comprehends the
progress and conditions of men, and their duties towards each other. The
Bible, the sacred book of man, is in the heavens; there does man find
written the word of God.

Human souls are lights, distinct from the universal soul, which is
diffused over all and penetrates everything. A purifying process guides
them from one existence to another, from one form to another, from one
world to another. The life of man is more than an experience or trial;
it is an effort, a struggle to reproduce and represent upon earth some
of that goodness, beauty, and truth which are diffused over the universe
and constitute its harmony.

Long, slow, and full of opposition is this educational process of the
soul. As the terraqueous globe becomes formed, changed, and perfected,
little by little, through the cataclysms and convulsions which, by means
of fire, flood, earthquake, and irruptions, transform the earth, so it
is with humanity. Through struggle is man educated, fortified, and
raised.

In the midst of social cataclysms and revolutions humanity has one
guiding star, a beacon which shows its light above the storms and
tempests, a mystical thread running through the labyrinth of
history--namely, the religion of philosophy and of thought. The vulgar
creeds would not, and have not dared to reveal the Truth in its purity
and essence. They covered it with veils with allegories, with myths and
mysteries, which they called sacred; they enshrouded thought with a
double veil, and called it Revelation. Humanity, deceived by a
seductive form, adored the veil, but did not lift itself up to the idea
behind it; it saw the shadow, not the light.

But we must return to our wandering hero.

Bruno was about thirty-six years old when he left Paris and went to
England. He was invited to visit the University of Oxford, and opened
his lectures there with two subjects which, apparently diverse, are in
reality intimately connected with each other--namely, on the Quadruple
Sphere and on the Immortality of the Soul. Speaking of the immortality
of the soul, he maintained that nothing in the universe is lost,
everything changes and is transformed; therefore, soul and body, spirit
and matter, are equally immortal. The body dissolves, and is
transformed; the soul transmigrates, and, drawing round itself atom to
atom, it reconstructs for itself a new body. The spirit that animates
and moves all things is one; everything differentiates according t