part depopulated the old world, a quite abnormal fruit-

fulness appeared among the human race, and twin- births were very frequent. The circumstance was also remarkable that none of the children born at this time obtained their full number of teeth ; thus nature, exerting itself to the utmost, was niggardly in details. This is related by F. Schnurrer, ' Chronik der Seu- chen,' 1825. Casper also, l Ueber die Wahrschein- liche Lebensdauer des Mensehen,' 1835, confirms the principle that the number of births in a given popula- tion has the most decided influence upon the length of life and mortality in it, as this always keeps pace with the mortality : so that always and everywhere the deaths and the births increase and decrease in like pro- portion ; which he places beyond doubt by an accumu- lation of evidence collected from many lands and their various provinces. And yet it is impossible that there can be a physical causal connection between my early death and the fruitfulness of a marriage with which I have nothing to do, or conversely. Thus here the
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metaphysical appears undeniable and in a stupendous manner as the immediate ground of explanation of the physical. Every new-born being comes fresh and blithe into the new existence, and enjoys it as a free gift : but there is, and can be, nothing freely given. Its fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of a worn-out existence which has perished, but which contained the indestructible seed out of which the new existence has arisen : they are one being. To show the bridge between the two would certainly be the so- lution of a great riddle.
" The great truth which is expressed here has never been entirely unacknowledged, although it could not be reduced to the exact and correct meaning, which is only possible through the doctrine of the primary and metaphysical nature of the will, and the secondary, merely organic nature of the intellect. We find the doctrine of metempsychosis, springing from the earliest and noblest ages of the human race, always spread abroad in the earth as the belief of the great majority of mankind ; nay, really as the teaching of all religions, with the exception of that of the Jews and the two which have proceeded from it : in the most subtle form however, and coming nearest to the truth in Bud- dhism. Accordingly, while Christians console them- selves with the thought of meeting again in another world, in which one regains one's complete personality and knows one's self at once, in those other religions the meeting again is going on now, only incognito. In the succession of births, and by virtue of metempsy- chosis or palingenesis, the persons who now stand in close connection or contact with us will also be born again with us at the next birth, and will have the same or analogous relations and sentiments towards us as
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now, whether these are of a friendly or a hostile de- scription. Recognition is certainly here limited to an obscure intimation, — a reminiscence, which cannot be brought to distinct consciousness, and refers to an in- finitely distant time ; with the exception, however, of Buddha himself, who has the prerogative of distinctly knowing his own earlier births and those of others, — as this is described in the ' J&taka.' But in fact, if at a favorable moment one contemplates, in a purely ob- jective manner, the action of men in reality, the intui- tive conviction is forced upon one that it not only is and remains constantly the same, according to the [Platonic] Idea, but also that the present generation, in its true inner nature, is precisely and substantially identical with every generation that has been before it. The question simply is, in what this true being consists. The answer which my doctrine gives to this question is well known. The intuitive conviction re- ferred to may be conceived as arising from the fact that the multiplying-glasses, time and space, lose for a moment their effect. With reference to the univer- sality of the belief in metempsychosis, Obry says rightly in his excellent book ' Du Nirvana Indien,' p. 13, ' Cette vielle croyance a fait le tour du monde, et tellement rdpandue dans la haute antiquite* qu'un docte Anglican Favait jugee sans pere, sans mere, et sans genealogie.' Taught already in the ' Vedas ' as in all the sacred books of India, metempsychosis is well known to be the kernel of Brahmanism and Bud- dhism. It accordingly prevails at the present day in the whole of non-Mohammedan Asia, thus among more than half the whole human race, as the firmest convic- tion, and with an incredibly strong practical influence. It was also the belief of the Egyptians, from whom it
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was received with enthusiasm by Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato. The Pythagoreans, however, specially re- tained it. That it was also taught in the mysteries of the Greeks undeniably follows from the ninth book of Plato's Laws. The ' Edda ' also, especially in the 'Voluspa,' teaches metempsychosis. Not less was it the foundation of the religion of the Druids. Even a Mohammedan sect in Hindustan, the Bohrahs, of which Colebrooke gives a full account in the ' Asiatic Kesearches,' believes in metempsychosis, and accord- ingly refrains from all animal food. Also among American Indians and negro tribes, nay, even among the natives of Australia, traces of this belief are found. . . . According to all this the belief in metempsy- chosis presents itself as the natural conviction of man whenever he reflects at all in an unprejudiced manner. It would really seem to be that which Kant falsely asserts of his three pretended ideas of the reason, a philosopheme natural to human reason, which proceeds from its forms ; and when it is not found it must have been displaced by positive religious doctrines com- ing from a different source. I have also remarked that it is at once obvious to every one who hears of it for the first time. Let any one only observe how earnestly Lessing defends it in the last seven paragraphs of his 'Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts.' 1 Lichtenberg also says in his ' Selbstcharacteristik ' : ' I cannot get rid of the thought that I died before I was born.' Even the excessively empirical Hume says in his skep- tical essay on immortality, 'The metempsychosis is therefore the only system of this kind that philos- ophy can hearken to.' What resists this belief is Judaism, together with the two religions which have 1 Translated in section 2 of this chapter.
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sprung from it, because they teach the creation of man out of nothing, and they have the hard task of linking on to this belief an endless existence a parte post. They certainly have succeeded, with fire and sword, in driving out of Europe and part of Asia that consoling primitive belief of mankind ; it is still doubt- ful for how long. Yet how difficult this was is shown by the oldest church histories. Most of the heretics were attached to this belief ; for example, Simonists, Basilidians, Valentinians, Marcionists, Gnostics, and Manicheans. The Jews themselves have in part fallen into it, as Tertullian and Justinus inform us. In the Talmud it is related that Abel's soul passed into the body of Seth, and then into that of Moses. Even the passage of the Bible, Matt, xvi, 13-15, only obtains a rational meaning if we understand it as spoken under the assumption of the dogma of metempsychosis. . . . In Christianity, however, the doctrine of original sin, i. e., the doctrine of punishment for the sins of an- other individual, has taken the place of the transmi- gration of souls, and the expiation in this way of all the sins committed in an earlier life. Both identify the existing man with one who has existed before : the transmigration of souls does so directly, original sin indirectly."
2. In the remarkable little treatise on " The Divine Education of the Human Race," by Lessing, the Ger- man philosopher, a book so sublimely simple in its profound insight that it has had enormous influence and was translated into English as a labor of love by the Rev. Frederick W. Robertson, the author outlines the gradual instruction of mankind and shows how the enlightenment is still progressing through many im- portant lessons. His thought mounts to a climax in
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suggesting the stupendous programme by which God is developing the individual just as he has been edu- cating the race : —
" The very same way by which the race reaches its perfection must every individual man — one sooner, another later — have traveled over. Have traveled over in one and the same life ? Can he have been in one and the selfsame life a sensual Jew and a spirit- ual Christian ? Can he in the selfsame life have over- taken both ?
" Surely not that : but why should not every indi- vidual man have existed more than once upon this world ?
u Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest ? Because the human understanding, be- fore the sophistries of the schools had dissipated 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 ca- pable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness ? Do I bring away so much from once that there is noth- ing 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 con- dition would permit me to make only a bad use of the present. And that which even I must forget now, is that necessarily forgotten forever ?
44 Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have been lost to me ? Lost ? And
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how much then should I miss ? Is not a whole eter- nity mine ? "
3. " The Destiny of Man," by J. G. Fichte, whose great thoughts still heave the heart of Germany and grandly mould the world, contains these paragraphs :
"These two systems, the purely spiritual and the sensuous, — which last may consist of an immeasur- able series of particular lives, — exist in me from the moment when my active reason is developed, and pursue their parallel course. The former alone gives to the latter meaning and purpose and value. I am immortal, imperishable, eternal, so soon as I form the resolution to obey the law of reason. After an exist- ence of myriad lives the super-sensuous world can- not be more present than at this moment. Other con- ditions of my sensuous existence are to come, but these are no more the true life than the present con- dition is.
" Man is not a product of the world of sense ; and the end of his existence can never be attained in that world. His destination lies beyond time and space and all that pertains to sense.
" Mine eye discerns this eternal life and motion in all the veins of sensible and spiritual nature, through what seems to others a dead mass. And it sees this life forever ascend and grow and transfigure itself into a more spiritual expression of its own nature. The sun rises and sets, the stars vanish and return again, and all the spheres hold their cycle dance. But they never return precisely such as they disappeared ; and in the shining fountains of life there is also life and progress.
" All death in nature is birth ; and precisely in dying, the sublimation of life appears most conspicu-
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ous. There is no death-bringing principle in nature, for nature is only life, throughout. Not death kills, but the more living life, which is hidden behind the old, begins and unfolds itself. Death and birth are only the struggles of life with itself to manifest itself in ever more transfigured form, more like itself.
" Even because Nature puts me to death she must quicken me anew. It can only be my higher life, un- folding itself in her, before which my present life dis- appears; and that which mortals call death is the visible appearing of another vivification."
4. Among the wealth of German geniuses, there is none more lofty and broad than Herder, whom Jean Paul admiringly pronounced, " a Poem made by some purest Deity, — combining the boldest freedom of philosophy concerning nature and God with a most pious faith." One of the most suggestive of this master's works is a series of " Dialogues on Metemp- sychosis," in which two friends discuss the theme to- gether. As the outcome of their colloquy is a stanch vindication of that hypothesis, it is not unfair to group together a few of the paragraphs on one side of the conversation : —
" Do you not know great and rare men who cannot have become what they are at once, in a single hu- man 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, in short, that elevation and natural supremacy over all around them ?
" Do not these great characters appear, for the most part, all at once ? Like a cloud of celestial spirits, descended from on high ; like men risen from the dead born again, who brought back the old time ?
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" Have you never had remembrances of a former state, which you could find no place for in this life ? In that beautiful period when the soul is yet a half- closed bud, have you not seen persons, been in places, of which you were ready to swear that you had seen those persons, or had been in those places before? And yet it could not have been in this life ? The most blessed moments, the grandest thoughts, are from that source. In our more ordinary seasons, we look back with astonishment on ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves. And such are we; we who, from a hundred causes, have sunk so deep and are so wedded to matter, that but few reminiscences of so pure a character remain to us. The nobler class of men who, separated from wine and meat, lived in per- fect simplicity according to the order of nature, carried it further, no doubt, than others, as we learn from the example of Pythagoras, of Iarchas, of Apollonius, and others, who remembered distinctly what and how many times they had been in the world before. If we are blind, or can see but two steps beyond our noses, ought we therefore to deny that others may see a hundred or a thousand degrees farther, even to the bottom of time, into the deep, cool well of the fore- world, and there discern everything plain and bright and clear ? "
To this last strain the listener responds : "I will freely confess to you that those sweet dreams of mem- ory are known to me also, among the experiences of my childhood and youth. I have been in places and circumstances of which I could have sworn that I had been in them before. I have seen persons with whom I seemed to have lived before ; with whom I was, as it were, on the footing of an old acquaintance." He
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then attempts to explain them as returned dreams, which his interlocutor answers with more wonderful impressions necessarily requiring a former life.
" Have you never observed that children will some- times, on a sudden, give utterance to ideas which make us wonder how they got possession of them ; which presuppose a long series of other ideas and se- cret self-communings ; which break forth like a full stream out of the earth, an infallible sign that the stream was not produced in a moment from a few raindrops, but had long been flowing concealed be- neath the ground, and, it may be, had broken through many a rock, and contracted many defilements ?
"You know the law of economy which rules throughout nature. Is it not probable that the Deity is guided by it in the propagation and progress of hu- man souls ? 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, as far as they are 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 any one can object to this hypothesis, which seems to have the anal- ogy of the whole creation in its favor.
" All the life of nature, all the tribes and species of animated creation, — what are they but sparks of the Godhead, a harvest of incarnate stars, among which the two human sexes stand forth like sun and moon? We overshine, we dim the other figures, but, doubt- less, we lead them onward in a chorus invisible to our- selves. Oh, that an eye were given us to trace the shining course of this divine spark ; to see how life
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flows to life, and ever refining, impelled through all the veins of creation, wells up into a purer, higher life.
" And yet Pythagoras, too, spoke of a Tartarus and an Elysium. When you stand before the statue of a high-hearted Apollo, do you not feel what you lack of being that form ? Can you ever attain to it here below, though you should return ten times ? And yet that was only the idea of an artist — a dream which our narrow breast also inclosed. Has the almighty Father no nobler forms for us than those in which our heart now heaves and groans ? The soul lies cap- tive in its dungeon, bound as with a sevenfold chain, and only through a strong grating, and only through a pair of light and air-holes, can it breathe and see, and always it sees the world on one side only, while there are a million other sides before us and in us, had we but more and other senses, and could we but exchange this narrow hut of our body for a freer prospect. That restless discontent shall some time finally release us from our repeated sojourns on earth, through which the Father is training us for a complete divorce from sense-life. When even at the sweetest fountains of friendship and love, we so often pine, thirsty and sick, seeking union and finding it not, what noble soul does not lift itself up and despise tabernacles and wanderings in the circle of earthly deserts.
" Purification of the heart, the ennobling of the soul, with all its propensities and cravings, this, it seems to me, is the true palingenesis of this life, after which, I doubt not, a happy, more exalted, but yet un- known metempsychosis awaits us."
5. Dr. Henry More, the learned and lovable Plato- nist of the seventeenth century, wrote a charming trea- tise on the "Immortality of the Soul," in which
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(chapter xii.) he argues for preexistence as fol- lows : —
" If it be good for the souls of men to be at all, the sooner they are, the better. But we are most cer- tain that the wisdom and goodness of God will do that which is the best ; and therefore if they can en- joy themselves before they come to these terrestrial bodies, they must be before they come into these bodies. For nothing hinders but that they may live before they come into the body, as well as they may after going out of it. Wherefore the preexistence of souls is a necessary result of the wisdom and good- ness of God.
" Again, the face of Providence in the work seems very much to suit with this opinion, there being not any so natural and easy account to be given of those things that seem the most harsh in the affairs of men, as from this hypothesis : that these souls did once subsist in some other state ; where, in several man- ners and degrees, they forfeited the favor of their Creator, and so, according to that just Nemesis that He has interwoven in the constitution of the universe and of their own natures, they undergo several calam- ities and asperities of fortune and sad drudgeries of fate, as a punishment inflicted, or a disease contracted from the several obliquities of their apostasy. Which key is not only able to unlock that recondite mystery of some particular men's almost fatal averseness from all religion and virtue, their stupidity and dullness and even invincible slowness to these things from their very childhood, and their incorrigible propension to all manner of vice ; but also of that squalid forlorn- ness and brutish barbarity that whole nations for many ages have lain under, and many do still lie under at
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this very day : which sad scene of things must needs exceedingly cloud and obscure the ways of Divine Providence, and make them utterly unintelligible ; unless some light be let in from the present hypoth- esis.
" And as this hypothesis is rational in itself, so has it also gained the suffrage of all philosophers of all ages, of any note, that have held the soul of man in- corporeal and immortal. I shall add, for the better countenance of the business, some few instances herein, as a pledge of the truth of my general conclusion. Let us cast our eye, therefore, into what corner of the world we will, that has been famous for wisdom and literature, and the wisest of those nations you shall find the asserters of this opinion.
" In Egypt, that ancient nurse of all hidden sciences, that this opinion was in vogue amongst the wisest men there, the fragments of Trismegist do sufficiently witness: of which opinion, not only the Gymnoso- phists, and other wise men of Egypt, were, but also the Brachmans of India, and the Magi of Babylon and Persia. To these you may add the abstruse phi- losophy of the Jews, which they call their Cabbala, of which the soul's preexistenee makes a considerable part, as all the learned of the Jews do confess.
" And if I should particularize in persons of this opinion, truly they are such of so great fame for depth of understanding, and abstrusest science, that their testimony alone might seem sufficient to bear down any ordinary modest man into an assent to their doctrine. And, in the first place, if we believe the Cabbala of the Jews, we must assign it to Moses, the greatest philosopher certainly that ever was in the world ; to whom you may add Zoroaster, Pythagoras,
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Epicharmus, Cebes, Euripides, Plato, Euclid, Philo, Virgil, Marcus Cicero, Plotinus, Ianiblichus, Proclus, Boethius, Pfellus, and several others, which it would be too long to recite. And if it were fit to add fathers to philosophers, we might enter into the same list Synesius and Origen ; the latter of whom was surely the greatest light and bulwark that ancient Christianity had. But I have not yet ended my cata- logue ; that admirable physician Johannes Fernelius is also of this persuasion, and is not to be so himself only, but discovers those two grand-masters of medi- cine, Hippocrates and Galen, to be so, too. Cardan, also, that famous philosopher of his age, expressly concludes that the rational soul is both a distinct be- ing from the soul of the world, and that it does pre- exist before it comes into the body ; and lastly, Pom- ponatius, no friend to the soul's immortality, yet can- not but confess that the safest way to hold it is also therewith to acknowledge her pre existence.
" And we shall evince that Aristotle, that has the luck to be believed more than most authors, was of the same opinion, in his treatise 4De Anima,' where he says, ' for every art must use its proper instruments, and every soul its body.' He speaks something more plainly in his - De Generatione Animge.' ' There are generated,' saith he, ' in the earth, and in the moisture thereof, plants and living creatures, and in the whole universe an animal heat ; insomuch that in a manner all places are full of souls.' We will add a third place still more clear, out of the same treatise, where he starts that very question of the preexistency of souls, of the sensitive and rational especially, and he concludes thus : ' It remains that the rational or intel- lectual soul only enters from without, as being only of
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a nature purely divine ; with whose actions the actions of this gross body have no communication.' Concern- ing which point he concludes like an orthodox scholar of his excellent master Plato ; to whose footsteps the closer he keeps, the less he ever wanders from the truth. For in this very place he does plainly profess what many would not have him so apertly guilty of, that the soul of man is immortal, and can perform her proper functions without the help of this terrestrial body."
6. Sir Thomas Browne explains and defends his own heresies, by suggesting the added heresy of re- incarnation : —
" For, indeed, heresies perish not with their au- thors : but like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in an- other. One general council is not able to extirpate one single heresy : it may be canceled for the present : but revolution of time and the like aspects from heaven will restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again. For, as though there were a me- tempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into an- other, opinions do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them. To see ourselves again, we need not look for Plato's year ; every man is not only himself : there have been many Diogeneses, 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 some one since, that parallels him, and is, as it were, his revived self." 1
7. One of the rare volumes of the early eighteenth
1 Religio Medici, section vi. Professor Francis Bowen in- clines to this same view. See page 108 et seq.
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century is Chevalier Ramsay's remarkable work en- titled " The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion," in which he elaborates the idea that " the sacred mysteries of our holy faith are not new fictions unheard of by the philosophers of all nations," but that " on the contrary Christianity is as old as the creation." In this "History of the human mind in all ages, nations, and religions, concerning the most divine truths," he shows that reincarnation is the common possession of Christianity and of all the other great systems of sacred thought : —
" 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 preexistence, if the prejudice of infancy inspired by the schoolmen had not accus- tomed us to look upon these expressions as metaphori- cal, and to believe, contrary to Scripture and to rea- son, that we were exiled from a happy state, only for the fault of our first parents. Atrocious maxim that sullies all the conduct of Providence, and that shocks the understandings of the most intelligent children of all nations. The answers ordinarily made to them throw into their tender minds the seeds of a lasting in- credulity.
" In Scripture, the wise man says, speaking of the eternal Logos, and his preexistent humanity : ' The Lord possessed me from the beginning of his ways, before his works of old ; I was set up from everlast- ing, from the beginning or ever the earth was ! ' All this can be said only of the eternal Logos. But what follows may be applied to the preexistent humanity of the Messiah : ' When he prepared the heavens I was
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there, when he encircled the force of the deep, when he established the clouds above, when he appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was by him, as one brought up with him, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in the habit- able parts of the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men.' It is visible that Solomon speaks here of a time soon after the creation of the world, of a tiine when the earth was inhabited only by a pure, innocent race. Can this be said after the fall, when the earth was cursed ? It is only a profound igno- rance of the ancient, primitive tradition of preexist- ence that can make men mistake the true sense of this sublime text.
"Our Saviour seems to approve the doctrine of pre- existence in his answer to his disciples when they in- terrogate him thus about the man born blind : ' Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind ? ' l 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 be- fore his corporeal birth, and, consequently, that he had preexisted in another state. Our Saviour's answer is remarkable : ' Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents ; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him ! ' Jesus Christ could not mean that neither this man nor his parents had ever sinned, 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 preexistence, nor for those of his parents, that he was born blind, but in order to manifest one day the power of God. Our Lord, therefore, far from blaming and redressing this error in his disci- 1 Gospel of John ix. 2.
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pies, answers in a way that seems to confirm them in the doctrine of preexistence. If he had looked upon this opinion as a capital error, would it have been compatible with his wisdom to pass it over so slightly, and taciturnly authorize it ? On the contrary, does not his silence indicate that he looked upon this doc- trine, which was a received maxim of the Jewish church, as the true explication of original sin ?
" St. Paul says, in speaking of the origin of mortal and physical evil, ' By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin ; and death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.' 1 If all have sinned, then all have voluntarily cooperated with Adam in the breach of the eternal law: for where there is no deliberate act of will, there can be no sin. The Apostle does not say that Adam's sin was imputed to all. The doctrine of imputation, by which God attributes Adam's sin to his innocent posterity, cannot be the meaning of St. Paul, for, besides that this doctrine is incompatible with the divine perfec- tion, the Apostle adds : ' For as by one man's disobe- dience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall all be made righteous.' 2 Now it is certain that men can only be made righteous by their per- sonal, deliberate, and voluntary cooperation with the spirit of grace, or the second Adam. The Apostle as- sures us in the same passage that ' all did not sin after the similitude of Adam's transgression.' This sin was really committed in a preexi stent state by the in- dividuals of the present human race. The meaning is that one pair gave the bad example, and all the human race co-existent with them in Paradise soon imitated this crime of disobedience against the eternal 1 Romans v. 12. 2 Ibid. v. 19.
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law, by the false love of natural knowledge and sen- sible pleasure. St. Paul seems to confirm this when he says : ' For the children being not yet born, having neither done good nor evil, it was said unto Rebecca, 4 Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.' God's love and hatred depend upon the moral dispositions of the creature. Since God says that he loved Jacob and hated Esau ere they were born, and before they had done good or evil in this mortal life, it follows clearly that they must have preexisted in another state. This would have appeared to be the natural sense of the text, if prejudices imbibed from our infancy, more or less, had not blinded the mind of Christian doctors to the same degree as Judaical prejudices darkened those of the ancient Pharisees.
" If it be said that these texts are obscure ; that preexistence is only drawn from them by induction, and that this opinion is not revealed in Scripture by express words, I answer, that the doctrines of the immortality of the soul are nowhere revealed ex- pressly in the sacred oracles of the Old or New Tes- tament, but because all their morals and doctrines are founded upon these great truths. We may say the same of preexistence. The doctrine is nowhere expressly revealed, but it is evidently supposed, as without it original sin becomes not only inexplicable, but absurd, repugnant, and impossible.
" There is nothing in the fathers nor councils that contradicts this doctrine ; yea, while the fifth general council and all the fathers after the sixth century con- demn a false idea of preexistence in which the an- cient tradition was adulterated by the Origenists and Priscillianists, the true doctrine of preexistence was not condemned by the church. This supposes that
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all the individuals of the human species composed of soul and body were created in Paradise, that they all cooperated in Adam's disobedience, partook of his crime, and so were justly punished. This was the constant tradition of the Jewish church, and confirmed by the Scriptures. This opinion of preexistence was also very ancient in the Christian church, ere the Origenists spoiled it with the Pythagorean and Pla- tonic fictions.
" It is against the impious degradation of trans- migration [through animal bodies] that the fathers declaim, and not the true Scripture doctrine of de- graded [human] intelligences. This the schoolmen confound with the false disguises — mixtures of the pagans. This great principle is the true key by which we can understand the meaning of several pas- sages of Scripture, and the sense of many sublime ar- ticles of faith. Thus only can we shelter Christianity from the railleries of the incredulous."
8. Among Soame Jenyns's " Disquisitions on Sev- eral Subjects" is a " Disquisition on a Prseexistent State," from which we quote the following : —
" 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 Brachmans of India, the Magi of Persia, and the greatest philosophers of Greece and Rome ; it was likewise adopted by the fa- thers of the Christian Church, and frequently enforced by her primitive writers. Why it has been so little no- ticed, so much overlooked rather than rejected, by the divines and metaphysicians of later ages, I am at a loss to account for, as it is undoubtedly confirmed by reason, by all the appearances of nature, and the doc- trines of revelation.
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" In the first place, then, it is confirmed by reason, which teaches us that it is impossible that the con- junction of a male and female can create, or bring into being, an immortal soul : they may prepare a material habitation for it, but there must be an immaterial preexistent inhabitant ready to take possession. Rea- son assures us that an immortal soul, which will eter- nally exist after the dissolution of the body, must have eternally existed before the formation of it ; for what- ever has no end can never have had any beginning, but must exist in some manner which bears no rela- tion to time, to us totally incomprehensible ; if, there- fore, the soul will continue to exist in a future life, it must have existed in a former. Reason likewise tells us that an omnipotent and benevolent Creator would never have formed such a world as this, and filled it with inhabitants, if the present was the only, or even the first, state of their existence, a state which, if un- connected with the past and the future, seems calcu- lated for no one purpose intelligible to our understand- ings ; neither of good or evil, of happiness or misery, of virtue or vice, of reward or punishment, but a con- fused jumble of them all together, proceeding from no visible cause and tending to no end. But, as we are certain that infinite power cannot be employed without effect, nor infinite wisdom without design, we may ra- tionally conclude that this world could be designed as nothing more than a prison, in which we are awhile confined to receive punishment for the offenses com- mitted in a former, and an opportunity of preparing ourselves for the enjoyment of happiness in a future, life.
" Secondly, these conclusions of reason are suffi- ciently confirmed by the force of nature and the ap-
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pearance of things. This world is evidently formed for a place of punishment as well as probation, — a prison, or house of correction, to which we are com- mitted, some for a longer, and some for a shorter time ; some to the severest labor, others to more in- dulgent tasks ; and if we consider it under this char- acter, we shall perceive it admirably fitted for the end for which it was intended. It is a spacious, beautiful, and durable structure; it contains many various apartments, a few very comfortable, many tolerable, and some extremely wretched ; it is inclosed with a fence so impassable that none can surmount it but with the loss of life. Its inhabitants likewise exactly resemble those of other prisons : they come in with malignant dispositions and unruly passions, from whence, like other confined criminals, they receive great part of their punishment by abusing and injur- ing each other. As we may suppose that they have not all been equally guilty, so they are not all equally miserable ; the majority are permitted to procure a tolerable subsistence by their labor, and pass through their confinement without any extraordinary penalties, except from paying their fees at their discharge by death. Others, who perhaps stand in need of more severe chastisement, receive it by a variety of meth- ods, some by the most tedious pains and diseases ; some by disappointments, and many by success in their favorite pursuits; some by being condemned to situa- tions peculiarly unfortunate, as to those of extreme poverty or superabundant riches, of despicable man- ners or painful preeminence, of galley-slaves in a des- potic, or ministers in a free, country.
" Lastly, the opinion of preexistence is no less con- firmed by revelation than by reason and the appear-
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ance of things ; for although, perhaps, it is nowhere in the New Testament explicitly enforced, yet through- out the whole tenor of those writings it is every- where implied. In them mankind are constantly rep- resented 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 oppor- tunity of expiating their guilt by sufferings, and regain- ing by a pious and virtuous conduct their lost estate of happiness and innocence ; this is styled working out their salvation, not preventing their condemnation, for that is already past, and their only hope now is re- demption, that is, being rescued from a state of captiv- ity and sin, in which they are universally involved. This is the very essence of the Christian dispensation, and the grand principle in which it differs from the religion of nature ; in every other respect they are nearly similar. They both enjoin the same moral du- ties and prohibit the same vices ; but Christianity ac- quaints us that we are admitted into this life oppressed by guilt and depravity, which we must atone for by suffering its usual calamities, and work off by acts of positive virtue, before we can hope for happiness in another. Now, if by all this a preexistent state is not constantly supposed, in which this guilt was in- curred 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 con- tracted without acting, or that we can act without ex- isting. So undeniable is this inference that it renders any positive assertion of a preexistent state totally useless ; as, if a man at the moment of his entrance into a new country was declared a criminal, it would
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surely be unnecessary to assert that he had lived in some other before he came there.
" In all our researches into abstruse subjects there is a certain clue, without which, the further we proceed the more we are bewildered ; but which, being fortu- nately discovered, leads us at once through the whole labyrinth, puts an end to our difficulties, and opens a system perfectly clear, consistent, and intelligible. The doctrine of preexistence, or the acknowledgment of some past state of disobedience, I take to be this very clue ; which, if we constantly carry along with us, we shall proceed unembarrassed through all the intricate mysteries both of nature and revelation, and at last arrive at so clear a prospect of the wise and just dis- pensations of our Creator, as cannot fail to afford com- plete satisfaction to the most inquisitive skeptic.
"Thus is a preexistent state, I think, clearly de- monstrated by the principles of reason, the appear- ance of things, and the sense of revelation ; all which agree that this world is intended for a place of punish- ment, as well as probation, and must therefore refer to some former period. For as probation implies a fu- ture life, for which it is preparatory, so punishment must imply a former state, in which offenses were com- mitted for which it is due ; and indeed there is not a single argument drawn from the justice of God, and the seemingly undeserved sufferings of many in the present state, which can be urged in proof of a future life, which proves not with superior force the existence of another which is already past."
9. One of the chapters in Joseph GlanviFs " Lux Orientalis," a treatise attempting to demonstrate the truth of Platonic preexistence, and strengthened by the elaborate annotations of Dr. Henry More, is an extension of the following —
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"Seven Pillars on which the Hypothesis of Preexist- ence stands.
" 1. All the divine designs and actions are carried on by pure and infinite goodness.
" 2. There is an exact geometrical justice that runs through the universe, and is interwoven in the con- texture of things.
"3. Things are carried to their proper place and state by the congruity of their natures ; where this fails we may suppose some arbitrary management.
" 4. The souls of men are capable of living in other bodies besides terrestrial ; and never act but in some body or other.
" 5. The soul in every state hath such a body as is fittest to those faculties and operations that it is most inclined to exercise.
" 6. The powers and faculties of the soul are either spiritual or intellectual, or sensitive or plastic.
" 7. By the same degrees that the higher powers are invigorated, the lower are abated, as to their proper exercise."
10. In Dowden's " Life of Shelley " (vol. i. p. 80), the following anecdote of the poet is quoted from his friend Hogg : " One morning we had been reading Plato together so diligently that the usual hour of exercise passed away unperceived. We sallied forth hastily to take the air for half an hour before dinner. In the middle of Magdalen Bridge we met a woman with a child in her arms. Shelley was more attentive at that instant to our conduct in a life that was past or to come than to a decorous regulation of his behavior according to the established usages of society. With abrupt dexterity he caught hold of the child. The mother, who well might fear that it was about to be
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thrown over the parapet of the bridge into the sedgy- waters below, held it fast by its long train. 'Will your baby tell us anything about preexistence, madam ? ' he asked in a piercing voice and with a wist- ful look. The mother made no answer, but perceiving that Shelley's object was not murderous, but alto- gether harmless, she dismissed her apprehension and relaxed her hold. ' Will your baby tell us anything about preexistence, madam ? ' he repeated, with un- abated earnestness. ' He cannot speak, sir,' said the mother seriously. ' Worse, worse,' cried Shelley with an air of disappointment, shaking his long hair most pathetically about his young face. ' But surely the babe can speak if he will, for he is only a few weeks old. He may fancy that he cannot, but it is only a silly whim. He cannot have forgotten the use of speech in so short a time. The thing is absolutely impossible.' ' It is not for me to dispute with you, gentlemen,' the woman meekly replied, 'but I can safely declare I never heard him speak, nor any child of his age.' It was a fine placid boy. So far from being disturbed by the interruption, he looked up and smiled. Shelley pressed his fat cheeks with his fingers. We commended his healthy appearance and his equanimity, and the mother was allowed to proceed, probably to her satisfaction, for she would doubtless prefer a less speculative nurse. Shelley sighed as we walked on. 4 How provokingly close are these new- born babes ! ' he ejaculated ; ' but it is not the less certain, notwithstanding the cunning attempts to con- ceal the truth, that all knowledge is reminiscence. The doctrine is far more ancient than the times of Plato, and as old as the venerable allegory that the muses are the daughters of memory ; not one of the muses was ever said to be the child of invention.' "
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11. Hume's skeptical essay on "The Immortality of the Soul " argues thus : —
" Reasoning from the common course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the su- preme cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy, what is incorruptible must also be ungen- erable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed be- fore our birth, and if the former existence noways concerns us, neither will the latter. , . .
" The metempsychosis is, therefore, the only system of this kind that philosophy can hearken to."
12. Southey says in his published " Letters " : "I have a strong and lively faith in a state of continued consciousness from this stage of existence, and that we shall recover the consciousness . of some lower stages through which we may previously have passed seems to me not impossible. . . .
" The system of progressive existence seems, of all others, the most benevolent ; and all that we do under- stand is so wise and so good, and all we do. or do not, so perfectly and overwhelmingly wonderful, that the most benevolent system is the most probable.' '
13. From a letter written by that curious genius William Blake (the artist) to his friend John Flax- man (the sculptor) : l —
" In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life ; and these works are the delight and study of archangels.
u You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel, my friend and companion from eternity. I look back into the regions of reminiscence and behold our an- cient days before this earth appeared and its vegeta- 1 See Scoones's English Letters, p. 361.
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tive mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses of eternity which can never be separated, though our mortal vehicles should stand at the re- motest corners of heaven from each other."
14. In the " Fortnightly Review " for September, 1878, Professor William Knight writes: "It seems surprising that in the discussions of contemporary phi- losophy on the origin and destiny of the soul there has been no explicit revival of the doctrines of Pre- existence and Metempsychosis. Whatever may be their intrinsic worth or evidential value, their title to rank on the roll of philosophical hypotheses is un- doubted. They offer quite as remarkable a solution of the mystery which all admit as the rival theories of Creation, Traduction, and Extinction."
" If we reject the doctrine of Preexistence, we must either believe in non-existence or fall back in one or other of the two opposing theories of Creation and Traduction ; and as we reject Extinction, we may find Preexistence has fewer difficulties to face than the rival hypotheses. Creation is the theory that every moment of time multitudes of souls are simultaneously born, — not sent down from a celestial source, but freshly made out of nothing and placed in bodies pre- pared for them by natural growth. To the Platonist the theory of Traduction seemed even worse, as it im- plied the derivation of the soul from at least two sources, — from both parents, — and a substance thus derived was apparently composite and quasi-material.
" Stripped of all extravagance 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; to
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have a workable explanation of Nemesis, and of what we are accustomed to call the moral tragedies and the untoward birth of a multitude of men and women. It is much also to have the doctrine of immortality lightened of its difficulties ; to have our immediate out- look relieved by the doctrine that in the soul's eternity its pre existence and its future existence are one. The retrospect may assuredly help the prospect."
" Whether we make use of it or not, we ought to realize its alternatives. They are these. Either all life is extinguished and resolved through an absorp- tion and reassumption of the vital principle every- where, or a perpetual miracle goes on in the inces- sant and rapid increase in the amount of spiritual ex- istence within the universe ; and while human life sur- vives, the intelligence and the affection of the lower animals perish everlastingly."
15. Professor W. A. Butler's celebrated lectures upon "The History of Ancient Philosophy" lean strongly toward an endorsement of Plato's philosophy of reincarnation: —
"It must be allowed that there is much in the hy- pothesis of preexistence (at least) which might at- tract a speculator busied with the endeavor to reduce the moral system of the world under intelligible laws. The solution which it at once furnishes of the state and fortunes of each individual, as arising in some un- known but direct process from his own voluntary acts, though it throws, of course, no light on the ultimate question of the existence of moral evil (which it only removes a single step), does yet contribute to satisfy the mind as to the equity of that immediate manifesta- tion of it, and of its physical attendants, which we un- happily witness. There is internally no greater im-
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probability 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. And if to that future state there are already discernible faint longings and impulses which to many men have seemed to involve a direct proof of its reality, hopes that will not be bounded by the grave, and desires that grasp eternity, others have found within them, it would seem, faint intimations scarcely less impressive of the past, as if the soul vibrated the echoes of a harmony not of this world. Wordsworth has told us that such convictions seem to be a part, though a neg- lected part, of the heritage of our race."
16. The novelist Bulwer thus expresses his opinion of this truth : " Eternity may be but an endless series of those migrations which men call deaths, abandon- ments of home after home, even to fairer scenes and loftier heights. Age after age the spirit may shift its tent, fated not to rest in the dull Elysium of the heathen, but carrying with it evermore its two ele- ments, activity and desire." *
17. Pezzani, the author of " The Plurality of the Soul's Lives," 2 writes : " The earthly sojourn is only a new probation, as was said by Dupont de Nemours, that great writer who, in the eighteenth century, out- stripped all modern thought. Now, if this be so, is it not plain that the recollection of former lives would seriously hinder probations, by removing most of their difficulties, and consequently of their deserts, as well as of their spontaneity ? We live in a world where
1 Other extracts from Bulwer appear on page 37.
2 Paris, 1865, third edition, p. 405.
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free-will is all-powerful, the inviolable law of advance- ment and progress among men. If past lives were remembered, the soul would know the significance and import of the trials which are reserved for it here be- low : indolent . and careless, it would harden itself against the purposes of Providence, and become paralyzed by the hopelessness of mastering them, or even, if of a better quality and more manly, it would accept and work them out without fail. Well, neither of these suppositions is necessary ; the struggle must be free, voluntary, safe from the influences of the past ; the field of combat must seem new, so that the athlete may exhibit and practice his virtues upon it. The ex- perience he has already acquired, the forces he has learned how to conquer, serve him in the new strife ; but in such a manner that he does not suspect it, for the imperfect soul undergoes reincarnations in order to develop the qualities that it has already manifested, to free itself from the vices and faults which are in opposition to the ascensional law. What would hap- pen if all men remembered their former lives ? The order of the earth would be overthrown ; at least, it is not now established on such conditions. Lethe, as well as free-will, is a law of the actual world."
18. One of Emerson's earliest essays (" The Method of Nature ") contains this paragraph : " We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. I cannot tell if these wonderful qualities which house to-day in this mortal frame shall ever reassemble in equal activity in a similar frame, or whether they have before had a nat- ural history like that of this body you see before you ; but this one thing I know, that these qualities did not now begin to exist, cannot be sick with my sick-
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ness nor buried in my grave ; but that they circu- late through the universe : before the world was, they were. Nothing can bar them out, or shut them in, but they penetrate the ocean and land, space and time, form and essence, and hold the key to universal nature."
Again, in one of his latest works (on "Immortal- ity ") he says : " The fable of the Wandering Jew is agreeable to men, because they want more time and land in which to execute their thoughts. But a higher poetic use must be made of the legend. Take us as we are, with our experience, and transfer us to a new planet, and let us digest for its inhabitants what we can of the wisdom of this. After we have found our depth there, and assimilated what we can of the new experience, transfer us to a new scene. In each transfer we shall have acquired, by seeing them at a distance, a new mastery of the old thoughts, in which we were too much immersed." 1
19. James Freeman Clarke writes (in " Ten Great Religions," ii. 190) : " That man has come up to his present state of development by passing through lower forms is the popular doctrine of science to-day. What is called evolution teaches that we have reached our present state by a very long and gradual ascent from the lowest animal organizations. It is true that the Darwinian theory takes no notice of the evolution of the soul, but only of the body. But it appears to me that a combination of the two views would remove many difficulties which still attach to the theory of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. If we are to believe in evolution, let us have the assist- 1 Other quotations from Emerson are on pages 23, 277.
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ance of the soul itself in this development of new- species. Thus science and philosophy will cooperate, nor will poetry hesitate to lend her aid."
20. The noblest work of modern times, and prob- ably of all time, upon immortality, is a large volume by the Kev. William R. Alger, entitled "A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life." It was published in 1860, and still remains the standard au- thority upon that topic throughout Christendom. This little book is substantially indebted to it. The author is a Unitarian minister, who devoted half his lifetime to the work, undermining his health thereby. In the first edition (1860) the writer characterizes reincar- nation as a plausible delusion, unworthy of credence. For fifteen years more he continued studying the sub- ject, and the last edition (1878) gives the final result of his ripest investigations in heartily endorsing and advocating reincarnation. No more striking argu- ment for the doctrine could be advanced than this fact. That a Christian clergyman, making the prob- lem of the soul's destiny his life's study, should be- come so overpowered by the force of this pagan idea as to adopt it for the climax of his scholarship is extremely significant. And the result is reached by such a sincere course of reasoning that the seminaries in all denominations are compelled to accept his book as the masterpiece. From one of the supplemental chapters we quote the following by his permission : —
" Besides the various distinctive arguments of its own, every reason for the resurrection holds with at least equal force for transmigration. The argument from analogy is especially strong. It is natural to argue from the universal spectacle of incarnated life that this is the eternal scheme everywhere, the variety
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of souls finding in the variety of worlds an everlasting series of adventures in appropriate organisms ; there being, as Paul said, one kind of flesh of birds, another of beasts, another of men, another of angels, and so on. Our present lack of recollection of past lives is no disproof of their actuality. Every night we lose all knowledge of the past, but every day we reawaken to a memory of the whole series of days and nights. So in one life we may forget or dream, and in another recover the whole thread of experience from the be- ginning.
" In every event, it must be confessed that of all the thoughtful and refined forms of the belief in a future life none has had so extensive and prolonged a prevalence as this. It has the vote of the majority, having for ages on ages been held by half the human race with an intensity of conviction almost without a parallel. Indeed, the most striking fact about the doctrine of the repeated incarnations of the soul, its form and experience in each successive embodiment being determined by its merits and demerits in the preceding ones, is the constant reappearance of that faith in all parts of the world, and its permanent hold on certain great nations.
" Another striking fact connected with this doctrine is that it seems to be a native and ineradicable growth of the oriental world; but appears in the western world only in scattered instances, and rather as an exotic form of thought. In the growing freedom and liberality of thought, which, no less than its doubt and denial, now characterize Christendom, it seems as if the full time had come for a greater mental and aes- thetic hospitality on the part of Christians towards Hindus. The advocates of the resurrection should
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not confine their attention to the repellant or the lu- dicrous aspects of metempsychosis, but do justice to its claim and its charm."
After reviewing and strengthening the evidences in favor of plural births, Mr. Alger continues : " The above translation of the ecclesiastical doctrine of the resurrection into a form scientifically credible, and rec- onciled with the immemorial tenet of transmigration, may seem to some a fanciful speculation, a mere in- tellectual toy. Perhaps it is so. It is not propounded with the slightest dogmatic animus. It is advanced solely as an illustration of what may possibly be true, as suggested by the general evidence of the phenom- ena of history and the facts of experience. The thoughts embodied in it are so wonderful, the method of it so rational, the region of contemplation into which it lifts the mind is so grand, the prospects it opens are of such universal reach and import, that the study of it brings us into full sympathy with the sublime scope of the idea of immortality, and of a cosmopolitan vindication of Providence uncovered to every eye. It takes us out of the littleness of petty themes and selfish affairs, and makes it easier for us to believe in the vastest hopes mankind have ever known. It causes the most magnificent conceptions of human destiny to seem simply proportional to the native magnitude and beauty of the powers of the mind which can conceive such things. After traversing the grounds here set forth, we feel that if the view based on them be not the truth, it must be because God has in reserve for us a sequel greater and love- lier, not meaner, than our brightest dream hitherto."
21. In the " Princeton Review " for May, 1881, Pro- fessor Francis Bowen (of Harvard University) pub-
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lishes a very interesting article on " Christian Metemp- sychosis," in which he urges the Christian acceptance of reincarnation. By his consent we quote a large portion of it, because it is so able an appeal for the adoption of this truth, from both a metaphysical and a Christian standpoint : —
" Our life upon earth is rightly held to be a disci- pline 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 grand a purpose. Threescore years and ten must surely be an inadequate preparation for eternity. But what assurance have we that the probation of the soul is confined within so narrow limits ? Why may it not be continued, or repeated, through a long series of successive generations, the same personality animat- ing one after another an indefinite number of tene- ments 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? It need not remember its past history, even while bearing the fruits and the consequences of that history deeply in- grained into its present nature. How many long pas- sages of any one life are now completely lost to mem- ory, though they may have contributed largely to build up the heart and the intellect which distinguish one man from another ! Our responsibility surely is not les- sened by such forgetfulness. We are still accountable for the misuse of time, though we have forgotten how or on what we wasted it. We are even now reaping the bitter fruits, through enfeebled health and vitiated desires and capacities, of many forgotten acts of self- indulgence, willfulness, and sin — forgotten just be-
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cause they were so numerous. Then a future life even in another frail body upon this earth may well be a state of just and fearful retribution.
" Why should it be thought incredible that the same soul should inhabit in succession an indefinite number of mortal bodies, and thus prolong its experi- ence and its probation till it has become in every sense ripe for heaven or the final judgment ? Even dur- ing this one life our bodies are perpetually changing, though by a process of decay and restoration which is so gradual that it escapes our notice. Every human being thus dwells successively in many bodies, even during one short life. This physiological fact seems to have been known by Plato, as in a well-known pas- sage of the Phsedo, a clear statement of it is put into the mouth of Cebes, who argues, however, that this fact affords no sufficient proof of the immortality of the soul. ' You may say with reason,' Cebes is made to argue, ' that the soul is lasting, and the body weak and short-lived in comparison. And every soul may be said to wear out many bodies, especially in the course of a long life. For if, while the man is alive, the body deliquesces and decays, and yet the soul al- ways weaves her garment anew and repairs the waste, then of course, when the soul perishes, she must have on her last garment, and this only will survive her ; but then, again, when the soul is dead, the body will at last show its native weakness and soon pass into de- cay.' And again : 4 Suppose we admit also that, after death, the souls of some are existing still, and will exist, and will be born and die again and again, and that there is a natural strength in the soul which will hold out and be born many times, — for all this, we may still be inclined to think that she will be weary
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in the labors of successive births, and may at last suc- cumb in one of her deaths and utterly perish.' l
" 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. We do not all start fair in the race that is set before us, and there- fore all cannot be expected, at the close of one brief mortal pilgrimage, to reach the same goal, and to be equally well fitted for the blessings or the penalties of a fixed state hereafter. The commonest observation assures us that one child is born with limited capaci- ties and perhaps a wayward disposition, strong pas- sions, and a sullen temper ; that he has tendencies to evil which are almost sure to be soon developed. An- other, on the contrary, seems happily endowed from the start ; he is not only amiable, tractable, and kind, but quick-witted and precocious, a child of many hopes. The one seems a perverse goblin, while the other has the early promise of a Cowley or a Pascal. The dif- ferences of external condition also are so vast and ob- vious that they seem to detract much from the merit of a well-spent life and from the guilt of vice and crime. One is so happily nurtured in a Christian home, and under so many protecting influences, that the path of virtue lies straight and open before him, — so plain, indeed, that even the blind could safely walk therein; while another seems born to a heritage of misery, exposure, and crime. The birthplace of one is in Central Africa, and of another in the heart of civilized and Christian Europe. Where lingers eter- nal justice then ? How can such frightful inequalities be made to appear consistent with the infinite wisdom and goodness of God ?
1 Jowetfs translation, Am. ed. vol. i. p. 416.
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" If metempsychosis is included in the scheme of the divine government of the world, this difficulty dis- appears altogether. Considered from this point of view, every one is born into the state which he has fairly earned by his own previous history. He carries with him from one stage of existence to another the habits or tendencies which he has formed, the disposi- tions which he has indulged, the passions which he has not chastised, but has voluntarily allowed to lead him into vice and crime. No active interference of retrib- utive justice is needed, except in selecting for the place of his new birth a home with appropriate surround- ings — perhaps such a home as through his evil pas- sions he has made for others. The doctrine of inher- ited sin and its consequences is a hard lesson to be learned. We submit with enforced resignation to the stern decree, corroborated as it is by every day's ob- servation of the ordinary course of this world's affairs, that the iniquity 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 en- dowments which he has inherited, so to speak, from himself ; that is, from his former self in a previous stage of existence. If, for instance, he has neglected his opportunities and fostered his lower appetites in his childhood, if he was then wayward and self-indul- gent, indolent, deceitful, and vicious, it is right and just that, in his manhood and old age, he should expe- rience the bitter consequences of his youthful follies. If he has voluntarily made himself a brute, a brute he must remain. The child is father of the man, who often inherits from him a sad patrimony. There is an awful meaning, if we will but take it to heart, in the solemn announcement of the angel in the apoca-
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lyptic vision : ' He that is unjust, let aim ue unjust still ; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still ; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still ; and he that is holy, let him be holy still ! ' And it matters not, so far as the justice of the sentence is concerned, whether the former self, from whom we receive this heritage, was the child who, not many years ago, bore the same name with our present self, or one who bore a different name, who was born in another age and perhaps another hemisphere, and of whose sad history we have not now the faintest re- membrance. We know that our personal identity actually extends farther back, and links together more passages of our life, than what is now present to con- sciousness ; though it is true that we have no direct evi- dence of this continuity and sameness of being beyond what is attested by memory. But we may have indirect evidence of it from the testimony of others in the case of our own infancy, or from revelation, or through reason- ing from analogy and from the similarity of cases and characters. The soul, said the Hindoos, is in the body like a bird in a cage, or like a pilot who steers a ship, and seeks a new vessel when the old one is worn out.
"Nothing prevents us, however, from believing that the probation of any one soul extends continuously through a long series of successive existences upon earth, each successive act in the whole life-history being retributive for what went before. For this is the universal law of being, whether of matter or mind ; everything changes, nothing dies in the sense of being annihilated. What we call death is only the resolu- tion of a complex body into its constituent parts, noth- ing that is truly one and indivisible being lost or de- stroyed in the process. In combustion or any other
! UTERS ON REINCARNATION.
rapid chemical change, according to the admission of the materialists themselves, not an atom of matter is ever generated or ever ceases to be ; it only escapes from one combination to enter upon another. Then the human soul, which, as we know from conscious- ness, is absolutely one and indivisible, only passes on after the dissolution of what was once its home to ani- mate another body. In this sense we can easily accept the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Our future life is not, at any rate not while the present administration of this world's affairs continues, to be some inconceivable form of merely spiritual being. It will be clothed again with a body, which may or may not be in part the same with the one which it has just left. Leibnitz held that the soul is never entirely di- vorced from matter, but carries on some portion of what was its earthly covering into a subsequent stage of existence. . . . We can easily imagine and believe that every person now living is a representation of some one who lived perhaps centuries ago under another name, in another country, it may be not with the same line of ancestry, and yet one and the same with him in his inmost being and essential character. His sur- roundings are changed; the old house of flesh has been torn down and rebuilt ; but the tenant is still the same. He has come down from some former genera- tion, bringing with him what may be either a help or a hindrance ; namely, the character and tendencies which he there formed and nurtured. And herein is retribution ; he has entered upon a new stage of pro- bation, and in it he has now to learn what the charac- ter which he there formed naturally leads to when tried upon a new and perhaps broader theatre. If this be not so, tell me why men are born with characters so
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unlike and with tendencies so depraved. In a sense far more literal than was intended by the poet, it may be true of every country churchyard, that
' Some mute inglorious Milton there may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.'
They bring with them no recollection of the incidents of their former life, as such memory would unfit them for the new part which they have to play. But they are still the same in the principles and modes of con- duct, in the inmost springs of action, which the for- gotten incidents of their former life have developed and strengthened. They are the same in all the es- sential points which made them formerly a blessing or a curse to all with whom they came immediately in contact, and through which they will again become sources of weal or woe to their environment. Of course, these inborn tendencies may be either exagger- ated or chastised by the lessons of a new experience, by the exercise of reflection, and by habitually heeding or neglecting the monitions of conscience. But they still exist as original tendencies, and as such they must make either the upward or the downward path more easy, more natural, and more likely to reach a goal so remote that it would otherwise be unattainable.
" To make this more clear, let me refer to the preg- nant distinction so admirably illustrated by Kant be- tween what he calls the Intelligible Character and the Empirical or acquired Character. The former is the primitive foundation on which the latter, which di- rectly determines our conduct for the time being, is built. To a great extent, though not entirely, we are what we are through the influence of what have been our surroundings — through our education, our com- panions, our habits, and our associations. But these
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influences must have had a primitive basis to work upon, and can only modify the operation of the native germs, not change their nature ; and they will modify these more or less profoundly according as they are more or less amenable to outside influences and mani- fest more or less decidedly a bias in one direction or another. What the future plant will be depends much more on the specific nature of the seed which is sown than on the fertility or barrenness of the soil into which it is cast. The latter only determine whether it shall be a vigorous plant or a weak one, whether in fact it shall grow at all or only rot in the ground ; but they do not determine the specific direction of its de- velopment, whether it shall be an oak, a willow, or an ivy-bush. The Empirical or acquired Character, as it is open to observation, is a phenomenon ; it is what the man appears to be, or what he has become under the shaping influence of the circumstances to which he has been exposed. But the Intelligible Character, the inmost kernel of his real being, is a noumenon, and es- capes external observation ; we can judge of its nature only indirectly from its effects ; that is to say, from the conduct which it has cooperated to produce. A change taking place in any substance must be the joint result of two factors ; namely, its proper cause operat- ing upon it from without, and the thing's own nature or internal constitution. Thus the same degree of heat acts very differently upon different substances, say, on wax, iron, water, clay, or powder. In like manner, a given motive, say, the desire of wealth, when acting on different persons, though with the same strength or intensity, may lead to very dissimilar re- sults ; it makes one man a thief and another a miser, renders one envious and another energetic and indus-
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trious. If frequently indulged, it forms a fixed habit, and thus becomes an element in the acquired or empir- ical character.
" Now Kant, with the bias of a necessitarian, places our freedom and our responsibility in the realm of noumena, attributing them exclusively to our Intelli- gible Character. As to the acquired character when once formed, he says we must act in accordance with it, and therefore we are not accountable for the partic- ular act to which it led, since that we could not help. After I have once formed a habit of lying or stealing, should an opportunity and temptation recur, I must repeat the offense. But our inborn character, which expresses what we really are, as a noumenon, lies out- side of time, space, and causality, and therefore can- not be led astray by temptation or external circum- stances, but is entirely free. Herein solely consists our merit or our guilt. Hence Kant would make us responsible not for the particular crime, which we could not help committing, but for being such a person as to be capable of that crime. We are accountable not for what we do, but for what we are. We are to be punished not for stealing this horse, but for being a rogue, or thief in grain, for being naturally inclined to stealing. . . .
" I know not how it may seem to others, but to me there is something inexpressibly consolatory and in- spiring in the thought that the great and good of other days have not finally accomplished their earthly career, have not left us desolate, but that they are still with us, in the flesh, though we know them not, and though in one sense they do not really know themselves, be- cause they have no remembrance of a former life in which they were trained for the work which they are
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now doing. But they are essentially the same beings, for they have the same intellect and character as be- fore, and sameness in these two respects is all that constitutes our notion of personal identity. We are unwilling to believe that their beneficent activity was limited to one short life on earth, at the close of which there opened to them an eternity without change, without farther trial or action, and seemingly having no other purpose than unlimited enjoyment. Such a conception of immortality is exposed to Schopenhauer's sarcasm, that if effort and progress are possible only in the present life, and no want or suffering can be endured except as the penalties of sin, there remains for heaven only the weariness of nothing to do. An eternity either of reward or punishment would seem to be inadequately earned by one brief period of pro- bation. It is far more reasonable to believe that the future life which we are taught to expect will be simi- lar to the present one, and will be spent in this world, though we shall carry forward to it the burden or the blessing entailed upon us by our past career. Besides the spiritual meaning of the doctrine of regeneration, besides the new birth which is ' of water and of the Spirit,' there may be a literal meaning in the solemn words of the Saviour, ' Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' . . .
" I should be sorry to believe that that remarkable group of excellent scholars, thinkers, and divines, the Port-Royalists, who upheld the cause of Jansenism for three quarters of a century, have finally passed away from earth. On the contrary, if anywhere in these later times the model of a Christian scholar and historian could be found, we might well say that the spirit of Tillemont lives again in him. If we could
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find one who united in himself all the best qualities of a Christian teacher, stainless in heart and life, we might well believe that it was Lancelot in another earthly form. For either Pascal or Arnauld, it must be admitted that we should not know where to look ; if their spirits are yet in this world, they must be in the obscurity of some lowly station.1
" All this speculation, I repeat, is completely fanci- ful, and can serve no other purpose than to show, even if the doctrine of metempsychosis were true, that we should not be able to identify one person in any two of his successive appearances upon earth. We surely could not know of him in this respect any more than he knows of himself ; and, as already said, the total break in memory at the beginning of every suc- cessive life must prevent the newly born from recog- nizing the oneness of his own being with any former existence in an earthly shape.
" Curiously enough this want of self-knowledge is confessed in the only case in which we have a direct assertion in Scripture (if language is to be inter- preted in its ordinary literal meaning and not strained into a figurative sense), that one of the heroes of the olden time had reappeared upon earth under a new name, as the forerunner of a new dispensation. At the time of the Saviour there appears to have been a general expectation among the Jews that the coming of the Messiah was to be heralded by the reappear- ance upon earth of the prophet Elijah, this expecta- tion being founded upon the text in Malachi : ' Be- hold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.'
1 See Matthew Arnold's poem upon his father, Dr. Arnold, page 168.
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Early in the public ministry of John the Baptist, we read that the belief prevailed among his hearers that this prophecy was fulfilled in him. But when directly asked, i Art thou Elias ? ' he replied, ' I am not. Art thou that prophet ? And he answered, No.' He had no memory of his former life under that name ; and though he must have been aware of the popular belief upon the subject, and of the many points of similarity between his own career and that of the great restorer of the worship of the true God at an earlier period, he was too honest to claim an authority which he did not positively know to belong to him.
" Yet we learn that our Lord subsequently twice declared, in very distinct language, that Elijah and John the Baptist were really one and the same person. Once, while John was still alive but in prison, Jesus told the multitude who thronged around him, ' Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist; ' and he directly goes on to assert, ' If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.' (Matt. xi. 14.) And again, after John was beheaded, Jesus said to his disciples, 1 Elias is come already and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed.' ' Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.' (Matt. xvii. 12, 13.) Still again, in the scene on the mount of Transfiguration. ' Behold there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias ; ' and it is said of the three disciples who were then in company with Jesus that, ' When they were awake, they saw his glory and the two men that stood with him.' (Luke ix. 30, 32.) That the com- mentators have not been willing to receive, in their obvious and literal meaning, assertions so direct and
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so frequently repeated as these, but have attempted to explain them away in a non-natural and metaphori- cal sense, is a fact which proves nothing but the exist- ence of an invincible prejudice against the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. . . .
" Assuming the doctrine to be well founded, it is for every person to determine with what character he will leave the world at the close of one stage of his earthly being, believing that with this same character thus trained for weal or woe he is inevitably at once to begin a new life, and thus either to rise or fall farther than ever. It seems to me that the dogma of a future life, so prolonged through a countless succes- sion of other lives on earth until it becomes an im- mortality, is thus brought home to one with a force, a vividness and certainty, of which in no other form it is susceptible. It has been said that no prudent man, if the election were offered to him, would choose to live his present live over again ; and as he whom the world calls prudent does not usually cherish any lofty aspirations, the saying is probably true. We are all so conscious of the many errors and sins that we have committed that the retrospect is a saddening one ; and worldly wisdom would probably whisper, ' It is best to stop here, and not try such a career over again.' But every one would ardently desire a renewal of his earthly experience if assured that he could enter upon it under better auspices, if he believed that what we call death is not the end of all things even here below, but that the soul is then standing upon the threshold of a new stage of earthly existence, which is to be brighter or darker than the one it is just quitting, according as there is carried forward into it a higher or lower purpose. . . .
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" This doctrine also suggests, as it seems to me, a clearer and more satisfactory explanation than would otherwise be possible of the fall of man through dis- obedience and its consequences, as narrated in Genesis and interpreted by St. Paul. Certainly the primeval man, the Adam of each one of us, when he first through the inspiration of Deity 'became a living soul,' was born into a paradise, an Eden, of entire purity and innocence, and in that state he talked directly with God. There was also given to him through his conscience the revelation of a divine law, an absolute command, to preserve this blessed state through restraining his appetites and lower impulses to action, and making the love of holiness superior even to the love of knowledge. But man was tempted by his appetites to transgress this law ; he aspired after a knowledge of good and evil, which can be at- tained only through experience of evil, and he thereby fell from innocence into a state of sin, which neces- sarily corrupted his whole future being. The habit of disobedience once formed, sin in the same person has a self - continuing and self - multiplying power. The stain carried down from a former life becomes darker and more inveterate in the life that follows. We have no reason to complain of the corruption of human nature, for the world is what we have made it to be by our own act. The burden has not been transmitted to us by others, but has been inherited from ourselves ; that is, from our former selves. Re- demption from it by man's own effort thus became impossible. This is death, moral death, the only death of which a human soul is capable.
" Thus far we have considered metempsychosis as a means of retribution ; that is, of awarding to each
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soul in the next future life upon which it is entering that compensation either of weal or woe which it has earned for itself, — has in fact necessarily entailed upon itself by its conduct in the life which it has just completed. But the transmigration of souls may be regarded also in another light, as that portion of the divine government of this world's affairs which main- tains distributive justice, since, through its agency, in the long run, all inequalities of condition and favoring or unfavoring circumstances may be compensated, and each person may have his or her equitable share of opportunities for good and of the requisite means for discipline and improvement. If our view be con- fined within the limits of a single earthly life, it must be confessed that the inequality is glaring enough, so that it seems to justify the honest doubts of the trembling inquirer, while it has offered a broad mark for the scoffs and declamation of the confirmed un- believer.
" This hypothesis — and I do not claim for it any other character than that of a highly probable and consolatory hypothesis — also throws a new and wel- come light upon the deep and dark problem of the origin of evil. In the first place, according to the views which have now been taken, the sufferings which are the immediate consequence and punishment of sin are properly left out of the account, since these evince the goodness of God no less than the happiness resulting from virtue, the purpose in both cases being to advance man's highest interests by the improvement of his moral character ; just as the affectionate parent rewards the obedience and punishes the faults of his child, love equally constraining him to adopt either course. And how many of the evils borne both by
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individuals and by communities are attributable di- rectly to their own misconduct, to their willful dis- regard of the monitions of conscience ! The body which is now languid from inaction through sloth, and enfeebled or racked by disease, might have been active, vigorous, and sound, prompt to second every wish of its owner, and ministering to his enjoyment through every sense and limb. And could we know all, could we extend our vision over the whole history of our former self, how would our estimate of this purely retributive character of our present suffering be enlarged and confirmed ! It would then be evident that no portion of it is gratuitous or purposeless. And the community which is now torn with civil dissen- sion, desolated by war, or prostrated in an unequal strife with its rivals, might have been peaceful, afflu- ent, and flourishing, if rulers and ruled had heeded the stern calls of duty, instead of blindly following their own tumultuous passions. And as nations, too, have a continuous life, like that of a river, through a constant change of their constituent parts, many of their woes are clearly attributable to the misdeeds of their former selves. Once admit the great truth that virtue, not happiness, is man's highest interest, and most of the pains of this life indicate the goodness and justice of God quite as much as its pleasures.
" But according to the theory which we are now con- sidering, a still larger deduction must be made from the amount of apparent evil at any one time visible in the world. All the inequalities in the lot of mankind, which have prompted what are perhaps the bitterest of all complaints, and have served skeptics like Hume and J. S. Mill as a reason for the darkest imputations upon divine justice in the government of the world,
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disappear from the picture altogether. Excepting only what we have just considered, the retributive consequences of more or less sin, there are no in- equalities. All start from the same point, and journey- through the same vicissitudes of existence, exhausting sooner or later all varieties of condition. Prince and peasant, bond and free, barbarian and cultured, all share alike whatever weal or woe there is in the world, because all must at some future time change places with each other. But after these two large deduc- tions from the amount complained of, what remains ? Very little, certainly, which we cannot even now see through ; that is, which we cannot assign an adequate reason for ; and to the eye of faith nothing remains. The world becomes a mirror which reflects without blot or shadow the infinite goodness of its Creator and Governor. Death remains ; but that is no evil, for what we call death is only the introduction to another life on earth, and if this be not a higher and better life than the one just ended, it is our own fault. Our life is really continuous, and the fact that the subse- quent stages of it lie beyond our present range of im- mediate vision is of no more importance, and no more an evil, than the corresponding fact that we do not now remember our previous existence in antecedent ages. Death alone, or in itself considered, apart from the antecedent dread of it which is irrational, and apart from the injury to the feelings of the survi- vors, which is a necessary consequence of that attach- ment to each other from which so much of our hap- piness springs, is not even an apparent evil ; it is mere change and development, like the passage from the embryonic to the adult condition, from the blos- som to the fruit.'*
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22. In " Ways of the Spirit, and other Essays," by- Professor Frederick Henry Hedge, the twelfth chapter, upon " The Human Soul," strongly advocates rein- carnation. By the publishers' consent we reprint the pages referring to it : —
" We reach back with our recollection and find no beginning of existence. Who of us knows anything except by report of the first two years of earthly life ? No one remembers the time when he first said ' 1/ or thought 4 1.' We began to exist for others before we began to exist for ourselves. Our experience is not co-extensive with our being, and memory does not comprehend it. We bear not the root, but the root us.
" What is the root ? We call it soul. Our soul, we call it ; properly speaking, it is not ours, but we are its. It is not a part of us, but we are a part of it. It is not one article in an inventory of articles which together make up our individuality, but the root of that individuality. It is larger than we are, and other than we are — that is, than our conscious self. The conscious self does not begin until some time after the birth of the individual. It is not aborig- inal, but a product, — as it were, the blossoming of an individuality. We may suppose countless souls which never bear this product, which never blossom into self. And the soul which does so blossom exists before that blossom unfolds.
" How long before, it is impossible to say ; whether the birth, for example, of a human individual is the soul's beginning to be ; whether a new soul is fur- nished to each new body, or the body given to a pre- existing soul. It is a question on which theology throws no light, and which psychology but faintly illustrates. But so far as that faint illustration reaches
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it favors the supposition of preexistence. That sup- position seems best to match the supposed continued existence of the soul hereafter. Whatever had a be- ginning in time, it should seem must end in time. The eternal destination which faith ascribes to the soul presupposes an eternal origin. On the other hand, if the preexistence of the soul were assured it would carry the assurance of immortality.
" An obvious objection, and one often urged against this hypothesis, is the absence of any recollection of a previous life. If the soul existed before its union with this present organization, why does it never recall any circumstance, scene, or experience of its former state ? There have been those who professed to remember a past existence ; but without regarding those pre- tended reminiscences, or regarding them only as il- lusions, I answer that the previous existence may not have been a conscious existence. In that case there would have been no recorded experience, and conse- quently nothing to recall. But suppose a conscious existence antecedent to the present, the soul could not preserve the record of a former organization. The new organization with its new entries must necessarily efface the record of the old. For memory depends on the continuity of association. When the thread of that continuity is broken, the knowledge of the past is gone. If, in a state of unconsciousness, one were taken entirely out of his present surroundings ; if falling asleep in one set of circumstances, like Chris- topher Sly in that play, he were to wake in another, were to wake to entirely new conditions ; especially if during that sleep his body were to undergo a change, — he would lose on waking all knowledge of the former life for want of a connecting link between it
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and the new. And this, according to the supposition, is precisely what has happened to the soul at birUi. The birth into the present was the death of the old, — 'a sleep and a forgetting.' The soul went to sleep in one body, it woke in a new. The sleep is a gulf of oblivion between the two.
" And a happy thing, if the soul preexisted, it is for us that we remember nothing of its former life. The memory of a past existence would be a drag on the present, engrossing our attention much to the pre- judice of this life's interests and claims. The back- ward-looking soul would dwell in the past instead of the present, and miss the best uses of life.
" But though on the supposition of a former exist- ence the soul would not be likely to preserve the record of that existence, it would nevertheless retain the effect. It would not, on assuming its present conditions, be as though it had never before been. Its past experience would essentially modify it ; it would take a character from its former state. If a moral and intellectual being, it would bring into the world of its present destination certain tendencies and dis- positions, the growth of a previous life. And thus the moral law and the moral nature of the soul would assert themselves with retributions transcending the limits of a single existence, and reaching on from life to life of the pilgrim soul.
"It is commonly conceded that there are native differences of character in men, — different propensi- ties, tempers, not wholly explained by difference of circumstances or education. They show themselves where circumstances and education have been the same ; they seem to be innate. These are sometimes ascribed to organization. But organization is not
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final. That, again, requires to be explained. Accord- ing to my thinking, it is the soul that makes organiza- tion, not organization the soul. The supposition of a previous existence would best explain these differences as something carried over from life to life, — the harvest of seed that was sown in other states, and whose fruit remains, although the sowing is remem- bered no more.
" This was the theory of the most learned and acute of the Christian Fathers (Origen), and though never adopted and sanctioned by the church, has been oc- casionally revived in later time. Of all the theories re- specting the origin of the soul it seems to me the most plausible, and therefore the one most likely to throw light on the question of a life to come."
V.
THE POETEY OF REINCARNATION IN WESTERN LITERATURE.
Poets, the first instructors of mankind. — Horace.
Poets are the truest diviners of nature. — Bulwer-Lytton.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves un- derstand. — Plato.
Poets should he lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, hut should announce and lead. — Emer- son.
We caM those poets who are first to mark Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark While others only note that day is gone.
Holmes.
O brave poets, keep back nothing, Nor mix falsehood with the whole. Look up Godward ! Speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul ! Hold, in high poetic duty Truest Truth, the fairest beauty.
Mrs. Browning.
The spirit of the Poets came at morn
To Sinai, summoned by the Lord's command,
Singers and Seers ; those born and those unborn The chosen souls of men, a solemn band.
The noble army ranged, in viewless might
Around that mountain peak which pierces heaven ;
Greater and lesser teachers, sons of light,
Their number was ten thousand score and seven.
Then Allah took a covenant with his own, Saying, "My wisdom and my word receive.
Speak of me unto men, known or unknown, Heard or unheard : bid such as will believe.' '
"Bear witness then," spake Allah, " souls most dear, I am your Lord, and ye heralds of mine." Thenceforward through all lands his Poets bear The message of the mystery divine.
Edwin Arnold.
THE POETRY OF REINCARNATION IN WESTERN LITERATURE.
The poets are the seers of the race. Their best work comes from the intuitional heights where they dwell, conveying truths beyond reason, not understood even by themselves, but merely transmitted through them. They are the few tall pines towering above the common forest to an extraordinary exaltation, where they catch the earliest and latest sunbeams which pro- long their day far beyond the limits below, and pene- trating into the rare upper currents whose whisperings seldom descend to the crowd.
However diverse the forms of their expression, the heart of it is thoroughly harmonious. They are always prophets voicing a divine message received in the mount, and in these modern days they are almost the only prophets we have. Therefore it is not a mere pleasantry to collect their testimony upon an unusual theme. When it is found that, though working inde- pendently, they are in deep accord upon reincarna- tion, the inevitable conclusion is that their common in- spiration means something — namely, that their gospel is worth receiving.
It may be objected that these poems are merely dreamy effusions along the same line of lunacy, with
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no real attachment to the solid foundations upon which all wholesome poetry is based ; that they are kinks in the intellects of genius displaying the weakness of men otherwise strong. But so universal a feeling can- not be disposed of in that way, especially when it is found to contribute to the solution of life's mystery. All the poets believe in immortality, though unaided reason and observation cannot demonstrate it. Some inexperienced people deride the fact that nearly all poetry centres upon the theme of Love — the most il- logical and airy of sentiments. But the deepest sense of the world is nourished by the certainty of these "vague " truths. So the presence of reincarnation in the creed of the poets may give us courage to confide in our own impressions, for "all men are poets at heart." What they have dared publish we may ven- ture to believe and will find a source of strength.
It is well known that the idea of reincarnation abounds in oriental poetry. But as our purpose is to demonstrate the prevalence of the same thought among our own poets, most of whom are wholly independent of eastern influence, we shall here confine our atten- tion to the spontaneous utterances of American and European poets. We shall find that the great major- ity of the highest occidental poets lean toward this thought, and many of them unhesitatingly avow it. For convenience we divide our study into four parts, comprising forty-two authors.