The Spirits' Book

Allan Kardec

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a) What happens to the spirit of a child who dies young?
“It restarts a new existence.”

If a human being has only one existence and his or her future is determined for all eternity after this one existence, how could half the human race that dies in infancy, merit eternal happiness without putting forth any effort? What exempts them from the often painful conditions of progress inficted on others? This would not be consistent with God’s justice. Reincarnation acts as the most supreme justice equally distributed to all. The possibilities of the future are open to all without any exception or preference being given to any. Those who are the last to arrive have only themselves to blame. Each person must merit happiness by his or her own actions, and bear the consequences of their wrongdoing.

Viewing childhood as a normal state of innocence is completely irrational. Do we not see children who display wicked instincts at an age when even education could not have yet any infuence on them? Many seem to be crafty, dishonest, devious, and even display the instincts of theft and murder from birth, despite the good examples surrounding them. Criminal law absolves them from their wrongs, asserting that they have acted without judgment, which is correct because their actions are instinctive rather than the product of deliberate intent. However, from where do these different instincts of children of the same age, raised under the same conditions, and subjected to the same infuences originate? If not from the inferiority of the spirit, where does this mature perversity come from since education has played no role? Those who are vicious have a spirit that has made less progress and each suffers the consequences, not of their actions as a child, but as the result of wrongful actions in prior lives. The law is the same for everyone, and no one can escape God’s justice.

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