328 NATURE AND LIFE. 



unities more especially ? It is that of having, moreover, 

 the consciousness of such perception, the feeling also of 

 the relations that bind the whole together, and those facul- 

 ties, more or less developed, which that consciousness and 

 that perception imply. But why should these unities be 

 any more perishable than the others ? Why, if all these 

 forces, all these activities, are eternal, should those alone 

 not possess eternity which have this high privilege, that 

 of knowing the infinite relations which the others sustain 

 without knowing that they do so ? 



To form a conception of the immortality of 'the soul, 

 then, we must place ourselves at that point of view to 

 which men rarely and hardly rise, of the simplicity and 

 the indefectibility of all those principles of force that fill 

 the universe. We must train ourselves to understand that 

 what we see is nothing in comparison with what we do not 

 see. The whole force, the whole spring, of the most com- 

 plex movements, the most magnificent phenomena of Na- 

 ture and the most subtile operations of life, thought in- 

 cluded, proceed from the infinite commingling of an infinity 

 of series of invisible and unextended principles, whose ac- 

 tivities ascend in the scale of perfection from simple power 

 of movement up to supreme reason. Human personality, 

 such as we see and know it, is only a coarse and complex 

 result from those of these primitive activities which are 

 the best and deepest thing in us. It is not that person- 

 ality which is immortal that is no more immortal than 

 the motive force of a steam-engine is, or the electricity of 

 a voltaic battery, although movement and electricity are 

 of themselves indestructible. It is not that personality 

 which can aspire to a home in the bosom of God. Our 

 true personality, our real jT, that which may without illu- 

 sion count on a future life, is unity released from every 

 material bond, and all concrete alloy ; it is that force, neces- 

 sarily pure, which has a more or less clear consciousness 



