to be only a feeling of inferiority, recognition and love towards the invisible Being that had given them live and happiness. There isn’t a better nation or country in the whole universe. They love their neighbors as they do to themselves; they always employ a smooth and gracious language bearing a kind smile on their lips. It is true that the walk around naked but dressed on innocence and candor.”
According to this image those peoples were infinitely superior not only to their invaders but still today if compared to those of the most civilized countries. The Spaniards did not learn anything from their virtues, contaminating them with their vices; in response to their good hospitality brought them slavery and death. Those miserable peoples were exterminated in their majority and the few that still remain were perverted by contact with their conquerors.”
“Before such result here is the question: Where is the progress, the moral benefit collected by humanity with so much bloodshed? Wouldn’t have been better that the old Europe had just ignored the New World, so happy before that discovery?”
Here is how my spiritual guide answered that question:
We would respond with pleasure if your Spirit were capable of handling such a serious matter at this point in time, a matter that requires some spiritual-philosophical development. Ask Kardec. This order of ideas was already debated but they will report to that in a more lucid way than you would because you always have a tense Spirit and curious ears. That is a consequence of your current condition that you must accept.”
-o-
A first instruction sticks out from that. It is not good enough to be a medium, even a developed one, to easily receive communications about the first subject that shows up. That medium is doing his homework but at this point in time his own Spirit is struggling with other things and could not have the necessary calm. That is how a thousand other things may oppose to the exercise of mediumship. That faculty may subsist but it still depend on the support of the Spirits that may give it or deny according to their own judgment of convenience and that frequently in the interest of the medium.
As for the main question this is the response obtained at the Parisian Society:
(July 8th, 1864 – medium Mr. d’Ambel)
“Under the appearance of a certain natural goodness and with customs that are sweeter than righteous the Incas lived carelessly, without progress or elevation. Those primitive races lacked the struggle and if bloody battles did not decimate them; if an individual ambition did not exert influence there drive those populations to conquests, they were not less contaminated by a dangerous virus that would lead their race to extinction. It was necessary to stir up the vital sources of those corrupt Incas from which the Aztecs represented the fatal decadence that would affect all of those peoples. If we add to these entirely physiological causes the moral causes we will notice that the level of sciences and arts had remained there in a prolonged infancy. Hence, there was the need to put those pacific countries at the level of occidental races. Today the race is considered extinct because it melt with the Spanish conquerors. A new and lively nation flourished from that mixture of races that from a vigorous impulse will soon equate with the peoples of the old continent. What is left of so much blood shed, ask those in Bordeaux. To begin with the blood shed was not as considerable as one could believe. Facing the firearms and a few soldiers of Pizarro the whole region surrender as if before semi-gods coming out of the water. It is almost an episode of the old mythology and that indigenous race is, in more than one feature, similar to those that defended the Order of the Golden Fleece.”
We add a few reflections to these judicious explanation.
From an anthropological point of view the extinction of races is a positive fact. From the point of view of philosophy it is still a problem. From the point of view of religion the fact is irreconcilable with God’s justice if admitted only one corporeal existence to mankind to decide its future for eternity. In fact the extinguished races are always inferior to those that succeed them. Can they have an identical position in a future life when compared to the more perfected ones?
Simple common sense repeals that idea otherwise our endeavor to improve would be useless and we couldn’t care less if we remained savages. The non-pre-existence of the soul would forcibly imply the creation of new more perfect souls, for each race, leaving the hands of the Creator, a hypothesis that is irreconcilable with every principle of justice. If, on the contrary, we admit the same starting point to all souls and a succession of progressive existences, everything is explained.
In the extinction of races people generally don’t take into account that it is only the material body that is destroyed and the spiritual one is forgotten, only changing the vestment because the former was no longer compatible with one’s moral and intellectual development. Suppose the whole black race is destroyed. The only thing that will be destroyed is the black garment but the Spirit, that always lives, will first take an intermediary body between the white and the black and later a white body. That is how a being placed in last degree of humanity will reach in a given time the sum of perfections compatible with the condition of our globe.
Therefore one must not forget that the extinction of races only reaches the body not affecting the Spirit in any way. Far from suffering with that the Spirit gains a more perfected body, provided with a brain network that respond to a greater number of faculties.
The Spirit of a savage incarnate in the body of a European wise man would not be wiser and would not know what to do with his instrument whose inactive networks would break; the Spirit of a wise man, incarnate in the body of a savage would be like a pianist before a piano that lacked many strings. This thesis was developed in an article of the Spiritist Review, April 1862, about the perfectibility of the black race.
There is no doubt that the Caucasian white race is the one that occupies the first place on Earth. But has that race reached the apogee of perfection? Are all faculties of the soul represented in that race? Who would dare say? Let us then suppose that advancing continually the Spirits of that race ended up meeting in a dead end. The race would disappear to give rise to another one, of a more rich organization. That is what the law of progress wishes. Can we already see in the white race very distinct nuances, like moral and intellectual development? We may rest assured that the most advanced will absorb the others.
The disappearance of races take place in two ways: one by the natural extinction as a consequence of environmental conditions and of their degeneration when remain isolated; second by the conquests and dispersion determined by cross marriages. It is known that the black and white races gave rise to another one much superior to the former and that it is like a step further for the Spirits of that race. Furthermore the fusion of blood brings the alliance of Spirits from which the most advanced help the progress of the others. With that respect who can foresee the effects of the last war of China; the alterations that will take place in that country for so long stationary; the new physiological and psychological elements taken there? In a few centuries perhaps it may not be more recognized than today’s Mexico when compared to the times of Columbus.
As for the indigenous peoples of Mexico we say, with Erastus, that their customs were more sweet than virtuous and add that its pretense golden age was undoubtedly much poeticized. The history of conquests teaches us that they fought one another, something that does not indicate great respect towards their neighbors. Their golden age was that of infancy. Today they live the apex of youth. Later will reach maturity. If they still don’t have the virtue of the wise men they have acquired the intelligence that will lead to that when matured by experience. Nonetheless, centuries are needed for the education of peoples; it only takes place by the transformation of their constituent elements. Would France be what it is today without the conquest of the Romans? Would the barbarians get civilized without the invasion of Gallia? The Gallic wisdom and the Roman civilization together with the strength of the peoples from the North formed the current French people.
It is undoubtedly painful to think that progress may sometimes need destruction. But it is necessary to destroy the old shanties to replace them by new, more beautiful and comfortable houses. Besides, it is necessary to take into account the belated state of the globe whose humanity is still in the phase of material and intellectual progress. When it enters the phase of moral and spiritual progress the moral needs will surpass the material necessities; mankind will govern itself according to the justice and will no longer have to claim their place by force. War and destruction will no longer have a meaning. Until then the struggle is a consequence of their moral inferiority.
Living more the materiality than the spirituality mankind does not see things but from the present and material point of view, and for that matter, limited. Up until now humanity has ignored that the central role belongs to the Spirit. Mankind has seen the effects but did not figure out the causes and that is the reason for veering off in sciences, institutions and religions. By teaching them the participation of the spiritual element in everything in this world Spiritism broadens the horizon and changes the direction of the ideas. It opens up the era of moral progress.
