[Footnote 76: It is impossible for heredity and environment to supply _all_ the conditions that a soul's evolution calls for, and _nothing but these conditions_; that is the reason Providence intervenes in the interests of justice.] [Footnote 77: It is in this great body, with which we are in sympathy, though we claim the right to dispute their theories when we regard them as erroneous, that this hypothesis is met with more especially. True, certain schools of lower occultism teach it also, but they form a minority, and are of no importance.] [Footnote 78: Harmony is established when there is vibratory synchronism of all the states of matter of the different bodies _i.e._, when each slate of matter in a body vibrates in unison with the analogous states of matter of all the other bodies.] [Footnote 79: When the "life wave" has ended its cycle on this earth, it passes in succession over the other planets of our chain and leaves the earth in a state of slumber. This slumber ceases with the return of the "life wave"; it becomes death when the evolution of the chain is accomplished. See A. P. Sinnett's _Esoteric Buddhism._] [Footnote 80: At a certain stage on the _Path_, return to earth is no longer obligatory.] CHAPTER IV. REINCARNATION AND THE RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHIC CONSENSUS OF THE AGES. In the rapid review we are now about to make of the religion and philosophy of the past, we shall find that, under many and divers names and veils, the doctrine of Rebirths has been taught from the farthest antiquity right up to the present time. There is not a nation that has not preserved clear traces of this doctrine; not a religion that has not taught it, either openly or in secret, or, at all events, retained the germ of the teaching; and if we count only those peoples of whose national religion it forms part, _i.e._, Hindus and Buddhists, the number of believers in Reincarnation may be summed up in round figures at 540 millions of the present population of 1400 millions throughout the world. The greatest of philosophers, both ancient and modern, have regarded palingenesis as the basis of life, but whereas in the past the pledge of initiation prevented its details from being promulgated, in our days, along with the flood of light which this cycle has brought us, the veil of secrecy has been partially lifted, and theosophy has been privileged to set forth this glorious teaching in its main outlines and its most important details. INDIA.