Prior Causes of Afflictions

However, if there are misfortunes in this life of which humans are the primary cause, there are others which, at least in appearance, are completely foreign to them and which seem to  touch them fatalistically.  Such is, for example, the loss of loved ones and family breadwinners; such are, furthermore, the accidents that no foresight could have prevented; the reversals of fortune that frustrate all measures of prudence; natural disasters and congenital infirmities, especially those that take from their unfortunate victims the means of earning their livelihood through labor, such as physical disabilities and mental impairment, etc.

Those who are born into such conditions have obviously done nothing  in  their  present life to  deserve, without compensation, such a sad fate, which they could not  avoid, which they are powerless to change by themselves, and which puts them at the mercy of public commiseration. Why, then, are there such unfortunate beings, while right beside them under the same roof and in the same family there are others who have been favored in every way?

Finally, what can be said of those children who die at a very young age, and who knew of life only suffering? These are problems that no philosophy has yet been able to resolve, anomalies that no religion has been able to justify, and which would be the negation of God’s goodness, justice and providence according to the hypothesis that the soul is created at the same time as the body and that its fate is irrevocably set after a stay of but a few instants upon the earth. What caused these souls, having just left the hands of the Creator, to bear such miseries in this world, and to merit, in the future, any sort of recompense or punishment, when they could have done neither good nor evil?

Nevertheless, in virtue of the axiom that every effect has a cause, these miseries are effects that must have a cause, and if one believes in a just God, then that cause must also be just. Consequently, since the cause always precedes the effect, and since the cause in this case cannot be found in the present life, then it must be prior this life, that is, it belongs to a previous existence. On the other hand, since God can neither punish us for the good we have done nor for the evil we have not done, then if we are being punished it is because we have done evil. If we have not done evil in this life, then we did it in another. This is an alternative that is impossible to escape and whose logic shows on what side the justice of God lies. Therefore, humans are not always or fully punished in their current existence, but they can never escape the consequences of their wrongs. The prosperity of evil persons is only momentary and if they do not expiate their evil today, they will tomorrow; likewise,  those who suffer today are expiating their past. The misfortune that at first seems to be undeserved thus has its reason for being, and those who are suffering may always say, “Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned.”