From a reader of “O Consolador” (“The Consoler”):

“Reading your article: ‘The sane ones do not need doctors” in the referred publication, where it is said that the Spirits who formed the races of white men came from Capela and that the black and yellow races, at that time, were already found here, one question comes to mind: From where and when did those Spirits come from (black and yellow)?

The book A Caminho da Luz (Towards the Light) ¹  (Chapter II) allows us to conclude that these races (black and yellow), existing on earth – at the time of the primitive world -, evolved right here, in a natural process, and with the patient and constant intervention of “Jesus’ workers” throughout the centuries.

As for the origin and when the Spirits who animated the bodies of the black and yellow races is concerned, is an unfathomable enigma for us, in our current stage.

In the same book Emmanuel points out, on pages 30 and 31: 

“The spiritual forces that drive earthly phenomena, under the guidance of Christ, established, at a time of great malleability of material elements, a definitive lineage for all species, within which the Spiritual principle would find the process of its refinement, marching towards rationality. Fish, reptile, mammals, all had their steady lineages of development and man would escape from this general rule.” (our quotes.)

Divaldo P. Franco (in a lecture in Argentina: Part II of this article) states the same. 

How the first men appeared on earth – In The Genesis ², chap XI, ‘Spiritual Genesis’, item 29, the emergence of man is clearly pointed out:

“When the Earth showed appropriate climate conditions for the existence of the human species, human Spirits incarnated on it. Where did they come from? Whether they were created at that point; whether they came, fully formed, from space, from other worlds, or from the Earth itself, their presence on this planet, from a certain point was a fact, (…) They dressed up with bodies that were adequate to their special needs, to their skills, and that, physiologically, had animal characteristics. Under their influence and through the exercise of their faculties, those bodies modified and improved themselves: that’s what common observation proves. Let’s put aside, therefore, the issue of the origin, insoluble for now; (…) (Our highlights.)

They evolved with the unfolding of the intelligent principle and the action of superior Spirits, at Jesus’ service, who presided the formation of the Earth and governs it.

About the theme, here are a few questions from The Book of Spirits ³:

Question 48: Will we be able to know the time of the emerging of man and other living beings on Earth?

“No; all your calculations are chimeric.”

Question 49: If the germen of the human species was among the organic elements in the globe, why didn’t men formed themselves spontaneously, like in the time of their origin?

“The principle of things lies within God’s secrets. However, one may say that men, once spread around the Earth, took within themselves the same elements necessary to their formation, in order to transmit them according to the laws of reproduction. The same thing happened to the different species of living beings.” – (Highlighted)

Everything is connected in the work of Creation – The core of the argument contained in the question:

Question 607-a. – Therefore, can one consider the soul as being the intelligent principle of inferior beings of Creation?

“Didn’t we already say that everything happens in nature and moves towards unity? It is in those beings, which you’re far from knowing in their entirety, that the intelligent principle elaborates itself, little by little individualizes itself and gets ready for life. It is, in a way, a rehearsal, such as germination, by which the intelligent principle suffers a transformation and becomes Spirit. (…).” (Highlighted, except the word Spirit highlighted from the original.)

A noble friend cites The Gospel According to Spiritualism (chapter III, item 14): there was on Earth (circa 1863) three groups of Spirits: the ones who had always lived here and were still primitive; the ones who had always lived here and showed some kind of evolution and the foreigners originated from other worlds.

It is understood that the system of Capela supplied the Earth with Spirits. That the yellow race had its origin from somewhere else, by the special features of their culture (religious traditions and the peculiar way of registering the words, different from Arabs, Greeks and the Jewish). Certainly they started their evolution in a different realm, and not the Earth. That would justify their culture being different from the others. Those are respectable suppositions, but we do not know medium sources that support them.

Creationism or Evolutionism? – Two lines of thought oppose each other about the origins of the Human Race on Earth. One only defends Creationism; the other Evolutionism.

Joanna de Angelis ⁴ harmonizes these tendencies, with current scientific facts:

“Two alternatives, therefore, confront each other in an antagonism, (Creationism and Evolutionism) that is more the result of interpretation than of factual legitimacy, and can be solved by the association of both theories.

Divine Psychism conceived and elaborated life, thanks to a programming that materialized in the evolutionary process, step by step, with gaps correspondent to the period of death, in which psychism went on experimenting a continuous evolution, returning in primitive forms that turned themselves even more complex, until reaching the superior expressions of evolved animals, culminating in the human being.

This possibility shouldn’t be discarded, when one can see God’s fingerprints in the genome, after being decoded, in which we can find all the history of the various beings in their strange codes responsible for the information contained especially in every cell of the human body, in a group of three billion letters… (…).” (Highlighted by the spiritual author.)

Before, in the same text, she already warned:

“(…) to consider that Evolutionism can explain in all its complexity the miracle of life, without the need of Creationism or the presence of an Author, is to lend it a transcendence that resembles Divinity itself.”

A recent scientific discovery corroborates to the idea that harmonizes Creationism and Evolutionism:

The more interested can read, on the Internet, an article that addresses this fact in “Ciencia e Saude” posted on 10?01?2009, named Human oldest ancestor proves that man and monkey evolved in parallel with each other. (The link in Portuguese is: http://noticias.uol.com.br.)

Here’s a small excerpt, that says:

“The discovery of the oldest known ancestral to humans already contradicts the idea that man had evolved from primitive chimps, says a study published on the magazine ‘Science’. The work points out to a parallel of monkeys and men after a separation of the two families, millions of years ago. The pivot of the discussion was the fossil of a female of the species Ardipithecus ramidus. Named Ardi, she is 4,4 millions of years old.” (Highlighted.) 

(This article will be resumed next issue.) 

Bibliography: 

1. XAVIER, Francisco C. A Caminho da Luz. Pelo Espírito Emmanuel. 22. Ed. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 1996.

2. KARDEC, Allan. A Gênese. Trad. Evandro N. Bezerra. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 2009. cap. XI, ‘Gênese Espiritual’, it. 29;

3. KARDEC, Allan. O Livro dos Espíritos. Trad. Evandro N. Bezerra. 2. ed. Rio de Janeiro: FEB, 2011. Q. 48, 49 e 607-a.

4. FRANCO, Divaldo P. Joanna de Angelis, Espírito, mensagem Crença em Deus, recebida na Áustria em 1º de junho de 2007 e publicada em Reformador, edição de maio 2008.