Note 7 — Chapter LXXXXI · Incarnation of the Living Soul or Jíva.

So says a spiritualistic philosopher. Think you this earth of ours is a lifeless and unsentient bulk, while the worm on her surface is in the enjoyment of life? No, the universe is not dead. This life—jíva, what is it but the pervading afflux of deific love and life, vivifying all nature, and sustaining the animal and vegetable world as well as the world of mind? These suns, systems, planets and satellites, are not mere mechanisms. The pulsations of a divine life throb in them all, and make them rich in the sense that they too are parts of the divine cosmos. Should it be objected that it proves too much; that it involves the identity of the vital principle of animals and vegetables, let us not shrink from the conclusion. The essential unity of all spirit and all life with this exuberant life from God, is a truth from which we need not recoil, even though it bring all animal and vegetable forms within the sweep of immortality. Epes Sargent.