Is not this a revival of the old idea of the transmigration of souls? To be sure, the soul is not a material thing made of an invisible and airy substance, fluttering about after death and entering into another body. There are no material migrations of soul taking place, however tenuous the substance of the soul might be imagined to be. The memories of the present, our recollection of our past existence, depend on the fact that the living matter which is constantly replacing itself in us by other living matter, like the water in a wave rolling on the surface of the sea, always assumes the same form. It is the form that is constantly reproducing. In this sense, man (that is his soul) is the _product_ of education. The soul of the future man stands in the same relation to our soul as the future edition of a book, revised and enlarged, stands to its present edition.[1] One man impresses his modes of thought, his habits, his methods of action, his ideals upon his fellow men, and thus implants his very soul into their lives. In this sense a transmigration of souls is taking place constantly, and he who opens his eyes will see it. No one has given plainer examples of this truth in the pleasant shape of novelistic narration, than Gustav Freytag. _The Lost Manuscript_ is in more than one respect a representative work, incorporating the spirit of the times. It is interesting from its descriptions of University circles, of country life, and of the vanity fair at the smaller princely courts of Germany. Yet these interesting descriptions gain in value, because we are taught by the author to comprehend the secret laws that rule the growth of, and determine the hidden interconnections between, the souls of men. The plot of _The Lost Manuscript_. Gustav Freytag briefly characterizes as follows: "In the upright soul of a German scholar, through the wish to discover something of great worth for knowledge, are cast juggling shadows, which, like as moonlight distorts the forms in the landscape, disturb the order of his life, and are at last overcome only through painful experiences." Concerning the invention of the plot as well as of the characters of _The Lost Manuscript_, the following account from Gustav Freytag's Reminiscences will be of interest: