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

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ALLAN KARDEC
learned. He may, during incarnation, forget partially and for a time, but the latent intuition
which he preserves of all that he has once known aids him in advancing. Were it not for this
intuition of past acquisitions, he would always have to begin his education over again. A
spirit, at each new existence, takes his departure from the point at which he had arrived at the
close of his preceding existence."
219. If that be the case, there must be a very close connection between two successive
existences.?
"That connection is not always so close as you might suppose it to be; for the conditions of
the two existences are often very different, and, in the interval between them, the spirit may
have made considerable progress."-(2l6)
220. What is the origin of the extraordinary faculties of those individuals who, without any
preparatory study, appear to possess intuitively certain branches of knowledge, such as
languages, arithmetic, etc.?
"The vague remembrance of their past; the result of progress previously made by the soul, but
of which it has no present consciousness. From what else could those intuitions be derived?
The body changes, but the spirit does not change, although he changes his garment."
221. In changing our body, can we lose certain intellectual faculties, as, for instance, the
taste for an art?
"Yes, if you have sullied that faculty, or made a bad use of it. Moreover, an intellectual
faculty may be made to slumber during an entire existence, because the spirit wishes to
exercise another faculty having no connection with the one which, in that case, remains
latent, but will come again into play in a later existence."
222. Is it to a retrospective remembrance that are due the instinctive sentiment of the
existence of God, and the presentiment of a future life, which appear to be natural to man,
even in the savage state?
"Yes, to a remembrance which man has preserved of what he knew as a spirit before he was
incarnated; but pride often stifles this sentiment."
- Is it to this same remembrance that are due certain beliefs analogous to spiritist doctrine,
'which are found among every people?