nd against are quite
out of reach. Perhaps also all the worlds, both above and below us, are
fac-similes of our own. If so, away goes free will for good and all;
unless, indeed, we underpin our system with the hypothesis that all the
fac-simile bodies of different sizes are actuated by a common soul. These
acute supplementary notions of mine go far to get rid of the difficulty
which some have found in the common theory that the soul inhabits the body:
it has been stated that there is, somewhere or another, a world of souls
which communicate with their bodies by wondrous filaments of a nature
neither mental nor material, but of a _tertium quid_ fit to be a
go-between; as it were a corporispiritual copper encased in a
spiritucorporeal gutta-percha. My theory is that every soul is everywhere
_in posse_, as the schoolmen said, but not anywhere _in actu_, except where
it finds one of its bodies. These _a priori_ difficulties being thus
removed, the system of particle-worlds is reduced to a dry question of
fact, and remitted to the decision of the microscope. And a grand field may
thus be opened, as optical science progresses! For the worlds are not
fac-similes of ours in time: there is not a moment of _our_ past, and not a
moment of _our_ future, but is the _present_ of one or more of the
particles. A will write the death of Caesar, and B the building of the
Pyramids, by actual observation of the processes with a power of a thousand
millions; C will discover the commencement of the Millennium, and D the
{193} termination of Ersch and Gruber's Lexicon,[336] as mere physical
phenomena. Against this glorious future there is a sad omen: the initials
of the forerunner of this discovery are--NO!

THE SUPERNATURAL.

The History of the Supernatural in all ages and nations, and in all
Churches, Christian and Pagan: demonstrating a universal faith. By Wm.
Howitt.[337] London, 2 vols. 8vo. 1863.

Mr. Howitt is a preacher of spiritualism. He cements an enormous collection
of alleged facts with a vivid outpouring of exhortation, and an unsparing
flow of sarcasm against the scorners of all classes. He and the Rev. J.
Smith[338] (_ante_, 1854) are the most thoroughgoing universalists of all
the writers I know on spiritualism. If either can insert the small end of
the wedge, he will not let you off one fraction of the conclusion that all
countries, in all ages, have been the theaters of one vast spiritual
display. And I su