preestablished harmony See LEIBNIZ, PHILOSOPHY. OF MIN. preexistence, existence of the individual soul or psyche prior to its current embodiment, when the soul or psyche is taken to be separable and capable of existing independently from its embodiment. The current embodiment is then often described as a reincarnation of the soul. Plato’s Socrates refers to such a doctrine several times in the dialogues, notably in the myth of Er in Book X of the Republic. The doctrine is distinguished from two other teachings about the soul: creationism, which holds that the individual human soul is directly created by God, and traducianism, which held that just as body begets body in biological generation, so the soul of the new human being is begotten by the parental soul. In Hinduism, the cycle of reincarnations represents the period of estrangement and trial for the soul or Atman before it achieves release (moksha). F.J.C.