The Theosophist Monthly Journal devoted to Oriental Philosophy Art Literature and Occultism June 1885

The blind the deaf the dumb the idiot and the criminal stand side by side with the rich the powerful the intelligent and the virtuous ; the child of the thief and the beggar is clothed in rags and nourished in vice the child of the king lies in purple and fine linen and has every aid to virtue that postion and nurture can bestow ; no action of his own has etailed this punishment on [...] The fourth and fifth may be considered as the personal soul consisting of the desires and will of the personality : the egoism or self-sonseiousness the vehicle of the permanent Ego which is the sixth oveshadowed by the seventh the Atman the One Life which alone renders any permanence possible. [...] The consciousness of man has been divided into sensuous and super-sensuous and is the relation that exists between the past and the present Ego the individuality the hige self in its passage through the earthly personality assimilates the experiences of the sensuous consciousness and in this way the essentials of the past Egos are included in the individuality and exist in the super-sensuous [...] We shall recognize that there is a potentiality of good even in the most degraded and discern the truth in the words of one of our teachers who says the vices of men are but steps in the ladder of virtue." The influence of this doctrine on the ideas of right and wrong will be seen in its effect on the individual and his conception of the valve of action in its double aspect of cause and effect [...] As a sequence of the continuity of spirit and its permanence in change the doctrine of re-birth is the only theory that will yield a true metaphysical basis for the explanation of the phenomena of life ; it is translated on to the physical plane in the laws of evolution and manifests its ethical value in the unswerving law of justice.