e Lethe,
but for which the Will would remember the various manifestations it
has caused. When we die, we throw off our individuality, like a
worn-out garment, and rejoice because we are about to receive a new
and a better one."

Edgar Allen Poe, speaking of the dim memories of bygone lives, says:

"We walk about, amid the destinies of our world-existence, encompassed
by divine but ever present Memories of a Destiny more vast--very
distant in the bygone time and infinitely awful.

"We live out a Youth peculiarly haunted by such dreams, yet never
mistaking them for dreams. As Memories we _know_ them. During our
_Youth_ the distinction is too clear to deceive us even for a moment.

"But now comes the period at which a conventional World-Reason awakens
us from the truth of our dream ... a mis-shapen day or a misfortune
that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another
life...." (_Eureka._)

Georges Sand, in _Consuelo_, sets forth the logic of Reincarnation;
and G. Flammarion expounds this doctrine in most of his works:
_Uranie_; _Les Mondes Imaginaires et les Mondes Reels_; _La Pluralite
des Mondes Habites_, etc.

Professor William Knight wrote in the _Fortnightly Review_ for
September, 1878:

"It seems surprising that in the discussions of contemporary philosophy
on the origin and destiny of the soul there has been no explicit revival
of the doctrines of Pre-existence and Metempsychosis.... They offer
quite a remarkable solution of the mystery of Creation, Translation, and
Extinction....

"Stripped of all extravagances and expressed in the modest terms of
probability, the theory has immense speculative interest and great
ethical value. It is much to have the puzzle of the origin of evil
thrown back for an indefinite number of cycles of lives and to have a
workable explanation of Nemesis...."

Professor W. A. Butler, in his _Lectures on the History of Ancient
Philosophy_, says:

"There is internally no greater improbability that the present may be
the result of a former state now almost wholly forgotten than that the
present should be followed by a future form of existence in which,
perhaps, or in some departments of which, the oblivion may be as
complete."

The Rev. William R. Alger, a Unitarian minister, adds:

"Our present lack of recollection of past lives is no disproof of
their actuality.... The most striking fact about the doctrine of the
repeated incarnations of the soul ... is t