re human of
the lower animals! Let those take care who look contemptuously upon the
animals, lest, in misusing one of them, they misuse some ancestor of
their own, sent back, as the one mercy for him, to reassume far past
forms and conditions--far past in physical, that is, but not in moral
development--and so have another opportunity of passing the
self-constituted barrier. The suggestion may appear very ridiculous, and
no doubt lends itself to humorous comment; but what if it should be
true! what if the amused reader should himself be getting ready to
follow the remanded ancestor! Upon it, however, I do not care to spend
thought or time, least of all argument; what I care to press is the
question--If we believe in the progress of creation as hitherto
manifested, also in the marvellous changes of form that take place in
every individual of certain classes, why should there be any difficulty
in hoping that old lives may reappear in new forms? The typical soul
reappears in higher formal type; why may not also the individual soul
reappear in higher form?

Multitudes evidently count it safest to hold by a dull scheme of things:
can it be because, like David in Browning's poem _Saul_, they dread lest
they should worst the Giver by inventing better gifts than his? That we
do not know, is the best reason for hoping to the full extent God has
made possible to us. If then we go wrong, it will be in the direction of
the right, and with such aberration as will be easier to correct than
what must come of refusing to imagine, and leaving the dullest
traditional prepossessions to rule our hearts and minds, with no claim
but the poverty of their expectation from the paternal riches. Those
that hope little cannot grow much. To them the very glory of God must be
a small thing, for their hope of it is so small as not to be worth
rejoicing in. That he is a faithful creator means nothing to them for
far the larger portion of the creatures he has made! Truly their notion
of faithfulness is poor enough; how then can their faith be strong! In
the very nature of divine things, the common-place must be false. The
stupid, self-satisfied soul, which cannot know its own stupidity, and
will not trouble itself either to understand or to imagine, is the
farthest behind of all the backward children in God's nursery.

As I say, then, I know no cause of reasonable difficulty in regard to
the continued existence of the lower animals, except the present