ed, that energetic mind
smitten into idiotcy, and the azure light wandering objectless as a
meteor wanders over the morass,--still that silver spark would shine
the same, indestructible by aught that shattered its tabernacle. And
I murmured to myself, "Can that starry spark speak the presence of the
soul? Does the silver light shine within creatures to which no life
immortal has been promised by Divine Revelation?"

Involuntarily I turned my sight towards the dead forms in the motley
collection, and lo, in my trance or my vision, life returned to them
all!--to the elephant and the serpent; to the tiger, the vulture, the
beetle, the moth; to the fish and the polypus, and to yon mockery of man
in the giant ape.

I seemed to see each as it lived in its native realm of earth, or of
air, or of water; and the red light played more or less warm through the
structure of each, and the azure light, though duller of hue, seemed to
shoot through the red, and communicate to the creatures an intelligence
far inferior indeed to that of man, but sufficing to conduct the current
of their will, and influence the cunning of their instincts. But in
none, from the elephant to the moth, from the bird in which brain was
the largest to the hybrid in which life seemed to live as in plants,--in
none was visible the starry silver spark. I turned my eyes from the
creatures around, back again to the form cowering under the huge
anaconda, and in terror at the animation which the carcasses took in
the awful illusions of that marvellous trance; for the tiger moved as
if scenting blood, and to the eyes of the serpent the dread fascination
seemed slowly returning.

Again I gazed on the starry spark in the form of the man. And I murmured
to myself, "But if this be the soul, why is it so undisturbed and
undarkened by the sins which have left such trace and such ravage in the
world of the brain?" And gazing yet more intently on the spark, I became
vaguely aware that it was not the soul, but the halo around the soul,
as the star we see in heaven is not the star itself, but its circle of
rays; and if the light itself was undisturbed and undarkened, it was
because no sins done in the body could annihilate its essence, nor
affect the eternity of its duration. The light was clear within the
ruins of its lodgment, because it might pass away, but could not be
extinguished.

But the soul itself in the heart of the light reflected back on my own
soul within me