The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence exhibits one variety of the idea of pre-existence, though in a necessarily inaccurate and somewhat fanciful form—as though infants were a stage higher in the scale than grown men. Such an idea would involve the old mistaken postulate of initial perfection, which was made long ago concerning the race: whereas the truth was innocency, not perfection. But the idea that nothing less than the whole of a personality must be incarnated—even in the body of an infant—leads to innumerable difficulties;—it does not even escape unanswerable questions about trivialities such as the moment of arrival; and it is responsible for much biological scepticism concerning the existence of any soul at all. Whereas, on the strength of the experience that all processes in nature are really gradual, the idea of gradual incarnation—increasing as the brain and body grow, but never attaining any approach to completeness even in the greatest of men—sets one above innumerable petty difficulties, and to me seems an opening in the direction of the truth. On this view, the portion of larger self incarnated in an infant or a feeble-minded person is but small: in normal cases, more appears as the body is fitted to receive it. In some cases much appears, thus constituting a great man; while in others, again, a link of occasional communication is left open between the part and the whole—producing what we call “genius.” Second childishness is the gradual abandonment of the material vehicle, as it gets worn out or damaged. But, during the episode of this life, man is never a complete self, his roots are in another order of being, he is moving about in worlds not realised, he is as if walking in a vain shadow and disquieting himself in vain. It may be objected that our present existence is very far from being a dream or trance-like condition, that we are very wide awake to the “realities” of the world, and very keen about “things of importance”; that an analogy drawn from the memories of hypnotic patients and multiple personalities, and other pathological cases, is sure to be misleading. It may be so, the idea is admittedly of the nature of speculation; but the greatest of poets lends his countenance to the notion that phenomena and appearances are not ultimate realities, that our present life is not unlike the state of a sleep-walker—that we slept to enter it, and must sleep again before we wake— “We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.”