Mrs. Besant opens her little volume with the famous story of the conversion to Christianity of Edwin, but she tells it very loosely, and in fact wrongly; which is a proof that the infallibility of the Mahatmas has not fallen upon their disciple. She states that while Paulinus, the Christian missionary, was speaking to-Edwin of life, death, and immortality, a bird flew in through a window, circled the hall, and flew out again into the darkness; whereupon the Christian priest "bade the king see in the flight of the bird within the-hall the transitory life of man, and claimed for his faith that it showed the soul, in passing from the' hall of life, winging its way, not in the darkness of night, but in the sunlit radiance of a more glorious world." Now the bird did not fly into the hall as Paulinus was speaking, nor did he preach this sermon upon its movements. It was one of Edwin's suite who introduced the bird's flight as a metaphor, reminding the king that sometimes at supper, in the winter, a sparrow would fly in out of the storm, entering at one door and passing out at another, staying but a minute, and after that minute returning to winter as from winter it came. "Such is the life of man," said the Saxon speaker, "and of what follows it, or what has preceded it, we are altogether ignorant; wherefore, if this new doctrine should bring anything more certain, it well deserves to be followed." This is how the incident is related by Bede, though it is probably apocryphal; nevertheless it ought not to be hashed up by fresh cooks; and if the matter is in itself of trifling importance, it is as well to be accurate, especially when you pretend a close acquaintance with the Masters of Wisdom. Many hundred years have elapsed since Paulinus talked with Edwin, and to-day, says Mrs. Besant, there are "more people in Christendom who question whether a man has a spirit to come anywhence or to go any-whither, than, perhaps, in the world's history could ever before have been found at one time." We are also reminded that man has always been asking whence the soul comes, and whither it goes, and "the answers have varied with the faiths." _This_ is true, at any rate; but it does not suggest to Mrs. Besant any lesson of modesty or hesitation. Despite the discord of so many ages, she is most coolly dogmatic. It does not, apparently, occur to her to ask _why_ the discord has perpetually prevailed. In matters of science, after investigation and discussion, the world comes to an agreement; in matters of theology (or, if you like, Theosophy) the world grows more and more at variance. _Why_ is this? There must be an explanation. And to our mind the explanation is very simple. In matters of science men deal with _facts_, while in those other matters they deal with _fancies_, and the more freedom you give them the greater will be the variety of their preferences.