To my mind the birth of a child is not a breach of the law of continuity, but on that very ground I must admit the previous existence of the Self that is here born as a child, and which brings with it into this new order of things simply its Self-consciousness, and even that not developed but undeveloped potentia, in a sleep. When afterwards a child awakes to self-consciousness, that is really its remembrance of its former existence. The Self which it becomes conscious of, remember, is in its essence not of this world only, but of a former as well as of a future world. This constitutes in fact the only distinct remembrance in every human being of a former life. There are besides indistinct remembrances of his former existence, viz. the many dispositions which every thinking man finds in himself, and which are not simply the result of the impressions of this world on a so-called _tabula rasa_. Unless we begin life as _tabula rasa_ we begin it as _tabula preparata_, as _leukomata_, and whatever colour or disposition, or talent, or temperament, whatever there is inexplicable in each individual, that he will perceive, or possibly remember, as the result of the continuity between his present and former life. _MS._ What, then, is that which we call Death? Separation of the Self from a living body. If so, does the body die because the Self leaves it, or does the Self leave the body because it dies? What has life to do with the Self? Has the Self which for a time dwells in a living body anything to do with what we call the life of that body? Does the Self take possession of a body because it lives, or does the body live because the Self has taken possession of it? The difficulty arises from our vague conception of _life_. Life is only a mode of existence. Existence is possible without what we call life, not life without existence. To live means to be able to absorb, but who or what is able? The Self exists, it is sentient, capable of perception by becoming embodied. It is perceptive because sentient, it is conceptive because perceptive. The difficulty lies in the embodiment. It is there where all philosophy becomes ridiculous. _MS._ Knowledge belongs to the Self alone, call it what we will. The nerve fibres might vibrate as often as they pleased, millions and millions of times in a second; they could never produce the sensation of red if there were no Self as the receiver and illuminator, the translator of these vibrations of ether; this Self that alone receives, alone illumines, alone knows, and of which we can say nothing more than that it exists, that it perceives, and as the Indian philosophers add, that it is blessed, _i.e._ that it is complete in itself, serene, and eternal. _Silesian Horseherd._