The Spiritist Doctrine shows the progress as one of its cornerstones. The human being is subjected to progress; this journey towards what Spiritism calls the Science of the Infinite, nobody is excluded. The same applies to the worlds, in which, as well as its inhabitants, also progress and advance in this journey that, at the first moment, and are just primitive worlds.

In face of that, called attention, mainly among spiritualists, the thought by the English philosopher John Gray in his latest book, Straw Dogs, published in Brazil by Editora Record, in which he states that faith in progress is an illusion and that no advancement can take humanity out of its natural condition. For Gray, history has shown that, when we think we are progressing, in fact we are going backwards and, therefore, scientific progress is not real and good enough for the world to be a better place. Of course that when referring to progress John Gray is talking about the moral one, ethics in human relations, something that in Science, for itself, is unable to provide. It is not required to have any study to understand that.

Kardec, the Compiler of Spiritism, examined the subject in several moments of his work.

Intellectual progress, according to him, is faster than moral progress. There are several reasons to explain this and maybe the most important is connected to the materialistic conception of life, in which we give more value to intellectual development rather than moral for our kids.

However, only a blind does not realize moral progress, even small, that has been seen in the world we live, where a hundred years ago we kept in captivity poor creatures like us and, just as we are, children of the same God, while today several organizations defend forests, rivers and whales against the egoism, still rife in our planet.

Of course we are far to know on Earth a civilization worth of this name, subject whose Spirits of High Degree refer to the following question in the “Spirits’ Book”:

Question 793 - By what signs shall we know when a civilization has reached its apogee?

"You will know it by its moral development. You believe yourselves to be considerably advanced, because you have made great discoveries and wonderful inventions, because you are better lodged and better clothed than the savages; but you will only have the right to call yourselves 'civilized' when you have banished from your society the vices that dishonor it, and when you live among yourselves like brothers, practicing Christian charity. Until then, you are merely enlightened nations, having traversed only the first phase of civilization"