of one existence into another. The limits of the body seem well
defined enough as definitions go, but definitions seldom go far.
What, for example, can seem more distinct from a man than his banker
or his solicitor? Yet these are commonly so much parts of him that
he can no more cut them off and grow new ones, than he can grow new
legs or arms; neither must he wound his solicitor; a wound in the
solicitor is a very serious thing. As for his bank--failure of his
bank's action may be as fatal to a man as failure of his heart. I
have said nothing about the medical or spiritual adviser, but most
men grow into the society that surrounds them by the help of these
four main tap-roots, and not only into the world of humanity, but
into the universe at large. We can, indeed, grow butchers, bakers,
and greengrocers, almost ad libitum, but these are low developments,
and correspond to skin, hair, or finger-nails. Those of us again
who are not highly enough organised to have grown a solicitor or
banker can generally repair the loss of whatever social organisation
they may possess as freely as lizards are said to grow new tails;
but this with the higher social, as well as organic, developments is
only possible to a very limited extent.

The doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls--a
doctrine to which the foregoing considerations are for the most part
easy corollaries--crops up no matter in what direction we allow our
thoughts to wander. And we meet instances of transmigration of body
as well as of soul. I do not mean that both body and soul have
transmigrated together, far from it; but that, as we can often
recognise a transmigrated mind in an alien body, so we not less
often see a body that is clearly only a transmigration, linked on to
some one else's new and alien soul. We meet people every day whose
bodies are evidently those of men and women long dead, but whose