Our brains are inherited from our ancestors. Why, then, may it
not be that the human brain is a palimpsest, containing more or
less faded, yet recoverable records, not only of our entire past
life, but of the lives of our ancestors to the remotest periods?
Pythagoras profest a distinct recollection of his former lives;
the writer of this knows two educated men who have lived before
in the persons of rather more famous individuals than their
present representatives; Lumen, in Flammarion’s “Stories,” finds
that his soul had passed through many previous conditions.
Indeed, the idea of transmigration, which is a poetic forecast
of the more scientific doctrine here enunciated, is a very
familiar one. Coleridge, in his boyhood one day was proceeding
through the Strand, stretching out his arms as if swimming,
when a passer-by, feeling a hand at his coat-tail, turned
rudely round and seized him as a pickpocket. Coleridge denied
the charge, and confest that he had forgotten his whereabouts
in the impression that he was Leander swimming across the
Hellespont--a wretched streetlamp being transformed by his
imagination into the signal-light of the beautiful priestess of
Sestos.--_American Notes and Queries._
(1139)
=Forms=--See SPIRIT AND FORM.
=Forms, Value of=--See EXPERIENCE A HARD TEACHER.
=Fortitude=--See ENDURANCE OF PAIN.