The defunct shall be deified among the Gods in the lower divine region, he shall never be rejected.... He shall drink from the current of the celestial river.... His Soul shall not be imprisoned, since it is a Soul that brings salvation to those near it. The worms shall not devour it. (clxiv. 14-16.) The general belief in Re-incarnation is enough to prove that the religions of which it formed a central doctrine believed in the survival of the Soul after Death; but one may quote as an example a passage from the _Ordinances of Manu_, following on a disquisition on metempsychosis, and answering the question of deliverance from rebirths. Amid all these holy acts, the knowledge of self [should be translated, knowledge of the _Self_, Atma] is said (to be) the highest; this indeed is the foremost of all sciences, since from it immortality is obtained.[2] The testimony of the great Zarathustrean Religion is clear, as is shown by the following, translated from the _Avesta_, in which, the journey of the Soul after death having been described, the ancient Scripture proceeds: The soul of the pure man goes the first step and arrives at (the Paradise) Humata; the soul of the pure man takes the second step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hukhta; it goes the third step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hvarst; the soul of the pure man takes the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal Lights. To it speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it: How art thou, O pure deceased, come away from the fleshy dwellings, from the earthly possessions, from the corporeal world hither to the invisible, from the perishable world hither to the imperishable, as it happened to thee--to whom hail! Then speaks Ahura-Mazda: Ask not him whom thou asketh, (for) he is come on the fearful, terrible, trembling way, the separation of body and soul.[3] The Persian _Desatir_ speaks with equal definiteness. This work consists of fifteen books, written by Persian prophets, and was written originally in the Avestaic language; "God" is Ahura-Mazda, or Yazdan: God selected man from animals to confer on him the soul, which is a substance free, simple, immaterial, non-compounded and non-appetitive. And that becomes an angel by improvement. By his profound wisdom and most sublime intelligence, he connected the soul with the material body. If he (man) does good in the material body, and has a good knowledge and religion he is _Hartasp_.... As soon as he leaves this material body, I (God) take him up to the world of angels, that he may have an interview with the angels, and behold me. And if he is not Hartasp, but has wisdom and abstains from vice, I will promote him to the rank of angels.