We have seen that birth reunites interrupted relations, that the foetus recapitulates the course of preceding evolutions. It is not the child who suggests its embryonic form, it is the embryonic entities, who by virtue of psychic affinities, painfully created, reconstruct - that is, re-incarnate - themselves round the first ovulum. It is thus that later on the child comes to be incarnated, in the reconstructed physiological unity. There is no preconceived plan: there is an order and a succession of forms previously learned and necessarily repeated. The visual soul cannot constitute itself otherwise than it has done in the animal species, and the same may be said of each organ.

To believe, on one hand, that our faculties represent the sum of the chemical activities peculiar to our substance, and, on the other, that these faculties will be manifested in the child who is born for the first time, would be the height of absurdity. To create an eye without having seen, to construct an ear without having heard! It would be easier to conceive a child, still within the body of its mother capable of speaking its national tongue. The miracle would be no greater. When a child comes into the world, we are profoundly ignorant of the mystery which prepares his way: but we may presuppose a series of inductions: first, induction of the mental body, this latter inducting the ethereal body, which in turn, inducts matter.

Differences in conditions and inequalities of birth are thus justified. We need no longer attribute to God the spontaneous creation of innocent souls subjected to such unequal tests. But it is, above all, unreasonable and impious to suppose that this divine creation subordinates the will of God to the capricious union of human beings. A philosopher, Jean Reynaud, annihilates this theological dream in the following terms.1

"Unheard of things, baseness of souls, and if I dare say it, even while rejecting it, baseness of the Creator!

"It is as if a libertine, outraging in wanton passion, by violation or adultery, all the laws of Heaven and earth, should infamously signal to Him whose eye is all-seeing; and as if the All-Powerful, deciding to create, should give life to the unfortunate soul which must accompany the fruit of the debauch. Such are the occasions for which we oblige the Creator to come forth from His sublime repose!

1 Jean Reynaud - Terre et Ciel, 1864, p. 198.

The most dishonest or disgraceful passion finds in Him, when it wishes, a faithful cooperator, hastening to crown by an infinite complement that which had been so wretchedly prepared for Him. No, I will never grant you that the miracle of the appearance of a new soul in the universe could take place by a demand of this kind. If that were the truth I should prefer to consider the soul, as do the materialists, to be a product of the generation of man, than to make of it a creation of God, for impiety revolts me even more than absurdity. Here is an obstacle that we can never overcome, for all theologians will run aground here. It is a rock."

This is, indeed, the fact. Is it necessary to add that the attribution of such an act to the Divinity would be incompatible with justice, reason, and goodness? God having to create souls, He could only create them alike, give to all the same fate. Equality is found only in the original nothingness from which they sprang: it is in evolution that the differentiation of souls and intelligences begins. God would commit grave injustice in the repartition of souls if, of two souls having not as yet lived and therefore still innocent, He should project one, deprived of intelligence, into a place of misery, overwhelming it with moral and physical blemishes, while placing the other in a fair environment, endowing it with all the gifts of heart and mind.

The hypothesis that the soul is contained in the seed would explain no more clearly how similar bodies produce souls so different. This hypothesis is inspired by the point of view that conceives energy as contained in matter, which is folly. A much more probable theory is that nature has conformed in this, as in everything, to the method which she constantly follows, that of slow evolution. The soul develops itself under the influence of a creative will by which it is vivified. As solar magnetism attracts vegetation, as the earth tosses up its fountain, so the individual feels a will awaken within himself under the influence of the Divine Sun, and, like a flower on prepared soil, he germinates in the organic realm, as soon as the summit of evolution has been attained.

There is thus a perfect order in a perfect justice. In the beginning, ignorance, with freedom for experimentation. As soon as the will awakens, the being puts for his first effort, which he repeats in his successive lives. Free and without experience, he stumbles at each step. God is never an accomplice to his errors. God's light shines eternally upon consciousness. He who will not look toward this light, is liable to long gropings, and sooner or later, will recognize his error.

In a word, we have come from nothing, but we all have the same course to follow, the same obstacles to overcome, the same kingdom to attain.

Man dies and the child is reborn with the burden of his past, he is the author of his destiny: hence the great inequalities which appear from the moment of birth. But with each step that man takes toward truth, he feels himself more secure: there is always a little more light, a little more experience. He is the author of himself, the living negative of his own actions. The very quality of the astral body which surrounds him must bear the stamp of his failure, or manifest his greatness. If he generates hate, he develops Hell within himself, and can never attain Heaven until he completely understands the splendid solidarity which should unite the human family.