“Your first expressed thought may be not unscriptural, little angel—the _beasts_ perish; their _forms_ perish; but their _life_, through other transmigrations, may reach Heaven in the _human_ form!” “Why, that is the old doctrine of transmigration of souls,” said Gusty. “Not exactly, or rather, it is _more_ than that; for instance, I think that life continually _ascends_, never _descends_. It looks to me very stupid to suppose that a soul can _relapse_ into the form of a beast. No, life is never _lost_, but it continually _changes its locality_, always _ascending_; the various forms of life being the steps by which it reaches humanity—then Heaven. I have lived so much in the wildest solitudes of nature; I have seen so much _more_, so much _stronger_ life-spirit _below_, than on a _level_ with humanity; I have felt it struggling up, through water, stones, and clay; through lichen, herb, and tree; through insects, birds, and beasts; up to its highest visible form, humanity; and I have grown to _dream_ that life-spirit is elaborated from matter; or if not so, that in the union of spirit with matter, spirit may be first incarnated in the lowest form of matter, and passing through its various stages rise to human, to angelic nature. I believe there is one life-God, and many lives; the souls created in His image—that these souls might not each have been created at a _word_, in a _moment_—but created, or elaborated through _long ages_. I believe that each soul retains its separate existence, its separate features, its individual self, unmixed as undivided through all its incarnations; for instance the spirit of a rose in ascending the scale of being will never enter the form of an eagle, or a lion. To illustrate nearer home—here is my gentle Rosalia, whose pure spirit, ages ago, might have slept in the pale light of a seed pearl; then, in the lapse of centuries, lived in the fragrance of the wood violet; then, through many transmigrations, reached the form of the dove, then a lamb, and lastly, is incarnated in the beautiful child before us.” “Then, if that were so, why can I not remember when I was a violet, and when I was a dove?” pertinently inquired Rosalia.