"When weak Time shall be pour'd out Into Eternity, and circular
joys Dance in an endless round."

14 Taylor, Physical Theory of Another Life, ch. xii.

15 Taylor, Saturday Evening, pp. 95-111.

16 Taylor, Physical Theory of Another Life, ch. xvii.

This result seems the more probable of the two; for the assertion
of countless decillions of personalities all progressing beyond
every conceivable limit, on, still on, forever, is incredible. If
endless linear progress were the destiny of each being, the whole
universe would at last become a line! And though it is true that
the idea of an ever novel chase attracts and refreshes the
imagination, while the idea of a monotonous revolution repels and
wearies it, this is simply because we judge after our poor earthly
experience and its flagging analogies. It will not be so if that
revolution is the vivid realization of all our being's
possibilities.

Annihilation, absorption, resurrection, conveyance, recurrence,
migration, transition, these seven answers to the question of our
fate, and of its relation to the course of nature, are thinkable
in words. We may choose from among them, but can construct no real
eighth. First, there is a constant succession of growth and decay.
Second, there is a perpetual flow and ebb of personal emanation
and impersonal resumption. Third, there is a continual return of
the same persistent entities. Fourth, all matter may be sublimated
to spirit, and souls alone remain to occupy boundless space.
Fifth, the power of death may cease, all the astronomic orbs be
populated and enjoyed, each by one generation of everlasting
inhabitants, the present order continuing in each earth until
enough have lived to fill it, then all of them, physically
restored, dwelling on it, with no more births or deaths. Sixth, if
matter be not transmutable to soul, when that peculiar reality
from which souls are developed is exhausted, and the last
generation of incarnated beings have risen from the flesh, the
material creation may, in addition to the inter stellar region, be
eternally appropriated by the spirit races to their own free range
and use, through adaptations of faculty unknown to us now; else it
may vanish as a phantasmal spectacle. Or, finally, souls may be
absolutely created out of nothing by the omnipotence of God, and
the universe may be infinite: then the process may proceed
forever.

But men's beliefs are formed rather by the modes of thought they