The Idea of Reincarnation

(We agree for the most part with the following article, written by a clergyman of the Church of England. Next week, Father Thurston, S.J., will give the Roman Catholic view.—En. Sfiectator.1 PEINCARNATION ! There is subtle magic in the - It piques the imagination, shedding the glamour of possible romance over one's prosaic existence, and investing with a larger importance one's commonplace self. -Fancy 'ranges over the varied roles one may have filled - in the drama of history. Wistfully, one wants it 'to be true! But• the glitter does not prove. the gold ; there 'is' the acid test in reserve.

IS any such test available here ? I venture to suggest that there iS, and that it may be -thu.s applied : How far do the underlying principles implied by this theory conform to the accepted conclusions of present-day thought.?

NoW,,reinearnatiOn (or metempsychosis), if I understand it .aright, -rests upon the formidable assumption that every -human organism born into this world depends, for its status as such, upon being endowed from without at some definite moment in its history with a ready- made " psychical entity or " soul," and, further, that this .role may be filled by some discarnated spirit, . very much as a clock might be transferred to a new case. That is to say, as reinearnationists we should be committed, to the (now discredited) view that the body is simply, the " receptacle " for a soul, as the case is the receptacle for the clock.

Here, obviously, we arc plunged into the mystery. of Life itself. What has Biology, the Science of Life, to tell us ? Broadly, this : Each of us dates individual existence from a microscopic germ-cell, which is the converging. point of separate life-streams originating in. a remote past.

In this cell, from the moment of derivation from the parent elements, . the entire individual-to-be—". body and soul "—was implicit. Developing on the definite lines prescribed for it by its ancestry, and drawing always for growth on its environment while retaining its identity throughout, the .germ-cell grew to rational self-consciousness as an organic whole.

That is to say, a human organism does not arise as a " corpus" awaiting an " ego." It originates in its entirety from the germ-cell ; it begins its career as a unity ; and from germ-cell to adult it is one and the same.

How and at what point, then, in that unbroken line of its history could such a wholly new and revolutionary factor as an alien personality have entered the organism from without, the true " ego " being already in possession ? How, in fact, is the reincarnation of a previously existing " ego " imaginable except on the assumption that a body- were created or assembled de novo to receive it ?

. But the matter, so far from being a merely biological one, touches the very notion of personality itself—faces us, in fact, with the metaphysical mystery of personal identity involved in the apparent truism " I am myself and nobody else," with its tremendous implication that every self-conscious being stands alone, confronting all other existence across that immeasurable gulf which divides percipient subject from object perceived.

Now, what is this personality, this " ego," this thing I am, which (for me) stamps all else with the quality of " otherness," and makes me (willy nilly) the centre of my world, so that I can scarce conceive of its existence without myself ? .• What is it that survives the periodic renewal of the particles composing my body ? Whatever else it may be, it is at any rate some centre or nucleus of self- consciousness, some integrating and unifying entity in virtue of which " I "—the supra-bodily, transcendental, real " I "—am not merely a diverse and complicated bundle of sensations, thoughts, and desires, but a psychologically indkisible unit.

So strongly do I hold this view that I cannot admit so-called dissociation of (or dual) personality to be more than dissociation of strata of memories and experiences within the one basically intact being. Indeed, so firmly am I convinced of my essential oneness that, if every single characteristic of an ancestor had descended to me, together with every particle of his body, I hold that I should be entirely distinct from him ; I should be—myself. In other words, I, whosoever I may be, am so very much myself that I am unique ; however many generations have preceded or will follow me, " I " could never have occurred before, and can never occur again.

The inevitable inference is that my present earth-life is my first—and my last.

Yet in spite of all this, I have lived before. Pre- existence—not personal pre-existence or previous incarna- tion—is a thought which I cannot evade. For, not only am I, as a human,being, heir to a vital principle preserved (by means of the undying germ-plasm) and handed down in continuous succession from the dawn of humanity; but my life stretches back into a remote past which antedates matter itself.

It were idle to-day to maintain that the first living cell was but a chance collocation of chemical elements. Before its advent there existed, as a perpetual overflow from the Divine Fountain-head, Life . itself, diffused, 1omogeneous, and impersonal, awaiting incarnation ; ready to be " condensed " by impact on matter, and thus ro make it the vehicle for propagating finite (and eventually personal) beings.

I, then, have lived before, like every other creature, from an amoeba, to, a Shakespeare, that has ever tenanted. the.earth; on the broad. bosom of that:mighty life-stream which irrigates •alLexistenee. , _ . As to my individual 'self; 'I alp content to &Heft that it came into being some few decades ago. For, however attractive the cycle-view of existence, how much grander . the conception (unfolded by the genius of Bergson) of life as an irresistible surge. and progression, thrusting its way forward with gathering force .in a Universe where "no repetitions are possible" and there is no turning back ! • • . • If such be our Universe, it is one in which reincarnation. is unthinkable.. Then, of the millions who, have gone, before us, not one may re:enter the. range of those physical conditions through which ". selfhood " was attained; all are departed to be refashioned upon. a higher, plane than this ; nor shall we, their successors, " pass this way.

again." .

The most concrete and durable fact of. existence is self-conscious personality. The Hand of Design has led us from remote impersonal beginnings to its achievernenti and Destiny is writ large upon it by the, same Hand;.- but an interminable cycle of .earth-lives leaves, .scant space for an element which I hold inseparable from that Destiny—viz., . that we. . should be essentially, and