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.