EVOLUTION OF MIND IN MAN 63 



minds, so in like proportion our powers of observation decrease. 

 This is why farming, which is a science of observation, not 

 of study, necessitates that those who succeed well as farmers, 

 must be brought up in close touch with nature before they are 

 fifteen years of age, or they will not acquire the habit of 

 noticing the small details which make big practical differences 

 in this profession in life, more than in any other profession ; 

 failing which advantage, no matter how they may excel in 

 theoretical knowledge, they are very seldom able to compete 

 practically, with those who have from childhood been in touch 

 with nature, and have kept alive their powers of observation. 



I have instanced this here so that the reader may 

 the better grasp that the same laws hold good with the recall- 

 ing of memories of the past, and the recollections of the minds 

 of our ancestors. In this manner, when God took away our 

 power of memory, for the reasons stated above, he gave us in 

 place thereof, a limited power to recall in an indistinct manner 

 under like conditions and like circumstances the observations 

 and experiences of those of our past ancestors possessed of 

 similarly constructed brains to our own, not those of any of 

 our ancestors. Hence these thoughts and ideas we fondly lay 

 claim to belong, not to our own life, but to the past generations 

 upon generations, who are now granting us a temporary lease 

 of them. And we recall them as we require them, not as we 

 will to call them, for they come not at our call but at the call 

 of like circumstances and requirements, of like scenes and 

 conditions to those that gave them birth in the lives of our 

 ancestors. When we think aright, and succeed at work at 

 which others think wrongly and fail, it is because we have 

 ancestors who lived to see a like occurrence of the same circum- 

 stances under which we now live, whereas those who failed 

 have lacked ancestors whose experience could teach them. 



Had memory not been withdrawn, fear would have 

 daunted and destroyed our courage. In this manner we are 

 now permitted to recall to our minds the knowledge of our 

 past ancestors, when we require it ; for their souls, though their 

 bodies are dead, are part and parcel of the souls within us, and 

 their life and brains still live on in the immortality of their 

 souls, hidden invisibly in the misty caverns and cavities of our 

 brains, and they are permitted to emerge in our thoughts, to 

 aid with the hidden souls of defunct bodies reincarnated in 



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