vinity, he only reduces the Divinity into an An like himself."
During the later ages, therefore, all theological speculations, though
not forbidden, have been so discouraged as to have fallen utterly
into disuse. The Vril-ya unite in a conviction of a future state, more
felicitous and more perfect than the present. If they have very vague
notions of the doctrine of rewards and punishments, it is perhaps
because they have no systems of rewards and punishments among
themselves, for there are no crimes to punish, and their moral standard
is so even that no An among them is, upon the whole, considered more
virtuous than another. If one excels, perhaps in one virtue, another
equally excels in some other virtue; If one has his prevalent fault or
infirmity, so also another has his. In fact, in their extraordinary
mode of life. There are so few temptations to wrong, that they are good
(according to their notions of goodness) merely because they live.
They have some fanciful notions upon the continuance of life, when once
bestowed, even in the vegetable world, as the reader will see in the
next chapter.

Chapter XIV.

Though, as I have said, the Vril-ya discourage all speculations on the
nature of the Supreme Being, they appear to concur in a belief by which
they think to solve that great problem of the existence of evil which
has so perplexed the philosophy of the upper world. They hold that
wherever He has once given life, with the perceptions of that life,
however faint it be, as in a plant, the life is never destroyed; it
passes into new and improved forms, though not in this planet (differing
therein from the ordinary doctrine of metempsychosis), and that the
living thing retains the sense of identity, so that it connects its past
life with its future, and is 'conscious' of its progressive improvement
in the scale of joy. For they say that, without this assumption, they
cannot, according to the lights of human reason vouchsafed to them,
discover the perfect justice which must be a constituent quality of the
All-Wise and the All-Good. Injustice, they say, can only emanate
from three causes: want of wisdom to perceive what is just, want of
benevolence to desire, want of power to fulfill it; and that each of
these three wants is incompatible in the All-Wise, the All-Good,
the All-Powerful. But that, while even in this life, the wisdom,
the benevolence, and the power of the Supreme Being are sufficiently
apparent to com