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

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THE SPIRITS’ BOOK
348. Does a spirit know beforehand that tile body he chooses has no chance of living?
"He sometimes knows it; but if he chooses it on this account. it is because he shrinks from the
trial he foresees."
349. When, from any cause, a spirit has failed to accomplish a proposed incarnation, is
another existence provided for him immediately?
"Not always immediately. The spirit requires time to make a new choice, unless his
instantaneous reincarnation had been previously decided upon."
350. When a spirit is definitively united to an infant body, and it is thus too late for him to
refuse this union does lie sometimes regret the choice he has made?
"If you mean to ask whether, as a man, he may complain of the life he has to undergo, and
whether he may not wish it were otherwise, I answer, Yes; but if you mean to ask whether he
regrets the choice he has made, I answer, No, for he does not remember that he has made it. A
spirit, when once incarnated. cannot regret a choice which he is not conscious of having
made; but he may find the burden lie has. assumed too heavy. and, if lie believes it to be
beyond his strength, he may have recourse to suicide."
351. Does a spirit, in the interval between conception and birth, enjoy the use of all his
faculties.?
"He does so more or less according to the various periods of gestation; for he is not yet
incarnated in his new body, but only attached to it. From the instant of conception confusion
begins to take possession of the spirit, who is thus made aware that the moment has come for
him to enter upon a new existence; and this confusion becomes more and more dense until
the period of birth. In the interval between these two terms, his state is nearly that of an
incarnated spirit during the sleep of the body. In proportions as the moment of birth
approaches, his ideas become effaced, together with his remembrance of the past, of which.
when once he has entered upon corporeal life, he is no longer conscious. But this
remembrance comes back to him little by little when he has returned to the spirit-world."
352. Does the spirit, at the moment of birth, recover the plenitude of his faculties?