it is
clothed.

Secondly, the analogy which first leads to belief in absorption is
falsely interpreted. Taken on its own ground, rightly appreciated,
it legitimates a different conclusion.

A grain of sand thrown into the bosom of Sahara does not lose its
individual existence. Distinct drops are not annihilated as to
their simple atoms of water, though sunk in the midst of the sea.
The final particles or monads of air or granite are not
dissolvingly blended into continuity of unindividualized
atmosphere or rock when united with their elemental masses, but
are thrust unapproachably apart by molecular repulsion. Now, a
mind, being, as we conceive, no composite, but an ultimate unity,
cannot be crushed or melted from its integral persistence of
personality. Though plunged into the centre of a surrounding
wilderness or ocean of minds, it must still retain itself unlost
in the multitude. Therefore, if we admit the existence of an
inclusive mundane Soul, it by no means follows that lesser souls
received into it are deprived of their individuality. It is "one
not otherwise than as the sea is one, by a similarity and
contiguity of parts, being composed of an innumerable host of
distinct spirits, as that is of aqueous particles; and as the
rivers continually discharge into the sea, so the vehicular
people, upon the disruption of their vehicles, discharge and
incorporate into that ocean of spirits making the mundane Soul."4

Thirdly, every consideration furnished by the doctrine of final
causes as applied to existing creatures makes us ask, What use is
there in calling forth souls merely that they may be taken back
again? To justify their creation, the fulfilment of some educative
aim, and then the lasting fruition of it, appear necessary. Why
else should a soul be drawn from out the unformed vastness, and
have its being struck into bounds, and be forced to pass through
such appalling ordeals of good and evil, pleasure and agony? An
individual of any kind is as important as its race; for it
contains in possibility all that its type does. And the purposes
of things, so far as we can discern them, the nature of our
spiritual constitution, the meaning of our circumstances and
probation, the resulting tendencies of our experience, all seem to
prophesy, not the destruction, but the perfection and
perpetuation, of individual being.

4 Tucker, Light of Nature, Part II. chap. xxii.

Fourthly, the same inference is yielded by a