race has evolved morally and that the collective
conscience marks a higher point on the ethical thermometer than in the
past is too obvious for argument.

Now, how is that evolutionary progress to be accounted for? It will not
do to say that the Christian religion has wrought the change because,
splendid as are the teachings of the Christ, the world has not accepted
them and shaped its civilization by them. If it had done so the world
war would have been impossible. Not only have the so-called Christian
nations wrangled and fought over commercial spoils through all their
history but class has been arrayed against class and every gain in
either personal liberty or economic improvement has been wrested by
force from those who profited by the misfortunes of others. In other
words, the particular improvements that should have been brought about
by religion were compelled, not freely volunteered. All religious
teaching helps but, allowing all we reasonably may for the influence of
Christianity, we are still unable to account for the change in the
common conscience of the race, an evolutionary gain that has been going
steadily on since long, long before the coming of the Christ. How then
shall we account for it?

If the hypothesis of reincarnation is sound the progress of the race in
morality becomes simple. The majority of the great groups of souls that
constituted the civilized nations in the time when Rome was mistress of
the world have had several incarnations in that time and in each sojourn
on the astral plane have had the severe lesson of the painful reaction
from cruelty to others. Thus does nature gradually change the cruel man
to the merciful man. In every incarnation the soul grows more humane as
well as more intelligent. All of the lessons learned in any incarnation
are carried forward into the next life, and thus compassion grows until
there is ultimately perfect sympathy with all suffering. Both the
progress of the soul and of the race are comprehensible from the
viewpoint of reincarnation.

Except by that hypothesis how is it possible to explain such
evolutionary progress? Those who do not believe in the pre-existence of
the soul and hold that it is in some way brought into being at the time
of conception or birth, are put in the very illogical position of saying
that the reason why the world is better now than it was in the Roman
period is because it pleases God to create a better kind of souls now
than he