The unborn child has merely a corporeal frame, a forming principle. The
creation and development of its limbs by which it reaches full growth
are its own acts. It has not yet the feeling that these parts are its
possession, for it needs them not and cannot use them. A fine eye, a
beautiful mouth, are to him only objects to be secured unconsciously,
so that they may sometime become serviceable parts of himself. They are
made for a subsequent world of which the child as yet knows nothing: it
fashions them by virtue of an impulse, blind to him, which is clearly
established alone in the organization of the mother.[1] But when the
child, ripe for the second stage of life, slips away from the organ
representing the provision for his former needs, it leaves it behind,
and suddenly sees itself an independent union of all its created parts.
This eye, ear, and mouth now belong to him; and even if acquired only
through an obscure inborn sense, he is learning to know their precious
uses. The world of light, color, tone, perfume, taste, and feeling is
only now revealed as the arena in which the functions acquired to that
end are to operate for him, if he makes them serviceable and strong.
The relation of the first stage to the second recurs in a higher degree
in the relations of the second to the third. Our whole action and will
in this world is exactly calculated to procure for us an organism,
which, in the next world, we shall perceive and use as our Self. All
spiritual influences, all results of the manifestations which in the
lifetime of a man go forth from him, to be interwoven with humanity and
nature, are already united by a secret and invisible bond; they are
the spiritual limbs of the man, which he exercises during life while
still bound to a spiritual body, to an organism full of unsatisfied,
upreaching powers and activities, the consciousness of which still lies
outside him, though inseparably interwoven with his present existence,
yet, only in abandoning this, can he recognize it as his own.
But in the moment of death, when the man is separated from the organ
upon which his acquisitive efforts were bent here, he suddenly receives
the consciousness of all, which as a result of his earlier exterior
life in the world of ideas, powers, and activities, still survives,
prevails, flowing out as from a well-spring, while still bearing also
within himself his organic unity.
This, however, now becomes living, conscious, independent, and,
according to his destiny, controls mankind and nature with his own
completed individual power.
Whatever any one has contributed during his life, of creation,
formation, or preservation, to the sum of human idealism, is his
immortal part, which, in the third stage, will continue to operate even
if the body, to which, in the second, this working power was bound,
were long since destroyed. What millions who have died have acquired,
performed, and thought, has not died with them--nor will it be undone
by what the next millions shall have acquired, performed, and thought,
but continues its power, unfolds itself in them spontaneously, impels
them towards a great goal which they do not themselves perceive.
This ideal survival seems indeed to us only an abstraction, and the
continued influence of the soul of the dead in the living but an empty
fancy.
But it only appears so to us because we have no power to perceive
in them spirits in the third stage, to comprehend a predestined and
permanent existence; we can only recognize the connecting link of their
existence with ours, the portion of increase within us, appearing under
the form of those ideas which have been transmitted from them to us.
Although the undulating circle which a sinking stone leaves behind it
in the water creates, by its contact, a new circle around every rock
which still projects above the surface, it still retains in itself a
connected circumference which stirs and carries all within its reach;
but the rocks are only aware of the breaking of the perfect line. We
are just such ignorant objects, only that we, unlike fixed rocks, while
even still in life, shed about us a continuous flow of influence which
extends itself not only around others but within them.
Already, in fact, during his lifetime, every man with his influence
grows into others through word, example, writing, and deed. While
Goethe lived, contemporary millions bore within them sparks from his
soul, and were thereby newly kindled. In Napoleon’s life nearly the
whole period was penetrated by the force of his spirit. With their
death these tributary sources of life did not also die; only the
motive power of a new earth-born channel expired, and the growth and
manifestation of this, emanating from an individual, and in their
totality again forming an individual, production now takes place with
a similar indwelling consciousness, incomprehensible indeed to us, as
was its first inception. A Goethe, a Schiller, a Napoleon, a Luther,
still live among us, thinking and acting in us, as awakened creative
individuals, more highly developed than at their death--each no longer
restrained by the limitations of the body, but poured forth upon the
world which in their lifetime they moulded, gladdened, swayed, and in
their personality far surpassing the influences which we still discern
as coming from them.
The greatest example of a mighty soul which still lives on actively in
after-ages is Christ. It is not an empty saying that Christ lives on
in his followers; every true Christian holds him not only relatively
but absolutely within his heart. Every one is a partaker in him who
acts and thinks in obedience to his law, for it is the Christ that
prompts this thinking and acting in each. He has extended his influence
through all the members of his Church and all cling together through
his Spirit, like the apple to its stem, the branches to the vine. “For
as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that
one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.” (1 Cor. xii.
12.[2]) Yet not only the greatest souls, but every strong man awakes in
the next world in conscious though incomplete possession of an organism
which is a union of eternal spiritual acquirements and influences, with
a greater or smaller extent of realization, and more or less power
to unfold further, according as the soul of the man himself in his
lifetime has advanced and gained ground. But he who has clung to the
earth, and has only used his powers in pursuit of the material life,
the pleasures and needs of the body, will find but an insignificant
remnant of life surviving. And so the richest will become the poorest
if he has only his gold to lean upon, and the poorest the richest if he
uses his strength to win his life honestly. For what each does here he
will have there, and money there will only count for what it brought
the consumer here.
The problems of our present spiritual life, the thirst for the
discovery of truth, which here seems to profit us but little, the
striving of every genuine soul to accomplish things which are merely
for the good of posterity, conscience, and the repentance that arouses
in us an unfathomable distress for bad actions, even though they bring
us no disadvantage here, rise from haunting presentiments of what
all this will bring to us in that world in which the fruit of our
slightest and most hidden activity becomes a part of our true self.
This is the great justice of creation, that every one makes for himself
the conditions of his future life. Deeds will not be requited to the
man through exterior rewards or punishments; there is no heaven and no
hell in the usual sense of the Christian, the Jew, the heathen, into
which the soul may enter after death. It makes neither a spring upward
nor a fall downward, nor comes to a standstill; it does not break
asunder, nor dissolve into the universal; but, after it has passed
through the great transition, death, it unfolds itself according to the
unalterable law of nature upon earth; steadily advancing step by step,
and quietly approaching and entering into a higher existence. And,
according as the man has been good or bad, has behaved nobly or basely,
was industrious or idle, will he find himself possessed of an organism,
healthy or sick, beautiful or hateful, strong or weak, in the world to
come, and his free activity in this world will determine his relation
to other souls, his destiny, his capacity and talents for further
progress in that world.
Therefore be active and brave. For the idler here will halt there, the
earth-bound will be of a dull and weak countenance, and the false and
wicked will feel the discord which his presence makes in the company of
true and pure spirits as a pain, which, even in that world, will still
impel him to amend and cure the evil which he has committed in this,
and will allow him no peace nor rest until he has wiped out and atoned
for his smallest and latest evil deed.
And if his companion spirits have for long rested in God, or rather
lived as partakers in His thoughts, he will still be pursued by the
tribulation and restlessness of the earthly life, and his spiritual
disorder will torment men with ideas of error and superstition, lead
them into vice and folly, and while he himself is retarded on his way
to achievement in the third stage, he also will hold back those in whom
he survives, upon their path from the second to the third.
But however long the false, the evil, and the base may still prevail
and struggle for its life with the true, the beautiful, and the
good,--yet through the ever-increasing power of truth, and the
growing force of evil’s own self-destructive results, it will at last
be conquered and abolished; and so of all falsehood, all evil, all
impurity in the soul of man, there will at last be nothing left. That
alone is the eternal, imperishable part of a man that is to him true,
beautiful, and good. And if only a grain of mustard-seed of it is in
him--there could be no one without it--so, purged of chaff and dross
through the purgatory of life, afflicting only the imperfect, it will
survive in the third stage, and, even if late, be able to grow into a
noble tree.
Rejoice then, even you whose soul is here tried by tribulation and
sorrow; the discipline will avail much, which in the brave struggle
with obstacles in the path of progress you have experienced in this
life, and, born into the new life with more strength, you will more
quickly and joyfully recover what fate has denied you here.