metamorphosis, pursues the
palingenesic course of its eternal destiny....

"... Let us, then, add the teachings of metempsychosis to those of the
Gospel, and place Pythagoras by the side of Jesus...."

Andre Pezzani concludes in the following words his remarkable book on
_The Plurality of the Soul's Lives_:

"Apart from the belief in previous lives, nothing can be explained,
neither the coming of a new soul into this evil world, the often
incurable bodily infirmities, the disproportionate division of wealth,
nor the inequality in intelligence and morality. The justice of God
lies behind the monstrous phantom of chance. We understand neither
what man is, whence he comes, nor whither he goes; original sin does
not account for the particular fate of individuals, as it is the same
for all. Roughly speaking, it clears up no difficulties, but rather
adds to them the most revolting injustice. Once accept the theory of
pre-existence, and a glorious light is thrown on the dogma of sin, for
it becomes the result of personal faults from which the guilty soul
must be purified.

"Pre-existence, once admitted as regards the past, logically implies a
succession of future existences for all souls that have not yet
attained to the goal and that have imperfections and defilements from
which to be cleansed. In order to enter _the circle of happiness_ and
leave _the circle of wanderings_, one must be pure.

"We have opposed error, and proclaimed truth, and we firmly believe
that the dogmas of pre-existence and the plurality of lives are true."

Thomas Browne, in _Religio Medici_, section 6, hints at Reincarnation:

"Heresies perish not with their authors, but, like the river Arethusa,
though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in
another ... revolution of time will restore it, when it will flourish
till it be condemned again. For as though there were a Metempsychosis,
and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find, after
certain Revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat
them.... Each man is not only himself, there hath been many Diogenes
and as many Timons, though but few of that name; men are lived over
again, the world is now as it was in ages past; there was none then
but there hath been someone since that parallels him, and is, as it
were, his revived self."

Lessing, in _The Divine Education of the Human Race_, vigorously
opposes a Lutheran divine who rejects reincarnation: