beetle, the moth; to the fish and the polypus, and to yon mockery of man
in the giant ape.

I seemed to see each as it lived in its native realm of earth, or of air,
or of water; and the red light played more or less warm through the
structure of each, and the azure light, though duller of hue, seemed to
shoot through the red, and communicate to the creatures an intelligence
far inferior indeed to that of man, but sufficing to conduct the current
of their will, and influence the cunning of their instincts. But in none,
from the elephant to the moth, from the bird in which brain was the
largest to the hybrid in which life seemed to live as in plants,--in none
was visible the starry silver spark. I turned my eyes from the creatures
around, back again to the form cowering under the huge anaconda, and in
terror at the animation which the carcasses took in the awful illusions of
that marvellous trance; for the tiger moved as if scenting blood, and to
the eyes of the serpent the dread fascination seemed slowly returning.

Again I gazed on the starry spark in the form of the man. And I murmured
to myself, "But if this be the soul, why is it so undisturbed and
undarkened by the sins which have left such trace and such ravage in the
world of the brain?" And gazing yet more intently on the spark, I became
vaguely aware that it was not the soul, but the halo around the soul, as
the star we see in heaven is not the star itself, but its circle of rays;
and if the light itself was undisturbed and undarkened, it was because no
sins done in the body could annihilate its essence, nor affect the
eternity of its duration. The light was clear within the ruins of its
lodgment, because it might pass away, but could not be extinguished.

But the soul itself in the heart of the light reflected back on my own
soul within me its ineffable trouble, humiliation, and sorrow; for those