The red light, which grew paler and paler as I looked, undulated from the
brain along the arteries, the veins, the nerves. And I murmured to
myself, "Is this the principle of animal life?"

The azure light equally permeated the frame, crossing and uniting with the
red, but in a separate and distinct ray, exactly as, in the outer world, a
ray of light crosses or unites with a ray of heat, though in itself a
separate individual agency. And again I murmured to myself, "Is this the
principle of intellectual being, directing or influencing that of animal
life; with it, yet not of it?"

But the silvery spark! What was that? Its centre seemed the brain; but I
could fix it to no single organ. Nay, wherever I looked through the
system, it reflected itself as a star reflects itself upon water. And I
observed that while the red light was growing feebler and feebler, and the
azure light was confused, irregular,--now obstructed, now hurrying, now
almost lost,--the silvery spark was unaltered, un disturbed. So
independent was it of all which agitated and vexed the frame, that I
became strangely aware that if the heart stopped in its action, and the
red light died out; if the brain were paralyzed, that energetic mind
smitten into idiotcy, and the azure light wandering objectless as a meteor
wanders over the morass,--still that silver spark would shine the same,
indestructible by aught that shattered its tabernacle. And I murmured to
myself, "Can that starry spark speak the presence of the soul? Does the
silver light shine within creatures to which no life immortal has been
promised by Divine Revelation?"

Involuntarily I turned my sight towards the dead forms in the motley
collection, and lo, in my trance or my vision, life returned to them
all!--to the elephant and the serpent; to the tiger, the vulture, the