eory."

Adam shook his head. "I understand heredity," he said, "but karma and
recapitulation are too much for me."

"Karma is our heritage from former existences," she answered, "that
may have been lived here or elsewhere. It is the sum of our past, good
and bad. It is based on a belief in reincarnation, and it is the law
that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. It is justice
untempered by mercy, and it is at variance with the doctrine of
vicarious atonement, though one may believe it and worship Christ as
the highest type of love the world has ever known. Naturally, it does
not appeal to the people who are willing to let some one bear the
cross for them, and yet I have wondered whether, if we were sure we
should not gather figs from thistles, we should sow the thistles so
freely. The recapitulation theory makes the child pass through the
evolutionary stages of the nation or nations he represents. It has a
kind of seven ages of man of its own, and brings him down through all
phases,--the savage, the hunter, the explorer, the conqueror, the
builder. I don't pretend fully to understand it. I heard one of its
ablest exponents say once, 'The soul of the German nation is in the
German boy.' Heredity curses or blesses, sometimes both. Before any of
these theories prospective parents might well hesitate."

"Which do you believe?" asked Adam, curiously.

She reflected a moment. "A little of all three; not all of any of
them; one would have to be a profound student to understand fully what
their adherents claim for them. Heredity plays strange freaks now and
then. It is easier to account for Abraham Lincoln by the second theory
than by either of the others. His shiftless, untidy mother and
commonplace father do not explain such a soul as his; nor was there
any reversion in his childhood to the original savage instincts that
make children dismember grasshoppers--rather the reverse. I like
better to think that, like that other Deliverer, who was a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief, he came to do the will of his and
our Father which art in heaven,--came gladly, freely, knowing the end
from the beginning."

Adam sat up suddenly and looked at her with startled eyes. "Then you
think--you mean--you don't believe--surely you don't believe we have
anything to do with our coming here?"

She smiled. "Surely I do. Our coming is sad enough when we do it
voluntarily. It would be quite intolerable to have existence t