Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/186

Rh Now by soul is here meant the thinking, conscious, knowing, hating, loving, aspiring principle—that mysterious something about whose origin, nature, perdurability or co-perishability with the body, so much has been said, sung, and written, until philosophers generally have got by the ears, while waging the fiercest of all intellectual battles. I propose herein to settle the controversy, or at least to indicate the clear road to such settlement, being perfectly confident and conscious that herein will be found the only possible method and route to the final adjudication. It is hard for a true thinker to have much patience with those whose highest conception of Soul and Spirit is that of a rarefied gaseous ether evolved from gross substance as light and heat radiate from glowing coals of fire in a wintry grate; because such a conception is wholly untrue, seeing that no possible refinement of solid substance or matter can ever approach the state of even the magnetic Æth of Space, much less that, diviner thing of which we are treating. It is clear that matter does not think; Soul does, therefore Soul is one thing, matter quite another, requiring a bridge to span the gulf between them, and that bridge is some subtle form of magnetism; nor can Soul be evolved from it by any process of rarefaction or refinement; for Soul it was from all past Eternity; soul it is, and such it will remain to all possible eternities to come; while matter, either in its solidified or condensed, or in its far-particled or fluid states, will remain matter until all its life is exhausted, and Deity shall have become senile and decrepit from the weight of Time and lapse of hoary centuries!

We know, can know, but little concerning God, notwithstanding so many people claim to be quite intimate acquaintances, and on familiar terms with Him! yet we have every reason to believe the Ineffable One to be pure ; and I, the writer hereof, so believe; and furthermore, that he is as A Sun, emitting countless billions of beams and rays every instant—and that each contains myriads of scintillas, every one of which is an embryon, or soul-germ, capable of development into perfect man or womanhood!

While God is clear Soul, matter is pure body; one is a unit, unparticled itself, yet emitting and irradiating, besides the countless