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980
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
animals. Even if these accounts be not true, there are innumerable other indications of inborn sagacity in them. The plants are very little removed from the lowest grades of animals, so that there is hardly any perceptible difference between the highest strata of the vegetable and the lowest ones of the animal kingdom. Even in the mineral kingdom death is not unknown, which means that metals are also endowed with life. This is amply borne out by the scientific experiments conducted by the great Indian Scientist, Prof. Sir J. C. Bose of Bengal. The fact is that there is no life without consciousness, and no consciousness without life. Hence, wherever there is life there is consciousness, whether it be fully manifested or not. Now, because the Thinker or soul is nothing other than consciousness, it further follows that wherever there is life there is soul.
We now come to
TRANSMIGRATION which, as has been already shown, is a truth of philosophy, So far as its recognition by the generality of mankind is concerned, undoubtedly all the ancient religions of the world were based on it. The conflict of opinion
have hitherto been treated by the Orientalists and others as human inventions to claim additional glory for their religion, but truth has now, at last, begun to assert itself and to show that animals can understand and make themselves understood by man, Nicholson points out that some of the Mahomedan saints, also, were wellknown for holding converse with animals ("The Mystics of Islam,' p. 139).
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