ns of the created world into animated and vegetable
nature; the former is again divided into the improvable, and the
unimprovable, and the retrogressive. The improvable embraces all
those species which are marching, by slow, progressive, but immutable
mutations, towards the perfection of terrestrial life, or to that last,
elevated, and sublime condition of mortality, in which the material
makes its final struggle with the immaterial--mind with matter. The
improvable class of animals, agreeably to the monikin dogmas, commences
with those species in which matter has the most unequivocal ascendency,
and terminates with those in which mind is as near perfection as this
mortal coil will allow. We hold that mind and matter, in that mysterious
union which connects the spiritual with the physical being, commence
in the medium state, undergoing, not, as some men have pretended,
transmigrations of the soul only, but such gradual and imperceptible
changes of both soul and body, as have peopled the world with so many
wonderful beings--wonderful, mentally and physically; and all of which
(meaning all of the improvable class) are no more than animals of the
same great genus, on the high road of tendencies, who are advancing
towards the last stage of improvement, previously to their final
translation to another planet, and a new existence.

"The retrogressive class is composed of those specimens which, owing to
their destiny, take a false direction; which, instead of tending to the
immaterial, tend to the material; which gradually become more and
more under the influence of matter, until, by a succession of physical
translations, the will is eventually lost, and they become incorporated
with the earth itself. Under this last transformation, these purely
materialized beings are chemically analyzed in the great laboratory of
nature, and their component parts are separated; thus the bones become
rocks, the flesh earth, the spirits air, the blood water, the gristle
clay and the ashes of the will are converted into the element of fire.
In this class we enumerate whales, elephants, hippopotami, and divers
other brutes, which visibly exhibit accumulations of matter that must
speedily triumph over the less material portions of their natures."

"And yet, Doctor, there are facts that militate against the theory; the
elephant, for instance, is accounted one of the most intelligent of all
the quadrupeds."

"A mere false demonstration, sir. Natu