ardently longed. So the body you now behold is, indeed, the son's
body, but the soul which animates it is that of the father. And
it is a year since this event occurred. Such is the real solution
of the problem, whose natural effects the physician attributes to
the result of disease. The spirit which now tenants this young man's
form had no knowledge of art when he was so strangely reborn into
the world, beyond the mere rudiments of drawing which he had learned
while watching his son at work during the previous six years. What,
therefore, seems to the physician to be a painful recovery of
previous aptitude, is, in fact, the imperfect endeavour of a novice
entering a new and unsuitable career.

"For the father the experience is by no means an unprofitable one.
He would certainly, sooner or later, have resumed existence upon
earth in the flesh, and it is as well that his return should be
under the actual circumstances. The study of art upon which he
has thus entered is likely to prove to him an excellent means of
spiritual education. By means of it his soul may ascend as it has
never yet done; while the habits of the body he now possesses,
trained as it is to refined and gentle modes of life, may do much
to accomplish the purgation and redemption of its new tenant.
It is far better for the father that this strange event should
have occurred, than that he should have remained an earth-bound
phantom, unable to realise his own position, or to rise above the
affection which chained him to merely worldly things."

--Paris, Feb. 21, 1880