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As it was the function of the hierophant, in the Grecian mysteries, to show the sacred symbols as concrete incarnations of faith, so was it De Quincey's to reveal in open light the everlasting symbols, universally intelligible when once disclosed, which are folded in the involutions of dreams and of those meditations which most resemble dreams; and as to the manner of these revelations, no Roman pontifex maximus, were it even Cæsar himself, could have rivalled their magisterial pomp.
If Agassiz told me that the forms of life which had successively tenanted the globe were the incarnations of successive thoughts of the Deity; and that he had wiped out one set of these embodiments by an appalling geological catastrophe as soon as His ideas took a more advanced shape, I found myself not only unable to admit the accuracy of the deductions from the facts of paleontology, upon which this astounding hypothesis was founded, but I had to confess my want of any means of testing the correctness of his explanation of them.
Narrowness, lack of tolerance, prejudice, and similar forms of undeveloped consciousness must be wiped out by the broad understanding and sympathy that come only from experience. It is argued that only by repeated incarnations the soul is able to realize the futility of the search for happiness and satisfaction in material things.
Those who accept the truth of Reincarnation do not blame their parents for their poor talents, or for not possessing extraordinary powers, but they remain content with their own lot, knowing that they have made themselves as they are to-day by their own thoughts and deeds in their previous incarnations.
And since the Hindus were accustomed to look upon the great heroes and benefactors of humanity as incarnations of deity we shall not be surprised to read from an author of that time that every morning before sunrise great numbers of Hindus crowded together in front of the palace to await the appearance of Akbar and to prostrate themselves as soon as he was seen at a window, at the same time singing religious hymns.
It was objected that he did not find the whole doctrine of the Trinity in the first verse of Genesis, that he corresponded with eminent heretics of England and Germany, that he was not averse to reforms, that, in short, he was not inclined to wallow in the slime from which had crawled forth such huge incarnations of evil as John XXIII., Julius II., Sixtus IV., and Alexander VI.
Immortality in the flesh means cessation from further incarnations, the last and present personality including all others in consciousness, until we can say, "I, manifesting in the physical, as so-and-so, am now and forever immortal, remembering other manifestations which were not sufficiently complete, but which added to the sum of my consciousness until now I know myself a deathless being."
In energy and fame and beauty, who else in the three worlds can equal Him than you two that have been born in the race of Dharma? He has told me the entire course of duties having reference to Kshetrajna. He has also told me of all those incarnations which he will, in the future, have in this world.
Their dogma that there had been divine incarnations obliged them to assert that there had been a fall of man, this seeming to be necessary to obtain a logical argument in justification of prodigies so great. For the relief of the guilty soul, they prescribed in this life fasts and penances, and in the future a transmigration through animals for purification.
In this manner the advocates of the doctrine offer the present revival as another proof of their teachings. One of the first questions usually asked by students of the subject of Reincarnation is: "Where does the soul dwell between incarnations; does it incarnate immediately after death; and what is its final abode or state?"
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