In that sense the idea is feasible and illuminative. It explains the obvious limitations and localism of our personalities, as being more or less passing and temporary embodiments of our true selves; and it represents the latter as immense storehouses of experience from all manner of places and times, and similarly as centres of world-activity operating in different fields of time and space. At the same time, it presents various difficulties. For one thing, it poses the difficulty that for each of us this vast interior being is, as a rule, so deeply buried that both oneself and one’s friends are only faintly conscious—if at all—of its true outline. And if one does not recognize this being, of what use is it to us? It is true that we sometimes meet people who at first sight give us a strong impression of far-back intimacy; but this is only a vague impression and hardly sufficient to afford proof of pre-existence. The only way of meeting this difficulty seems to be to suppose, as residing in this inner being or true self, another order of consciousness, faint intimations of which we even now have, and by which, as it grows and develops, we may some day clearly recognize our true selves and true nature. Another difficulty is that (as already said) for any satisfactory sense of survival continuity of memory is needed; and we should have to suppose that the memory of each earth-life was continued into and stored up in this deeper soul or æonian self. Memory would not normally pass from one embodiment or incarnation to another, but each stream would flow into the central self and there be stored. And I think we may admit that this is by no means impossible. Indeed there are not a few facts (some already mentioned) with regard to the recovery of memory which make the mater probable. Though any given earth-life in a given form could not be repeated, the _memory_ of such an earth-life, fresh and clear, may survive for an indefinite time in the crystal mirror of the deeper consciousness.[127] And it is perhaps allowable to suppose that in this way, and with the lifting of the opaque veil of our present consciousness, we may some day come clearly into the presence of friends we have lost.