f they never had happened, so far as the memory is
concerned. And yet, the same "I," or Ego, persists, and the person's
character has certainly been affected and influenced by the experiences
and lessons of that year. Perhaps in that year, the person may have
acquired certain knowledge that he uses in his everyday life. And so, in
this case, as with Reincarnation, the "essence" of the experiences are
preserved, while the details are forgotten. For that is the
Reincarnationist contention. As a matter of fact, advanced occultists,
and other Reincarnationists, claim that nothing is really forgotten, but
that every event is stored away in some of the recesses of the mind,
below the level of consciousness--which idea agrees with that of modern
psychologists. And Reincarnationists claim that when man unfolds
sufficiently on some higher plane, he will have a full recollection of
his past experiences in all of his incarnations. Some Reincarnationists
claim that as the soul passes from the body all the events of that
particular life pass rapidly before its mind, in review, before the
waters of Lethe, or oblivion, causes forgetfulness.

Closely allied to the last mentioned argument against Reincarnation is
the one that as the memory of the past life is absent, or nearly so, the
new personality is practically a new soul, instead of the old one
reincarnated, and that it is unreasonable and unjust to have it enjoy or
suffer by reasons of its experiences and acts in the previous life. We
think that the answers to the last mentioned objection are answers to
this one also. The "I," Ego, or Individuality, being the same, it
matters not if the details of the old Personality be forgotten. You are
the same "I" that lived fifty years ago in the same body--or even ten
years ago--and you are enjoying certain things, or suffering from
certain things, done or left undone at the previous time, although you
have forgotten the incidents. The impress of the thing is on your
Character, and you are today largely what you are by reason of what you
have been in past years, though those years are forgotten by you. This
you will readily admit, and yet the argument of the Reincarnationists is
merely an extension of the same idea. As Figuier says: "The soul, in
spite of its journeys, in the midst of its incarnations and divers
metamorphoses remains always identical with itself; only at each
metempsychosis, each metamorphosis of the external being, improving