one Infinite Spirit, and that all other spiritual beings have proceeded
from Him as the rays of light are flashed from the sun; and that, in
time, all will return to Him again and be absorbed in the being from
which they have come. Thus all spirits are supposed to have proceeded
from one source--God. As all natural life in the end is but a
manifestation of solar energy, so all human beings are supposed to be
only bits of God, for a time imprisoned in bodies, and some time to
return to the Deity and be absorbed in Him, or in it.

Another answer to the question as to the soul's origin is that of
Preëxistence. This may be called the Oriental theory, for almost the
whole Orient holds this view. The substance of the teaching is suggested
by Wordsworth, in his "Ode to Immortality," in the following lines:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar."

Many Occidentals have believed in preëxistence. One of the most
intelligent persons whom I have ever known once affirmed that she had
had thoughts which she was sure were memories of events which had
occurred in a previous life. This answer only pushes the question one
stage further back, and leaves us still inquiring, Where do the souls of
men originally come from?

Another answer to our question affirms that every individual soul is
created by God whenever a body is in readiness to receive it--that when
a body is born a soul is made to order for it. An old poet wrote as
follows: