ills better things than we. According to the analogy of the human
organism, both the heavenly bodies and plants are to be conceived as beings
endowed with souls, although they lack nerves, a brain, and voluntary
motion. How could the earth bring forth living beings, if it were itself
dead? Shall not the flower itself rejoice in the color and fragrance which
it produces, and with which it refreshes us? Though its psychical life may
not exceed that of an infant, its sensations, at all events, since they do
not form the basis of a higher activity, are superior in force and richness
to those of the animal. Thus the human soul stands intermediate in the
scale of psychical life: beneath and about us are the souls of plants and
animals, above us the spirits of the earth and stars, which, sharing in and
encompassing the deeds and destinies of their inhabitants, are in
their turn embraced by the consciousness of the universal spirit. The
omnipresence of the divine spirit affords at the same time the means of
escaping from the desolate "night view" of modern science, which looks upon
the world outside the perceiving individual as dark and silent. No, light
and sound are not merely subjective phenomena within us, but extend around
us with objective reality--as sensations of the divine spirit, to which
everything that vibrates resounds and shines.

[Footnote 1: _Nanna, or on the Psychical Life of Plants_, 1848;
_Zend-Avesta, or on the Things of Heaven and the World Beyond_, 1851;
_Physical and Philosophical Atomism_, 1855; _The Three Motives and Grounds
of Belief_, 1863; _The Day View_, 1879; _Elements of Aesthetics_, 1876;
_Elements of Psycho-physics_, 1860; _In the Cause of Psycho-physics_, 1877;
_Review of the Chief Points in Psycho-physics_, 1882; _Book of the Life
after Death_, 1836, 3d ed., 1887; _On the Highest Good_, 1846; _Four
Paradoxes_, 1846; _On the Question of the. Soul_, 1861; _Minor Works by Dr.
Mises_ (Fechner's pseudonym), 1875. On Fechner cf. J. E. Kuntze, Leipsic,
1892.]

The door of the world beyond also opens to the key of analogy. Similar
laws unite the here with the hereafter. As intuition prepares the way for
memory, and lives on in it, so the life of earth merges in the future life,
and continues active in it, elevated to a higher plane. Fechner treats the
problem of evil in a way peculiar to himself. We must not consider the
fact of evil apart from the effort to remove it. It is the spur to all
activity--