ii INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 311 



the pursuit of an infinite object by a finite intelligence 

 is justified from the infinite potentiality of the latter, as 

 eternal and unlimited in its capacity for delight and 

 blessedness. The infinite desire is itself a pledge of 

 its fulfilment in an eternal life. 1 The individual, finite 

 as it is, must realise in itself the whole nature of the 

 universe to which it belongs ; each thing, each substance 

 or monad, realises in the course of its life all other 

 possible existences. Each takes on successively all pos- 

 sible forms, just as at every moment all possible forms 

 are actually realised in the universe as a whole. Each 

 thing, and every part of each, present to us the 

 " similitude," the image of the universe. It is precisely 

 the thought which afterwards loomed so largely in the 

 philosophy of Leibniz, that each monad is a mirror of 

 the universe. The transmigration of the earlier philo- 

 sophy appears in a far nobler light in this phase. The 

 soul of man does not change in itself as it passes 

 through its innumerable forms ; now it is endowed 

 with the " instruments " or members of the human 

 body ; anon it will take up the members of another 

 body ; " for the soul which has now the bodily organs 

 of a horse there await the bodily members of a man 

 and of all other kinds of being, in regular series, or in 

 confused order ; the death of the present members has 

 no bearing upon the future life and its innumerable 

 forms. The soul would not suffer if this were known 

 to it ; the wise soul does not fear death, sometimes 

 desires it, and goes to meet it. Before every sub- 

 stance lies eternity for duration, immensity for place, 

 omniformity for realisation." The soul is not limited 



1 Cf. Bartholmess (vol. i. p. 124), who refers to Cardan and Campanella as 

 offering a similar "proof" of immortality. 



2 De fmm.j Op. Lat. i. I. 20^. 



