Human souls during their existence on the Earth Plane are often the cause and in reality are the artisans of their own bodily afflictions and affections; they are also the instigators and the artisans of their moral sufferings. Even more so, for their worldly sufferings are often independent of their action; but it is wounded pride, disappointed ambition, the anxieties of avarice, envy, jealousy, all the passions, in short, that constitute the torments of the soul.

Envy and jealousy! Happy are they who know not those two gnawing worms. Where envy and jealousy exist, there can be no calm, no repose. Before him who is the slave of those passions, the objects of his longings, of his hatreds, of his anger, stand like so many phantoms, pursuing him without respite, even in his sleep. The envious and jealous are always in a fever. Is such a state a desirable one? Can you not understand that, with such passions, man creates for himself the most terrible tortures, and that the earth really becomes a hell for him?

Many of our colloquial expressions present vivid pictures of the effects of the different passions. We say, "puffed up with pride," "dying with envy," "bursting with spite," "devoured by jealousy," pictures that are only too true to their originals. In many cases, these evil passions have no determinate object. There are persons, for instance, who are naturally jealous of every one who rises, of everything that oversteps the common line, even when their own interest is in no way concerned, and simply because they are not able to command a similar success. Every manifestation of superiority on the part of others is regarded by them as an offense to themselves; for the jealousy of mediocrity would always, if it could, bring every one down to its own level.

Disappointed Ambition

Much of the unhappiness of human life is a result of the undue importance attached by man to the things of this world; vanity, disappointed ambition, and cupidity, make up no small part of his troubles. If he placed his aims beyond the narrow circle of his outer life, if he raised his thoughts toward the infinite that is his destiny, the vicissitudes of human existence would seem to him as petty and puerile as the broken toy over the loss of which the child weeps so bitterly. He who finds his happiness only in the satisfaction of pride and of gross material appetites, is unhappy when he cannot satisfy them; while he who asks for no superfluities is happy under circumstances that would be deemed calamitous by others. We are now speaking of the civilized people, for the savage, having fewer wants, has not the same incitements to envy and anxiety; his way of looking at things is altogether different. In the civilized state, man reasons upon and analyzes his unhappiness, and is therefore all the more painfully affected by it; but he may also reason upon and analyze the means of consolation within his reach.

This consolation is furnished him by Christianity, which gives him the hope of a better future, and by Spiritism, which gives him the certainty of that future.