or form of an organized living body? or with Plato, that she has a life
of her own? Is the Pythagorean image of the harmony, or that of the
monad, the truer expression? Is the soul related to the body as sight to
the eye, or as the boatman to his boat? (Arist. de Anim.) And in
another state of being is the soul to be conceived of as vanishing into
infinity, hardly possessing an existence which she can call her own,
as in the pantheistic system of Spinoza: or as an individual informing
another body and entering into new relations, but retaining her own
character? (Compare Gorgias.) Or is the opposition of soul and body a
mere illusion, and the true self neither soul nor body, but the union
of the two in the 'I' which is above them? And is death the assertion
of this individuality in the higher nature, and the falling away into
nothingness of the lower? Or are we vainly attempting to pass
the boundaries of human thought? The body and the soul seem to be
inseparable, not only in fact, but in our conceptions of them; and any
philosophy which too closely unites them, or too widely separates them,
either in this life or in another, disturbs the balance of human nature.
No thinker has perfectly adjusted them, or been entirely consistent with
himself in describing their relation to one another. Nor can we
wonder that Plato in the infancy of human thought should have confused
mythology and philosophy, or have mistaken verbal arguments for real
ones.

5. Again, believing in the immortality of the soul, we must still
ask the question of Socrates, 'What is that which we suppose to be
immortal?' Is it the personal and individual element in us, or the
spiritual and universal? Is it the principle of knowledge or of
goodness, or the union of the two? Is it the mere force of life which is
determined to be, or the consciousness of self which cannot be got rid
of, or the fire of genius which refuses to be extinguished? Or is there
a hidden being which is allied to the Author of all existence, who is
because he is perfect, and to whom our ideas of perfection give us a
title to belong? Whatever answer is given by us to these questions,
there still remains the necessity of allowing the permanence of evil, if
not for ever, at any rate for a time, in order that the wicked 'may not
have too good a bargain.' For the annihilation of evil at death, or the
eternal duration of it, seem to involve equal difficulties in the moral
government of the u