But if we possess a soul and it is capable of passing through the many and varied stages that life suffers, what becomes of its impressions? What and where are the benefits of its retention?
Where is the soul when we are in a state of unconsciousness? Surely, if the soul were ever present to guard and maintain life, it would be standing by and using its power when it is most needed. We have no occasion for help when we are not in danger. It is when power can be used and exercised that it should be manifested.
Even love, the great compelling force of our life, is subject to the variations of our chemical "soul," its attractions and repulsions.
If two form the unit of reproduction, and love is the great mating medium of Nature, then once it is animated, once it is brought into existence, it should endure permanently, and the possessors should at least enjoy their blissful companionship until the end. But no. Nature would entice, and then destroy, this most consuming feeling of life.
Two persons can start life with the most irresistible attraction and irrepressible love and within a very short time, unless they guard their love with every means and weapon of advanced thought and reason, Nature, through her duplicity, will provide searching eyes to alienate their affection, causing a wretchedness unparalleled in the mental miseries of mankind's life.
The saddest state of all is when two persons, with the sacred devotion of love, cohabit and the happy result is loving children, and yet while this happy family, free from Nature's pitfalls and snares, are living in a peaceful and blissful state, there exists the ever-menacing "devil" who tempts the loving wife and mother to follow the will-o'-the-wisp—and thereby undoes and destroys the greatest kingdom of life.
The devoted husband and father, by the flash of an eye, and the charm of a face, can forsake his sacred ties of devotion and become a degenerate and outcast, with death as his only salvation. In either case Nature stands by with a sneer upon her lips, and God forgets his obligation to his children. But the final analysis proves beyond doubt that the physical attraction is responsible for this action; and who can deny that it is the chemical attraction of two forces that produced this irresistible desire?