"We walk about, amid the destinies of our world-existence, encompassed by divine but ever present Memories of a Destiny more vast—very distant in the bygone time and infinitely awful.
"We live out a Youth peculiarly haunted by such dreams, yet never mistaking them for dreams. As Memories we know them. During our Youth the distinction is too clear to deceive us even for a moment.
"But now comes the period at which a conventional World-Reason awakens us from the truth of our dream ... a mis-shapen day or a misfortune that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life...." (Eureka.)
Georges Sand, in Consuelo, sets forth the logic of Reincarnation; and G. Flammarion expounds this doctrine in most of his works: Uranie; Les Mondes Imaginaires et les Mondes Réels; La Pluralité des Mondes Habités, etc.
Professor William Knight wrote in the Fortnightly Review for September, 1878:
"It seems surprising that in the discussions of contemporary philosophy on the origin and destiny of the soul there has been no explicit revival of the doctrines of Pre-existence and Metempsychosis.... They offer quite a remarkable solution of the mystery of Creation, Translation, and Extinction....
"Stripped of all extravagances and expressed in the modest terms of probability, the theory has immense speculative interest and great ethical value. It is much to have the puzzle of the origin of evil thrown back for an indefinite number of cycles of lives and to have a workable explanation of Nemesis...."
Professor W. A. Butler, in his Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, says:
"There is internally no greater improbability that the present may be the result of a former state now almost wholly forgotten than that the present should be followed by a future form of existence in which, perhaps, or in some departments of which, the oblivion may be as complete."
The Rev. William R. Alger, a Unitarian minister, adds: