he has no knowledge? To
inflict a punishment for any conduct or thought to which the memory does
not bear evidence, nor conscience furnish assent, nor the whole realm of
conscious experience reveal a trace, is both unethical and in violation of
the deepest laws of being.

Nor does it appear how this process, as a method of discipline, can
achieve what is expected of it. It is maintained that, ultimately, all the
myriads of separate souls will cross over this terrible stream of human
existence and reach the further shore of emancipation. But what aptitude,
or efficiency, there can be in metempsychosis itself to reach this end is
not apparent. That the soul should ultimately reach beatitude rather than
absolute, irremedial, degradation through this process is merely
_assumed_, and that without adequate foundation in reason.

In view of the well-known power of sin and its tendency to settle down,
through habit, into a permanent type of character; in view of the
well-attested scientific doctrine of heredity--a doctrine which easily
accounts for and explains every semblance of truth in transmigration--it
seems incredible that any soul in India could, through transmigration,
finally emerge out of the quicksand of sin and corruption which surround
and overwhelm it, especially when it is assumed that it has already passed
through many births.

It should also be remembered that, at its basis, this doctrine has its
face turned, with equal repugnance, against all sorts of work. Desire of
every kind, good as well as evil, is to be suppressed inasmuch as it is
the source of action, and action must bear its fruit, the eating of which
prolongs existence which, itself, is the burden to be removed. The
question is not how to become good and to overcome evil in life, but how
to shake off all personality. And this is accomplished, they say, by
abandoning all action and suppressing all desire whatever. How this can
result in holiness and lofty character is not evident. It is true that a
certain sort of "good works" have large value in this process of
emancipation. But quiescence rather than character is the thing
emphasized. Noble thoughts and aspirations are as fatal as are the basest
to immediate deliverance--they all disturb that equilibrium of the soul
which ushers it into its final rest. "The confinement of fetters is the
same whether the chain is of gold or of iron."

It is doubtless true that this doctrine has some elements of tr