736. To assert that the talents are inherited from the parents cannot be consistent with any form of logic, quite apart from the fact that this assertion cannot possibly create even the tiniest microscopic justification or slightest degree of extenuating circumstances for all the injustice that the beings' unequally favourable conditions must then represent. If inheritance formed the foundation of the talents that the beings were born with, where have all the talents come from that are characteristic of present-day human beings, talents that were completely unknown and out of the question when our forefathers were alive? From whom have human beings inherited the talent for the ingenious present-day technology, for the mechanisation of the forces or the ability to transform the elements into the driving force behind our creativity or the satisfaction of our wishes and desires? Is it not a well known fact that our forefathers had no telephones, radios, films, railways, cars, aeroplanes or any other of the great wealth of products of mental and physical capability that we are culminating in in these days? So, from whom have we inherited the talents to create all these phenomena? The sceptic will perhaps say that of course we have acquired them through thinking, experience and practice. That is all very well, but if we have not been able to inherit from our forefathers all the talents that form the basis for this entire mental and technical capability, which determines to such an extent the whole of our existence, what kind of talents are they we have inherited as an innate gift, and which should thereby render a previous life superfluous? Is it the talent to write, paint or draw? Is it the ability to organise lavish financial phenomena or the ability to gather riches? Is it the ability to be a leader or the ability to be a criminal? But why should the talents or abilities behind these phenomena be acquired as an innate gift? Why should it be possible to inherit these when the previously mentioned talents, which are so important at present, can come about, as the sceptic himself admits, as only a product of thinking, experience and practice? Is the talent for creating brilliant financial concerns or the talent for creating intricate crimes easier to justify as the direct result of heredity than the talents from which the previously mentioned modern cultural advancements have sprung? Why should it be easier to inherit the talent for creating a brilliant, magnificent work of art than the talent for creating an ingenious solution to people's means of communication and other cultural advancements? Do you not think experience, thinking and practice are equally necessary behind the creation of all talents? In addition, it is also a fact that we have never in any case whatsoever yet seen that children are an exact copy of their parents, as they undeniably would be if the talents were passed on as only an inheritance from the parents to the children. If the talents existed as merely a phenomenon inherited from the forefathers, all children of geniuses would be geniuses. But is this the case? Are there not many cases where such children are only averagely gifted? And is it not an equally well known fact that less gifted parents have sometimes had a child that has become an extraordinary genius? From where does such a child get this greater giftedness or this surplus of mental qualifications that makes it a genius? As its parents were not geniuses, any form of inheritance must rightfully be ruled out. Is it not natural that this child's greater giftedness is due exclusively to its own thinking, experience and practice? But as this child was already born with this greater giftedness in the form of talents, the thinking, experience and practice that forms the basis of these talents cannot have taken place in its present terrestrial life. And as the child, as we have already mentioned, cannot have inherited the talents from its parents, since they were not geniuses or did not possess these same talents, it becomes clear that the being has had a previous existence in which this very thinking, experience and practice has taken place, and without which it would have been absolutely impossible for these talents to have emerged.