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

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CHAPTER V
PLURALITY OF EXISTENCES
223. "The dogma of reincarnation," it is sometimes objected, "is not new; it is a resuscitation
of the doctrine of Pythagoras." We have never said that spiritist doctrine was of modern
invention; on the contrary, as the inter-communication of spirits with men occurs in virtue of
natural law, it must have existed from the beginning of time, and we have always
endeavoured to prove that traces of this inter-communication are to be found in the earliest
annals of antiquity. Pythagoras, as is well known, was not the author of the system of
metempsychosis; he borrowed it from the philosophers of Hindoostan and of Egypt, by whom
it had been held from time immemorial. The idea of the transmigration of soul was, therefore,
in the earliest ages of the world, a general belief, equally admitted by the common people and
by the most eminent thinkers of that period.
By what road did this idea come to them? Did it reach them through revelation or through
intuition?
In regard to this point we know nothing; but it may be safely assumed that no idea could thus
have traversed the successive ages of the worlds, and have commanded the assent of the
highest intellects of the human race, if it had not been based on some solid ground of truth
and reason. The antiquity of this doctrine should therefore be considered as an argument in its
favour, rather than as an objection. But, at the same time, it must not be forgotten that there
is, between the antique doctrine of metempsychosis and the modern doctrine of reincarnation,
this capital difference, viz., that the spirits who inculcate the latter reject absolutely the idea
that the human soul can pass into an animal, and vice versa.
The spirits, therefore, who now proclaim the dogma of the plurality of our corporeal
existences reassert a doctrine which had its birth in the earliest ages of the world, and which
has maintained its footing to the present day in the convictions of many