In some cases this effect may be comparatively trivial, while in others it may be of the most serious character.

The trivial results, whether good or bad, are simply small debits or credits in our account with Nature; but the greater effects, whether good or bad, make a personal account which is to be settled with the individual concerned.
A man who gives a meal to a hungry beggar, or cheers him by a kindly word, will receive the result of his good action as part of a kind of general fund of Nature's benefits; but one who by some good action changes the whole current of another man's life will assuredly have to meet that same man again in a future life, in order that he who has been benefited may have the opportunity of repaying the kindness that has been done to him.
One who causes annoyance to another will suffer proportionately for it somewhere, somehow, in the future, though he may never meet again the man whom he has troubled; but one who does serious harm to another, one who wrecks his life or retards his evolution, must certainly meet his victim again at some later point in the course of their lives, so that he may have the opportunity, by kindly and self-sacrificing service, of counterbalancing the wrong which he has done.

In short, large debts must be paid personally, but small ones go into the general fund.
These then are the principal factors which determine the next birth of the man.

First acts the great law of evolution, and its tendency is to press the man into that position in which he can most easily develop the qualities which he most needs.

For the purposes of the general scheme, humanity is divided into great races, called root-races, which rule and occupy the world successively.