beings know one another? By their bounding solids. In other words, my soul
speaks to yours through the medium of our minds and bodies.
"That is the common phrase? Quite so; but I am using it in an absolute
physical sense. A line can only be aware of another line at a point of contact;
a plane of another plane at the line where they cut; a cube of another cube at
the surface common to both; and a soul of another soul where their ideas are
in conjunction.
"I do want you to grasp this with every fibre in your being; I believe it to
be the most important thesis ever enunciated, and you will be proud to learn
that it is wholly Brother Cyril's, with no help from me. Hinton, Rouse Ball,
and others, laid the foundations; but it was he that put it in such a clear light,
and correlated it with occult science.
"You must give the honour to the Mahathera Phang!" interjected Cyril. "I
was proving to him the metaphysical nature of the soul — and he regarded
me with so amused a smile that I perceived my asininity. Of course there can
be but one order of Nature!"
"In any case," continued Iff, "this theory of Cyril's wipes the slate clean of
every metaphysical speculation. Good and evil vanish instantly, with Realism
and Nominalism, and Free will and [105] Determinism — and all the 'isms'
and all the 'ologies'! Life is reduced to mathematical formulae, indeed, as the
Victorian scientists rightly wished to do; but at the same time mathematics is
restored to her royal pre-eminence as not only the most exact, but the most
exalted of the sciences. The intelligible order of things, moreover, becomes
natural and inevitable; and such moral problems as the cruelty of organic life
return to their real insignificance. The almost comic antinomy between man's
size and his intelligence is reduced; and although the mystery of the Universe
remains unsolved, at least it is a rational mystery, and neither senseless nor
intolerable.
"Let us now come down to a simple practical point. Here is a soul anxious
to communicate with other souls. He can only do it by obtaining a mind and
body. Now you'll notice, taking that cone image of ours again, that any
section of it is always one of three regular curves. It would not fit into a
square, for example, however you turned it. And so our soul has to look about
for some mind which will fit one of his sections. There is a great deal of
latitude, no doubt; for the mind grows, and is at first very plastic. But there
must be some sort of relation. If I am a wandering soul, and wish to
communicate with the soul now manifesting a section of itself as Professor of