for their reception, are sent
back to earth to reanimate other bodies.

Aristotle held the opinion that the souls of human beings are sparks
from the divine flame, while Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy,
taught that spirit acting upon matter produced the elements and the
earth. There is plenty of evidence going to show that the early Fathers
in the Christian church believed in the doctrines of reincarnation
and the renewal of worlds. Neither is there any doubt but that this
philosophy came from the East, where it originated. It is thought that
the ancient philosophers who elaborated these doctrines were unable to
account for the existence of evil without a belief in the immortality of
the soul. Spirit was eternal, as was also matter.

A soul, upon leaving the body, in course of time found its way back to
earth, surrounded by conditions suited to its stage of growth. Here it
must reap all the consequences of its former life. It must also during
its stay on earth make the conditions for its next appearance upon an
earthly plane. So soon as through a succession of births and deaths
it had perfected itself, it entered into a state of Nirvana. It was
absorbed into the great Universal Soul. Nothing is ever lost.

"Many a house of life
Hath held me--seeking ever Him who wrought
These prisons of the senses, sorrow fraught;
Sore was my ceaseless strife!
But now,
Thou builder of this tabernacle--Thou!
I know Thee.
Never shalt Thou build again
These walls of pain,
Nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay
Fresh rafters on the clay;
Broken Thy house is, and the ridge-pole split!
Delusion fashioned it!
Safe pass I thence--deliverance to obtain."(60)

60) Edwin Arnold, The light of Asia.

Regarding the opinions of the ancients on the subject of the eternity of
matter, Higgins, in his learned work on Celtic Druids, says:

"The eternity of matter is a well known tenet of the Pythagoreans, and
whether right or wrong there can be no doubt that it was the doctrine
of the oriental school, whence Pythagoras drew his learning. It was a
principle taken or mistaken from, or found amongst, the debris of that
mighty mass of learning and science of a former period, of which, on
looking back as far as human ken can reach, the most learned men have
thought tha