203. Do parents transmit to their children a part of their soul, or do they only give them the animal life to which another soul afterwards adds the moral life?

"The animal life only is given by the parents, for the soul is indivisible. A stupid father may have clever children, and vice versa."

204. As we have had many existences, do our relationships extend beyond our present existence?

"It cannot be otherwise. The succession of their corporeal existences establishes among spirits a variety of relationships which date back from their former existences; and these relationships are often the cause of the sympathies or antipathies which you sometimes feel towards persons whom you seem to meet for the first time."

205. The doctrine of reincarnation appears, to some minds, to destroy family ties, by carrying them back to periods anterior to our present existence.

"It extends those ties, but it does not destroy them; on the contrary, the conviction that the relationships of the present life are based upon anterior affections renders the ties between members of the same family less precarious. It makes the duties of fraternity even more imperative, because in your neighbour, or in your servant, may be incarnated some spirit who has formerly been united to you by the closest ties of consanguinity or of affection."

– It nevertheless diminishes the importance which many persons attach to their ancestry, since we may have had for our father a spirit who has belonged to a different race, or who has lived in a different social position.

"That is true; but this importance is usually founded on pride; for what most people honour in their ancestors is title, rank, and fortune. Many an one, who would blush to have an honest shoemaker for his grandfather, boasts of his descent from some debauchee of noble birth. But, no matter what men may say or do, they will not prevent things from going on according to the divine ordering; for God has not regulated the laws of nature to meet the demands of human vanity."

206. If there be no filiation among the spirits successively incarnated as the descendants of the same family, does it follow that it is absurd to honour the memory of one's ancestors?

"Assuredly not; for one ought to rejoice in belonging to a family in which elevated spirits have been incarnated. Although spirits do not proceed from one another, their affection for those who are related to them by family-ties is none the less real; for they are often led to incarnate themselves in such and such a family by pre-existing causes of sympathy, and by the influence of attractions due to relationships contracted in anterior lives. But you may be very sure that the spirits of your ancestors are in no way gratified by the honours you pay to their memory from a sentiment of pride. Their merits, however great they may have been, can only add to your deserts by stimulating your efforts to follow the good examples they may have given you; and it is only through this emulation of their good qualities that your remembrance can become for them not only agreeable but useful also."