Reincarnation: a Study of Forgotten Truth (Eco)

Hermann Lotze, the German philosopher, in his magnificent Microcosm, argues that the idea of a transmigration of souls remains a dream of the fancy, nor has anyone yet succeeded in giving it a higher moral significance for the order of the universe.

The ethical leverage of the doctrine of reincarnation is immense. Its motive power is great. It reveals as magnificent a background to the present life, with its contradictions and disasters, as the prospect of immortality opens up an illimitable foreground, lengthening out the horizon of hope. It binds together the past, the present and the future in one ethical series of causes and effects.

In Reincarnation, a Study of Forgotten Truth, the author goes through an extensive study of the Bible, ancient poetry and writings, Western literature, the Christendom, and the religions of the East to answer one fundamental question: We cannot yet have learned all that we are meant to learn through the body; how much of the teaching even of this world can the most diligent and most favored man have exhausted before he is called to leave it; does all that remain lost?