functions to you incomprehensible, once belonged to the earth; their
spiritual natures have risen through different stages of planetary life,
leaving their dust behind them, carrying with them only their
intellectual power. You ask me if they have any knowledge or
reminiscence of their transitions; tell me of your own recollections in
the womb of your mother and I will answer you. It is the law of divine
wisdom that no spirit carries with it into another state and being any
habit or mental qualities except those which may be connected with its
new wants or enjoyments; and knowledge relating to the earth would be no
more useful to these glorified beings than their earthly system of
organised dust, which would be instantly resolved into its ultimate atoms
at such a temperature; even on the earth the butterfly does not transport
with it into the air the organs or the appetites of the crawling worm
from which it sprung. There is, however, one sentiment or passion which
the monad or spiritual essence carries with it into all its stages of
being, and which in these happy and elevated creatures is continually
exalted; the love of knowledge or of intellectual power, which is, in
fact, in its ultimate and most perfect development the love of infinite
wisdom and unbounded power, or the love of God. Even in the imperfect
life that belongs to the earth this passion exists in a considerable
degree, increases even with age, outlives the perfection of the corporeal
faculties, and at the moment of death is felt by the conscious being, and
its future destinies depend upon the manner in which it has been
exercised and exalted. When it has been misapplied and assumed the forms
of vague curiosity, restless ambition, vain glory, pride or oppression,
the being is degraded, it sinks in the scale of existence and still
belongs to the earth or an inferior system, till its errors are corrected
by painful discipline. When, on the contrary, the love of intellectual
power has been exercised on its noblest objects, in discovering and in
contemplating the properties of created forms and in applying them to