Now, as I have observed in a former chapter, there is nothing more perplexing to us in regarding man as a responsible being, than the degree to which we have reason to believe his moral nature is influenced by his physical organization; but leaving this difficult question to be decided (if ever it can be decided in this world) by wiser heads than mine, there is one thing of which we may rest perfectly assured, namely, that let the fault of an impure, or vicious, or even merely sensuous life, lie where it will—whether it be the wicked spirit within, or the ill-organized body without, or a _tertium quid_ of both combined—still the soul that has been a party to this earthly career, must be soiled and deteriorated by its familiarity with evil; and there seems much reason to believe that the dissolution of the connection between the soul and body produces far less change in the former than has been commonly supposed. People generally think—if they think on the subject at all—that as soon as they are dead, if they have lived tolerably virtuous lives, or indeed been free from any great crimes, they will immediately find themselves provided with wings, and straightway fly up to some delightful place, which they call heaven, forgetting how unfit they are for heavenly fellowship; and although I can not help thinking that the Almighty has mercifully permitted occasional relaxations of the boundaries that separate the dead from the living, for the purpose of showing us our error, we are determined not to avail ourselves of the advantage. I do not mean that these spirits—these _revenants_ or _restants_—are special messengers sent to warn us: I only mean that their occasionally “revisiting the glimpses of the moon” form the exceptional cases in a great general law of nature which divides the spiritual from the material world; and that, in framing this law, these exceptions may have been designed for our benefit. There are several stories extant in the English, and a vast number in the German records, which, supposing them to be well founded—and I repeat, that for many of them we have just as good evidence as for anything else we believe as hearsay or tradition—would go to confirm the fact that the spirits of the dead are sometimes disturbed by what appear to us very trifling cares. I give the following case from Dr. Kerner, who says it was related to him by a very respectable man, on whose word he can entirely rely:—