PDF version - Geae

espective situations and our different views of life. But the goal is the same for all! Under the whip of trials,
under the lancet of pain, all mount, all are eventually elevated.
The soul is not made for us, it makes itself through the ages. It faculties, its virtues, grow from century
to century. By incarnation each one comes to take up the task of yesterday, interrupted by death, and to perfect
it. From this comes the shining superiority of certain souls who have lived much - accomplished much -
labored much. From this those extraordinary beings who appear here and there in history and project vivid rays
of light on the route of humanity; their superiority is only the result of accumulated experience.
Regarded in this light, the march of humanity is clothed in grandeur. It slowly frees itself from the
obscurity of the ages, emerges from the shadows of ignorance and barbarity, and advances with measured
steps in the midst of obstacles and tempests. It climbs the steep path, and at every turn in the route sees grander
heights, and beholds the luminous summits whereon are throned wisdom, spirituality, and love. And this
collective march is also the individual march of each one of us. For this humanity is ourselves; we are the
same beings who, after a time of repose in space, come back century after century until we are ripe for a better
society and happier world. We are a part of the generation gone, and we will be among those to come. In fact
we compose but one immense human family marching on to the realization of the divine plan - the place of its
magnificent destiny.
One who will give attention to it finds a long past within himself. If the facts of history awaken in us
profound emotion, if we feel ourselves living the lives of those personages of the past, it is because that history
is our own. When we read the annals of certain epochs, and feel drawn toward some of the characters with
veritable passion, it is because our own past is animated and brought to life again. Through the woof woven by
the centuries we have found that our own anguish, our own aspiration and memories momentarily veiled in us
are awakened. If we interrogate our subconscious minds, voices sometimes vague and confused, sometimes
clear and ringing, will answer from the depths. These voices speak of great epochs, of migrations of man, of
furious hordes who passed, carrying all before them, into night and death. These voices speak to us, too, of
humble lives effaced, of silent tears, of forgotten sorrows, of heavy and monotonous hours passed in work, in
meditation, and in prayer - of the silence of cloisters, and of the misery of existences poor and desolate. At
certain hours an entire confused and mysterious world awakes and vibrates in us - a world whose echoes move
and enervate us. It is the voice of the past. It speaks in the somnambulistic trance, and relates the vicissitudes
of the poor soul struggling through the world. It tell us that the actual ME is made of numerous personalities,
which are combined in us like the tributaries of a river: that our principle of life has animated many forms -
forms whose dust reposes in the debris of empires, under the vestiges of dead civilizations.
All these existences have left in the profound depths of us traces, memories, and impressions
ineffaceable. The man who studies and observes feels that he has lived, and will live. He is his own heir,
harvesting in the present what he has sown in some past, and sowing now for the future. It is thus the beauty
and the grandeur of this conception of successive lives asserts itself, coming as it does to complete the law of
evolution seen by science. Exercised at one time in all domains, it rewards each one according to his works,
and shows us above all, the majestic law of progress which reigns in the universe, and leads life ever toward
more beautiful and better states.
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