Certain men are endowed with all the gifts of the intellect; others, on the contrary, are devoid of intelligence, penetration, and memory. They stumble at every step in the difficult journey of life. Their narrow minds, their incomplete faculties, expose them to every kind of failure and misfortune. They cannot succeed in anything, and destiny seems to select them for the chosen victims of its most fatal blows. There are beings whose whole life, from their birth to their death, is a prolonged cry of suffering and despair. What crime have they committed? Why are they upon the earth? They have not asked to be born, and if they had been free, they would have entreated that this bitter cup might be removed from their lips. They are here below in spite of themselves, against their will. This is so true that some, in an excess of despair, sever the thread of their own life. They tear themselves away with their own hands from an existence which terrible suffering has rendered insupportable to them.
God would be unjust and wicked to impose so miserable a life upon beings who have done nothing to incur it, and who have not solicited it. But God is neither unjust nor wicked; the opposite qualities are the attribute of His perfect essence. Consequently, the presence of man on certain portions of the earth, and the unequal distribution of evil over our globe, are not to be explained. If any of my readers can show me a doctrine, a philosophy, a religion by which these difficulties can be resolved, I will tear up this book, and confess myself vanquished.
If, on the contrary, you admit the plurality of human existences and _re-incarnations_, that is to say the passage of the same soul into several different bodies, everything is wonderfully easily explained. Our presence in certain portions of the globe is no longer the effect of a caprice of fate, or the result of chance; it is simply a station of the long journey which we are taking throughout the worlds. Previous to our birth in this world we have lived either in the condition of superior animals, or that of man. Our actual existence is only the consequence of another, whether it be that we bear within ourselves the soul of a superior animal, which we must purify, perfect, and ennoble, during our sojourn on earth; or that, having already fulfilled an imperfect and evil existence, we are condemned to re-commence it under new obligations. In the latter case, the career of the man re-commences, because his soul is not yet sufficiently pure to rise to the rank of a superhuman being.