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CHAPTER XV
REINCARNATION AND INFANT PRODIGIES
We can consider certain precocious manifestations of genius as proofs of pre-existence, in the sense
that they are revelations of work accomplished by souls in anterior cycles. Phenomena of this kind could not
have occurred by hazard without attachments to the past. History gives us accounts of prodigies of tender age
with faculties so superior to, and having no correspondence with their ancestors, that the most subtle
explanations of materialists fail to find an immediate cause. Michael Angelo, Salvator Rosa, Mozart, Paganini,
Pascal, Rembrandt, can all be named in this class. Jacques Crichton, a Scottish lad who was called ‘The
Admirable Crichton,’ was one of the word’s greatest wonders in precocity. William Hamilton, at the age of
thirteen, knew twelve languages, and at eighteen he was called the greatest mathematician of the age. M.
Trombette, born of a poor, uneducated family, learned Arabic by reading one book, Abel-el-Kadar; while in
primary school he acquired French and German in two months. In several weeks he acquired Persian, while on
shipboard in company with a Persian. At twelve, he learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew simultaneously. His
friends say he knew three hundred Oriental dialects. The King of Greece made him Professor of Philosophy at
Boulogne.
At the International Congress of Psychology in Paris, 1900, Professor Charles Richet presented a
Spanish child three and a half years old, named Pepito Arriola, who improvised upon the piano rich and varied
airs. At the age of four and a half years he played six compositions of his own at the Royal Palace of Madrid
before the King and Queen. His harmony was remarkable and his expression marvelous. The young artist has
since become and incomparable violinist. The law of rebirth alone can explain many of these cases; their gifts
are the results of immense labors which have familiarized their spirits with the arts and sciences. These
manifestations of previous genius, while appearing abnormal, are nevertheless but the consequence of labor
pursued through the centuries. Professor Frederick Myers calls this indestructible capital of the being the
subliminal consciousness.
The conceptions of right, justice, and duty are much keener in some people and races than in others:
they are not merely the result of education, of the present, but of something deeper. Education only develops
the germs already there. There are also strange anomalies of savage characters, which can only be explained by
anterior lives. We see children exhibiting ferocious tendencies of cruelty to domestic animals and of theft,
wholly inexplicable by their environment of heredity. In an opposite manner, we see children displaying
devotion and self-sacrifice extraordinary for their age. Angels of goodness and virtue growing up in the midst
of depravity, and thieves and assassins in virtuous families can only be explained by the theory of former lives.
Each one brings with him at birth the fruits of evolution and the tastes and tendencies he has acquired in all
directions. The spirit is capable of diverse studies, but in the limited course of terrestrial life, and through the
effect of material conditions, each soul is usually restricted in its studies.
As soon as the will is directed toward one of the domains of vast knowledge by the fact of its
accumulated tendencies, its superiority in that direction is displayed and returns more and more accentuated
with each life. It is so the child prodigies come, with the genius and talents which are the results of continuous
progressive efforts toward a determined object. Nevertheless, the soul being called to enter into all kinds of
knowledge and not restrict itself to any one, successive states of education are necessary to its unlimited
development. We have behind us infinite reminiscences and souvenirs; before us, another infinity of promises
and hopes. But in all this splendor of life, the greater part of humanity sees only and wishes only to see mean
fragments of actual existence - and existence which it believes without a yesterday or a tomorrow. This is the
cause of the weakness of philosophical thought and moral action in our epoch. The work already effected by
each spirit can be easily calculated when measured by the rapidity with which it assimilates the elements of
any kind of science whatever. By this explanation the difference in individuals who have here enjoyed the
same advantages can be readily understood which would remain incomprehensible otherwise. Two people
equally intelligent, studying the same subject with the same masters, do not assimilate in the same manner.
One seizes the ideas at a glance, the other can penetrate them only by slow, sustained labor. One has but to
penetrate the reservoir of his past, the other is meeting these problems for the first time. One person accepts a
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