FACULTIES PECULIAR TO CERTAIN CHILDREN, APTITUDES AND VOCATIONS AMONG MEN, ARE ADDITIONAL PROOFS OF RE-INCARNATIONS.—EXPLANATION OF PHRENOLOGY.—DESCARTES' INNATE IDEAS, AND DUGALD STEWART'S PRINCIPLE OF CAUSALITY CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY THE PLURALITY OF LIVES.—VAGUE RECOLLECTIONS OF OUR ANTERIOR EXISTENCES.
IF there are no re-incarnations, if our actual existence is, as modern philosophy and the ordinary creeds maintain it to be, a solitary fact, not to be repeated, it follows that the soul must be formed at the same time as the body, and that at each birth of a human being, a new soul must be created, to animate this body. We would ask, then, why are not all these souls of the same type? Why, when all human bodies are alike, is there so great a diversity in souls, that is to say, in the intellectual and moral faculties which constitute them? We would ask why natural tendencies are so diverse and so strongly marked, that they frequently resist all the efforts of education to reform, or repress them, or to direct them into any other line? Whence come those instincts of vice and virtue which are to be observed in children, those instincts of pride or of baseness, which are often seen in such striking contrast with the social position of their families? Why do some children delight in the contemplation of pain, and take pleasure in torturing animals, while others are vehemently moved, turn pale, and tremble at the sight or even the thought of a living creature's pain? Why, if the soul in all men be cast in the same mould, does not education produce an identical effect upon young people? Two brothers follow the same classes at the same school, they have the same masters, and the same examples are before their eyes. Nevertheless, the one profits to the utmost by the lessons which he receives, and in manners, education, and conduct, he is irreproachable. His brother, on the contrary, remains ignorant and uncouth. If the same seed sown in these two soils has produced such different fruit, must it not be that the soil which has received the seed, i.e., the soul, is different in the case of each?
Natural dispositions, vocations, manifest themselves from the earliest period of life. This extreme diversity in natural aptitudes would not exist if souls were all created of the same type. The bodies of animals, the human body, the leaves of trees, are fabricated after the same type, because we can observe but few and slight differences among them. The skeleton of one man is always like the skeleton of another man; the heart, the stomach, the ribs, the intestines are formed alike in every man. It is otherwise with souls; they differ considerably in individuals. We hear it said every day that such an one's child has a taste for arithmetic, a second for music, a third for drawing. In the case of others evil, violent, even criminal instincts are remarked, and these dispositions break out in the earliest years of life.
That these natural aptitudes are carried to a very high degree and unusual extent, we have celebrated examples recorded in history, and frequently cited. We have Pascal, at twelve years old, discovering the greater portion of plane geometry, and without having been taught anything whatever of arithmetic, drawing all the figures of the first book of Euclid's geometry on the floor of his room, exactly estimating the mathematical relations of all these figures to each other; that is to say, constructing descriptive geometry for himself. We have the shepherd, Mangiamelo, calculating as an arithmetical machine, at five years old. We have Mozart executing a sonata with his four-years-old fingers, and composing an opera at eight. We have Theresa Milanollo playing the violin with such art and skill, at four years old, that Baillot said she must have played the violin before she was born. We have Rembrandt drawing like a master of the art, before he could read. Etc., etc.
Every one remembers these examples, but it must be borne in mind that they do not constitute exceptions. They only represent a general fact, which in these particular cases was so prominent as to attract public attention. They are valuable as exponents to the public of a fundamental law of nature, the diversity of natural faculties and aptitudes, and the predominance of particular faculties among certain children. Children endowed with these extraordinary and precocious vocations are called little prodigies. This qualification is sometimes used in a depreciatory sense, for the little prodigies are accused of failing to carry out the promises of their childhood; it is observed that the brilliant abilities of their early years have not been guarantees of extraordinary success in their careers as grown men. A child, whose drawings were wonderful at four years old, has become a wretched dauber, as an established artist. A musician, who enchanted his audience at eight years old, has grown up a very mediocre performer.
This remark is just, and the fact is explicable thus: If the little prodigies have not become great men, it is because they have not cultivated their faculties; because they have allowed sloth and disuse to extinguish their talents. It does not suffice to possess natural abilities for a science, or an art, work and study must strengthen and develop them. Little prodigies are outstripped in their career by hard workers, as is natural. They have come upon earth with remarkable faculties which they had acquired during a previous life, but they have done nothing to develop those faculties, which have remained as they were at the moment of terrestrial birth. The man of genius is the man who unceasingly cultivates and perfects such great natural aptitudes and faculties as he has been endowed with at his birth.
The predominance of particular faculties in certain children is not to be explained according to the common philosophy which discerns the creation of a new soul in the birth of every infant. They are, on the contrary, easily explicable according to the doctrine of re-incarnations, indeed they are no more than a corollary of that doctrine. Everything is comprehensible if a life, anterior to the present, be admitted. The individual brings to his life here, the intuition which is the result of the knowledge he has acquired during his first existence. Men are of more or less advanced intelligence and morality, according to the life which they have led before they come into this world to play the parts which we can see. This is self-evident in the case of a man who recommences his life. This man had acquired certain faculties during his first, which are profitable to him in his second existence. Perhaps he does not possess all the faculties with which his first life was endowed, in their full and perfect integrity, but he has what mathematicians call the resultant of those faculties, and this resultant is a special aptitude, it is vocation. He is a calculator, a painter, or a musician by vocation, because, in his former human career he has had the faculty of calculation, drawing, or music. We believe that it is impossible to find any other explanation of our natural aptitudes. It will be objected to this, that it is strange that aptitude and faculties should be the resultant of a prior existence, of which we have, nevertheless, no recollection. We reply to this objection that it is quite possible to lose all remembrance of events which have happened, and yet to preserve certain faculties of the soul which are independent of particular and concrete facts, especially when those faculties are powerful. We constantly see old men who have lost all recollection of the events of their life, who no longer know anything of the history of their time, nor indeed, of their own history, but who, nevertheless, have not lost their faculties, or aptitudes. Linnæus, in his old age, took pleasure in reading his own works, but forgot that he was their author, and frequently exclaimed: "How interesting! How beautiful! I wish I had written that!"
There is no reason to doubt that a child, after its re-incarnation, may preserve the aptitudes of its previous existence, though it has entirely lost the remembrance of the facts which took place and which it witnessed during that period. These faculties reappear and become active in the child, just as the half-extinguished flame of a fire is rekindled by the breath of the wind. The breath which fans the smouldering flame of human faculties is that of a second existence.
The absence of memory may be urged as an objection to re-incarnations in the body of a child, but this argument does not apply to the incarnation of the soul of an animal in a human body. The animal, being almost without the faculty of memory, it is easy to understand that its aptitudes only pass into the condition of man. The good or evil, gentle or fierce instincts which human souls manifest so early, are explained by the species of the animal through which the soul has been transmitted. A child who has a faculty for music may have received the soul of a nightingale, the sweet songster of our woods. A child who is an architect by vocation may have inherited the soul of a beaver, the architect of the woods and waters.