FullReads

“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 transference.”

“That shows me–pardon the apparent impertinence–that you have never really examined the soul question with any close attention. Do you suppose that D—— really likes being so noticeably different from other men? Depend upon it,’ he has noticed in himself what we have noticed in him. Depend upon it, he has tried to be ordinary, and found it impossible. His soul manages him as a strong nature manages a weak one, and his soul is a female, not a male. For souls have sexes, otherwise what would be the sense of talking about wedded souls? I have no doubt whatever of the truth of reincarnation on earth. Souls go on and on following out their object of development.”

“You believe that every soul is reincarnated?”

“A certain number of times.”

“That even in the animal world the soul of one animal passes into the body of another?”

“Wait a minute. Now we are coming to something that tends to prove my theory true. Animals have souls, as you imply. Who can know them intimately and doubt it for an instant? Souls as immortal–or as mortal–as ours. And their souls, too, pass on.”

“Into other animals?”

“Possibly. And eventually, in the process of development, into human beings.”

I laughed, perhaps a little rudely. “My dear Professor, I thought that old notion was quite exploded in these modern scientific days.”

“I found my beliefs upon my own minute observations,” he said rather frigidly. “I notice certain animals masquerading–to some extent–as human beings, and I draw my own conclusions. If they happen to fit in at all with the conclusions of Pythagoras–or anyone else, for that matter–well and good. If not, I am not much concerned. Surely you notice the animal–and not merely the animal, but definite animals–reproduced in man. There are men whose whole demeanour suggests the monkey. I have met women who in manner, appearance, and even character, were intensely like cats.”

I uttered a slight exclamation, which did not interrupt him.

“Now, I have made a minute study of cats. Of all animals they interest me the most. They have less apparent intensity, less uttered passion, than dogs, but in my opinion more character. Their subtlety is extraordinary, their sensitiveness wonderful. Will you understand me when I say that all dogs are men, all cats women? That remark expresses the difference between them.”

He paused a moment.

“Go on–go on,” I said, leaning forward, with my eyes fixed upon his keen, puckered face.

He seemed pleased with my suddenly-aroused interest..

“Cats are as subtle and as difficult to understand as the most complex woman, and almost as full of intuitions. If they have been well treated, there is often a certain gracious, condescending suavity in their demeanour at first, even towards a total stranger; but if that stranger is ill disposed toward them, they seem instinctively to read his soul, and they are in arms directly. Yet they dissemble their fears in a cold indifference and reserve. They do not take action: they merely abstain from action. They withdraw the soul that has peeped out, as they can withdraw their claws into the pads upon their feet. They do not show fight as a dog might, they do not become aggressive, nor do they whine and put their tails between their legs. They are simply on guard, watchful, mistrustful. Is not all this woman?”

“Possibly,” I answered, with a painful effort to assume indifference.

“A woman intuitively knows who is her friend and who is her enemy–so long, at least, as her heart is not engaged; then she runs wild, I allow. A woman—- But I need not pursue the parallel. Besides, perhaps it is scarcely to the point, for my object is not to bolster up an absurd contention that all women have the souls of cats. No; but I have met women so strangely like cats that their souls have, as I said before souls do, coloured their bodies in actions. They have had the very look of cats in their faces. They have moved like them. Their demeanour has been patently and strongly feline. Now, I see nothing ridiculous in the assumption that such women’s bodies may contain souls–in process of development, of course–that formerly were merely cat souls, but that are now gaining humanity gradually, are working their way upwards in the scale. After all, we are not so much above the animals, and in our lapses we often become merely animals. The soul retrogrades for the moment.”