THE truth of the reincarnation of the human soul carries with it as necessary corollaries most important ethical conclusions. It establishes a philosophic and legitimately scientific basis for human conduct - something that the world has not had since the perversion of the teachings of Christ, during the second and third centuries of this era. Even at that time the real gnosis underlying Christ's tenets was only trusted in the hands of an inner circle of disciples, and by no means given to the world at large. "Cast not your pearls before swine," taught this Master, which reservation may have afforded the very opportunity for perversion by prohibiting the giving out of the real truth when erroneous teachings began to creep in through the ignorance of the Church Fathers. Certainly, not within the records of modern history has there been such an unveiling of Isis, such light thrown upon the problems of human life, as in the writings of Madame H. P. Blavatsky, which goes to prove that human necessity must have been very urgent for the Custodians of the Archaic Wisdom to have permitted this profuse giving out of sacred and secret teachings.

At any rate, enough light has been thrown upon man's relation to his fellow-men and to nature to afford a sound basis for human ethics. As a part of the great Whole, as an emanation from a higher Logos, and constituting himself a lower one, a knowledge of these relations is of infinite importance in its determining influence upon not only his highest hopes, aspirations and ambitions, but also upon his every thought and act in his daily life. Knowing this life to be but a school for preparing him for a higher and happier one, and that this happier existence cannot be attained by any sycophantic adulation, cajoling of or forgiveness by an imaginary Jehovah, but must be won under the iron law of cause and effect; and, further, that, like pupils in our public schools, he will be kept in this grade of sin and suffering by continually reincarnating until he himself earns his promotion to a higher one - man cannot but begin to examine his motives more closely, to pay some attention to the debtor and creditor account of a karma as accurate as it is inevitable.

Under the short-sighted Western conception of but one existence upon this earth, the numerous and grossly palpable failures in justice, in human affairs, have exerted a most pernicious influence upon human ethics. Solomon, indeed, declared that he had never "seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread"; but the very reverse obtains under our social system, in which, as caustically remarked by Madame Blavatsky, we have made of vice an art and of selfishness a basis for ethics. We loudly claim that "honesty is the best policy," while thousands of millionaires who have come dishonestly by every penny of their hoards not only go down to peaceful and honored graves, but with the assurance - signed, sealed, executed, and the "cash" equivalent receipted for - of eternal happiness in the future.

Under the broader view, all these apparent failures in justice are recognized as only apparent, and not real; human self-respect is restored; and the intuitive belief that honesty is the best policy, obscured by the one-life horizon, becomes magnificently demonstrated as these horizons are seen to stretch away into an infinite perspective. Recognizing that we ourselves have made the bitter present by an unwise past, that we have not been unjustly and causelessly born into this sphere of existence the helpless victims of fate or of accident, we can set ourselves cheerfully to right by the light of the broader conception, environments, both physical and mental, which we know to be but the meting out of exact and impersonal justice to us. By the light of Reincarnation and Karma, we perceive that the social injustices with which our civilization is now cursed are rooted too deeply to be plucked out by merely changing our laws. Human desires and motives must be radically changed, and this can only be done by making man aware of his true nature and god-like destiny.

Then he will recognize that all the evils which now threaten to engulf humanity in a sea of anarchy and bloodshed arise wholly out of yielding to the dominance of the animal portion of his being - are on the animal plane; and that all appeals to force or violence can only still further arouse and strengthen those brutal elements, to control and spiritualize which is the chief reason for incarnation upon this earth. Social and political reform must proceed, like every other process in nature, from within without; and when the inner desire to act justly shall have arisen, the outer act will quickly conform. Meanwhile, no effort to show the real unity and solidarity of humanity is of as great importance as the popularizing of the teachings of Reincarnation, which distinguishes the true man and his necessities from the false one with his illusionary ambitions, and Karma, which shows that social as well as all other evolution takes place under the law of cause and effect, and cannot but act justly.

Aside from social and political considerations, the twin truths of Reincarnation and Karma, when once clearly comprehended, satisfy the religious element which is, or ought to be, so deeply engrafted in every human heart. It has been well and truly said that "religion is for the wise, and superstition for the ignorant"; and within these teachings only is to be found that food which will supply the need of rational and philosophical men for a scientific and philosophical religion. Therefore, from the religious standpoint, this inquiry into the nature and functions of the soul is amply justified. Blind faith alone fails; creeds are but idle pat- terings and empty sounds; man must know his destiny, or the incentive to upward exertion is largely paralyzed. Reason teaches us that death cannot transport us where we are not now; cannot act as a kind of moral filter, that in some miraculous way will remove the impurities of our lower nature, and fit us for habitation in some high or "heavenly" sphere, nor, failing this, transport us to some inconceivably horrible hell. The chain of life is formed of continuous links. We have become what we are by an infinite series of past lives; we have to work out our future destiny by an infinite series of lives to come.