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The law of the return of the soul to flesh is the law of attraction and affinity. When the spirit
reincarnates it is attracted to a centre conforming to its tendencies, character, and degree of evolution. Souls
incarnate by groups; they constitute spiritual families whose members are united by tender and powerful ties
contracted during existences pursued in common. At times these spirits are separated from one another
temporarily, and choose new localities to acquire new faculties. This explains the analogies and the differences
which characterize members of one family, children and parents. It has been said that reincarnation ruins the
idea of family, and confuses the situation occupied by parent and child, husband and wife, etc. It is quite the
contrary. In the hypothesis of one life, spirits disperse after a brief existence, and frequently become strangers.
According to orthodox creeds, souls after death are placed in two diverse situations conforming to their merits,
and the ‘select’ are separated for ever from the ‘reprobates.’ As a result the ties of family are broken at death
never to be united. While by rebirths, spirits unite anew, and pursue in common their peregrinations through
the worlds, and their union becomes in this way more complete. Our spontaneous tenderness for certain people
here is easily explained; we have already known them, and are but reconstructing old affections. How many
lovers, how many husbands and wives are united by innumerable existences pursued together! Their love is
indestructible - for love is the force of all forces, the supreme tie which nothing can break. The conditions of
reincarnation are such that reciprocal situations are rarely changed. The advanced spirit in the liberty it has
gained chooses the place where it will be reborn, while the inferior spirit is pushed by a mysterious force
which it obeys instinctively. But all are protected, counseled, and sustained in the passage through space and
earthly existence, more painful and difficult than death.
The union of the soul to the body is effected through the means of the etheric form, of which we have
spoken; by its subtle nature it serves as a tie between spirit and matter. The soul is attached to the germ by this
plastic mediator which binds it more and more through the phases of progressive gestation and forms the
physical body. Fibre by fibre, molecule by molecule, from conception to birth, the fusion operates slowly.
Under the increasing flow of material elements and the force furnished by ancestors, the vibratory movements
of the etheric body of the infant are reduced, while the soul faculties, the memory, and consciousness of other
lives is annihilated. All the impressions of its celestial life and its long past are plunged in depths of
unconsciousness. They will emerge again only at the hour of trance or of death, when the spirit regains the
plenitude of its vibratory movements and elucidates the sleeping world of its memories. The role of the etheric
double is large: it explains from birth to death all vital phenomena. Possessing in itself the ineffaceable traces
of all states of being since its origin, it communicates the impression and the essential traits to the material
germ. The key to embryonic phenomena is there during the period of gestation; the etheric body impregnates
itself with the vital fluid, and materializes sufficiently to become the regulator of the energy and the support of
the elements furnished by the progenitors.
It is the invisible armature which sustains the human frame; thanks to it, individuality and memory are
conserved in spite of the vicissitudes of the changing and mobile part of being. And it assures, too, the memory
of the present existence, a chain of souvenirs from the cradle to the tomb, furnishing us with intimate certitude
of identity.
The incorporation of the soul is not spontaneous, but is gradually developed, and becomes complete
but at birth. At this moment matter completely enfolds the spirit, which will vivify it in return by acquired
faculties. Long will be the period of its development, during which the soul will apply itself to fashion a new
envelope, and to make it an instrument capable of manifesting interior powers. But in this work the soul will
be assisted by a spirit ordained as its guide, which watches over it and inspires and directs it during its long
earthly pilgrimage.
Each night during sleep, and often in the day during childhood, the soul disengages itself from the
body and returns to space to gain new force, and returns to its sleeping body to take up its painful existence.
Before resuming contact with matter and commencing a new career, the spirit, we have said, must chose the
place where it will be reborn on earth. But this choice is limited, circumscribed, and determined by multiple
causes. The former lives, its moral debts, its affections, its merits and demerits, the role it is fitted to play - all
these elements intervene in the fixing of the life in preparation. They help to decide the race, the place, the
family. The earthly souls we have loved attract us; the ties of the past are renewed in other alliances and
friendships. The same places even exercise upon us their mysterious attraction, and it is rare when destiny does
not lead us several times to the country where we have lived, loved, and suffered. Hate, too, is a force which
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