Many writers on the subject of Metempsychosis have devoted much time, labor and argument to prove the reasonableness of the doctrine upon purely speculative, philosophical, or metaphysical grounds.  And while we believe that such efforts are praiseworthy for the reason that many persons must be first convinced in that way, still we feel that one must really feel the truth of the doctrine from something within his own consciousness, before he will really believe it to be truth.  One may convince himself of the logical necessity of the doctrine of Metempsychosis, but at the same time he may drop the matter with a shrug of the shoulders and a “still, who knows?” But when one begins to feel within himself the awakening consciousness of a “something in the past,” not to speak of the flashes of memory, and feeling of former acquaintance with the subject, then, and then only, does he begin to believe.

Many people have had “peculiar experiences” that are accountable only upon the hypothesis of Metempsychosis.  Who has not experienced the consciousness of having felt the thing before—­having thought it some time in the dim past?  Who has not witnessed new scenes that appear old, very old?  Who has not met persons for the first time, whose presence awakened memories of a past lying far back in the misty ages of long ago?  Who has not been seized at times with the consciousness of a mighty “oldness” of soul?  Who has not heard music, often entirely new compositions, which somehow awakens memories of similar strains, scenes, places, faces, voices, lands, associations and events, sounding dimly on the strings of memory as the breezes of the harmony floats over them?  Who has not gazed at some old painting, or piece of statuary, with the sense of having seen it all before?  Who has not lived through events, which brought with them a certainty of being merely a repetition of some shadowy occurrences away back in lives lived long ago?  Who has not felt the influence of the mountain, the sea, the desert, coming to them when they are far from such scenes—­coming so vividly as to cause the actual scene of the present to fade into comparative unreality.  Who has not had these experiences—­we ask?

Writers, poets, and others who carry messages to the world, have testified to these things—­and nearly every man or woman who hears the message recognizes it as something having correspondence in his or her own life.  Sir Walter Scott tells us in his diary:  “I cannot, I am sure, tell if it is worth marking down, that yesterday, at dinner time, I was strangely haunted by what I would call the sense of preexistence, viz., a confused idea that nothing that passed was said for the first time; that the same topics had been discussed and the same persons had stated the same opinions on them.  The sensation was so strong as to resemble what is called the mirage in the desert and a calenture on board ship.”  The same writer, in one of his novels, “Guy Mannering,”