From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



the conditions in which he finds himself. He has full 

 responsibility and has to take its full consequences. 



Another objection which has been alleged against 

 the palingenetic theory is the existence of pain among 

 creatures too backward in evolution to have any know- 

 ledge of moral causes. What crime can a horse, beaten 

 by a drunken brute, or a dog tortured by vivisection, 

 have committed in a previous existence ? 



In this reasoning there is a fundamental error. Evil 

 is not necessarily justified by the past. It is more often 

 the consequence of the low general level of the present 

 evolutionary state. To see in the sufferings of a creature 

 nothing but the consequences of its previous acts, is 

 grossly illogical. What may be affirmed is that the 

 real knowledge of good and evil the moral sanction 

 arises from inherent justice and is always proportionate 

 to the degree of free choice which the creature enjoys, 

 that is to say, to its moral and intellectual level. 1 



Responsibility for their acts can only be attributed 

 to beings who have reached a high degree of evolution. 

 The higher the evolution the greater the responsibility; 

 for their considered conduct will have more and more 

 influence on their progress and on their conditions of 

 life according to the measure of their advancement. 



A last objection, also of a moral nature, has been 

 made to the idea of justice inherent in the idea of palin- 

 genesis : it is, that if an act is not followed by a rigorously 

 similar retribution, there is no justice, but only half- 

 justice. If it is followed by rigorously similar retribution 

 there can be no evolutionary progress, but only a linked 

 series from evil by evil to evil, which amounts to an 

 assertion of unending reactions of evil in a vicious logical 

 circle. 



This objection is really only a matter of words. 

 Absolute justice can perfectly well be imagined as fulfilled 

 by retributions which fit the crime though perhaps are 



1 See L'Efoe Subconscient. 

 317 



