Do you not know great and rare men
who cannot have become what they are at once, in a single human existence?
Who must often have existed before
in order to have attained that purity of feeling,
that instinctive impulse for all that is true, beautiful and good -
in short, that elevation and natural supremacy over all around them?...
Have you observed that children will sometimes,
of a sudden, give utterance to ideas
which makes us wonder how they got possession of them;...
Have you never had remembrances of a former state,
which you could find no place for in this life?...
Have you not seen persons, been in places,
of which you had seen those persons, or had been in those places before?
-J. G. von Herder (1744-1803)
German Philosopher, Theologian, Poet and Literary Critic