“Let rules be fixed that may our rage contain, And punish faults _with a proportion’d pain_; But do not flay him who deserves alone A whipping for the fault that he has done.” This is a rule for all men, and a just one. Have we to believe that God, of whom you make the embodiment of wisdom, love and mercy, is less entitled to these attributes than mortal man? ENQ. Have you any other reasons for rejecting this dogma? THEO. Our chief reason for it lies in the fact of re-incarnation. As already stated, we reject the idea of a new soul created for every newly-born babe. We believe that every human being is the bearer, or _Vehicle_, of an _Ego_ coeval with every other Ego; because all _Egos_ are _of the same essence_ and belong to the primeval emanation from one universal infinite _Ego_. Plato calls the latter the _logos_ (or the second manifested God); and we, the manifested divine principle, which is one with the universal mind or soul, not the anthropomorphic, extra-cosmic and _personal_ God in which so many Theists believe. Pray do not confuse. ENQ. But where is the difficulty, once you accept a manifested principle, in believing that the soul of every new mortal is _created_ by that Principle, as all the Souls before it have been so created? THEO. Because that which is _impersonal_ can hardly create, plan and think, at its own sweet will and pleasure. Being a universal _Law_, immutable in its periodical manifestations, those of radiating and manifesting its own essence at the beginning of every new cycle of life, IT is not supposed to create men, only to repent a few years later of having created them. If we have to believe in a divine principle at all, it must be in one which is as absolute harmony, logic, and justice, as it is absolute love, wisdom, and impartiality; and a God who would _create_ every soul for the space of _one brief span of life_, regardless of the fact whether it has to animate the body of a wealthy, happy man, or that of a poor suffering wretch, hapless from birth to death though he has done nothing to deserve his cruel fate—would be rather a senseless _fiend_ than a God. (_Vide infra_, “On the Punishment of the Ego.”) Why, even the Jewish philosophers, believers in the Mosaic Bible (esoterically, of course), have never entertained such an idea; and, moreover, they believed in re-incarnation, as we do. ENQ. Can you give me some instances as a proof of this?