Two manufacturers had each a workman who might hope to become some day the partner of his employer. But it happened that both these workmen made so very bad a use of their time that they merited dismissal. One of the manufacturers drove away his unfaithful workman, despite his supplications; and this workman, being unable to obtain any other employment, died of want. The other said to his workman - "You have wasted a day; you owe me compensation for the loss you have thus caused me. You have done your work badly; you owe me reparation for it. I give you leave to begin it over again. Try to do well, and I will keep you in my employ, and you may still aspire to the superior position which I had promised you."

Need we ask which of the manufacturers has shown himself to be the most humane? And would God, who is clemency itself, be more inexorable than a just and compassionate man? The idea that our fate is decided forever by a few years of trial, and notwithstanding the fact that is was not in our power to attain to perfection while we remained upon the earth, fills the mind with anguish; while the contrary idea is eminently consoling, for it leaves us hope. Thus, without pronouncing for or against the plurality of existence, without admitting either hypothesis in preference to the other, I assert that, if the matter were left to your choice, there is no one who would prefer incurring a sentence against which there should be no appeal. A Hindu philosopher has said that "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him for the happiness of the human race;" the same might be said in regard to the plurality of existence. But, as I have already remarked, God does not ask your permission in the establishment of providential ordering; He does not consult your preference in the matter.

Either the law of reincarnation exists, or it does not exist; let us see on which side is the balance of probabilities, considering the matter from another point of view, but still leaving out of sight all idea of any statements that have been made by the spirits in regard to it, and examining the question merely as a matter of philosophic inquiry. If the law of reincarnation does not exist, we can have but one corporeal existence; and if our present corporeal life be our only one, the soul of each individual must have been created at the same time as his body; unless, indeed, we assume interiority of the soul, in which case we should have to inquire what was the state of the soul before its union with the body, and whether this state did not constitute an existence of some kind or other. There is no middle ground. Either the soul existed before its union with the body, or it did not. If it existed, what was its condition? Was it possessed of self-consciousness? If not, its state must have been nearly equivalent to non-existence. If possessed of individuality, it must have been either progressive or stationary; in either case, what was its degree of advancement on uniting itself to the body? If, on the contrary, it be assumed, according to the general belief, that the soul is born into existence at the same time as the body - or that, previous to the birth of the body, it possesses only negative faculties - we have to propose the following questions:

1. Why do the souls manifest so great a diversity of aptitudes independently of the ideas acquired by education?

2. Whence comes the extra-normal aptitude for certain arts and sciences displayed by many children while still very young, although others remain in a state of inferiority, or of mediocrity, all their life?

3. Whence do some individuals derive the innate or intuitive ideas that are lacking in others?

4. Whence do some children derive the precocious instincts of vice or virtue, the innate sentiments of dignity or of baseness, which often contrast so strikingly with the situation into which they are born?

5. Why is it that some men, independently of education, are more advanced than others?

6. Why is it that among the races which people the globe some are savage and others civilized? If you took a Hottentot baby from its mother's breast, and brought it up in our most renowned schools, could you succeed in making of it a Moses or a Shakespeare?

What is the philosophy or the theosophy that can solve these problems? Either the souls of men are equal at their birth, or they are unequal. If they are equal, why these inequalities of aptitude. Will it be said that these inequalities depend on the corporeal organization of each child? But such a doctrine would be the most monstrous and the most immoral of hypothesis; for, in that case, man would be a mere machine, the sport of matter; he would not be responsible for his actions, but would have the right to throw all the blame of his wrong-doing on the imperfections of his physical frame. If, on the other hand, souls are created unequal, God must have created them so; but, in that case, why is this innate superiority accorded to some and denied to others? And would such partiality be consistent with the justice of God, and the equal love He bears to all His children?

Admit, on the contrary, a succession of existences, and everything is explained. Men bring with them, at their birth in flesh, the amount of intuition they have previously acquired. They are more or less advanced, according to the number of existences they have previously accomplished, according as they are nearer to or farther from the common starting-point; exactly as, in a company made up of individuals of different ages, each will possess a degree of development proportionate to the number of years he has already lived; the succession of years being to the life of the body what the succession of existences is to the life of the soul. Bring together in the same place, at the same time a thousand individuals of all ages, from the new-born babe to the patriarch of eighty. Suppose that a veil is thrown over their past, and that you, in your ignorance of that past, imagine them all to have been born on the same day. You would naturally wonder how it is that some are big and others little; that some are wrinkled and others fresh; that some are learned and others ignorant; but if the cloud which hid their past were dispersed, and you discovered that some had lived longer than others, all these differences would be explained. God, in His justice, could not create souls more or less perfect.

But granting the plurality of our corporeal existences, there is nothing in the differences of quality that we see around us in any way inconsistent with the most rigorous equity; for what we see around us is then perceived to have its roots, not in the present, but in the past.

Is this argument based on any pre-conceived system or gratuitous supposition? No. I start from a fact that is patent and incontestable - viz, the inequality of natural aptitudes and of intellectual and moral development; and I find this a fact to be inexplicable by any of the theories in vogue, while the explanation of this fact afforded by the Hindu doctrine of Reincarnation is at once simple, natural, and rational. Is it reasonable to prefer a theory which does not explain this fact to one which does?

In regard to the sixth question, it will doubtless be replied that the Hottentot is of an inferior race; in which case I beg to inquire whether a Hottentot is or is not a man? If he is not a man, why try to make him a Christian? If he be a man, why has God refused to him and to his race the privileges accorded to the Caucasian race? Hindu philosophy is too broad to admit the existence of different species of men; it recognizes only men whose spiritual part is more or less backward, but who are all capable of the same progress. Is not this view of the human race more conformably with the justice of God?

We have been considering the soul in regard to its past and its present; if we consider it in regard to the future, we are met by difficulties which the theories in vogue are equally unable to explain.

If our future destiny is to be decided solely by our present existence, what will be in the future the respective positions of the savage and of the civilized man? Will they be on the same level, or will there be a difference in the sum of their eternal felicity?

Will the man who has labored diligently all his life to advance his moral and itellectual improve-ment be placed in the same rank with the man who, not through his own fault, but because he has neither the time nor the opportunity for advancing, has remained at a lower point of moral and intellectual improvement?

Can the man who has done wrong because the means of enlightenment have been denied him be justly punished for wrong-doing which has not been the result of his own choice?