ON LIFE AFTER 
 DEATH 
 
 PEGHNER 
 
 V
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 fHILOSBPHY 
 DEPARTMENT
 
 Return this book on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. A 
 charge is made on all overdue 
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 U. of I. Library 
 
 11148-S
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH
 
 PROF. G. T. FECHNER
 
 ON 
 
 LIFE AFTER DEATH 
 
 FROM THE GERMAN 
 OF 
 
 GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. HUGO WERNEKKE 
 Head Master of Weimar Realtfymnasium 
 
 Third Edition 
 
 CHICAGO AND LONDON 
 
 THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 1914
 
 Copyright 1906 
 
 by 
 
 THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. 
 CHICAGO
 
 TO 
 
 THE MEMORY OF 
 
 THE REVERED AUTHOR, 
 WHO ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY KINDLY 
 j ACCEPTED THE FIRST ENGLISH VERSION OF 
 
 THE PRESENT LITTLE BOOK 
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH 
 K 
 
 J FROM 
 
 The Translator. 
 
 c- 
 
 364508
 
 "... El nacer 
 Y el morir son parecidos." 
 
 La vida es sueno: I. 678.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 FECHNER'S famous essay, Das Bitch- 
 lem vom Leben nach dem Tode, 
 which in this present shape 1 hopes 
 to be made welcome to the English-reading 
 public, came out originally in 1835. But 
 in the age of romanticism, strange to say, 
 it seems to have met with little more favor 
 than in the ensuing period of materialism, 
 when Buchner and Moleschott proclaimed 
 a creed attainable without much mental ef- 
 fort. A second edition, therefore, slightly 
 altered, 2 was not undertaken till 1866. A 
 third edition, in 1887, bore witness, on the 
 
 1 It is a revision of our first edition, published in 
 1882 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 
 London. While this new edition was in preparation, 
 another translation came out in the United States, 
 by Maria C. Wadsworth (Boston 1905). 
 
 2 The alterations, throughout in the shape of omis- 
 sions, are slight in extent, but characteristic of the 
 author's mental development. He thought it advisa- 
 ble to suppress certain passages, in which his philo- 
 
 7
 
 8 PREFACE. 
 
 one hand, that the new generation had be- 
 gun to appreciate the booklet, and on the 
 other hand, that its author, with his mind 
 constantly fixed on the highest problems of 
 moral and natural philosophy, still upheld 
 the views set forth in one of his earliest 
 publications. A fourth and a fifth reprint 
 came out, after his death, in 1900 and 
 1903. 
 
 It was a long and laborious life, though 
 outwardly uneventful, which closed on No- 
 vember 18th, 1887. Gustav Theodor 
 Fechner was born, on April 19th, 1801, at 
 Gross-Sarchen, a small village in the Ober- 
 lausitz, which at present belongs to the 
 Prussian province of Silesia, whereas in 
 the beginning of the last century it was 
 under the Elector of Saxony. Hence it 
 was at the ancient Saxon university, in 
 Leipzig, that Fechner went through his 
 course of studies, and where in 1834, he 
 was appointed professor of physics. His 
 
 sophic imagination might be considered to have taken 
 too daring a flight. They will be found, with a 
 reference to their original place in his deductions, at 
 the end of this translation.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 sphere of activity was not confined to the 
 delivering of public lectures. He wrote, 
 and translated from the French, science 
 textbooks, and conducted several maga- 
 zines of a scientific character. The obser- 
 vations preparatory to his publications on 
 galvanism and electro-magnetism proved 
 injurious to his eyesight, so that for some 
 time he was obliged to give up all writing 
 and lecturing. It was, however, so far re- 
 stored as to enable him to labor for many 
 successive years in the fields of scientific in- 
 vestigation and philosophical and meta- 
 physical speculation. 
 
 His standard work Elemente der Psy- 
 chophysik was published in 1859 (with im- 
 portant additions issued in 1877 and 
 1882). Slowly, at least in the beginning, 
 but steadily and very honorably, it has 
 made its way among men of science, at 
 home and abroad. Fechner's Law, the 
 fundamental law of psychophysics (stating 
 that sensation varies in the ratio of the log- 
 arithm of impression) has become a term 
 of international currency. 
 
 "It will never be forgotten," says
 
 10 PREFACE. 
 
 Wundt, 3 "that Fechner was the first to in- 
 troduce exact methods, exact principles of 
 measurement and experimental observa- 
 tion for the investigation of psychic phe- 
 nomena, and thereby to open the prospect 
 of a psychological science, in the strict 
 sense of the word. When Herbart had a 
 similar aim in view, he failed to find the 
 way towards it. The chief merit of Fech- 
 ner's method is this : that it has nothing to 
 apprehend from the vicissitudes of philo- 
 sophical systems. Modern psychology has 
 indeed assumed a really scientific character, 
 and may keep aloof from all metaphysical 
 controversy." 
 
 If among the divers branches of psychol- 
 ogy, aesthetics seemed least of all suscepti- 
 ble of scientific treatment, it was Fechner 
 again, who attempted, and successfully at- 
 tempted, an Introduction to ^Esthetics 
 (Forschule der jEsthetik, 1876), based on 
 experiment and analysis. He modestly 
 speaks of it as a "rhapsodic" discussion of 
 
 3 Gustav Theodor Fechner. Rede zur Feier seines 
 hundertjahrigen Geburtstags gehalten von Wilhelm 
 Wundt. Leipzig 1901.
 
 PREFACE. 11 
 
 various questions, but he clearly shows the 
 way to solve the proposed problems not 
 on the basis of a priori principles, by the 
 descending process or the way "from 
 above," as he likes to describe it, but by ob- 
 servation and induction, by the ascending 
 process, the way "from below." He dwells 
 upon the connection of the problems on 
 hand with the more general investigation 
 of the causes of pleasure. Beginning with 
 pleasing objects of the simplest description 
 (geometrical figures, for instance), and 
 proceeding to analyze works of art, he 
 finds out experimentally what it is that 
 makes things pleasant or unpleasant, and 
 formulates the principles of aesthetic 
 pleasure. 
 
 The long and varied list of Fechner's 
 publications, in the shape of detached es- 
 says, pamphlets and greater works, opens 
 with the writings of "Dr. Mises" such as 
 A Demonstration that the Moon is made 
 of Iodine, A Panegyric of the Medical Art 
 of the Present Time, Four Paradoxes, 4 ' 
 
 4 The Paradoxes dexterously proved by Dr. Mises 
 are these, That the shadow is a living being; That
 
 12 PREFACE. 
 
 Stapelia Mixta* and at the first sight it 
 may seem hard to realize the identity of 
 Dr. Mises, with his sometimes exuberantly 
 fantastic humor, and Professor Fechner, 
 the scientist and philosopher. And yet the 
 sympathetic reader will understand how 
 the one could develop into the other. There 
 is similarity of style between them, and 
 there is, strange as it may sound, relation- 
 ship of subject. The Anatomy of Angels, 
 for instance, which reads very like a fairy- 
 tale, turns out to be a humorous prelude 
 to the fundamental conception of the 
 
 space has four dimensions; That witchcraft is a reality; 
 That the world was made not by a creative but by a 
 destructive principle. 
 
 5 The whimsical choice of this title is thus face- 
 tiously explained by the author: "I was anxious to 
 follow the fashion with my little book, sending it out 
 under the name of some flower. But finding that the 
 recent publications were adorned with the names of 
 almost all the children of Flora which I knew, I was 
 rather at a loss, till a Stapelia mixta, placed outside 
 my window, caught my eye, a flower of a somewhat 
 sombre color, dotted with glaring bright specks, and 
 exhaling an odor, that the carrion-flies will lay their 
 eggs on it by mistake. As little as a Christian, I said 
 to myself, will ever call his baby Judas Iscariot, as 
 little can a fashionable author have called his book 
 after that flower. And so my hesitation was removed."
 
 PREFACE. 13 
 
 planet-world, on which the first part of his 
 Zend-Avesta is based. Originally the 
 Booklet on Life after Death, dedicated to 
 two young ladies, the daughters of Fech- 
 ner's friend Grimmer, a Leipzig book- 
 seller, also bore the name of Dr. Mises. 
 Here, however, the author is quite grave. 
 The subject of the second part of Zend- 
 Avesta (which did not appear till 16 
 years afterwards) is here previously 
 sketched, with a forcible eloquence and 
 great warmth of feeling. The author con- 
 fines himself to stating his ideas, the dog- 
 matic tone is prevalent, the reasoning by 
 analogy, a peculiar modification of the in- 
 ductive method, which is the characteristic 
 feature of his later works, is less obvious 
 here. 
 
 Another little book of a preliminary 
 character, on the Summum Bonum (Vber 
 das hochste Gut, 1846) briefly stating the 
 ethical principles more fully expounded in 
 Zend-Avesta, was followed, in 1848, by an 
 elaborate discussion of what Fechner terms 
 u the Soul-Question" the problem of the 
 soul. In Nanna, or the Soul-Life of Plants,
 
 14 PREFACE. 
 
 he upholds that the same reasons which 
 cause us to assume the existence of a mind 
 or soul 6 in the bodies of man and of ani- 
 mals, viz. : the evident design in their bod- 
 ily organization, the helpful interaction of 
 their organs, the reaction upon, and adap- 
 tation to, outward conditions, must induce 
 us to assume that there is a soul in plants as 
 well. From the tenet that the organized 
 beings inferior to man must have a soul, or 
 rather do not consist of a body and soul, 
 but are body and soul in one, like man him- 
 self, he proceeded to the higher and grand- 
 er conception, that the beings superior to 
 man, the celestial bodies, must likewise 
 have an inward life, underlying, or con- 
 comitant with, their outward life that, in 
 fact, the whole universe is alive, not a dead 
 bulk, but an animated being, a wonderful 
 organism of the sublimest order. This 
 grand doctrine was ingeniously and elo- 
 
 8 It may be as well to state here that Fechner, with 
 his skill in minute research and his mastery of lan- 
 guage, has little taste for certain subtleties of termin- 
 ology, so that in his writings, as in our translation, 
 the terms mind, soul, spirit, are used with very little 
 difference of meaning.
 
 PREFACE. 15 
 
 quently set forth in Zend-Avesta, or the 
 Things of Heaven and the Hereafter 
 (Zend-Avesta, oder tiber die Dinge des 
 Himmels und des Jenseits), published in 
 1851, in three volumes, of which the first 
 and second contain his ideas on the relation 
 of human life to divine life and the life of 
 the universe, whereas the subject of the 
 third is the relation of our present life to 
 the life to come. He sums up his ideas in 
 the following paragraphs : 
 
 Syllabus of the Theory of Heavenly Things. 
 (Zend-Avesta, Chap. XX.) 
 
 1. According to a quite justified, though not 
 exactly current view, the earth comprising in 
 the term water, air, animals, plants, in short, 
 everything that by the force of attraction is re- 
 tained on it represents, in the same way as the 
 human body, a system based on the continuity of 
 substance and closely held together by mutual and 
 purposeful interaction, made up of a variety of 
 parts and subordinate systems, and going through, 
 in never-ending evolution, a variety of periodical 
 and cyclical motions, of which general system of 
 parts and motions the human body constitutes an 
 inferior system.
 
 16 PREFACE. 
 
 2. Examining the various points of resem- 
 blance as well as of difference between man and 
 earth, we discover on the one hand an agreement 
 between them in every point which in any theory 
 of the relation between body and soul has been es- 
 tablished as characteristic of a spiritual individual- 
 ity connected with a material organism, whereas 
 their undeniable differences make it evident that 
 the earth is an individuality of higher and more 
 independent life than man's lower and more re- 
 strained life. 
 
 3. As our bodies belong to the greater and 
 higher individual body of the earth, so our spirits 
 belong to the greater and higher individual spirit 
 of the earth, which comprises all the spirits of 
 earthly creatures, very much as the earth-body 
 comprises their bodies. At the same time the 
 earth-spirit is not a mere assembly of all the spirits 
 of the earth, but a higher, individually conscious 
 union of them. Our own individuality and in- 
 dependence, which are naturally but of a relative 
 character, are not impaired but conditioned by this 
 union. If any meaning is to be connected with 
 the term in current use when we speak of a "spirit 
 of mankind," we must identify it with the spirit 
 of the earth. 
 
 4. Considering that the earth is one of the 
 celestial bodies, and reasoning again from analogy, 
 we are led to view those bodies, the stars, as en-
 
 PREFACE. 17 
 
 dowed with an individual spirit each, and thus 
 forming a realm of another and higher order of 
 beings, in which we may indeed discover such 
 characteristics as we have reason to ascribe to be- 
 ings of a higher order than ours. This view of 
 ours coincides with the belief of many human 
 races, which at all times, as long as they were in 
 close contact with nature, looked upon the hosts 
 of heaven as divine beings and wherein our own 
 popular belief in angels has its roots. 
 
 5. As all the stars, considered materially, be- 
 long to the material universe, so all the spirits of 
 stars belong to the spirit of the universe, i. e., the 
 divine spirit. At the same time their own indi- 
 viduality and independence is as little impaired 
 by this circumstance as our own spirits are by their 
 connection with the earth-spirit: it is their com- 
 mon link, their highest conscious union. 
 
 6. The divine spirit is one, omniscient and 
 truly all-conscious, i. e., holding all the conscious- 
 ness of the universe and thus comprising each indi- 
 vidual consciousness of his creatures in a higher 
 and the highest connection. 
 
 7. As the earth, far from separating our bodies 
 from the universe, connects and incorporates us 
 with the universe, so the spirit of the earth, far 
 from separating our spirits from the divine spirit, 
 forms a higher individual connection of every 
 earthly spirit with the spirit of the universe.
 
 18 PREFACE. 
 
 This circumstance does not abolish the blessed 
 fact that we have in Christ the highest mediator 
 between God and man. 
 
 Syllabus of the Theory of the Hereafter 
 (Zend-Avesta, Chap XXXI.) 
 
 1. When a man dies, his spirit will not be 
 absorbed in the greater and higher spirit of 
 which it was born to an individual existence; on 
 the contrary, his relation to that spirit will become 
 clear and conscious, and his whole spiritual prop- 
 erty will appear in a higher light. By that higher 
 spirit the earth-spirit as well as the divine spirit 
 may be understood, as it is the spirit of the earth 
 that connects us with God. 
 
 2. Our present life and our future life may 
 aptly be compared to a life of perceptions and a 
 life of reminiscences. Or we may say that the 
 higher spirit to whom we belong will transfer 
 us in death from his lower life, of perceptions, 
 to his higher life, of reminiscences. As now we 
 share his perception life, without losing our in- 
 dividuality and relative independence, we shall 
 share, in a like manner, his reminiscence-life. 
 
 3. The relation between the spirits of that 
 higher stage and those of our lower stage, which 
 are connected into one spiritual realm, finds its 
 analogy in the connection of our own spheres of
 
 PREFACE. 19 
 
 reminiscences and perceptions. As our percep- 
 tions derive a higher significance from our rem- 
 iniscences, and as our reminiscences are constantly 
 influenced by our perceptions, which come to asso- 
 ciate themselves with them, so do the spirits of 
 the higher stage give a higher significance to our 
 spiritual life and are in their turn influenced by 
 ours ; though at the same time they live their own 
 higher and freer life, in their relations to each 
 other and to the higher spirit. 
 
 4. As our reminiscences require a less sharply 
 defined place in our brain than our perceptions, 
 so are the spirits of the higher stage less closely 
 tied to earthly substance, though they, like our 
 reminiscences, cannot entirely do without it. Now 
 the material foundation of our reminiscences, 
 whatever it may be, grows from the material of 
 our perceptions (the images of outward objects, 
 for instance, produce effects in our brain, with 
 which, when perception has ceased, reminiscence 
 will be connected), so will the material existence 
 connected with the spiritual life in the hereafter 
 grow from our present existence. 
 
 5. Our future spheres of existence though all 
 incorporated in the same great body, the earth, 
 will not disturb, confuse or efface each other. 
 Even here our spheres of existence necessarily 
 cross and intersect each other, as the means of 
 our mutual intercourse, which in the hereafter
 
 20 PREFACE. 
 
 will only increase in intimacy, variety and con- 
 sciousness; and in our brain the material changes 
 connected with our reminiscences cross and inter- 
 sect each other, leaving them nevertheless undis- 
 turbed and uneffaced. 
 
 6. As in our present life the body which at any 
 period is the vehicle of our mind, has grown from 
 the body which was its vehicle in a former period, 
 so in our future life the material vehicle of our 
 spiritual existence must have grown, to preserve 
 our individuality, from the vehicle of our present 
 spiritual existence. This condition is indeed real- 
 ized in our individual sphere of actions, in the 
 totality of which everything is stored up that 
 during our present life has produced any effect 
 in our body. 
 
 7. The extinction of our present life seems to 
 be the condition for the transition of conscious- 
 ness from its present sphere to the continuation of 
 it. A similar antagonism is observable in the 
 various spheres of our consciousness, as long as 
 it is connected with, and therefore confined by, 
 our narrower body. 
 
 8. The moral side of our view is this, that it 
 explains how every man produces the conditions 
 of a blessed or unblessed existence hereafter, in 
 the consequences of his inward and outward acts 
 during his present existence. The man who in 
 this life tried to understand the divine order of
 
 PREFACE. 21 
 
 things and to act in accordance with it, doing 
 what is good, within himself and in the world, 
 will have the final salutary effects of it as a re- 
 ward; the man whose thoughts and actions have 
 been bad, who wrought evil in this world, will 
 have to bear the consequences of it as a punish- 
 ment which consequences will increase on him 
 till he turn from his evil way. 
 
 9. Our views are not in contradiction with the 
 teachings of Christianity, from which after all 
 they deviate only in some less essential points. 
 Pointing out the real meaning of certain teach- 
 ings, which are sometimes taken in a more or less 
 figurative or symbolical sense, they may serve to 
 fortify Christian conviction and promote Chris- 
 tian life. 
 
 The Authors Creed. 
 (Zend-Avesta, Chap. XXXII.) 
 
 I. I believe in one God, eternal, infinite, om- 
 nipresent, all-mighty, all-knowing, all-loving, all- 
 just, all-merciful, through whom comes and goes 
 and has its being whatever there comes and goes 
 and is, who lives and moves and has his being in 
 everything as everything in him; who knows 
 everything that is known and can be known ; who 
 loves all his creatures in one as he loves himself; 
 who does will what is good and does not will 
 what is evil; who in the course of time directs
 
 22 PREFACE. 
 
 everything to its own good end; who is merciful 
 even to the wicked, so as to make his very punish- 
 ment the means of his improvement and final 
 salvation. 
 
 2. I believe that God has bestowed certain 
 parts or sides of his spiritual essence on individ- 
 ual creatures, this earth being one of them, filled 
 with its own spirit, as a portion of the divine 
 essence, which again, in an individual manner, 
 fills all the individual creatures of the earth, so 
 that all of us, human beings, animals and plants, 
 are children of God from and in and through 
 this spirit, though man alone enjoys the privilege, 
 which involves a duty, of becoming conscious of 
 his eternal father's will and of his own fellow- 
 ship in a higher spiritual community. 
 
 3. I believe that Christ, son of God from and 
 in and through the spirit that fills the earth as a 
 portion of the divine essence, is not only one of 
 us, but above us, as we are destined through his 
 mediatorship to become children of God and 
 attain a higher spiritual union than through our 
 mere natural birth. 
 
 4. I believe that there is nothing either un- 
 natural or supernatural in God's universal order 
 and dispensation, though there may result uncom- 
 mon and unexampled effects from uncommon and 
 unexampled causes, so that in the whole of 
 Christ's life and work there was nothing un-
 
 PREFACE. 23 
 
 natural or supernatural, only that he was the 
 cause, such as never had been nor ever will be 
 again, of effects that never had been but will 
 remain and go on growing forever. 
 
 5. I believe, that the one right way to the 
 salvation of mankind is by true love of God and 
 of one's neighbor, truly practised as it has been 
 commanded by Christ, and that cherishing this 
 love and practising it is the one thing whereby in 
 a higher sense we shall be made of one spirit. 
 
 6. I believe that the teaching and community 
 of Christ will not decrease, but increase, so that 
 one day every human being shall belong to it; 
 even what is not given in this life, shall be given 
 hereafter. 
 
 7. I believe that the community or church of 
 Christ is the body that is forever filled with his 
 spirit, and that the teaching of Christ, duly 
 preached, read, interpreted, received and acted 
 upon, with baptism and eucharist duly admin- 
 istered and received, are the principal means of 
 keeping Christ's spirit alive in his community or 
 church and of incorporating, strengthening and 
 preserving its members. 
 
 .8. I believe in a resurrection and an eternal 
 life of man, as a consequence and continuation 
 of his present life, whereof we have an example 
 in Christ, our present body and life being only a 
 small seedcorn of a freer and more refined body
 
 24 PREFACE. 
 
 and life, which shall be ours, when our spirit is 
 to live in a house not made by hands, which will 
 last forever, in heaven, where everything shall 
 be made known that now is hidden from us, and 
 where we shall see clearly, what now we see in 
 part, as in a glass, darkly, and where those that 
 are here spiritually united in and through Christ, 
 shall see him and each other face to face. I be- 
 lieve that this fleeting present life is a prepara- 
 tory stage to eternal life, and that everyone in his 
 good or evil intentions, his good or evil deeds, 
 produces the conditions of his future life, that his 
 works shall follow him and that he will reap 
 what he has sown. 
 
 9. I believe that the purport of the divine com- 
 mandments is not to spoil man's pleasure and 
 happiness, but to regulate and direct his will and 
 his doings to the purpose of promoting the great- 
 est possible happiness of them all. I believe that 
 to will and do according to this purpose is the 
 duty of man, and that thereby he will be in 
 accordance with God's commandments, even in 
 cases when there is no express commandment. 
 
 10. I believe that the consequences of evil 
 actions are such that in the course of time they 
 will bring about their own punishment, and 
 those of good actions, finally to bring about their 
 own reward. I believe that the consequences of 
 this life will extend to the hereafter, where such
 
 PREFACE. 25 
 
 justice will be fully administered as was only 
 begun or postponed here. I believe that the pun- 
 ishment of the wicked and the reward of the good, 
 when longer postponed, will finally come on the 
 more decidedly, and will continue to increase 
 till the bad man shall have been compelled to 
 mend his way, and till the good man shall have 
 given himself up completely to the divine mercy. 
 I believe that the free will of man may alter the 
 way towards that end, but not the end itself. I 
 believe that this is not the working of a lifeless 
 order of things, but that this order is due to the 
 indwelling of the divine spirit. 
 
 Fechner's next work, Professor Schlei- 
 den und der Mond (1856) was more than 
 an apology of his Nanna; it was a new at- 
 tempt, repeated in the books On the Soul- 
 Question (1861) and The Three Motives 
 and Arguments of Belief (Die drei Motive 
 und Grunde des Glaubens, 1863), to rouse 
 the world from its materialistic slumber 
 a task which he was well aware would re- 
 quire "a good deal of breath.'* When Dar- 
 win's views began to attract universal at- 
 tention, Fechner, with a wonderful sagacity 
 and a comprehensiveness of mind certainly 
 not frequent in a man of his age, assimi-
 
 26 PREFACE. 
 
 lated them into his own system, giving 
 them a new foundation, and at the same 
 time deriving from them a new support to 
 his own theories. This was done in his 
 treatise Some Ideas on the Creation and 
 Evolution of Organisms (Einige Ideen zur 
 Schopfungs, und Entwickelungsgeschichte 
 der Organismen 1873). In The Day- 
 light-View versus the Night-View (Die 
 Tagesansicht gegeniiber der Nachtansicht 
 1879) he gave a new exposition and 
 apology of his metaphysical system, the 
 subject being essentially the, same as in 
 Zend-Avesta) re-arranged and condensed. 
 It appears from this and from some minor 
 publications of his latter years, that to the 
 end of his life Fechner's efforts lay invari- 
 ably in the same direction, attempting to 
 bring about a reconciliation, so much need- 
 ed in our days, of science and religion, by 
 looking not at one side of the universe 
 only, but diligently examining it in its two 
 aspects, the material and the spiritual. The 
 scientist still seems little inclined to ap- 
 proach the latter ; his habits of thought will 
 not permit him to enter upon such discus-
 
 PREFACE. 27 
 
 sions. On the other hand, it seems only 
 natural, as Wundt says, that "the adher- 
 ents of modern mysticism should have 
 claimed Fechner as one of their own." 
 Baron Reichenbach, the discoverer of Od, 
 engaged his interest, "almost by violence," 
 till Fechner yielded to attend some of his 
 experiments. In 1877, when Henry Slade 
 was in Germany, Fechner received many 
 an invitation to join spiritistic seances. 
 Professor Zollner was his friend, and he 
 could not refuse to be present, with W. 
 Weber, the physicist, and Scheibner, the 
 mathematician, during the experiments 
 with Slade, which Zollner afterwards de- 
 scribed in such an enthusiastic tone of con- 
 viction that most of his previous admirers 
 began to doubt of his sanity of mind. Fech- 
 ner speaks of them with great reserve. He 
 does not undertake to deny from the out- 
 set the possibility of the so-called spiritistic 
 phenomena, but he yields with reluctance 
 to the empirical reasons for acknowledging 
 their reality. His daylight-view can exist 
 with or without spiritism, but he would 
 prefer to do without it. "For though the
 
 28 PREFACE. 
 
 two views coincide in some material points, 
 so that our view may find and to some de- 
 gree does find a support in spiritism, the 
 character of its abnormal phenomena is in- 
 convenient and prejudicial to the quiet 
 progress of reasoning." At the same time 
 he confesses u that, to be insensible to the 
 amount and weight of evidence in favor of 
 spiritistic phenomena, would be equivalent 
 to contempt of experimental science. If 
 spiritism be preposterous, the means com- 
 monly adopted to refute it are still more 
 preposterous. On other occasions infer- 
 ences are drawn from successful experi- 
 ments, neglecting those that were unsuc- 
 cessful; in the case of spiritism, however, 
 its adversaries draw their inferences en- 
 tirely from unsuccessful experiments, re- 
 jecting those that were successful. On 
 other occasions the investigator of a new 
 field of experience makes it his object to 
 find out the conditions for successful ex- 
 periment; in the present case the condi- 
 tions are all made a priori. If an experi- 
 ment made in the dark or with insufficient 
 light be successful, it counts for nothing,
 
 PREFACE. 29 
 
 because the result was not obtained by 
 daylight; but if it is successful under more 
 favorable conditions, by daylight, it counts 
 again, for nothing, owing to the nature 
 of the result." Fechner makes this re- 
 mark, as he declares, "not from sympathy 
 with spiritism, but from a sense of justice 
 due to the subject and the persons; for 
 even though one should like to get rid of 
 spiritism at any expense, it ought not to be 
 done at the expense of truth." 
 
 The considerate way in which Fechner, 
 with a truly philosophical attitude, express- 
 es his opinion in this case, and which in 
 fact never seems to leave him in his re- 
 searches, is certainly apt to secure to his 
 views a more than transitory appreciation. 
 
 H.W. 
 
 WEIMAR, 1905. 
 On Fechner's Birthday.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MAN lives on earth not once, but three 
 times: the first stage of his life is 
 continual sleep; the second, sleep- 
 ing and waking by turns ; the third, waking 
 forever. 
 
 In the first stage man lives in the dark, 
 alone; in the second, he lives associated 
 with, yet separated from, his fellow-men, 
 in a light reflected from the surface of 
 things; in the third, his life, interwoven 
 with the life of other spirits, is a higher 
 life in the Highest of spirits, with the 
 power of looking to the bottom of finite 
 things. 
 
 In the first stage his body develops itself 
 from its germ, working out organs for the 
 second; in the second stage his mind de- 
 velops itself from its germ, working out 
 organs for the third ; in the third the divine 
 germ develops itself, which lies hidden in
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 31 
 
 every human mind, to direct him, through 
 instinct, through feeling and believing, to 
 the world beyond, which seems so dark at 
 present, but shall be light as day hereafter. 
 
 The act of leaving the first stage for the 
 second we call Birth; that of leaving the 
 second for the third, Death. Our way 
 from the second to the third is not darker 
 than our way from the first to the second : 
 one way leads us forth to see the world out- 
 wardly ; the other, to see it inwardly. 
 
 The infant, in the first stage, is blind and 
 deaf to all the light and all the music of the 
 second stage, and having to leave its moth- 
 er's womb is hard and painful, and at a cer- 
 tain moment of its birth the dissolution of 
 its former life must be like death to it, be- 
 fore it wakens to its new existence. In the 
 same way we, in our present life, with all 
 our consciousness bound up within this nar- 
 row body, know nothing of the light, the 
 music, the freedom, and the glory of the 
 life to come, and often feel inclined to look 
 upon the dark and narrow passage which 
 leads towards it, as a little lane with "no
 
 32 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 thoroughfare" to it. Whereas death is 
 merely a second birth into a happier life, 
 when the spirit, breaking through its nar- 
 row hull, leaves it to decay and vanish, like 
 the infant's hull in its first birth. And 
 then all those things which we, with our 
 present senses, can only know from the 
 outside, or, as it were, from a distance, will 
 be penetrated into, and thoroughly known, 
 by us. Then, instead of passing by hills 
 and meadows, instead of seeing around us 
 all the beauties of spring, and grieving that 
 we cannot really take them in, as they are 
 merely external : our spirits shall enter into 
 those hills and meadows, to feel and enjoy 
 with them their strength and their pleasure 
 in growing; instead of exerting ourselves 
 to produce, by means of words or gestures, 
 certain ideas in the minds of our fellow- 
 men, we shall be enabled to elevate and 
 influence their thoughts, by an immediate 
 intercourse of spirits, which are no longer 
 separated, but rather brought together, by 
 their bodies; instead of being visible in our 
 bodily shape to the eyes of the friends we
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 33 
 
 left behind, we shall dwell in their inmost 
 souls, a part of them, thinking and acting 
 in them and through them.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE infant, when in its mother's 
 womb, has merely a body-spirit 
 the Formative Principle. Its ac- 
 tions are limited to growing, to producing 
 and developing its several limbs and or- 
 gans. It does not feel them as its own 
 property, it does not use them, nor is it 
 able to use them. A beautiful eye, a beau- 
 tiful mouth are merely beautiful objects to 
 the infant; it has produced them without 
 being aware that one day they shall be 
 useful parts of its own self. They are 
 made for a world to come whereof it 
 knows nothing, fashioned through some 
 mysterious impulse, the origin of which 
 must be traced back to the organization of 
 its mother. 1 As soon, however, as the 
 infant, matured for the second stage of 
 
 *For the physiologist I would express it more dis- 
 tinctly, thus. The formative principle of the infant 
 lies, before its birth, not in those parts which are to
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 35 
 
 life, leaves its primary organs behind, it 
 grows self-conscious, feels itself an inde- 
 pendent unity of all its self-created organs : 
 the eye, the ear, the mouth henceforth are 
 its own; and having produced them 
 through some innate impulse, unconscious- 
 ly, it now learns to use them, rejoicing in 
 its strength; a world of light, of colors, 
 sounds, odors, tastes, reveals itself through 
 the organs produced for those purposes. 
 
 Now, the relation of the first stage of 
 life to the second will recur, in a climax, in 
 the relation of the second stage to the 
 third. In a way similar to the one just 
 alluded to, all our volitions and actions in 
 this world are intended to produce an 
 organism, which in the world to come we 
 shall perceive and use as our own new 
 Self. All the mental influences, all the 
 results due to the actions of a person in his 
 
 continue living after its birth, but rather in those which 
 in birth, must be left behind and decay, as the body of 
 man decays in death (placenta cum funiculo umbilical!, 
 velamentis ovi, eorumque liquoribus) ; thus the human 
 being, born into the world, grows out of the infant's 
 activity, as a continuation of it.
 
 36 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 lifetime, which spread all over mankind 
 and all over the earth, are, even at present, 
 bound up together by a mysterious, invis- 
 ible bond, thus forming a person's spiritual 
 organs, fashioned during his life and com- 
 bined into a spiritual body, an organism of 
 continually active powers and effects, of 
 which, though indissolubly connected with 
 his present existence, he has at present no 
 consciousness. 
 
 In the moment of death, however, when 
 man has to part with those organs in which 
 his powers of acting lay, he will, all at 
 once, become conscious of all the ideas and 
 effects which, produced by -his manifold 
 actions in life, will continue living and 
 working in this world, and will form, as 
 an organic offspring of an individual stem, 
 an organic individuality which only then 
 becomes alive, self-conscious, self-active, 
 ready to act through the human and nat- 
 ural world, of its own will and power. 
 
 Whatever a person contributes, in his 
 life, towards creating, transforming, or 
 preserving the ideas pervading the human
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 37 
 
 and natural world, is his own imperishable 
 portion, able to act for itself in the third 
 stage of life, though the body to which, 
 during the second stage, it was inherent, 
 be long since decayed. The thoughts and 
 actions of so many millions that are gone, 
 are not gone with them, neither shall they 
 be obliterated by the thoughts and actions 
 of the many millions that are to come after 
 them; in them and with them they shall 
 grow, and act, and impel them towards one 
 great aim unseen by themselves. 
 
 We are inclined to look upon this ideal 
 continuation of our lives as a mere ab- 
 straction, and to consider the continued 
 influence which the spirits of the dead ex- 
 ercise on the minds of the living as an idle 
 fantasy. So it seems to us, because we 
 lack the appropriate senses wherewith to 
 perceive the spirits of the third stage, in 
 their real existence, pervading the depths 
 of the Universe : we only perceive the ties 
 which unite their existence with our own, 
 viz. : those very ideas which they left be- 
 hind for us to share with them. The circle
 
 38 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 of waves which a falling stone produces on 
 a surface of water calls forth other circles 
 round every rock rising above the surface 
 within its reach; for all that it remains one 
 continual circle, producing and encircling 
 all the rest, whereas the rocks perceive it, 
 so to speak, only in part, as a fragment. 
 We are such rocks ourselves, unconscious 
 of the encircling waves, though, unlike 
 those fixed objects, we produce, every one 
 of us, a continual circle of actions all 
 around us, encircling and crossing those 
 produced by our fellow-men. 
 
 In fact, every person, in his lifetime, 
 takes hold of, and grows into the minds of 
 others, by his words and works, spoken, 
 written, or acted. 
 
 While Goethe was still alive, thousands 
 of contemporaries bore within them some 
 sparks from the light of his genius, which 
 afterwards kindled up into new light. 
 While Napoleon was still alive, his power- 
 ful genius exercised its influence on the 
 whole generation almost; and when the 
 one and the other died, the germs which
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 39 
 
 had fallen into other minds, did not die 
 with them, they grew, and developed them- 
 selves, constituting in their total an in- 
 dividual being, as their origin had been 
 from an individual. And these new in- 
 dividual beings we must assume to be 
 provided, though in a manner incompre- 
 hensible to us, with self-consciousness, as 
 well in their present state as they were 
 before. Goethe, Schiller, Napoleon, Luth- 
 er, are still alive among us, self-conscious 
 individuals thinking and acting with us, in 
 a higher state of development now, no 
 longer bound up within a narrow body, 
 but pervading the world which they in 
 their lifetime instructed, edified, delighted, 
 ruled, and producing effects even far sur- 
 passing those of which we are generally 
 aware. 
 
 The most striking instance of a great 
 spirit living and working on through the 
 ages we see in Christ. You must not think 
 it an empty saying, that He liveth in those 
 who believe in Him. Every true Christian 
 carries Him within him, not in a symbolical
 
 40 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 meaning, but in life and reality; every one 
 that thinks and acts according to His mind 
 is a partaker in Him; for it is the spirit of 
 Christ that causes in him such thinking and 
 acting. He is diffused through all the 
 members of His body, the Church, and 
 they are all united through His spirit, like 
 apples clinging to a tree, or branches at- 
 tached to a vine : "For as the body is one, 
 and hath many members, and all the mem- 
 bers of that one body, being many, are one 
 body: so also is Christ." ( 1 Cor. xii. 12.) 
 And like those great and this Greatest of 
 spirits, every true worker shall waken in 
 the world to come with an individuality, an 
 ^organism of his own making, comprising 
 thousands of effects and productions, filling 
 a narrower or wider sphere, endowed with 
 more or less power of growth and develop- 
 ment, even as their spirits in |this life 
 moved more or less actively in their 
 spheres of labor. The man that has been 
 groveling on the ground, employing his 
 mental faculties only in moving, feeding, 
 pampering his body, will become a very
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 41 
 
 insignificant being hereafter. The richest 
 will then be the poorest, if he has only 
 used his money that he may not have to 
 use his powers, and the poorest may turn 
 out the richest, if he has used his powers 
 to do his duty in this world. For what- 
 ever a man uses and puts out at present 
 will be his own hereafter; but the pound 
 that was kept and laid up in a napkin will 
 be taken away entirely. 
 
 The mysteriousness of our present in- 
 ward life, the thirst after truth, which 
 sometimes is of but little avail here below, 
 the desire of every honest mind to work 
 for the good of posterity, the sense of 
 regret and trouble of mind caused by the 
 consciousness of a wicked deed, even 
 though unaccompanied by present disad- 
 vantages, all such phenomena arise from 
 a dim presentiment of what our fate will 
 be hereafter, when we shall reap the fruit 
 of our slightest and most secret acts. 
 
 Behold in this the wonderful justice of 
 the Universe, leaving it to every being to 
 prepare for himself the conditions of his
 
 42 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 future existence. There are no outward 
 rewards and punishments for our actions, 
 there is no heaven or hell in the popular 
 meaning of the word, with Christians, 
 Jews and Gentiles for the spirits of the 
 dead to ascend or descend to, by a leap as 
 it were; but there is no dead stop either, 
 no absorption of the soul into the universe : 
 the spirit of man has to go through his 
 great climacteric disease, death; after 
 which his development will continue, in and 
 for a higher life on this earth of ours. The 
 foundations of that higher development, 
 in accordance with the laws of creation, 
 must be sought for on a lower stage ; and 
 according as a man, in this life, has been 
 good or bad, has acted nobly or meanly, 
 worked hard or neglected his work, he will 
 find, in after-life, an organism of his own, 
 healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or hateful, 
 strong or weak; his self-chosen way of act- 
 ing in this world will determine his rela- 
 tion to other spirits, his faculties and tal- 
 ents, his whole destiny during his develop- 
 ment in that other world.
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 43 
 
 "Let us then be up and doing I" For he 
 who walks at a slow pace here will be lame 
 there ; he who opens not his eyes here will 
 be weak-sighted there ; who practises deceit 
 and wickedness will feel at variance with 
 all the good and faithful spirits, and that 
 feeling will be so painful in him as to impel 
 him even in the other world, to amend the 
 evil he did in this world; nor will he find 
 rest and peace until his least and last 
 offence be repented and atoned for. When 
 other spirits rest in peace with God, par- 
 taking of His thoughts, the wicked ones 
 will go about restless, through the sorrows 
 and changes of earthly life, and their spir- 
 itual disorder will infect other men with 
 error and superstition, with folly and vice ; 
 and while they, in the third world, lag 
 behind on the way towards perfection, they 
 will keep back those in whom they live, on 
 their way from the second world to the 
 third. 
 
 Hence, meanness, wickedness, untruth, 
 may hold their sway for a time against 
 generosity, honesty, godliness; but in the
 
 44 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 end they will be overcome by the increas- 
 ing power of the good, they will be brought 
 to nought through their own deeds, by the 
 increasing evil consequent thereon, and 
 nothing shall remain in any man's spirit 
 that is false and vile and impure ; only what 
 is true, good, and beautiful, is to be our 
 eternal, imperishable portion, of which if 
 there be but a mustard-seed in any of us 
 (and there can be no human being utterly 
 destitute of it), all dross and chaff which 
 are yet around it will be consumed in the 
 purging fire of our third life, a fire of tor- 
 ment for the wicked only and in the end, 
 be it ever so late, it will grow up into a 
 noble tree. 
 
 And you, too, rejoice, whose spirit is 
 being tried and refined here below by grief 
 and suffering. You are only learning to 
 be patient and persevering in removing 
 every obstacle which would hinder your 
 progress, and on being born into a higher 
 life will find yourself the better enabled to 
 make up for all it has been your lot on 
 earth to leave undone.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MAN uses many means to obtain one 
 end, God makes one means serve 
 many ends. 
 
 The plant thinks it is here merely for its 
 own sake, intended to grow, to toss in the 
 wind, to drink in light and air, to prepare 
 colors and odors as an ornament for itself, 
 to play with bees and butterflies. And 
 it is here for itself, no doubt, but for the 
 earth as well, a tiny organ of the earth 
 for light, air, and water, to meet there and 
 work together for the benefit of the whole 
 terrestrial system ; it is intended to breathe 
 for the earth, to make a verdant garment 
 for the earth, to prepare food, raiment, 
 and fuel, for man and beast. 
 
 Man thinks he is here merely for his 
 own sake, intended to enjoy himself, to 
 toil and labor for his growth in body and 
 mind. And he is here for himself, no 
 doubt, but his body is a dwelling-place for
 
 46 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 higher spirits as well, to enter into, to 
 commune and work together there, and 
 thus to direct his mind to think and feel in 
 various ways, and help him to be fit for 
 the life to come. 
 
 Man's mind is therefore, simultaneous- 
 ly, his own property, and the property of 
 those higher spirits; and whatever comes 
 to pass in it, equally belongs to both sides, 
 only in a different sense and manner. 
 
 Thus, in our diagram, the many-colored 
 star in the middle stands for itself, an inde- 
 pendent individual figure, whose several
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 47 
 
 rays shoot from, and are kept together by 
 a common centre ; and again that same star 
 appears to be formed by the six single- 
 colored circles, each of which is again an 
 independent individual figure, so that every 
 ray belongs to the central star as well as to 
 the intersecting circles. Behold in this 
 not a likeness, but a symbol, of the human 
 soul. 
 
 We often wonder whence such a thought 
 came into our minds. Some longing, or 
 some melancholy, or happy mood will come 
 over us we know not how or why. An in- 
 ward voice persuades us to act, or exhorts 
 us to forbear acting, though all the time we 
 are not conscious of any motive of our own 
 tending one way or other. This is the 
 influence of spirits entering into us, think- 
 ing and acting in us from centres different 
 from our own. Such influence is still more 
 striking in certain abnormal conditions of 
 the mind in clairvoyance or mental dis- 
 order when the relation of mutual de- 
 pendence has been decided in their favor, 
 making us entirely passive under their in-
 
 48 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 fluence, without any reaction on our own 
 part. As long, however, as our mind is 
 awake and healthy it cannot become a mere 
 plaything, without a will of its own, of the 
 spirits that have grown into it and become 
 a living part of it. For such a healthy 
 human mind is an invisible life-centre of 
 spiritual attraction, a connecting link for 
 divers spirits, who are thus enabled to hold 
 communion with each other, and to engen- 
 der thoughts within us. They do not, 
 however, create the mind, which is the in- 
 born property of each individual person, 
 with free-will, self-determination, self- 
 consciousness, reasoning power, and all 
 other mental faculties comprised therein. 
 At the time of our birth, it is true, all these 
 faculties are folded up as in a germ, look- 
 ing forward to being developed into an or- 
 ganism of individual life and reality. 
 Now, upon our entering this life those 
 spirits draw near on all sides, trying to 
 make use of our faculties for themselves, 
 in order to increase their own sphere of 
 activity, in a certain direction, and if they
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 49 
 
 succeed in doing so, a new impulse in that 
 same direction is given to our own mind 
 in its development. 
 
 Those ingrown spirits, in their turn, are 
 subject, though in a different way, to the 
 influence of the human will. They in- 
 fluence and direct a man's mind, they also 
 receive new impressions from the store of 
 his spiritual life. In a mind harmoniously 
 developed, none of these influences has the 
 mastery over the others. For every con- 
 comitant spirit shares only a certain part 
 of his own self with one individual person; 
 hence the will of that person can exercise 
 only a limited influence on him whose 
 sphere lies for the greater part without 
 him; and as every human mind forms a 
 rally-point for many spirits, it can only be 
 liable to a limited influence from each of 
 them. If a man, however, of his own 
 choice would submit entirely to be guided 
 by them, he would lose his control over 
 their influences. 
 
 There are spirits opposed to each other, 
 so that their presence in the same human
 
 50 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 mind is incompatible; therefore the good 
 and the evil spirits, the true and the false, 
 dispute with each other the possession of 
 our souls. The inward strife which so fre- 
 quently we experience is just such a strug- 
 gle of spirits trying to take possession of 
 our will, our reason, in short, our whole 
 inward life. As a person feels the agree- 
 ment of the spirits within him, in peace, 
 quiet, and harmony of his own self, he also 
 feels their strife, in inward trouble, con- 
 fusion, doubt and despondency. But man 
 need not become an inert and restless prey 
 for the stronger spirits in that combat; he 
 stands with his own active powers, in the 
 midst of the contending elements each of 
 which tries to draw him to itself; he may, 
 in such strife, side with and help that party 
 he chooses, and may thus decide the victory 
 even in favor of the weaker side, adding 
 his own strength to that of the spirit 
 against the stronger ones. Thus his in- 
 dividuality, his own self, will remain unen- 
 dangered as long as he preserves his inborn 
 strength and freedom, nor tires of using
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 51 
 
 them. If, nevertheless, he is led on by 
 evil spirits, it is from the difficulty he may 
 find in using his own inward strength; and 
 so, to become bad, it is enough to be care- 
 less and lazy. 
 
 The better a man's character is, the 
 more easy it will be for him to become still 
 better; and the worse he is, the more easily 
 he will be utterly ruined. For a good man 
 has received many good spirits within him- 
 self, who, uniting their powers with his, 
 will save him some effort in getting rid of 
 the evil spirits that have remained in him 
 or approach him. Therefore, doing good 
 does not weary a good man; he has his 
 good spirits to help him, whereas a wicked 
 man, to follow any good intentions he may 
 have formed, must first overcome, by his 
 own efforts, the evil spirits that resist his 
 intentions. 
 
 Besides, kindred spirits will find, and as- 
 sociate with, each other, fleeing from con- 
 trary ones, if not forced to stay. The good 
 spirits within us call other good spirits 
 around us, and the evil spirits within us
 
 52 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 attract the evil ones. Pure spirits rejoice 
 to come and live in a pure mind, but out- 
 ward evil takes hold of the evil within us. 
 If good spirits in increasing numbers take 
 their abode in our soul, the last devil that 
 had lingered there will soon flee away, they 
 are no fit company for him; and thus the 
 soul of the good man becomes a pure heav- 
 enly dwelling for blessed spirits, abiding 
 there in sweet company. But even good 
 spirits when they see the impossibility of 
 reclaiming a soul from the predominant 
 evil ones, will desert it, and so it becomes 
 a hell, a place full of the torment of the 
 damned. For the pangs of conscience, 
 and the trouble and restlessness in the 
 minds of the wicked are torments not only 
 felt by themselves, but by the evil spirits 
 within them as well, even with more in- 
 tensity.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE higher spirits, living as they are 
 not in an individual man, but each 
 living and acting in many, are spir- 
 itual bonds between those persons, uniting 
 them all in the same belief, the same truth, 
 the same moral or political tendency. All 
 the persons who have any spiritual fellow- 
 ship between them, belong to the body of 
 one spirit, and as co-ordinate members of 
 it, work out the ideas which they have 
 received from that spirit. Sometimes an 
 idea lives at one time in a whole nation, 
 a great number of people are moved to 
 one great common enterprise. There is a 
 mighty spirit coming over them all, pene- 
 trating them all. Such universal influences, 
 however, are not only brought about by 
 the spirits of the dead; also numberless 
 new-born ideas of the living influence those 
 living around them ; but all the ideas which 
 a living person sends forth into the world
 
 54 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 are also elements and members of his fu- 
 ture spiritual organism. 
 
 Now, wherever two kindred spirits meet 
 on earth, growing into one through their 
 common qualities, and influencing and en- 
 riching one another through their different 
 qualities, the communities, nations, or gen- 
 erations, to which they formerly belonged 
 individually, enter into spiritual com- 
 munion as well, increasing thereby the men- 
 tal stores and powers of each other. Thus 
 the development of spiritual life in the 
 third stage is closely connected with the de- 
 velopment and progress of mankind. The 
 gradual formation and growth of states, 
 the progress of science and art, of com- 
 merce and trade, the development of all 
 these spheres into larger and larger bodies 
 harmoniously organized, is the conse- 
 quence of numberless spirits living and 
 moving among men and growing together 
 into greater spiritual organisms. 
 
 How could it be possible for all those 
 important spheres of life to take shape on 
 great immutable principles, if they were
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 55 
 
 to rely on the confused selfish actions of 
 individuals too short-sighted to see from 
 the centre to the circumference, or from 
 the circumference to the centre? How 
 could it be possible, were not this activity 
 influenced by higher spirits, who see clear- 
 ly through the whole system, and, crowd- 
 ing round the common divine centre, and 
 uniting their divine elements, direct men, 
 between them, towards higher aims? 
 
 But as there is a harmony of spirits kind- 
 ly meeting and helping each other, so is 
 there also a conflict of spirits, in which all 
 earthly and finite concerns must in the end 
 destroy one another, leaving the things 
 eternal to survive in their purity. Symp- 
 toms of this conflict may also be observed 
 in the human world, in the antagonism of 
 systems, the hatred of parties, the wars 
 and revolutions between sovereigns and 
 nations. 
 
 The majority of men stand amid these 
 great spiritual movements, with blind 
 faith, blind obedience, blind hatred and 
 fury, neither hearing with their own ears
 
 56 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 nor seeing with their own eyes, but directed 
 by other spirits towards ends and aims of 
 which they know nothing, allowing them- 
 selves to be led on through misery, slavery, 
 and death, following the impulse of those 
 higher spirits like a herd of cattle. 
 
 On the other side, there are men who, 
 both acting and directing, influence the 
 movement with clear consciousness and in- 
 ward independence. But, after all, they 
 are only voluntary means to great pre- 
 destined ends, whose free actions may in- 
 deed determine the way and rate of the 
 progress, but not its end and object. Those 
 men who have accomplished great things 
 in the world, were enabled to do so by 
 their insight into the spiritual tendency of 
 the period in which they lived, and they 
 succeeded because they made their free 
 acting and thinking agree with that ten- 
 dency, while other men, perhaps just as 
 great and sincere, failed, because they op- 
 posed that tendency. That first class of 
 men were elected by the Spirit who knows 
 which ways are best for which ends, to be
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 57 
 
 new centres for his moving powers, not in 
 the manner of blind tools, but of living in- 
 struments serving his wisdom and justice, 
 of their own free will and with their own 
 powers of intellect. It is not the slave 
 under the taskmaster that does the better 
 work. And what they begin to work in 
 the service of God beneath, they will con- 
 tinue hereafter, when they are partakers 
 of His heavenly kingdom.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ON many occasions when the spirits of 
 the living and dead meet, they may 
 both be unconscious of the meeting; 
 or the consciousness may be on one side 
 only who is there that could follow or 
 fathom such intercourse ! So let it be 
 understood that, whenever we speak of 
 their meeting each other, we mean that 
 they meet consciously, and whenever we 
 speak of the presence of the dead, we mean 
 that they are present consciously. 
 
 There is one means of meeting con- 
 sciously for the living and the dead: it is 
 the memory of the living for the dead. 
 To direct our attention to the dead is to 
 attract their attention towards us, just as 
 an outward impression on a living person 
 will direct his attention to the place where 
 it acts upon him. 
 
 Our memory of the dead is indeed noth- 
 ing but a consequence of their own con- 
 scious life beneath; a consequence brought
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 59 
 
 to our consciousness; but their whole life 
 in the hereafter is made up of the conse- 
 quences of their present life. 
 
 Even when one living person thinks of 
 another, it may cause some influence on his 
 mind; but it is of no effect, as his conscious- 
 ness is held within the bonds of his earthly 
 frame. But consciousness set free by 
 death seeks its own place, yielding to the 
 influences exercised upon it the more easily 
 and decidedly, the more easily and decid- 
 edly those influences have been exercised 
 before. 
 
 A stroke in the physical world is always 
 felt double, by him that strikes and by him 
 that is struck : so a stroke of consciousness, 
 produced by thinking of a dead person, is 
 connected with a double sensation. It is a 
 mistake to think of the share only which 
 our present life has in that mental act, un- 
 mindful of the share of the life hereafter : 
 a mistake and neglect which cannot remain 
 without their consequences. 
 
 If a lover has lost his beloved one, a 
 husband his wife, a child its mother, it is in
 
 60 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 vain for them to look to distant heavens 
 for the piece torn off their own lives, strain- 
 ing their eyes and stretching out their 
 hands into vacancy for that which has 
 never been really taken away from them; 
 it is only the thread of bodily communica- 
 tion that is broken ; the intercourse through 
 their outer senses, whereby they both un- 
 derstood each other, has given way to an 
 immediate connection through their inner 
 senses, though they have not yet learned to 
 understand it. 
 
 I saw a mother once looking anxiously 
 about the house and garden for her own 
 living child which all the time she was 
 carrying in her arms. A greater mistake 
 than hers is the mistake of her who will 
 look for her dead child in some distant 
 space, whereas it would suffice to look into 
 her own self to find it. And if she does 
 not find it there entire, was it entire, was it 
 all her own, strictly speaking, while she 
 carried it in her arms? It is true, the ad- 
 vantages of outward intercourse, of out- 
 ward words, looks, and care-taking are lost
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 61 
 
 to both; the advantages of an inward inter- 
 course have only begun now, if she would 
 only recognize that there is such an inward 
 intercourse and see the advantages it has. 
 Nobody will speak to or shake hands with 
 a person whom he supposes to be absent; 
 but if you once know better, and have 
 learned to see in a clearer light, there will 
 be for you a new life of the living with 
 their dead, and the dead will gain by this 
 knowledge no less than the living. 
 
 If you think of a dead person earnestly 
 and intensely, not only the thought of him 
 or her, but the dead person himself will be 
 in your mind immediately. You may in- 
 wardly conjure him, he must come to you; 
 you may hold him, he must stay with you, 
 if you only fix your thoughts upon him. 
 Think of him in love or in hatred, he will 
 be sure to feel it ; think of him with strong 
 love, with stronger hatred, he will feel it 
 the more strongly. Up to this you have 
 had your memories of the dead, now you 
 know the use of them; henceforth you will 
 be able at will to make a dead person
 
 62 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 happy or miserable, through thinking of 
 him, to reconcile yourself to him or quarrel 
 with him, consciously for him as well as for 
 yourself. Do so, then, but always for a 
 good purpose, and take care that the mem- 
 ory which you leave behind one day may be 
 to your own advantage. 
 
 Blessed the man who left behind him a 
 store of love, of respect, and veneration, in 
 the memory of men. What he left behind 
 in his present life he will gain after death, 
 acquiring a comprehensive consciousness of 
 all that is thought of him by those who re- 
 main behind; he will thus carry home the 
 bushel of which he had but single grains 
 to count in his lifetime. Such are the 
 treasures which we are bidden to lay up for 
 heaven. 
 
 Woe to the man whom curses and exe- 
 crations, a memory of terror, follow! 
 What followed him in this life will over- 
 take him in death: this is part of the hell 
 that awaits him. Each cry of misery that 
 is sent after him will turn out a sharp ar- 
 row reaching him to pierce his very heart.
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 63 
 
 Full justice is done to every man : it con- 
 sists in the totality of the consequences of 
 both his good and evil actions. The good 
 man who was misjudged here must suffer 
 from that circumstance for sometime, here- 
 after, as from an outward evil; and his 
 false glory will follow the unjust man as 
 an outward good; therefore, it will be well 
 for you to keep your good name unsullied 
 and not to hide your light under a bushel. 
 But among the spirits hereafter there will 
 be no misjudging; what was weighed amiss 
 here will be set right above, and will be 
 overweighed by an addition to the other 
 side of the balance. Divine justice shall 
 finally overcome all injustice of the earth. 
 
 Whatever wakens the memory of the 
 dead is a means of calling them to our 
 side. At every festival arranged to com- 
 memorate them, they rise; round every 
 statue which we erect in their honor, they 
 float; to every song celebrating their noble 
 acts, they listen. Here is a vital germ for 
 a new phase of art! Art has grown so 
 old, so tired of repeating old spectacles
 
 64 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 before the old lookers-on again and again; 
 here is another tier of boxes opening, as 
 it were, above the pit filled with the old 
 spectators ; now we know of a company of 
 a higher class looking down from above, 
 and the noblest object of art will be, hence- 
 forth, to please those above, no longer 
 those below; but the people below ought 
 to be pleased with that which is approved 
 of above. 
 
 The scoffers go on scoffing and the 
 churches continue quarrelling scoffing 
 and quarrelling about a mystery which the 
 scoffers say is repugnant to reason, and 
 which the churches declare is above reason ; 
 for a greater secret has remained con- 
 cealed from both parties, the opening of 
 which removes at last, in a very simple 
 and easy manner, the difficulty which has 
 defied the reason of scoffers and disturbed 
 the harmony of the churches; it is simply 
 the greatest illustration of a universal law, 
 wherein they would see an exception to 
 and above all law. It is not in a mere 
 body of flour and water that Christ is re-
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 65 
 
 ceived by the faithful partaker of His holy 
 Supper. If you receive it in the thought 
 of Him, He is with His thoughts not only 
 near you, but within you ; the more earnest- 
 ly you think of Him the more closely He 
 will unite Himself with you. But if you 
 do not think of Him at all, you eat and 
 drink nothing but common bread and com- 
 mon wine.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE longing of every man to be, after 
 his death, once more united with 
 those he loved most dearly in this 
 life, shall be fulfilled in a more perfect 
 degree than you ever thought of or hoped 
 for. 
 
 Those who were united in their life by 
 a common spiritual element shall, in the 
 hereafter, not only meet, but grow to- 
 gether, through that very element which 
 shall become a mutual organ of their spir- 
 its, of which they both partake with equal 
 consciousness. For even now the dead and 
 the living, as well as the living among each 
 other, are grown into one by numberless 
 elements of that kind, elements which they 
 have in common ; but not till death has un- 
 done the bonds in which this frame of ours 
 holds every soul of the living, will the 
 union of their consciousness be enhanced 
 into a consciousness of their union. In the
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 67 
 
 moment of death every one will realize the 
 fact that what his mind received from 
 those who died before him, never ceased 
 to belong to their minds as well, and thus 
 he will enter the third world not like a 
 strange visitor, but like a long expected 
 member of the family, who is welcomed 
 home by all those with whom he was here 
 united in the community of faith, of knowl- 
 edge, or of love. 
 
 We shall also enter into close fellow- 
 ship with the great spirits of those who 
 lived, in their second stage of life, long 
 before us, but whose great example and 
 wisdom served to form our own minds. 
 Thus he who lived here entirely in Christ 
 will be entirely in Christ hereafter; nor is 
 his individuality to be extinguished within 
 a higher individuality; nay, he will be es- 
 tablished, and receive new strength, and 
 at the same time be able to strengthen 
 others. For such spirits as are grown 
 into one by their common elements must 
 profit by each other's strength, while, at 
 the same time, they influence each other
 
 68 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 through their different elements. Some 
 spirits will strengthen each other in many 
 parts of their character, while others have 
 only few points of coincidence and of mu- 
 tual interest; some of these alliances 
 brought about by the kindred elements in 
 different spirits may be dissolved again, 
 but those whose tendency is towards truth, 
 virtue, and beauty will continue. 
 
 All things which have no elements of 
 eternal harmony in them, though continu- 
 ing beyond this life, must one day vanish 
 away, thereby separating those spirits who 
 for some time were united in an unworthy 
 alliance working for no good. 
 
 Though the different elements of human 
 spirits contain, for the greater part, some 
 germ of the true, the beautiful, and the 
 good, that germ is, in this life, covered up 
 and encumbered with much that is trifling, 
 corrupted, false, and wrong. The spirits 
 united by such elements may, in after-life, 
 either remain united or not: for they may 
 either hold what is right and good, leaving 
 that which is wrong and wicked to the evil
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 69 
 
 spirits whose company they shun; or some 
 of them may keep the good, others the bad, 
 elements. 
 
 On the other hand, spirits united by their 
 mutual ownership of some element or idea 
 of the true, the beautiful, or the good, in its 
 eternal purity, will remain united by them 
 for ever, sharing for ever the same spirit- 
 ual property. 
 
 In the same measure, therefore, as the 
 higher spirits comprehend the eternal 
 ideas, they will grow together in larger 
 spiritual organisms; and as the roots of all 
 individual ideas are in general ideas, and 
 theirs again in more general and universal 
 ideas, so at last will all the spirits be 
 united in wonderful organization with 
 the greatest of spirits, with God. 
 
 Thus the spiritual world, in its perfec- 
 tion, is not a mere gathering together of 
 spirits, but it may be likened to a living 
 tree of spirits, with its roots in the earth 
 and its crown reaching throughout the 
 heavens. 
 
 Only the greatest and noblest spirits, as
 
 70 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Christ and His Saints, are able to reach, 
 immediately, with the best part of their be- 
 ing, the inward height and greatness of 
 God; the smaller and minor spirits take 
 root in them as twigs in branches, and 
 branches in trees, connected, through their 
 mediation, with the highest essence of the 
 most High. 
 
 Dead geniuses and saints are, therefore, 
 the true mediators between God and men, 
 partaking, on one side, of the ideas of God 
 and communicating them to men, and feel- 
 ing, on the other side, the joys and suffer- 
 ings of mankind and communicating them 
 to God. 
 
 In the very beginnings of religious life 
 the worship of the dead was closely con- 
 nected with the worship of deified nature; 
 the savage races have retained the greater, 
 the civilized races the higher part of those 
 views, and there is no people or community 
 that do not hold more or less of them as a 
 chief article of faith. Therefore, every 
 town ought to have a shrine for their own 
 great dead, which might be built close by,
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH, 71 
 
 or right within the temple of God, whereas 
 Christ alone ought to be always worshiped 
 in the same place with God himself.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then 
 face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I 
 know even as also I am known." 1 Cor. xiii. 12. 
 
 MAN leads both an outward and an 
 inward life in this world; the one 
 visible and perceptible for every 
 one in his looks, words, works, and deeds ; 
 the other perceptible only for himself in 
 his thoughts and emotions. The continua- 
 tion of the visible life into the world 
 around may be easily traced, the continu- 
 ation of the invisible life remains invisible, 
 but is by no means wanting. For as man's 
 inward life forms the centre of his present 
 existence, its continuation will form the 
 centre of his future existence. 
 
 Indeed, the effects which a person pro- 
 duces in a form visible and perceptible to 
 the living, are not the only emanation from 
 him. However minute and gentle a vibra- 
 tion connected with some conscious move-
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 73 
 
 ment within our mind may be and all our 
 mental acts are connected with, and ac- 
 companied by, such vibrations of our brain 
 it cannot vanish without producing con- 
 tinued processes of a similar nature, within 
 ourselves, and, finally, around ourselves, 
 though we are not able to trace them into 
 the outer world. As little as the lute can 
 keep its music to itself, so little can our 
 brain. The music of sounds or of thoughts 
 originates in the lute or in the brain, but 
 does not stay there: it spreads beyond 
 them. 
 
 What a wonderfully complicated play of 
 vibrations of a higher order, originating 
 in our brain, may be going on along with 
 the coarser and lower play that strikes our 
 eyes and ears, something like the most deli- 
 cate ripple on the big waves of a lake, or 
 the finely traced ornaments on the surface 
 of a carpet, which receives its whole value 
 and higher meaning from them. The man 
 of science knows and studies the play of 
 waves of a lower order only, little caring 
 for those of a higher order. He does not
 
 74 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 perceive them, but knowing the principle, 
 he ought not to neglect the inferences that 
 may be derived from it. 1 
 
 Therefore, the effects produced by hu- 
 man spirits are not limited to their con- 
 tinued influence upon us by means of their 
 perceptible outer life in the present stage: 
 along with this outer part there is in our 
 nature another imperceptible inner part, 
 even the essential part of the human being. 
 Suppose a man to have lived and died in 
 some desert island without any direct in- 
 fluence on other people's lives: he must 
 continue in his individuality, in expectance 
 of future development, having been unable 
 
 1 Whether we attribute the action of the nerves to 
 chemical or electrical processes, we either ascribe them 
 to the vibrations of ultimate particles, or at least 
 assume them to be evoked by or connected with them, 
 though the imponderable substance may herein be of 
 greater moment than the ponderable. Now vibrations 
 can only seem to die out, in so far as they spread in- 
 definitely in all directions; or, if dying out for a time, 
 transformed into energy or tension, they are able to 
 begin afresh, in some form or other, in accordance with 
 the law of the conservation of energy.
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 75 
 
 to develop himself in this life through 
 intercourse with his fellow-men. In the 
 same way a child, which has been alive 
 only for a moment, can never die again. 
 The shortest moment of conscious life 
 produces a circle of influence around 
 it, just as the briefest tone that seems gone 
 in a second, produces a similar circle, which 
 carries the tone into endless space, far 
 beyond the persons standing by to listen; 
 for no action, or effect, is utterly destroyed, 
 it goes on producing new effects of its 
 kind for ever. Thus the mind of a child 
 will develop itself from that one conscious 
 moment, as well as the mind of that iso- 
 lated man, but in a different way from what 
 it would have done when beginning from 
 a more developed state. 
 
 It is only in death that a man becomes 
 fully conscious of all the influence he exer- 
 cised on other men's minds; in the same 
 way will he acquire only in death full pos- 
 session and use of what he has fashioned 
 within himself. What mental treasures he 
 gathered in all his life, what fills his mem-
 
 76 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 ory, what pervades his feelings, what his 
 mind and fancy created, will remain his 
 property for ever. The connection and 
 interdependence of all these mental stores 
 remains dark to us in this life. Thoughts 
 will occasionally pass through this treas- 
 ure-house, lighting up with their rays the 
 little corner that lies on their way, and 
 leaving the rest in obscurity. Our mind 
 never realizes its inward fulness all at once. 
 Detached ideas only, happening to find a 
 new idea to associate with, will emerge 
 from the dark for a moment, to sink back 
 into the dark the next moment. Thus man 
 is a stranger to his own mind, in which 
 he gropes in the dark, trusting to his syl- 
 logisms to guide him, and often forgetting 
 the best of his treasures, which happen to 
 lie out of his way concealed by the dark- 
 ness which covers the regions of the human 
 spirit. In the moment of death, however, 
 when eternal night sinks down on his bodily 
 eyes, a new day will break upon his spirit; 
 the centre of the inner man will kindle into 
 a sun, which sheds its radiance over all his
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 77 
 
 spiritual stores, and at the same time pene- 
 trates into and looks through them as an 
 inward eye of unearthly keenness. All 
 that he had forgotten here, he will find 
 again there; he only forgot it because it 
 went to the hereafter before him, where he 
 finds it all gathered up for him, in a new 
 and universal light, which saves him the 
 trouble of collecting what he wants to as- 
 sociate, and dividing what he wants to 
 separate. At a glance he will be able to 
 survey all that is in him, his various ideas 
 in their relations of agreement and con- 
 tradiction, of connection and separation 
 not confined to one particular direction of 
 his thoughts, but looking into every direc- 
 tion at once. There are instances of per- 
 sons approaching such a state of inward 
 illumination, even in this life, in cases of 
 approaching death, as by drowning, or in 
 somnambulism, or narcosis, and such like. 
 As high as the flight and sight of a bird 
 mount above the lowly path of the blind 
 crawling caterpillar, that knows of nothing 
 but what it touches in its slow movements,
 
 78 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 so far will that higher state of knowledge 
 surpass our present state. So that in death 
 not only our body, but our senses, our in- 
 tellect, the whole constitution of our mind, 
 must be cast off, as forms too narrow for 
 our life hereafter, as useless members for 
 a new order of things, where everything 
 that we could approach and investigate 
 but slowly and imperfectly with such earth- 
 ly organs, will be immediately within our- 
 selves, for us to look through, to know, 
 and to enjoy. Every man's own self, how- 
 ever, in the middle of that dissolution of 
 temporary forms, will remain unimpaired 
 in its whole extent and development, and 
 there will be for him a new and higher life 
 instead of the inferior kind of activity 
 which has been extinguished. The turmoil 
 of thoughts is hushed; they need no longer 
 come and go, and move about, to become 
 conscious of their relation to each other. 
 The present intercourse of thoughts will 
 give way to a higher intercourse, between 
 spirits and spirits. And as the intercourse 
 of human thoughts takes place in human
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 79 
 
 spirit, so the intercourse and communion 
 of spirits will take place in that higher 
 spirit whose all-connecting centre we call 
 God. For them no language is required 
 to understand, no eye to see and recognize 
 each other. Just as one thought of ours 
 understands and influences another with- 
 out the mediation of mouth, ear, or hand; 
 as thoughts meet and part without an out- 
 ward link or separation; so secret, close, 
 and immediate will the communion of 
 spirits be. There is nothing those spirits 
 will be able to conceal from each other; 
 every sinful thought that lurked here in 
 some dark corner of the mind, everything 
 a man would like to cover up from his 
 fellow-men with a thousand hands, will lie 
 clear and open to every spirit. Only those 
 spirits, therefore, that were all pure and 
 true in this life, will be able to meet other 
 spirits unashamed hereafter; and those 
 that were set aside and misjudged here will 
 be understood and appreciated hereafter. 
 Again, every spirit will with a self- 
 penetrating eye perceive all his own de-
 
 80 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 fects, all he left unfinished, imperfect, and 
 discordant within himself here, and per- 
 ceiving these defects will feel them with 
 the same keenness of sensation with which 
 we feel our bodily defects. And as in the 
 human mind one thought may help to free 
 the other from all that is deficient in it, 
 and as they associate into higher thoughts, 
 supplying in this wise what is imperfect in 
 each of them: just so the communion of 
 spirits will serve them as a means of prog- 
 ress towards perfection.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MAN'S relations with nature, in this 
 life, are of a material as well as 
 of a spiritual kind. Heat, air, 
 water, earth enter into and issue from him 
 in every direction, forming and changing 
 his body. Around him, they move side by 
 side, within him they meet and combine, 
 and in their combination make up a frame, 
 which shuts off his bodily sensations 2nd 
 whatever there is still deeper than these 
 within him, from immediate contact y/ith 
 the outer world. Thus he looks and feels 
 into the outer world through the windows 
 of his senses, and draws fragmentary 
 knowledge out of it as in little buckets. 
 
 After his death, however, when his bod- 
 ily frame sinks into decay, the spirit, fet- 
 tered and encumbered no longer, will roam 
 throughout nature in unbound liberty. 
 Then he will feel the waves of light and 
 sound not only as they strike his eyes arid
 
 82 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 ears, but as they glide along in the oceans 
 of air and of ether; he will feel not only 
 the breathing of the wind and the heaving 
 of the sea against his body bathing in them, 
 but float along through air and sea him- 
 self; he will no longer walk among verdant 
 trees and fragrant meadows, but conscious- 
 ly pervade the fields, and forests, and men 
 as they walk about them. 
 
 Thus, what he loses in passing to a high- 
 er stage of life are nothing but organs the 
 imperfect aid of which he can gladly dis- 
 pense with in a state of existence where he 
 shall feel, and perfectly and actually take 
 in, everything that, on a lower stage, lay 
 outside his own self and could not be ap- 
 proached but by such slow mediation. Why 
 should we take our eyes and ears with us 
 into the life to come, to draw in light and 
 sound from living nature's well, when the 
 waves of that future life shall move in 
 harmony and union with the very waves of 
 light and sound? Nay, more : The human 
 eye, though kindred to the sun, is but a tiny 
 thing, perceiving of the glory of the skies
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 83 
 
 but little sparkling dots. Man's longing 
 to know more of the heavens is not grati- 
 fied in this life. Though he invent tele- 
 scopes to enlarge the power and capacity 
 of his eyes, it is in vain the stars are only 
 so many dots for him. So he hopes to at- 
 tain in the life to come what his present 
 life cannot afford him, he trusts to have 
 his longings satisfied when he shall go to 
 heaven, and to see, henceforth, distinctly 
 everything that was hidden from his earth- 
 ly sight And he is right in hoping so, 
 though he shall not receive wings to go to 
 heaven and fly from star to star with, or 
 from the heavens visible above us to higher 
 heavens yet unseen; there are no such 
 wings in the nature of things. Nor is he 
 to see the heavens in being carried from 
 one star to another in a succession of new 
 births; there is no stork to carry babies 
 from star to star. Nor will his eye receive 
 more visual power to penetrate into the 
 farthest distances of heaven, by being 
 turned into the largest kind of telescope; 
 the principle of our earthly vision would
 
 84 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 prove insufficient there. When, as a con- 
 scious part of the great celestial body that 
 carries and holds him the Earth he con- 
 sciously partakes in the intercourse, 
 through light, between this and other heav- 
 enly beings: then shall he see his longing 
 gratified. 
 
 What, a new kind of sight? Well, it 
 would not be fit for men below, just as our 
 present sight would not suffice for the heav- 
 ens above. 1 Through heavenly space the 
 Earth floats along, an enormous eye, im- 
 mersed in an ocean of the light which pro- 
 ceeds from numberless stars, and wheeling 
 round and round to receive, on all sides, 
 the impact of its waves, which cross and 
 cross again, a million of times, without 
 ever disturbing each other. It is with that 
 eye man shall one day learn to see, meeting 
 with the spreading waves of his future 
 life the outward waves of the surrounding 
 ether, and undisturbed by the encountering 
 
 1 Lest this assumption, apparently involving serious 
 difficulties, might be considered thoughtless, I shall 
 more fully explain the meaning of it in an appendix.
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 85 
 
 waves, penetrating, with its most subtle 
 vibrations, into the depths of heaven. 
 
 Learn to see, indeed! A great many 
 things man will have to learn after his 
 death. For you must not expect that you 
 shall take in, on your very entrance into it, 
 the whole splendor of heaven, which is in 
 store for the life to come. Even here a 
 child must learn to see and hear; what it 
 sees and hears in the beginning are sights 
 and sounds meaningless for it, dazzling, 
 stunning, confusing. The same will be the 
 case, in the life to come, with what is of- 
 fered to the new senses of the new child. 
 Only what man takes away with him of this 
 life, the remembrance of all he has done, 
 thought, and been here, he will see clearly 
 and distinctly within him, as soon as he 
 enters that new life: though this will pri- 
 marily leave him very much the same man 
 he has been. And you may be sure that 
 the foolish, the idle, the wicked shall profit 
 by the glory of the hereafter only so far as 
 they are made to see the discord of their 
 lives, and are compelled, in the end, to give
 
 86 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 up their old, evil ways. Even for his pres- 
 ent life man has received an eye to see all 
 the marvels of heaven and earth, an ear to 
 drink in the sounds of music and of human 
 speech, an understanding to grasp the 
 meaning of all these things yet, what is 
 the use of eye, ear, or mind to the foolish, 
 the idle, the wicked? 
 
 The best and highest things of the life 
 to come, as well as of the present life, are 
 only for the best and highest men, who 
 alone understand, appreciate, and help to 
 produce them. Thus only the higher class 
 of spirits will be enabled to understand, 
 and take an active part in, the conscious 
 intercourse of the celestial being that car- 
 ries them with other beings of the "com- 
 pany of heaven." 
 
 Whether, after aeons of years, this earth 
 of ours, revolving round the sun in closer 
 and closer orbits, shall return to the womb 
 whence it issued, for a new, solar life to 
 begin for all earthly creatures who 
 knows ? And would it behoove us to know, 
 at present?
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE spirits of the third stage will 
 dwell in the regions of this Earth, 
 whereof mankind itself forms a 
 part, as in a common body, and all the 
 processes in nature will be to them the 
 same as the processes in our bodies are to 
 us at present. Their body will enclose the 
 bodies of the second stage of life as a com- 
 mon mother, just as the bodies of the sec- 
 ond stage enclose those of the first. But a 
 spirit of the third stage has for his own 
 share the common body which he con- 
 tributed to form and develop during his 
 earthly life. Whatever in this world has 
 become, through the existence of a certain 
 human being, different from what it would 
 have been without him, helps to constitute 
 his new existence, grown out of the com- 
 mon root of all existence, and made up, 
 partly of solid institutions and works, part-
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 ly of moving and spreading effects, similar- 
 ly to the way our present body is made up 
 of solid material, and of changeable ma- 
 terial kept together by the solid. 
 
 Now, as the spheres of existence where- 
 in the lives of higher spirits move must 
 necessarily intersect, the question arises 
 how is it possible for such numberless 
 spheres to cross and recross each other 
 without disturbing and confusing each 
 other. But you may as well ask how it is 
 possible for numberless water waves to 
 cross in the same lake, for numberless 
 air waves to cross in the same atmos- 
 phere, for numberless waves of light 
 to cross in the same ether, for numberless 
 waves of memory to cross in the same 
 brain, for numberless spheres of human 
 lives the germs and substructions of their 
 after-lives to cross in this world without 
 disturbing and confusing each other. On 
 the contrary, they only produce a move- 
 ment and life, of a higher order, of those 
 waves, those memories, those lives of the 
 second, and also of the third stage.
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 89 
 
 But what is there that keeps those cross- 
 ing spheres of consciousness asunder? 
 Nothing is there to keep them asunder in 
 any particular points of coincidence, for 
 they all have their points in common, 
 though they belong to each of them in a 
 different manner: this is what separates 
 them and distinguishes them as individuals. 
 Or would you ask what there is to distin- 
 guish or separate the intersecting wave 
 circles? You are able to distinguish them 
 outwardly, though they are all alike; and 
 it must be much easier for spheres of con- 
 sciousness to distinguish each other and 
 themselves inwardly. 
 
 When you get a letter from India or 
 Australia having its pages crossed with 
 writing in different directions, how do you 
 manage to distinguish the two sets of lines? 
 Simply by the inner connection of each set. 
 Now, the world may be compared to such 
 a sheet crossed with divers sets of writing, 
 in ever so many directions, every set read- 
 ing itself as it stands by itself, and reading 
 as well the other sets by which it is crossed.
 
 90 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 But that letter is only a very inadequate 
 symbol of the world. 
 
 How, then, can consciousness remain 
 one, when spread over such an extended 
 space? Is there not the law about "the 
 Threshold of Consciousness" P 1 You may 
 as well ask how can it remain one in the 
 more limited space of your body, of which 
 that more extended space is only a con- 
 tinuation. Your body, your brain, are 
 they mere points? Or is there one partic- 
 ular point in them, the seat of the soul? 
 There is no such point. The nature of 
 your soul at present is to maintain the 
 
 'This empirical law of the reciprocity of body and 
 mind states, that consciousness is extinguished when- 
 ever the bodily activity on which it depends, sinks 
 below a certain degree of strength, called the Thresh- 
 old. The more extended this activity, the more it will 
 be weakened, and the more easily it will sink below 
 the threshold. There is such a threshold for our con- 
 sciousness as a whole the limit between sleeping and 
 waking and a particular one for every particular 
 sphere of the mind. Hence, in the waking state, the one 
 or the other idea will rise up or sink in our mind, ac- 
 cording as the particular activity on which it depends 
 rises above, or sinks below, its respective threshold.
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 91 
 
 connection between all the parts of your 
 small body; hereafter it will be, to main- 
 tain the more extensive connection of all 
 the parts of your larger body. The spirit 
 of God maintains the connection of the 
 whole Universe, and would you look for 
 God in a point? And one day you shall 
 more fully partake of His ubiquity. 
 
 Or, if you are afraid that the waves of 
 your future life may be too extended to rise 
 to the threshold which they reach and over- 
 step in this life, you ought to consider that, 
 far from spreading into an empty world 
 where they would indeed sink into an abyss, 
 they spread into a world, which, as the 
 eternal foundation of the spirit of God, 
 will be a foundation of yours as well : for 
 it is only as supported by and enclosed in 
 the divine life that any creature can live. 
 
 The little wren, carried on the eagle's 
 back, can easily soar above the mountain 
 tops, which she could never do for herself; 
 she can even fly a little higher, above the 
 eagle's back where she rested. But both 
 eagle and wren remain in the care of God.
 
 92 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Another question arises how, after 
 death, we shall be able to exist without our 
 brain, that wonderful structure which at 
 present supports all our mental activity, de- 
 veloping itself in the same measure as that 
 activity grows and develops itself was 
 it given to us for no purpose ? It would be 
 the same question, how the plant can exist 
 without the seed out of which it burst forth 
 into life, and grows into light: the seed, 
 another such wonderful structure, develop- 
 ing itself more and more through its own 
 vitality; was that seed made for no pur- 
 pose? 
 
 Now you ask, is there, in all the world 
 around us, another structure as wonderful 
 as the human brain, that might take its 
 place in after-life, or is there any structure 
 even superior to it: for the life to come 
 will no doubt be superior to the present 
 life. But is not your body, as a whole, a 
 larger and grander structure than your eye, 
 your ear, your brain, or any of its parts? 
 And again the world of which mankind, 
 with their commonwealths, their sciences,
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 93 
 
 arts, and commerce form only a part, is 
 in the same degree, nay, in an unspeakably 
 higher degree, superior to your little brain, 
 which is only a part or particle of that part. 
 To gain a higher view of the subject, you 
 must not take the earth for a mere ball of 
 land and water and air; the earth is indeed 
 a larger and higher individual creature 
 than yourself, a heavenly being, with a 
 more wonderful living and moving on its 
 surface than you carry about in your own 
 little brain, contributing thereby your own 
 small share to the earth life. It is vain 
 for you to dream of a life to come, if you 
 fail to recognize the life around you. 
 
 What does the anatomist see in a man's 
 brain? It is to him a labyrinth of whitish 
 filaments, the meaning of which he cannot 
 read. And what does the brain see in it- 
 self? A world of light, and sound, and 
 thoughts, associations, fancies, emotions of 
 love and hatred. This will help you to 
 realize the difference between that which 
 you see of the world, looking at it from the 
 outside, and that which the world sees
 
 94 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 within itself. Then you will no longer 
 expect that in the world as a whole the 
 inside and the outside ought to resemble 
 one another more than in the case of your- 
 self, as a part of the world. And only 
 because you are a part of the world you are 
 enabled to see within yourself a part of 
 that which the world sees in itself. 
 
 Finally, you may ask what it is that in 
 after-life, and not till then, wakens our 
 larger body, so to speak. For that body 
 exists at present, growing and spreading 
 into the outer world as a continuation of 
 our present narrow body. Well, it wakens 
 from the very fact that this narrow body 
 falls asleep, or rather decays. It is only 
 an instance of the universal rule, which 
 prevails throughout this present life, 
 whence we conclude that it will continue 
 hereafter. In your sceptic way, you in- 
 sist on drawing all your conclusions from 
 this life; so you ought to draw this one 
 also. 
 
 Conscious energy is in fact never pro- 
 duced afresh, nor can it be absolutely de-
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 95 
 
 stroyed. Similar to the body with which 
 it is connected, it may change its place, 
 form, and activity, in time and space. 
 When it sinks to-day in one place, it will 
 rise in another place to-morrow. That 
 your eye may be awake, may see conscious- 
 ly, your ear must go to sleep for a while ; 
 that your mental activity may be roused, 
 your senses must sleep for a while; a feel- 
 ing of pain in some minute part of your 
 body may for a time extinguish all your 
 consciousness. When directed to a large 
 range of subjects at once, the light of at- 
 tention will necessarily shine but feebly on 
 the details; when it is concentrated on one 
 point, all the rest will recede into darkness; 
 to reflect on something is to abstract from 
 other things. You are awake to-day be- 
 cause you slept yesterday, and the more 
 active you have been in waking, the sound- 
 er will be your sleep. 
 
 Now, in this life, our sleep, in a certain 
 sense, is only half-sleep, allowing the old 
 man to waken again, because the old man 
 is still here ; in death our sleep will be full
 
 96 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 sleep, out of which shall waken a new man, 
 for the old man is not: but the old rule 
 holds good again, which demands an equiv- 
 alent of your former consciousness ; and as 
 there is a new body instead of the old one, 
 being a continuation of the same, so there 
 will be a new consciousness, as an equiva- 
 lent and continuation of the old one. 
 
 A continuation, I say; for whatever pre- 
 serves, in the old man, the consciousness 
 that dwelled in the body of the child, 
 though there is not an atom of it left in his 
 body, will preserve, in his future life, the 
 same consciousness that dwelled in the 
 body of the old man, of which not an atom 
 will be left in the new body. For in either 
 case the new body preserves the effects of 
 the former body, the organ of his former 
 consciousness, and is itself the outgrowth 
 of it. Thus there is one principle for the 
 continuation of our present life, from this 
 day to the morrow, and for the continua- 
 tion of the present life into the life to 
 come. And could there be any principle 
 but an eternal one for the eternal con- 
 tinuation of human life?
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 97 
 
 As little need you ask, how it is that the 
 effects produced by you in this world, which 
 have spread around and beyond yourself, 
 belong to you more properly and more 
 closely than any other effects lying beyond 
 your sphere. The reason for this is in 
 their origin from you. Every cause 
 retains its effects as an eternal prop- 
 erty. And, after all, your acts never went 
 beyond you; even in this life, they formed 
 an unconscious continuation of yourself, 
 only waiting to be wakened to new con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 As little as a man, when once alive, can 
 ever die again, as little could he have wak- 
 ened into life had he not been alive before; 
 only he was not alive individually. The 
 consciousness which wakens in a child at 
 its birth is only a part of the eternal and 
 universal consciousness concentrated in this 
 new soul. To follow this living power of 
 consciousness through all its ways and 
 changes involves no greater difficulty than 
 following the living power of the body. 
 
 Perhaps you are afraid that human con-
 
 98 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 sciousness, being born of the universal con- 
 sciousness, may be again absorbed into the 
 same. Behold the tree ! What a time it 
 took for the stem to grow branches; but 
 once here they cannot be swallowed up into 
 the stem again, else the tree could not grow 
 and develop itself : but the tree of universal 
 life must grow and develop itself as well. 
 
 After all, to draw any conclusion from 
 this life about the hereafter, we must not 
 take our stand on unknown causes or self- 
 made premises; but on known facts, from 
 whence to proceed to the greater and high- 
 er facts of after-life, and thus to strengthen 
 and support our belief from below, in addi- 
 tion to higher arguments, and vitally to 
 connect this belief with practical life. If 
 we did not need this faith, we should re- 
 quire no support for it; but what would be 
 its use without such support?
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE human soul is spread throughout 
 the body; when the soul departs the 
 body decays. But the conscious- 
 ness of the soul is in different places at 
 different times. 1 You may watch it wan- 
 dering about in our narrow body, now 
 corresponding with the eye, now with the 
 ear, with the outer and inner senses. In 
 death, it will wander beyond our body, like 
 a man who, having had his little house de- 
 stroyed wherein he moved about for years, 
 
 x Or, to express it more exactly, consciousness is 
 present and awake when and where the activity of the 
 body underlying the activity of the mind the psycho- 
 physical activity exceeds that degree of strength 
 which we call the threshold. According to this view, 
 consciousness can be localized in time and space. The 
 summits of the waves of our psycho-physical activity 
 move and change about from place to place, though 
 confined, in this life, to our body, even to a limited part 
 of our body, and in sleep they sink below the threshold 
 to rise again in waking.
 
 100 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 leaves it for ever to wander to distant 
 countries. Death separates our two lives 
 only so far as it takes us from the narrow 
 scene of our wanderings to a wider one. 
 Now, in this life consciousness cannot be 
 in every place at once; the same in after- 
 life. But the range of its wanderings will 
 be incomparably wider, with freer roads, 
 with higher points of view, embracing all 
 the lower ones of the present life. 
 
 Even in this life it may happen, though 
 very rarely, that the light of consciousness 
 wanders from the narrow body into the 
 larger body, and returning home gives in- 
 formation about things which are taking 
 place far away in space, or things which, 
 springing from present circumstances, will 
 take place in some future time: for the 
 length of the future rests on the breadth 
 of the present. Sometimes a little rift will 
 open, and quickly close again, in the other- 
 wise closed door between this world and 
 the next, the door which only death shall 
 open for ever and aye. Nor is it well for 
 us to peep through those rifts before the
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 101 
 
 time. But such exceptions to the rule of 
 our present life are still in harmony with 
 the greater rule which embraces both this 
 life and the life hereafter. 
 
 Sometimes the narrower body will fall 
 asleep to a certain extent, in an uncommon 
 way, wakening in a no less uncommon way, 
 in another direction, beyond its usual 
 limits, though not so completely as to 
 awaken no more. Or, some part of our 
 larger body is impressed with such uncom- 
 mon intensity as to draw our consciousness, 
 for a while, away from our narrower body, 
 to rise above the threshold in an unusual 
 place. Hence the wonders of clairvoy- 
 ance, of presentiments, and dreams mere 
 fables, if our future body and our future 
 life are fables, otherwise signs of the one 
 and predictions of the other : and if a thing 
 has its signs, it must exist; if it has predic- 
 tions, it will come. 
 
 However, all those things are no signs 
 of a healthy life. For in this life we have 
 only to build up our bodies for the here- 
 after, not to see or hear with the eyes and
 
 102 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 ears of the hereafter. A flower when 
 opened before its time will not thrive. And 
 though our belief in a life to come may 
 be supported by such occasional glances 
 caught in this life, it must not take its foun- 
 dation on them. A sound and healthy be- 
 lief is founded on arguments, and it reaches 
 to the highest points of view of a healthy 
 life, being itself essential to the health and 
 integrity of such a life. 
 
 Did you take the faint image in which 
 a dead person appears in your memory for 
 a mere inward semblance? If so, you are 
 mistaken; it is more than that, it is your 
 friend's own self, consciously coming, not 
 only near you, but into you. His former 
 shape is still the garment of his soul, 
 though no longer encumbered with his for- 
 mer solid body and wandering slowly along 
 with him, but transparent and light, free 
 from earthly burdens, changing its place 
 in a moment, at the call of every person 
 who thinks of him, or even entering into 
 your mind of his own accord, thus causing 
 you to remember him who is dead. The
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 103 
 
 old idea, so generally adopted, of the souls 
 of the dead as light, bodiless, unbounded 
 by space, is quite a correct view of the 
 subject, without earnestly meaning to be so. 
 You have also heard of ghosts appear- 
 ing what the doctors call phantasms or 
 hallucinations. They are indeed halluci- 
 nations of the living, but, at the same time, 
 real manifestations of the dead. The faint 
 images in our memory are such manifesta- 
 tions, those vivid apparitions are only the 
 more so. It is no use worrying whether 
 they be one thing or the other, for they 
 are really both things at a time. And as 
 you are not frightened by the images with- 
 in you, being present manifestations of 
 spirits, you need no more be frightened by 
 the apparitions before you. Though, 
 after all, in a certain sense, there is reason 
 for being frightened. The images of the 
 memory are either called up by yourself, 
 or they come, quietly and peacefully, in 
 the course of your inner life as helps to its 
 development; the other class of manifesta- 
 tions come unbidden, too strong to be kept
 
 104 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 back, standing before you it seems, but, in 
 reality, standing within you, not to help, 
 but rather to disturb the working of your 
 inner life; such a presence is an abnormal 
 one, belonging at the same time to this life 
 and the next. The dead and the living 
 ought not to hold intercourse in this way. 
 To see dead persons almost as distinctly 
 and objectively as spirits see each other, is 
 almost death to the living; hence the fright 
 of the living caused by their presence. And 
 as, in those cases, the dead return half- 
 way from the realms beyond the grave to 
 the land this side the grave, popular belief 
 not an unfounded belief, perhaps will 
 have it that only those spirits walk about 
 here that are not released yet, but still 
 earth-bound with a heavy chain. To drive 
 away the unblessed spirit, call for the help 
 of a better and mightier one; but the best 
 and the mightiest is the one Spirit above all 
 spirits. In His protection, what can harm 
 you? Popular belief agrees in this that 
 evil spirits will vanish when the name of 
 God is called upon.
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 105 
 
 There is, however, in this matter great 
 danger of belief degenerating into super- 
 stition. The simplest means, after all, of 
 keeping ghosts away is, not to believe in 
 their coming. For believing that they may 
 come is going half-way to meet them. 
 
 "Spirits see each other," I said just now. 
 I argue that such appearance, which is con- 
 trary to the order of things at present, is 
 only anticipated from the order of things 
 to come. Clearly, distinctly, objectively, 
 the inhabitants of the hereafter will see 
 each other, in the same shape of which we 
 in this life preserve but a faint likeness, a 
 dim contour, in our memory. For they 
 interpenetrate each other with their whole 
 nature, of which a small portion only en- 
 ters our minds when we remember them. 
 In order to attract them, it will be neces- 
 sary to direct one's attention towards them, 
 in after-life as well as at present. 
 
 Now you may ask, How is it possible for 
 those that interpenetrate each other to ap- 
 pear to each other objectively, in a distinct 
 shape? You may as well ask, How is it
 
 106 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 possible that that something which, in your 
 brain, produces the idea of a living person, 
 or the memory of a dead person (and this 
 is all you have to base it upon), appears to 
 you as an outward object, a definite recol- 
 lection ? The effects that produce your rec- 
 ollection have no distinct shape themselves, 
 yet they bring before you the distinct out- 
 lines of the person from whom they orig- 
 inally proceeded. You cannot tell why it 
 is so, in this life; how can you expect to 
 know more of the hereafter? 
 
 Thus, I say again, do not draw infer- 
 ences from supposed present causes un- 
 known to you, nor from premises of your 
 own invention; but from present facts 
 known to you and all, to arrive at the 
 greater and higher facts of the hereafter. 
 Any single inference may be erroneous, so 
 you must not stick to all the particulars; 
 but the accordance of all the different in- 
 ferences, pointing towards that which is 
 before and above all inference, will be the 
 best support for our belief from below, 
 and the best guide to the regions above.
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 107 
 
 But if, from the beginning, you would take 
 your footing above, the whole path of be- 
 lief which is to lead you upward might slip 
 from under your feet.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THERE would be no more difficulties 
 for our belief, could we only make 
 up our minds to take the word that 
 has been a fine saying for more than a thou- 
 sand years, that "in God we live, and move, 
 and have our being," for more than a 
 word, or rhetorical phrase. In that case 
 our belief in God and in our own eternal 
 life would be one; we should then look 
 upon our own life as part of God's eternal 
 life, and should consider the height of our 
 future life above this present life as a 
 higher step within God, from that lower 
 step where we are placed in Him now; a 
 better insight into the things below would 
 enable us better to comprehend higher 
 things, and from their mutual connection 
 we should comprehend the great whole of 
 which we only form a part. 
 
 When your perceptions are gone out of 
 your consciousness, recollections will rise
 
 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 109 
 
 out of them. Thus your whole earthly life 
 of perceptions in God will be gone one day, 
 but a higher life of recollections in God 
 will have risen out of it; and as your rec- 
 ollections move and associate within your 
 head, the spirits of the hereafter move and 
 associate within the Divine head. It is 
 only one step higher on the same ladder, 
 which does not lead to God, but higher up 
 in God, who holds within Himself top and 
 bottom of that ladder. How empty must 
 God appear to those who take the above- 
 mentioned text for an empty sound; how 
 full is God through the full significance of 
 those words ! 
 
 Do you pretend to know how, in your 
 present stage, a life of perceptions is pos- 
 sible in your mind? You know nothing 
 but that there is such a life, which, being a 
 spiritual life, is only possible in a spirit. 
 So there can be no difficulty for you to be- 
 lieve although you know not how it is 
 possible that there will be a life hereaf- 
 ter, of your whole spirit in a higher spirit;
 
 110 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 if you only believe that there is a higher 
 Spirit, and yourself in Him. 
 
 And again, there would be no more diffi- 
 culties for our belief, if we could make up 
 our minds to take for true that other word, 
 that in everything God liveth, and moveth, 
 and hath His being. Then there would be 
 no dead world for us, but a living world, 
 out of which every human being builds up 
 his own future body, as a new house built 
 up within the house of God. 
 
 When, oh, when, will that life-giving 
 faith become alive among us? The fact 
 that it is a life-giving faith shall make it 
 alive.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 YOUR question was, whether it would 
 be; my answer is how it will be. 
 Faith renders your question as to 
 the Whether unnecessary; but if the ques- 
 tion is asked, there is that one answer as 
 to the How. And as long as that How has 
 not been settled, the Whether will not cease 
 to come and go. 
 
 Here is the tree ; let one or the other of 
 its leaves drop away, if only its root be 
 struck deeply and firmly in the ground: 
 new branches and new leaves will grow and 
 drop away again, but the tree will stand 
 and bring forth blossoms of beauty, and 
 instead of taking its root in faith, bear 
 fruits of faith.
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 ON THE PRINCIPLE OF HEAVENLY VISION, 
 
 VISION may be produced on several 
 principles. If an opaque screen 
 were placed in front of the retina 
 with only a tiny opening in it, we could see 
 through that opening, as every luminous 
 point of the outer world would send a slen- 
 der ray of light through it, and the rays 
 crossing in the opening would produce an 
 image, inverted, on the retina. But such 
 vision by means of slender rays would be 
 rather dim ; that is not the way in which we 
 see on earth. By another principle a trans- 
 parent lens is placed in front of the retina 
 which concentrates the whole cone of light 
 emitted from every luminous point of the 
 outer world, into a spot of the retina. This 
 makes vision much more distinct; and this 
 is the actual principle of earthly vision, or 
 rather of the external process of it; it does 
 not explain the real act of seeing. For the
 
 APPENDIX. H3 
 
 soul does not see immediately the points of 
 the image on the retina; vision, as a mental 
 act, is produced by the vibrations propa- 
 gated into the brain, the different vibra- 
 tions proceeding from one point being felt 
 in one ; whatever proceeds from a common 
 source is perceived as one in the soul, 
 though we cannot tell how a complex proc- 
 ess in space is condensed into a simple per- 
 ception in the mind. It is, after all, nat- 
 ural enough for one and the same thing to 
 afford a different appearance when seen 
 from different points of view an inner or 
 an outer one and it is a general experi- 
 ence concerning the connection between 
 body and soul that a simple psychic act is 
 based on a physical complex, or, that the 
 physically complicated is psychically con- 
 centrated into something simple and one 
 in itself. Vision may be explained through 
 this law, and could hardly be explained 
 differently, from the impossibility of prov- 
 ing a simple seat of the soul. 
 
 Now, a third principle of vision may be 
 conceived, viz., the principle of interpene-
 
 114 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 tration of the psycho-physical emanations 
 (i. e., physical processes producing psy- 
 chical effects) of two opposite points, the 
 perception of either point being produced 
 in the other immediately, by uniting those 
 various emanations in one. And what holds 
 good for two separate points, would do for 
 two separate systems of points. This 
 would be the most perfect vision, the points 
 of the objects appearing to each other im- 
 mediately and in their full intensity, in pro- 
 portion with the power produced by the in- 
 terpenetrating emanations, whereas in our 
 earthly vision it is not the points of the 
 objects that are seen, only their images on 
 the retina. 
 
 I imagine that there could be a mode of 
 vision on this principle. The emanations 
 of celestial bodies, meeting each other in 
 space, do indeed correspond to it, suppos- 
 ing that luminary vibrations, or concomi- 
 tant vibrations of a higher order, may be 
 considered as psycho-physical movements 
 (which supposition is nowise contrary to 
 experience). There has indeed always
 
 APPENDIX. 115 
 
 been an inclination to connect our own 
 mental life with movements of imponder- 
 able substance; nor can there be anything 
 to prevent our connecting such movements 
 in the outer world with a mental life of a 
 higher order. Even our human eye would 
 not exactly require a lens in front of the 
 retina to receive point-shaped impressions 
 from outward points, if the retina itself, 
 and each successive stratum of it, which 
 now intercept outward emanations on their 
 way to our psycho-physical system, should 
 offer a surface of sensitive points to re- 
 ceive, and meet with their own emanations, 
 directly and without any check or hind- 
 rance, the impression of the outward vi- 
 brations : as in the case of the luminary 
 emanations of stars. 
 
 What, then, is the use of earthly eyes? 
 It is this that in their connection with our 
 other senses, they help to form organs for 
 effects of a higher order, organs which we 
 call Men, who in their turn are connected, 
 and united into an organism of a higher 
 order than man, which we call Earth!
 
 116 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 New vibrations go forth, no doubt, from 
 the central points in which the fibres of the 
 optic nerve terminate in the brain, vibra- 
 tions propagated through the fibres be- 
 tween those points, and producing, where 
 they meet, through the total of impressions 
 caused by the single points, the perceptions 
 of real objects: in the same way we may 
 assume the perceptions of all the heavenly 
 beings to be embraced in a higher Divine 
 perception. 
 
 Two naked men are evidently under the 
 same outward conditions, reciprocally, as 
 two stars; however, they do not see each 
 other with their skins ; for the psycho-phy- 
 sical system of man is inside him, closed 
 up behind his skin, whereas that of the 
 Earth is spread out over its surface, having 
 its ultimate ramifications in the human be- 
 ings that live on that surface. Now, there 
 is one place in the skin affording an en- 
 trance to our psycho-physical system, name- 
 ly, the eye, whereby men do indeed see 
 each other. The rest of the emanations 
 which they interchange, spread beyond
 
 APPENDIX. 117 
 
 them into the greater psycho-physical sys- 
 tem, without affecting their own respective 
 consciousness. 
 
 I do not say that every point in this the- 
 ory is well established, but I hope I have 
 given a right idea of a right principle. It 
 is no demonstration, it is only a remark, 
 which I hope will prove the germ, still half- 
 buried in darkness, to a great luminous 
 world-conception. My speculations, as laid 
 down in this last and in the foregoing chap- 
 ters, will become better established on 
 larger and firmer grounds, and will be 
 more generally adopted, when the science 
 of psycho-physics, now only in its infancy, 
 shall see its object not in an isolated theory 
 of the relations between body and mind in 
 the particular human and animal organ- 
 isms, but in a universal theory of the rela- 
 tions between the mental and the material 
 principles of the universe. Such a time, of 
 which this purports to be a harbinger, shall 
 come. To the materialist and the idealist 
 my views must at present appear foolish- 
 ness, just as the materialism and idealism
 
 118 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 of our days will one day appear foolishness 
 in their turn.
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 THE following passages contained in 
 the first Edition in the places here 
 referred to, were suppressed by the 
 Author in the later editions. 
 
 ( Page 70, after line 15). It ought, how- 
 ever, to be remembered that though in the 
 third stage the spirit of man may rise to- 
 wards God, the third stage is not the high- 
 est attainable. In that stage the spirit of 
 man, having passed through this life, will 
 more fully comprehend the working of God 
 in the life of the earth. However, God 
 manifests himself in still higher stages of 
 life, which we are in the habit of vaguely 
 describing as the heavens. To them man 
 aspires during the third stage, preparing 
 himself to live there in a succeeding stage. 
 Nothing in the life of the earth will be con- 
 cealed from man while in the third stage. 
 The greatest spirit of that stage will by 
 God's appointment be governors of the
 
 120 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 earth. But into that higher life, beyond 
 the earth, man will have to be born through 
 a second death. 
 
 (Page 82, line 17.) This earth of ours, 
 of which mankind forms a part, is to the 
 spirits of the third stage a common body, 
 and all the processes of nature are to them 
 what the processes of our own body are to 
 us. Their body encloses the bodies of the 
 second stage, as the bodies of the second 
 stage enclose those of the first. Each lower 
 sphere of life is enclosed in a higher 
 sphere, into which it is one day to open. 
 The one grows in and through the other, 
 by means, as it were, of nerves connecting 
 the two. But there is no connection of 
 consciousness between the two. No sphere 
 of life is clearly aware of the greater 
 sphere which encloses it, and which it is 
 one day to occupy. Thus man in his pres- 
 ent stage is like the seed growing and de- 
 veloping itself as part of the plant, with- 
 out knowing about the light-life of the 
 plant, which shall one day be its own life, 
 when in death it has left its mother-plant.
 
 APPENDIX. 121 
 
 (Page 85, line 19, after the colon.) The 
 earth, the body of the spirits of the third 
 stage, is self-contained, but connected with 
 a greater body, the Sun, by the emanating 
 light and the general gravitation as the 
 child is connected with its mother's body by 
 the navel-string, receiving through it its 
 impulses of life. And as the embryo, while 
 connected with its mother, goes on growing 
 and unfolding itself, till in its first birth it 
 passes into the mother's own sphere of life, 
 and as man, after his birth, while connected 
 with the earth, goes on growing and un- 
 folding himself, till in death he shall pass 
 into the earth's own sphere of life, so the 
 spirits of the third stage, being connected 
 with the sun, will go on unfolding them- 
 selves, till on the fourth stage they shall 
 pass into the sun's life. In this way man, 
 having gone through his round of the three 
 stages of earth-life, is to begin a new round 
 in a higher world another celestial body 
 so that the highest stage of his earth-life 
 is like an embryo-state for the lowest stage 
 of that higher-world life. And so the earth
 
 122 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 may be compared to an egg, from which 
 the sun breeds spirits, that they may rise to 
 the sun on wings of light. 
 
 In their stage of sun-life the spirits, by 
 means of light and gravitation, will see and 
 feel through space, and commune with 
 planets and suns, as far as light and gravi- 
 tation reach. Their common light-sense 
 will enable the sun's inhabitants to survey 
 at a glance the varieties of life and motion 
 in all the planets as clearly as we now sur- 
 vey our nearest surroundings; and so, 
 though born on one individual planet out 
 of the many, we shall know them all with- 
 out having to pass a lifetime on each of 
 them. The spirits who, while living on 
 several planets, remained strangers to each 
 other, will meet on the sun, in the same 
 sphere of life, whence each of them may 
 look back upon the scene of his own former 
 life as well as on the scenes of evolution of 
 all the rest. And in a succeeding stage the 
 spirits of the individual sun will be born 
 into the vast ocean of suns, which knows of 
 no bounds but boundlessness. And in a
 
 APPENDIX. 123 
 
 still higher stage they will reach the eter- 
 nal source of space and time, itself indepen- 
 dent of space and time and finally even 
 they will outgrow all space and time, being 
 received into God's everlasting glory. 
 
 Chapter IX (conclusion). Therefore be 
 ye of good courage in your outlook beyond 
 the grave; do not heed the sayings of ig- 
 norance, proclaiming that in death, when 
 man's body is given back to the dust of the 
 earth, his spirit shall lose itself in the abso- 
 lute. Of a truth, man shall return to the 
 absolute, though not after his first death, 
 but after his last, and not like the raindrop 
 that is swallowed up in the ocean from 
 which it originally came, but like the butter- 
 fly that leaves its caterpillar's skin behind, 
 to move about freely and joyfully in its 
 pure parental element. The last death of 
 man, or of any spirit, is indeed an addition, 
 of a new individual and independent ele- 
 ment evolved in and through its various 
 stages of life, to the grea.t Principle of all 
 existence, undetermined in the beginning of 
 creation, but destined to be determined and
 
 124 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 evolved by this very addition. The abso- 
 lute is not a grave-yard for decaying 
 corpses ; it is the birth-place of the children 
 of God that have grown into angels, who 
 are as eyes and ears and hands to God, 
 whereby he governs all the lower spheres, 
 down to this present world of ours.
 
 AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT TO FIRST 
 EDITION. 
 
 r "T l HE idea worked out in this little 
 book, that the spirits of the dead 
 continue to exist as individuals in 
 the living, was first suggested to me 
 through a conversation with my friend 
 Professor Billroth, 1 then living in Leipzig, 
 now in Halle. The idea appealing to a 
 series of kindred thoughts lying ready in 
 my own mind, and engendering new ones, 
 finally assumed the present shape, enlarged 
 by a kind of spontaneous evolution into the 
 idea of a higher life of spirits in God. In 
 
 'Johann Gustav Friedrich Billroth, born 1808 at 
 Lubeck, died 1836 at Halle, where in 1834 he had been 
 appointed professor of theology. He must not be con- 
 fused with Theodore Billroth, the famous anatomist. 
 Prof. Billroth's chief work, here alluded to (but, as it 
 seems, undeservedly neglected in our days), was pub- 
 lished after his death by Prof. Erdmann, of Halle: 
 Vorlesungenuber Religionsphilosophie: Leipzig, 1837.
 
 126 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 
 
 the meantime the originator's own way of 
 thinking has taken a different direction 
 from ours, in the philosophy of religion in 
 general, and especially in the doctrine of 
 immortality, so that he seems for the most 
 part, if not entirely, to have abandoned the 
 fundamental idea. Nevertheless, I have 
 felt obliged to mention him as its origina- 
 tor, though I may no longer speak of him 
 as its advocate. As far as I know he will 
 expound his own views on the subject in 
 a philosophical work shortly to appear. 
 
 Written at Gastein, 
 
 August, 1835.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Absolute not a grave-yard, 124. 
 ^Esthetics, Introduction to, 10. 
 After-life, Description of, 41-43. 
 Angels, Anatomy of, 12; Belief in, 17. 
 Apparitions, 103. 
 Art, Germ for a new phase of, 64. 
 
 B 
 
 Billroth, J. G. F., 125. 
 
 Birth, 31. 
 
 Blessed or unblessed existence, 20. 
 
 Blessed the man, 62. 
 
 Body, Celestial, 121. 
 
 Body-spirit, Infant has, 34. 
 
 Bodies of the three stages, 87. 
 
 Brain, a world of emotions, 93; and lute, 73; Mental 
 
 acts accompanied by vibrations of, 73; Without 
 
 brain after death, 92. 
 Buchner, F. K. C. L., 7. 
 Butterfly, Man like a, 123. 
 
 Caterpillar, Man like a, 123. 
 Celestial body, 121. 
 
 127
 
 128 INDEX. 
 
 Child alive a moment cannot die, 75. 
 
 Christ, Church of, 23; in the Lord's Supper, 65; 
 Christ liveth, 39; son of God, 22; the mediator, 
 18; to be worshiped with God, 71; United in, 
 24; United with, in the hereafter, 67. 
 
 Christ's body, the Church, 40; life not supernat- 
 ural, 22f. 
 
 Christianity, 21. 
 
 Church, The, Christ's body, 40; of Christ, 23. 
 
 Churches and scoffers, 64. 
 
 Circle of influences, 75. 
 
 Circles, Intersecting wave, 89; of waves, 37f. 
 
 Clairvoyance, 47, 101. 
 
 Color-star, 46. 
 
 Commandments of God, 24. 
 
 Communion of Spirits, 79, 80. 
 
 Conscious energy, 94; Conscious in death, 75. 
 
 Consciousness, Continuation of, 20; not reabsorbed 
 in universal, 98 ; Set free by death, 59 ; Threshold 
 of, 90, 99; Transition of, 20; Union of, enhanced 
 by death, 66; Universal, 97; wanders, 99, 100. 
 
 Continuation of life, 96. 
 
 D 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 25. 
 
 Dead geniuses and saints, mediators, 70. 
 
 Dead, The, and living, Meeting of, 58; how they 
 arise, 63; Image of, in memory, 102; in your 
 mind, 61; Influence of, 53; made happy or mis- 
 erable, 62; Real manifestations of the, 103; 
 Shrine for great, 70; Spirits of the, 37; Thoughts
 
 INDEX. 129 
 
 of the, not gone, 37 ; within us, 60 ; Worship of 
 the, 70. 
 
 Death, 31; a climacteric disease, 42; a new day, 76; 
 a second birth, 32; After death, liberty, 81; 
 Conscious in, 75 ; Consciousness set free by, 59 ; 
 enhancing union of consciousness, 66 ; First and 
 last, 123; In the moment of, 36; Man will learn 
 after, 85. 
 
 Desert island, Man on, 74. 
 
 Divine germ in the third stage, 30; Divine life, 91; 
 Divine perception, 116; Divine spirit all-con- 
 scious, 17. 
 
 
 
 Earth; a common body, 120; an embryo-state, 121; 
 
 an enormous eye, 84; an individuality, 16, 93; 
 
 a system, 15; and mankind, 16; bound spirits, 
 
 104; like an egg, 122; -spirit, 17ff; the body of 
 
 the spirits of the third stage, 121. 
 Earthly eyes, Use of, 115. 
 Earthly vision, 83, 113. 
 Egg, Earth like an, 122. 
 Embryo-state, The Earth an, 122. 
 Eucharist, Christ in the, 65. 
 Evolution, 26. 
 
 Eye; an entrance, 116; Earth an enormous, 84. 
 Eyes, Use of earthly, 115. 
 
 Fechner, Gustav Theodor; Dates of Birth and Death, 
 8; on spiritism, 29; Pseudonym of, 11; Works: 
 Elements of Psychophysics, 9; Introduction to
 
 130 INDEX. 
 
 ^Esthetics, 10; Four Paradoxes, 11; Anatomy of 
 Angels, 12; Stapelia Mixta, 12; Zend Avesta, 
 13, 15, 21, 26; Summum Bonum, 13; Nanna or 
 the Soul-Life of Plants, 13 ; Professor Schleiden 
 and the Moon, 25; On the Soul Question, 25; 
 The Three Motives and Arguments of Belief, 
 25; Some Ideas on the Creation and Evolution 
 of Organisms, 26 ; The Daylight- View versus the 
 Night- View, 26. 
 
 Fechner's Law, 7. 
 
 Fellowship with great spirits, 67. 
 
 Future life one of reminiscences, 18. 
 
 G 
 
 Ghosts, 103. 
 
 God, Belief in, 21ff; Christ to be worshiped with, 
 71 ; In Him we live, 108 ; lives in everything, 
 110; Our life part of God's life, 108. 
 
 God's Commandments, 24; ubiquity, 91. 
 
 Goethe, J. W. v., 38, 39. 
 
 Good, Increasing power of, 44. 
 
 Grave, Outlook beyond the, 123. 
 
 Grave-yard, Absolute not a, 124. 
 
 H 
 
 Hallucinations, 103. 
 Heavens, Hopes of, 83. 
 Heavenly things, 15. 
 Hell, 41, 52. 
 Herbart, J. F., 10. 
 
 Hereafter; How to arrive at facts of, 106; Justice 
 in the, 25 ; Senses too narrow for, 78 ; Spirits of
 
 INDEX. 131 
 
 the, 109; Spirits united in the, 69; United in the, 
 66; United with Christ in the, 67. 
 
 Illumination, State of, 77. 
 Infant has body-spirit, 34. 
 Interpenetration, 114; of spirits, 105. 
 Intersecting wave circles, 89. 
 Isolated man, Mind of an, 75. 
 
 J 
 Justice, 63; in the hereafter, 24; of the universe, 41. 
 
 Larger body, Our, 101. 
 
 Life, part of God's life, 108. 
 
 Light-sense, 122. 
 
 Living and dead, Meeting of, 58. 
 
 Longing gratified, 84. 
 
 Lute and brain, 73. 
 
 Luther, M., 39. 
 
 M 
 
 Means and ends, 45. 
 
 Mediator, Christ a, 70. 
 
 Mediators, Dead geniuses and saints are, 70. 
 
 Mental acts accompanied by vibrations of the 
 
 brain, 73. 
 Mind of man, 46. 
 
 Mises, Dr. (Pseudonym of Fechner), 11, 12, 13. 
 Moleschott, Jacob, 7. 
 Mother looking for child, 60.
 
 132 INDEX. 
 
 N 
 
 Name to be kept unsullied, 63. 
 Nanna, or the Soul-Life of Plants, 13. 
 Napoleon, 38, 39. 
 
 O 
 Od, 27. 
 
 P 
 
 Paradoxes, Four, Footnote, 11. 
 
 Perceptions; Present Life one of, 18; and remi- 
 niscences, 19. 
 Phantasms, 103. 
 Placenta, Footnote, 35. 
 Plants, The Soul-Life of, 14. 
 Present life one of perceptions, 18. 
 Present stage like a seed, 120. 
 Presentiments, 101. 
 Psychophysics, 117; Elements of, 9. 
 Psychophysical emanations, 114. 
 Punishment and Reward, 24, 25, 41, 43, 62. 
 
 Reichenbach, Baron, 27. 
 
 Reminiscences; Future Life one of, 18; and percep- 
 tions, 19. 
 
 Resurrection of man, 23. 
 Reward and punishment, 24, 25, 41, 43, 62. 
 
 S 
 
 Scheibner, 27. 
 Schiller, F. v., 39. 
 Schleiden, M. J., 25.
 
 INDEX. 133 
 
 Scoffers and churches, 64. 
 
 Seed, Present stage like a, 120. 
 
 Self unimpaired, Man's, 78. 
 
 Sense organs dispensed with, 82. 
 
 Senses; too narrow for hereafter, 78; Windows 
 of, 81. 
 
 Shrine for great dead, 70. 
 
 Sight, A new kind of, 84. 
 
 Slade, Henry, 27. 
 
 Sleep and Waking, 95. 
 
 Soul, Symbol of the, 47. 
 
 Spheres intersect, 88. 
 
 Spirit tried here, 43. 
 
 Spirits; cannot conceal their thoughts, 79; Close Fel- 
 lowship with the great, 67; Communion of, 79, 
 80; continue as individuals, 125; engender 
 thoughts within us, 48 ; entering into us, 47 ; 
 Harmony of, 55; Higher, 55; Immediate inter- 
 course of, 32; in God, 126; Kindred, 51, 54; 
 of the hereafter, 109; of the third stage, 87; see 
 each other, 105; Strife between, 49, 50, 55; 
 try to make use of us, 48; united in the here- 
 after, 69. 
 
 Spiritism, 27, 28 ; Fechner on, 29. 
 
 Spiritual; body, 36; movements, 55; world like a 
 tree, 69. 
 
 Stages of life. See s. v. Three stages of life. 
 
 Stapelia Mixta, 12. 
 
 Stork to carry babies, No, 83. 
 
 Strife between spirits, 49, 50, 55. 
 
 Summum Bonum, 13. 
 
 Superstition, Danger of, 105. 
 
 Symbol of the soul, 47.
 
 134 INDEX. 
 
 Telepathy (not mentioned, but probably implied), 
 32, 59, 79. 
 
 Thoughts of the dead not gone, 37. 
 
 Three Stages of Life, 30f, 35f, 121; Bodies of, 87; 
 First Stage, 31; Second (present) Stage, like a 
 seed, 120; Third Stage, 54, 119; Spirits of, 87, 121. 
 
 Threshold of consciousness, 90, 99. 
 
 Tree of spirits, 69. 
 
 U 
 
 Union of consciousness enhanced by death, 66. 
 United in the hereafter, 66. 
 Universe, alive, 14. 
 
 V 
 
 Vibrations, Footnote, 74; of brain, Mental acts ac- 
 companied by, 73. 
 Vision, 112, 113, 114. 
 
 W 
 
 Wadsworth, Maria C., 7. 
 Waking and sleep, 95. 
 Weber, W., 27. 
 Woe to the man, 62. 
 Wren on eagle's back, 91. 
 Wundt, Wilhelm, 10, 27. 
 
 Zend-Avesta, 13, 15, 21, 26. 
 Zollner, Professor, 27.