now left to be set
forth, may be designated by the word transition.14 It affirms that
at death they pass from the separate material worlds, which are
their initiating nurseries, into the common spiritual world, which
is everywhere present. Thus the visible peoples the invisible,
each person in his turn consciously rising from this world's
rudimentary darkness to that world's universal light. Dwelling
here, free souls, housed in frames of dissoluble clay,

"We hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth,
On the last verge of mortal being stand,
lose to the realm where angels have their birth,
Just on the boundaries of the spirit land."

Why has God "broken up the solid material of the universe into
innumerable little globes, and swung each of them in the centre of
an impassable solitude of space," unless it be to train up in the
various spheres separate households for final union as a single
diversified family in the boundless spiritual world? 15 The
surmise is not unreasonable, but recommends itself strongly,
that,

"If yonder stars be fill'd with forms of breathing clay like ours,
Perchance the space which spreads between is for a spirit's
powers."

The soul encased in flesh is thereby confined to one home, its
natal nest; but, liberated at death, it wanders at will,
unobstructed, through every world and cerulean deep; and
wheresoever it is, there, in proportion to its own capacity and
fitness, is heaven and is God.16 All those world spots so thickly
scattered through the Yggdrasill of universal space are but the
brief sheltering places where embryo intelligences clip their
shells, and whence, as soon as fledged through the discipline of
earthly teaching and essays, the broodlet souls take wing into the
mighty airs of immensity, and thus enter on their eternal
emancipation. This conjecture is, of all which have been offered
yet, perhaps the completest, least perplexed, best recommended by
its harmony with our knowledge and our hope. And so one might wish
to rest in it with humble trust.

The final destiny of an immortal soul, after its transition into
the other world, must be either unending progress towards infinite
perfection, or the reaching of its perihelion at last and then
revolving in uninterrupted fruition. In the former case, pursuing
an infinite aim, with each degree of its attainment the flying
goal still recedes. In the latter case, it will in due season
touch its bound and there be satisfied,