[130] See _infra_, ch. xiv. p. 255; also E. B. Wilson, _The Cell_, p. 433. [131] Though this process, it would appear, requires _practice_, and is not learned at once. [132] See the frequent description of the unusual beauty and radiancy of the forms seen in connection with trance-mediums and circles. [133] It may easily be understood, I think, that the process by which the distinct soul is thus built up may last several lifetimes. That is, there may be a long period during which the budding soul still entangled in the race-life may be reincarnated jointly with the race-soul in a kind of mixed way—family and race-characteristics mingling with and obscuring its expression—though these incarnations would become ever less mixed and more individual in character till the day of the soul’s final disentanglement. [134] In the _Symposium_—Shelley’s translation. [135] Shelley’s translation. [136] What the _physical_ medium of this transmission may be—whether the germ-plasm of Weismann, or some subtle _aura_ which connects the members of a race together, or anything else—is a question to which the answer at present is not very clear. [137] And not only out of the abysmal deeps of Man, but also out of the hidden soul of the Earth, and other cosmic beings. [138] See _supra_, ch. vii. p. 122. [139] See note at end of chapter vi. [140] See, for instance, Homer’s _Odyssey_, bk. xi., lines 601 _et seq._, where Odysseus speaks with the ghost of Hercules in Hades; but it is explained that Hercules himself is in Heaven: “Then in his might I beheld huge Hercules, phantom terrific, Phantom I say, for the hero himself is among the immortals.” [141] In this case, described by Dr. Morton Prince in his _Dissociation of a Personality_ (see note to ch. vi., _supra_), at least four or five distinct personalities were recognizable in the one woman. [142] See _The Art of Creation_, pp. 80, 81. [143] See Bergson’s _L’Évolution Créatrice_ throughout. [144] “Der Beginn des erneuten seraphischen Lebens und Einbeziehung alles dessen, was ausser der Gegenwartsenge liegt.” End of Project Gutenberg's The Drama of Love and Death, by Edward Carpenter