ese teachers taught that the soul consists of three parts, the
first being the "kuei," which had its seat in the belly, and which
perished with the body; the second being the "ling," which had its seat
in the heart or chest, and which persisted for some time after death,
but which eventually disintegrated; and the third, or "huen," which had
its seat in the brain, and which survived the disintegration of its
companions, and then passed on to other existences.

As strange as it may appear to many readers unfamiliar with the subject,
the ancient Druids, particularly those dwelling in ancient Gaul, were
familiar with the doctrine of Reincarnation, and believed in its tenets.
These people, generally regarded as ancient barbarians, really possessed
a philosophy of a high order, which merged into a mystic form of
religion. Many of the Romans, upon their conquest of Gallia, were
surprised at the degree and character of the philosophical knowledge
possessed by the Druids, and many of them have left written records of
the same, notably in the case of Aristotle, Caesar, Lucan, and Valerius
Maximus. The Christian teachers who succeeded them also bore witness to
these facts, as may be seen by reference to the works of St. Clement,
St. Cyril, and other of the early Christian Fathers. These ancient
"barbarians" entertained some of the highest spiritual conceptions of
life and immortality--the mind and the soul. Reynaud has written of
them, basing his statements upon a careful study of the ancient beliefs
of this race: "If Judea represents in the world, with a tenacity of its
own the idea of a personal and absolute God; if Greece and Rome
represent the idea of society, Gaul represents, just as particularly,
the idea of immortality. Nothing characterized it better, as all the
ancients admit. That mysterious folk was looked upon as the privileged
possessor of the secrets of death, and its unwavering instinctive faith
in the persistence of life never ceased to be a cause of astonishment,
and sometimes of fear, in the eyes of the heathen." The Gauls possessed
an occult philosophy, and a mystic religion, which were destroyed by the
influences of the Roman Conquest.

The philosophy of the Druids bore a remarkable resemblance to the Inner
Doctrine of the Egyptians, and their successors, the Grecian Mystics.
Traces of Hermeticism and Pythagoreanism are clearly discernible,
although the connecting link that bound them together has been lost to