mmense congeries of souls. But it remains that
these souls, inhabiting these bodies, are linked together by
some mysterious medium which makes it possible for them to
communicate with one another. What is this mysterious medium?
What we have already indicated, here and there in this book, leads
us at this point to our natural conclusion. Such a medium may well
be nothing less than that elemental soul, with the universal ether as
its bodily expression, the existence of which we have already
suggested as a more than probable hypothesis. If the omnipresent
body of this elemental soul is the material atmosphere or medium
which unites all material bodies, surely we are justified in
assuming that the invisible primordial medium which binds all
souls together, which hypothetically binds them together even
_before_ they have, by the interaction of their different visions,
created the universe, is this universal "soul of the elements." Only
a spiritual substance is able to unite spiritual substances. And only
a material substance is able to unite material substances. Thus we
are justified in assuming that while the medium which unites all
bodies is the universal body of the elemental soul, the medium
which unites all souls is the omnipresent soul-monad of this
elemental being. It must however be remembered that this uniting
does not imply any sort of spiritual _including_ or subsuming of
the souls thus united. They communicate with one another by
means of this medium; but the integrity of the medium which
unites them does not impinge at any point upon their integrity.

Thus, at the end of our journey, we are able, by this final process
of drastic elimination, to reduce the world in which we live to a
congeries of living souls. Some of these souls possess what we
name animate bodies, others possess what we name inanimate
bodies. For us, these words, animate and inanimate, convey but
slight difference in meaning. Between a stone, which is part of the
body of the earth, and a leaf which is part of the body of a plant,
and a lock of hair which is part of the body of a man, there may be
certain unimportant chemical differences, justifying us in using the
terms animate and inanimate. But the essential fact remains that all
we see and taste and touch and smell and hear, all, in fact, that
makes up the objective universe which surrounds us, is a portion
of some sort of living body, corresponding to some sort of living
soul.

Our ind