THEO. Just what I said: “attributes,” among which is _memory_, all of which perish like a flower, leaving behind them only a feeble perfume. Here is another paragraph from H. S. Olcott’s “Buddhist Catechism”[34] which bears directly upon the subject. It deals with the question as follows:—“The aged man remembers the incidents of his youth, despite his being physically and mentally changed. Why, then, is not the recollection of past lives brought over by us from our last birth into the present birth? Because memory is included within the Skandhas, and the Skandhas having changed with the new existence, a memory, the record of that particular existence, develops. Yet the record or reflection of all the past lives must survive, for when Prince Siddhartha became Buddha, the full sequence of His previous births were seen by Him ... and any one who attains to the state of _Jhana_ can thus retrospectively trace the line of his lives.” This proves to you that while the undying qualities of the personality—such as love, goodness, charity, etc.—attach themselves to the immortal Ego, photographing on it, so to speak, a permanent image of the divine aspect of the man who was, his material Skandhas (those which generate the most marked Karmic effects) are as evanescent as a flash of lightning, and cannot impress the new brain of the new personality; yet their failing to do so impairs in no way the identity of the reincarnating Ego. ENQ. Do you mean to infer that that which survives is only the Soul-memory, as you call it, that Soul or Ego being one and the same, while nothing of the personality remains? THEO. Not quite; something of each personality, unless the latter was an _absolute_ materialist with not even a chink in his nature for a spiritual ray to pass through, must survive, as it leaves its eternal impress on the incarnating permanent Self or Spiritual Ego.[35] (See On _post mortem_ and _post natal_ Consciousness.) The personality with its Skandhas is ever changing with every new birth. It is, as said before, only the part played by the actor (the true Ego) for one night. This is why we preserve no memory on the physical plane of our past lives, though the _real_ “Ego” has lived them over and knows them all. ENQ. Then how does it happen that the real or Spiritual man does not impress his new personal “I” with this knowledge?