from Henry Vaughan to Wordsworth, praise it. It appealed to Hume as more rational than the rival theories of creationism and traducianism. It has points of contact with the anthropology of Kant and Schelling.… Passing from the schools to the instinctive ideas of primitive men, or the conceptions now entertained by races half-civilized or wholly barbarous, a belief in transmigration will be found to be almost universal. It is inwoven with nearly all the mythology of the world. It appears in Mexico and Thibet, amongst negroes and the Hawaiian Islanders. It comes down from the Druids of ancient Gaul to the Tasmanians of to-day. The stream of opinion, whether instinctive, mystic, or rational, is continuous and broad; and if we could legitimately determine any question of belief by the number of its adherents, the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, would apply to this more fitly than to any other" (Essays in Philosophy, pp. 323, 326).
The Theory of "Metakinesis"
But we cannot terminate our inquiry by the acceptance of this ancient doctrine of pre-existence and transmigration. This is as much a matter of speculation as any other theory and is attended with embarrassments of a peculiar nature. It is cited to show how strong the conviction of men in all times has been that the mind of man neither arises as an uncaused phenomenon nor finds its cause in the movements of matter. A scientific writer of highly accredited authority, Professor Lloyd Morgan, of Bristol, in his late work on Animal Life and Intelligence, has stated a theory which does justice to the principle of causation, whatever may be said of it from other points of view. "It is generally admitted," he says, "that physical phenomena, including those which we call physiological, can be explained (or are explicable) in terms of energy. It is also generally admitted that consciousness is something distinct from, nay, belonging to a wholly different phenomenal order from, energy. And it is further generally admitted that consciousness is nevertheless in some way closely, if not indissolubly, associated with special
