SECTION V.

THE SOUL, OR APPARITIONAL FORM IN MAN. We have reached an important division of our investigation. We have proved the existence of the solid, and the existence of a soul in the solid; in earth, minerals, vegetables, fish, fowl, birds, animals; in some cases being able to prove it by facts cognisant to all; in others, by sensitive powers possessed by portions of our fellow-men; but confirmed by tests, these being our only modes of direct proof. As the iron, the tree, the fish, and the brute, are speechless; no voice have they— In poetic imagery, "The mountains and the valleys break forth into singing, and the trees of the fields clap their hands;" but not one of the tribe can tell us their sensations of pleasure, and of pain; the tree cannot tell us its pleasures, during growth; its pains when the burning sun absorbs all its moisture; and its agonies when the woodman severs the branches from the trunk. We have heard the gardener telling us that the shrub bleeds—the sensitive plant shrinks from adverse influence. The horse and the ass in our cities feel the blows, or the thong of the oppressor; the flesh is seen to writhe; but no voice of complaint is heard; no explanation of sensations can we understand; we have therefore to observe and reason; but man, considering man, has reason, has susceptibility, has Voice. He has his own consciousness; he can feel pleasure and pain if he has an analytic intellect, he can watch the action of chemical substances on himself; he can communicate his observations and his sensations, by speech, to his species in language each understands. Doubtless the Crow tribe have some power analogous to speech, by means of which they conduct their gyrations in the air, with all the skill of military tacticians, and can sit in judgment on their fellow-crow who may have transgressed their laws, and then, punish by death. Other divisions of animated nature, from their habits and actions, appear to have a spirit; to them as perfect as is possessed

by Man; but as they give out no voice, which man can understand, man has to study his own composition, feelings, and motives, and by converse with his fellow, compare notes; he can experiment, gather facts, and from those facts discover laws; which, when discovered, open new fields of harmony, startling us by their simple grandeur, leading us, in our egotism, to laud and magnify the man who discovers the law; and, as a rule, ignore or minify the GREAT INTELLECTUAL Designer who first planned and created it.

As our object is to prove, by facts, that Man has, in addition to his body, a Soul, and a Spirit, and as they are so blended the one in the other, it requires more than ordinary care so to conduct our examinations, as to avoid mingling the operations of the one with that of the other, or of any given two with the third, while it may be under examination. By-and-by, when our examination of each part is concluded, and we can, from a given position, observe the working of the three powers in harmony, our task will be as much more pleasing, as our looking at the rose in all its richness of colour, form, leaves, and stalk; is, from the concentrated attention of our minds only on the stalk, the thorn, the leaf, or the colour.

The relation of matter to matter; the frequent evidences we have of attraction and repulsion; of affinity and want of affinity, in solids, in fluids, and in gases; have been fertile sources of delight, and of investigation to the philosopher; and these researches have increased our knowledge of the divisions matter is composed of; analysis has been carried on with indomitable zeal in several branches of the sciences, and the results have been astounding; discovery upon discovery has for many years past been the rule; chemical knowledge has so increased, and the amalgamation of solids and essences have made the combinations as numerous, as those which can be made from the twenty-six letters of our alphabet. As to the human body, we can detect in it iron, and other ingredients; we can perceive how portions of the system work; others we cannot; we use the words carbon, and oxygen, with freedom;

chyme and chyle; and other terms and phrases for the operation of the multitudinous pieces of human mechanism, fill our books and our brains; but how apples, oranges, and bread; how fish and fowl, can, by human mastication, be turned into flesh; how the play of affinities, and anti-affinities, are kept in harmony in the human body for so many years, is beyond our imitation, and, also, beyond our comprehension; they are facts; we cannot deny them; and, therefore, we endeavour to create a theory, which will cover the facts, but which, in many cases, is like a spider's web, beautiful in its proportions, but full of holes, and so delicate in texture, that the muscular energy of a fresh discovery by some philosopher coming after, breaks the web, and all is naught.

To prove Soul-existence in the human organization is of vital importance in the consideration of, and judgment upon, the question of man's immortality; we seem, intuitively, to perceive, that as a man is a part of animated creation, the laws, and their developments, as observed in other bodies, must be in action in him; and as questions are easier put than answered; so conviction, or intuitive judgment, passes sentence from past observation of facts, which have been the links of the chain; but the vividness and details of those facts have passed away; nor can they be recalled in our ordinary condition, unless in shreds and patches; a ray through memory, lights up some bygone landscape scene, which, at the time, bathed the senses in rapture. The rays of past knowledge help the decision; but to an inquirer of the why and wherefore, an indistinct and unsatisfactory answer may be given. On the branch of investigation before us, we will point to leading facts; and as they pass in review before the mind of the reader, they may recall, old forgotten facts of a kindred character, which will be additional rivets in the machinery of Truth.

Let Man meet Man, and shake hands; they look well, feel well, and converse joyously; neither are conscious of any effluvia proceeding out of their bodies. They are healthy, the

air around them is so pure, they appear not to be conscious of its existence. Ask them, Is there any effluvia, aura, or light, coming from you or your friend? the surprised answer would be, No. So ready is the judgment to be guided by sight; but they forget that the air they breathe is a compound of oxygen and nitrogen; innoxious merely because of the existence of a beneficent law, by which twenty-one parts of the one mingle with seventy-nine parts of the other. If but a slight change took place in these proportions, they would become deadly gases, and these healthy and joyous men would gasp in agony, and lie still in death. Let either of those men in their fulness of health, meet a friend in "ill health," or go to the room of a sick person, and he is at once conscious of change; the emanations from that sick man in fever, smallpox or other disease, are so subtile, yet unseen; that they enter the healthy man, impregnate him, and in many cases prostrate him in sickness of a like kind. Nothing cannot produce something; something, therefore, must have come out of the sick-something also comes out of the healthy, which is so subtile, that often, as in vaccination, the infinitesimal portion of that something enters into, or is absorbed by, the sick, and seems to permeate the whole body with health, as the almost unseen vaccine matter enters, spreads, and yeasts the whole body with disease. The correctness of this position, apart from sick bed evidences, is through the bloodhound. Let the waistcoat, hat, or stockings of any man, however healthy he may be, be shown and smelt by a bloodhound, and he singles out that smell from all other smells; showing that each man has a distinctive "aura" or essence issuing out of him, as distinct as the variations of the human face. Hours and days after will that bloodhound "get on the scent," and with untiring, unerring zest will he scent footstep after footstep, mile after mile, till he reaches the person he is in quest of an unanswerable proof that from man issues an aura or scent. In the human body is phosphorus; it has lately been acknowledged by men of science to be in the

brain, it unites with the other chemicals in the body; the constituent portions of which are detailed in page 31, and need not here be reinserted. Latent heat pervades all bodies; the proportions vary, yet still it is there, and under certain laws can be developed. I need not here go into proofs of this, because the fact being acknowledged by the leaders of the sciences, arguments and proof would fill our pages, and no adequate compensation be received. The foregoing statements prepare the mind for receiving the assertion, that some human beings are more sensitive to external influences than others. In some, the sensations of heat or of cold are more acute than in others; some are more quick-eyed than others; some are long-sighted, some are short-sighted; the power of the eye varies, and according to that power, so is the judg ment of persons as to the appearance of objects at a distance. A young friend of mine, on asking her opinion of the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, shortly after it was opened; stated she did not see why people should praise it as they did, that it was very pretty, and had a great many flowers, &c. Now, as she was gradually losing her eyesight, and could not see perfectly the objects within the dimensions of even one of the courts, her powers of vision, prevented her taking a sweep of the whole building, and perceiving the harmonies of the palace as a whole. Her impressions, though truthful, were as much inferior to the reality, as our ordinary impressions of the extent of the naked eye-range of the sky, is inferior to those men whose powers of vision are so great as to see without telescopes the moons round Saturn. But for the telescope, those statements would be considered untrue by many, yet the moons would be there, deny who would. So with the lights issuing from the human body, they are seen by that class of persons called "sensitives," who see lights, or the auras, which issue from all men and women. These lights are of various colours and shades; from some the aura is so dead in brightness of colour, as to be almost unseen; others, so bright, as to envelope the persons as if in a mist of light, scarcely allowing the features