II NOTES. 93 



as 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 

 consequences 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 pre- 

 vented, 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 present 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 es- 

 cape 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 phi- 



