Wilhelmi said, "Then the soul is but a watch which winds itself." "There must always be some _perpetuum mobile_," I said, "for all things have moved for an eternity already. The question is, either the soul never winds off, or it is its own watchmaker. I return to the subject. If a ruptured life-vein in the fourth brain-chamber of a Socrates place the whole land of his ideas and moral tendencies in a blood-bath, these ideas and moral tendencies will surely be covered with blood-water, but not spoilt by it; because not the drowned brains were virtuous and wise, but his _self_ was, and because the dependence of a watch on its case for protection from dust, &c. does not prove the identity of the two, or that the watch consists only of cases. As spiritual exertions are not bodily ones, but only _precede_ or _follow_ them; and as every spiritual activity leaves traces, not only in the soul, but also in the body; must, then, if apoplexy or age destroy corporeal activity,--must the soul's fire be therefore quenched? Is there no difference between the soul of a _childish_ old man, and that of a _child_? Must the soul of Socrates, imprisoned in Borgia's body as in a mud-bath, lose its moral powers, and does it suddenly change its virtuous qualities for vicious ones? Or shall in left-handed wedlock (which has no common property of body and soul) the one conjugal half only share the gains, not also the losses of the other? Shall the ablactated soul feel only the blooming, not also the faded body? And if it does, the earth surrounding it must, as our earth does to the superior planets, give it the reflection of our advancing and retrograding. If we shall ever be disembodied, the slow hand of time, that is, ever encroaching age, must do it. If our course is not to be concluded in one world, the gulf between it and the second must always appear to us a grave. The _short_ interruption to our progress by age, and the _longer_ one by death, destroy this progress as little as the _shortest_ interruption by sleep. We anxiously suppose--as the first man did--the _total_ sun-eclipse of sleep to be the _night_ of death, and this again the _doomsday_ of the world." "That must yet be proved, although I believe it," replied Phylax. New beauties prevented my answering, and closed the 506th Station. (P. S.--I have been told the Chaplain has declared that he had purposely not replied to several of my arguments, but he hoped he could see them in print, and then he would publish his opinions. But he will scarcely live until this letter is printed, and he will answer it.) 507th STATION. The Theft of the Souvenir.--Answers to Previous Stations.--On the Emigration of the Dead to the Planets.--The Threefold World in Man.--Grief without Hope.--The Seal of Immortality.--The Country-seat.--The Balloons.--Ecstasy.