ve echoing
halls, "'Twas auld lang syne, my dear, 'Twas auld lang syne."

Plato's doctrine of reminiscence here finds its basis. We have
lived before, perchance many times, and through the clouds of
sense and imagination now and then float the veiled visions of
things that were. Efforts of thought reveal the half effaced
inscriptions and pictures on the tablets of memory. Snatches of
dialogues once held are recalled, faint recollections of old
friendships return, and fragments of landscapes beheld and deeds
performed long ago pass in weird procession before the mind's half
opened eye. We know a professional gentleman of unimpeachable
veracity, of distinguished talents and attainments, who is a firm
believer in his own existence on the earth previously to his
present life. He testifies that on innumerable occasions he has
experienced remembrances of events and recognitions of places,
accompanied by a flash of irresistible conviction that he had
known them in a former state. Nearly every one has felt instances
of this, more or less numerous and vivid. The doctrine at which
such things hint that "Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in
utter nakedness," but trailing vague traces and enigmas from a
bygone history, "do we come" yields the secret of many a mood and
dream, the spell of inexplicable hours, the key and clew to
baffling labyrinths of mystery. The belief in the doctrine of the
metempsychosis, among a fanciful people and in an unscientific
age, need be no wonder to any cultivated man acquainted with the
marvels of experience and aware that every one may say,

"Full oft my feelings make me start,
Like footprints on some desert shore,
As if the chambers of my heart
Had heard their shadowy step before."

Fifthly, the theory of the transmigration of souls is marvellously
adapted to explain the seeming chaos of moral inequality,
injustice, and manifold evil presented in the world of human life.
No other conceivable view so admirably accounts for the
heterogeneousness of our present existence, refutes the charge of
a groundless favoritism urged against Providence, and completely
justifies the ways of God to man. The loss of remembrance between
the states is no valid objection to the theory; because such a
loss is the necessary condition of a fresh and fair probation.
Besides, there is a parallel fact of deep significance in our
unquestionable experience; "For is not our first year forgot? The
haunts of memory echo