inseparable solidarity of activities. The universe is an eternal
society of eternal force individuals, all of which are capable of
constant changes in groupings, aggregations, developments,
relations, but absolutely incapable of annihilation. Every atom
possesses potential reason, and comes to self apprehension
whenever the appropriate conditions meet. All differences
originate from conditions and exist not in essentialities.

According to this theory, the eternity of the soul is sure, but
that eternity must be an endless series of mutual transitions
between consciousness and unconsciousness, life and death.37 Since
all cannot be men at once, they must take their turns. Carus says,
a soul enclosing in itself an independent consciousness is
inconceivable. When the organism by which consciousness is
conditioned and revealed is destroyed in death, consciousness
disappears as certainly as the gleaming height of a dome falls in
when its foundation is removed. And Drossbach adds, death is the
shade side of life. Without shade, light would not be perceptible,
nor life without death; for only contrast leads to knowledge. The
consciousness of life is realized by interchange with the
unconsciousness of death. Mortality is the inevitable attribute of
a self conscious being. The immortality of such a being can be
nothing else than an everlasting mortality. In this restless
alternation between the opposite states of life and death, being
holds continuous endurance, but consciousness is successively
extinguished and revived, while memory is each time hopelessly
lost. Widenmann holds that the periods of death are momentary, the
soul being at once born again, retaining no vestiges of its
past.38 Drossbach, on the contrary, believes that memory is an
indefeasible quality of the soul atom, the reason why we do not
remember previous lives being that the present is our first
experiment. When all atoms destined to become men have once run
the human career, the earliest ones will begin to reappear with
full memory of their preceding course. It matters not how long it
requires for one circuit of the whole series of souls; for the
infinite future is before us, and, as we are unconscious in death,
the lapse of ages is nothing. We lie down to sleep, and instantly
rise up to a new life.

36 Hickok, Rational Cosmology, ch. ii. sect. 1: Matter is force.

37 Drossbach, Die personliche Unsterblichkeit als Folge der
atomistischen Verfaasung der