iousness, and therefore of
memory, as certainly as a mountain range is a limitation of sight and
prevents one's knowing what lies beyond it. In higher realms we do know
our wider life and vaster consciousness that includes the memory of our
past incarnations. But when we come downward into another incarnation it
is as though we were descending in a narrow vale within mountain ranges
that stand between us and the wider world. Memory is dependent on things
not within the control of the will. Memory often fails to establish
facts which we wish to recall. We know, for example, the name of a
certain person. There is no doubt that we know it and yet it is
impossible to remember it at will. Tomorrow it will flash upon us, but
we cannot remember it now, try as we may. Now, if memory fails to
produce its record even when we have a mental picture of just how that
person looks, and know just where we have met him, it is certainly not
remarkable that with no such immediate connection with our last
incarnation we fail to recall it. It was perhaps in another part of the
world, and in another civilization, and is separated from us by the long
interval between incarnations. Of course memory likewise fails to
produce that record. But all of our past experiences are within the
soul, just as the records of all of the experiences of this life are in
the mind whether we can connect them with the present moment or not.

But it may be asked why it is that, if we do not remember events that
have occurred in past lives and people we have seen before, we do not at
least now have a knowledge of the facts previously familiar to us. What
the soul gains from incarnation to incarnation is not concrete facts but
something higher and far more valuable. It gains the essence of facts
which gives the understanding of their true relationship; and this is
the thing we call good judgment or common-sense. A man does not succeed
in business because he knows a lot of facts, but because he knows what
to do with the facts. An encyclopedia is full of facts but it cannot run
a business. Every theorist and dreamer is loaded with facts. The
successful man is the one with balance and judgment.

It might seem on first thought that one who has been a carpenter in a
previous incarnation should have no need to learn the name and use of a
saw, or one who has been a skillful penman to learn slowly to hold the
pen and fashion the letters. But we must remember that the old so