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SCIENCE
existence throughout the whole of the past eternity of time, as surely as it will continue to exist in the future.
But the soul could not have existed as a pure spirit in the past, for in that case it would be impossible for it to be born in the world. This is because in its natural purity the soul is the enjoyer of full perfect knowledge, infinite perception, unbounded happiness and all other divine attributes, which, in the absence of a restraining force or body of some kind, must be deemed to be manifested in the fullest degree in its nature. The idea of such a perfect being descending to inhabit a body of flesh and thereby crippling its natural unlimited perfection in a number of ways is too absurd to be entertained for a moment. It follows from this that the soul did not exist in a condition of perfection prior to its present incarnation, and that the existence of some force capable of dragging jivas (souls) into different wombs is a condition precedent to their birth in the different grades of life. But how shall we conceive force operating on a soul and dragging it into an organism, if not as the action of some kind of matter? It is, therefore, clear that the soul must have been in union with some kind of matter prior to its birth in any given incarnation.
It is the influence of matter, then, which is responsible for all those conditions of the soul which are not natural to a pure spirit; for the fusion of different substances always results in the limitation or suspension of their pure natural functions, e. g., hydrogen and
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