ii MEANING OF IMMORTALITY 309 



animal bodies, and in different " worlds " or stars. 

 The individual human and animal souls would be 

 merely modes of the one earth -soul, just as the 

 different star -souls would be merely modes of the 

 one soul of the universe, the first and highest emana- 

 tion of divinity. The immortality of the individual 

 soul would mean accordingly its reabsorption, at the 

 close of its bodily life, into the eternal ; but it would 

 be impossible then to ascribe any continuity or identity 

 to the souls of two beings which succeed each other 

 in nature. This impersonal immortality is that which 

 is most prominent in the Italian dialogues ; it gives 

 place, so far as prominence is concerned, to quite 

 another standpoint in the later Latin works. Thus 

 we find in the Causa the comparison of the presence 

 of the spiritual in matter to that of a voice in a 

 room : it is wholly in the room and in every part of 

 the room, yet it is only one utterance that is so 

 heard in the different parts. 1 It might be added that 

 the different degrees of perfection or of divinity in 

 different things would correspond exactly with the 

 differences in the intensity, vividness, of the sound in 

 nearer and more distant parts of the room. As matter 

 itself is ultimately one with spirit, 2 the outcome of this 

 theory is an extreme Pantheism ; especially as in the 

 Causa the transcendent Unity, elsewhere distinguished 

 from the soul of the universe, is disregarded. Divinity 

 constitutes both existence and essence of all things, and 

 all things are ultimately one God, in whom individual 

 beings have their reality, and in whom each is one with 

 all other beings. u We have not to look for divinity 

 at a distance from us, for we have it with us, more 

 truly intimate to us than we are to ourselves " ; and so 



1 Lag. 242. 3. 2 Causa, Dial. 4; esp. Lag. 265, 38 ff. 



