206 THE BIRD WATCHER 
ten times as much as @ghave found, with no thought 
of the lumbago thereby avoided. Thus each way 
would have had its own particular foolery ; and which 
way has not? Does not this apply to much greater 
matters, and often where there might seem to be no 
doubt as to where the foolery lay? The way of sin, 
for instance, that leads to remorse, has always been 
thought a foolish way, and that of virtue and clear 
conscience a wise one. Nevertheless, he who goes 
the first gains such knowledge by experience as can 
never be acquired in any other way, and is therefore 
to this extent the superior of the other unless fe has 
already gained it, either in a life before this or in 
some other manner. If he has not, it seems probable 
that he will have to do so at one time or another, by 
the laws of development—assuming that personal life 
and personal development survive the thing called 
death. Who, then, if we make these assumptions, 
stands the better off, he who has learnt a great truth 
through his sinning, or he who, often owing to 
circumstances merely, has neither the sin nor the 
truth? Quite possibly, as it seems to me, the former ; 
for what do we really know except through our own 
actual experience? What a dream must this life soon 
become to us if we are born, through death, into 
another one widely different fom it! and seeing what 
death does to this body of ours, how can it be other 
than widely different? If, therefore, we could pass 
from life to life, or rather from stage to stage of 
life, keeping the knowledge gained in each to help us 
