"But at least," replied I to him, "if what you say of that Balsam be true, it is a mark of the Rationality of our Soul; seeing without the help of our Reason, or the Concurrence of our Will, she Acts of her self; as if being without us, she applied the Active to the Passive. Now if being separated from us she is Rational, it necessarily follows that she is Spiritual; and if you acknowledge her to be Spiritual, I conclude she is immortal; seeing Death happens to Animals, only by the changing of Forms, of which Matter alone is capable." The Young Man at that, decently sitting down upon his Bed, and making me also to sit, discoursed, as I remember, in this manner: "As for the Soul of Beasts, which is Corporeal, I do not wonder they Die; seeing the best Harmony of the four Qualities may be dissolved, the greatest force of Blood quelled, and the loveliest Proportion of Organs disconcerted; but I wonder very much, that our intellectual, incorporeal, and immortal Soul should be constrained to dislodge and leave us, by the same Cause that makes an Ox to perish. Hath she covenanted with our Body, that as soon as he should receive a prick with a Sword in the Heart, a Bullet in the Brain, or a Musket-shot through the Chest, she should pack up and be gone? And if that Soul were Spiritual, and of her self so Rational that being separated from our Mass she understood as well as when Clothed with a Body; why cannot Blind Men, born with all the fair advantages of that intellectual Soul, imagine what it is to see? Is it because they are not as yet deprived of Sight, by the Death of all their Senses? How! I cannot then make use of my Right Hand, because I have a Left! "And in fine, to make a just comparison which will overthrow all that you have said; I shall only alledge to you a Painter, who cannot work without his pencil: And I'll tell you, that it is just so with the Soul, when she wants the use of the Senses. Yet they have the Soul, which can only act imperfectly, because of the loss of one of her Tools, in the course of Life, to be able then to work to Perfection, when after our death she hath lost them all. If they tell me, over and over again, that she needeth not these Instruments for performing her Functions, I'll tell them e'en so, That then all the Blind about the Streets ought to be Whipt at a Carts-Arse, for playing the Counterfeits in pretending not to See a bit." He would have gone on in such impertinent Arguments, had not I stopt his Mouth, by desiring him to forbear, as he did for fear of a quarrel; for he perceived I began to be in a heat: So that he departed, and left me admiring the People of that World, amongst whom even the meanest have Naturally so much Wit; whereas those of ours have so little, and yet so dearly bought. CHAPTER XVII. _Of the Author's Return to the Earth._