1919 1

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fur the founding cf a Cotiigt, ifi, this Colony"

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Presented "by the Author

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THE FULFILLING
OF THE VISION

A CONCISE ACCOUNT OF MANS DESTINY
WITH AN INQUIRY AS TO WHETHER SPIRIT
COMMUNICATION IS PROBABLE

By James C. Dubois

COPYRIGHT 1919
By JAMES C. DUBOIS

PRICE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS

1919
Frye 6f Smith Printers
San Diego, C-l.

A FOREWORD

Though hardly necessary, I preface with a few words to state that
the views arrived at herein have been a progressive and legitimate process,
with no attempt to strain a point or force an issue. Truth was my sole
and only object, as I had long been persuaded that nothing else could
give the spirit of man the peace that passeth all understanding.
If, then, the truth alone can make us free, those who sincerely and
earnestly desire it should feel no real apprehension at anything I have
written. It has well been said that even ugly truths are to be welcomed
if thereby we may learn to see more clearly the untruthfulness with
which we go about living.
There are many, however, who find it quite impossible to change
from firmly established, deep-rooted views and are quite content in say
ing that the old-time religion is good enough for them. It might, per
haps, be wiser if they could realize that religion is not so much an end
in itself, but rather, more or less, a blind striving towards an end, and
which is spiritual achievement.
I have no desire in the world to persuade them to forsake well-
trodden paths which give joy and satisfaction to their souls. I have
written nothing which might tend in any way to destroy their supremest
hopes, but rather to place them on what appears to me to be a securer
and more spiritual platform. The privilege is theirs to dismiss my no
tions of truth with a smile, and regard them as but another example
of the vagaries common to human thought.
But others there are who have become convinced that sectarian re
ligion cannot fully satisfy our deeper cravings for the real facts of
life, and who may rejoice in finding in what I have written much that
coincides with what they have been more or less believing. Whilst faith
may be needed when we see through a glass but darkly, yet to know our
selves more clearly as we are known, the people must have vision in order
to react instinctively and rightly to spiritual truths and to Uve harmon
iously one with the other.
Such views as have been only briefly touched upon may, at some fu
ture date, should occasion so demand, receive a fuUer treatment, until
when I would ask the kind indulgence of any possible corresponding!
reader.

The Fulfilling of the Vision

Even as Job of old cried, "If a man die, shall he live again?" so is the heart
of man ceaselessly asking the same question. For many centuries the simpler mind
of humanity was comforted by the message of the Christian Gospels and assured in
its faith by the recorded resurrection of Jesus as told by the different writers.
Scepticism has, however, wrought a mighty change, critical enquiry seeking to
undermine the whole foundation upon which the faith was built. Christianity may
still have a tremendous vogue throughout the world, a fact equally true of other re
ligions of mankind, causing one to ponder as to whether any may be more than pro
visionally true.
This latter belief is one increasingly held by those who have recognized the mythical
character underlying the Christian faith and who now realize that the resurrection of
Jesus, even though historically a fact, could mean but no more than the breath of life
restored to a body still in existence, but does not answer the more vital question, "If a
man die and his body decay utterly away, shall he live again?" In growing despair
many have allied themselves to spiritualism, or rather spiritism, in the hopes they may
have all sufficient evidence of man's survival after death, it being demonstrated through
so-called communications from the dead.
If such communications were true, it would prove that the dead awake to their
new life in more or less possession of their earthly memory, that all loves and affections
for friends and relatives left behind remain in all their old intensity. Not only this,
but the deceased retain their former sex and language, and, in some unexplained way,
are clothed in suitable garments. From whence come these clothes, or whether they
are of material or immaterial substance, we are not told, but doubtless such an import
ant detail to the sceptic may be treated as a. mere quibbling objection by the uncritical
believer. It is generally assumed by the majority of believers in a future life that existence
beyond would be much as it is on earth, with the exception of sin and suffering, these
being no more, parted friends again united to form apparently the same exclusive
cliques as rule here below. We must, however, try to ascertain if such belief would
satisfy our highest spiritual hopes and aspirations, or convince the soul's deeper
cravings. There is nothing fundamentally wrong in the belief except that it falls far
short of what our clearer-sighted spiritual teachers claim to be our final goal.
Let those who will, read carefully the essays by Emerson on "Spiritual Laws,''
and "The Over Soul." There they may learn that real sprituality overleaps all mun
dane affairs, whether such be of the heart or head, relating to deep affection, or to
intellectual attainment, and seeks its ideal in the eternal. We must come to realize
that our earthly affections are but stepping-stones to the growing demands of the
spirit. It is natural enough that those who have but lately lost a beloved child, husband
or wife, fondly hope to rejoin them in the world beyond the grave, but they fail to
comprehend the full implication. How can recognition arise, or the same affection
be in force, when the one left behind grows old and decrepit, and not only has changed
entirely in personal appearance and character, but, in the whirligig of events has be
come attached to other objects of affection, possibly supplanting in strength of those
who have long since passed away. Only too readily can the human heart change from
one love to another for us to imagine that any one affection can permanently absorb
any developing human being.
Whilst it can not be denied that many may dwell upon the remembrance of some
deceased friend for the remainder of their life, such deep-seated and prolonged sorrow
affecting their whole character and tuning it to a higher key, yet death may, deliver
them from the sad memory of their loss, permitting only the spiritual results to re
main for the enrichment of their entire nature.
We are therefore faced with another query. It is commonly asserted that we
pass through life but once for our eternal weal or woe. By what conclusive authority

is such assertion made? If Christianity is to blame for such a narrow interpretation,
then perhaps it is well that modern investigation is slowly uprooting all the old ideas,
which tend to stunt further revelations to the mind and chain the struggling spirit
to the deadening influence of hide-bound traditions.
Most thinkers err in forsaking the happy mean for some one-sided and therefore
unsatisfactory notion. Average Christians are too inclined to regard life as but ful
filling the exactions of their church and to believe that their reward will duly follow;
if not in this world, then in the next. Consequently nothing but mediocrity and com
placency can result; the spirit remaining a dumb and unstriving entity with no
outlet for its vaster aims.
Otherwise we have rampant pessimism bewailing the fearful fate of all mankind
and denouncing the appalling possible prospect of passing again through life to en
dure once more its tragedies and miseries. Many, therefore, believe with Schopen
hauer, that our highest consummation should be to conquer and subdue the "will to
live," attaining thereby the Nirvana of the Hindus.
Life most assuredly does represent a most tremendous conflict in which we all in
dividually are engaged, but in the last analysis, when we may see more clearly, where
we now see but darkly, it may be found to be hardly the appalling thing that pessi
mism claims.
How, then, can we reconcile the opposing thoughts of men and obtain some more
rational procedure by which mankind may attain that goal, the aim of all religious
teaching and spiritual endeavors?
A Christian evolutionist, to explain the evolution of spirit in man, declares it to be
the outcome of the anima of animals becoming more and more individuated through
the organic scale until it reaches completeness as a spirit individual in man.
And what then? As thus stated, if implying thereafter orthodox Christian
redemption, it has a suspicious look of the trail of the serpent in the shape of Christian
theology of predestination, whereby a few favored ones are to reap the harvest and
glory of an immortal life gained by the agonizing strifes and struggles of the mil
lions who have died before. Although generally ignored and shelved, it is a most
vital question to ask as to what becomes of all those born prior to civilization, or
even of those now outside the pale of Christian teaching who have never had the
chance to be redeemed?
Must we, moreover, believe that the awful issues of eternal life, with all its sub
lime and supernal possibilities, depend on the chance of hearing some stray words
falling from some evangelist's lips? Are we to persuade ourselves that God, in His
gracious mercy, leads some wavering soul to accept salvation, whilst another, by the
withholding of such clemency and kindness is plunged into eternal darkness?
This difficulty is, however, presumedly readily overcome by invoking the doctrine
of free-will which permits each unit of humanity to be his or her saviour for eter
nity. To discuss in any way fully the problem of free-will is not the object -of this
essay, but the writer may, however, deny unqualifiedly that the human will is free.
It is but a delusion of the mind, filling it with the glowing notion that by one's efforts
one may gain the crown of life. The notion bites the religious person with the con
sciousness of his moral aims, convincing him that it is through his own self -initiation
that he may attain the prize, the reward of all who have proved themselves worthy
to be called.
Professor William James, in one of his works, writes :
"The whole sting and excitement of our voluntary life depends on our sense that
in it things are being really decided from one moment to another, and that it is not
the dull rattling off of a chain which was forged ages ago. This appearance which
makes life and history tingle with such a tragic zest may not be an illusion."
Nor indeed may we regard it as an illusion, except in its relation to our volun
tary efforts. Only God is free, in which freedom we, as individuals, may share as
through reflection, even as a mirror may reflect whatever is cast upon its surface.
The real significance lies in the fact that our griefs and struggles arise from our
developing natures in which things must be new even to God, Himself, necessitating
constant adjustments and improvements along the line of trials and errors, as is
common in all our human doings. In our very idea of God we my swing from one
extreme to another, primarily*regarding Him as but a magnified saint, with all human
attributes, and then making him infinite, omnipotent and omniscient, removing Him
to a transcendency which cannot condescend to deal with a gross, material world,
but which apparently is presumed to run itself by means of natural laws. _
However, by placing an overruling Providence, fully competent to carry the des
tined, work to completion, yet necessitating such experimental creations as nature
shows, we may more satisfactorily trace the ways and means pursued to bring about
the spiritual development of the human race.

Few seem to realize the complex nature of man, the delicate, ceaseless adjust
ments required to secure results for the advantage of both the individual and the race.
With death lurking at every corner, with life depending upon every breath of air, it
is plainly evident that the most constant supervision must be exercised to sustain and
uphold any man upon his way.
It is a common practice with pious people to speak of a divine guidance in so
many critical periods of their lives, and equally to assume that the remainder of their
existence has somehow also run itself like nature. It should be plainly apparent that
if divine guidance be admitted at all, then all other incidents and details of one's life
must be also arranged to allow everything to dovetail one within the other and har
monize the scheme.
A man does not live to himself alone, but is part of a vast organism, in which
all mankind is involved, and as the scheme of creation must embrace the whole of
humanity we are led to enquire how each one may individually acquire his or her
highest spiritual character.
It has well been said that in matters of speculation the first and oldest opinion
is often the most, probable because common sense immediately hits' upon it. And this
is especially true in reference to reincarnation embodied in the teachings of Plato and
of Buddha, now occupying the minds of many modern thinkers. Even in the theory
of a continuous germ plasm, in modern biology, we learn how the world of thought
has ever been preoccupied with the continuity of life.
Among Western people this doctrine of rebirths has not been much accepted, the
Christian faith doubtless standing in the way, yet the system of progressive existence,
through successive lives, appears to be the only rational means to allow all finally to
reach the same spiritual level.
The present writer may at once state that he holds no brief for Buddhistic or
Theosophical doctrines, as through their system of Karma and belief in human free
will the larger purpose of God is stultified. Speaking for oneself one can admit but
the one divine agent unfolding and fulfilling the plan of the ages, with neither our
human interference nor partiality to frustrate the intended end.
Through successive earthly existences, yet possibly but a few in number, at stated
distances apart, carrying the psychical effects garnered in one life over into another,
we may increase in wisdom and moral strength. Only by such a method can we suf
ficiently explain how our greater men have arrived at their instinctive impulse for all
that is true, beautiful and good.
In the main the system can be worked out on a most equable basis, an unequal
dispensation in one life, being compensated in another, and all creatures, at one time
or another serving the burdensome offices of the world for the welfare of both them
selves and of the race.
The main drawback to this belief, to so many thinking people, is the question of
personal identity, the loss of memory of one's former doings, seeming, to them, tan
tamount to the annihilation of one's real personality. This is a difficulty more ap
parent than actual, as to a spiritual being the remembrance of mundane affairs should
be neither desirous nor made into a religious hope.
We should rather rejoice that we do ••'forget earlier existences and turn our minds
on that purer life in which nothing pertaining to earthly things should have place nor
entrance. Janus-like, we would fain face both ways, seeking yearningly after heav
enly things, yet dreading to let go the attachments of the world. Complete detach
ment must rule the conquering Ego and we may thereby learn that it is not exactly
recollections that we may need, but rather a capacity to produce the eternal ideas of
God and finding our own sofll responding freely to the divine activity in the creation
of beatific visions, the development of such a capacious power being evidently our
mission here below.
So long as we may realize ourselves as self-conscious in any life it matters not
that an earlier period is forgotten. Virtues and other qualities which we acquire are
the invisible links which bind us to our various existences, our future character de
pending on the psychical and moral progress we may formerly have made.
Edward Caird remarked that " a man's religion is the expression of his ultimate
attitude to the universe, the summed-up meaning and purport of his whole con
sciousness of things. In short it is the highest form of his consciousness of him
self in relation to all things and beings."
Standing somewhat apart and regarding sympathetically all the struggling efforts
of men to express their inner thoughts, throughout the entire world, we may come
to recognize that whilst a divine purpose is manifested in the Christian faith, yet like
all other faiths, it must gradually yield to something more in conformity with modern
ideas. Inasmuch as such a leaven of wider thought is at work within the church, it
requires no great imagination to see the change of attitude spreading gradually among
all Christian believers. 7

Christianity has done most valuable service in making the ideas of immortality
and of our divinity, through the recorded life of Jesus, of a nature that can be readily
grasped. In the belief of a future life, thus made more comprehensible, we may trace
the purpose of God, but the purpose still goes onward, and it behooves all who can
to cast more immature beliefs behind and advance to greater, deeper truths.
With the widening of our knowledge, and the accumulation of facts relative to
our psychical nature, we are becoming less beholden to theological authority on the
question of a future life, although thanks are due to the church in keeping the hope
alive amid such opposing forces.
Even though it may be said that one cannot decisively demonstrate the existence
of God and human immortality, yet the whole course of history tends to confirm the
truth of both. Doubtless the actual truth must be a revelation to every individual soul
and to be realized as true, even as one recognizes one's everyday existence.
As one advances in life, through so many disturbing elements of ceaseless hopes
and fears, there comes a time when one finds a chain of evidence, link by link, pro
claiming a determined reason in one's presence on earth. As one's vision becomes
clearer, with despair giving way to more optimistic views, religious problems yielding
up their secrets, and in feeling thoroughly convinced that some unseen hand is guiding
the race to some foreseen end, then the idea of immortality becomes an illumined
probability. As Christianity does not embrace in its scheme the dead who never heard of
Christ, and does not rationally explain how corrupt men, converted on their death
bed, attain spiritual perfection, we must seek for further means of salvation than the
Christian faith can afford.
The difficulty of preaching the Gospel to the more learned and subtle thinking
Hindus reveals the need of some basis which will satisfy the heart and mind of people
wheresoever they may be found. By combining the highest Oriental wisdom with that
of Western thought we may construct an edifice in which all thinkers may find a
common home. Such a combination would be the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation
and the Christian belief in personal immortality and the Fatherhood of God.
In a reputed interview with Mr. Edison, he was made to say that he disbelieved in
the continuity of the individuality, as with the death of the person, and therefore
decay of the brain, there could be nothing left to continue the existence. It is be
coming more and more clearly demonstrated that the brain is but an instrument to the
whole psychic nature, serving as a means, in each successive life, for extending the
area of our increasing consciousness. Life and death are processes and not terminal
events. It matters not to the real Self if the physical form decays, so long as one
may become self-conscious in each succeeding life.
Kant asserted that "the soul possesses self-consciousness after death, otherwise
it would be subject to spiritual death. With this self-consciousnes necessarily remains
personality and the consciousness of personal identity."
Such a statement as this may be somewhat premature, if Kant wishes to convey
the notion we should survive the shock of death with our faculties unimpaired and
be fully conscious of the world we had left behind, such an idea being responsible
for the fundamental error relative to communication with the dead.
In our present development we may no more coherently and connectively be con
scious at death than we are whilst we dream during sleep. It is true we may dream
rationally and wisely, but there is never a close and clear. connection between the wak
ing and the dreaming State.
This is due to the fact that it is our active, waking brain, and regarded as the con
scious mind, which connects us with this earthly life in a social way, but in sleep we
are cut off from this social environment by the disconnection of the brain with its
waking conditions. If, then, a sleeping brain forbids us to enter into comprehensible
communications with our daily thoughts and doings, then how much more would the
complete loss of that brain deprive us of any possibility of associating ourselves with
what we had known on earth.
Exactly what happens to the dead between successive births we cannot say. It
may be a dreamless slumber, or an existence paralleling an earthly sleep with happier
dreams. Yet, even as in dreams, we live in another world than the waking one of the
senses, so would death bring about the same result, and communications with friends
left behind would be neither possible nor consciously desired.
As the evidence for such communication is, to many people, overwhelmingly con
clusive, the writer can merely say that if such were positively true, then the communi
cations would be only of a nature extracted from a psychical entity, before the de
ceased had been entirely divested of its earthly social memories, this statement being
in line with the assertion often made that the so-called communications do not extend
beyond a very limited period after the dead had reached the other shore. If com-

munications were actually a fact, we might compare such as might be obtained from
a somnambulist seated at a telephone wire many miles away. The only real consola
tion would be in the assurance of survival after death, but there would be no clear
conscious recognition, on the part of the deceased, of those to whom the communi
cations were made.
Unintelligible as this world may only too often appear when we attempt to answer
the problems placed before us, yet determined brooding may reveal shining patches
of light spreading out into broader bands, with errors and delusions slowly fading
before the power of reason. It may be even urged that adherence to spiritistic phe
nomena, in any shape or form, may be as much a sign of a lack of real spirituality
as would be an attachment to weakening superstitions. In spite of the list of the
famous personages who have accepted such phenomena, it may yet be doubted whether
any one of them are men of spiritual insight, but rather appear to be men of scientific
or literary abilities, many of them in fact, at an earlier period of their life, claiming
to be materialistic in their views, with no thought to a future life. Rather we should
believe a spiritual thinking man, like a poet, is born, not quickly made, and is the
result of the character acquired by all his preceding lives on earth and so reveals him
self almost from his earliest years in his new birth.
Now great stress is laid on the communication of mind with mind without the
ordinary physical means, as in telepathy, such a means being advanced as applicable
to spiritistic phenomena, but there is always needed a physical organism, one at each
end, for results, but which organism the dead would lack.
It should be stated that so long as we live on earth in a social world we need to
be in constant touch with the physical things of nature to live coherently and ration
ally together. Out of touch with such environment, as is present in our everyday
waking moment, we are delivered over to the more irrational, even though pleasing,
world of our subsconscious self as in dreams and perhaps also death.
To speak shortly, inasmuch as we need a physical body to connect us rationally
with the social world of intercourse, so also should we require a suitable spiritual
body to enter into right social relationship with the world of perfected spiritual be- '
ings, and my contention is that humanity has not reached that desired development
where the mortal life is finally put off for immortality, the physical body being dis
placed for the spiritual for evermore. Without any such body, whether in the physical ¦
or spiritual realm, a comprehending communication by the disembodied soul seems,
to me, to be apparently impossible.
In the last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, towards the end of the article
"The Subliminal Self," there is written as follows : "According to Myers, the sub
liminal self which survives is not the normal self-conscious personality of a man,
such as is known and valued by friends, but a personality of which this normal per
sonality is but a stunted, distorted, fragment. It would, therefore, seem that accord
ing to this doctrine death must involve so great a transformation that such continuity
as obtains must be insufficient to yield the emotional satisfaction demanded. The
hypothesis would thus seem to destroy, in great measure, the value of the belief which
Myers seeks to justify and establish."
In Myers' work, "The Survival of Human Personality after Death," the inten
tion was to show the soul of man as being capable of existing independently of
the body in some super-terrestrial realm, the discarded physical body having served
as but a temporary imperfect instrument for the whole human Self.
There have been many attempts in spiritualistic circles to demonstrate, through
so-called communications from the dead, that life over there would not differ so much
as rules over here, and that the dead retain in the spiritual life most of the charac
teristics as belonged to them on earth. Even so acute a thinker as Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, in a late article on spiritualism, cannot imagine a spiritual body as anything
more than a middle-aged physical one, all persons who have passed over receiving a
certain standard body, old and young alike, so that a kind of uniform, average con
dition may prevail in the other world.
In the statement quoted above from the Encyclopedia it is sufficiently apparent
that Myers' whole argument is in antagonism to the main contentions current with
spiritists, but it may be more confidently asserted that it is strictly in line with the
doctrine of reincarnation which claims that man's full development could never reach
its culmination by a single life on earth, such development needing a complete har
mony of his psychical, moral and spiritual natures. With Emerson, therefore, we
may conclude, that whatever may be beautiful and attractive in earthly relations must
be succeeded and supplanted by what is still more beautiful, and so on for ever,
as we may well believe the soul can be trusted to the end. But it must be remembered
that God is a Spirit and all true worship of Him must be in spirit and in truth; and

the only enduring love and friendship are such as blend in a communion with God,
Himself, by perfected spirits alone.
The foregoing had been the original extent of this essay, but certain present day
controversies have tempted me to write a little further in an attempt to strike a bal
ance between the disputants in the world of thought.
The Great War has brought into such pronounced prominence the question of
a future existence, has enlarged so much the horizon of many sincere, thinking people
thereon, compelling them to seek for some wider view than their particular sect will
allow, and has in general so broadened the world's sympathy and views, that it may
prove opportune to discuss briefly a few important points relative to man's coming
destiny. Owing to the exalted light in which, in many quarters, this war has been regarded,
it has caused many a celebrity in theological and literary circles to declare, in the
most emphatic tones, that the wondrous heroism and devoted self-sacrifice that have
been revealed cannot have been in vain, and that therefore all those soldiers who
have died in the performance of such self-imposed duties have undoubtedly gained
the crown of immortality and heaven as their future home. Most theologians, es
pecially evangelists and Presbyterians of the older school, demur at this, claiming that
salvation can arise only through a belief in Jesus Christ, and all that such belief im
plies as expounded by the church.
A dilemma is assuredly presented here to those who are bound to the doctrines
of their faith, as on the one hand they are firmly persuaded that man passes through
this life but once for his eternal weal or woe, whilst on the other hand they may have
young relatives or beloved friends, who though not converted in the way they regard
essential to salvation, have nevertheless gone forth to die in the cause of humanity
and justice. Naturally the question arises as to what becomes of them after death.
Their hearts cry out for another chance for those who have so nobly and heroically
yielded up their lives to save the world from slavery, whilst their own religious opin
ions compel them to believe that the only chahce had come and gone with the refusal
to accept the tenets of their church.
Now both materialistic scientists and ecclesiastics vehemently assert that reason
must be our guiding star in all our daily thinking, yet in the most vital thing in life,
that which concerns man's future destiny, both parties often drop reason in the back
ground and are swayed either by prejudice or deep seated instincts which warp the
reason and blind the judgment.
A materialistic scientist may admiringly applaud the wondrous order and power
displayed in the stellar universe and ungrudingly admit the marvelous ingenuity and
wisdom revealed throughout all nature, but if pressed to assert that some over-ruling
Conscious Intelligence must exist beyond all phenomena, to maintain the ceaseless
regularity and order that we see, he instantly denies it, and if urged to express his
true convictions falls back upon blind chance and boldly states he could see no reason
why chance should not have produced our universe as well as any other thing. But one
may surely ask how chance alone could have initiated anything whatsoever, far less the
Cosmos as we find it, i. e., from mere chaos.
Ecclesiastics, on the other hand, whilst united in their belief in an over-ruling
Providence merciful and loving to all created things, omnipotent and all-knowing,
holding the suns, stars and planets in the very hollow of His hands, yet cling un
reasonably and passionately to an out-worn faith as presented in their formal creeds,
refusing to listen to the call of reason, if such reason might cause them to abandon
doctrines and beliefs they have hugged to their bosom all their days, and compelling
them to readjust their religious views more in accordance with man's enlarging vis
ions and conceptions.
Despite, however, all the bitter antagonism of the church against the inroads of
science throughout the past centuries, it has been gradually forced to modify its
creeds and dogmas. Not only have such modifications arisen in perhaps every Chris
tian church, but it may further be stated that in the Anglican there is now left in
tact absolutely not a single dogma that once formed the very marrow of the Christian
faith. One leading pillar rejects the Virgin birth, another the divinity of Jesus, whilst
many decline to accept miracles owing to a deepening instinct of their ethical un-
worthiness, and as a climax there has lately been published a work entitled "Founda
tions of Christian Belief," written by eight Oxford scholars, all shining lights of this
particular church, the third essay of which declines to accept the resurrection story
for several reasons which the writer gives. He _ claims that the physical resurrection
is a scientific impossibility, as the material particles which once formed and consti
tuted a human body are constantly changing and that such actual particles when we
die and are laid in the grave, enter, through the indirect medium of vegetation, into
the composition of other human bodies. For this reason he claims that such idea of
10

a physical resurrection is gradually being abandoned, and any difficulty that arises
in the story of Jesus he can only regard as due to visions on the part of those disciples
who declared they had seen him; the assumed appearances being retold until they
became accepted as actual facts and materialized into the stories of the Gospels.
Now such fatal admissions as these represent more than mere straws on the cur
rent of thought. They reveal rather an awakening to the deeper truths of life. It
is the letter that killeth, but the spirit that giveth life, and until we discern more
clearly the spiritual facts underlying all our creeds and dogmas, we are yet in our own
sins, not having cast off the cloak of ignorance for the bright robe of sanity and
knowledge. It is, moreover, a significance worth noting that these assertions emanate
from guiding members of a denomination that claims a direct lineage from the Apos
tolic Church, and it requires no great foresight to believe that at some future date
all lesser sects may realize the need of spiritualizing more fully their own particular
church. To return, however, to our problem as to what happens to heroic, but unrepent
ant, souls at their death on the battlefield, this is a matter that has a far wider range
than is generally recognized. It concerns mankind in the mass, of all those people
who never heard of Christ, of all those millions of people who died in far off lands
entirely ignorant of the Gospel and all that it denotes.
I can remember when barely more than a lad, and in the emotional days of
adolescence, being attracted by a certain religious belief most exclusive in its nature,
in which but very few finally were saved, all others eternally to be lost.
But as the novelty wore off a wiser reflection caused me to ponder the matter
more thoroughly in my mind. Many a time I would find myself regarding certain
relatives and friends with the thought that as they had failed to accept the particular
salvation as had seemed so essential to me then they could never hope to reach the
Happy Isles. Such an ending to their struggling lives and aspirations made me shrink
within myself until I could readjust my mind to a kinder and more rational con
clusion. And yet there are numerous Christian people, preachers, evangelists and laymen,
who can continue all their days to regard with complacency, if not repressed satis
faction, the idea that many of their dearest friends who, dying unconverted, must at
last be cast into the pit of eternal loss. With such a future in store for those they
had otherwise esteemed and loved, it is a wonder they can eat, drink and make merry
in the normal way they do. It was Jonathan Edwards who spoke of the ransomed
souls looking over the ramparts of heaven and gazing down on the damned ones
in hell suffering in awful torments, and becoming filled with rapture on realizing what
they had themselves escaped.
The truth of the whole matter is that such thinkers have no real imagination.
They cannot clearly visualize what they so often attempt to describe in exaggerated,
terrifying, fashion. At bottom they have no clear conception of what they so often
speak and preach. Their ideas are hazy, vague and very indistinct. They deal mostly
in words and emphasis, but with no clear notion as to what they really wish to say.
In fact, nature herself gives the lie to their belief, as she is never cruel beyond a cer
tain measure, unconsciousness ensuing when pain goes beyond a certain limit.
Above all things we must keep our thinking clear-cut and altogether rational, not
shadowy and of a kind that has no precise and definite meaning even to ourselves.
At any rate, as I grew older and came more and more in contact with the vast
population of a mighty city, observing the various types of people with their different
ways of thinking and acting, being born and bred into conditions over which they had
no real control, yet striving as best they knew how to play a manful part, it was
gradually forced on me that an all gracious and infinite heavenly Father could not
have brought so many countless human creatures into existence, to toil dully and
wearily merely to make a bare living, mostly ignorant of better things, being without
the least opportunity of understanding spiritual joys, and then to let them die with
out any hope or possibility of attaining what religion tells us are the only things
worth having.
I would watch the workers at their various tasks, grimy mechanics in the shops,
laundry girls in heated rooms, seamstresses bending over their sewing machines, pale
clerks and girls in stores and factories, and I would ceaselessly ask myself as to
their purpose on this earth, if certain doctrines could be proven to be true.
According to the interpretation of so many sectarians, only a comparatively few
will finally see salvation, the vast majority of mankind otherwise being consigned either
to eternal death or the eternal tortures of a hell. That a belief in hell still survives in
its old lurid form is sufficiently evidenced by the assertions of a present day evangelist
who has the endorsement of nearly every orthodox minister in the various cities
where he launches his campaigns. There can be no alternative, according to this
11

preacher and his adherents. It is either a heaven or a hell, ineffable eternal bliss,
or sufferings beyond anything that one may endure on earth.
Now these men may call themselves religious, but they can be neither humane
nor spiritual in nature. To declare that they are only abiding by what the Word of
God asserts is merely a confession of spiritual darkness ; a complete failure to com
prehend the deeper meaning conveyed in all religious thought. Why, for instance,
should such men have denounced so vehemently and strongly the atrocities committed
by the Germans in this war when, by their own sayings, they commit their own
brethern to cruelties even greater after death. If these preachers appeal to the Bible
as their authority, then the Germans can point to the orders laid upon them by their
lords, masters and professors. In both cases we are faced by men who have not
learned the higher order proceeding from the light within their own soul.
So long, therefore, as men are unable to realize and resist all brutal or heinous
ideas, they are not yet free Sons of God. Theological doctrines do but serve to point
the way in spiritual development, whereas the actual vision is only for him who can
see it. In short, the whole history of humanity is so intricate and involved that even
the broadest and humanest treatment cannot decipher for us too readily the meaning
for the existence of all mankind and the future welfare of the whole.
As far as lies in our power we must endeavor to take more of a cosmical view,
a view from some superior height of thought wherein neither prejudice nor narrow
engrained opinions can influence nor warp the judgment. We must seek to detach
ourselves from our common hatreds, notions and dislikes and strive to regard hu
manity from the exalted situation of a transcendental loving Father, who has no
other intention than to bring all His created children into the likeness of Himself,
being affected by no petty, mean and narrow interpretations of our daily sins and
errors as is current between ourselves, judging as we mainly do from the standpoint
of our own interest and general development of character. With Tennyson we may
perhaps also come to say: "That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroyed.
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God has made the pile complete."
Just how such a happy consummation could be reached was a problem that vexed
me long and sorely. At any rate I had, even early in life, realized that the authority
of the churches was built upon no more solid foundation than that which any earnest
student might determine for himself, seeing how the Christian church is divided
against itself, with' no real unanimity on any single doctrine. That the church and
Bible may be divinely guided and inspired may most readily be granted, but with the
understanding that they both represent a progressive revelation of God's purpose and
that the purpose still moves forward, and to believe that the last word has even now
been spoken is to stultify every new discovery and inspiration within the human soul.
Seeking, therefore, some broader and more intelligible decision as to how man
kind could ultimately be saved, the answer, on one momentous night, flashed across
my mind as in a burst of wondrous insight. For, so it seemed to me, the revelation
keeping me awake the whole night through as I fitted the magic key into one trouble
some lock and another, and finding once insoluble problems becoming most marvel-
ously clear and transparent.
As my readers will at once conclude, reincarnation was that key. At that time
I had read next to nothing of Hindu or Theosophical literature, and of high philos
ophy and metaphysics I cannot recall having then read a single book. Although I
must have read, in a general sense, of the theory in relation to this doctrine, yet it
was but in a diffident and disinterested way owing to the fantastic and absurd ideas
with which it was so greatly interwoven. The idea itself, however, thus suddenly
introduced, must have been latent within my mind, coming into full fruition at the
time appointed.
Fruitful indeed as the doctrine subsequently proved to me, as more obscure phases
took on more illuminating aspects, it was rather surprising to find even experienced
writers,' whether adherents or opposers, treating it in a most unreasonable or facetious
way. Believers, for example, often write as if reincarnation meant a perpetual living
and dying, the disembodied soul immediately, or very shortly after death, entering into
another physical body waiting to receive it, and carrying with it a more or less clear
recollection of its previous life. Perhaps Kipling wrote truer than he thought when
he says '' "We shall rest and faith we shall need it-
Lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of all good workmen
Shall set us to work anew."
12

We might, however, except young children, dying perhaps, as discipline and salu
tary lessons to their parents. Also might be included those on a low scale of intelli
gence, as where the span of consciousness is small, an increase of incarnations would
make but little difference to the still unthinking Self.
Opposers on the other hand flippantly enquire as to what animal one may in a
future life possess. Perhaps a toad, or a cat ! This is merely after the style of Bishop
Wilberforce enquiring after the Simian ancestry of Professor Huxley in their fam
ous debate several years ago.
All this irrelevance only serves to cloud the issue and reveals no sincere and
honest attempt to solve the deeper problems of life. Any theory which will answer
the greater number of disturbing questions is surely to be preferred to any dogmatic
statement which answers rationally none at all.
Evolution is one such theory, displaying as it does the steady growth and de
velopment of all living things from the primordial chaos, and is merely an extension
to the past of just what we see happening every day. The Genesis story of instan
taneous creation of a man and woman awakens at once to every present-day, think
ing mind the most preplexing and unanswerable of questions.
Every parent knows the helplessness and ignorance of every new-born child, re
quiring the utmost care in its up-bringing and tuition, and yet our presumed first
parents were born full-grown, able to conduct the entire business of life without the
least instruction, and capable of conversing freely in a language they had never learned.
To overcome this last objection, a Scripture enthusiast of the old order, main
tained that angels from heaven taught Adam and Eve the art of speech. One can do
nothing with this type of mind, but must leave such to their own devices. It is not
truth they desire', but rather a hankering after old habits of thought.
Spiritual evolution claims, however, that at a certain period of life's history, when
man's ancestors had reached a certain physical and mental stage, and when the em
bryo in the sub-human body had reached a certain growth, human souls, or sparks
of the divine nature, became attached to such embryos and we have what may be
rightly called the Creation of Man. The differentiation thus arising between the first
human being and the highest animal type, its immediate ancestors, might therefore
supply the missing link of Charles Darwin. Thereafter man would be man, with no
possible return to that from which he sprung.
Now, reincarnation is another fruitful theory, as it helps us in a way that no
other plan of salvation can even remotely succeed in doing. Apart from what I
have mentioned, in the earlier part of this essay, as to its large acceptance with other
nations of the world, there may also be added such modern names as Goethe, Less-
ing, Herder, Balzac, Tennyson and Coleridge, with a whole host of lesser lights,
giving the doctrine their more or less full sanction. Even such a sceptic as David
Hume claims that metempsychosis is the only doctrine of a future life that philosophy
can hearken to. Moreover, in the Church, such men as Bishop Mercer of Tasmania
in his "Larger Hope," and Mr. A. C. Benson, in one of his books, both entertain
the notion, the latter indeed only hesitating because he fears the acceptance might
interfere with the doctrines and beliefs of the Christian faith. Moreover, might be
included so noted a philosopher as Professor James Ward, who, in his "Realm of
Ends," ventures to explain why the idea might most probably be true.
On the other hand, however, we have the assertion of H. G. Wells, the English
novelist, that the transmigration of souls without a continuing memory is to his mind
utter foolishness, the imagining of a race of children. But one may perhaps discount
his authority, as in one of his essays he denies any future life at all to the individual.
It is only now in his maturity that he is arriving at the notion that a living God
exists, as in his "God the Invisible King," and who has us in His thought and care.
But as Wells still declines to admit any individual immortality, either for himself
or others, his words of would-be condolence and consolation become devoid of sub
stance and can have no real appeal to the majority of suffering mankind. With due
deference to his keen, incisive, intellectual powers we must, however, conclude that
he has not yet been fully born to that deeper knowledge of the soul, often revealed
to little children and hidden from the wise. The child may be the spiritual father
to the man, the Kingdom of God visioned in early days, becoming incorporated into
its very being throughout the coming years. Intellect of itself may become destructive
and needs to be reinforced by spiritual qualities to give it a true and trustworthy
character. Returning, however, to the query as to the future fate of the individual soldier
dying on the field of battle, perhaps sacrificing himself to save another, or whilst en
gaged on some special duty he had voluntarily taken upon himself. It goes without
saying that many a religious man, hitherto bound to his creeds and doctrines must
be greatly embarassed to give any clear and definite decision. Either he must admit
13

that he may be wrong in his narrow interpretation, or seeking to shelve the ques
tion, asserts that God may do as He thinks fit, thus tacitly assuming there may be
other means of redemption than lies within his ken.
. Now it may be broadly stated that the soldier, either at home or at the front,
is not over-religiously inclined, his mind being too engrossed on the practical work
he may have on hand. The religious attitude of which one may often read may be
ascribed largely to the activities of such religious bodies as the Y. M. C. A., Salva
tion Army, K. of C, army chaplains and such sects as may operate within the mili
tary zone, and should not be regarded as the outcome of any spontaneous awakening
of the minds of the soldiers to religious things.
Testaments have been handed out by the thousands, meetings have been cease
lessly held whenever opportunities may offer, army officers, piously inclined, have
sought to influence their subordinates into prayerful and reverent attitudes, and in
one way or another one is led to believe that the average soldier bears himself like
one of Cromwell's Ironsides, with a prayer ever on his lips and with a stern and holy
purpose inspiring all his actions.
Yet shrewd observers of the average soldier, whether Tommy Atkins, or the
Yankees, are not too ready to admit any great religious trend of thought, although
on the eve of any great engagement most of the men may become more thoughtful
and more inclined to listen to religious counsel, such an attitude passing away as soon
as the struggle may be over and a more normal condition prevailing in the trenches.
It is idle to insist that the recurrent heroism, courage and self-sacrifice involved
result from a religious attitude, as these virtues in war have always been present at
all periods of man's history, and arise rather from some deep instincts in man's na
ture revealing themselves with fighting men, even as mother-instinct will endow the
most timid of women with courage and resolution to defend their young at the ex
pense of their own lives. The soldiers do not necessarily wish to die in their sacrific
ing acts. They take a sporting chance as it were and doubtless are not over-imagin-
atively endowed to realize the actual risk they run.
We may, however, grant that there may be more idealistic souls, prompted by the
highest motives, who see in their enlistment in this war a blow for righteousness, a
struggle for good over evil, for the attainment of which their own life is not worth
a moment's thought. But.it would be folly to blind ourselves to the fact that what
ever virtues war itself may bring forth, yet actual participation in a hand to hand
struggle is only too liable to destroy all the finer sentiments in a man, reducing him
to an infuriated savage beast whose only desire is to kill, kill, kill.
The fighters themselves so express themselves, and such a bestial tendency is not
conducive to those spiritual qualities for which the saints have ceaselessly contended,
striving hourly, daily and yearly for long periods of time to acquire in taming all evil
thoughts, beating down in every shape and form those unruly, ugly passions, which
war, disguise the fact as we may, brings instantly into sharp and sudden prominence.
No, no, it cannot be. No man snatched suddenly by death all aflame with the
lust and carnage of battle, with the blood of his fellow-men fresh upon his hands,
with hatred and madness throbbing but lately in his mind, can be considered as a fit
candidate for the holy courts of heaven and all that such connotes.
The solution, however, may not be so difficult would we but stretch our vision
and enlarge our view of man's redemption. In these young idealists, sacrificing their
lives, we may see examples of the scriptural assertion that one must die to live, i. e.,
the baser self must die to be born again to a higher and nobler life.
Self-sacrifice is not something peculiar to these present days, but has revealed
itself throughout man's entire history, in days of peace as well as in times of war.
But no sudden generous impulse to die, if need be, can immediately lift one to the
supreme spiritual condition which all saints and mystics, in all ages, have emphatically
declared can be attained only through years of ceaseless spiritual strivings and en
deavors. Could man be made a perfect being in a single act of creation the world
of strife and struggle as we find it, would have been an unnecessary and even cruel
infliction upon the human race. But we are now growing wiser, and are learning
more and more clearly the ways and methods requisite to bring man to that final
condition of spiritual development which is evidently his destined end. To speak
candidly, it is this rigid attitude of religious thinkers in accepting so literally the Bible
stories which force other thinkers into atheistic and materialistic ways of thought.
Unable to harmonize the findings of science and rational thought with those of
orthodox theology these men choose rather to adopt a negative position than to ac
cept what they regard as merely the invention of man. But man of himself can in
vent nothing. He can only abide by the decisions of his mind, and if thereby religion
has been forced upon his notice, it is only right that reason should demand
the reason why. 14

War has undoubtedly had its evolutionary uses, but it is becoming more and more
insisted upon that man is now spiritually outgrowing it, so that it should no longer
find a lodgment in his thoughts and actions. Indeed the very persistent cry that this
present vast conflict must be waged to a finish, it being war on war, so that war may
finally be put down, is an eloquent testimony to the fact that wiser-thinking men are
convinced that war, with all the hideous barbarism and outrages following in its
wake, must be trampled under foot to insure to mankind the permanent peace and
tranquility of spirit which it at heart craves so much.
So the question then arises, what becomes of those who, sacrificing themselves
for the common good, have not otherwise prepared themselves fbr an immortal state
of being? Now, as I have said, this query has an exceedingly wide range and would
practically include the whole human race, as there must be few indeed, if any, who
have fully realized the whole purport of the spiritual life and are thoroughly cleansed
and purified to enter therein. What would the spiritual life mean, in its divinest
sense, to an Australian Bushman, or an African Pygmy, or the lowest European type,
even though converted to the Christian faith? Mere conversion cannot change those
of low mentality into high-minded spiritual men.
Many attempts have been made to solve the problem, such as purgatory, an in
termediate state, or a plurality of worlds wherein all imperfect humans may rise
from better to better until they become perfected into everlasting life.
Purgatory, or the intermediate state, would imply a disembodied condition, in
which almost countless souls exist in isolated loneliness, working out their redemption
in brooding contemplation, cut off from all rational intercourse with their fellows,
solving all moral problems and spiritual perplexities from within themselves, even
as a spider spins its web. The Greeks, themselves, in their own conception of some
such gloomy abode for the departed shades, had so much healthy horror of it that they
claimed life on earth, in the humblest position, was to be preferred by far.
We cannot, here on earth, build up within ourselves any rational course of thought
and behaviour without intercommunication and practical endeavor, so we have no
right to presume it would be otherwise when the physical organism be thrown off, and
the still undeveloped Self be left, in a disembodied state entirely to its own inner
resources. To speak of other lives in other worlds is mere vagueness and vain imagery. If
such other worlds imply material worlds like our earth, then somewhat similar con
ditions must rule there as here, people being born and developed as we see happening
now with us.
This is only removing to another sphere what is equally possible on earth. We
have no guarantee that any other world in the universe would be any better fitted
to develop fully a human self than the one it had but lately left. It would seem,
therefore, that if our own earth can fulfill all conditions needed, it would be a mere
superfluity to introduce another world on the physical plane of being. Moveover, the
object of this essay is to show that mankind is a unity and should retain its solidarity,
even though its various members be in different stages of individual development, so
that when the last curtain be drawn upon the stage, we should not be scattered
throughout stellar space, but be assembled together on the one common ground of
earth. But if it be impossible for the earth to hold all its created human souls at one
time, — which is not absolutely necessary, and concerning which I have suggested an
alternative in the last page or two — yet, in returning in new incarnations all mankind
would benefit from those rarer spirits by reason of their higher development and
spiritual knowledge.
But is it quite impossible for this earth to contain and sustain at one time all
humans who have ever lived? Let us see by a few rough calculations.
This earth consists of some 55,000,000 square miles of dry land, a certain amount
of which is unsuitable for human needs, but which loss could be largely counter
balanced by great reclamation projects of soil recovered from swamps, deserts and
inroads of the sea. As to density of population, we find that it varies from 743 people
to the square mile in industrial Saxony to 317 to the square mile in Japan and 270
to the square mile in agricultural China, whilst Belgium before the war had over
600 to the square mile.
With improved methods of housing, town and country equally agreeable to live
in, free transportation, scientific intensive cultivation, and waste of food reduced to
a minimum, it might not be absurd to believe that this earth might maintain some 12
to 15,000,000,000 people.
At first thought it would seem that vastly more than fifteen thousand millions of
people must have lived and died from the very beginning. Perhaps not.
15

Now man's literary history goes back only some nine thousand (9,000) years,
whilst archaeology can only definitely trace man's record to some 20,000 years, beyond
which all is mere conjecture and surmise.
By the discovery of a few isolated fragments of human bones some scientists have
attempted to extend man's origin back some 400,000 years. Considering, however, the
immense advance man has made in the last fifty or sixty years, and even more, the
civilization which has arisen within the past ten thousand years or so, one may surely
ask what was man doing in all those 370,000 years or so prior to the time when more
or less authentic records reveal his presence here on earth?
Convinced as one may be that an increasing purpose runs throughout man's de
velopment, one may be warranted in refusing to accept any such belief in regard to
man's first appearance. Until more trustworthy evidence be forth-coming one may
disregard these extreme claims of science, and one may not be far wrong in fixing
man's age at some 25,000 years, which would mean some 250 centuries. With three
generations or so to a century, 30 years being a generation, and each individual soul
having lived some two or more times, according to individual development or age at
death, it may not prove impossible that the total number of created souls may not
have exceeded some 12 to 15,000,000,000. Man's ancient history only records a few
largely populated centers, whilst outside the world may have been but sparsely in
habited. Originally there may have been but a few millions for many thousands of
years and gradually increasing as we now find to be the case.
God's handwriting is not so clear that all who run may read, but rather He writes
in cryptograms and riddles which man must unravel for himself. We know not how
nature may have worked in the past, nor how by means of earthquakes, landslides
or cataclysms of some sort or other, she may have imbedded remains of man in old
strata for man's future bewilderment and solving. Enigmas in every field of thought,
whether science, philosophy, spiritism or religion, are for the testing of our spirit.
To those to whom spiritism makes no spiritual appeal it becomes encouraging to
learn, through earnest searchings, how new angles of view and certain sidelights may
illuminate its dark labyrinthine passages and lead one into brighter and more endear
ing paths of truth.
Concerning religion itself we should compare one religion with another, and seek
for the esoterie meanings hidden in them all to arrive at the spiritual truth. There is
a close parallelism between the lives of Zoroaster, Krishna, Buddha, Mithra with that
of Jesus of Nazareth, and not only are certain forms of worship as baptism, con
firmation and Eucharist supper, more or less common to most religions, but there are
also mentioned other crucified saviours than the one described in the Christian Bible.
There have even been attempts to substitute what is styled an ethical Christianity
for the old miraculous one of the Evangelical churches. It may be said that any such
liberal Christianity is not Christianity at all. To introduce merely a human Jesus
could be no true worship, for admire and revere a man as one may, yet worship in a
religious sense would be impossible, at least to the intelligent.
A writer in the Monist, a Chicago magazine, has put the whole matter very suc
cinctly when he states that liberal Christianity could not be accepted as it does not
go far enough, for it gives no place for the divine plan in the Christian faith. In
short the supreme question is not whether Jesus was really an historical character
or not, but rather what. the religion actually means to mankind-
The life of Christ as given in the Gospels must be regarded as an organic part
of a divine plan for the redemption of man. Christianity was not known by that
name before the destruction of Jerusalem A. D. 70, and the Christianity as we know
it is largely the Christianity as interpreted by the Apostle Paul. What has been gen
erally accepted for Christianity, as understood by the church, does not rest so much
upon authentic history as upon subjective experiences of its leading advocates and
recorders. The last days of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, are an allegory, a dramatised
narrative, with a profound spiritual meaning. It is most significant to note that whilst
there were secular historians in the days of Jesus, and that historians write history
independent of religious bias, yet outside the Christian records beyond a spurious
reference in Josephus, there is not a single word elsewhere referring to the existence
of the most wonderful and stupendous character which ever trod the earth; that is,
if we were bound by Christian literature. It is simply inconceivable that so divine
a person, so unparalleled in the annals of the world, could have lived, performed in
credible miracles, risen from the dead, and all this happening in a civilized community,
and to be further recognized as the Messiah of the human race and so recognized and
esteemed by only a few ignorant fishermen and a sprinkling of less illiterate disciples.
Necessarily the story as commonly accepted is now more rationally understood
to have been so described for the benefit of simple minds unable to grasp the more
16

subtle inner meaning. The real plan, existing in some form or other, in most religions,
was the idea of God incarnated in man. The Creation was the Calvary of Deity. The
Cross is the deeper significance, as the divine sufferer was God Himself who, in creat
ing the universe, sacrificed Himself for it, laying down His purer life in the universe
of matter and form. This Cross represents the greatest of all sacrifices, and as such
has been regarded as eternal and timeless, or at least endures so long as mankind
is unredeemed. The influence or tradition of Jesus was apparently so great among his leading
followers that they could only express what they felt about him by taking advantage
of what the mystery religions said about Adonis and Osiris, who were considered as
earlier saviours of mankind. From thence arose the dogmas of the church, which
developed swiftly and spread throughout the land wherever Christians could be found.
The Christ myth is really a myth from beginning to end, taking its rise from the
Gnostics, who antedated Christianity. The Gospels were originally intended as sym
bolical of inner meanings, but which the church, as spirituality declined, interpreted
literally, thus causing much confusion in thought.
Referring to the doctrine of immortality it has been said by a competent author
ity that such doctrine has become a dogma to be accepted on faith, and the obligation
of raising it to positive knowledge is implicitly or expressly disavowed.
This seems rather a strange statement to make, as it had always appeared to me
that the church had done its utmost to convince its adherents that resurrection from
the dead implying immortality, was positively a fact as evidenced in Jesus Christ and
the promises of the Scriptures.
On the other hand, it is not yet a scientific fact, and for the wisest of reasons.
Were it accepted and believed in as a mere matter of course it would mean compara
tively little to the majority of mankind, who would regard it as no more significant
than a continuity of their existing life, and which latter fact may give rise to no
wonder at all. The final truth is therefore kept in abeyance as a star to be attained
by individual thought and effort. The suspense is intended to keep the soul active
in pursuit, to inspire the mind and keep it constantly keyed up to more and more
endeavor, to rouse the expectation to more and more searchings of the spirit, and
to awaken each individual to a full realization of its own duty in deciphering this
cardinal mystery of life and thought. There can be no vicarious salvation, and un
less one can rise in one's own self-hood to the heights of spiritual attainment, he is
yet in his sins of ignorance and moral deficiency.
In the foregoing I have tacitly implied that reincarnation on earth would supply
all rational answers as to what happens to departed souls. Could one have open
. access to the minds and lives of people, one might readily ascertain that heaven, hell
and purgatory can be just as fully lived here as is assumed to happen in a future
state, so that the Scriptures can be said to be actually fulfilled when rationally inter
preted. Even many a literalist is inclined to believe that punishment would not be
eternal but merely age-long, which is just what may be endured in any rebirth on earth.
Evangelists and clerics are perfectly ready to believe if they can convert sinners
even on their death bed, then such need not be cast out for their transgressions. As,
however, their own influence to convert ceases this side of the grave, it would often
seem as if they wanted no one saved unless they could themselves have the credit for
the saving. But God may have far more reaching plans than may be generally ac
cepted. As to the atrocious deeds done in the name of religion, all history only too graph
ically describes. Even our greatest reformers, in their zeal for God's purpose, could
not carry out their work without the utmost bigotry, persecution and intolerance, as
witness John Calvin in his conduct towards Servetus. Both Luther and Knox dis
played symptoms of the same ugly traits.
Moreover, what can one say of the spirituality of a church, claiming to hold the
keys of heaven, which yet could produce and sanction such an iniquitous institution
as the Spanish Inquisition. Such claims as this, or any a church may make, may be
expedient in the divine purpose to discipline and instruct a people by authority, but
the only key to the spiritual life is the illumination within each man's or woman's
soul and nothing else can save us.
Spiritual attainment is something positive in its nature, comprising the highest
humaneness and pure and lofty ideals, and cannot be gauged by those who can only
think of heaven in terms of creeds and social cliques, and religion as a cause for
contentious arguments and disputes.
Truly has it been said that man makes God after his own image and paints heaven
in accordance with his own desires. So warriors would fain believe that, in the after
life, they would mingle with warriors, recounting their bloody deeds, artists fraternize
with artists, poets with poets, and each one with his kind. It would not be more
17

grotesque to say washerwomen also with washerwomen. Well might Jesus have said,
"Ye know not what spirit ye are of."
Yet, as a matter of fact, reincarnation itself may follow some such procedure, the
reborn Ego taking up its new life largely in accordance with the ideals and aspirations
only partly developed in the former existence. Or it may be that the reverse may be
true that those who have done evil in the one life may in the next undergo the very
torments of hell, as we may realize is what happens to so many unfortunate humans
on this earth. Herein again we may see the Scriptures fulfilled as in the parable of
the rich man and Lazarus, their material positions being reversed in a new incarna
tion in accordance with the manner in which they had behaved in a former one. But
let us not forget, however, that punishments and afflictions are intended to be cor
rective and for spiritual development and not arbitrarily punitive as a judgment from
an angry God. Neither in the physical nor moral realm are our errors or misdeeds
forgiven until we learn to act wisely and uprightly. Nature overlooks no breaking
of her laws, but punishes us in her own good time for any infringement that we make.
The same holds true in . the moral realm, and until we cease to act immorally we
must suffer for our ignorance, as after all it is only ignorance or perverse intelligence
that persuades us to act in immoral ways.
Whether we sin or err knowingly or not makes no difference to nature. Her
duty is to teach us to obey her laws, and this we must learn to do undeviatingly, no
matter how long the time may be. Apparently it would often seem as if many an
erring sinner might escape the consequences of misdeeds, but this can never be.
Sooner or later the full measure is exacted, and it is owing to this inevitable Nemesis
that follows which should check us in any thoughts of vengeance. "Vengeance is
mine, I will repay" saith the Lord, and it may be doubted whether any efforts of ours
could surpass the overwhelming misery and terrible distress which God, in his own
right judgment, may visit upon a sinful man for the redemption of his soul.
This view, however, differs from Karma as blind fate differs from Providence, as
Karma operates by the mere chance of man's feeble and uncertain will, whilst my
view introduces God as the sole origin and supervisor of all nature's doings.
With regard to the theory itself there is not a single argument against reincar
nation which could not equally be urged against every other religious belief in a fu
ture life. If the soul can exist independently of the body after death as Christianity
teaches, it can also pre-exist.
The greatest stumbling block, however, would seem to be in the matter of identity
from one birth to another. It was Gilbert Chesterton who wrote, "Reincarnation has
always seemed to me a cold creed, because each incarnation must forget the other."
This objection is similar to the one uttered by H. G. Wells, but both these writers
treat the matter from a purely intellectual standpoint, which is quite inadequate as
concerns the psychic or spiritual life. The intellect can only reason about things which
come within its own experiences, and if certain experiences are denied us, merely
denying them can in no wise prove their non-existence.
I would, therefore, wish to say that though reincarnation can not be proved to
satisfy another, yet, like a belief in the existence of God, it may take on so sure and
rational a footing in one's mind that it supplants every other belief that one may
have held.
Both Chesterton and Wells have doubtless lived well-rounded, comfortable and
keen-thinking lives which may have proved to them well worth while, so they might
regret to learn that all their mental gifts standing alone might perhaps avail them
little, seeing that a new incarnation would deliver them into a fresh order of things
when anything might happen. But this may depend on one's soul and spiritual
development, and if pursuing a steady righteous course one should not need to fear
as to what the future might bring.
Yet, whatever be the main objections of these writers they appear to overlook that
what would be consoling to them would be agonizing tortures to millions of others
who even pray for death and oblivion that they may be spared the tormenting mem
ories of past humiliations, misdeeds and broken, painful careers. Happy, indeed, if
we could forget, would be the glad cry of these. Herein lies the mercifulness of this
theory, inasmuch as it delivers us from the terror of remembering so much we would
so willingly forget. ,
The existence of God, as to whether there may be a future life, and reincarnation
the method thereof, are not self-evident facts, but rather ideas planted in the mind
which we must each nourish and tend until they flourish into fruit-bearing trees for
our own sustenance and food.
In being born again, in another physical body, the fear is often expressed that
we would lose our own identity and become somebody else, thus being robbed of the
18

benefits of those qualities we may have laboriously acquired in a former life. This
reminds me of the childish ditty we used to quote one to another :
"If you were I and I were you,
And both of us were somebody else,
Who in wonder would we be?"
All this seems to imply that if we were somebody else we would have no self-
consciousness and be equivalent to nobody. It should go without saying that if we
were somebody else we would be that somebody absolutely, with all his thoughts and
feelings, just as we realize our own particular Self. But this is surely quibbling, as
we cannot have two Selves. That is the very uniqueness of the whole matter and
the key to the whole problem. The actual- sense of self-consciousness is what rep
resents our Self-hood. So long as we personally realize our own thoughts and feel
ings surging throughout our being, what more do we need?
Necessarily the problem is more complicated than thus broadly stated, but it can
not be clearly explained unless another has certain experiences to supplement what
I write. The difficulty with most people is in realizing the vital difference between
a person and the Self. The Self represents the immortal Ego and is present as con
sciousness in all our changing lives, whereas we may all be different persons even
in the one life, as is plainly evident in the variations from childhood to old age, as
revealed in our dream life, as experienced by emotional actors and actresses, and
also in anesthetic revelations, as well as by those multiplied personalties living en
tirely different lives, the one person knowing nothing of the actions of the other.
There have been several cases of men losing their entire memory and restarting life
as a mere child having to relearn everything that had been forgotten.
In one special case the patient was enabled to piece his two different personalties
together to form one united Self. So also may our various lives be found to be but
fragments of a larger whole, becoming more consciously known as the entire nature
grows and expands. We should rest assured that the same Power which binds our
consciousness together from one day to another is fully able to continue so to do
from one life to another, even though we may not clearly understand the process.
The trouble, however, is that sceptical queries are raised by those who approach
the subject from a matured outlook on life, almost as if they had no innocent child
hood wherein reflective thought had no place at all. Would they insist that such
childhood had no meaning because it lacks the rational thinking power of later years?
One may indeed be possessed of the most logical reason and profound intellectual
grasp, and yet be but a pauper in spirit as against the visions, glamor, and glorious
sense of beauty of so many gifted children. The reflective powers of the mind may
be said to form part of the objective order of human life and may be more or less
common to most men educated along somewhat similar lines, but no training or
philosophical tuition can endow one with the raptures and intuitions of youth, or the
mystical sense of our greatest spiritual teachers.
To those who know how to dream true, there may come revealing dreams which
seem to assure one that such experiences are to be preferred to any coming in our
normal waking life, with the exception of childhood, and in such incidents we may
take on a character which appears to have no real connection with our every-day,
waking self, yet giving us every satisfaction as would be possible if we were wide
awake. We realize, however, that our dream life is not continuous in its nature,
thus forcing us to conclude that such episodes are but shadows as compared to the
solid substance of our daily existence. But it may otherwise be said that if any
of our more significant dreams could be carried on from one night to another, and
reflected upon in the dream, even as we reflect with the waking consciousness, this
might be analogous to a state of mind in a rebirth.
But as it is we may learn that the whole process may be most orderly and pro
gressive, our mental development being a proportionate combination of objective and
subjective qualities in accordance with our character, disposition and requirements. We
are not all born equal into this world, neither mentally, physically, nor spiritually, nor
will any kind of training nor education make us so. Many an old man full of human
knowledge and worldly wisdom, at his death may be far less spiritually developed
than a child just, born into the world and only needing an appropriate working of
the mechanism of its brain and body to reveal its true character. The only answer
to such an anomaly is what reincarnation supplies, viz., that the child is, compara
tively, spiritually old, and has gained its larger, richer nature through former lives.
Would we but recognize the fact, this theory would seem to be the only method
by which we can progressively and consciously build up the Self, each successive life
carrying us forward a few or many steps, death then stepping in . to remove certain
hindrances to our full development, and helping us thereby to construct our earthly
19

house on a firmer and solider foundation to thus aid more swiftly the development
of the whole spiritual nature. Unless death broke the chains of deep-rooted habits
and fixed ways of thinking, many a man would become utterly stagnant and no longer
capable of growth. Nature attends to this in her own marvelous way and gives every
man and woman every wise facility to develop by degrees to their full complete
stature. Inasmuch as the race has produced its Platos, Newtons and Shakespeares
from such a lowly origin as evolution teaches, we can therefore presume that every
individual now existing may be capable of attaining the same lofty height of creative
thought, and even pass beyond into still purer regions of spiritual perfection. To
reach any such stage, however, we must forget, else pur joy could never be complete.
Inasmuch as all cultured, spiritually gifted men are not obsessed by any memory
of their lowly origin, with all the bestiality, savageness and uncleanness that such an
origin suggests, it should equally follow that the whole human race should individually
also forget so as to be on the same platform of attainment.
It must be very evident that many a man who has lived evilly all his earlier days,
and being converted later in life, would of necessity gladly forget the greater part
of his past to obtain any deep joy and satisfaction to his soul. But in any event
any possible forgetfulness can never be complete so long as the physical body and
brain function in a normal way, with vain regrets and uneasy ghosts persistenly aris
ing to trouble and vex the repentant man. Death, however, can carry out the oblivion
to the fullest detail, leaving no memory but such psychical effects as may prove es
sential to the further growth of the Self.
Why indeed should we remember a former life happening perhaps many centuries
ago, under such vastly different social conditions, and when our mental activities
might have been upon a lower grade of intelligence, minus any real reflective power.
Indeed we, one and all, forget our first or second year from birth, whilst there are
many intelligent men who cannot recall beyond their seventh year. To some chil
dren, however, the first seven years may constitute their most enchanting ecstatic days,
yet many there are who have never known such hallowed times; but we may well be
lieve that the same process which so richly endowed the former will permit the same
to others. Shut off, as it seems we must be, from remembering the details of a former life,
yet there may remain phychic vestiges of those other days which may explain how
one may more or less readily comprehend the working of a mind on a lower plane of
thought, enabling psychologists and alienists to prepare their professional reports, be
sides permitting artists to write or picture in the way they do, even though none of
these men have actually in this present life, practised such things as they describe.
We cannot very well imagine what we have not in some measure experienced for
ourselves. Children, especially, seem in possession of many peculiar thoughts or traits which
can have no definite relationship to their existing life, but would seem to refer to
some earlier existence.
This strange and even startling flash of insight as to the possibility of a former
personality may come with the strongest conviction to those who, now suffering from
some grievous physical ailment or mental disability, and perhaps in poverty all their
life, somehow sense the fact that they had once lived a freer, more satisfying life
on the material plane of being, even though the previous existence may have been
on a lower moral and spiritual plane than now is the case. ,
Our mental equipment is not a complete, ready-made thing, but has slowly evolved
by means of various contrasts in life as light and dark, hot and cold, sweet and sour,
good and bad, and so on. So also may the great change arising in a new birth, as
compared to a former existence, be the contending force needed to awaken us to a
truer, larger, knowledge of the Self. On mental states William James writes as
follows :
"One conclusion was forced on my mind at that time, and my impression of its
truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness,
rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst
all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of con
sciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their exist
ence, but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their com
pleteness — definite types of mentality, which probably have their field of application
and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves
these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded."
We may now touch somewhat on the nature of the soul itself, which by many
scientists is treated as a mere chimera, yet curiously enough they retain the word
"psychology" in studying what they would otherwise deny.
A current belief with religious people would place the soul somewhere in the
head, or elsewhere in the physical body, so that when such body dies, the soul must
20

depart. The problem remains as to where it goes. Does it still remain within the
confines of the physical universe floating about in some invisible manner in company
with an innumerable host of other disembodied spirits, or are we to believe that at
the dissolution of soul and body, the soul in some inexplicable manner flies off be
yond the physical universe, beyond the farthest star, whose light takes thousands of
years to reach our planet? How would the soul travel to cover such an enormous
distance ? We may make it as ethereal as we like, but it could not outpace the speed
of light itself. In fact, it is the new astronomy teaching us the vastness of the stellar
universe which has helped to change our former notions of a heaven, purgatory and
hell and to revise our ideas thereon.
A few years ago there was written an article in Hibbert's Journal entitled, "What
and Where is the Soul?"
The gist of the article is an attempt to demonstrate that the seat of consciousness
could not be situated in the brain, as materialistic phychology would assert, as inas
much, whilst in every act of vision the two different eyes of a person are each con
nected with one-half of the two hemispheres of the brain, we should therefore see two
distinct images of everything we may be regarding, but we know we see but one
united image. Now where, the writer asks, are the two images, from the two sepa
rate eyes, made into the one image we see as in any normal act of vision? Neither
of the two hemispheres of the brain can form the real unified image, as here the
division is only too plainly apparent. The real unity of the two images must arise
elsewhere than in the brain, and be something which must constitute some unifying
principle capable of embracing the diverse functions of the whole body under one
coalescing state of consciousness.
In seeking to learn where could be located the conscious Ego to all the activities
of the human body this writer surmises it might be even millions of miles away, at
tached by innumerable wires to the physical body, or we can even believe, with Bruno,
that the body may be in the soul which embraces and enfolds it in some invisible and
mysterious way and discarding it as the temporary body at death has fulfilled its
passing function.
Moreover, there is the fact that two stimuli applied simultaneously to sense or
gans cause a change in consciousness which is a combined effect of these two stimuli;
yet throughout, in spite of the combined effect, the two nervous processes remain dis
tinct as if in two separate bodies, out .making a combination, even as the two images
of the two hemispheres of the brain make but one unified image to consciousness.
Men of science, to save their face, explain, or rather guess, that the conscious
effect is due to a coherent blend of the different nerve actions, all consciousness be
ing the confluent tide of cell life, the cell being the only source and seat of life on
earth, and if no cells, there is no consciousness, personality itself not being resident
in any one organic cell, but in all the cells together, such consciousness and personality
being entirely confined to the physical organism alone.
And this is said in spite of the fact that all physical things are actually divided
from each other by an uribridgeable gap, according to the atomistic or corpuscular
theory. Yet scientists must say something, and such is the nearest they can arrive at.
Where we are really ignorant, any wild hypothesis may be advanced without any great
objections. If we could gain any clear conception of the nature of the soul or con
sciousness, we might be nearer the truth in admitting it to be some simple or com
plex unified thing upon which all the activities of the body might be compounded and
accepted by us in consciousness.
The brain, therefore, or rather the whole physical body, may be but a transmissive
instrument, operated by God or nature to the sentiency of the human soul, this instru
ment being analogous to the telephone or telegraph for the transmission of messages,
the real agent and percipient at the two ends of the lines being concealed from sight.
In making the brain the seat of consciousness, we are supposed to see, think and feel
everything within the brain, and nowhere else. Now, as a matter of common observa
tion, this is not so, as consciousness is not confined to the brain or body, but per
vades space everywhere outside the body.
This plain fact, therefore, would help to prove that consciousness is of the soul
or spirit, which in its sentient activity takes up the images, thoughts and feelings,
transmitted by the brain and sympathetic nerve system of the body, and combines
them into one conscious effect. In short, when we claim we feel a pain in any special
ized portion of the body, this may be actually true, as our whole body may be localized
in the soul, and we may experience the disturbance wherever it may occur. Medical
science, we know, endeavors to claim that pains are only really felt in the brain. Of
course this is simply in line with the statement that consciousness is in the brain.
21

Necessarily a great obstacle to our thought is as to where this conscious entity
or Ego can be situated. We are led to believe that our body, with all other bodies,
is situated somewhere within an almost infinite physical universe. Our souls must,
therefore, either be within this physical universe and forming an inseparable part of
it, or must be beyond it, in some different kind of a world. This last idea makes one
wonder how our body and soul could be connected through such a vast distance as
we are assured the visible universe to be.
That the difficulties are great, I will admit, but the human mind has essayed many
an ingenious contribution to the subject, and we cannot say but that any day may
bring some approximate solution to the question. For instance, we have the Hindu
doctrine of Maya, in which the visible universe is regarded as an illusion, with no
more permanent existence than may be any of our dreams, but which doctrine modern
Hindus have modified to a phenomenal or conditional existence, which is somewhat
similar to our western belief of Idealism, one form of which makes the souls of God
and of men and the ideas in them, the sole existences.
Of course I need hardly say that men of science decline to accept this, as they
claim to have traced the gradual formation of the world from nebulous star-mist,
passing through many geological ages, until it arrived as we now recognize it. Scien
tists, it seems, must adhere to their belief in what they regard as a material universe,
as thereby we are introduced to something tangible and more permanent than our own
ideas. This universe is pointed to as a standard by which we may rectify our calcu
lations and inferences. In our daily experiences it seems almost impossible to escape
from a belief in this physical world, known to us in sequences in time, as revealed in
history, in our own lives, in geology, and also as existing in space as declared in as
tronomical knowledge.
Yet scientists appear to overlook the pertinent fact that, whatever may be the
ultimate composition of matter, everything comes to us in the shape of mind, as we
can never ourselves step out of our mind in our consciousness of material processes.
If, then, all material happenings can be realized only in mind, then mind of some sort
or other may be the only permanent existence.
This is in a way what the Christian Scientists claim, but there is a fatal incon
sistency about these people which tends to invalidate their opinions on important
philosophical questions. Until their founder died they believed the physical form could
continue to live on, taking their cue from the belief in the physical resurrection of
Jesus. Found in error, when Mrs. Eddy died, these Christian Scientists sought to
enlarge their founder's erroneous statement, and claim now that it is the soul that
does not die, and that the physical survival must be replaced by that of the spiritual,
which, of course, although not so admitted, is really a refutation of the reported
resurrection of Jesus as mentioned in the Gospels. Moreover, they would make man
responsible for his own imperfect creation by declaring that man, himself, brought
all sin and sickness into the world. It is very evident that pain and evil are wrought,
like growth and decay, into the very tissues of our bodies, our very disposition and
character resulting from the play and action of our nervous system. Their idea of
Mortal Mind is but a misnomer for physical processes which man assuredly did not
create and sustain.
I can, therefore, only urge that most of our false thinking arises from the en
grained belief in human free-will. If our wills were really free, under our own con
trol, then of necessity one could voluntarily act upon one's mind and body. If, how
ever, the human will could act freely upon matter in the shape of its own body and
brain particles, why should it not also be able to affect other things, outside its own
body, by the same act of mental willing? If any individual can voluntarily produce
the locomotion of its own extended body, then why not also of some light vehicle
.standing in the roadway, or of a minature railway-car placed on a track?
It is true that there are certain mental practitioners who claim that the human will
can influence, by mental means, things outside its own body, such as the movement
of small objects. Even though their claim were true they would assuredly be in error
in believing the power came directly from themselves.
Even to formulate the question intelligibly might half solve the problem of the
connection between mind and body. Mind is presumably fluid, and according to Ideal
ism, the outward, objective things, being mental in nature should be also fluid, and
therefore amenable to mental efforts. The truth may well be that the outward world
is mental, as Idealism declares, but not of the easy and transitory fluidity that we
find our own mental make up to be, but of a far more permanent nature, bound to
gether by harmonious and well-balanced laws.
The mighty influence of fervent heat and of the electric current may be minor
effects of the mental power of a Transcendent Mind, working immanently through
what we know as nature, and sufficiently demonstratijig that all so-called matter may
22

be equally as fluid and continually formed to the shapes and figures ruling in the
world. The puzzle of gravitation, of acting at a distance, might be more easily solved
by conceiving mental action controlling the stars and planets in their courses.
In rejecting, therefore, the common notion of human free-will it can be safely
asserted that we, voluntarily, do not act upon matter at all, whether in or out of the
body. This is the prerogative of the One Supreme Mind, all visible things represent
ing the outer effects of Its will, all such objects constantly flowing and melting away
to reappear in other forms as the mind of God dictates. This mental action, as shown
in _ the outer effects, subordinate to what we know as God may- be the coherer which
bridges the gap and binds all otherwise separated things together, yet being uncon
sciously mechanical and automatic, even as science regards the processes of nature.
In claiming that the human consciousness is elsewhere than in the brain, we may
do so for four specific reasons. First, we have the requirements of religion and
spiritual philosophy in making the immortal Ego of a nature quite distinct from its
mortal body. Secondly, it would more satisfactorily explain why consciousness per
vades space, i. e., why we see things outside the body. Thirdly, it would serve to
enlighten us in the matter of vision, as to how the two images in the two halves of
the brain merge together to make only one distinct image. Fourthly, in introducing
something other than the physical brain and body, a repository for psychical memory
is made available, upon which the conscious mind can draw as circumstances will
allow. And even further, this transmission theory might be able to throw more light
on the misty subjects of somnambulism, hypnotism and dual personality, and of all
strange happenings in connection with the subconsciousness.
This conscious or objective mind forms part of what we know as the physical
or rational universe and in the individual represents the brain, whilst the subcon
sciousness appears to be rather a reservoir from which this conscious mind or brain
is fed or nourished. Through this brain and physical body we are brought into daily
and social activity with our earthly environments and fellow-men for the purpose of
enlarging the area of our entire nature, but it is to the deeper powers of the soul,
with its visions and intuitions, we should perhaps look for the greater upbuilding of
the human Ego. The soul itself seems to be a sum of enduring capacities for
thoughts, feelings and efforts of determinate kinds. It is also stated that the soul is
a system of capacities which are fully present as latent potentialities from the be
ginning of the individual life, and these potentialities are realized or brought into
play only in proportion as the brain mechanism becomes developed and specialized.
The soul would thus seem to be the organ of consciousness, of awareness, need
ing a body, whether physical or spiritual, to realize its social or spiritual connection
with the larger outer world of spirits. Having certain tendencies or faculties of its
own the soul is itself the source of that inner light which recognizes the truth and
beauty of things as the Ego spiritually develops. It would appear to deal more in
meanings than in details, grasping in an intuitive act of insight what the most tedious
explanation can only laboriously present.
Man would appear to be a combination of body, soul and spirit, and at death
of the physical body there may survive within the Ego such qualities and memories
requisite for the fuller development of the entire Self. Now science, to overcome
the obvious difficulty as to where the consciousness can be situated, pretends to con
fine it to some sort of a fourth dimension in the head.
As many may possibly know, there has been a lot of ingenuity displayed seeking
to demonstrate the possibility of the existence of a fourth dimension, though it is
not necessary to confine it to the head. Spiritists have taken advantage of its con
jectural existence and have regarded it as the abode of the departed. This attach
ment to it by spiritists is enough to condemn it, in the eyes of most scientists, as
being unworthy of serious study, seeing that spiritists have placed themselves on
record as embracing all the wildest theories to prove the continuity of our person
ality after death. Yet mathematicians of the highest order, with no tinge of mystic
ism and credulity in their nature, have given this subject their profoundest thought
and adherence.
Now a man living in three dimensional space could take any object out of an
assumed two dimensional space without the inhabitants of such two dimensional space
seeing how it was done. So it has been supposed that a fourth dimensional man
could take an object as a chair, table or book, out of our three dimensional space,
without any of us recognizing how it happened.
For instance, such a hypothetical fourth dimensioned being could take a chair
which was in a closed room, and by means of the fourth dimension, could lift it out
side the room without passing it through doors or windows. He could also take a
rubber-ball and turn it inside out, just as we might turn a glove inside out.
23

Now in a mental sense we can actually do these things. That is to say, we can
fully see that such might be done, but as I have already mentioned we have no actual
control over matter at all, yet we may conclude that such may not be impossible to
God by a shifting and movement of the particles of the articles in question, and
their former position changed. But inasmuch as the integrity of our minds, as well
as the uniformity of earth's affairs demand a conservation of what we know as na
ture's laws, such a reversal of ordinary procedures do. not come to pass, except in
dreams where such happenings do most certainly occur.
Could we, however, arrive at any conclusion in the matter we might affirm that
our consciousness or soul life .may exist in such a fourth dimension, the objective world
of three dimensions, in which we pass our physical life, being but a world of tem
porary appearances, sustained by God through methods of His own and intended for
the education of humanity for the purpose of spiritual attainment.
Now, there is a curious brain disease which causes the victim to imagine that
somehow he is detached entirely from his body, and such parts as he can manage to
see appear to him to be a long way off, and any attempt to move any of his limbs
is like trying to set them in motion as if they were automatic arms and legs he was
pulling with strings or wires.
This may be aggravated in most disturbing and distressing ways, causing the vic
tim to imagine all living creatures to be actually nothing more than physical struc
tures, behind and through which shines no rational, conscious soul, thus tending to
confirm the materialistic notion of a mechanical, automatic, physical universe. On
the other hand, the consciousness may be lifted into a pure, divine atmosphere,
wherein we can perceive loveliness and beauty for what they really are and in which
the coarse life of the physical senses appears to have no part at all.
Moving pictures may somewhat confirm the notion that the soul is not an integral
part of the body, but may be situated quite elsewhere. We know that a film is made
up of a number of inanimate pictures, but on the screen they become as natural as life.
Now, if the whole apparatus were more perfect, with an attached, accurately-timed,
phonograph, and the moving pictures shown in natural colors and in three dimen
sional space, which could be done, then we perhaps could not decide that the figures
revealed were not as much alive as the people we may meet upon the street.
It is only that nature is more perfect in her methods that we are more deluded
than by anything manufactured by man. We may pass through life as if somehow
we were closely acquainted with each other, but this may be largely an illusion. Our
bodies may certainly come in contact, but our souls or consciousness may be utterly
remote one from the other as much as if we dwelt in different planets. We may talk
of living in a common world of objects, and this is true as regards the world of form,
of which our own physical body constitutes a part, yet otherwise it may be as if we
walked alone, reminding us as it does of the real loneliness of the soul, as only at
rare times do men find themselves brought nearer to each other in kindredness of
thought. This moving picture illustration has a more significant bearing as to the seat of
consciousness than hasty thinking might conclude. In comparing other people with
ourselves we naturally presume that they all exist as we may seem to do ; that is, in
the world we judge to be around us on every side, and that their consciousness is like
unto our own consciousness and situated somewhere within themselves, as we may
consider our own to be in ourself. In short, the average thinker is perhaps inclined
to believe that he regards the world outside himself much as we may look at things
through a window in a room. People may imagine they look straight through their
eyes at things in general, without considering the complicated process needed for any
act of vision ; first the vibrations of the ether to the eyes, then the action of the optic
nerves to the two hemispheres of the brain, and then the further mysterious process
bringing about the unified image, of which I have written.
So, in the last analysis, we do not see actual bodies at all, any more than we see
the real bodies in a moving picture, as all we see in any act of vision are merely images,
pf both our neighbors' bodies and our own, transmitted along a slender nerve to
the brain to be revealed to the consciousness, wherever that may be. So the curious
result is that another person's consciousness, as well as our own, may no more be
where we may naturally judge it to be; i. e., in close proximity to the body, or rather
to the image which is all we really see, than there is any consciousness within the
animated figures displayed upon the screen. We may be as much deluded in the first
case as we actually know we are in the last.
These are metaphysical problems and are not to be apprehended without studying
metaphysics, but my main reasons for the above paragraphs are to emphasize the
relationship of soul and body, and that no adequate answer can be obtained as to
what the soul is until we can, in some measure, realize as to where the soul is.
24

In an article written by Professor Jacks on the question as to whether communi
cations from the dead be possible, he makes this pertinent statement: "May it not be
that where these deceased beings, who seek to communicate with their friends on
earth, are, there they have been all along."
Exactly what the writer, himself, may have had in mind, I, myself, cannot say,
but to me it falls into line with much that I have written, but yet with no endorsement
of spiritism. It implies to me that the soul or Ego may, perhaps always, remain in
the- one place; that is in what we have pleased to call the fourth dimension, or more
specifically the real spiritual world. So whether we exist as alive in the physical
world, or in dreams, or pass into death, the individual soul or spirit may not shift
about incessantly as we know the physical body must do when it travels from one
spot to another.
To put the matter more plainly, we may liken the soul to an individual seated at
any moving picture entertainment, the screen being represented by his own physical
body, through which all impressions of the outer objective world comes into his con
sciousness. Were we able to compare the two processes step by step, we might -learn
that the mechanical systems in the two cases may be constructed along almost identi
cal lines. In stating, then, that the soul need not move around as does the physical body,
we have some evidence in dream life, which is adjudged to represent more truly the
soul life, as in dreaming we can travel wherever fancy leads, overleaping barriers and
time without the slightest hindrance. Moreover, in claiming that the physical world
exists elsewhere than where I have presumed to believe the consciousness may be,
we have greater hopes of reconciling some of the bitter disputes in the scientific,
philosophical and theological schools of thought. A certain philosopher has already
attempted to show how any one system of philosophy always embraces some portion
more or less of any other system. Realism and Idealism may be the two sides of the
shield of truth, inasmuch as Realism may represent the world of nature; i. e., the
world of forms and energy pursuing its evolutionary course as science has declared,
whilst Idealism may be the world of consciousness, these two terms also representing
the sensible world and the intelligible world as announced by Plato.
Monism and Dualism might be similarly treated, the former representing God in
His unity and entirety, whilst Dualism would be that extended world we know as
nature, the pure mechanism of science, everything working by law and development,
and we could even say that this natural world might go along exactly as mechanical
science asserts, even though no human consciousness accompanied the movements
of the human forms, insofar as we actually control such movements.
Wavering, on occasions, in my own new found beliefs, and coming into contact
with many sorry types of men, and being sorely perplexed how possibly they could
be saved, I have at times been driven to accept the philosophical doctrine of Solipsism
not in its extreme form, but modified to accommodate certain tendencies of thought.
If so many religious and philosophical people can be content that so few might finally
be saved, I had consoled myself with the notion that only comparatively few human
beings had consciously, independently, existed, the remainder being automatons, or mind
images such as might come to me in dreams ; but, in the former case being maintained
in the phenomenal world as a rational, connected, objective dream for my benefit and
education, as well as for all predestined spirits, by the same power that sustains all
the natural events of one's existence. Yet, on the other hand, the doctrine of rein
carnation can rectify all these shortcomings of the evil and depraved, and given suf
ficient time and opportunity the worst of mankind may become all that we are evi
dently intended to become.
As to whether animals have souls or consciousness, we cannot well determine, as
personally we can decide only definitely on our own existence, and what I call a
modified Solipsism is not impossible, and a consciousness of one's existence may be
only true of those really so conscious in the Solipsistic way referred to. We might
even fall back upon the Cartesian philosophy, wherein consciousness is denied to ani
mals. It could even be true that the higher animals may have souls ; not in the per
sonal conscious sense as with humans, but that the same animal souls may be mani
fested in succeeding forms and continue to exist in an enduring form in the future
life ; as surely the future life may bear some resemblance to what we find on earth,
and birds, animals and flowers form part of that vaster City of God.
It may, therefore, be true, as has often been said, that the mass of people are not
at all interested in a future life ; or, in fact, are the least desirous of finding out whaf
happens to them after death. Now, nature has doubtless her own wise reasons for
such a strange anomaly, seeing that perhaps no one has as yet been developed to
that perfect state wherein one puts off mortality for immortality, and is at final peace
with God. Why, then, should the mass of people unduly fret concerning what to them
25

is as yet a deferred goal. Nature, therefore, in her wisdom, leaves the greater ques
tion in a way that may serve conditionally to those who feel a religious need, but
otherwise keeping it largely in the background, which whilst subconsciously leavening
peoples' thoughts is not too urgent to interfere with the general tenor of their daily
life, except with those who have become advanced and refuse to be conciliated with
lesser truths.
It has been said that either we must believe there is no God and no revelation nor
knowledge possible of Him, or that the revelation of God must be sought in the whole
process of nature and in its culminating expression in the lives of men.
As to whether God actually exists, this is a question which, as I have before sug
gested, each must individually answer for him or herself, as it is one that neither
present-day science nor academical philosophy can definitely decide. It must become
an increasing sense of knowledge revealed to the souls of one and all.
In realizing, then, that man is not a mere wisp blown hither and thither by the
winds of chance, but rather that his destiny is fully assured through the methods
pointed out, we can more clearly comprehend why so many people are so suddenly
swept away by mighty cataclysms, as tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions,
plagues, famines, and through such an overwhelming episode as this Great War. The
temporary withdrawal of human souls from earth counts as nought against the les
sons to be taught to the world at large. God works through nature in larger strokes
than we readily understand, but the very magnitude of great catastrophes may prove
far more effective in stirring the thought and morality of the world than if a similar
number of victims had perished in a series of isolated instances, occurring, as we
know, every day.
Death, itself, is not the 'painful thing we often may conjecture. Pains and tor
ments belong to life itself, from which one may be kindly delivered by death, so that
life may be gathered up again under far more favorable auspices. Why many are
inclined to regard a rebirth as a most appalling contemplation is due to the fact that
they regard such future life as a repetition of what they have already so painfully
and fearfully endured. But God keeps the reckoning, and those who have sought to
live as graciously and humanely as it was possible to be, should not unduly dread
what future days may 'bring.
That another life may prove an affliction to those now living in depravity and
sin may most certainly be true, but this may mean no more than what other suffering,
striving humans are every day enduring for their eternal good and welfare. Such
sorrows, pains and griefs are, however, but for a season and should not be compared
for a moment to the hell of theology so heartlessly bestowed by man upon his neigh
bor, nor to be likened to the Hindu and Theosophical conception of rebirths whereby
so many mentally unfortunates must die and be reborn such a great number of times,
a perpetual turning on the wheel of fate.
There may be no real retrogression to the awakened striving soul, but rather a
series of to and fro movements, yet mounting ever' upward in a spiral form, all ap
parent retrogressive actions being but backward steps to gain impetus for a still
greater advance. In preliminary stages of development perhaps no such regular moral
progress would be in force, as the Ego must first pass through many varied experi
ences on the natural plane of life before contrasting influences in the moral and spirit
ual realms can duly affect the mind. In lower races the physical organism is limited
in its scope for mental activity, thus proving that a finer and more sensitive nervous
system is requisite to carry on the development of the Self, and which would come
in a new birth.
Moreover, in regarding nature as cruel, we may doubtless be somewhat in error,
as pain does not belong to the physical world, but only to the sentient soul. The vio
lent writhings and contortions, suggesting the most fearful agony, we may largely at
tribute to automatic movements in the physical body and affecting sympathetically
far more the beholder than the victim himself. Nature has her anaesthetic, both in
taking life and when she wounds. In any dire calamity we may only too easily be
lieve that the victim who dies had suffered more than he who had survived, whereas
the very opposite may be true. Better, perhaps, a sudden tragic ending to an un
fortunate life than an unhappy living on.
But whilst we may absolve nature, in her own procedure, from any studied cruelty,
it is not so easy to do so in regard to her agent, man, for man is cruel both know
ingly and unknowingly. He glories too often in the cruelties he inflicts. He will
"gloat over the sufferings he can impose on them that he dislikes, and in one way and
another will play the part of a savage beast with the addition of realizing what
he does. So true is this that it is mere folly to gloss it over or ignore it. We can only
attempt to explain it by recognizing that there must be a psychological necessity
26

for its existence. It is even something to know cruelty for what it is. In less de
veloped periods man might commit many a cruelty without realizing it as such. Man
is not yet fully civilized, but is liable at the least opportunity to yield to all the baser
instincts belonging to his primitive condition.
How can it profit a man to denounce vehemently the atrocities in this war, who
in his own way has been just as culpable in his dealings with his fellow-man. It
might well be queried whether the late heinous deeds committed could crush more a
human soul than is caused by titled men and exploiters of labor compelling their
tenants and workers to live in filthy slums and toil painfully for long and weary hours.
But though these offences must come, it still remains true that those who commit
them must pay the price for their ignorance of the moral law.
All these various phases of cruelties we must, therefore, consider as the soul's
stepping stones, the method of approach to the sublimities of the spirit, garnering as
we may the attributes of tenderness, sympathy and pity, acquired slowly and painfully
through these ugly means.
Perhaps we may even need to supplement the Golden Rule by what we might
call the Diamond Rule, based on that gem of purity and clarity. It is not enough to
do unto others what we should desire to be done unto us, but rather we should have
an intuitive insight into another's needs and do unto another what he would desire
we should do unto him.
We may thus conclude, though often hard for us to understand, both for ourselves
and others, that, taking life on the whole, we are not called upon to bear more than
we are able, as what might be a fiendish infliction upon one might be quite easily
endurable to others of a different constitution, who indeed might often feel therein
some morbid satisfaction. Suffering, pain and tribulations we realize are our com
mon human lot, but these are for the purpose of instilling within us the virtues of
courage and endurance, paving the way to all spiritual attainment. It was a great
Russian novelist who declared that it was only his exile to Siberia which fully re
vealed to him his own soul.
Nor should we regard moral evil as aught else than God's own method of teach
ing us the blessing and glory of holiness and righteousness. Evil vitally affects only
those under its powerful influence and persuasion. Yet to the eye of God evil can
be no more real than the rot and corruption of an apple or of decaying leaves. In
the progress of time will arise a physical change proving to be a beneficial transfor
mation in fertilizing the soil, and so may man through evil learn the blessedness of
goodness. Let us remember that evil belongs to the natural world alone and man's
moral shortcomings are actually no worse than are committed by nature through all
her own actions and her varied creatures. Professor Huxley declared that "the ethi
cal progress of society lies not in imitating the natural or cosmic process, which con
sists in indifference to human woes and sufferings, but in combating it."
Our moral struggles are a result of nature's proceedings and in proportion to
our victories in overcoming natural proclivities do we approach nearer and nearer
to .our spiritual goal.
Of course all this philosophy makes God alone responsible for all the atrocities
committed on this earth, thus tending to make the perpetrators indifferent to the
wrongs they have done.
Yet such is a philosopher's privilege and a conclusion from which no true thinker
should shrink, as in no other way can order be obtained from the unruly elements in
life. It was Mr. A. C. Benson, I believe, who once wrote that it would be a joyful
relief to his troubled mind could he feel convinced that God was the origin of evil,
as evil might then after all be but hidden good and might be at last destroyed.
By comparing nature's ways with tHose of man's such a result could be readily
obtained. For instance, we may compare the torpedoing of the Lusitania with the
sinking of the Titanic. The latter tragedy was regarded as an accident or a visita
tion from God, or nature, against whose decree we dared -say nothing. The Lusitania
affair was naturally ascribed to German brutality and callousness, which actually was
the fact, as no humane or generous thinking person could have descended to the deed,
it being on a par with common murder. It revealed a state of mind, of spiritual
eclipse, in a people requiring severe corrective punishment to overcome and amend.
The very disposition and willingness of mind were evidently taken advantage of, in an
evolutionary way, for the moral instruction of the world. It is through a morally
graduated humanity that mankind at large is brought to a realization of the higher
aims of life by means of the power of good and bad examples, teaching man to seek
the good and avoid the evil.
God moves in a mysterious way His wishes to reveal, and in permitting the Lusi
tania to be sunk, He rriay have had the wisest plan in view. The whole event was of
a nature to startle the entire civilized world into a recognition of the grievous moral
27

relapse possible to man unless his thoughts are turned on God, and eventually to bring
to Germany herself the heinousness of her crime, leading, we may hope, to due fruits
of repentance. Should she wonder why she was chosen as the scapegoat in this conflict it can
only be said it may be due to her national character, her profound egotism and lack
of true democratic spirit, needing such a discipline and lesson to make her more hu
mane. Pharaohs, both as an individual and as a nation, may be used by God for the
fulfillment of His plans. But there is no injustice nor arbitrariness involved. We
all react according to our real character, and if such character be deficient we may
yield to evil promptings and thus, befall the immoral happenings in the world. But
to one whose whole heart and mind are turned to godly ways, he should believe that
God will keep him in the straight and narrow path, so that his integrity and honesty
of purpose niay be faithfully upheld.
Asking ourselves once again as to where the spiritual world may be, it might be
helpful to realize that the vibrations in the ether amount to the inconceivable rate of
40,000 millions of millions in a second. Now, such a vast number of separate move
ments in one second should at once convince us that time would be but an arbitrary
imposition on our senses. Of space the same might also be said, as to a transcendent
mind the whole physical universe must be present at every single moment, so ou/
immaterial soul, as part of God's divine nature, might no more be affected by what we
call space than these numerous vibrations are affected by what we call time.
Ere the blessed culmination to man's struggling efforts would be finally attained,
the race would be gradually reaching that federation of the world, that real society,
when the Christ in the spirit of mankind would be the ruling motive, which might be
called the first resurrection. But it must be a society with a true understanding of
spiritual values and far removed from that materialistic, irreligious, socialism, which,
seeking to destroy one tyranny, would replace it with another even greater of its own.
Nature herself would be conquered, her forces harnessed and controlled for the bene
fit of man. Disease would be eradicated, and with evil about eliminated from the hu
man mind, death itself would be the last enemy to be vanquished.
The indignation against Germany's outrages proves that we are growing more hu
mane. It is not so very long since that the highest legal talents in America were
straining every effort to condemn feeble old women to be hanged for witches, and
only some fifty years ago that a fratricidal war was waged to decide whether man
should be sold as a mere chattel, to be treated no better than a beast of burden.
But the higher purpose won. Slavery was put down, and again in this Great
War the higher purpose won, and Germany, with her mailed fist and trampling down
of people's rights, has been shown that might cannot overcome the right, nor the
rising democratic spirit of the age be subdued, when man is really learning to love
more and more his neighbor, and which may gradually increase until the kingdom of
God and righteousness be fully established on earth. Only the right can flourish and
remain, all else being' doomed to perish.
Should it be asked, as asked it has been, what is the use of exhorting men to lead
a nobler life if there is no free-will, and things will happen anyway, it may be said
that the arrangement of our thoughts may be likened to a kaleidoscope, in which a
slight shaking will entirely change the grouping or combination of the glass patterns ;
so also may a stirring appeal or warning fall like a shock upon the mind, bringing
about a new adjustment, which may transform the whole character. One should re
joice at every opportunity of making such nobler appeals, as we can never tell but
that some of our remarks may fall on good soil and produce a goodly crop.
If, therefore, we personally cannot shape events, either for ourselves or others,
yet we can form some accurate idea as to where we are in our journey of life by
watching carefully the signs and landmarks placed by those more advanced upon the
path. All this line of thought is but a full extension of the religious belief in a Su
preme Being from whom all blessings flow, and in whom we move and have our being,
and which, fully accepted in the larger meaning and thoroughly assimilated, becomes
as natural as accepting all the common blessings of life; the food we eat, the air we
breathe, the sun which warms us, and which we readily admit are the free gifts of
God. Indeed it is our realization of the full part that God plays in the affairs of
man which proves our spiritual growth.
Concerning thought itself there has been much fear entertained at the assertion
that the brain secretes thoughts as the liver secretes bile, this seeming to make for
scientific materialism, and all our conscious effects to be but the result of cerebral
processes. But if by thought is meant the power of forming words and sentences, and build
ing up a language by which we communicate one with the other, then there need be
no room for dispute. But consciousness is something far more than this and could
28

exist quite independent of words and languages. Consciousness is more a matter
of perceptions, feelings and sensations, the soul itself transforming all words into
deeper meanings of its own, and these larger meanings may be the medium by which
we identify ourselves from one life to another. The various nations use different
words, but they all refer to the same things in nature, and the soul itself seems to
know far more than we can ever express in mere words themselves. *>
Music itself is consciousness without words, but we are herein delivered over to
the richer world of pure thought and feeling when we realize we are touching on the
nobler side within us. Truly it is that in proportion as we cease thinking in a cerebral
way, i. e., with mere words and sentences, and rise to the heights of divine contem
plation, are we nearer to the essence of the pure joy of living.
Thought in' this cerebral way is simply automatic and mechanical, and being a
common inheritance of the race may arise in somewhat of an equal measure in any
rebirth if one be born under favorable conditions of heredity and environments. But
experiences are the real touchstone of life and decide the way and tendency our for
mal thought may take. Thus in two cultured men, as far as mental ability and edu
cation go, the one becomes an optimist and a spiritual thinking man, whilst the
other sinks into pessimism and materialistic science.
If many of us may feel we are laid under an enchantment from which any day
we may awaken to the true significance and beauty of life, it would seem even more
true that many an intellectual sceptic, of moral leanings, is under an evil spell, com
pelling him to assent to proposition against which one would imagine his higher Self
would instinctively rebel. Yet such an anomaly may be part of the divine order, see
ing that scepticism is needed to arouse people from lethargy and easy going compla
cency into a higher conception of the spiritual life. But in due time these rebels
against conventional opinions of the day will also come' into their own.
We may trust the Self to maintain all eternal qualities once acquired, and it may
be added that it is with the aid of the nervous systems and affections of the body,
as well as our environments that we recall so readily the past. But let these environ
ments be violently disjointed and we might more easily understand that the Self is
something far greater than our normal personality which we realize from one day
to another. Many a soldier sent to France in, this war refers feelingly to the uproot
ing of his former self to he replaced by something he can as yet neither define nor
himself understand. But i the readjustment will follow in due course, with the man
in possession of new experiences and ideas he might once have believed impossible. v
If we are to accept Universalism and no one may be lost, then the final consum
mation may necessitate a most exquisite adjustment of sexual conception, and an
equable development of spiritual qualities amongst mankind at large. Possibly the
transformation, from the physical to the spiritual, may not be, as Paul predicts, in
stantaneous for all at the same time, when in the twinkling of an eye we shall be
changed. Perhaps the story of Jacob's ladder may have some deeper significance concealed
beneath the surface, as most of the Bible stories have, and we may even imagine the
veil between the physical and spiritual becoming finally worn so thin by the spiritual
development of the human race that there may be a constant passing over from the
one condition to the other as developed spirits are ready to discard for ever the
physical for the spiritual body. Such a call would be in a clear, glad consciousness
of the real meaning of the celestial life, which life many a one might be living only
a little less fully on this earth. The bonds of flesh cast off, the spirit would rise tri
umphant, glorious and beautiful beyond description into the realms it has been learn
ing to love and yearn for with intensity.
Should it further be asked why our sorrows and physical disabilities are not more
freely ameliorated it can only be said that the laws of nature may perhaps forbid.
Working mechanically she can only act in accordance with the provisions originally
ordained. Men who lose arms, legs and eyes have never been known to have them
naturally replaced, and such limits placed upon nature must necessarily be applied to
all the afflictions we endure. These evidently cannot be removed, except as permitted
through the procedures of nature, hence the reason why miracles are now being more
and more discredited by every thinking man.
What, then, may the spiritual life imply? Have we not advanced in every di
rection, mentally, morally and spiritually since it was said that eye hath not seen,
ear hath not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things which God
hath prepared for them that love Him?
The account of the Transfiguration of Jesus was but an adumbration, a very pale
description compared to those glorious, shimmering, effulgent, shining, supernal fig
ures which come to many a favored child as a foretaste of the real spiritual world.
Such visions of beauty are indescribable, as mere words cannot convey to another
29

what must be its own revelation. All the greatest art is but an attempt of the artist
to depict as best he can the more or less perfect vision he has seen in his own soul.
Spiritual beauty is a complete transmutation of the natural into beauty of its own
essence. But these wondrous radiant visions to the child would seem rather to be of a
static nature, i. e., simply visions of a nature apart from the child itself. The child's
purpose would, therefore, be to transform these ecstatic visions into dynamic activity,
to realize, in a higher state of consciousness, this transcendent beauty as pertain
ing to its own spiritual life, and as I have before mentioned, to feel itself responding
freely to divine creation of beauty in aH its various forms.
Now it is the increased activity of the nerve ends which makes up the sensuous
joys of life. A man taking a warm bath is not particularly exhilarated by dabbing
his body with a little sponge, in isolated spots, but rather by plunging the whole body
into the liquid mass, and feeling every submerged portion responding to the generous
treatment. In a cool drink, moreover, to a thirsty man, on a hot and dusty day, it
is the flow of the draught, filling every crevice of the mouth, and exciting in its pass
age down the throat every craving nerve, which constitutes the keen pleasure in
drinking. The spirit itself may be said to be a blossoming from the flesh, as it is only
through our fleshly struggles in this natural life on earth that we are brought to a
realization of'that purer spiritual world beyond this vale of sorrows, tears and death.
Plato himself in his "Symposium" refers to this acquirement of love and beauty. He
says, in part:
"The true order of going or being led by another to the things of love is to use
the beauties of earth as steps al°ng which he mounts upward for the sake of that
other beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair forms; and from fair
forms to fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows
what the- essence t>f beauty is. What, then, if man had eyes to see the real beauty —
the divine beauty pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of
mortality and of the vanities of human life."
The spiritual body may, therefore, respond in a manyfold enhanced way to the
power of beauty whether manifested in color, form or music. Music is rhythm, melody
and harmony arranged into beauteous forms as the soul of the musician can decide.
How, then, would it be for the Supreme Musician to use our spiritual body as an in
strument for celestial music? The thought is too great for words and I can only con
clude with the saying of Plotinus, the Neo-Platonist, quoted by Frederic Myers :
"So let the soul that is not unworthy of that vision contemplate the Great Soul
freed from deceit and every witchery, and collected into calm. Calm be the body for
her in that hour and the tumult of the flesh ; aye, let all that, is about her be calm,
calm be the earth, the sea, the air, and let heaven itself be still. Then let her feel
how into that silent heaven the Great Soul floweth — and so may man's soul be sure
of Vision when suddenly she is filled with light, for this light is from Him and is He,
then surely shall one know His presence, when like a god of old time He entered into
the house of one that calleth Him and maketh it full of light, and how may this
thing be for us?"
To which let it be added that once having known the real Vision we may be sure
that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory
which "shall be revealed in us in the fulfillment of this Vision.

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