realise that in dealing with transmigration we are not dealing simply with some old-world doctrine deciphered from some palm-leaf written in some ancient character.  After describing—­here following the ancient philosophical writings, the Upanishads—­how the Jivatma or Soul comes up through the various existences of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms until it reaches the human stage, the Text-book proceeds to describe the further upward or downward process.  It is declared that the downward movement (from man to animal) is now much rarer than formerly—­that concession is made to modern ideas—­but the law of the downward process is as follows:  “When a man has so degraded himself below the human level that many of his qualities can only express themselves through the form of a lower creature, he cannot, when his time for rebirth comes, pass into a human form.  He is delayed, therefore, and is attached to the body of one of the lower creatures as a co-tenant with the animal, vegetable, or mineral Jiva [life], until he has worn out the bonds of these non-human qualities and is fit to take birth again in the world of men.  A very strong and excessive attachment to an animal may have similar results.”  Where modern ideas reach in India, one can understand such ideas as those melting away.  A second passage from the Text-book is interesting, as showing the compiler’s idea of the place of a life in Europe in the chain of existences, although in this case also the statement is made only about “ancient days.”  “The Jivatma [soul] was prepared for entrance into each [Indian] caste through a long preliminary stage outside India; then he was born into India and passed into each caste to receive its definite lessons; then was born away from India to practise these lessons; usually returning to India to the highest of them, in the final stages of his evolution.”  In other words, people of the outer world, say Europeans, are rewarded for virtue by being born into the lowest Indian caste, and then, after rising to be brahmans in India, they go back to Europe to give it the benefit of their acquirements; and finally crown their career by reappearing in India as a brahman philosopher or jogi.  Surely we may laugh at this without being thought unsympathetic or narrow-minded.  We recall Mrs. Besant’s assertion that she had a dim recollection of an existence as a brahman pandit in India.  According to the spiritual genealogy of the Hindu Text-book, she may hope to be born next in an Indian child, and become a jogi possessed of saving knowledge of the identity of self with Deity.

[Sidenote:  The women of the middle class and transmigration.]