s not explained by scientific or theological
phrases. The complete individual is assuredly not contained in the first
germ. The microscope cannot find it there and to say that it is there
potentially, merely means that we know the germ will develop in a
certain way. To say that a force is manifesting itself in the germ and
assuming the shape which it chooses to take or must take is also merely
a phrase and metaphor, but it seems to me to fit the facts[36].

The doctrines of pre-existence and transmigration (but not, I think, of
karma which is purely Indian) are common among savages in Africa and
America, nor is their wide distribution strange. Savages commonly think
that the soul wanders during sleep and that a dead man's soul goes
somewhere: what more natural than to suppose that the soul of a new born
infant comes from somewhere? But among civilized peoples such ideas are
in most cases due to Indian influence. In India they seem indigenous to
the soil and not imported by the Aryan invaders, for they are not
clearly enunciated in the Rig Veda, nor formulated before the time of
the Upanishads[37]. They were introduced by Buddhism to the Far East and
their presence in Manichaeism, Neoplatonism, Sufiism and ultimately in
the Jewish Kabbala seems a rivulet from the same source. Recent research
discredits the theory that metempsychosis was an important feature in
the earlier religion of Egypt or among the Druids[38]. But it played a
prominent part in the philosophy of Pythagoras and in the Orphic
mysteries, which had some connection with Thrace and possibly also with
Crete. A few great European intellects[39]--notably Plato and
Virgil--have given it undying expression, but Europeans as a whole have
rejected it with that curiously crude contempt which they have shown
until recently for Oriental art and literature.

Considering how fixed is the belief in immortality among Europeans, or
at least the desire for it, the rarity of a belief in pre-existence or
transmigration is remarkable. But most people's expectation of a future
life is based on craving rather than on reasoned anticipation. I cannot
myself understand how anything that comes into being can be immortal.
Such immortality is unsupported by a single analogy nor can any instance
be quoted of a thing which is known to have had an origin and yet is
even apparently indestructible[40]. And is it possible to suppose that
the universe is capable of indefinite increase by th