WISLIZENUS— THOUGHTS ON MATTER AND FORCE. 309 



If reasoning has led us thus step by step to the conclusion, 

 that the human soul is a force of its own, superior to physical 

 forces and to vital force, we must believe too, that the human 

 soul cannot be annihilated, or, as it is commonly expressed, 

 that it must be immortal. When the lower forces are care- 

 fully preserved in nature, the higher ones certainly are not 

 doomed to perdition, but ought to be still more carefully 

 preserved. 



The next question offering itself is, of course, in what 

 manner is this force preserved ? Is it converted incidentally 

 during life into vital force, to return with it by the seeding 

 process into new physical organization, or, in other words, 

 is it to be preserved only by physical propagation from 

 parents to children, and has it in every instance to begin 

 again from the beginning ? This would be a very limited 

 and partial mode of preserving this force ; it would leave its 

 continuation to mere chance; it would not account for its 

 sudden disappearance at the moment of death ; it would 

 destroy its marked individuality by abolishing its highest 

 attributes, consciousness and free will ; it would exclude the 

 law of progress and constant perfectibility, inherent to the 

 soul, and be in fact not much better than annihilation. Or 

 is it preserved, according to the views of ancient philoso- 

 phers, by continued transmigration of the souls, at the mo- 

 ment of death, from and into animal and human bodies on 

 our <dobe ? The low standing of many millions of our race, 

 whose intellectual and moral qualities are scarcely elevated 

 above the animal, has probably suggested this idea of con- 

 sanguinity between animal and human souls ; and I am free 

 to confess, that I could not see any injustice in the return of 

 the souls of men who, during life, have only brutalized 

 themselves, into the very nature of brutes. But the hypoth- 

 esis lacks all natural evidences and is at best but a philo- 

 sophical dream. The ancients, when the greater part of our 

 globe was still a terra incognita, located the abode of de- 

 parted spirits in the "happy islands," far away in the Atlan- 

 tic, in the fabulous west. But in our pragmatical age, every 

 nook and corner of our earth has been so explored, that 

 nowhere is a spot left for myth and tradition. 



Now, if our soul is immortal and destined, after its discon- 

 nection with the body, to a new and progressive life in some 

 other form, where in all probability shall we find it, if not on 

 our globe ? In heaven, is the general term used by religion, 

 which by science is defined : on other celestial bodies simi- 

 lar to our own. Astronomy has disclosed to us an infinity of 

 worlds, a few smaller, most of them immensely larger than 

 this earth. The law of gravity controls them all ; aerolites as 

 well as the late discoveries in spectroscopy prove, that the 

 same matter essentially and the same chemical laws exist 



