duty, following on so many others, to offer it anew, this time
in the clear, logical, illuminating form presented in theosophic
teachings. The necessity thereof is all the more imperative when we
consider the growth of scepticism and materialism amongst the more
intellectual classes, whilst the mass of the people have forsaken
their blind faith only to succumb to religious indifference.

To every awakened soul the question comes:

Why does evil exist?

So long as the enigma remains unsolved, Suffering remains a
threatening sphinx, opposing God and ready to devour mankind.

The key to the secret lies in Evolution, which can be accomplished
only by means of the continual return of souls to earth.

When once man learns that suffering is the necessary result of divine
manifestation; that inequalities of conditions are due to the
different stages which beings have reached and the changeable action
of their will; that the painful phase lasts only a moment in Eternity,
and that we have it in our power to hasten its disappearance; that
though slaves of the past, we are masters of the future; that,
finally, the same glorious goal awaits all beings--then, despair will
be at an end; hatred, envy, and rebellion will have fled away, and
peace will reign over a humanity made wise by knowledge.

Were this modest work to hasten forward this time by a few years, we
should feel sufficiently rewarded.

The subject will be divided into four chapters:

(1) The Soul and the bodies.

(2) Reincarnation and the moral law.

(3) Reincarnation and science.

(4) Reincarnation and the religious and philosophical
concensus of the ages.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This Council came to the following decision:--_Whosoever
shall teach the pre-existence of the soul and the strange opinion of
its returns to earth, let him be anathema!_]

REINCARNATION

A STUDY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION

CHAPTER I.

THE SOUL AND THE BODIES.

In a book dealing with the resurrection of bodies and the
reincarnations of the Soul, a chapter must be devoted to the
fundamental elements of the question.

We will give the name of _Soul_ to abstract Being, to the Unknown,
that unmanifested Principle which cannot be defined, for it is above
all definition.

It is the Absolute of Western philosophers, the _Parabrahm_ of the
Hindus, the _Tao_ of the ancient sages of China, the causeless Cause
of all that has been or ever will be manifested in co