tead.

"The disembodied spirits of man and beast return as the clouds to
renew the young streamlets of infancy....

"When a man dieth or leaveth his body, he wendeth through the gate of
oblivion and goeth to God, and when he is born again he cometh from
God and in a new body maketh his dwelling; hence is this saying:

"The body to the tomb and the spirit to the womb....

"This doctrine is none other than what God hath taught openly from the
very beginning....

"For truly the soul of a man goeth not to the body of a beast, as some
say....

"But the soul of the lower beast goeth to the body of the higher, and
the soul of the higher beast to the body of the savage, and the soul
of the savage to the man....

"And so a man shall be immortal in one body and one garment that
neither can fade nor decay.

"Ye who now lament to go out of this body, wept also when ye were born
into it...."[221]

"The person of man is only a mask which the soul putteth on for a
season; it weareth its proper time and then is cast off, and another
is worn in its stead....

"I tell you, of a truth, that the spirits which now have affinity
shall be kindred together, although they all meet in new persons and
names."[222]

In _Asiatic Researches_, Colebrooke states that the present Mohammedan
sect of the _Bohrahs_ believes in metempsychosis, as do the Hindus,
and, like the latter, abstains from flesh, for the same reason.

Thus we find the doctrine of Reincarnation at the heart of all the
great religions of antiquity. The reason it has remained in a germinal
state in recent religions--Christianity and Islamism--is that in the
latter Mohammed did not attain to the degree of a Hierophant, and in
all likelihood the race to which he brought light did not greatly need
to become acquainted with the law relating to the return to earth
life; whereas in the former the real teachings of the Christ were lost
when the Gnostics were exterminated, and Eusebius and Irenaeus, the
founders of exoteric Christianity, unable to grasp the _spirit_,
imposed the _letter_ throughout the religion.

THE DOCTRINE OF REBIRTH IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY.

In antiquity, science and philosophy were scarcely anything else than
parts of religion[223]; the most eminent scientists and the greatest
philosophers alike were all supporters of the established form of
religion, whenever they did not happen to be its priests, for the
temples were the common cradle of science and ph