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"In a general way. The Volitionalists hold that the discarnate
individuality is fully conscious, and is capable of something
analogous to sense-perception, and is also capable of exercising
choice in the matter of reincarnation vehicles, and can reincarnate or
remain in the discarnate state as it chooses. They also believe that
discarnate individualities can communicate with one another, and with
at least some carnate individualities, by telepathy," he said. "The
Statisticalists deny all this; their opinion is that the discarnate
individuality is in a more or less somnambulistic state, that it is
drawn by a process akin to tropism to the nearest available
reincarnation vehicle, and that it must reincarnate in and only in
that vehicle. They are labeled Statisticalists because they believe
that the process of reincarnation is purely at random, or governed by
unknown and uncontrollable causes, and is unpredictable except as to
aggregates."

"That's a fairly good generalized summary," Dr. Harnosh of Hosh
grudged, unwilling to give a mere layman too much credit. He dipped a
spoon into a tobacco humidor, dusted the tobacco lightly with dried
_zerfa_, and rammed it into his pipe. "You must understand that our
modern Statisticalists are the intellectual heirs of those ancient
materialistic thinkers who denied the possibility of any discarnate
existence, or of any extraphysical mind, or even of extrasensory
perception. Since all these things have been demonstrated to be facts,
the materialistic dogma has been broadened to include them, but always
strictly within the frame of materialism.

"We have proven, for instance, that the human individuality can exist