“An empty and deserted organism, as yours was at the time we used it for our evocation,” he said slowly; “an organism unable to offer resistance owing to its being unoccupied--that is the channel, if it were available, which they would take. When the soul is out--or _not yet--in_.” We gazed fixedly at one another for a time I could not measure. I knew his awful meaning. For to me, in that first moment of comprehension, it seemed too terrible, too incredible for belief. I staggered over to the open window. Julius came after me and laid his hand upon my shoulder. “The body is but the instrument,” I heard him murmur; “the vehicle of the soul that uses it. Only at the moment of birth does a soul move in to take possession. The parents provide it, helpless and ignorant as to who eventually shall take command. And if this thing happened--though the risk is small----” I turned and faced him as he stopped. “A monster!” “An elemental being, a child of the elements----” “Non-human?” I gasped. “Nature and human-nature linked,” he replied with curious reverence. “A cosmic being born in a human body. Only---- I shall not fail.” And before I could find another word to utter, or even acknowledge the quick pressure of his hand upon my own, I heard his step upon the passage boards, and found myself alone again. I stood by the open window, gazing into the deep, star-lit sky above this mountain valley on our little, friendly Earth, prey to emotions that derived from another, but forgotten planet--emotions, therefore, that no “earthly” words can attempt to fathom or describe.... Book IV THE ATTEMPTED RESTITUTION CHAPTER XXV “_Let us consider_ wisdom _first_. “_Can we be wiser by reason of something which we have forgotten? Unquestionably we can.... A man who dies after acquiring knowledge--and all men acquire some--might enter his new life, deprived indeed of his knowledge, but not deprived of the increased strength and delicacy of mind which he had gained in acquiring the knowledge. And if so, he will be wiser in the second life because of what has happened in the first._ “_Of course he loses something in losing the actual knowledge.... But ... is not even this loss really a gain? For the mere accumulation of knowledge, if memory never ceased, would soon become overwhelming, and worse than useless. What better fate would we wish for than to leave such accumulations behind us, preserving their greatest value in the_ mental faculties _which have been strengthened by their acquisition_.”--J. M’Taggart. As I sit here in the little library of my Streatham house, trying to record faithfully events of so many years ago, I find myself at a point now where the difficulty well-nigh overwhelms me. For what happened in that valley rises before me now as though it had been some strange and prolonged enchantment; it comes back to me almost in the terms of dream or vision.