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strains   of   germplasm   carry  an  excessive  freightage  of
memories--are, to be  scientific,  more  atavistic  than  other
strains;  and  such a strain is mine. I am a freak of heredity,
an atavistic nightmare--call me what you will; but here  I  am,
real  and  alive, eating three hearty meals a day, and what are
you going to do about it?

     And now, before I take up my tale, I  want  to  anticipate
the  doubting  Thomases  of psychology, who are prone to scoff,
and who would otherwise surely say that  the  coherence  of  my
dreams  is  due to overstudy and the subconscious projection of
my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In the first place, I
have never been a zealous  student.  I  graduated  last  of  my
class.  I  cared  more for athletics, and--there is no reason I
should not confess it--more for billiards.


     Further, I had no knowledge of evolution until  I  was  at
college, whereas in my childhood
      and  youth  I  had  already  lived  in  my dreams all the
details of that other, long-ago life. I
      will say, however, that  these  details  were  mixed  and
incoherent until I came to know the
      science  of evolution. Evolution was the key. It gave the
explanation, gave sanity to the
      pranks of this atavistic brain of mine that,  modern  and
normal, harked back to a past
      so   remote   as  to  be  contemporaneous  with  the  raw
beginnings of mankind.

     For in this past I know of, man, as we  to-day  know  him,
did not exist. It was in the period of his becoming that I must
have lived and had my being.


CHAPTER III

     

     The  commonest  dream  of my early childhood was something
like this: It seemed that I was  very  small  and  that  I  lay
curled  up  in  a sort of nest of twigs and boughs. Sometimes I

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