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great new truth on principle in politics or religion at once, because he has been prepared in former lives to
understand it. Another must be convinced by force of arguments, because it is new to him.
Without this explanation of former lives, the diversity without limit in the matter of intelligence and
consciousness would remain an unsolvable problem. Genius is not, we have said, explained by heredity or
conditions of environment. If heredity could explain it, it would be more frequent. The majority of celebrated
men have sprung from mediocre conditions. Christ, Socrates, Joan of Arc, were born of obscure families.
Illustrious scientists and philosophers have risen from the most common antecedents. Bacon, Copernicus,
Galvani, Keppler, Hume, Kant, Locke, Malebranche, Spinoza, Laplace, J. J. Rousseau, can all be named in this
class. No explanation of heredity can give us the key to the genius of Shakespeare. The facts are no less
significant regarding the descendants of men of genius. Their power of intellect departs with them, and it is
rarely found in their children. The sons of a great poet or a great mathematician are often incapable of the
elementary work in those two realms. There is a long list of illustrious men whose sons were stupid or
worthless - Pericles, Aristides, Thucydides, Sophocles, Germanicus, Cicero, Vespasian, Marcus Aurelius, not
to mention the sons of Charlemangne, Henry IV., etc.
There are, however, cases where talent seems hereditary. That is when the psychic resemblance exists
between parents and children, and can be traced back to sympathies existing in former lives. Mozart came
from a musical family, yet its musical capacity was not sufficient to explain how he could have a knowledge of
the laws of harmony at the age of four! He alone of his family became celebrated, the other Mozarts remaining
obscure.
Evidently when the great intelligences can, in order to manifest their faculties more freely, they
reincarnate in an environment where their tastes will be understood and encouraged. That is often the case with
musicians, for whom special conditions of sensation and perception are indispensable. But in most cases
genius appears in the bosom of a family, without precedent or successor in the chain of generations. The great
founders of religion and the great moralists were of these - Lâo-Tsze, Buddha, Zarathustra, Christ,
Mohammed, Plato, Dante, Newton, Giordano Bruno. If the brilliant or sad exception created in a family by the
apparition of a man of genius or a criminal was a simple case of atavism, we would find in the family
genealogy some ancestor who served as a model - a primitive type of the manifestation. But this is rarely the
case in either sense. The question may be asked us how we conciliate these dissimilarities with the law of
attractions of similars, which seem to preside as the coming together of souls. The penetration into certain
families of superior or inferior beings who came to give or receive education, to submit to or exercise a new
influence, is easily explained. It results from the chain of common destinies, which at certain points rejoins and
enlaces again, as a consequence of affection or hate exchanged in the past: forces equally attractive which
reunite souls on successive planes in the vast spiral of evolution.
We have said in an earlier book, In the Invisible, that genius owes much to inspiration, and that
inspiration is a sort of mediumship. But we must add that when this faculty is specially and clearly indicated,
the man of genius cannot be considered a mere instrument, which is all that mediumship proper would make
him. Genius is above all an acquisition of the past, the result of patient studies, of slow and painful initiation;
these have developed in the being a profound sensibility, which opens the door to high influences.
There is a pronounced difference between the intellectual manifestations of child prodigies and
mediumship in its generally accepted sense. One has a character intermittent, abnormal. Mediumship cannot at
all times exercise its faculty, but must have special conditions often difficult to obtain. But infant prodigies are
able to use their talents at any moment, in a permanent manner, as we do who have acquired control of our
mental faculties. If we analyze these cases with care we will recognize the fact that the genius of young
prodigies is personal. Its application is regulated by their will, and their works, astonishing as they appear,
represent always something of their age, and not that of a high foreign influence, as in the case of mediumship
controls.
There is always in their manner of working a hesitation and wavering which would not occur if they
were the passive instruments of an occult, superior will. That is why we say that Pepito, notably, indicates a
long past of preparation. We find certain individuals who combine the two causes, personal acquisition and
exterior inspiration. That does not lessen the theory of reincarnation. We must always have recourse to that to
solve certain problems of inequality; we were not all launched at the same moment in the turmoil of life. We
have not all traveled the same paths, but have come through infinite routes. By this fact are explained our
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