Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

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THE SPIRITS’ BOOK
Sex in Spirits
200. Have spirits sex?
“Not as you understand sex; for sex, in that sense, depends on the corporeal organisation.
Love and sympathy exist among them, but founded on similarity of sentiments."
201. Can a spirit, who has animated the body of a man, animate the body of a woman in a
new existence, and vice versa ?
"Yes; the same spirits animate men and women."
202. Does a spirit, when existing in the spirit-world, prefer to be incarnated as a man or as a
woman?
"That is a point in regard to which a spirit is indifferent, and which is always decided in view
of the trials which he has to undergo in his new corporeal life."
Spirits incarnate themselves as men or as women, because they are of no sex and, as it is necessary for
them to develop themselves in every direction, both sexes. as well as every variety of social position.
furnish them with special trials and duties, and with the opportunity of acquiring experience. A spirit
who had always incarnated itself as a man would be only known by men, and vice versa.
Relationship - Filiation
203. Do parents transmit to their children a part of their soul, or do they only give them the
animal life to which another soul afterwards adds the moral life?
"The animal life only is given by the parents, for the soul is indivisible. A stupid father may
have clever children, and vice versa.”
204. As we have had many existences, do our relationships extend beyond our present
existence?
"It cannot be otherwise. The succession of their corporeal existences establishes among spirits
a variety of relationships which date back from their former existences; and these
relationships are often the cause of the sympathies or antipathies which you sometimes feel
towards persons whom you seem to meet for the first time."
205. The doctrine of reincarnation appears, to some minds, to destroy family ties, by carrying
them back to periods anterior to our present existence.
"It extends those ties, but it does not destroy them; on the contrary, the conviction that the
relationships of the present life are based upon anterior affections renders the ties between
members of the same family less precarious. It makes the duties