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Faith & Spirit Quote by Georg Hermes

"The soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold"

About this Quote

A deliberate old-world cadence ("passeth", "mansions") does more than sound pious; it stages spiritual motion as something orderly, almost architectural. Hermes frames the soul not as a static possession but as a traveler, and that metaphor quietly shifts the moral stakes. If life is pilgrimage, then change is not failure or inconsistency - it is the job. The line gives religious development a narrative logic: you do not betray the faith by moving through doubt, discipline, suffering, insight. You are passing through rooms.

The word choice is doing covert theological work. "Form to form" implies continuity without sameness: the soul persists while its outward condition, understanding, even its moral texture can transform. "Mansions" suggests both shelter and hierarchy. Some rooms are cramped, provisional; others are spacious, nearer to home. That lets Hermes speak about gradations of spiritual maturity without the crudeness of labeling people saved/unsaved, enlightened/unenlightened. It's a gentle scalpel.

Context matters: Hermes, a German Catholic theologian in the wake of the Enlightenment, was steeped in debates about reason, conscience, and how belief becomes justified. His broader project tried to make faith intellectually accountable; he was later condemned for it. Read against that tension, the quote doubles as self-defense. It argues that the soul's movement through "manifold" stages is not a threat to doctrine but a feature of a living, reasoning faith. The subtext: give people time. Spiritual truth may be fixed, but human access to it is painfully, necessarily sequential.

Quote Details

TopicMeaning of Life
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Hermes, Georg. (2026, January 15). The soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-soul-passeth-from-form-to-form-and-the-114407/

Chicago Style
Hermes, Georg. "The soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-soul-passeth-from-form-to-form-and-the-114407/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The soul passeth from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-soul-passeth-from-form-to-form-and-the-114407/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Georg Hermes (April 22, 1775 - May 26, 1831) was a Theologian from Germany.

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