ON THE MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS 213 It is evident-however we may explain the matter-that activities and sensibilities do persist and manifest themselves in the human organism quite independent of the ordinary and stereotyped endorgans, and this fact must go far to persuade us, not only that there is an inner, a more subtle, and a more durable body than that which

usually recognize, but that in some respects this latter body is a limitation and a hindrance to the activity of the former, and to the swiftness and range of the perceptions of the soul.

What, then, it will naturally be asked, is the object or purpose or use of our incarnation in this grosser body?—why, if there is such an ethereal or spiritual frame within, should it thus tend to accrete denser particles upon itself and ultimately to clothe itself in a vesture of so opaque and material a nature? It would be rash to attempt to answer so profound a question offhand-off one's own bat as it were; and still more rash perhaps to accept any of the ready-made answers which are offered in such profusion, and in so many different jargons and lingos, by the sects and schools, from the Gnostics and Theosophists to the most philistine of the chapels and churches. Yet if one may venture a suggestion, it would seem rather likely that the object and purpose and use of this process by which the soul is entangled in matter, and its operation and perception so strangely ham

pered and limited, is-limitation; that limitation itself and even hindrance are part and parcel of the great scheme of the soul's deliverance. But the further consideration of this I will defer to a later chapter.1

1 1 See chapter xiii. p. 243.

CHAPTER XII

REINCARNATION

THERE is a good deal of talk indulged in, on the subject of Reincarnation-talk of a rather cheap character. One does not quite see what is the use of saying that the ego will be reincarnated again some day, unless one has some sort of idea what one means by the ego, and unless one has some understanding of the sense in which the word "reincarnation" is used. If it is meant that your local and external self, approximately as you and your friends know it to-dayincluding dress, facial outline, professional skill, accomplishments, habits of mind and body, interests and enthusiasms-is going to repeat itself again in five or five hundred years, or has already appeared in this form in the past; one can only say "impossible!" and "I trust not!" For all these things depend on date, locality, heredity, surrounding institutions, social habits, current morality, and so forth, which-though they have certainly played their part in the spirit's growth —must infallibly be different at any other period (short of the whole universe repeating itself). And anyhow to have them repeated again da capo at some future time would be terribly dull.

But if you say "Of course I don't mean anything so silly as that," it becomes incumbent on you to say what you do mean.

Supposing, for instance, you had been planked down a baby in the Arabian desert, and grown up to maturity or middle age there, instead of where you are, would any of your presentday friends recognize you? Where would be your charming piano-playing, your excellent cricket, your rather sloppy water-color painting, your up-to-dateness in the theatrical world? Where your morality (with three wives of course) or your religion (something about "Christian dogs"), or where your British sang froid and impeccability? And if it is obvious that in such a case as this you would, owing to the changed conditions, be changed out of all recognition, much more-one might say-would this be the case if you had been born five hundred years ago, or were to be born again five hundred years hence. Your whole outlook on life, and its whole impress on you, would be different.

Of course I am not meaning, by these remarks, to say that reincarnation is in itself impossible or absurd; that would be prejudging the question. All I mean at present is that if we are going to study this subject, or theorize upon it, it is really necessary to define in some degree the terms which we use. I do not say that you, the reader, might not be reincarnated, but I think it is clear that if you were, we should have a good deal of trouble in following and find

ing you! It is clear that the you, so reappearing, would not be your well-known local and external self, but some deep nucleus, difficult perhaps for your best friend to recognize, and possibly even unknown or unrecognized by yourself at present. And similarly of some friend that you love for a thousand little tricks and ways. We all have such friends, and at times cherish a sentimental romance of their being restored to us in some future æon habited in their old guise and with their well-worn frocks and coats. But surely it is no good playing at hideand-seek like that. The common difficulties about the conventional heaven-the difficulty about meeting your old friend who used to be so good after-dinner stories, about meeting him with a harp in his hand and sitting on a damp cloud-is no whit the less a difficulty whatever future world may be the rendezvous. He would be changed (externally) and we should be changed, and it might well happen that if we did seem to recall any former intimacy we should both feel like strangers, and be as shy and tentative in our approaches to each other as school-children.

at

What do we mean by the letter "I"? and what do we mean by the word Reincarnation? These two questions wait for a reply.

It

The first is a terribly difficult question. lies (though neglected by the philosophers themselves) at the root of all philosophy. Perhaps really all life and experience are nothing but an