dowed with
will-power, and finally gods, having developed the entire
potentialities of the All by their repeated imprisonment in the series
of forms that make up the visible and invisible kingdoms of nature.

Every form, _i.e._ aggregate of substance-force, reflects within
itself one of these points of Divinity. This point is its Monad, its
centre of consciousness, or soul; it is the cause which is manifested
as qualities in the envelopes, and these give it the illusion of
separateness for a certain period,[18] just as a soap-bubble
momentarily acquires a fictitious individuality and appears separate
from the atmosphere--of which it forms part--so long as its illusory
envelope endures.

Thus do men imagine themselves separate from one another, when all the
time their soul is nothing more than a drop of the divine Ocean,
hidden momentarily in a perishable body.

The "contraries" are the anvil and the hammer which slowly forge souls
by producing what might be called sensation in general, and sensation
is a fertile cause of suffering each time the vehicles of
consciousness receive vibrations that greatly exceed their fundamental
capacity of sensation. Without sensation however--consequently without
suffering--the body could neither walk,[19] nor see, nor hear, nor
show any disturbance brought to bear upon it; there would exist no
possible relation between the Universe and the "I," between the All
and the parts, between bodies and souls; there would be no
consciousness, or sensation of being, since no vibration from without
would find an echo in the incarnated "centres" of life; no knowledge
would be possible; man would be, as it were, in a state of
nothingness; and, without suspecting it, his body might at any moment
be crushed to the ground by the forces of Nature.

But these material necessities are not by any means the only ones that
demand sensation; without it, one of the principal objects of
evolution--the development of "Egos"--would be impossible. As an
example borrowed from the domain of physical sensation, we need only
call to memory a well-known experience in childhood.

All who have been at a boarding school know how heavy and fetid is the
atmosphere of a dormitory in the early winter morning, when fifty boys
have been breathing the same air again and again during the whole of
the night. And yet, who suspected this until he had gone out for a few
minutes and then returned to the bed-room? It needed the "c