Page:Riddles of the Sphinx (1891).djvu/440

412 descent compels us to assert that the soul of man has been developed out of the souls of animals, what difficulty remains in the supposition that each individual soul has passed through the stages of this same development? And again, the objection to pre-existence, on the ground of our failure to remember anything about our past lives, has distinctly diminished in cogency. We have learnt too well what a curiously uncertain thing memory is to attach much weight to its disabilities. For, in the first place, the absence of memory may be perfectly accounted for ideologically on grounds of adaptation. The memory of such a past as we should probably have had would have been a most troublesome equipment, a most disabling burden, in the battle of life. For the recollection of our past faults and past failures would, in the present state of our spiritual development, be a most fatal obstacle to the freshness and hopefulness with which we should encounter life's present problems. Whatever, therefore, may be the case hereafter, it seems clear that the cultivation of a wise forgetfulness was the condition of spiritual progress in the past; a short memory was necessary, if the burden of unbearable knowledge was not to crush our spirit.

Secondly, in the face of the growing evidence of how the right manipulations may revive the memory of what seemed to have perished beyond recovery (cp. ch. ix. §28 s.f.), it would be rash indeed to assert that the progress of experimental psychology should not, by some as yet undiscovered process, enable us actually to remember our past. And lastly, it should be observed that whatever the evidential value of our obliviousness of our past lives, it applies equally to the earlier portions of our