Greek philosophy, in its highest state of development, regarded the soul as something more than the sum of the moments of thinking. It held it to be a portion of the Deity himself. This doctrine is the necessary corollary of Pantheism. It contemplated a past eternity, a future immortality. It entered on such inquiries as whether the number of souls in the universe is constant. As upon the foregoing point, so upon this: there was a complete analogy between the decision arrived at in Grecian and that in Indian philosophy. Thus the latter says, "I am myself an irradiated manifestation of the supreme BRAHM." "Never was there a time in which I was not, nor thou, nor these princes of the people, and never shall I not be; henceforth we all are." Viewing the soul as merely a spectator and stranger in this world, they regarded it as occupying itself rather in contemplation than in action, asserting that in its origin it is an immediate emanation from the Divinity--not a modification nor a transformation of the Supreme, but a portion of him; "its relation is not that of a servant to his master, but of a part to the whole." It is like a spark separated from a flame; it migrates from body to body, sometimes found in the higher, then in the lower, and again in the higher tribes of life, occupying first one, then another body, as circumstances demand. And, as a drop of water pursues a devious career in the cloud, in the rain, in the river, a part of a plant, or a part of an animal, but sooner or later inevitably finds its way back to the sea from which it came, so the soul, however various its fortunes may have been, sinks back at last into the divinity from which it emanated. Both Greeks and Hindus turned their attention to the delusive phenomena of the world. Among the latter many figuratively supposed that what we call visible nature is a mere illusion befalling the soul, because of its temporary separation from God. In the Buddhist philosophy the world is thus held to be a creature of the imagination. But among some in those ancient, as among others in more modern times, it was looked upon as having a more substantial condition, and the soul as a passive mirror in which things reflected themselves, or perhaps it might, to some extent, be the partial creator of its own forms. However that may be, its final destiny is a perfect repose after its absorption in the Supreme. [Sidenote: Illustration of the nature of the soul.]