II NOTES 93 



& a dumb man on account of his transgression ; and 

 a robber who has once done an act of mercy, may 

 come to life in a king's body as the result of his 

 virtue, and then suffer torments for ages in hell or 

 as a ghost without a body, or be re-born many times 

 as a slave or an outcast, in consequence of his evil 

 life. 



" There is no escape, according to this theory, from 

 the result of any act ; though it is only the conse- 

 quences of its own acts that each soul has to endure. 

 The force has been set in motion by itself and can 

 never stop ; and its effect can never be foretold. If evil, 

 it can never be modified or prevented, for it depends 

 on a cause already completed, that is now for ever 

 beyond the soul's control. There is even no continuing 

 consciousness, no memory of the past that could guide 

 the soul to any knowledge of its fate. The only 

 advantage open to it is to add in this life to the sum 

 of its good actions, that it may bear fruit with the 

 rest. And even this can only happen in some future 

 life under essentially the same conditions as the pre- 

 sent one : subject, like the present one, to old age, 

 decay, and death ; and affording opportunity, like the 

 present one, for the commission of errors, ignorances, 

 or sins, which in their turn must inevitably produce 

 their due effect of sickness, disability, or woe. Thus 

 is the soul tossed about from life to life, from billow 

 to billow in the great ocean of transmigration. And 

 there is no escape save for the very few, who, during 

 their birth as men, attain to a right knowledge of the 

 Great Spirit : and thus enter into immortality, or, as 

 the later philosophers taught, are absorbed into the 



