chapter xv

), and Edgar Allen Poe in _Eureka_, record similar experiences. Mr. H. Fielding Hall, in _The Soul of a People_{4} (London, 1902), pp. 290-308, reports several very remarkable cases of responsible natives of Burma who stated that they could recall former lives passed by them as men and women. Mr. Hall has carefully investigated these cases, and gives us the impression that they are worthy of scientific consideration.

[627] Cf. Ferenczi, op. cit., p. 316, &c. Professor Freud's theory of dreams supports entirely, but does not imply our hypothesis that some (and probably many) abnormal dreams of a rare kind, whether good or bad in tendency, may be due to the latent content of subconsciousness, out of which they undoubtedly arise, having been collected and carried over from a previous state of consciousness parallel to our present one. In respect to our present life Professor Freud holds, as a result of psycho-analysis of thousands of dream subjects, that the latent content of every dream in the adult is directly dependent upon mental processes which frequently reach back to the earliest childhood; and he gives detailed cases in illustration. In other words, there is always a latent dream-material behind the conscious dream-content, and probably a part of it was innate in the child at birth, and hence, according to our view, was pre-existent. (Cf. Ernest Jones, _Freud's Theory of Dreams_, in _Amer. Journ. Psych._, April 1910, xxi, No. 2, pp. 301 ff.)

[628] Cf. Du Prel, _Philosophy of Mysticism_, ii. 25 ff., 34 ff.

[629] _The Dream of Ravan_, in _Dublin Univ. Mag._, xliii. 468.

[630] Myers, in _Proc. S. P. R._, vii. 305.

[631] James, _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 483.

[632] The esoteric teaching in many of the mystic schools of antiquity was that the atoms of each human body transmigrate through all lower forms of life during the long period supposed to intervene between death and re-birth of the individuality. This doctrine seems to be one of the main sources of the corruption which crept into the ancient re-birth doctrines and transformed many of them into doctrines of transmigration of the human soul into animal and plant bodies; and some unscrupulous priesthoods openly taught such corrupted doctrines as a means of making the ignorant populace submissive to ecclesiastical rule, the theological theory expounded by such priesthoods being that the evil-doer, but not the keeper of the letter of the canonical law, is condemned to expiate his sins through birth in brute bodies. The pure form of the mystic doctrine was that after the lapse of the long period of disembodiment the individuality reconstructs its human body anew by drawing to itself the identical atoms which constituted its previous human body--these atoms, and not the individuality, having transmigrated through all the lower kingdoms. Such an esoteric doctrine probably lies behind the exoteric Egyptian teaching that the human soul after the death of its body passes through all plant and animal bodies during a period of three thousand years, after which it returns to human embodiment. Some scholars have held that the exoteric interpretation of this theory and its consequent literal interpretation as a transmigration doctrine led the Egyptians to mummify the bodies of their dead. Cf. Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura_, Book III, ll. 843-61; and Herodotus, Book II, on Egypt.

[633] Cf. Dr. L. S. Fugairon's _La Survivance de l'âme, ou la Mort et la Renaissance chez les êtres vivants; études de physiologie et d'embryologie philosophiques_ (Paris, 1907); cf. Revel, _Le Hasard_, p. 457.

[634] Darwin never considered or attempted to suggest what it is that of itself really evolves, for it cannot be the physical body which only _grows_ from immaturity to maturity and then dissolves. Darwin thus overlooked the essential factor in his whole doctrine; while the Druids and other ancients, wiser than we have been willing to admit, seem not only to have anticipated Darwin by thousands of years, but also to have quite surpassed him in setting up their doctrine of re-birth, which explains both the physical and psychical evolution of man.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

Superscripted letters are indicated by {superscript}.

The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations.

Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors have been silently closed while those requiring interpretation have been left open.

Other punctuation has been corrected without note.

The following misprints have been corrected: "Fortelling" standardized to "foretelling" (page 213) "fom" corrected to "from" (footnote 342) "Name" corrected to "Names" (Index)

Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.

The following symbols were substituted for images on pages 272 and 273: Maltese cross = [C] Triangle = [T] Jupiter = [J] Mercury = [M] Venus = [V] Saturn = [S] Moon = [Mo] Sun = [O] Large Asterisk [*]