through which the azure light poured its restless
flow, were surging up and round the starry spark, as
in siege. And I could not comprehend the war,
nor guess what it was that the mind demanded the
soul to yield. Only the distinction between the
two was made intelligible by their antagonism.
And I saw that the soul, sorely tempted, looked
afar for escape from the subjects it had ever so
ill controlled, and who sought to reduce to their
vassal the power which had lost authority as
their king. I could feel its terror in the
sympathy of my own terror, the keenness of my
own supplicating pity. I knew that it was
imploring release from the perils it confessed its
want of strength to encounter. And suddenly the
starry spark rose from the ruins and the tumult
around it,—rose into space and vanished. And
where my soul had recognised the presence of
soul, there was a void. But the red light burned
still, becoming more and more vivid; and as it
thus repaired and recruited its lustre, the whole
animal form which had been so decrepit, grew
restored from decay, grew into vigour and youth:
And I saw Margrave as I had seen him in the
waking world, the radiant image of animal life
in the beauty of its fairest bloom.

And over this rich vitality and this symmetric
mechanism now reigned only, with the animal
life, the mind. The starry light fled and the soul
vanished, still was left visible the mind: mind,
by which sensations convey and cumulate ideas,
and muscles obey volition; mind, as in those
animals that have more than the elementary
instincts; mind, as it might be in men, were men
not immortal. As my eyes, in the Vision, followed
the azure light, undulating, as before, through the
cells of the brain, and crossing the red amidst the
labyrinth of the nerves, I perceived that the
essence of that azure light had undergone a
change; it had lost that faculty of continuous
and concentred power by which man improves
on the works of the past, and weaves schemes
to be developed in the future of remote
generations; it had lost all sympathy in the past,
because it had lost all conception of a future
beyond the grave; it had lost conscience, it had
lost remorse. The being it informed was no
longer accountable through eternity for the
employment of time. The azure light was even more
vivid in certain organs useful to the conservation
of existence, as in those organs I had
observed it more vivid among some of the
inferior animals than it is in man—secretiveness,
destructiveness, and the ready perception
of things immediate to the wants of the day.
And the azure light was brilliant in cerebral
cells, where before it had been dark, such as
those which harbour mirthfulness and hope, for
there the light was recruited by the exuberant
health of the joyous animal being. But it was
lead-like, or dim, in the great social organs
through which man suborns his own interest to
that of his species, and utterly lost in those
through which man is reminded of his duties to
the throne of his Maker.

In that marvellous penetration with which the
Vision endowed me, I perceived that in this
mind, though in energy far superior to many,
though retaining, from memories of the former
existence, the relics of a culture wide and in
some things profound; though sharpened and
quickened into formidable, if desultory, force
whenever it schemed or aimed at the animal
self-conservation, which now made its master-
impulse or instinct; and though among the
reminiscences of its state before its change were
arts which I could not comprehend, but which I
felt were dark and terrible, lending to a will
never checked by remorse, arms that no healthful
philosophy has placed in the arsenal of
disciplined genius; though the mind in itself had an
ally in a body as perfect in strength and
elasticity as man can take from the favour of
nature—still, I say, I felt that that mind wanted
the something, without which men never could
found cities, frame laws, bind together, beautify,
exalt the elements of this world, by creeds that
habitually subject them to a reference to another.
The ant, and the bee, and the beaver congregate
and construct; but they do not improve. Man
improves because the future impels onward that
which is not found in the ant, the bee, and the
beaver—that which was gone from the being
before me.

I shrank appalled into myself, covered my face
with my hands, and groaned aloud: "Have I
ever then doubted that soul is distinct from
mind!"

A hand here again touched my forehead, the
light in the lamp was extinguished, I became
insensible, and when I recovered I found myself
back in the room in which I had first conversed
with Sir Philip Derval, and seated, as before, on
the sofa by his side.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

MY recollections of all which I have just
attempted to describe were distinct and vivid;
except, with respect to time, it seemed to
me as if many hours must have elapsed
since I had entered the museum with
Margrave; but the clock on the mantelpiece met
my eyes as I turned them wistfully round
the room; and I was indeed amazed to
perceive that five minutes had sufficed for all which
it has taken me so long to narrate, and which in
their transit had hurried me through ideas and
emotions so remote from anterior experience.

To my astonishment, now succeeded shame and
indignation—shame that I, who had scoffed at
the possibility of the comparatively credible
influences of mesmeric action, should have been so
helpless a puppet under the hand of the slight
fellow-man beside me, and so morbidly impressed
by phantasmagorical illusions; indignation that
by some fumes which had special potency over the
brain, I had thus been, as it were, conjured out
of my senses: and, looking full into the calm
face at my side, I said, with a smile to which I
sought to convey disdain: