aid to believe in an astral body, which leaves
the body during sleep, but which perishes as the body disintegrates
after death; and a second soul which leaves the body only at death, and
which persists until it is reborn at a later time. In fact, the student
finds that nearly all of the primitives races, and those semi-civilized,
show traces of a belief in a complex soul, and a trace of doctrine of
Reincarnation in some form. The human mind seems to work along the same
lines, among the different races--unless one holds to the theory that
all sprang from the same root-race, and that the various beliefs are
survivals of some ancient fundamental doctrine--the facts are not
disturbed in either case.

In the last mentioned connection, we might mention that the traditions
concerning Ancient Atlantis--the lost continent--all hold to the effect
that her people believed strongly in Reincarnation, and to the ideas of
the complex soul. As the survivors of Atlantis are believed to have been
the ancestors of the Egyptians on the one hand, and of the Ancient
Peruvians on the other--the two branches of survivors having maintained
their original doctrines as modified by different environments--we might
find here an explanation of the prevalence of the doctrine on both sides
of the ocean. We mention this merely in passing, and as of general
interest in the line of our subject.

CHAPTER II.

THE EGYPTIANS, CHALDEANS, DRUIDS, ETC.

After considering the existence of the doctrines of Reincarnation among
the primitive peoples, and its traditional existence among the vanished
peoples of the past, we find ourselves irresistibly borne toward that
ancient land of mystery--the home of the mystics and occultists of the
past--the land of Isis--the home of the builders of the Pyramids--the
people of the Sphinx. Whether these people were the direct descendants
of the people of destroyed Atlantis, the home of the Ancient Wisdom--or
whether they were a new people who had rediscovered the old
doctrines--the fact remains that when tracing back any old occult or
mystic doctrine we find ourselves gradually led toward the land of the
Sphinx as the source of that hidden truth. The Sphinx is a fit emblem of
that wonderful race--its sealed lips seem to invite the ultimate
questions, and one feels that there may be a whispered answer wafted
from those tightly closed lips toward the ear that is prepared to hear
and receive it. And so, in our search