parts of the one soul, which has no
parts, but by the soul itself.

Therefore all things are immortal. Nothing is so lost to the
infinite soul as to be wholly and totally obliterated. The
withering of a flower is as much the act of the all-pervading soul
as the death of a child; but the life and death of a human being
involve activities of the soul so incomparably greater than the
blossoming of a plant, that the immortality of the one, while not
differing in kind, may be infinitely more important in degree. The
manifestation of the soul in the life of the humming-bird is
slight in comparison with the manifestation in the life of a man,
and the traces which persist forever in the case of the former are
probably insignificant compared with the traces which persist in
the case of the latter; but traces must persist, else there is no
immortality of the individual; at the same time there is not the
slightest reason for urging that, whereas traces of the soul's
activity in the form of man will persist, traces of the soul's
activity in lower forms of life and in things inanimate will not
persist. There is no reason why, when the physical barriers which
exist between us and the soul that is within and without us are
destroyed, we should not desire to know forever all that the
universe contains. Why should not the sun and the moon and the
stars be immortal,--as immortal in their way as we in ours, both
immortal in the one all-pervading soul?

"The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the
chambers and the magazine of the soul. In its experiments there
has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not
solve," said Emerson in the lecture he called "Over-Soul."

What a pity to use the phrase "Over-Soul," which removes the soul
even farther aloof than it is in popular conception, or which
fosters the belief of an inner and outer, or an inferior and a
superior soul; whereas Emerson meant, as the context shows, the
all-pervading soul.

But, then, who knows what any one else thinks or means? At the
most we only know what others say, what words they use, but in
what sense they use them and the content of thought back of them
we do not know. So far as the problems of life go we are all
groping in the dark, and words are like fireflies leading us
hither and thither with glimpses of light only to go out, leaving
us in darkness and despair.

It is the sounding phrase that catches the ear. "For fools adm