Conspicuous among the forces of change are, first, the study of physical phenomena on scientific methods, a study which, by convincing the Western mind of a profound mystery behind all phenomena, gives fresh impulse to speculative thought, and rouses effort to reach and apprehend the law of evolution. Second, the study of psychic phenomena revealing modes of consciousness hitherto ignored, and impelling science to penetrate the hidden recesses of our psychic activities and investigate some of the heights and depths of man’s inner constitution. Third, the historical studies that throw new light on the marvellous civilizations of the past and those religions that are more ancient than Christianity. Whatever the ultimate outcome of these studies may prove, it is clear that the perspective of early faiths—their range and reach—was vaster than that of current Christianity, and this perception is creeping into our popular literature and laying hold of public thought. For instance, a recent writer remarks: “The modern scientific revelation of stellar evolution and dissolution seems a prodigious confirmation of Buddhist theories of cosmical law.” And again, “With the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution old forms of thought crumbled, new ideas arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas, and we have a general intellectual movement in directions strangely parallel with Oriental philosophy.” (Lafcadio Hearn’s _Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life_.) This movement necessarily will advance only by carrying with it, i.e. convincing step by step, the reason of man, and seeing that Oriental philosophy has the doctrines of re-incarnation and Karma at its foundation, these must be tested and the fact ascertained whether or not they are consistent with the laws of phenomenal existence already discovered and believed in by the Occidental mind. “To-day,” says Lafcadio Hearn, “for the student of scientific psychology, the idea of pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact,” and he quotes in corroboration of this statement Professor Huxley’s opinion of the theory—“None but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality, and it may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying.” (_Evolution and Ethics_, p. 61, Ed. 1894.)