127. Are all spirits created equal in terms of intellectual capacity?
“They are all created equal, but as they do not know from where they originate, their free will must take its course. They progress more or less rapidly in both intelligence and morality.”
Spirits who follow the right path from the beginning do not attain perfection right away. Despite being free from iniquity, they have to acquire the experience and wide-ranging knowledge necessary for their perfection. They may be compared to children who, no matter how good their natural instincts are, need to be developed and enlightened, and who cannot mature without transition. Just as some people are good and others bad from infancy, some spirits are good and others bad from their inception. There is, however, one radical difference: a child possesses instincts that have already been formed, while the spirit, at its creation, is neither good nor bad. Rather, it possesses all possible tendencies, and strikes out on its path through the action of its free will.
