based on
Reincarnation and on its foundation, the law of Causality, that this
faith gives them patience in the present and hope for the future; for
it teaches that man, every moment he lives, is subject to the
circumstances he has created, and that, though bound by the past, he
is yet master of the future.

Why cannot we, in this troubled Europe of ours, accept this belief as
the solution of the distressing problem of the inequality of
conditions, for to the weak in rebellion against oppression it would
come as a soothing balm, whilst the strong would find in it a stimulus
to devoted pity such as wealth owes to poverty and happiness to
misfortune? Herein lies the solution of the whole social problem.

EGYPT.

If we pass from India to Egypt, the land of mystery, we again find the
world-wide doctrine of palingenesis hidden beneath the same veil.

According to Egyptian teaching, the theory of the "fall of the angels"
was accepted; the fallen angels were human souls[99] who had to become
reincarnated till they reached a state of purification; fallen into
the flesh, subjected to its vicissitudes and passions, these souls had
to evolve, in successive rebirths, until they had developed all their
faculties, obtained complete control over the lower nature, and won
back their original purity; then this latter would no longer be the
unconscious purity of youthful innocence, but the conscious purity of
mature age, _i.e._, of the soul that has known both good and evil in
the course of its experiences, has overcome the serpent of matter, the
tempter, and voluntarily chosen the life of virtue.

The "Judgment" of the after-life is determined by the degree of
purity that has been attained; if insufficient, the soul returns to
earth, there to inhabit a human, an animal, or a vegetable form, in
accordance with its merits or demerits.

These lines prove that Egyptian teaching has come down to us, covered
with gross dross and slag, as it were, which must be subjected to
careful sifting; when this is done, we see that it also sets forth the
transmigrations to which the elements of the various vehicles are
subjected,[100] the physical ternary[101] rises from the dead, the
animal man[102] transmigrates; and man, properly so-called,[103]
reincarnates, but the details of these processes have been so confused
in such fragments of Egyptian palingenesis as we possess that it is no
easy matter to find the traces of this classification.

F