"It seems surprising that in the discussions of contemporary philosophy on the origin and destiny of the soul there has been no explicit revival of the doctrines of Pre-existence and Metempsychosis.... They offer quite a remarkable solution of the mystery of Creation, Translation, and Extinction.... "Stripped of all extravagances and expressed in the modest terms of probability, the theory has immense speculative interest and great ethical value. It is much to have the puzzle of the origin of evil thrown back for an indefinite number of cycles of lives and to have a workable explanation of Nemesis...." Professor W. A. Butler, in his _Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy_, says: "There is internally no greater improbability that the present may be the result of a former state now almost wholly forgotten than that the present should be followed by a future form of existence in which, perhaps, or in some departments of which, the oblivion may be as complete." The Rev. William R. Alger, a Unitarian minister, adds: "Our present lack of recollection of past lives is no disproof of their actuality.... The most striking fact about the doctrine of the repeated incarnations of the soul ... is the constant reappearance of that faith in all parts of the world and its permanent hold on certain great nations.... "The advocates of the resurrection should not confine their attention to the repellent or ludicrous aspects of metempsychosis, ... but do justice to its claim and charm." (_A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life_.) Professor Francis Bowen, of Harvard University, writes in the _Princetown Review_ for May, 1881, when dealing with the subject of _Christian Metempsychosis_: "Our life upon earth is rightly held to be a discipline and a preparation for a higher and eternal life hereafter. But if limited to the duration of a single mortal body, it is so brief as to seem hardly sufficient for so great a purpose.... Why may not the probation of the soul be continued or repeated through a long series of successive generations, the same personality animating, one after another, an indefinite number of tenements of flesh, and carrying forward into each the training it has received, the character it has formed, the temper and dispositions it has indulged, in the stage of existence immediately preceding?...