PRE-EXISTENCE AND HEREDITY. 413 



present life. No one has any but second-hand 

 evidence of the earHer stages of his existence on 

 earth ; our belief in our birth rests upon testimony, 

 and is confirmed by inference; we beheve the tales 

 of our entry into the world, because we perceive 

 that we must have come into it somehow. And the 

 inference as to our pre-existence is of a precisely 

 similar kind, though, it may be, of inferior certainty 

 {cp. ch. X. § 29). So also we believe the testimony of 

 our reason as to our past existence, because there is 

 no other mode of accounting for our present exist- 

 ence ; we believe in pre-existence, because it is 

 the only reasonable inference from the observed 

 facts. 



§ 18. But there remains one very real and seri- 

 ous objection to our eschatology, as to all theories 

 of pre-existence, and indeed to all belief in a future 

 life. This is the conflict between it and the con- 

 ception of heredity. If our parents fashion our 

 bodies for us, and if our souls are the souls of our 

 particular bodies, how can the immortal spirit enter 

 them from without ? If our character and circum- 

 stances are the inherited results of the past action of 

 our parents, how can they be the result of the past 

 action of our Ego, and the reward of conduct in a 

 previous life ? 



The difficulty is a real one, and must not be trifled 

 with or evaded. It will not do to deny the fact of 

 heredity, and still less to limit its scope by distin- 

 guishing that part of the soul which is inherited 

 from that which pre-exists. The one device would 

 display only our scientific ignorance, the other our 

 metaphysical incompetence (cp. § 6). 



But perhaps, we may say, the dilemma in which 

 the objection seeks to place us is a false one, and 



