however, not sufficient for the development of our powers. Every human being must pass through each of the seven branch races of each of the sub-races of each of the root-races of humanity; and must, in short, live, or, as our author expresses the idea, be incarnated about eight hundred times—some more and some less—upon this planet, before the hour will come when it will be permitted to him, by a path as easy of passage for him then, as is that followed by the rays of light, to visit the planet Mercury, for his next two million years of existence.

Through each of these eight hundred mortal lives, man is purifying and developing his nature. When, at the end of each, his body dies, his higher principles leave the lower to gradual dissolution, while they themselves remaining still bound in space to this planet, pass into Devachan, the state of effects. Here, entirely unconscious of what passes on earth, the soul remains, absorbed in its own subjectivity. For a length of time, stated as never less than fifteen hundred years, and shown by figures to average not less than eight thousand, the soul, enjoying in its own contemplation those things it most desired in mortal life, surrounded in its own imagination by the friends and the scenes it has loved on earth, reaps the exact reward of its own deeds. When Nature has thus paid the laborer his hire, when his power of enjoyment has exhausted itself, the soul passes by a gradual process into oblivion of all the past—an oblivion from which it returns only on its approach to Nirvana—and waits the moment for reincarnation. Yet it comes not again to conscious life, unaffected by the forgotten past. Karma,—the resultant of its upward or downward tendencies,—which has been accumulating through all the course of its existence, remains; and the new-born man comes into visible being with good or evil propensities, the balance of which is to be affected by the struggles of one more mortal phase of existence. Thus we go on through one life after another, each time a new person yet the same human soul, ignorant of our own past lives, yet never free from their influence upon our character, exactly as in mature life we have absolutely forgotten what happened to us in our infancy, yet are never free from its influence. In Devachan, which corresponds, says our author, to what in other religions is the final and eternal heaven, we receive, from time to time, the reward of our deeds done in the body, yet still pass on with all our upward or downward tendencies until, many millions of years in the future, during our next passage through life on this planet, we shall come to the crisis in our existence which shall determine whether we are to become gods or demons.

Let me now turn back the page of history. A little more than one million years ago this earth was covered, as now, with vegetable forms, and was the dwelling of animals, as numerous, perhaps, and as various as now; but there was no humanity. The time was come when man, who had passed already three times round the planetary chain, and was nearly half way through his fourth round, should again make his appearance on the scene. Nature works only in her own way, and that way is uniform. The first man must be born of parents already living. As there are no human parents, he must be born of lower animals, and of those lower animals most nearly resembling the coming human animal. Darwin has told us what the animal was, yet the new being was a man and not an ape, because, in addition to its animal soul, it was possessed also of a human soul. We all know that man is an animal. Those modern students of science, who affirm that that is the whole truth of human nature, take a lower view of their own being than the Indian philosophers. Man is an animal plus a human and a spiritual soul.

Behold, now, the earth peopled by man. Through seven races must he pass, each with its various branches. Yet these races are not contemporaneous; for Nature is in no hurry. One race comes forward at a time, reaches the height of its possibility, then passes away during great physical transformations, and leaves but a wreck behind to live, and witness, in some new part of earth, the coming of another race. These races and branch races and sub-branch races are to be animated by the same identical souls. Hence, one race at a time; at first, even, one sub-race only, for the next is to be of a higher order. After each root-race has run its course, the earth has always been prepared by a great geological convulsion for the next. In this convulsion has perished all that makes up what we call civilization, yet not all men then living. Since some souls are slower than others, all are not ready to pass into the second race, when the time for that race has come. Hence fragments of old races survive, kept up for a time by the incarnation of the laggard souls whose progress has been too slow. Thus, we are told, although the first and second root-races have now entirely disappeared, there still remain relics of the third and fourth. The proper seat of this third root-race was that lost continent which Wallace told us, long ago, stood where now roll the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, south and southwest of Asia. Here we have, in the degraded Papuan and Australian, the remainder of the third race. Degraded I call him, because his ancestors, though inferior to the highest races of to-day, were far in advance of him. So it must always be. Destroy the accumulations of the highest race of men now living, and the next generation will be barbarians; the second, savages.

The fourth root-race inhabited the famous, but no longer fabulous, Atlantis, now sunk, in greater part, beneath the waters of the Atlantic. Fragments of this race were left in Northern Africa, though perhaps none now remain there, and we are told that there is a remnant in the heart of China. From the relics of the African branch of this root-race, the old Egyptian priests had knowledge regarding the sunken continent, knowledge which was no fable, but the traditionary lore and history of the survivors of the lost Atlantis.

Such is, in brief, an outline of the nature, history, and destiny of man, as the Buddhist relates it. How has he obtained his knowledge? By means which, he says, are within the reach of any one. First, of the history: it is said to be well authenticated tradition. Of the actual knowledge of former races, the Egyptian priests were the repositories, inheriting their information from the Atlantids. Of human nature and destiny the Buddhist would say: Here are the facts, look about you and see. From a theory of astronomy, or botany, or chemistry, we find an explanation of facts, and these facts explained, confirm and establish the theory. So, too, of man, here is the view, once a theory, but now as firmly established as the law of gravitation. Besides, by study and contemplation, the expert has developed, in advance of the age in which he lives, his spiritual soul, and this opens to him sources of information which place him on a higher level in point of knowledge than the rest of mankind, just as the man with seeing eyes has possibilities of information which are absolutely closed to one born blind.

Let me stop here to explain more fully what is the spiritual soul. I should call it, using a term that seems to me more natural to our vocabulary, the transcendental sense. In the reality of such a sense I am a firm believer. It was once fashionable to ridicule whatever was thought, or nicknamed, transcendental. Yet transcendentalism seems to me the only complete bar to modern scepticism. Faith, in the highest Christian sense, is transcendental. We know some things for which we can bring no evidence, things the truth of which lies not in logic, nor even in intellect. The intellect never gave man any firm conviction of God's being. Paley's mode of reasoning never brought conviction to any man's mind. At best, it only serves to confirm