The weary pilgrim oft doth seek to know QUARLES. Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million of them walking the earth openly at noontide; some half hundred have vanished from it, some half hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch tick one. CARLYLE. Truth dwells in gulphs, whose deeps hide shades so rich GEORGE CHAPMAN. I am: how little more I know! WHITTIER. Where wert thou, Soul, ere yet my body born WADDINGTON. REINCARNATION A STUDY OF FORGOTTEN TRUTH BY E. D. WALKER "Ex oriente lux" THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY 253 WEST 72ND STREET 1911 Soul, dwelling oft in God's infinitude And sometimes seeming no more part of me A path I know not, from a source to a bourn D. M. MULOCK. Insect and reptile, fish and bird and beast, Cast their worn robes aside, fresh robes to don; Tree, flower, and moss, put new year's raiments on; Each natural type, the greatest as the least, Renews its vesture when its use hath ceased. How should man's spirit keep in unison With the world's law of outgrowth, save it won To leave and frame anew, if God inspire! PREFACE. “THE idea of a transmigration of souls has hitherto remained a dream of the fancy, nor has any one yet succeeded in giving it a higher moral significance for the order of the universe." So writes Hermann Lotze, the German philosopher, in his magnificent "Microcosm," expressing the common feeling of Christendom. If this little book achieves its purpose it will show the strength and value of that dreamy idea. The present perplexity of all Christendom upon the deepest problems of life, the sense of blind fate oppressing mankind, the despairing restlessness of many leading poets, the absence of sublime ideals in art, the prevalence of materialism and agnosticism (if not in philosophy, in the most vital form of practical life), all feed ide of dissatisfaction which |