of consciousness upon the disintegration of brain tissue and the hypothesis that it is simply a mode of motion, which we were compelled to reject. We then followed the indications of embryology and considered the manifestations of psychic life in micro-organisms. We found that there is a sense-of-objects even in the lowest of these. We called attention to the fact that consciousness is the sense of unity of psychic elements, supported by the unity of the organism, and illustrated it by showing that there are three ways in which this unity may be lost, so that a new consciousness supervenes. The conclusion from all this evidently is, that, while psychic elements are manifested to us directly only through consciousness, they exist as its pre-conditions; and, therefore, are not to be denied existence beyond the sphere of consciousness. This sense of unity does, indeed, come and go with our food and breath, and, so far as sense can testify, ceases when we sleep and when we die, for as an ancient sage has said, "Sleep is the image of death." But while we sleep the psychic elements that consciousness unifies in our waking hours do not cease to be. Who shall say that they shall cease to be in that last sleep whose morning never dawns on earthly hills? Unconscious we were born into this world, and its pain and chill were our first greeting. Unconscious ante-natal elements were the fountain from whose secret springs personality emerged with its rational powers and ancestral similitude. Either a miracle is wrought with every first sensation, breaking the sequence of causation that connects child with parent, or the promise and potency of a human spirit were centred in the embryonic organism. Unless every analogy of nature is violated, what we call the soul had its being long before it came to consciousness.
The Belief in Metempsychosis.
It may be that this is the truth that underlies the ancient doctrine of pre-existence and metempsychosis. It is almost startling to observe the extent to which this doctrine has been accepted. In a recent essay upon the subject, Professor
