Another point may also be mentioned. The idea of transmigration and
reincarnation is here used as a possible solution for the extreme
difficulties which beset the question of the apparently fortuitous
brevity of some human lives. I do not, of course, propound it as
literally and precisely as it is here set down--it is not a forecast of
the future, so much as a symbolising of the forces of life--but _the
renewal of conscious experience_, in some form or other, seems to be the
only way out of the difficulty, and it is that which is here indicated.
If life is a probation for those who have to face experience and
temptation, how can it be a probation for infants and children, who die
before the faculty of moral choice is developed? Again, I find it very
hard to believe in any multiplication of human souls. It is even more
difficult for me to believe in the creation of new souls than in the
creation of new matter. Science has shown us that there is no actual
addition made to the sum of matter, and that the apparent creation of
new forms of plants or animals is nothing more than a rearrangement of
existing particles--that if a new form appears in one place, it merely
means that so much matter is transferred thither from another place. I
find it, I say, hard to believe that the sum total of life is actually
increased. To put it very simply for the sake of clearness, and
accepting the assumption that human life had some time a beginning on
this planet, it seems impossible to think that when, let us say, the two
first progenitors of the race died, there were but two souls in heaven;
that when the next generation died there were, let us say, ten souls in
heaven; and that this number has been added to by thousands and
millions, until the unseen world is peopled, as it must be now, if no
reincarnation is possible, by myriads of human identities, who, after
a single brief taste of incarnate life, join some vast community of
spirits in which they eternally reside. I do not say that this latter