The morning journal-courier., 1908-01-02

haunting as of a pre-existence-is not exceptional; it is not new; 1t is not limited to poets or dreamers or to those whose minds are supersensi- tive. From the very dawn of history it has haunted the minds of men. given food for thought and shaped itself in all kinds of speculation.
 In common with other forms of mysticism it had its cradle in the East, where it had its philosophers and poets. In the subtle metaphysics of the BrahmiLs and in the noble morality which has its home under the shadow of Buddha, it stands out precise and clear as an ultimate fact which requires theory, and it would appear a religion. for its due express sion. It was grafted into the theology of Egypt; it laid hold of the mind of Plato, who discusses it under the term namnesis-reminiscen of for mer existence or of things once known and seen. Among the Jews the Phaf- isees had explained it by a doctrine that the virtuous have power to re- vive and live again (Josephus. An tiq., Xviii). In the New Testament John the Baptist is regarded by some as the reincarnation of Elijah, and the disciples of the Christ on one oc- casicn asked whether a certain man born blind was suffering for the sin of his parents or for some sin of his own. Under the forms of transmigra- ton, metempsychosis. reincarnation. such phenomena were discussed among the early church fathers, some of whom decidedly believed that pre- existence was the explanation of such phenomena as l have mentioned. Schopenhauer, Leasing. Hegel, Leib- nitz, Herder and Fichte have dealt with it.
 l ask is there not .uch a thing as ancestral memory? That child should present certain features cr his father and mother. and reproduce certain we'll known gestures and mannerisms of his grandfather, is loked upon as something very ordin- ary, Is it not possible that the child may inherit something of his ances- tors memory? That these flashes of reminiscence are the sudden awaken ing, the calling into action of some thing we have in our blood; the disks. the records of an ancestors past life. which require only the essential ad- justment and conditions to give up their secrets? If so, then we have in ancestral memory natural answer
 
 seeking the aid of eastern theology.
 Have We not get here, too, theory which explains a large class of ap- partitions, the evidence for which if Is easier to ignore than to explain, and so We prefer to shrug our shoul- ders and pass them by? Take the common form of ghost story. A sees the ghost of one B, whom he subse quently identifies, say from the fam fly gallery of portraits. to be an an- cestor. Some member of his house I should say back in the centuries. did actually witness such a scene. did see B come in as A saw, only the origin al witness saw B in the flesh at such moment, under such conditions that great impression was made upon him, and this impression was handed on to later scion of his house, to be preserved in this racial conscious ness
 The theory of an ancestral memory. maintain, is a reasonable proposi- ton, and as a working hypothesis Will be found useful in the solution ot many puzzles that confront us daily If the memory cells of our an- cestors were the collected photograph ca impressions of their experiences. and these cells in the process of pho- tographing were subjected to some subtle change in physical structure. then that these negatives of impress sions should be handed on to poster ity is not difficult to understand and accept That these negatives may be broken. blurred, indistinct, obliterat- ed' is to be expected, but at the same tune some of them may be passed on intact, possessing the potentlalities to which l have called attention Forbes Phillips in the Nineteenth Century and After.