and the same from soul to soul, and returns purer
and transfigured from the kindred breast. Through this mystery the
individual finds, and understands, and loves himself, only in another;
and every spirit detaches itself only from other spirits; and there
is no man, but only a Humanity; no isolated thinking, and loving, and
hating, but only a thinking, and loving, and hating in and through
one another. Through this mystery the affinity of spirits, in the
invisible world, streams forth into their corporeal nature, and
represents itself in two sexes, which, though every spiritual band
could be severed, are still constrained, as natural beings, to love
each other. It flows forth into the affection of parents and children,
of brothers and sisters, as if the souls were sprung from one blood as
well as the bodies--as if the minds were branches and blossoms of the
same stem; and from thence it embraces, in narrower or wider circles,
the whole sentient world. Even the hatred of spirits is grounded in
thirst for love; and no enmity springs up, except from friendship
denied.

Mine eye discerns this eternal life and motion, in all the veins of
sensuous and spiritual Nature, through what seems to others a dead
mass. And it sees this life forever ascend, and grow, and transfigure
itself into a more spiritual expression of its own nature. The
universe is no longer, to me, that circle which returns into itself,
that game which repeats itself without ceasing, that monster which
devours itself in order to reproduce itself as it was before. It is
spiritualized to my contemplation, and bears the peculiar impress of
the spirit--continual progress toward perfection, in a straight line
which stretches into infinity.

The sun rises and sets, the stars vanish and return again, and all the
spheres hold their cycle-dance. But they never return precisely such
as they disappeared; and in the shining fountains of life there is
also life and progress. Every hour which they bring, every morning and
every evening, sinks down with new blessings on the world. New life
and new love drop from the spheres, as dew-drops from the cloud, and
embrace Nature, as the cool night embraces the earth.

All death in Nature is birth; and precisely in dying the sublimation
of life appears most conspicuous. There is no death-bringing principle
in Nature, for Nature is only life, throughout. Not death kills, but
the more living life, which, hidden behind the old, begi