"There are", 'Abdu'l-Bahá remarked, "some who
imagine that an innate sense of human dignity will prevent man from committing
evil actions and ensure his spiritual and material perfection." On the
contrary, He pointed out, it is readily observable that human development
depends on education. He then drew the implications of this law for the
progress of society. All the evidence inescapably demonstrates that the
principal influence in the gradual civilizing of human character, far from
being a simple endowment of nature, has been the effect produced on the
rational soul by the guidance of the successive Messengers of God. It has been
through Their intervention, and through it alone, that the peoples of the
world, of whatever nation or religion, have learned the values and ideals that
have empowered them to put material resources and technological means at the
service of human betterment. It is They who, in each age, have defined the
meaning and requirements of modernity. It is They who have been the ultimate
Educators of humankind…
(The Universal House of Justice, from a message dated
26 November 2003, addressed to “the Followers of Bahá'u'lláh in the Cradle of
the Faith”)
