The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-08-23
The Idea of Re-hirth.


 One of the most curious facts in the whole range of modern thought is the almost sudden reappearance among us of the idea of rebirth, as subject of reasonable speculation, very probable theory plausible, solution of many diff ficult problems; in word, as an idea that must be seriously considered, and very probably will be accepted, as one of the working hypotheses of life.
 There is, of course, no absolute novelty in this idea of re-birth of the gradual development of the individual througha a series of lives. It is no absolute novel,
 ty even In Europe, or in the Europe of the last hundred years.
 To touch on one or two salient points only. This idea in one form or another
 was held by Pythagoras; it is clearly taught by Plato; it is lucidly set forth by Virgil, though in mythological guise. We are assured by Professor Goldstucker that it was doctrine of the rabbis, who even went into the most
 precise details, declaring that Adam, David and the Messiah were successive appearances of the same individual; that the soul of Japhet reappeared in Simeon; that Terah reappeared as Job;
 that Thamar was, reborn as Ruth.
 Even among the early Christians, St.
 Jerome relates, the doctrine of re-birth was taught as a traditional and esoter- ic. one, only communicated to a select few. For this Professor Goldstucker vouches. The idea of re-birth, there fore, was not foreign to either of the great sources of our western, culture, the Hebraic and the Hellenic; and there was a certain acquaintance with it at almost every epoch of European life, during the last eighteen hundred years; the kind of acquaintance that we find in Shakespeare, for instance, who al- ludes, again and again to the idea of |Pythagoras. But Shakespeare only played with the idea. Rosalind had never been so rhymed since she was rat in the days of Pythagoras, and so
 on. And here is, the novelty. That, while the last ten or fifteen centuries
 were aware of the, idea of re-birth, and
 only played with it, we have suddenly taken it seriously.
 There were signs of this serious con- sideration at least hundred years ago; but it is only within the last ten or fif- teen years that the idea of re-birth has become widely known, universally thought about, and, believe, very largely accepted. The two first men of light and leading who broadly and thoughtfully accepted the idea of re- birth in modern Europe were Lessing and Schopenhauer. The arguments of
 Leasing, as summed up by Professor
 Goldstucker, are these: "The soul is a simple being, capable of infinite concep- tions at the same time. It must obtain them gradually, in an infinite success sion of time. If, however, it obtain them gradually, there must be an order l in which, and degree to which, these conceptions are acquired. This order and this measure are the senses. At present, the soul has of such senses | five; but neither is there any ground 10 assume that it began with having five senses, nor that it will stop there. For, since nature never takes leap, the soul | must have gone through all the lower stages before it arrived at that which it occupies now, :. and since nature contains many substances and powers which are not accessible to those senses ! with which it is now endued, it must be assumed that these will be future l stages, at which the soul will have as
 many senses as correspond with the powers of nature" And this my sys- tem," concludes Leasing, ifs. certainly | the oldest of all philosophical systems,
 for it is in reality no other than the sys- l tenn of the pre-existence of the soul and metempsychosis, which not only occu- pied the speculation of Pythagoras and 1 Plato, but also before them of Egyp- ! tians, Chaldeans and Persians-in | short, of all the sages of the east" Leasing, therefore, held the idea of re-
 birth quite unreservedly and very phil
 osophically. And in Schopenhauer's
 system it is not only present-it is an
 indispensable necessity.-Madras Week. ly Mail.
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