hile their own unsought
trains of thought, feeling and imagery the rich mental panorama of
pictures and events, are taken for a series of substantial
revelations of the universe of being. An irresistible belief in
preexistence, immortality and transmigration, results.

On the contrary, in the Western world, the characteristic
tendencies are all different. Pantheistic theories are rarely
held, and the dreams and emotions which those theories are fitted
to feed are foreign and repulsive. An impassible barrier is
imagined separating humanity from every other form of being.
Speculative reason, imagination and affection, are chiefly
employed in scientific studies and social pursuits, or personal
schemes, external rather than internal. This absorption in
material things and evanescent affairs engenders in the spirit an
arid atmosphere of doubt and denial, in which no efflorescence of
poetic and mystic faiths can flourish. Thus, while the outward
utilities abound, hard negations spread abroad; and living,
personal apprehension of God, of an all pervasive Providence, and
of the immortality of the soul in any form, dies out either in
open infidelity or in a mere verbal acceptance of the established
creed of society. Consequently, to the average mind of the modern
Western world, the doctrine of transmigration remains a mere
fancy, although, as we shall immediately see, it has a strange
poetic charm, a deep metaphysical basis, and a high ethical and
religious quality.

The first ground on which the belief rests is the various strong
resemblances, both physical and psychical, connecting human beings
with the whole family of lower creatures. They have all the senses
in common with us, together with the rudiments of intelligence and
will. They all seem created after one plan, as if their varieties
were the gradulations of a single original type. We recognize
kindred forms of experience and modes of expression in ourselves
and in them. Now the man seems a travesty of the hog, the parrot,
the ape, the hawk, or the shark; now they seem travesties of him.
As we gaze at the ruminating ox, couched on the summer grass,
notice the slow rhythm of his jaw, and the wondering dreaminess of
his eyes, it is not difficult to fancy him some ancient Brahmin
transmigrated to this, and patiently awaiting his release. Nor is
it incongruous with our reason or moral feeling to suppose that
the cruel monsters of humanity may in a succeeding birth find