“Like Cardon and Pompanatius, “who were no friends to the soul’s immortality”, as says Henry More, “Aristotle expressly concludes that the rational soul is both a distinct being from the soul of the world, though of the same essence”, and that “it does preexist before it comes into the body.”
Years have rolled away since the Count Joseph De Maistre wrote a sentence which, if appropriate to the Voltairean epoch in which he lived, applies with still more justice to our period of utter skepticism.
“I have heard”, writes this eminent man, “I have heard and read myriads of good jokes on the ignorance of the ancients, who were always seeing spirits everywhere; methinks that we are a great deal more imbecile than our forefathers, in never perceiving any such now, anywhere.””
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 