Book 15, Line 156, &c., as follows:

"O mortals! chilled by dreams of icy death,

Whom air-blown bubbles of a poet's breath,

Darkness and Styx in error's gulph have hurl'd,

With fabled terrors of a fabled world;

Think not, whene'er material forms expire,

Consumed by wasting age or funeral fire,

Aught else can die: souls, spurning death's decay,

Freed from their old, new tenements of clay

Forthwith assume, and wake to life again.

... All is change,

Nought perishes" ...

_Orger's translation_[225]

Campanella, the Dominican monk, was sent into exile on account of his

belief in the successive returns of the soul to earth.

The Younger Helmont, in his turn, was attacked by the inquisition for

leaching this doctrine in his _De Revolutione Animarum_, in which he

brings forward, in two hundred problems, all the arguments; that make

reincarnation necessary.

Cudworth and Dr. Henry More, the Platonists of Cambridge, were

faithful believers in Palingenesis; whilst Joseph Glanvill, in _Lux

Orientalis_, finds that there are "Seven Pillars" on which

Pre-existence rests.

Dr. Edward Beecher, in _The Conflict of Ages_ and _The Concord of

Ages_, as well as Julius Muller, the well-known German theologian, in

_The Christian Doctrine of Sin_, warmly uphold it.

Schelling acknowledges it in his _Dissertation on Metempsychosis_.

Leibnitz, in his _Monadology_, and more especially his _Theodicy_,

witnessed to his belief in this doctrine. Had he dared to speak out

his thoughts openly, he would more effectively have advocated his

"Optimism," by the teachings of evolution and rebirths, than by all

the other arguments he advanced.

Chevalier Ramsey, in _The Philosophical Principles of Natural and

Revealed Religion_, writes:

"The holy oracles always represent Paradise as our native country, and

our present life as an exile. How can we be said to have been banished

from a place in which we never were? This argument alone would suffice

to convince us of pre-existence, if the prejudice of infancy inspired

by the schoolmen had not accustomed us to look upon these expressions

as metaphorical, and to believe, contrary to Scripture and reason,

that we were exiled from a happy state, only for the fault and

personal disobedience of our first parents....

"Our Saviour seems to approve the doctrine of pre-existence in his

answer to the disciples, when they interrogate him thus about the man

born blind,[226] 'Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that

he was born blind?' It is clear that this question would have been

ridiculous and impertinent if the disciples had not believed that the

man born blind had sinned before his corporal birth, and consequently

that he had existed in another state long ere he was born on earth.

Our Saviour's answer is remarkable, 'Neither hath this man sinned nor

his parents, but that the works of God might be manifested in him.'

Jesus Christ could not mean that neither this man nor his parents had

ever committed any sin, for this can be said of no mortal; but the

meaning is that it was neither for the sins committed by this man in a

state of pre-existence, nor for those of his parents, that he was born

blind; but that he was deprived of sight from his birth, by a

particular dispensation of Providence, in order to manifest, one day,

the power of God in our Saviour. Our Lord, therefore, far from blaming

and redressing this error in his disciples, as he did those concerning

his temporal kingdom, answers in a way that seems to suppose with

them, and confirm them in the doctrine of pre-existence. If he had

looked upon this opinion as a capital error, would it have been

consonant or compatible with his eternal wisdom to have passed it

over so lightly and thus tacitly authorised it by such silence? On the

contrary, does not his silence manifestly indicate that he looked upon

this doctrine, which was a received maxim of the Jewish Church, as the

true explanation of original sin?

"Since God says that he loved Jacob and detested Esau ere they were

born, and before they had done good or evil in this mortal life, since

God's love and hatred depend upon the moral dispositions of the

creature, ... it follows clearly that if God hated Esau, type of the

reprobate, and loved Jacob, type of the elect, before their natural

birth, they must have pre-existed in another state.

"If it be said that all these texts are obscure, that pre-existence is

largely drawn from them by induction, and that this belief is not

revealed in Scripture by express words, I answer that the doctrines of

the immortality of the soul are nowhere revealed, least of all in the

oracles of the _Old_ and _New Testament_. We may say the same of

pre-existence. This doctrine is nowhere expressly revealed as an

article of faith, but it is evidently implied in the _Wisdom of

Solomon_, by the author of _Ecclesiasticus_, by our Saviour's silence,

by St. Paul's comparisons, and by the sacred doctrine of original sin,

which becomes not only inexplicable, but absurd, repugnant, and

impossible, if that of pre-existence be not true.... The Fifth General

Council held at Constantinople pronounces anathema against all those

who maintain the fabulous doctrine of pre-existence in the Origenian

sense. It was not then the simple doctrine of pre-existence that was

condemned by the council, but the fictitious mixtures and erroneous

disguises by which this ancient tradition had been adulterated by the

Origenites."

Soame Jenyns writes:

"That mankind had existed in some state previous to the present was

the opinion of the wisest sages of the most remote antiquity. It was

held by the Gymnosophists of Egypt, the Brâhmans of India, the Magi of

Persia, and the greatest philosophers of Greece and Rome; it was

likewise adopted by the _Fathers of the Christian Church, and

frequently enforced by her early writers_; why it has been so little

noticed, so much overlooked rather than rejected, by the divines and

metaphysicians of latter ages, I am at a loss to account for, as it is

undoubtedly confirmed by reason, by all the appearances of nature and

the doctrines of revelation.

"In the first place, then, it is confirmed by reason, which teaches us

that it is impossible that the conjunction of a male and female can

create an immortal soul; they may prepare a material habitation for

it; but there cannot be an immortal, pre-existent inhabitant ready to

take possession. Reason assures us that an immortal soul, which will

exist eternally after the dissolution of the body, must have eternally

existed before the formation of it; _for whatever has no end can never

have had any beginning_....

"Reason likewise tells us that an omnipotent and benevolent Creator

would never have formed such a world as this, and filled it with such

inhabitants if the present was the only, or even the first, state of

their existence; for this state which, if unconnected with the past

and the future, would seem calculated for no purpose intelligible to

our understanding, neither of good or evil, of happiness or misery, of

virtue or vice, of reward or punishment; but a confused jumble of them

all together, proceeding from no visible cause and tending to no

end....

"Pre-existence, although perhaps it is nowhere in the _New Testament_

explicitly enforced, yet throughout the whole tenour of these writings

is everywhere implied; in them, mankind is constantly represented as

coming into the world under a load of guilt; as condemned criminals,

the children of wrath and objects of divine indignation; placed in it

for a time by the mercies of God to give them an opportunity of

expiating this guilt by sufferings, and regaining, by a pious and

virtuous conduct, their lost state of happiness and innocence....

"Now if by all this a pre-existent state is not constantly supposed,

that is, that mankind has existed in some state previous to the

present, in which this guilt was incurred, and this depravity

contracted, there can be no meaning at all or such a meaning as

contradicts every principle of common sense, that guilt can be

contracted without acting, or that we can act without existing...."

The following is a quotation from Hume, the great positivist

philosopher:

"Reasoning from the common course of nature, what is incorruptible

must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed

before our birth, and if the former existence in noway concerned us,

neither will the latter.... Metempsychosis is, therefore, the only

system of this kind that philosophy can hearken to." (_The Immortality

of the Soul_.)

Young, in his _Night Thoughts_ (Night the Sixth), has the following

lines:

"Look nature through, 'tis revolution all;

All change, no death. Day follows night; and night

The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise;

Earth takes th' example ...

... All, to reflourish, fades;

As in a wheel, all sinks, to re-ascend.

Emblems of man, who passes, not expires."

"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in

Nature is resurrection," said Voltaire.

Delormel, Descartes, and Lavater were struck with the tremendous

importance of the doctrine of Palingenesis.

_The Philosophy of the Universe_, of Dupont de Nemours, is full of the

idea of successive lives, as a necessary corollary of the law of

progress; whilst Fontenelle strongly advocates it in his _Entretiens

sur la Pluralité des Mondes_.

It is needless to state that these ideas formed part of the esoteric

teachings of Martinez Pasqualis, Claude Saint-Martin, and their

followers.

Saint-Martin lived in times that were too troubled for him to speak

freely. In his works, however, not a few passages are found in which

there can be no doubt that reincarnation is hinted at, to anyone able

to read between the lines. (_Tableau nat._, vol. I, p. 136; _L'homme

de Désir_, p. 312.)

In his _Oeuvres Posthumes_ (vol. I, p. 286) appears this remarkable

passage:

"Death ought to be looked upon only as one stage in our journey. We

reach this stage with tired, worn-out horses, and we start again with

horses that are fresh and able to take us farther on our road; all the

same, we must pay what we owe for the portion of the journey that has

been traversed, and until the account is settled, we are not allowed

to continue our way."

Goethe writes as follows to his friend Madame von Stein:

"Tell me what destiny has in store for us? Wherefore has it bound us

so closely to each other? Ah! in bygone times, thou must have been my

sister or my wife ... and there remains, from the whole of those past

ages, only one memory, hovering like a doubt above my heart, a memory

of that truth of old that is ever present in me."

Ballanche, an orthodox Christian mystic, says:

"Each one of us is a reincarnating being, ignorant both of his present

and of his former transformations." (_Pal. Sociale_, book III., p.

154.)

"Man is brought to perfection only by becoming a more perfect order of

things, and even then he does nothing more than bring back, as Plato

said, a confused memory of the state that preceded his fall." (_Essai

sur les Instit. Sociales_, vol. ii., p. 170.)

"This life we spend on earth, shut in between an apparent birth and an

equally apparent death, is, in reality, only a portion of our

existence, one manifestation of man in time." (_Orphée_, vol. iv., p.

424.)

"Our former lives belong to astronomical cycles lost in the mighty

bosom of previous ages; not yet has it been given to us to know them."

(_Orphée_, vol. iv., p. 432.)

Balzac's _Seraphita_ abounds with references to the idea of successive

lives:

"All human beings spend their first life in the sphere of instincts,

in which they endeavour to discover how useless are the treasures of

earth."

".... How often we live in this first world...."

"Then we have other existences to wear out before we reach the path on

which the light shines. Death is one stage on this journey."

Constant Savy[227] describes as follows the conditions of immortality

and a succession of lives by means of reincarnation:

"In proportion as its soul is developed by successive lives, the body

to which it is to be united will necessarily be superior to those it

has worn out; otherwise there would be no harmony between these two

elements of human existence; the means given to the soul would bear

no relation to the development of its power. This body, gifted with

more perfect and numerous senses, could not have an equal value for

all....

"Besides, these natural inequalities are also advantageous for

individual progress in another way; the errors resulting therefrom

cause truths to be discovered; vices laid bare almost form a reason

for the practice of virtue by all men, or at all events they protect

one from vice by reason of the horror they inspire; the ignorance of

some arouses the love of science in others; the very idleness which

dishonours some men inspires others with a love for work.

"So that these inequalities, inevitable because they are necessary,

are present in the successive lives we pass through. There is nothing

in them contrary to universal harmony; rather, they are a means for

effecting this harmony, and are the inevitable result of the

difference in value that bodies possess. Besides, no man remains

stationary; all advance at a more or less rapid rate of progress....

"When faith is born, it is an illumination. Since man's immortality is

one progressive advance, and, to effect this, he prepares the life he

enters by the life he is leaving; since, in short, there are

necessarily two worlds, one material, the other intellectual, these

two worlds, which make up the life to come, must be in harmonious

relationship with our own.

"Man's work will, therefore, be a continuation of his past work....

"I would never believe that our intelligence, which begins to develop

in this life, comes to a halt after such an imperfect growth, and is

not exercised or perfected after death....

"... Nature always advances, always labours, because God is life and

he is eternal, and life is the progressive movement in the direction

of the supreme good, which is God himself. Could man alone in the

whole of nature, man so imperfect and full of faults, stop in his

onward course, either to be annihilated, or suddenly, without

participating in it, though he was created free, find that he was as

perfect as he could possibly be? This is more than I can understand.

"No, when the time comes, man will not find that his life has been

useless, a thing for mere contemplation; he will not find that he is

improved without personal participation therein, without effort and

toil on his part; above all, he will not be reduced to a state of

nothingness. He will again have a life of toil; he will participate,

to the extent God has permitted him, in the endless creations produced

by divine omnipotence; he will again love, he will never cease to

love; he will continue his eternal progress, because the distance

between himself and God is infinite."

Pierre Leroux says:

"If God, after creating the world and all creation, were then to

abandon them, instead of guiding them from life to life, from one

state of progress to another, to a goal of real happiness, he would be

an unjust God. It is unnecessary for St. Paul to say; 'Shall the thing

formed say to him that formed it. Why hast thou made me thus?'

(_Romans_, chap, 9, v. 20.) There is an inner voice, doubtless coming

to us from God himself, which tells us that God cannot bring about

evil, or create in order to cause suffering. Now this is what would

certainly happen were God to abandon his creatures after an imperfect,

a truly unhappy life.

"On the other hand, if we regard the world as a series of successive

lives for each creature, we see very well how it comes about that God,

to whom there is neither time nor space, and who perceives the final

goal of all things, permits evil and suffering as being necessary

phases through which creatures must pass, in order to reach a state of

happiness which the creature does not see, and, consequently, cannot

enjoy in so far as it is a creature, but which God sees, and which,

therefore, the creature virtually enjoys in him, for the time will

come when it will partake of that happiness."[228]

In Fourier we find the following lines[229]:

"Where is there an old man who would not like to feel certain that he

would be born again and bring back into another life the experience he

has gained in the present one? To affirm that this desire cannot be

realised is to confess that God is capable of deceiving us. We must,

therefore, recognise that we have already lived before being what we

now are, and that many another life awaits us, some in this world, and

the rest in a higher sphere, with a finer body and more delicate

senses...."

Alphonse Esquiros expresses himself as follows[230]:

"The question may well be asked whether the talents, the good and the

evil tendencies man brings with him at birth may not be the fruit of

acquired intelligence, of qualities and vices gained in one or many

former existences. Is there a previous life the elements of which have

prepared the conditions of the life now being lived by each of us?

People in ancient times thought so. Inborn dispositions, so different

in children, caused them to believe in impressions left by previous

existences in the imperishable germ of man. From the time when

intelligence begins to show itself in children we faintly discern a

general attitude towards things, which is very like a memory thereof.

It would appear that, according to this system, no one is unconnected

with the elements he introduces into life at each birth.

"All the same, rebirth in humanity constitutes no more than an initial

circle of tests. When, after one or several incarnations, man has

attained to the degree of perfection necessary to cause a change, he

passes to another life, and, in another sphere, begins an existence of

which we know nothing, though it is possible for us to regard it as

linked to the present life by the closest of bonds....

"The limit to the progress man must have attained to, before entering

upon another circle of tests in another sphere, is at present unknown

to us; science and philosophy will doubtless succeed in determining

this limit later on.

"They alone are reborn to earthly flesh who have in no way raised the

immortal principle of their nature to a degree of perfection that will

enable them to be reborn in glory....

"I affirm the perpetual union of the soul to organic bodies; these

bodies succeed each other, being born from one another, and fitting

themselves for the constitutive forms of the worlds traversed by the

immortal ego in its successive existences. The principle of life,

extended to divers evolutions of rebirth, is ever for the Creator

nothing more than a continuation of one and the same state. God does

not regard the duration of a being as limited to the interval between

birth and death; he includes all possible segments of existence, the

succession of which, after many interruptions and renewals, forms the

real unity of life. Must souls, when they leave our globe, put on,

from sphere to sphere, an existence hidden from us, whose organic

elements would continually be fitting themselves for the characters

and natures of the different worlds? Reason can come to no decision on

this point. Only let us not forget that the soul always carries off a

material germ from one existence to the next, making itself anew, so

to speak, several times, in that endless ascent of lives through the

worlds, wherein it attains, heaven after heaven, a degree of

perfection increasingly linked with the eternal elements of our

growing personality.

"It may be seen, from what is here stated, how vain is the hypothesis

of perfect bliss following on the death of the righteous.

"It is useless for the Christian to soar beyond time, beyond some

limit that separates him from infinite good; he cannot do this by a

single effort. God proportions his intervention and aid to the

totality of the states man must pass through in the course of an

indefinitely long series of existences...."

M. d'Orient, an orthodox Catholic, writes as follows[231]:

"In this doctrine, so evidently based on reason, everything is linked

and held together: the foreknowledge of God and the agreement thereof

with man's free-will. This problem, hitherto impossible to solve, no

longer offers any difficulty, if by it is meant that God, knowing

before birth, by reason of his previous deeds, what there is in the

heart of man, brings man to life and removes him from it in

circumstances that best fit in with the accomplishment of his

purposes....

"We see in this way how it is that God is the controller of all the

main events that take place in the world, for the knowledge he has of

souls in former lives, and his power to dispose of each and all in the

way he pleases, enable him to foresee events in his infinite knowledge

and arrange the whole sequence of things in conformity with his plans,

somewhat as an ingenious, skilful workman, by the aid of various

colours, conceives of and arranges the life-like reproduction of a

mosaic, a picture, or a piece of inlaid work. We understand all his

forecasts of the future, how it was that Daniel foretold so exactly

the greatness of Alexander and his conquests; how Isaiah called Cyrus

by name many centuries before these mighty conquerors appeared to

spread confusion and terror over the world; how God, in order to show

forth his might before the nations and spread abroad the glory of his

name, is said to have hardened Pharaoh's heart and roused his

obstinate will; for all that was needed in order to bring to pass

these various results was for God to call back into existence certain

souls he knew to be naturally suited to his purpose. This is

distinctly pointed out in the passage from the apostle St. Jude,

which, if we accept the meaning that first offers itself to the mind,

would seem positively to imply that certain souls had undergone a

sentence of eternal reprobation: 'For there are certain men crept in

unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation,

turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness....'

"And so there falls away and disappears the greatest difficulty in the

doctrine of grace, which consisted in explaining how it came about

that God made some men pitiful and others hard-hearted, without there

being in him either justice or acceptance of persons; showing pity,

says St. Augustine, only by grace that was unmerited, and hardening

hearts only by judgment that was always just; since evidently

according to this theory it is not (as Origen has already said) apart

from previous merit that some are formed for vessels of honour, and

others for vessels of shame and wrath. That harsh sentence pronounced

upon Judas by the Bishop of Hippon, which so grievously scandalised

most of the Catholic theologians, although only the confirmation of

the quotation from St. Jude, viz., that the wretched man had been

predestined to shed the Saviour's blood, will seem to be a very just

one in the sense that God causes that already lost soul to be born

again, that demon, as Jesus Christ called him, for the very purpose of

perpetrating the hateful crime.

"Consequently the most sublime mysteries of religion, the most

wonderful facts regarding the destiny of the soul, find their natural

explanation in a clear understanding of this doctrine of

metempsychosis, however strange and extraordinary it may at first

appear. What more striking proof can be asked for, what stronger and

more convincing reason than such agreement, concerning matter wherein

all positive proof will always, humanly speaking, be impossible? A

doctrine which meets all the facts of the case so accurately, which

explains, without difficulty, all the phenomena of our existence in

this world, can, of necessity, be nothing else than true."

Jean Reynaud expresses himself in these terms in _Terre el Ciel_:

"How glorious the light that would be cast on the present order of

things on earth by a knowledge of our former existences! And yet, not

only is our memory helpless regarding the times that preceded birth,

it is not even conscious of the whole of the intervening period, often

playing us false in the course of a lifetime. It retains absolutely

nothing of the period immediately preceding birth, and scarcely any

trace of our education as children; we might even be altogether

ignorant of the fact that we were children once, were there not around

us witnesses of that time. On every hand we are wrapped in a veil of

ignorance, as with a pall of darkness, we no more distinguish the

light beyond the cradle than that beyond the tomb. So far as memory is

concerned, it would seem that we might be compared with a rocket such

as we sometimes see flashing through the sky in the night-time,

leaving behind it a line of light, this light never shows anything

more than a limited portion of the way. Of like nature is memory, a

trail of light left behind on our journey; we die, and everything is

dark around us; we are born again, and the light begins to appear,

like a star through the mist; we live, and it develops and grows,

suddenly disappears again and reappears once more; from one eclipse to

another we continue our way, and this way, interrupted by periods of

darkness, is a continuous one, whose elements, only apparently

separated, are linked to each other by the closest of bonds; we always

bear within ourselves the principle of what we shall be later on, we

are always rising higher. Question us on our past, and, like the

rocket, we reply that we are going forward, but that our path is

illumined only in our immediate neighbourhood, and that the rest of

the road is lost in the blackness of night; we no more know from where

we came than we know our destination, but we do know that we came from

below and are rising higher, and that is all that is necessary to

interest us in ourselves and make us conscious of what we are. And who

knows but what our soul, in the unknown secret of its essence, has

power some day to throw light on its successive journeyings, like

those streaks of flame to which we are comparing it? There are strong

reasons for thinking that such is the case, since the entire

restoration of memory appears, with good reason, to be one of the main

conditions of our future happiness....

"In like manner the soul, passing from one abode to another, and

leaving its first body for a new one, ever changing its appearance and

its dwelling, guided by the Creator's beams, from transmigration to

transmigration, from metamorphosis to metamorphosis, pursues the

palingenesic course of its eternal destiny....

"... Let us, then, add the teachings of metempsychosis to those of the

Gospel, and place Pythagoras by the side of Jesus...."

André Pezzani concludes in the following words his remarkable book on

_The Plurality of the Soul's Lives_:

"Apart from the belief in previous lives, nothing can be explained,

neither the coming of a new soul into this evil world, the often

incurable bodily infirmities, the disproportionate division of wealth,

nor the inequality in intelligence and morality. The justice of God

lies behind the monstrous phantom of chance. We understand neither

what man is, whence he comes, nor whither he goes; original sin does

not account for the particular fate of individuals, as it is the same

for all. Roughly speaking, it clears up no difficulties, but rather

adds to them the most revolting injustice. Once accept the theory of

pre-existence, and a glorious light is thrown on the dogma of sin, for

it becomes the result of personal faults from which the guilty soul

must be purified.

"Pre-existence, once admitted as regards the past, logically implies a

succession of future existences for all souls that have not yet

attained to the goal and that have imperfections and defilements from

which to be cleansed. In order to enter _the circle of happiness_ and

leave _the circle of wanderings_, one must be pure.

"We have opposed error, and proclaimed truth, and we firmly believe

that the dogmas of pre-existence and the plurality of lives are true."

Thomas Browne, in _Religio Medici_, section 6, hints at Reincarnation:

"Heresies perish not with their authors, but, like the river Arethusa,

though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in

another ... revolution of time will restore it, when it will flourish

till it be condemned again. For as though there were a Metempsychosis,

and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find, after

certain Revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat

them.... Each man is not only himself, there hath been many Diogenes

and as many Timons, though but few of that name; men are lived over

again, the world is now as it was in ages past; there was none then

but there hath been someone since that parallels him, and is, as it

were, his revived self."

Lessing, in _The Divine Education of the Human Race_, vigorously

opposes a Lutheran divine who rejects reincarnation:

"The very same way by which the race reaches its perfection must every

individual man--one sooner, another later--have travelled over. Have

travelled over in one and the same life? Can he have been in one and

the self-same life a sensual Jew and a spiritual Christian?

"Surely not that! But why should not every individual man have existed

more than once in this world?

"Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest?

Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools

had disciplined and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once? Why may

not even I have already performed those steps of my perfecting which

bring to men only temporal punishments and rewards? And once more, why

not another time all those steps, to perform which the views of

Eternal Rewards so powerfully assist us? Why should I not come back as

often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness?

Do I bring away so much from once that there is nothing to repay the

trouble of coming back?

"Is this a reason against it? Or because I forget that I have been

here already? Happy is it for me that I do forget. The recollection of

my former condition would permit me to make only a bad use of the

present. And that which even I must forget _now_, is that necessarily

forgotten for ever?"

Schlosser gives expression to similar thoughts in a fine work of his:

_Über die Seelenwanderung_.

Lichtemberg says in his _Seibstcharacteristik_:

"I cannot get rid of the thought that I died before I was born, and

that by this death I was led to this rebirth. I feel so many things

that, were I to write them down, the world would regard me as a

madman. Consequently, I prefer to hold my peace."

Charles Bonnet is the author of a splendid work, full of noble and

lofty thoughts, on this subject. It is entitled _Philosophic

Palingenesis_.

Emmanuel Kant believes that our souls start imperfect from the sun,

and travel through planetary stages farther and farther away to a

paradise in the coldest and remotest star in our system. (_General

History of Nature_.)

In _The Destiny of Man_, J. G. Fichte says:

"These two systems, the purely spiritual and the sensuous--which last

may consist of an immeasurable series of particular lives--exist in me

from the moment when my active reason is developed and pursue their

parallel course....

"All death in nature is birth.... There is no death-bringing principle

in nature, for nature is only life throughout.... Even because Nature

puts me to death, she must quicken me anew...."

Herder, in his _Dialogues on Metempsychosis_, deals with this subject

more fully:

"Do you not know great and rare men who cannot have been what they are

in a single human existence; who must have often existed before in

order to have attained that purity of feeling, that instinctive

impulse for all that is true, beautiful, and good?... Have you never

had remembrances of a former state?... Pythagoras, Iarchas,

Apollonius, and others remembered distinctly what and how many times

they had been in the world before. If we are blind or can see but two

steps before our noses, ought we, therefore, to deny that others may

see a hundred or a thousand degrees farther, even to the bottom of

time ...?"

"He who has not become ripe in one form of humanity is put into the

experience again, and, some time or other, must be perfected."

"I am not ashamed of my half-brothers the brutes; on the contrary, so

far as I am concerned, I am a great advocate of metempsychosis. I

believe for a certainty that they will ascend to a higher grade of

being, and am unable to understand how anyone can object to this

hypothesis, which seems to have the analogy of the whole creation in

its favour."

Sir Walter Scott had such vivid memories of his past lives that they

compelled a belief in pre-existence. Instances of this belief may be

found in _The Life of Scott_, by Lockhart (vol. 7, p. 114, first

edition).

According to Schlegel:

"Nature is nothing less than the ladder of resurrection, which, step

by step, leads upward, or rather is carried from the abyss of eternal

death up to the apex of life." (_Æsthetic and Miscellaneous Works_;

and, _The Philosophy of History_.)

Shelley held a firm belief in Reincarnation:

"It is not the less certain, notwithstanding the cunning attempts to

conceal the truth, that all knowledge is reminiscence. The doctrine is

far more ancient than the times of Plato," (Dowden's _Life of

Shelley_, vol. 1, p. 82.)

Schopenhauer adopted the idea of Reincarnation which he had found in

the _Upanishads_; regarding this portion of his teaching, his

contemporaries and followers set up a kind of conspiracy of silence.

In _Parerga and Paralipomena_, vol. 2, chap. 15, _Essay on Religions_,

he says:

"I have said that the combination of the _Old Testament_ with the

_New_ gives rise to absurdities. As an example, I may cite the

Christian doctrine of Predestination and Grace as formulated by

Augustine and adopted from him by Luther, according to which one man

is endowed with grace and another is not. Grace thus comes to be a

privilege received at birth and brought ready into the world.... What

is obnoxious and absurd in this doctrine may be traced to the idea

contained in the _Old Testament_, that man is the creation of an

external will which called him into existence out of nothing. It is

quite true that genuine moral excellence is really innate; but the

meaning of the Christian doctrine is expressed in another and more

rational way by the theory of Metempsychosis, common to Brâhmans and

Buddhists. According to this theory, the qualities which distinguish

one man from another are received at birth, _i.e._, are brought from

another world and a former life; these qualities are not an external

gift of grace, but are the fruits of the acts committed in that other

world....

"What is absurd and revolting in this dogma is, in the main, as I

said, the simple outcome of Jewish theism with its 'creation out of

nothing,' and the really foolish and paradoxical denial of the

doctrine of metempsychosis which is involved in that idea, a doctrine

which is natural to a certain extent, self-evident, and, with the

exception of the Jews, accepted by nearly the whole human race at all

times.... Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I

should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is

haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of

nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life."

In _The World as Will and Idea_, he also says:

"What sleep is for the individual, death is for the Will (character).

"It flings off memory and individuality, and this is Lethe; and

through this sleep of death it reappears refreshed and fitted out with

another intellect, as a new being."

In _Parerga and Paralipomena_, vol. 2, chap. 10, he adds:

"Did we clearly understand the real nature of our inmost being, we

should see how absurd it is to desire that individuality should exist

eternally. This wish implies that we confuse real Being with one of

its innumerable manifestations. The individuality disappears at death,

but we lose nothing thereby, for it is only the manifestation of quite

a different Being--a Being ignorant of time, and, consequently,

knowing neither life nor death. The loss of intellect is the Lethe,

but for which the Will would remember the various manifestations it

has caused. When we die, we throw off our individuality, like a

worn-out garment, and rejoice because we are about to receive a new

and a better one."

Edgar Allen Poe, speaking of the dim memories of bygone lives, says:

"We walk about, amid the destinies of our world-existence, encompassed

by divine but ever present Memories of a Destiny more vast--very

distant in the bygone time and infinitely awful.

"We live out a Youth peculiarly haunted by such dreams, yet never

mistaking them for dreams. As Memories we _know_ them. During our

_Youth_ the distinction is too clear to deceive us even for a moment.

"But now comes the period at which a conventional World-Reason awakens

us from the truth of our dream ... a mis-shapen day or a misfortune

that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another

life...." (_Eureka._)

Georges Sand, in _Consuelo_, sets forth the logic of Reincarnation;

and G. Flammarion expounds this doctrine in most of his works:

_Uranie_; _Les Mondes Imaginaires et les Mondes Réels_; _La Pluralité

des Mondes Habités_, etc.

Professor William Knight wrote in the _Fortnightly Review_ for

September, 1878:

"It seems surprising that in the discussions of contemporary philosophy

on the origin and destiny of the soul there has been no explicit revival

of the doctrines of Pre-existence and Metempsychosis.... They offer

quite a remarkable solution of the mystery of Creation, Translation, and

Extinction....

"Stripped of all extravagances and expressed in the modest terms of

probability, the theory has immense speculative interest and great

ethical value. It is much to have the puzzle of the origin of evil

thrown back for an indefinite number of cycles of lives and to have a

workable explanation of Nemesis...."

Professor W. A. Butler, in his _Lectures on the History of Ancient

Philosophy_, says:

"There is internally no greater improbability that the present may be

the result of a former state now almost wholly forgotten than that the

present should be followed by a future form of existence in which,

perhaps, or in some departments of which, the oblivion may be as

complete."

The Rev. William R. Alger, a Unitarian minister, adds:

"Our present lack of recollection of past lives is no disproof of

their actuality.... The most striking fact about the doctrine of the

repeated incarnations of the soul ... is the constant reappearance of

that faith in all parts of the world and its permanent hold on certain

great nations....

"The advocates of the resurrection should not confine their attention

to the repellent or ludicrous aspects of metempsychosis, ... but do

justice to its claim and charm." (_A Critical History of the Doctrine

of a Future Life_.)

Professor Francis Bowen, of Harvard University, writes in the

_Princetown Review_ for May, 1881, when dealing with the subject of

_Christian Metempsychosis_:

"Our life upon earth is rightly held to be a discipline and a

preparation for a higher and eternal life hereafter. But if limited to

the duration of a single mortal body, it is so brief as to seem hardly

sufficient for so great a purpose.... Why may not the probation of the

soul be continued or repeated through a long series of successive

generations, the same personality animating, one after another, an

indefinite number of tenements of flesh, and carrying forward into

each the training it has received, the character it has formed, the

temper and dispositions it has indulged, in the stage of existence

immediately preceding?...

"Every human being thus dwells successively in many bodies, even

during one short life.[232] If every birth were an act of absolute

creation, the introduction to life of an entirely new creature, we

might reasonably ask why different souls are so variously constituted

at the outset.... One child seems a perverse goblin, while another has

the early promise of a Cowley or a Pascal.... The birthplace of one is

in Central Africa, and of another in the heart of civilised and

Christian Europe. Where lingers eternal justice then? How can such

frightful inequalities be made to appear consistent with the infinite

wisdom and goodness of God?...

"If metempsychosis is included in the scheme of the divine government

of the world, this difficulty disappears altogether. Considered from

this point of view, everyone is born into the state which he has

fairly earned by his own previous history.... We submit with enforced

resignation to the stern decree; ... that the iniquities of the

fathers shall be visited upon the children even to the third and

fourth generation. But no one can complain of the dispositions and

endowments which he has inherited, so to speak, from himself, that is,

from his former self in a previous stage of existence.

"And it matters not, so far as the justice of the sentence is

concerned, whether the former self from whom we receive this heritage

bore the same name with our present self, or bore a different

name...."

Professor F. H. Hedge, in _Ways of the Spirit, and other Essays_, p.

359, maintains that:

"Whatever had a beginning in time, it should seem, must end in time.

The eternal destination which faith ascribes to the soul presupposes

an eternal origin.... An obvious objection, and one often urged

against this hypothesis, is the absence of any recollection of a

previous life.... The new organisation with its new entries must

necessarily efface the record of the old. For memory depends on

continuity of association. When the thread of that continuity is

broken, the knowledge of the past is gone....

"And a happy thing, if the soul pre-existed, it is for us that we

remember nothing of its former life.... Of all the theories respecting

the origin of the soul this seems to me the most plausible, and

therefore the one most likely to throw light on the question of a life

to come."

The Spiritualists of Europe--those belonging to the school of Allan

Kardec, at all events--place reincarnation in the very forefront of

their teaching. We may add that those of America do not acknowledge

that the soul has more than one existence on earth, driven, however,

by the logic of things, which insists on progress, they state that

there are a series of lives passed in subtler bodies on invisible

planets and worlds.

All true philosophers have been attracted by the mystery of

palingenesis, and have found that its acceptance has thrown a flood of

light on the questions that perplexed them.

In Asia there are 400 millions of believers in reincarnation,

including the Chinese, Tartars, Thibetans, Hindus, Siamese,

Mongolians, Burmese, Cambodians, Koreans, and the people of Japan.

Tradition has handed down this teaching even to the most savage

tribes. In Madagascar, when a man is on the point of death, a hole is

made in the roof of his straw hut, through which his soul may pass out

and enter the body of a woman in labour. This may be looked upon as a

stupid superstition, still it is one which, in spite of its degenerate

form, sets forth the doctrine of the return of souls back to evolution

through earthly experiences. The Sontals, Somalis, and Zulus, the

Dyaks of Borneo and Sumatra, and the Powhatans of Mexico have similar

traditions. In Central Africa, slaves who are hunchbacked or maimed

forestall the hour of death by voluntary self-immolation, in the hope

of being reborn in the bodies of men who will be free and perfectly

formed.

To sum up: all tradition, whether popular, philosophical, or

religious, is instinct with the teaching of Rebirth.

OBJECTION.

_Reincarnation and Forgetfulness of the Past._

Sceptics are ever bringing forward against reincarnation the absence

of all memory of past lives, convinced that there can be no answer to

this argument.

They do not reflect that human ignorance is a bottomless abyss, whilst

the possibilities of Life are endless. The schools of the future will

smile at the claims made by those of the present, just as the latter

doubtless regard with pitying indulgence that school which, only a few

years ago, in the person of one of its most famous members, Dr.

Bouillaud, mercilessly condemned the exponent of Edison's invention,

because the _savant_, listening to a phonograph for the first time,

could not believe that it was anything else than ventriloquism!

Instances of this kind are sufficiently numerous and recent not to be

forgotten, in spite of the shortness of human memory.

In the present instance, there are many men of science who have not

yet been made sufficiently wise by experience to see that the very

mystery of memory itself might furnish an explanation of that general

absence of all power of recollection, which now seems to them

altogether incompatible with the doctrine of Rebirth.

So as not to appear to be running away from this objection, by dealing

with it only on the surface, we will endeavour to develop the question

somewhat, for we shall have to set forth to readers unacquainted with

theosophical teachings--which alone, up to the present, have thrown

light on these difficult subjects--certain doctrines which will be

well understood by none but theosophists, since they are incapable of

proof by a simple statement thereof, but form part, of a long chain of

teachings. We will offer them simply as theories--though they are

facts to us--theories that contain many an error, it may be, and are

imperfectly stated, though capable of widening the horizon of thought

and shedding a brilliant light upon many an obscure question. Earnest

seekers after truth, it is hoped, will not be disheartened by the

difficulties of the subject, but will endeavour to grasp the meaning

of the following pages, by reading them over again, if need be.

First, a few words must be said on memory in general, next we will

give a rapid sketch of what constitutes memory in atoms and molecules,

in the varied forms of the many kingdoms of nature and in human forms;

finally, we will speak of cosmic Memory, that veritable _Judgment

Book_ which takes account of all the vibrations of the Universe.

Amongst beings capable of memory, a distinction must be made between

those which have not reached the stage of self-consciousness, and

those which have done so, for memory, properly so-called, takes for

granted an "I." That which has not an "I" can only have a memory of

which it is not conscious[233]; the atom, for instance, of whose

memory we shall speak later on; that which has only a rudimentary "I"

possesses only a rudimentary memory from the point of view of its

bearing on the individual--such is that possessed by the souls of the

lower kingdoms, that which constitutes instinct; to the perfect "I"

alone belongs an individual memory--the human memory, and that of

beings who have attained to the superhuman stage. This memory may be

defined as the faculty possessed by an individualised "centre of

consciousness" voluntarily to reproduce the vibrations it has received

or generated.

A "centre of consciousness" is a form that serves, for the time being,

as the instrument of an individualised ray of that indefinable

principle called the soul. But for the presence of this individual

soul in a form, this latter would remain inactive as a centre of

consciousness--although active in its constituent parts[234]--and

could it not then, consciously, either generate or receive vibrations

on the plane from which the soul is momentarily absent--it could only

transmit them; for instance, when a man is in a brown study, he is not

conscious in his brain, of what is taking place on the physical

plane.[235]

The vehicles of consciousness are often numerous in a being, and the

more numerous in proportion to the degree this latter has attained in

the scale of evolution. The present day man possesses four bodies: the

visible, the astral, the mental, and the causal. They are not all

equally developed, and therefore not equally conscious, for the

clearness and intensity of consciousness depend on the decree of

perfection of its vehicles, just as the beauty of electric light

depends on the perfection of the apparatus producing it.

The Ego--the man--is the consciousness that is called forth by the

soul in the causal body. This consciousness varies in power with the

development of the body that gives birth to it. At first it is dim and

uncertain,[236] and acquires some degree of intensity only when it

receives, through the mental and astral vehicles, the simple and

intense vibrations of the physical body.[237] In savage races, for

instance, man possesses a definite consciousness only in his waking

condition; as soon as the soul is attached to the astral body,

externalised by sleep, it experiences only a dim consciousness in this

undeveloped vehicle. In advanced races, the astral body, being far

more developed, brings about distinct consciousness during sleep. As

man evolves, consciousness begins to function in the mental and the

astral bodies, without the assistance of the vibrations of the lower

vehicles, and when all the grades[238] of matter which compose the

human constitution are thus vitalised, man has become perfect; he

knows the Universe because he feels it within himself--he echoes it,

so to speak, and possesses all its powers.[239]

In ordinary man, the memory of events that have taken place in his

waking state can be brought back by that special effort of will which

sets in motion the cerebral molecules that have previously been put

into vibration by these events.

Sometimes the will, of itself, is powerless to recall this vibration,

either because the brain is tired or in some unfavourable condition or

other; it is then aided by bringing its automatism into play, by

endeavouring, for instance, to call back one constituent element of

the fact desired, a place, sound, scent, person, &c, and often in this

way is brought about the vibration of the molecules that constituted

the rest of the circuit, and the fact sought for presents itself;

association of ideas is a phenomenon based on this mechanical process.

A third method--a far more difficult one--is also used; the bringing

of every mental effort, to a standstill. The suppression of thought,

when sufficiently complete, brings the brain into a state of calm,

allows of the soul concentrating on the astral body whose memory is

keen and only slightly subject to obstruction, and then it often

happens that the vibration of the astral memory repercusses on to the

physical apparatus which suddenly remembers the thing desired.

On the death of the physical, the soul acts in the astral body; there

it retains a complete memory of life on earth, but the vibrations of

the physical plane no longer reach it,[240] these memories soon cease

to occupy its attention, and it gives itself up wholly to the

impressions received from the new world into which it has entered. In

this first stage of the after-life, then, there is a kind of darkening

of the memory of the past earth life--darkening, not oblivion.

When the purgatorial life is at an end and the astral body

disintegrates in its turn, the soul functions in the mental body, in

the mental world.[241] On this new plane, the memory of the worlds

left behind continues, though far less clearly than the memory of the

physical existed in the astral world; this is owing to the fact that,

in ordinary man, the mental body is not sufficiently developed to

constitute a complete vehicle of consciousness, capable of registering

all the vibrations that come to it; everything in the past that has

been _purely_ the work of the astral or the physical plane then

disappears from his memory; there remain only memories that have been

caused either by the mental qualities or qualities superior to these,

all the highest elements concerned with affection, intelligence, or

art. The mental world, generally speaking, is seen only to a small

extent or not at all, because of the incomplete development of the

mental body. Besides, recollections assume a new character[242]; every

thought takes a concrete form--that of a friend, for instance, appears

as the friend himself, speaking and thinking, more vivid than on the

earth plane[243]; everything is dramatised in marvellous fashion, and

life is intense throughout the realms of paradise.

The mental body, after exhausting the forces that make it up, also

dies, and the soul is "centred" in the only vehicle it has left, the

causal body, a body that is immortal, one may say, up to a certain

point, since the soul retains it until the time comes when it can

function in a still higher and more lasting vehicle,[244] and this

happens only after millions of years.[245] Here, another diminution of

memory takes place, because the soul loses a large portion of its

consciousness when it comes into contact with none but the vibrations

of this body, which is even more incompletely developed than the

former ones, though holding within itself all the germs of these

latter. The Ego then remains apparently sunk in sleep for a varying

period, though never for very long; then the germs in the causal body

become active, build up a new series of bodies in succession--the

mental, the astral, and finally the physical--and the soul returns

once more to incarnation.

It will now be understood how it comes about that a soul of average

development--on entering a new cycle, with the memory of the last

cycle considerably obliterated by the loss of the physical, astral,

and mental bodies, sheathed in new bodies on these planes, bodies that

have nothing in common with the life of the past--is unable to impress

its dim memories on to the brain; but it will also be seen that, with

the progress of evolution, the soul acquires ever clearer

consciousness in the causal body, in which it finally preserves the

memory of the various life-cycles. Since, at this stage, it has become

capable of projecting its vibrations, voluntarily, through the lower

bodies, it is able to transmit this memory first to the mental body,

then to the astral, and lastly to the physical body; when this is

possible, man, in waking consciousness, remembers his former lives.

This transmission requires a purificatory process in the vehicles and

a special training of the will. The matter of all the bodies--that of

the brain in particular--must be refined, its constituent elements

must be subtler, and its atoms must be fully awakened to

activity[246]; whereupon the cerebral cell becomes capable of

responding to the thought of the Ego, _i.e._, of vibrating in harmony

with the higher matter.

The second condition of the brain's receptivity is that this organ be

brought into a state of complete rest. So long as the waking

consciousness is active, the brain vibrates powerfully, and if, at

this time, the soul sends the brain its thought, this latter can no

more make an impression on the existing cerebral activity than a faint

note could be heard amid the clash of an orchestra. Consequently, man,

by the training of his will, must have acquired the power to stop the

thinking activity in the waking state, and to "centre" his attention

on the causal body, the only vehicle in which he can know the facts of

his past incarnations; this done he is able, at will, to project on to

his brain the scenes of his former lives and to imprint them thereon

with greater distinctness, in proportion to his development and

training.

In order to avoid continued explanations, we will deal with another

side of the question, however incomprehensible it be to such as have

not studied theosophy.

A vehicle of consciousness is both a registering apparatus[247] and a

conductor of vibrations.[248] The kinds of matter of which forms are

made up are perfectly graduated; the finest atom of the physical body

is built up of the densest atoms of the astral plane, the finest atom

of the astral body is made of the densest atoms of the mental plane,

and so on. Each atom is linked to the one that precedes and to the one

that follows it in that immense chain which stretches from the densest

to the subtlest plane of the Cosmos. Every vibration follows this

path, passes in all directions--in the seven[249] dimensions of

space-and terminates in the very Centre of consciousness, the Logos,

God incarnate in the world.

It is then comprehensible, even logical, that God should be both

conscious, on his receptive side, of everything that takes place in

the world (_omniscient_), and should produce, on his active side, all

the forces of the world (_omnipotent_). It is likewise admissible that

the human soul, when fully developed, should find in the causal body

the memory of the facts that have echoed therein, from the time when

it could function consciously in it. But, it will be asked, how could

it find, in the causal body, memories of existences it has not been

able to register individually, of which it has not been conscious,

those, for instance, that form the early stages of its evolution at a

time when it was conscious only in the lower vehicles?

Memory possesses many store-houses. The vibrations of which it is

composed affect the whole Universe, there is not a single local shock

that is not felt throughout all the worlds. The eternal registering of

things takes place in the great centre of consciousness, God, or

rather, it exists in him, for to him there is neither future nor past,

only one eternal present; evolution is unceasingly accomplished[250];

but if we look upon ourselves as finite beings, living in the illusion

of time and space, we find that vibrating matter preserves for a

longer or a shorter period the movement imparted to it. The denser the

substance, which forms the medium in which vibration takes place, the

feebler the vibration; that is why it speedily ceases on the physical

plane; it continues long, however, in the higher conditions of matter,

and it is there we must look for it,[251] if we would recall certain

events at which we have not been present. When anything exciting, a

murder, a battle, for instance, has happened anywhere, the subtler

atoms of the surrounding objects receive a powerful shock and continue

to vibrate for centuries. Those who have developed their inner senses

can thus witness the scene which is continually repeating itself, or

rather, is happening all the time.[252] Thus, psychometrists,[253] in

presence of a portion of a fossil, are enabled to bring back scenes

that this fragment has witnessed millions of years ago.[254]

In these cases, the memory of the facts is connected with that of the

atoms which register it; this memory can only be recalled by coming

into contact with these atoms.[255]

There is also another memory, midway between the unconscious memory of

atoms and the conscious memory of the human soul; that of the forms of

the various sub-human kingdoms. It is only slightly conscious, for it

is not individualised; all the same, it is precise in its nature. It

dwells in the vital essence of the form, an essence taken from a

collective "block" which supplies a portion of its substance to the

individuals of the same species; this incarnate portion of essence,

when the form disintegrates at death, returns to the parent "block,"

to which it communicates the result of its experiences, and when the

latter sends out a portion of itself, into a new form, this tentacle,

which is, so to speak, the soul of the form, is in possession of the

whole of the experiences of the "block."[256] This explains how it is

that the individual members of certain hostile species know one

another from birth--the chicken, for instance, which, immediately it

has left the egg, trembles before the hawk hovering above in the air;

such is also the reason why a duckling plunges into water as soon as

it comes to a pond, and the same instinct impels a bird to leave its

nest and trust itself to the air when fully fledged.

In these collective souls, belonging to the mineral, vegetable, and

animal kingdoms, there can be recovered the past to which they bore

witness, when the atoms of their bodies have been dispersed and

entered into new combinations.

When the elemental Essence[257] has definitely split up, and the

"blocks" have become separate, individualised, human fragments,[258]

each of these fragments is a causal body, a definite, immortal

_centre_ in the total Centre. Consequently there are in man three

kinds of memory: atomic memory, that of the atoms of his bodies;

instinctive memory of the special elemental essences which are the

collective souls of his various vehicles; and finally, the individual

memory of the centre,[259] which is one with the total Centre from

which it comes.

This element of unity, this human "I" in the divine "I," when

sufficiently developed, is able to evoke the memory of all the events

in which it has participated in the causal body, and also the memory

of those it has witnessed as a collective soul (elemental "block") in

bygone ages when active in various mineral, vegetable, and animal

species. As a centre in the great Centre, it can also call forth the

memory of everything in the Universe that its consciousness can

grasp.[260] And when, in this long pilgrimage, it has developed to the

farthest limits of the Universe it knows all that has been, is now,

and is to be in this Universe, consequently it knows both what it has

and what it has not participated in, for everything in the Universe

has then become part of itself.

Thus it is seen that the memory of the past is everywhere registered,

and that the difficulty a man has in bringing it back is caused by

nothing more than his imperfect development. Once he has entered the

"Strait Gate,"[261] and his consciousness is awake on the first plane

of Unity,[262] he becomes able to read the Great Book of Nature, in

which all vibrations are kept in potentiality; he can revive them by

an effort of will, similar to that he makes in a waking state, when he

wishes to bring back past impressions to his brain. The difference

lies in the fact that, in the latter case, being in the physical body,

he calls up the memory retained in the astral body; whilst in the

former case, being in the causal body, he brings memory within the

influence of the buddhic body, or even at times of higher bodies

still. The more the Being grows, and becomes able to fix his

consciousness on the higher planes, the wider extends his sphere of

influence, approaching that of divine Consciousness.

It is ignorance that brings forward this objection regarding loss of

memory, ignorance of life and of death, ignorance of the phenomena

that follow the last breath of a dying man, as well as of those

preceding the first faint cry of a new-born child. Sceptics, however,

might have shown a little more indulgence, for, as they are well

aware, ordinary memory _is_ even now so unreliable that a man has

great difficulty in recalling the whole of the thoughts that have

entered his brain during the last few minutes; he has forgotten the

details of the various events of the week; the facts of the past year

have mostly vanished from his mind, and when he comes to the end of

the journey, mere fragments of the story of his life are all that is

left. For all that, he has all the time retained the notion of the

identity of his "I"; he has the same body, the same senses, and the

same brain; his environment is the same; everything is there to bring

about association of ideas, to awaken memory. On the other hand,

centuries have elapsed before Rebirth takes place; the human being has

undergone the most radical changes and modifications; everything in

him that was perishable has disappeared, and is preserved only in a

germinal state. The visible bodily sheath has had its atoms scattered

to the four elements; the etheric body[263] has become separated from

the physical molecules whose vital support it formed; the body of

passions and desires (_astral body_) has lived for a few years in what

Catholics call _Purgatory_, Greeks, _Hades_, and Hindus, _Kâmaloka_;

after which, only germs have been left behind; then the intelligence

(_mental body_) has been dispersed in turn and endures only in a

germinal state. Almost everything that made up the man of bygone times

has disappeared, and is now concentrated in a complex germ hidden away

in the causal body and destined to develop a new personality later

on,[264] heir to the former one, though it will not be capable of

remembering events in which it took no part.

This is the explanation of the myth of Lethe.

The soul, in the causal body, drinks of the river of Life, and from

its sleep-giving draught forms the sheaths of the new incarnation, the

new bodies that altogether blot out the memory of the past; it is, in

very truth, a new-born babe who appears on earth.

The Root-Being,[265] however, survives the successive wrecks of

fleeting personalities, remaining in the new man as a guide, as the

"Voice of Conscience." He is the Watcher who strings, as on a thread,

the numberless pearls (_personalities_) which form the inevitable

cycle of human evolution, and is able, when fully developed, to summon

up the distant panorama of past lives. For him, nothing is lost.

The pioneers of the race have obtained direct proof of successive

incarnations, but apart from these rare and special instances,

ordinary individuals frequently have reminiscences and distinct

memories which are not investigated, either because they are

fragmentary in their nature or are related by children. In India,

where the natives believe in Reincarnation, such cases are regarded

without astonishment, and efforts are made to prove their truth by

serious investigation, whenever possible. And such proof is often

possible. When a child dies in infancy, before he is able to use his

body intelligently and of his own free will--before being able to

generate karma--the higher sheaths (_the astral and mental bodies_)

are not separated into their component parts. Return to earth quickly

takes place, the memory of the past life exists in the astral

body--which has not changed--and, more especially during the first few

years of life, can be impressed on the new brain with tolerable ease,

if this latter is at all delicately constituted. Then if reincarnation

takes place in the same country and in the neighbourhood of the past

incarnation, it can be proved to be true. Such instances do exist; the

reason they are not mentioned here is that they would add nothing to

the general proofs on which stress has been laid in this work. These

proofs form part of universal Law; they cannot be separated therefrom.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 81: The fifth, or Aryan race, in theosophic nomenclature;

the fourth was that of Atlantis; the third lived on the great southern

continent, Lemuria; the two preceding ones were, so to speak, only the

embryologic preparation for the following races.]

[Footnote 82: The "life-atoms," infinitesimal particles which by

aggregation form the human body. Certain of these atoms are preserved,

on the death of the body, as germs which will facilitate the

reconstruction of the physical body at the next rebirth.]

[Footnote 83: The divine Essence which animates animals, and so, in

another sense the astral bodies of men and animals, bodies whose

particles _transmigrate_ as do the physical atoms.]

[Footnote 84: H. P. Blavatsky, _Secret Doctrine._]

[Footnote 85: These words are relative; they express differences in

the evolution of souls.]

[Footnote 86: The atmosphere of subtle physical elements radiating

round the human body and acting in a defensive _rôle_ by preventing

the penetration of unhealthy elements from the immediate

surroundings.]

[Footnote 87: The "material sin" of Manu.]

[Footnote 88: One, here means the "life atoms" of a man's body.]

[Footnote 89: The word is here used in a generic sense; in the present

work, it would be more precise to replace it by the word

Resurrection.]

[Footnote 90: This "triad" comprises the visible matter of the body,

the etheric substance, and the life (Prâna) which the human ether

absorbs and specialises for the vitalising of the body. See _Man and

his Bodies_, by A. Besant.]

[Footnote 91: H. P. Blavatsky, _The Theosophist_, Vol. 4, pages 287,

288.]

[Footnote 92: The finer elements invisible to physical eye. Their

function is sensation, and by their association with the human mental

body incarnated in them, they give birth to the emotions and passions,

in a word, to the animal in man.]

[Footnote 93: The _Umbra_ of the Latin races.]

[Footnote 94: The _Kâma Rûpa_ of the Hindus.]

[Footnote 95: The purgatory of Christians, the astral plane of

theosophists, and the _Kâmaloka_ of Hindus.]

[Footnote 96: By the _fire_ of purgatory, says the Catholic metaphor.]

[Footnote 97: See A. Besant's masterly work on _Reincarnation._]

[Footnote 98: Dharma is a wide word, primarily meaning the essential

nature of a thing; hence the laws of its being, its duty; and it

includes religious rites, appropriate to those laws. This definition,

as also the extracts quoted, are taken from A. Besant's translation of

the _Bhagavad Gîtâ._]

[Footnote 99: Human souls, not all of them, but only the pious ones,

are daimonic and divine. Once separated from the body, and after the

struggle to acquire piety, which consists in knowing God and injuring

none, such a soul becomes all intelligence. The impious soul, however,

remains in its own essence and punishes itself by seeking a human body

to enter into, for no other body can receive a human soul, it cannot

enter the body of an animal devoid of reason: divine law preserves the

human soul from such infamy. Hermes Trismegistus, Book I, _Laclé_:

Hermes to his son Tat.]

[Footnote 100: Bodies.]

[Footnote 101: The physical body with its etheric "double," and life

(_Prâna_).]

[Footnote 102: The kâmic body.]

[Footnote 103: The causal body.]

[Footnote 104: _History_. Book 2, chap. 123.]

[Footnote 105: The causal body.]

[Footnote 106: The buddhic body, which, in ordinary man, is only in an

embryonic stage.]

[Footnote 107: Generally called _Prâna_, in man. _Jiva_ is the solar

life which, on being transmuted by the physical body, becomes _Prâna_,

the human physical life. Both _Jiva_ and _Prâna_ differ from each

other in nature and in vibration.]

[Footnote 108: The mental body.]

[Footnote 109: The causal body. In annihilation--what has been called

the loss of the soul--the kâmic principle (astral body) in the course

of a rather long succession of lives, does not allow the mental body

to become separated from it in purgatory; it keeps it imprisoned up to

the time of its disintegration; the causal body reaps nothing from the

incarnations, at each re-birth it loses the forces it is putting forth

in order to form the new mental body. It gradually atrophies until the

time comes when it is no longer fit to make use of the ordinary bodies

of the race to which it belongs. Then it remains at rest, whilst the

mental body gradually disintegrates; afterwards it takes up once again

its series of incarnations in the imperfectly evolved bodies of

primitive races. This will be understood only by those who have

studied theosophy.]

[Footnote 110: In this passage, H. P. Blavatsky alludes to the few

etheric, astral, and mental atoms which, at each disincarnation, are

incorporated in the causal body and form the nuclei of the future

bodies corresponding to them.]

[Footnote 111: _History._ Vol. 2, book 2, chap. 123 (already quoted).]

[Footnote 112: Of the elements of the personality--of the astral body,

in all probability.]

[Footnote 113: The Ego (soul) also lives in the air (the symbol of

heaven) and on the earth (whose symbol is water, dense matter)--in

heaven, after disincarnation; on earth, during incarnation.]

[Footnote 114: The soul is immortal and needs no food.]

[Footnote 115: Its name, Khopiroo, comes from the root Koproo, to

become, to be born again (H. P. Blavatsky).

Hartley says: "At the centre of the solar disk appears the Scarabeus

as the symbol of the soul re-uniting itself with the body. The

Scarabeus is called by Pierret the synthesis of the Egyptian

religion--type of resurrection--of self-existence--of self-engendering

like the Gods. As Tori, or Chepi, the Sun is the Scarabeus, or

self-engenderer, and the mystery of God."]

[Footnote 116: Also called kâmic body, astral body, body of desire,

etc.]

[Footnote 117: Reincarnation.]

[Footnote 118: Vol. 3, p. 124.]

[Footnote 119: The causal body illumined by the divine Essence, which

theosophy names Âtmâ-Buddhi.]

[Footnote 120: He calls him "the prince of lying fathers and dishonest

writers." (_Egypt_, vol. 1, p. 200).]

[Footnote 121: Eusebius even confesses this himself: "I have set forth

whatever is calculated to enhance the glory of our religion, and kept

back everything likely to cast a stain upon it." (_Proeparatio

Evangelica._ Book 12, chap. 31).]

[Footnote 122: _Namae-Sat Vakhshûr-i-Mahabad_, also in the fourth

"Journey" in chap. 4 of _Jam-i-Kaikhoshru_ (see _The Theosophist_, p.

333, vol. 21).]

[Footnote 123: See _Bardic Triads_, by E. Williams. Translated from

the original Welsh.]

[Footnote 124: "'Abred' is the circle of the migrations through which

every animated being proceeds from death: man has passed through it."

_Triad_ 13.

"Transmigration is in 'Abred.'" _Triad_ 14.

"There are three primitive calamities in 'Abred': the necessity of

evolution (of rebirths), the absence of memory (of past incarnations)

and death (followed by rebirth)." _Triad_ 18 (the words in parentheses

are our own).

"By reason of three things man is subjected to 'Abred' (or

transmigration): by the absence of the effort to attain knowledge, by

non-attachment to good, and by attachment to evil. As the result of

these, he descends into 'Abred,' to the stage corresponding to his

development, and begins his transmigrations anew." _Triad_ 25.

"The three foundations of science are: complete transmigration through

every state of being, the memory of the details of each

transmigration, the power to pass again at will through any state, to

acquire experience and judgment, (_a_) This comes to pass in the

circle of Gwynvyd." _Triad_ 36.

(_a_) The liberated being has power to call up the past, to tune his

consciousness with that of every being, to feel everything that being

feels, to be that being.]

[Footnote 125: In the poem _Cad-Godden_, quoted by Pezzani in _La

Pluralité des Existences de l'Âme_, p. 93. Taliesin is a generic name

indicating a function rather than the name of an individual.]

[Footnote 126: _Gallic War_ (Book 2, chap. 6). Valerius Maximus

relates that these nations lent one another money which was to be paid

back in the other world, and that at Marseilles a sweet-tasted poison

was given to anyone who, wishing to commit suicide, offered the judges

satisfactory reasons for leaving his body.]

[Footnote 127: _The Mystery of the Ages_, by the Duchesse de Pomar.]

[Footnote 128: In _Theologia_ or the _Seven Adyta._]

[Footnote 129: The "Cycle of Necessity" extends from the time when the

soul begins to evolve to the moment when it attains to liberation.]

[Footnote 130: _Life of Pythagoras._ Book 8, chap. 14.]

[Footnote 131: Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. Book 15.]

[Footnote 132: All that remained of the shield was the carved ivory

ornamentation, the iron had been eaten away by rust.]

[Footnote 133: Philostratus, _Life of Apollonius of Tyana._]

[Footnote 134: Philostratus, _Life of Apollonius of Tyana._]

[Footnote 135: Marinas, _Vita Procli._]

[Footnote 136: The Ego, the human soul properly so-called, what Egypt

named the liberated intelligence which resumes its sheath of light,

and again becomes a "daimon" (_Maspero_). In antiquity the name of

daimon was given to the human soul or to higher intelligences.]

[Footnote 137: _Hades_; the Purgatory of Catholics; the _Kâmalôka_ of

Hindus.]

[Footnote 138: Allusion to the struggle which separates the mental

from the astral body in Purgatory.]

[Footnote 139: _Kâmalôka_; Purgatory.]

[Footnote 140: The subterranean hell, the lowest world in Purgatory.]

[Footnote 141: Plato's _Laws_, Book 10.]

[Footnote 142: Plato's _Republic_, Book 10.]

[Footnote 143: They are in the causal body.]

[Footnote 144: _Phædo._]

[Footnote 145: These considerations are taken from the writings of H.

P. Blavatsky, and are also confirmed by modern criticism of biblical

texts.]

[Footnote 146: Maimonides. Quoted in _The Perfect Way_, by A.

Kingsford and E. Maitland.]

[Footnote 147: _Galatians_, chap. 4, verses 24, 25.]

[Footnote 148: _Starli_, part 4, p. 5.]

[Footnote 149: _Deuteronomy_, chap. 24, verses 1 to 4.]

[Footnote 150: _Deuteronomy_, chap. 17, verse 17.]

[Footnote 151: _Exodus_, chap. 21, verses 2 to 11.]

[Footnote 152: _Exodus_, chap. 21, verses 23, 24, 25.]

[Footnote 153: _Genesis_, chap. 9, verses 5, 6; also _Leviticus_,

chap. 7.]

[Footnote 154: _Exodus_, chapters 6, 12, 14, 22, 32,]

[Footnote 155: _Ecclesiastes_, chap. 3, verses 18, 19, 20, 22.]

[Footnote 156: The souls of a race in its maturity are of a more

advanced type than those of its infancy or old age.]

[Footnote 157: The Kabala is the secret teaching of the Jews; in it

lie hidden doctrines that are too profound to be taught in public.]

[Footnote 158: _Zohar_, 2, 99, quoted in Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 198.]

[Footnote 159: Evolution develops the soul, enabling it to reach its

goal: the divine state.]

[Footnote 160: The force of evolution comes from God and ceases only

when the soul is fully developed, and has reached the "promised land"

at the end of its pilgrimage: the divine state.]

[Footnote 161: Franck, _La Kabbale_, p. 244, etc.]

[Footnote 162: _The Hidden Wisdom of Christ_, 1864, vol. 1, p. 39.]

[Footnote 163: _De Bell. jud._ 2, 11.]

[Footnote 164: One of the lowest sub-planes of _Kâmaloka_

(Purgatory).]

[Footnote 165: The Christian Heaven (_Devachan_ of theosophy).]

[Footnote 166: The earth, which is above when compared with Tartarus,

but not so in relation to the Elysian Fields; versification imposes

such strict limits on expression, that it must have the benefit of

poetic licence.]

[Footnote 167: Fréret, _Examen crit. des apologistes de la relig.

chrét._, pages 12 and 13, Paris, 1823.]

[Footnote 168: Faustus.]

[Footnote 169: And yet the _Gospel of Saint John_ denies this (chap.

1, v. 21). The contradictions in the gospels are so numerous that they

alone have created thousands of infidels.]

[Footnote 170: Stolberg expresses himself as follows on this matter:

"This question was evidently based on the opinion that the disciples

of Jesus had formed, that this man, whose punishment dated from his

very birth, had sinned in a previous life." (_Histoire de N. S.

Jésus-Christ et de son siècle_, Book 3, chap. 43).]

[Footnote 171: _Revelation_, chap. 3, v. 12.]

[Footnote 172: _Revelation_, chap. 2, v. 28.]

[Footnote 173: _Revelation_, chap. 22, v. 16.]

[Footnote 174: _Revelation_, chap. 2, v. 17.]

[Footnote 175: H. P. Blavatsky.]

[Footnote 176: "Taken literally, the Book of the Creation gives us the

most absurd and extravagant ideas of Divinity."]

[Footnote 177: First _Ennead_, chap. I.]

[Footnote 178: The Universe, which can exist only through

_multiplicity._]

[Footnote 179: Second _Ennead_, chap. 3.]

[Footnote 180: Second _Ennead_, chap. 8.]

[Footnote 181: Third _Ennead_, chap. 4.]

[Footnote 182: _Concerning Abstinence_; Book 2.]

[Footnote 183: _Egyptian Mysteries_, Book 4, chap. 4.]

[Footnote 184: Here, _reincarnation_ is meant.]

[Footnote 185: This philosopher was surnamed _Peisithanatos_ (the

death-persuader).]

[Footnote 186: _Vie de Pythagore_, vol. I, p. 28.]

[Footnote 187: _Hist. de l'Ec. a'Alex._, vol. I, p 588.]

[Footnote 188: In this work, he says:

"The winged tribe, that has feathers instead of hair, is formed of

innocent but superficial human beings, pompous and frivolous in

speech, who, in their simplicity, imagine that the sense of vision is

the best judge of the existence of things. Those who take no interest

whatever in philosophy become four-footed animals and wild

beasts...."]

[Footnote 189: _Commentaries on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras._]

[Footnote 190: Hermes, _Commentaries of Chalcidius on the Timæus._]

[Footnote 191: _Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timæum Commentaria._]

[Footnote 192: September, 1898, p. 3.]

[Footnote 193: The life of the animal to which it is bound.]

[Footnote 194: The instrument must be suited to the development of the

artist; too highly developed a body would be bad for a man very low

down in the scale of humanity. This will, in some measure, explain the

paradoxical word here used; the _advantage_ there may sometimes be in

putting on a rudimentary body.]

[Footnote 195: G. R. S. Mead tells us that Justin believed in

Reincarnation only whilst he was a Platonist; he opposed this teaching

after his conversion to Christianity (See _Theosophical Review_,

April, 1906).]

[Footnote 196: Does this obscure passage refer to the resurrection of

the body?]

[Footnote 197: _Adversus Gentes_. "We die many times, and as often do

we rise again from the dead."]

[Footnote 198: Hyeronim., _Epistola ad Demetr...._]

[Footnote 199: Book 2, quest. 6, No. 17.]

[Footnote 200: _Ephesians_, ch. 1, v. 4 ... he hath chosen us in him

before the foundation of the world.]

[Footnote 201: _Instit. divin._, 3, 18.]

[Footnote 202: _Confessions_, I, ch. 6.]

[Footnote 203: _On the Immortality of the Soul_, chap. 12.]

[Footnote 204: _Hist. de Manichée et du Manichéisme_, vol. 2, p. 492.]

[Footnote 205: _Stromata._, vol. 3, p. 433. Edition des Bénédictins.]

[Footnote 206: The words in parenthesis are by the author.]

[Footnote 207: _Cont. Cels._ Book 4, chap. 17.]

[Footnote 208: [Greek: ti akolouthei].]

[Footnote 209: _De Principiis_, Book 3, chap. 5.]

[Footnote 210: _Contra Celsum_, Book 1.]

[Footnote 211: _Contra Celsum_, Book 1, chap. 6.]

[Footnote 212: _De Principiis_, Book 3, chap. 5.]

[Footnote 213: _De Principiis_, Book 4, chap. 5.]

[Footnote 214: _Contra Celsum_, Book 7, chap. 32.]

[Footnote 215: E. Aroux. _Les Mystères de la Chevalerie._]

[Footnote 216: Quoted by I. Cooper Oakley in _Traces of a Hidden

Tradition in Masonry and Mediæval Mysticism_, a very interesting work

on the sects which connect the early centuries with modern times.]

[Footnote 217: See _L'Islamisme et son Enseignement Ésotérique_, by

Ed. Bailly. _Publications théosophiques_, Paris, 1903.]

[Footnote 218: Chapter 18.]

[Footnote 219: Islam is now awaiting the coming of the Mahdi, its last

prophet; prophecy says that he will be the reincarnation of Mohammed

(_Borderland_, April, 1907).]

[Footnote 220: This is the reason Afghans still undertake pilgrimages

to Mecca.]

[Footnote 221: Chap. 22, verses 5, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 41. Quoted

by Lady Caithness in _Old Truths in a New Light._]

[Footnote 222: Chap. 23, verses 17, 26, 27, etc.]

[Footnote 223: By religion is here understood the devotional aspect

and the scientific side of the teaching of Truth, _i.e._, the science

of the divine Soul.]

[Footnote 224: _Nirmânakâyas_ are beings who have become perfect, and

who, instead of entering the Nirvâna their efforts have won, renounce

peace and bliss in order to help forward their human brothers in their

evolution.]

[Footnote 225:

O! genus attonitum gelidæ formidine mortis,

Quid Styga, quid tenebras, quid nomina vana timetis,

Materiam vatum, falsique piacula mundi?

Corpora sive rogus flammâ, seu tabe vetustas

Abstulerit, mala posse pati non ulla putetis

Morte carent animæ: semperque priore relictâ

Sede, novis domibus habitant vivuntque receptæ

. . . . . . . . .

Omnia mutantur, nihil interit ...

]

[Footnote 226: _S. John's Gospel_, chap. 9, verse 2.]

[Footnote 227: The following passages are taken from three of C.

Savy's works: _Comment. du Sermon sur la Montagne_ (1818); _Pensées et

Méditations_ (1829); _Dieu et l'Homme en cette Vie et Audelà_ (1838).]

[Footnote 228: _De l'Humanité_, vol. 1., p. 233.]

[Footnote 229: _Théorie de l'Unité Universelle_, vol. 2, p. 304-348.]

[Footnote 230: _Vie Future au Point de Vue Socialiste_, and

_Confession d'un Curé de Village._]

[Footnote 231: _Destinées de l'Âme._]

[Footnote 232: Alluding to the complete renewing of the material

molecules of the body, every seven years.]

[Footnote 233: Whose consciousness, however (along with memory), is at

the summit of the hierarchy which is its origin.]

[Footnote 234: Molecules and atoms have a particular consciousness of

their own which does not cease to function when, on the departure of

the individual soul, the body, as such, ceases to function.]

[Footnote 235: If sufficiently developed, however, he can be made

conscious of this in a higher vehicle.]

[Footnote 236: When man has barely entered the human stage--in

primitive man.]

[Footnote 237: Consciousness begins in the physical body, its simplest

instrument.]

[Footnote 238: There are other vehicles above the causal body.]

[Footnote 239: All the powers of the Universe are in the divine germ,

as the tree is in its seed.]

[Footnote 240: Because it no longer has a dense physical body. There

are exceptions to this rule, but there is no necessity to mention them

here.]

[Footnote 241: The Christian Heaven, the _Devachan_ of Theosophy.]

[Footnote 242: This character has already appeared on the astral

plane, though not in so striking a fashion.]

[Footnote 243: Unity exists on the plane of the Ego, and the latter

sends his thought into the forms made out of his vehicles; this will

be understood only by the few, but an explanation cannot be given at

this point, without writing a volume on the whole of theosophy.]

[Footnote 244: We are still dealing with the ordinary man.]

[Footnote 245: When liberation is attained. This can be effected

rapidly by those who _will_ to attain it.]

[Footnote 246: Only four of the seven atomic _spirillæ_ are active in

this our fourth planetary Round (one for each Round). They can be

rapidly vitalised by the will.]

[Footnote 247: When the soul is "centred" in it.]

[Footnote 248: The vibrations, whether registered as they pass or not

registered, continue their course through the substance of the

Universe.]

[Footnote 249: Science even now recognises four of these dimensions.]

[Footnote 250: This is said in order to satisfy such as are of a

metaphysical turn of mind, and frequently prone to criticism.]

[Footnote 251: When the inner senses are developed.]

[Footnote 252: A question will doubtless at once rise to the minds of

many readers; how can the same atoms produce, at once and almost

eternally, millions of different facts? We will reply briefly. Science

has been able to conceive of an explanation of a fact apparently quite

as absurd--the phenomenon of the balls of Russian platinum mentioned

by Zöllner (_Transcendental Physics_, ch. 9) which pass through

hermetically sealed glass tubes, and that of the German copper coins

dropping through the bottom of a sealed box on to a slate--by

accepting a fourth dimension of space. Who would affirm that the

dimensions of space are limited to four? Or that the science of the

immediate future will not be brought face to face with facts, and

find, in a fifth or sixth dimension of space, a possible explanation

of the phenomenon here mentioned, one which initiated seers can test

whenever they please, because it is a real fact?

Still, as these seers say, the coarsest atoms generally register only

one image, others register fresh images, so that in many cases there

is quite a superposition of images which must be carefully examined to

avoid errors.]

[Footnote 253: A psychometrist is a person endowed with a very fine

nervous system, capable of repeating the delicate vibrations which act

upon the inmost atoms of a body. In this way, by placing himself in

presence of an object that has been in contact with some individual,

he can clearly describe the latter's physical, moral, and mental

characteristics. Hitherto, Buchanan and Professor Denton have been the

most remarkable psychometrists; the experiments related in their works

have been made before witnesses and permit of no doubt whatever as to

the reality of this strange faculty.]

[Footnote 254: Instances of this are numerous in Professor Denton's

_The Soul of Things._]

[Footnote 255: This memory is preserved in the first "life-wave."]

[Footnote 256: This is _instinct_, _i.e._, a semi-conscious memory,

located in the "life-wave" of the second Logos.]

[Footnote 257: The divine Essence incarnated in the matter of the

lower planes of the Universe.]

[Footnote 258: When the "essence," after the destruction of the form

to which it gives life, no more returns to the parent-block from which

it came, it has become individualised, ready to enter into the _human

kingdom._]

[Footnote 259: The memory of the third life-wave, of the first Logos.]

[Footnote 260: Everything, for instance, that concerns the planes of

the planetary system, on which it has finished its evolution.]

[Footnote 261: The passing of consciousness from the causal body to

the nascent buddhic body.]

[Footnote 262: The buddhic plane (the one immediately above the

mental) is one in which the forms are so subtle that they no longer

_limit_ the Life (_the Soul of the World_) animating them. This Life

comes directly into contact with the Life which causes all forms to

live; it then sees Unity: it sees itself everywhere and in everything,

the joys and sorrows of forms other than its own are its joys and

sorrows, for it is universal Life.]

[Footnote 263: This body is composed of physical matter, and therefore

belongs to the physical plane. It has been given a special name, not

only because it is made of ether, but because it can be separated from

the physical body.]

[Footnote 264: The whole of the bodies: mental, astral, and physical.]

[Footnote 265: The Ego (soul) in the causal body.]

CONCLUSION.

We have now come to the end of our study: a task to which we have

certainly not been equal, so far is it beyond our powers. As, however,

we have drawn inspiration from our predecessors, so have we also, in

our turn, endeavoured to shed a few more rays of light on certain

points of this important subject, and indicate fresh paths that may be

followed by such as enter upon this line of investigation in the

future.

It is our most ardent desire to see this fertile soil well tilled, for

it will yield an abundant harvest. Mankind is dying in strife and

despair; the torrent of human activity is everywhere seething and

foaming. Here ignorance buries its victims in a noisome den of slime

and filth; there, the strong and ruthless, veritable vampires, batten

on the labour and drain away the very life of the weak and helpless;

farther away, science stumbles against the wall of the Unknown;

philosophy takes up its stand on the cold barren glacier of

intellectualism; religions are stifled and struggle for existence

beneath the age-long accumulations of the "letter that killeth." More

now than ever before do we need to find a reason for morality, a guide

for science, an Ariadne's thread for philosophy, a torch to throw

light on religion, and Love over all, for if mankind continues to

devote the whole of its strength to the pursuit of material benefits,

if its most glorious conquests become instruments to advance

selfishness, if its progress merely increases physical wretchedness

and makes moral decadence more terrible than before, if the head

continues to silence the appeals of the heart, then divine Compassion

will have no alternative but to destroy beneath the waters of another

flood this cruel, implacable civilisation, which has transformed earth

into an inferno.

Amongst the most pressing and urgent truths, the most fruitful

teachings, the most illuminating doctrines, the most comforting

promises, we have no hesitation in placing the Law of Rebirths in the

very front. It is supported by ethics, by reason, and by science; it

offers an explanation of the enigma of life, it alone solves almost

all the problems that have harassed the mind of man throughout the

ages; and so we hope that, in spite of its many imperfections, this

work of ours will induce many a reader to say: _Reincarnation must be

true, if could not be otherwise!_

THE END

* * * * *