like the
companion of the above man--the Man from Texas, who not only says:
"You've got to show me," but who also demands that the thing be "placed
in my hand." And, after all, one has no right to criticize these
people--they are but manifesting the scientific spirit of the age which
demands facts as a basis for theories, rather than theories that need
facts to prove them. And, unless Reincarnation is able to satisfy the
demands of this class of thinkers, the advocates of the doctrine need
not complain if the scientific mind dismisses the doctrine as "not
proven."

After all, the best proof along the above mentioned lines--in fact,
about the only possible strict proof--is the fragmentary recollections
of former lives, which many people possess at times--these recollections
often flashing across the mind, bringing with it a conviction that the
place or thing "has been experienced before." Nearly every person has
had glimpses of something that appeared to be a recollection from the
past life of the individual. We see places that we have never known, and
they seem perfectly familiar; we meet strangers, and we are convinced
that we have known them in the past; we read an old book and feel that
we have seen it before, often so much so that we can anticipate the
story or argument of the writer; we hear some strange philosophical
doctrine, and we recognize it as an old friend. Many people have had
this experience in the matter of Occultism--in the very matter of the
doctrine of Reincarnation itself--when they first heard it, although it
struck them as strange and unusual, yet they felt an inner conviction
that it was an old story to them--that they "had heard it all before."
These experiences are by far too common to be dismissed as mere fancy or
coincidence. Nearly every living person has had some experience along
this line.

A recent writer along the lines of Oriental Philosophy has said
regarding this common experience of the race: "Many people have had
'peculiar experiences' that are accountable only upon the hypothesis of
Metempsychosis. Who has not experienced the consciousness of having felt
the thing before--having thought it some time in the dim past? Who has
not witnessed new scenes that appear old, very old? Who has not met
persons for the first time, whose presence awakened memories of a past
lying far back in the misty ages of long ago? Who has not been seized at
times with the consciousness of a mighty 'oldness