16. Disbelief, simple doubts about the future – materialistic ideas, in other words – are the greatest incitements to suicide: they cause moral cowardice. And when men and women of science rest on the authority of their knowledge in order to try to prove to their listening or reading audience that they have nothing to hope for after death, are they not in fact leading them to the conclusion that if they are unfortunate then there is nothing better for them to do than to kill themselves? What could they possibly have to say that would turn them away from this conclusion? What compensation could they offer them? What hope could they give them? None at all, except nothingness. From this, one must conclude that if nothingness is the only heroic remedy, the sole prospect, then it would be more worthwhile to fall into it immediately rather than later on, and thereby suffer for less time.

The propagation of materialistic ideas is therefore the poison that injects the idea of suicide into a large number of individuals, and those who become apostles of such ideas assume an awful responsibility. With Spiritism, however, wherein doubt is no longer allowed, one’s outlook on life changes. Believers know that life goes on indefinitely beyond the grave, although in other conditions. Hence the patience and resignation that quite naturally keep them from any thought of suicide; and hence, in sum, moral courage.

17. From this point of view, Spiritism has yet another equally positive and perhaps more decisive result. It shows us suicides themselves who come to reveal their unhappy situation and to demonstrate the fact that no one violates with impunity God’s  law, which forbids human beings to cut their own life short.  Among  suicides, the  suffering, although  temporary instead of eternal, is nonetheless terrible and of such a nature as to induce to reflection those who might be tempted to leave here before God has so ordained. Spiritists thus have several reasons to counterbalance the idea of suicide: the certainty of a future life in which they know that their happiness will be in proportion to their unhappiness and the level of resignation they had while on earth; the certainty that if they shorten their life, they will in fact attain a result exactly opposite to what they were hoping for; that they free themselves from one evil to incur one that is worse, longer and more dreadful; that they are fooling themselves if they believe that by killing themselves they will go to heaven more quickly; that suicide is an obstacle to being reunited in the other world with the objects of their affections and whom they had hoped to meet there again; from whence follows the conclusion

Blessed are the afflicted that suicide, bringing nothing but disappointment, is against their best interests. Therefore, the number of suicides prevented by Spiritism has been considerable, and  one  may conclude from this fact that when everyone is a Spiritist there will be no more conscious suicides. Thus, comparing the results between materialist and Spiritist doctrines solely from the suicide point of view, we find that the logic of the former leads to suicide, whereas the logic of the latter deters it, which is a fact confirmed by experience.