plane of life here to planes elsewhere, and that
the stream is pouring in as well as out of this world, and that it may
be, in our case, pouring both ways, that is, we may be losing
individuals into lower grades of life as well as emitting them to
higher. See, what economy!

"Instead of wasting the energies of imagination to account for the
destinations of millions upon millions of human beings, the countless
host that has occupied the surfaces of this earth through all the
historic and prehistoric ages, we can, upon this assumption, reduce the
number of individuals immensely, allowing that spirits are constantly
arriving, constantly departing, and that the sum total in the solar
system remains perhaps nearly fixed, just as in the electrolysis of
water we have hydrogen rising at one electrode and oxygen at the other
by transmission of atoms of hydrogen and atoms of oxygen toward each
electrode through the water itself, in opposite directions, while for a
sensible time the mass of water remains unchanged.

"Let us suppose that in Mercury some form of mental life exists, that it
is individualized, that it expresses the physical constants of that
globe, that its mentality has reached the point where it can make use of
the resources of Mercury, can respond to its physical constants so far
as they awaken poetry or art or religion or science. Suppose that this
life is one of extreme forcefulness, of stress and storm, like some
prehistoric condition on our globe, but invested with more intellectual
attributes than the same ages on our earth required or possessed,
perhaps reaching a permanent condition not unlike that depicted in the
Niebelungen Lied or the Sagas of the North. It might be called the
_brawn_ period. Then the spirits born upon our planet or on any other
planet in an identical condition, would find after death their
destination in Mercury, where they could evolve up to the point where
they might return to as, or to some other planet fitted for a higher
life.

"Then Venus, we may imagine, succeeding Mercury, carries a higher type,
an emotional life, though of course I am not influenced by her
accidental name, in suggesting it. Here in Venus, a period perchance
resembling a mixture of the pagan Grecian life and the troubadour life
of Provence may prevail and again to it have flown the spirits which in
our planet only touch that development, which from Venus flow to us,
those adapted for the religious or intellec