tualists," although strictly speaking
they do not fit into that classification, for they hold that the
so-called "Spirit World" is not a place of permanent abode, but rather a
resting place between incarnations. These people prefer the name
"Spiritists," for they hold that man is essentially a spiritual
being--that the Spirit is the Real Man--and that that which we call Man
is but a temporary stage in the development and evolution of the
individual Spirit. The Spiritists hold that the individual Spirit
emanated from the Great Spirit of the Universe (called by one name or
another) at some distant period in the past, and has risen to its
present state of Man, through and by a series of repeated incarnations,
first in the form of the lowly forms of life, and then through the
higher forms of animal life, until now it has reached the stage of human
life, from whence it will pass on, and on, to higher and still higher
planes--to forms and states as much higher than the human state than man
is above the earthworm. The Spiritists hold that man will reincarnate in
earthly human bodies, only until the Spirit learns its lessons and
develops sufficiently to pass on to the next plane higher. They hold
that the planets and the countless fixed stars or suns, are but stages
of abode for the evolving Spirit, and that beyond the Universe as we
know it there are millions of others--in fact, that the number of
Universes is infinite. The keynote of this doctrine may be stated as
"Eternal Progression" toward the Divine Spirit. The Spirits do not
insist upon any particular theory regarding the constitution of the
soul--some of them speak merely of "soul and body," while others hold to
the seven-fold being--the general idea being that this is unimportant,
as the essential Spirit is after all the Real Self, and it matters
little about the number or names of its temporary garments or vehicles
of expression.

Still another class of Reincarnationists in the Western World incline
rather more toward the Grecian and Egyptian forms of the doctrine, than
the Hindu--the ideas of the Neo-Platonists which had such a powerful
effect upon the early Christian Church, or rather among the "elect few"
among the early Fathers of the Church, seeming to have sprung into
renewed activity among this class. These people, as we have said in the
beginning of this chapter, are rather inclined to group themselves into
small organizations or secret orders, rather than to