e of the
heavens. According to the nature and degree of his merit, his
heavenly existence is prolonged, or perhaps repeated many times in
succession; or, if his next birth occurs on earth, it is under
happy circumstances, as a sage or a king. But when he expires,
should there, on the other hand, be an overbalance of ill desert,
he is born as a demon in one of the hells, or may in repeated
lives run the circuit of the hells; or, if he at once returns to
the earth, it is as a beggar, a leprous outcast, a wretched
cripple, or in the guise of a rat, a snake, or a louse.

"The illustrious souls of great and virtuous men
In godlike beings shall revive again;
But base and vicious spirits wind their way
In scorpions, vultures, sharks, and beasts of prey.
The fair, the gay, the witty, and the brave,
The fool, the coward, courtier, tyrant, slave,
Each one in a congenial form, shall find
A proper dwelling for his wandering mind."

A specific evil is never cancelled by being counterbalanced by a
greater good. The fruit of that evil must be experienced, and also
of that greater good, by appropriate births in the hells and
heavens, or in the higher and lower grades of earthly existence.
The two courses of action must be run through independently. This
is what is meant by the phrases, so often met with in Oriental
works, "eating the fruits of former acts," "bound in the chains of
deeds." Merit or demerit can be balanced or neutralized only by
the full fruition of its own natural and necessary consequences.6
The law of merit and of demerit is fate. It works irresistibly,
through all changes and recurrences, from the beginning to the
end. The cessation of virtue or of vice does not put an end to its
effects until its full force is exhausted; as an arrow continues
in flight until all its imparted power is spent. A man faultlessly
and scrupulously good through his present life may be guilty of
some foul crime committed a hundred lives before and not yet
expiated. Accordingly, he may now suffer for it, or his next birth
may take place in a hell. On the contrary, he may be credited with
some great merit acquired thousands of

5 P. 286.

6 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. iv. p. 87.

generations ago, whose fruit he has not eaten, and which may bring
him good fortune in spite of present sins, or on the rolling and
many colored wheel of metempsychosis may secure for him next a
celestial birthplace. In short periods, i