ctions in the
appointed way from its birth; but by means of education something comes
into touch with man's inner life which is independent of any connection
with his heredity, and he may be in a position to assimilate the effects
of such external influences. The educator knows that such influences are
met by forces coming from man's inner nature. If this is not the case, all
instruction and training are meaningless. The unprejudiced educator finds
the boundary line between inherited talents and those inner forces of the
man himself which shine through them and originate in former lives, to be
very sharply marked. It is true, we cannot bring forward such weighty
proofs for things of this kind as we can for certain physical facts, by
means of scales; but then these are just the intimate things of life, and
one who has the power to appreciate such impalpable proofs will find them
convincing--even more convincing than palpable reality.

That animals may be trained, and thus, to a certain extent, acquire
qualities and capacities by education, is no objection to one who is able
to see reality, for apart from the fact that transitional stages are met
with all over the world, the results of training an animal by no means
fade away with its individual existence, as is the case with a man. What
is more, the fact has been emphasized that faculties acquired by domestic
animals through intercourse with man are transmitted, that is to say,
continue in the species, not in the individual. Darwin describes how dogs
fetch and carry without having been taught to do so, or without having
seen it done. Who would make such an assertion with regard to human
education?

Now there are thinkers whose observations have led them beyond the opinion
that a man is built by purely inherited forces from without. They rise to
the thought that a spiritual being, an individuality, exists before life
in the body, and fashions it; but many of them find it impossible to
conceive that there are repeated earthly lives, and that the fruits of
former lives are moulding forces during the intermediate state between two
lives. Let us take one instance from among the ranks of these thinkers.
Immanuel Hermann Fichte, son of the great Fichte, in his _Anthropology_
(p. 528) gives the observations which led him to the following conclusion:

"Parents are _not_ generators in the full sense of the word. They supply
organic substance, and not alone this, but also that int