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CHAPTER XII.
RE-INCARNATION.
همچو سبزها بارها روئیده ام هفتصد هفتاد قالب دیده ام *
[Tr.-Seventy times seven hundred bodies have I passed through; seed-like have I sprouted forth again and again.]
no
The eternity of the soul being established in the preceding chapters, re-incarnation follows as a necessary logical corollary. For it is inconceivable that throughout the unimaginably vast eternity of time which is implied in our notion of the past, the present incarnation of the soul should be altogether a novel and unprecedented event in its experience. The present appearance of the jiva can, then, in no sense be its first incarnation in the world. This is tantamount to saying that it must have appeared in many other forms or incarnations in the past. To deny this would be to introduce the element of chance, or the deux ex machina of a divine will, concerning which Mr. J. C. Chatterji makes the following highly pertinent observations in his Hindu Realism (pages 116-117):
"It cannot be said that the Atman suddenly makes a resolve to be born and is born, For, in that case, we have first to show the antecedents which can lead to such a resolve; because we know of resolves which are made without antecedents consisting of thoughts, ideas and perceptions. Secondly, if an Atman came to be born out of its own choice, by making a sudden resolve, it would be born only under conditions which would make it happy. But there are millions of men that are anything but happy in regard to their
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