But if the soul might not take up and solve the problem for want of time
and space, we at this writing are not so limited.
First, let us state it clearly. If death does not mean a loss of
consciousness necessarily, what is its distinguishing feature as
compared with life? And what, if anything, is there in it to dread? The
confusion of mind so general on these topics can be accounted for in a
very simple manner.
The body has its life and its death, and the soul has its life and its
death, and we have but two words to describe the four conditions. This
makes it so nearly impossible to generalize on the subject and at the
same time maintain clearness.
For while the student of natural history attributes life and death to
the body alone, and the idealist goes to the other extreme and makes
life and death purely subjective--attributes of mind, not matter--the
philosopher who would have his mind open on both sides, not only to
those thoughts which enter unheralded, but also to those which seem to
have their origin in physical vibrations and enter the sensorium through
the body,--the philosopher, I say, finds it necessary to discriminate
carefully in the use of these words, life and death, and to make it
clear which is meant, the body or the soul, whenever he attributes
either condition to man.
I have said the two words cover four conditions. What are they? In the
first the body is alive, and the soul is alive. Beautiful condition of
ingenuous youth! In the second, the body is alive, and the soul dead.
The man who by a course of persistent indulgence in all manner of crime
and sensuality has stifled the voice of conscience, and finally reached
the point where he is ready to say, "Evil, be thou my good," attains to
a form of quiet.
The soul dies, and its decaying powers are absorbed by the body, which
becomes henceforth an embodied poison, most dangerous and even deadly to
the contact of the sensitive.
The third condition is that of the soul first described, in which the
body has either temporarily or permanently parted with its life, while
the soul remains intact. Still a part of the world's seething life,
because action and reaction of the powerful causative soul-currents
continue with such a soul, the interment of the body will decide whether
the temporary physical death shall become permanent or not. In those
exceptional cases where the body is preserved from the paroxysms of a
blind grief which, when they include contact, tend to snap the last
thread of vitality, or, still more important, from the embalmer's
ignorant knife, which slays unnumbered thousands--when the body is
preserved from both these dangers by a previous isolation, great
possibilities are in store.
A forty-days' fast in the wilderness was the experience of one such
soul, after which he was able to say of his bodily life, No man taketh
it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down,
and I have power to take it again.
For his bodily life was restored to him, and death of the body had no
more terrors to the man who had attained superhuman powers.
The fourth and last case, that where the death of the body follows that
of the soul, will not be enlarged on.
There are such cases, but such can receive no lessons from a printed
page. The language of events alone can reach them, and even when the
soul is not dead, but rather entombed in the body, and rendered torpid
for want of air to breathe, the effect is the same, so far as reaching
them is concerned; the death of the body wakens such imprisoned spirits,
only to plunge them into an untold agony of despair as they discover
that life, with all its opportunities, has been worse than wasted, and a
bare existence alone remains, minus friends, minus hope, minus resource
of any kind even to conceal the abject poverty which is seen to be the
direct result of wilful and persistent wrongdoing all the way to the
bitter end.
If we can suppose that such a soul, at this twelfth hour, under the
tremendous pressure of this awakening, should suddenly resolve to
accept the situation, and to brace every nerve to endure the horrors of
the event without complaint, while it would not be possible to say
_when_ there would be any change for the better for such a one, the
reason would be because time is not to such a soul; while it still
remains true that mercy is as truly an attribute of infinite power, as
justice must always be.
If, on the other hand, we suppose that such a soul breaks out into rage
at the discovery of its loss, hurling anathemas at the author of its
being, it will thereby plunge itself into darker depths, parting with
one after another of its faculties, until final extinction of the
individuality closes the scene.
I have now shown the four conditions which our dual constitution in
relation to life and death makes possible. Some enlarging on these
topics, which concern us all, may not be unprofitable. We all enter
life in the first described condition, with body and soul both alive,
the body visible and tangible, the soul more or less so, according as
its environments since conception have favored its growth.
Comparatively few of us ever reach the second condition I have
described, in which the body remains alive while the soul is utterly
dead. The protests of this, which is called the immortal part of us,
because the death of the body in itself does not impair its vigor,
usually prevent so great a calamity from occurring.
Some kind of a compromise is entered into, by which the soul is allowed
a certain amount of freedom, on condition that the body shall remain
undisturbed in its favorite pleasures. Sometimes one day in the week is
selected, in which the soul is permitted to rule.
Sometimes a single department of life's activities is placed under its
charge, and to meet the man on the favored day, or to have dealings with
him in this favored department, gives you a very exalted idea of the
individual. Sometimes in his business relations a man will be found
conscientious in the extreme, while in his family he acts the tyrant and
the brute. Sometimes his family almost worship him, while thousands
speak his name with detestation. In either case the body, not the soul,
the outer and visible, not the inner invisible self, is the leading
factor in the man, and the court of last resort.
The man is still in slavery to the mortal; he has no knowledge of any
life except the earth-life; the faith-knowledge which he might have,
were his soul given its freedom and permitted to use its higher powers,
is shut out by the disorder of his condition, wherein a servant in
rank, the body, rules over the prince entitled to the throne.
This is the prevailing condition of the human family to-day, the
difference between most people in this respect being merely one of
degree, some giving the prince more, and some less of freedom. A few
millions at most have given the nominal power into his hands, retaining
the real for bodily uses. To curry favor with these, tens of millions
profess to have done the same. In thousands only is the soul truly
regnant, and these are widely scattered, and more or less hidden, lest
they be driven out of life.