human soul as an entity separable from the gross physical
organism. Consequently they do not discuss the question whether the
individual soul existed in the past or will continue to exist after
the death of the body. This kind of question does not disturb their
minds. They generally maintain that the individual soul is inseparable
from the body or the brain or nervous system; consequently what we
call soul or the conscious entity or the thinker is produced along
with the birth of the organism or brain, lasts as long as the body
lasts and dies when the organism is dissolved into its elements. But
those, on the other hand, who accept the theory of Reincarnation admit
the existence of soul as a conscious entity which is independent of
the physical organism, that it continues to live after death and that
it existed before the birth of the body. The theory of heredity has
always been supported by the materialistic scientists, atheists and
agnostics of all ages and also by those who believe in the special
creation of the first man and woman at a certain definite time and
that their qualities, character, life and soul have been transmitted
to all humanity through successive generations. The commonly accepted
meaning of the theory of heredity is that all the well-marked
peculiarities, both physical and mental, in the parents are handed on
to the children; or, in other words, heredity is that property of an
organism by which its peculiar nature is transmitted to its
descendants.

In the whole history of humanity there has never been a time when this
question of heredity has been discussed so minutely and in so many
different ways as it has been in the present century. Although this
theory was known in the East by the ancient Vedanta philosophers, by
the Buddhists of the pre-Christian era and by the Greek philosophers
in the West, still it has received a new impetus and has grown with