He has a tremendous imagination, which naturally is more at home in
the marvelous and catastrophic than in the orderly regions of familiar
phenomena. To him the heavens are an immense pyrotechnicon and he is the
master of the show and sets off the fireworks. But he knows nothing
of logic, which is the science of straight thinking, and his views of
things have therefore no value; they are nebulous.
Nothing is clearer than that our pre-existence is a dream, having
absolutely no basis in anything that we know or can hope to know. Of
after-existence there is said to be evidence, or rather testimony,
in assurances of those who are in present enjoyment of it--if it is
enjoyable. Whether this testimony has actually been given--and it is the
only testimony worth a moment's consideration--is a disputed point Many
persons while living this life have professed to have received it.
But nobody professes, or ever has professed, to have received a
communication of any kind from one in actual experience of the
fore-life. "The souls as yet ungarmented," if such there are, are dumb
to question. The Land beyond the Grave has been, if not observed,
yet often and variously described: if not explored and surveyed, yet
carefully charted. From among so many accounts of it that we have, he
must be fastidious indeed who can not be suited. But of the Fatherland
that spreads before the cradle--the great Heretofore, wherein we all
dwelt if we are to dwell in the Hereafter, we have no account. Nobody
professes knowledge of that. No testimony reaches our ears of flesh
concerning its topographical or other features; no one has been so
enterprising as to wrest from its actual inhabitants any particulars of
their character and appearance, to refresh our memory withal. And among
educated experts and professional proponents of worlds to be there is a
general denial of its existence.
I am of their way of thinking about that. The fact that we have no
recollection of a former life is entirely conclusive of the matter.
To have lived an unrecollected life is impossible and unthinkable, for
there would be nothing to connect the new life with the old--no thread
of continuity--nothing that persisted from the one life to the other.
The later birth is that of another person, an altogether different
being, unrelated to the first--a new John Smith succeeding to the late
Tom Jones.
Let us not be misled here by a false analogy. Today I may get a
thwack on the mazzard which will give me an intervening season of
unconsciousness between yesterday and tomorrow. Thereafter I may live to
a green old age with no recollection of anything that I knew, or did, or
was before the accident; yet I shall be the same person, for between the
old life and the new there will be a _nexus_, a thread of continuity,
something spanning the gulf from the one state to the other, and the
same in both--namely, my body with its habits, capacities and powers.
That is I; that identifies me as my former self--authenticates and
credentials me as the person that incurred the cranial mischance,
dislodging memory.
But when death occurs _all_ is dislodged if memory is; for between
two merely mental or spiritual existences memory is the only _nexus_
conceivable; consciousness of identity is the only identity. To
live again without memory of having lived before is to live another.
Re-existence without recollection is absurd; there is nothing to
re-exist.