If one part of that system is referred to the divine Will, so must the whole of it be. The souls, when they have entered animal bodies, must be supposed to be subject to a system of laws which is of one piece with the system of physical laws. If the physical part of the world-order is referred to the divine Will, the psychical part of it must be equally referred to {95} that Will. The souls might, indeed, conceivably have an independent and original nature of their own capable of offering resistance to the divine intentions. But we see, to say the least, no indications of a struggle going on between an outside divine Will and independent beings not forming a part of the divine scheme. At all events, the result of this struggle, if struggle there be, is (so far as we can observe) a system, complete and orderly, within the psychical sphere as much as within the purely physical sphere. And in particular the body is exactly fitted to the soul that is to inhabit it. We never find the intellect of a Shakespeare in connexion with the facial angle of a negro; bodies which resemble the bodies of their parents are connected with souls between which a similar resemblance can be traced. If the souls existed before birth, we must suppose those souls to be kept waiting in a limbo of some kind till a body is prepared suitable for their reception. We must suppose that among the waiting souls, one is from time to time selected to be the offspring of such and such a matrimonial union, so as to present (as it were) a colourable appearance of being really the fruit of that union. Further, before birth the souls must be steeped in the waters of Lethe, or something of the kind, so as to rid them of all memory of their previous experiences. Such a conception seems to {96} me to belong to the region of Mythology rather than of sober philosophical thought. I do not deny that Mythology may sometimes be a means of pictorially or symbolically envisaging truths to which Philosophy vaguely points but which it cannot express in clearly apprehensible detail. But such a Mythology as this seems to be intellectually unmotived and unhelpful. It is not wanted to explain the facts: there is nothing in our experience to suggest it, and much which is _prima facie_ opposed to it. It really removes no single difficulty: for one difficulty which it presents some appearance of removing, it creates a dozen greater ones. It is a hypothesis which we shall do well to dismiss as otiose.