So, ever since we began to remember, we know that our personal identity
has not failed us, no matter how bad may be our memory. This disposes
of the argument that identity depends on recollection, for the reason
that if it did depend alone on recollection we should each day have
to begin over again, as we cannot remember the events of the past in
detail, and some minds remember but little yet feel their personal
identity. And as it is often seen that some who remember the least
insist as strongly as the others on their personal identity, that
persistence of feeling must come from the old and immortal soul.
Viewing life and its probable object, with all the varied experience
possible for man, one must be forced to the conclusion that a single
life is not enough for carrying out all that is intended by Nature, to
say nothing of what man himself desires to do. The scale of variety
in experience is enormous. There is a vast range of powers latent in
man which we see may be developed if opportunity be given. Knowledge
infinite in scope and diversity lies before us, and especially in these
days when special investigation is the rule. We perceive that we have
high aspirations with no time to reach up to their measure, while the
great troop of passions and desires, selfish motives and ambitions, war
with us and among themselves, pursuing us even to the door of death.
All these have to be tried, conquered, used, subdued. One life is not
enough for all this. To say that we have but one life here with such
possibilities put before us and impossible of development is to make
the universe and life a huge and cruel joke perpetrated by a powerful
God who is thus accused, by those who believe in a special creation of
souls, of triumphing and playing with puny man just because that man is
small and the creature of the Almighty. A human life at most is seventy
years; statistics reduce this to about forty; and out of that little
remainder a large part is spent in sleep and another part in childhood.
Thus in one life it is perfectly impossible to attain to the merest
fraction of what Nature evidently has in view. We see many truths
vaguely which a life gives us no time to grasp, and especially is this
so when men have to make such a struggle to live at all. Our faculties
are small or dwarfed or weak; one life gives no opportunity to alter
this; we perceive other powers latent in us that cannot possibly be
brought out in such a small space of time; and we have much more than a
suspicion that the extent of the field of truth is vastly greater than
the narrow circle we are confined to. It is not reasonable to suppose
that either God or nature projects us into a body simply to fill us
with bitterness because we can have no other opportunity here, but
rather we must conclude that a series of incarnations has led to the
present condition, and that the process of coming here again and again
must go on for the purpose of affording us the opportunity needed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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