With Hâjî Abdû the soul is not material, for that would be a contradiction of terms. He regards it, with many moderns, as a state of things, not a thing; a convenient word denoting the sense of personality, of individual identity. In its ghostly signification he discovers an artificial dogma which could hardly belong to the brutal savages of the Stone Age. He finds it in the funereal books of ancient Egypt, whence probably it passed to the Zendavesta and the Vedas. In the Hebrew Pentateuch, of which part is still attributed to Moses, it is unknown, or, rather, it is deliberately ignored by the author or authors. The early Christians could not agree upon the subject; Origen advocated the pre-existence of men’s souls, supposing them to have been all created at one time and successively embodied. Others make Spirit born with the hour of birth: and so forth. But the brain-action or, if you so phrase it, the mind, is not confined to the reasoning faculties; nor can we afford to ignore the sentiments, the affections which are, perhaps, the most potent realities of life. Their loud affirmative voice contrasts strongly with the titubant accents of the intellect. They seem to demand a future life, even, a state of rewards and punishments from the Maker of the world, the _Ortolano Eterno_,[1] the Potter of the East, the Watchmaker of the West. They protest against the idea of annihilation. They revolt at the notion of eternal parting from parents, kinsmen and friends. Yet the dogma of a future life is by no means catholic and universal. The Anglo-European race apparently cannot exist without it, and we have lately heard of the “Aryan Soul-land.” On the other hand many of the Buddhist and even the Brahman Schools preach Nirwâna (comparative non-existence) and Parinirwâna (absolute nothingness). Moreover, the great Turanian family, actually occupying all Eastern Asia, has ever ignored it; and the 200,000,000 of Chinese Confucians, the mass of the nation, protest emphatically against the mainstay of the western creeds, because it “unfits men for the business and duty of life by fixing their speculations on an unknown world.” And even its votaries, in all ages, races and faiths, cannot deny that the next world is a copy, more or less idealized, of the present; and that it lacks a single particular savouring of originality. It is in fact a mere continuation; and the continuation is “not proven.” It is most hard to be a man; and the Pilgrim’s sole consolation is in self-cultivation, and in the pleasures of the affections. This sympathy may be an indirect self-love, a reflection of the light of egotism: still it is so transferred as to imply a different system of convictions. It requires a different name: to call benevolence “self-love” is to make the fruit or flower not only depend upon a root for development (which is true), but the very root itself (which is false). And, finally, his ideal is of the highest: his praise is reserved for: