In every nation there exist an almost infinite number of diverse conditions, riches and poverty, a wide field of opportunities or a total lack of them, facilities for development or conditions under which development is difficult or well-nigh impossible.
Amidst all these infinite possibilities the pressure of the law of evolution tends to guide the man to precisely those which best suit his needs at the stage at which he happens to be.
But the action of this law is limited by that other law of which we spoke, the law of cause and effect.

The man's actions in the past may not have been such as to deserve (if we may put it so) the best possible opportunities; he may have set in motion in his past certain forces the inevitable result of which will be to produce limitations; and these limitations may operate to prevent his receiving that best possible of opportunities, and so as the result of his own actions in the past he may have to put up with the second best.

So we may say that the action of the law of evolution, which if left to itself would do the very best possible for every man, is restrained by the man's own previous actions.
An important feature in that limitation--one which may act most powerfully for good or for evil--is the influence of the group of egos with which the man has made definite links in the past--those with whom he has formed strong ties of love or hate, of helping or of injury--those souls whom he must meet again because of connections made with them in days of long ago.
His relation with them is a factor which must be taken into consideration before it can be determined where and how he shall be reborn.
The Will of the Deity is man's evolution.

The effort of that nature which is an expression of the Deity is to give the man whatever is most suitable for that evolution; but this is conditioned by the man's deserts in the past and by the links which he has already formed.

It may be assumed that a man descending into incarnation could learn the lessons necessary for that life in any one of a hundred positions.