its ineffable trouble, humiliation, and sorrow; for
those ghastly wrecks of power placed at its sovereign command it was
responsible, and, appalled by its own sublime fate of duration, was
about to carry into eternity the account of its mission in time. Yet
it seemed that while the soul was still there, though so forlorn and so
guilty, even the wrecks around it were majestic. And the soul, whatever
sentence it might merit, was not among the hopelessly lost; for in its
remorse and its shame, it might still have retained what could serve
for redemption. And I saw that the mind was storming the soul, in some
terrible rebellious war,--all of thought, of passion, of desire, through
which the azure light poured its restless flow, were surging up round
the starry spark, as in siege. And I could not comprehend the war, nor
guess what it was that the mind demanded the soul to yield. Only the
distinction between the two was made intelligible by their antagonism.
And I saw that the soul, sorely tempted, looked afar for escape from
the subjects it had ever so ill controlled, and who sought to reduce to
their vassal the power which had lost authority as their king. I could
feel its terror in the sympathy of my own terror, the keenness of my own
supplicating pity. I knew that it was imploring release from the perils
it confessed its want of strength to encounter. And suddenly the starry
spark rose from the ruins and the tumult around it,--rose into space and
vanished; and where my soul had recognized the presence of soul, there
was a void. But the red light burned still, becoming more and more
vivid; and as it thus repaired and recruited its lustre, the whole
animal form, which had been so decrepit, grew restored from decay, grew
into vigour and youth: and I saw Alargrave as I had seen him in the
waking world, the radiant image of animal life in the beauty of its
fairest bloom.

And over this rich vitality and this symmetric mechanism now reigned
only, with the animal life, the mind. The starry light fled and the soul
vanished, still was left visible the mind,--mind, by which sensations
convey and cumulate ideas, and muscles obey volition; mind, as in those
animals that have more than the elementary, instincts; mind, as it might
be in men, were men not immortal. As my eyes, in the Vision, followed
the azure light, undulating as before, through the cells of the brain,
and crossing the red amidst the labyrinth of the nerves, I perceive