THEO. Has the coat torn to shreds from the back of the man who stole it, by another man who was robbed of it and recognises his property, to be regarded as fairly dealt with? The new “personality” is no better than a fresh suit of clothes with its specific characteristics, colour, form and qualities; but the _real_ man who wears it is the same culprit as of old. It is the _individuality_ who suffers through his “personality.” And it is this, and this alone, that can account for the terrible, still only _apparent_, injustice in the distribution of lots in life to man. When your modern philosophers will have succeeded in showing to us a good reason, why so many apparently innocent and good men are born only to suffer during a whole lifetime; why so many are born poor unto starvation in the slums of great cities, abandoned by fate and men; why, while these are born in the gutter, others open their eyes to light in palaces; while a noble birth and fortune seem often given to the worst of men and only rarely to the worthy; while there are beggars whose _inner_ selves are peers to the highest and noblest of men; when this, and much more, is satisfactorily explained by either your philosophers or theologians, then only, but not till then, you will have the right to reject the theory of re-incarnation. The highest and grandest of poets have dimly perceived this truth of truths. Shelley believed in it, Shakespeare must have thought of it when writing on the worthlessness of Birth. Remember his words: “Why should my birth keep down my mounting spirit? Are not all creatures subject unto time? There’s legions now of beggars on the earth, That their original did spring from Kings, And many monarchs now, whose fathers were The riff-raff of their age....” Alter the word “fathers” into “Egos”—and you will have the truth. FOOTNOTES: [31] “The phantasy,” says Olympiodorus (in Platonis Phæd.) “is an impediment to our intellectual conceptions; and hence, when we are agitated by the inspiring influence of the Divinity, if the phantasy intervenes, the enthusiastic energy ceases: for enthusiasm and the ecstasy are contrary to each other. Should it be asked whether the soul is able to energise without the phantasy, we reply, that its perception of universals proves that it is able. It has perceptions, therefore, independent of the phantasy; at the same time, however, the phantasy attends in its energies, just as a storm pursues him who sails on the sea.” [32] Namely, the body, life, passional and animal instincts, and the astral eidolon of every man (whether perceived in thought or our mind’s eye, or objectively and separate from the physical body), which principles we call _Sthula sarira_, _Pranâ_, _Kama rupa_, and _Linga sarira_ (_vide supra_).