Why Candles are a Bad Analogy for Souls

When you ask a chabadnik how people get their souls they tend to answer that a piece of your parent's soul splits off and becomes yours. If you ask them why each generation doesn't have less of a soul if the souls keep dividing this way their response is that souls are like candles. Just as a candle can light another candle without being diminished a soul can create another without losing any of itself. While this is a beautiful midrash, it is a terrible analogy. The reason candle flames can be passed without extinguishing the original fire is that a new fuel source is provided. The original flame is just a catalyst for a combustion reaction to occur in the new candle. Souls presumably do not get more fuel when they generate new souls. In fact since a soul isn't a physical entity there isn't even any fuel it could interact with in our world. I'm not claiming this is proof souls don't exist by the way (although I doubt they do), I'm merely asserting that emotional appeals to beautiful analogies shouldn't convince people of anything in metaphysical debates. Further, candles actually are slightly diminished when they light new fires in that they lose some energy in the heat transfer. The original candle must also expend more of it's own fuel in order to generate the energy to transfer to the new candle.   ¶ 5:50 PM