I induce the manifestations of a living Philomene. She
no longer suffers, seems very calm and always answers coldly and
distinctly. She knows that she is unpopular in the neighborhood, but
no one is a penny the worse and she will be even with them yet. She
was born in 1702; her maiden name was Philomene Cherpigny; her
grandfather on the mother's side was called Pierre Machon and lived
in Ozan. In 1732 she married, at Chevroux, a man named Carterton, by
whom she had two children, both of whom she lost.'"

Before her incarnation, Philomene had been a little girl who died in
infancy. Previous to that, she was a man who committed murder, and
it was to expiate this crime that she endured such suffering in the
darkness, and after her life as a little girl, when she had no time
to do wrong. Colonel de Rochas did not think it wise to carry the
hypnosis further, because the subject appeared exhausted and her
paroxysms were painful to watch. He obtained analogous and even more
surprising results with other subjects.

Maeterlinck's comments upon all this are of negligible value. He
pays a fine tribute to the theory of reincarnation. "There was never
a more beautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful and
probable creed," he says: yet for all that, it is clear that he has
not been at pains fully to inform himself of the Eastern teaching.

Colonel de Rochas' success, and that of all other experimenters
along these lines, is due to their unconscious following of the
Eastern method. He himself says that he "avoided everything that
should put the subject on a definite tack,"--that is, he refrained
from voluntary suggestion.

Having referred so frequently and so familiarly to the Eastern
belief in reincarnation, and hinted at a more solid foundation for
that belief than the single series of experiments above referred to,
it would be unfair to the reader not to gratify his curiosity more
fully in regard to these matters. In the light of our hypothesis
they take on an importance which justifies their further
consideration here.

VIII THE EASTERN TEACHING

ORIENTAL PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS

Western physical science, pursued with ardor and devotion for the
past hundred years, has attained to a control over physical phenomena
little short of magical, but in our understanding and mastery of
subjective phenomena we are far behind those Eastern peoples who
have made these matters the subject of study and experiment for