fellow, if you like,” he uttered, in his rather strident voice; “but as to condemning him, I would as soon condemn a tadpole for not being a full-grown frog. His soul is beyond his power to manage, or even to coerce, you may depend upon it.”
Having sipped his port, he drew a little nearer to me, and slightly dropped his voice.
“There would be less censure of individuals in this world,” he said, “if people were only a little more thoughtful. These souls are like letters, and sometimes they are sealed up in the wrong envelope. For instance, a man’s soul may be put into a woman’s body, or vice versâ. It has been so in D———‘s case. A mistake has been made.”
“By Providence?” I interrupted, with, perhaps, just a soupçon of sarcasm in my voice.
The Professor smiled.
“Suppose we imitate Thomas Hardy, and say by the President of the Immortals, who makes sport with more humans than Tess,” he answered. “Mistakes may be deliberate, just as their reverse may be accidental. Even a mighty power may condescend sometimes to a very practical joke. To a thinker the world is full of apple-pie beds, and cold wet sponges fall on us from at least half the doors we push open. The soul-juggleries of the before-mentioned President are very curious, but people will not realize that soul transference from body to body is as much a plain fact as the daily rising of the sun on one half of the world and its nightly setting on the other.”
“Do you mean that souls pass on into the world again on the death of the particular body in which they have been for the moment confined?” I asked.
“Precisely: I have no doubt of it. Sometimes a woman’s soul goes into a man’s body; then the man acts woman, and people cry against him for effeminacy. The soul colours the body with actions, the body does not colour the soul, or not in the same degree.”
“But we are not irresponsible. We can command ourselves.”
The Professor smiled dryly.
“You think so?” he said. “I sometimes doubt it.”
“And I doubt your theory of soul
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