What can be the quality and functioning of its memory? We cannot know. Interpolation and anachronism may legitimately appear as a necessary consequence of multiple lives.

Victor Hugo has said: 1

"You do not believe in progressive personalities (that is, in reincarnations) under the pretext that you remember nothing of your previous existences. Yet how may vanished centuries remain graven upon your memory when you no longer recall the thousand and one scenes of your present life? Since 1802, there have been ten Victor Hugos within me. Do you think that I remember all their deeds and all their thoughts ?

1 Reply of Victor Hugo, related by Arsene Houssaye, and cited by de Rochas.

"When I shall have passed the grave to find another light, all these Victor Hugos will be in some degree strangers, but it will always be the same soul."

Hence if the subject, in a hypnotic state, finds anew memories forgotten in his present life, it is because the soul, forever linked to its physiological state, finds therein the functional elements of memory: but the former personalities are perforce nonexistent, and of them only fragmentary recollections remain.

An exceedingly interesting case is that of Mme. H., observed by M. Bouvier, whom Colonel de Rochas had told of his experiments. I can give here only a superficial idea of this case, in a resume necessarily too brief.1

M. Bouvier speaks thus of the first regression of his subject, who has just reached the moment of birth:

"Before conception, when the spirit is yet in space, she makes an effort to escape from the invincible force which seems to draw her: then, always going back in time, she gives replies about what she is doing, what her mode of existence is, until she takes up again the body which she had formerly quitted, to return to a new life. But strangely enough, each time that I caused her to enter her mother's womb, she passed through the same phase, characterized by the same attitude." 2

1 The Report occupies 38 pages.

2 A. de Rochas, Les Vies successives, p. 178.

I must call attention, in passing, to the constancy of the process of incarnation, whoever may be the hypnotized subject.

Mme. J. was thirty-nine years old. They tried through her to push the experiment to its utmost limit, to cause her to go back as far as possible in time. [Thus they went back to her twelfth existence.

From her first regression - second life - she indicates proper names which have not been found, in places whose description is nevertheless correct. Thus, at fifteen years of age, she has just left the class of the Dames Trinitaires in the Rue de la Gargouille in Briancon. A note by M. de Rochas indicates that there was indeed a school for little girls kept by the Dames Trinitaires on the Rue de la Gargouille in that city. But the father of Mme. J. was born in Briancon, he left the city when he was very young: Mme. J. was born long after in a town of Isere, her mother had never lived in Briancon, nor had her husband, an army officer, ever been stationed there.

Third Life

Still in Briancon, at ten years, she gave the date 1748.

Fourth Life

In 1702, at Ploermel.

Fifth Life

The subject is a soldier: as in all the other lives it is pictures that are presented in the turning back of the course of time: the death scene is shown first. He dies from a lance thrust.

Q. Where did you receive this blow and in what year? A. At Marignan, in 1515. (Poor Berry, you are done for!)

Q. With whom were you? A. With Francis.

Q. What Francis? A. The father, our Lord and Master, forsooth, the King of France.

Q. What is your name? A. Michael Berry.

Q. Against whom are you fighting? A. Against these Swiss swine, etc.

Sixth Life

It is the year 1302. She is a young governess: only eighteen, she is with the Countess de Guise.

Q. Who is the King? A. I do not know, they say he is Philippe le Bel.

Seventh Life

It is 1010; at eighty-seven, she is an Abbess: at seventy-seven, she believes that the world is coming to an end.

Q. Do you know who is the king? A. Robert II. At seventy. Q. Who is the King? A. Capet. At sixty, the same request. A. It is Capet. At forty-five. A. It is Louis IV. At thirty-five. Q. Who is the King? A. Louis IV, for several years past. They say he is ugly, fat and bloated, but I have not seen him. At twenty-four years. Q. What is the date? A. 947. Q. Who is the King? A. Louis IV. At fifteen - same question. A. Louis IV.

Eighth Life

Chief of the Frankish warriors. He had been taken by Attila at Chalons-sur-Marne, and the Huns had burned out his eyes.

Q. Are there other chiefs over you? A. There is the chief tribune Massoee. Q. And over him? A. The chief of the Chiefs, Merovoeus.

Q. What year is it? A. 449.

Q. Do you know God? A. There is some one above, - it is Theos.

Q. How do you worship him? A. Men are of-iered up as a burnt offering - it is very beautiful.

Ninth Life

He is a guard of the Emperor Probus.

Q. What country are you in? A. At Romulus. Q. What year is it? A. 279. 1At twenty-five Q. What are you doing? A. I am at Tourino, with my wife. Q. Who united you? A. The praetor.

Tenth Life

She is a woman called Irisee. She wishes to enter the service of the Gods and waits upon the priest Ali.

Q. In what country are you? In Imondo.

Q. What year is it? A. Ali says that we should not seek to find out; the Gods know.

Eleventh Life

An unimportant child, dead at eight.

This regression toward past ages is certainly curious and there is a mystery about it which has not yet been elucidated: but the hypothesis of a momentary revival of the memories of a mind freed from the body is surely the least improbable of the hypotheses so far formulated.

It is to be regretted that this hypothesis has not been more often considered as a pivot for observation. Note, for example, what great interest there would have been in submitting Miss Beauchamp's case to the experiment of regression.

We feel the same regret upon the subject of the medium observed by Professor Flournoy, Helen Smith. The case of this medium would have been interesting in a very different way had it been studied upon the hypothesis of previous lives.

1 We think it well to recall the chronology here. - Francis I, 1515-1547 - Philippe le Bel, 1478-1506. - Robert II, 996-1081 - Hugues Capet, 978-996. - Louis le Gros, 936-954. - Merovoeus, 448-458 - Attila, 434-458. Probus Emperor from 276-282.