MASTER 
 NEGA TIVE 
 
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MICROFILMED 1992 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK 
 
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AUTHOR: 
 
 ARNOLD, EDWIN 
 
 TITLE: 
 
 DE 
 
 TH-AND 
 
 AFTERWARDS 
 
 PLACE: 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DA TE : 
 
 1897 
 
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 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 1832-1904. 
 
 Death— and afterwards, by Sir Edwin Arnold ... with a 
 supplement.^ Reprinted by authority from the 14th English 
 ed. New York, New Amsterdam book company, 1897. 
 
 05 p. front, (mounted port.) 19^"°. 
 
 Restrictions on Use: 
 
 1. Death. 2. linniortality. i. Title. 
 
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 Sir EDWIN ARNOLD, ,m. a., k.ci,e;,; 
 
 Author of " The Light o/ Asia " 
 
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 With a Supplement 
 
 REPRINTED BY AUTHORITY FROM THE FOURTEENTH 
 
 ENGLISH EDITION 
 
 NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY^ jj 
 PUBLISHERS J^Jt NEW YORK Jk Ji MDCCCXCVII 
 
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 (i 
 
 Aide Ijuepog ovk evd^parog kTvxdri.'^'' 
 
 /tscH. Suppl, 
 
 ** Unto this day it doth my herte boote 
 That I have had my worlde, as in my time." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 " Never the spirit was bom, the spirit will cease to be never ; 
 Never was time it was not ; End and Beginning are dreams! 
 Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit 
 for ever ; 
 
 Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of 
 it seems ! '* 
 
 The Song Celestial. 
 
 
Death — and Afterwards 
 
 •L 
 
 MAN is not by any means convinced as 
 yet of his immortality. All the great re- 
 ligions have in concert, more or less positively, 
 affirmed it to him ; but no safe logic proves it, 
 and no entirely accepted voice from some farther 
 world proclaims it. There is a restless instinct, 
 an unquenchable hope, a silent discontent with 
 the very best of transitory pleasures, which per- 
 petually disturb his scepticism or shake his 
 resignation ; but only a few feel quite certain 
 that they will never cease to exist. The vast 
 majority either put the question aside, being 
 absorbed in the pursuits of life ; or grow weary 
 

 t 
 
 Death- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 of meditating it without result; or incline to 
 think, not without melancholy satisfaction, that 
 the death of the body brings an end to the 
 individual. Of these, the happiest and most 
 useful in their generation are the healthy- 
 minded ones who are too full of vigor or 
 too much busied with pleasure or duty, to 
 trouble themselves about death and its eflFects. 
 The most enviable are such as find, or affect 
 to find, in the authority or the arguments of 
 any extant religion, sufficing demonstration of a 
 future existence. And perhaps the most foolish 
 are those who, following ardent researches of 
 science, learn so little at the knees of their 
 "star-eyed" mistress as to believe those forces 
 which are called intellect, emotion, and will, 
 capable of extinction, while they discover and 
 declare the endless conservation of motion 
 and matter. 
 
 If we were all sure, what a difference it 
 would make! A simple *'yes," pronounced 
 
 by the edict of immensely developed science; 
 one word from the lips of some clearly ac- 
 credited herald sent on convincing authority, 
 would turn nine-tenths of the sorrows of earth 
 into glorious joys, and abolish quite as large 
 a proportion of the faults and vices of man- 
 kind. Men and women are naturally good; 
 it is fear, and the feverish passion to get as 
 much as possible out of the brief span of mor- 
 tal years, which breed most human offences. 
 And many noble and gentle souls, which will 
 not stoop to selfish sins, even because life is 
 short, live prisoners, as it were, in their con- 
 demned cells of earth, under what they deem 
 a sentence from which there is no appeal, 
 waiting in sad but courageous incertitude the 
 last day of their incarceration; afraid to love, 
 to rejoice, to labour, and to hope, lest love 
 shall end in eternal parting, gladness in cheer- 
 less dust, generous toils in the irony of results 
 effaced, and hope itself in a vast and scornful 
 
 n 
 
 'M 
 
 } 
 
 <■*' *%.. 
 
« 
 
 8 
 
 Death- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 denial. What a change if all these could really 
 believe that they are cherished guests in an 
 intermediate mansion of a benign universe, 
 not doomed captives in one of its mournful 
 dungeons! How happy as well as fair and 
 attractive this planet would become if it were 
 not a doctrine, not a theory, not a poetic 
 dream, but a fact seen and accepted, that 
 Death arrives, not like *' Monsieur de Paris," 
 to strip the criminal, to clip his collar and hair, 
 and lop away from him life and love and de- 
 light; but as a mother lulling her children to 
 sleep, so that they may wake ready for play 
 in the fresh morning; as the gentlest angel of 
 all the many ministers of man, bringing him far 
 more than birth ever brought; and leading him 
 by a path as full of miracles of soft arrange- 
 ment, and as delicately contrived for his bene- 
 fit as is the process of birth itself, to heights 
 of advanced existence, simple, nevertheless, in 
 their turn and order as are the first drops of the 
 
 breast-milk of his mother, and neither more 
 nor less wonderful I 
 
 There is no new thing to say hereupon, 
 even if one should personally and sincerely 
 declare he was quite sure he had always ex- 
 isted, and should never cease to be. That 
 would be worth nothing philosophically, nor 
 be rendered a whit more valuable even if the 
 speaker should have studied all the creeds, and 
 mastered all the systems, and feel himself led by 
 something beyond them to state the assurance 
 which none of all these can give, or take 
 away. Good-will may recommend a convic- 
 tion, but cannot possibly impart it. Yet there 
 are reflections, disjoined from all conventional 
 assertions and religious dogmas, which may 
 be worth inditing, rather as suggestions to 
 other minds than arguments; rather as indica- 
 tions of fresh paths of thought than as pre- 
 suming to guide along them. And the first 
 which occurs is to represent the great mistake 
 
lO 
 
 Death- 
 
 of refusing to believe in the continuity of in- 
 dividual life because of the incomprehensi- 
 bility of it. Existence around us, illuminated by 
 modern sciences, is full of antecedently in- 
 credible occurrences; one more or less makes 
 no logical difference. There is positively not 
 a single prodigy in the ancient religions but 
 has its every-day illustration in Nature. The 
 transformations of classic gods and goddesses 
 are grossly commonplace to the magic of the 
 medusa, which is now filling our summer seas 
 with floating bells of crystal and amethyst. 
 Born from the glassy goblet of their mother, 
 the young hydrozoon becomes first a free germ 
 resembling a rice grain ; next a fixed cup with 
 four lips; then those lips turn to tentacles, and 
 it is a hyaline flower; which presently splits 
 across the calyx into segments, and the protean 
 thing has grown into a pine-cone crowned 
 with a tuft of transparent filaments. The cone 
 changes into a series of sea-daisies, threaded 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 II 
 
 on a pearly stalk; and these, one by one, 
 break off and float away, each a perfect little 
 medusa, with purple bell and trailing tentacles. 
 What did Zeus or Hermes ever effect like that ? 
 Does anybody find the Doctrine of the Incar- 
 nation so incredible? The nearest rose-bush 
 may rebuke him, since he will see there the 
 aphides, which in their wingless state produce 
 without union creatures like themselves; and 
 these again, though uncoupled, bring forth fresh 
 broods, down to the tenth or eleventh gen- 
 eration; when, on a sudden, winged males 
 and females suddenly result, and pair. Or is 
 the Buddhist dogma of immortality in the past 
 for every existent individual too tremendous a 
 demand ? The lowest living thing, the Prot- 
 amoeba, has obviously never died! It is a 
 formless film of protoplasm, which multiplies 
 by simple division; and the specimen under 
 any modern microscope derives, and must de- 
 rive, in unbroken existence from the amoeba 
 
12 
 
 Death- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 13 
 
 which moved and fed forty oeons ago. The 
 slime of our nearest puddle lived before the 
 Alps were made! 
 
 It is not, therefore, on account of the in- 
 credibility of a conscious life after death that 
 sensible people should doubt it 1 stood last 
 year in the central aisle of the Health Exhi- 
 bition at South Kensington, and observed a 
 graceful English girl lost in momentary interest 
 over the showcase containing the precise in- 
 gredients of her fair and perfect frame. There 
 — neatly measured out, labelled, and deposited 
 in trays or bottles—were exposed the water, 
 the lime, the phosphorus, the silex, the iron, 
 and other various elements, perversely styled 
 *'clay," which go to the building up of our 
 houses of flesh and bone. As I watched her 
 half-amused, half-pensive countenance, the verse 
 came to mind, '*Why should it seem to you 
 a wonderful thing, though one rose from the 
 dead?" Minerals and gases have, so science 
 
 opines, a kind of atomic and ethereal life in 
 their particles, and if we could only imagine 
 them conversing elementally, how sceptical they 
 would be that any power could put them to- 
 gether in the coarse ingredients of that glass 
 case, so as to form by delicate chemistry of 
 Nature the youthful beauty, the joyous health, 
 the exquisite capacities, and the involved human 
 life of the bright maiden who contemplated 
 with unconvinced smiles those alleged materials 
 of her being! But if, passing behind such an 
 every-day analysis of the laboratory, science 
 had dared to speak to her of the deeper secrets 
 in Nature which she herself embodied and 
 enshrined — without the slightest consciousness 
 or comprehension on her part — how far more 
 wonderful the mystery of the chemistry of her 
 life would have appeared! Some very grave 
 and venerable F.R.S. might, perchance, have 
 ventured reverently to whisper: ''Beautiful 
 human sister! built of the water, the flint, and 
 
 1 
 
 h 
 
I 
 
 H 
 
 Death- 
 
 i 
 
 the lime; you are much more marvellous than 
 all that! Your sacred simplicity does not and 
 must not yet understand your celestial com- 
 plexity! Otherwise you should be aware that, 
 hidden within the gracious house made of 
 those common materials — softly and silently 
 developed there by forces which you know 
 not, and yet govern, unwittingly exercising a 
 perpetual physiological magic — are tiny golden 
 beginnings of your sons and daughters to be. 
 You have heard of and marvelled at Iliads 
 written on films of fairy thinness, and enclosed 
 within nutshells! Diviner poems, in infinitely 
 finer characters, upon far subtler surfaces, are 
 inscribed upon each of those occult jewels of 
 your destined maternity! The history of all 
 the vanished lives of those to whom, by many 
 lines and stems, you are the charming heiress 
 — from their utmost heights of mental reach to 
 their smallest tricks of habit and feature ; from 
 passions and propensities to moles and birth- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 15 
 
 marks — are occultly recorded in the invisible 
 epigraph of those enchanted germs, to be more 
 or less developed when the flame on that new 
 altar of later life, of which you are the sacred 
 priestess, brings to reproduction such miracu- 
 lous epitomes." She would not, and could 
 not, understand, of course; yet all this is mat- 
 ter of common observation, the well-established 
 faci of heredity by pangenesis, certain though 
 incomprehensible. What, therefore, is there to 
 be pronounced impossible, because of our blind- 
 ness, in regard to endless continuity and de- 
 velopments of individuality, when out of the 
 holy ignorance of such maidenly simplicity 
 there can be thus subtly and steadfastly pre- 
 pared the indescribable beginnings of mother- 
 hood ? If one result of each human life should 
 be to produce, more or less completely, a 
 substantial, though at present invisible, environ- 
 ment for the next higher stage — while handing 
 on, by collateral lives, the lamp of humanity 
 
i6 
 
 Death- 
 
 to new hands — that would not be really more 
 strange than the condensation of the oak-tree 
 in the acorn, or the natural sorcery of the con- 
 tact of the milt and the spawn. ''Miracles" 
 are cheap enough! 
 
 Another consideration having some force, 
 is that we should find ourselves speculating 
 about this matter at all. All the other aspirations 
 of infancy, youth, and manhood turn out more 
 or less, as time rolls, to have been prophecies. 
 Instincts explain and justify themselves, each 
 by each. The body foresees and provides for 
 its growth by appetite; the mind expands 
 towards knowledge by childish curiosity; the 
 young heart predicts, by the flushed cheek and 
 quickening pulse, that gentle master-passion 
 which it has not yet learned even to name. 
 There is a significance, like the breath of a 
 perpetual whisper from Nature, in the way in 
 which the theme of his own immortality teases 
 and haunts a man. Note also that he discusses 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 17 
 
 it least and decides about it most dogmatically 
 in those diviner moments when the breath of a 
 high impulse sweeps away work-a-day doubts 
 and selfishnesses. What a blow to the philos- 
 ophy of negation is the sailor leaping from the 
 taffrail of his ship into an angry sea to save 
 his comrade or to perish with him! He has 
 never read either Plato or Schopenhauer — per- 
 haps not even that heavenly verse, ''Whoso 
 loseth his life for my sake, the same shall save 
 it." But arguments which are as far beyond 
 philosophy, as the unconscious life is deeper 
 than the conscious, sufficiently persuade him 
 to plunge. "Love that stronger is than death" 
 bids him dare, for her imperious sake, the wel- 
 tering abyss; and any such deed of sacrifice 
 and heroic contempt of peril, in itself almost 
 proves that man knows more than he believes 
 himself to know about his own immortality. 
 Every miner working for wife and children in 
 a "fiery" pit; every soldier standing cool and 
 
i8 
 
 Death- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 19 
 
 V 
 
 11 
 
 firm for his country and flag in those desert- 
 zarebas of Stewart and Graham, offers a similar 
 endorsement of Walt Whitman's indignant sen- 
 tence, *'lf rats and maggots end us, then 
 alarum! for we are betrayed." 
 
 "Well," it will be said, *'but we may be 
 betrayed!" The bottom of the sea, as the 
 dredging of the Challenger proves, is paved with 
 relics of countless elaborate lives seemingly 
 wasted. The great pyramid is a mountain of 
 bygone nummulites. The statesman's marble 
 statue is compacted from the shells and casts 
 of tiny creatures which had as good a right to 
 immortality from their own point of view as 
 he. Moreover, it may be urged, the suicide, 
 who only seeks peace and escape from trouble, 
 confronts death with just as firm a decisiveness 
 as the brave sailor or dutiful soldier. Most 
 suicides, however, in their last written words, 
 seem to expect a change for the better, rather 
 than extinction; and it is a curious proof of 
 
 the surviving propriety and self-respect of the 
 very desperate, that forlorn women, jumping 
 from Waterloo Bridge, almost always fold their 
 shawls quite neatly, lay them on the parapet, 
 and place their bonnets carefully atop, as if 
 the fatal balustrade were but a boudoir for the 
 disrobing soul. In regard to the argument 
 of equal rights of continuous existence for all 
 things which live, it must be admitted. If 
 the bathybius— nay, even if the trees and the 
 mosses— are not, as to that which makes 
 them individual, undying, man will never be. 
 If life be not as inextinguishable in every egg 
 of the herring and in every bird and beast, as 
 in the poet and the sage, it is extinguish- 
 able in angels and archangels. What, then, is 
 that specialized existence which, some believe, 
 can and does survive and take new shapes, 
 when the small dying sea-creature drops its 
 flake of pearl to the ooze, when the dog-fish 
 swallows a thousand trivial herring-fry, and 
 
20 
 
 Death- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 21 
 
 when the poet and the sage lie silent and 
 
 cold? 
 
 The reason why nobody has ever answered, 
 or, probably, ever will answer, is that each 
 stage of existence can only be apprehended 
 and defined by the powers appertaining to it. 
 Herein lurks the fallacy which has bred such 
 contempt for transcendental speculations, be- 
 cause people try to talk of what abides beyond, 
 in terms of their present experience. It is true 
 they must do this or else remain silent; but 
 the inherent disability of terrestrial speech and 
 thought ought to be kept more constantly in 
 view. How absurd it is, for example, to 
 hear astronomers arguing against existence in 
 the moon or in the sun> because there seems 
 to be no atmosphere in one, and the other is 
 enveloped in blazing hydrogen! Beings are at 
 least conceivable as well as fitted to inhale 
 incandescent gas, or not to breathe any gases 
 at all, as to live upon the diluted oxygen of 
 
 \ 
 
 l:\ 
 
 our own air. Embodied life is, in all cases, the 
 physiological equation of its environing condi- 
 tions. Water and gills, lungs and atmosphere^ 
 co-exist by correlation ; and stars, suns, and 
 planets may very well be peopled with proper 
 inhabitants as natural to them as nut-bushes 
 to us, though entirely beyond the wit of man 
 to imagine. Even here, in our own low de- 
 grees of life^ how could the oyster compre- 
 hend the flashing cruises of the sword-fish, 
 or he, beneath the waves, conceive the flight 
 and nesting of a bird? Yet these are near 
 neighbours and fellow- lodgers upon the same 
 globe. Of the ingredients of that globe we 
 build our bodies: we speak by agitating its 
 air; we know no light save those few beams 
 of the half-explored solar spectrum to which 
 our optic nerve responds. We have to think 
 in terms of earth-experience, as we have to live 
 by breathing the earth-envelope. We ought 
 to be reassured, therefore, rather than discon- 
 
il 
 
 certed, by the fact that nobody can pretend 
 to understand and depict any future life, for 
 it would prove sorely inadequate if it were at 
 present intelligible. To know that we cannot 
 now know is an immense promise of coming 
 enlightenment. We only meditate safely when 
 we realize that space, time, and the phenom- 
 ena of sense are provisional forms of thought. 
 Mathematicians have made us familiar with 
 at least the idea of space of four and more 
 dimensions. As for time, it is an absurd illu- 
 sionary appearance due partly to another illu- 
 sion, that of the seeming succession of events, 
 and partly to the motion of heavenly bodies, so 
 that by forgetting everything, and by going 
 close to the North Pole and walking east- 
 wards, a man might, astronomically, wind 
 back again the lost days of his life upon a 
 reversed calendar. Such simple considerations 
 rebuke materialists who think they have found 
 enough in finding a **law," which is really 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 23 
 
 but a temporary memorandum of observed or- 
 der, leaving quite unknown the origin of it 
 and the originator. Even to speak, therefore, 
 of future life in the terms of the present is 
 irrational, and this inadequacy of our faculties 
 should guard us from illusions of disbelief as 
 well as of belief. Nature, like many a ten- 
 der mother, deceives and puts off her children 
 habitually. We learned from Copernicus, not 
 from her, that the earth went round the sun; 
 from Harvey, not from her, how the loving 
 aching heart of man does its work; from 
 Simpson, not from her, how the measureless 
 flood of human anguish could be largely con- 
 trolled by the ridiculously simple chemical 
 compound of QHClg, or ''chloroform." Men 
 must be prepared^ therefore, to find themselves 
 misled as to the plainest facts about life, death, 
 and individual development. We shall inherit 
 the deplorable world-feuds of the past long 
 after they have sufficiently taught their nursery 
 
24 
 
 Death- 
 
 lessons of human effort, valor, patriotism, and 
 brotherhood; and we shall live in the gloom 
 of ancestral fears and ignorances when the use 
 of them for making man cling to the life which 
 he alone knows has for ages passed away. 
 But, all the time, it is quite likely that in many 
 mysteries of life and death we precisely re- 
 semble the good knight, Don Quixote, when 
 he hung by his wrist from the stable window, 
 and imagined that a tremendous abyss yawned 
 beneath his feet. Maritornes cuts the thong 
 with lightsome laughter, and the gallant gentle- 
 man falls — four inches ! Perhaps Nature, so full 
 of unexplained ironies, reserves just as blithe- 
 some a surprise for her offspring, when their 
 time arrives to discover the simplicity, agree- 
 ableness, and absence of any serious change, 
 in the process called ''dying." Pliny, from 
 much clinical observation, declared his opinion 
 that the moment of death was the most 
 exquisite instant of life. He writes, "Ipse dis- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 25 
 
 cessus animae plerumque fit sine dolore, nonnun- 
 quam etiam cum ipsa voluptate." Dr. Solander 
 was so delighted with the sensation of perishing 
 by extreme cold in the snow, that he always 
 afterwards resented his rescue. Dr. Hunter, in 
 his latest moments, grieved that he "could not 
 write how easy and delightful it is to die." 
 The late Archbishop of Canterbury, as his 
 "agony" befell, quietly remarked, "It is really 
 nothing much, after all!" That expression of 
 composed calm which comes over the faces of 
 the newly dead may not be merely due to 
 muscular relaxation. It is, possibly, a last 
 message of content and acquiescence sent us 
 from those who at last know a little more about 
 it than ourselves — a message of good cheer and 
 of pleasant promise, not by any means to be 
 disregarded. With accent as authoritative as 
 that heard at Bethany it has seemed to many 
 to murmur, "Thy brother shall live again!" 
 The fallacy of thinking and speaking of a 
 
i: 
 
 
 ! 
 
 26 
 
 Death- 
 
 future life in terms of our present limited sense- 
 knowledge has given rise to extremely foolish 
 visions of ** heaven," and made many gentle 
 and religious minds thereby incredulous. As 
 a matter of observation, no artist can paint 
 even in outline a form outside his experience. 
 Orcagna, in the Campo Santo at Pisa, tried 
 to represent some quite original angels, and 
 the result is a sort of canary-bird with sleeved 
 pinions and a female visage. Man never so 
 much as imagined the kangaroo and ornitho- 
 rhynchus till Captain Cook discovered their 
 haunts; how, then, should he conceive the 
 aspect of angels and new-embodied spirits? 
 But why should he be sceptical about them 
 because his present eyes are constructed for no 
 such lovely and subtle sights? We can per- 
 ceive how very easily our senses are eluded 
 even by lower modes of matter. The solid 
 block of ice, whereon we stood and skated, is 
 just as existent when it has melted into water 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 27 
 
 and become dissipated as steam; but it dis- 
 appears for us. The carbonic acid gas, which 
 we could not see, is compressed by the chemist 
 into fleecy flakes and tossed from palm to palm. 
 St. Paul was a much better physical philoso- 
 pher than the materialists and sceptics when 
 he declared "the things not seen are eternal." 
 But these invisible, eternal things are not, on 
 account of their exquisite subtlety, to be called 
 "supernatural." They must belong, in an as- 
 cending yet strictly connected chain, to the 
 most substantial and to the lowest, if there be 
 anything low. The ethereal body, if there be 
 such a garb, which awaits us, must be as 
 real as the beef-fattened frame of an East End 
 butcher. The life amid which it will live and 
 move must be equipped, enriched, and diver- 
 sified in a fashion corresponding with earthly 
 habits, but to an extent far beyond the narrow 
 vivacities of our present being. We need to 
 abolish utterly the perilous mistake that any- 
 
 i 
 
28 
 
 Death- 
 
 r 
 
 thing anywhere is ** supernatural," or shadowy, 
 or vague. The angelic Regent of Alcyone — if 
 there be one — in the heart of the Pleiades, is 
 *' extra-natural" for us; but as simple, real, 
 and substantial, no doubt, to adequate percep- 
 tions as a Chairman of quarter sessions to his 
 clerk. 
 
 Remembering, then, that the undeveloped 
 cannot know the developed, though it may 
 presage and expect it; remembering that bisul- 
 phide of carbon is aware of actinic rays invisible 
 to us; that selenium swells to light which is 
 not felt by our organization; that a sensitized 
 film at the end of the telescope photographs 
 a million stars we did not see; and that the 
 magnetic needle knows and obeys forces to 
 which our most delicate nerves are absolutely 
 dull; it seems within the range, and not be- 
 yond the rights, of the imagination to enter- 
 tain confident and happy dreams of successive 
 states of real and conscious existence, rising by 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 29 
 
 evolution through succeeding phases of endless 
 life. Why, in truth, should evolution proceed 
 along the gross and palpable lines of the visible, 
 and not also be hard at work upon the subtler 
 elements which are behind — moulding, govern- 
 ing, and emancipating them ? Is it enough, 
 together with the Positivists, to foresee the 
 amelioration of the race ? Their creed is, cer- 
 tainly, generous and unselfish; but since it 
 teaches the eventual decay of all worlds and 
 systems, what is the good of caring for a race 
 which must be extinguished in some final cata- 
 clysm, any more than for an individual who 
 must die and become a memory ? If death ends 
 the man, and cosmic convulsions finish off all 
 the constellations, then we arrive at the insane 
 conception of an universe possibly emptied 
 of every form of being, which is the most 
 unthinkable and incredible of all conclusions. 
 Sounder, beyond question, was the simple wis- 
 dom of Shakespeare's old hermit of Prague, 
 
 s 
 
I) 
 
 30 
 
 Death- 
 
 who " never saw pen and ink, and very 
 wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, * That 
 that is, is!'" 
 
 If so very sensible a recluse had gone deeper 
 into that same grand philosophy of common- 
 sense, we might fancy him saying to the niece 
 of his Majesty: "There is an immense deal in 
 this plain fact, fair Princess! that we are alive, 
 and far advanced in the hierarchy of such life 
 as we know. We cannot indeed fly like a 
 bird, nor swim like a dog-fish, nor hunt by 
 smell like a hound, but — vanity apart — we seem 
 to sit at the top of the tree of visible earth-life, 
 and what comes next ought to come for us." 
 If there has been a boundless Past leading to 
 this odd little Present, the individual, it is 
 clear, remembers nothing. Either he was not; 
 or he lived unconscious; or he was conscious, 
 but forgets. It may be he always lived, and 
 inwardly knows it, but now "disremembers;" 
 for it is notable that none of us can recall the 
 
 9t 
 
 i 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 31 
 
 first year of our human existence, though we 
 were certainly then alive. Instincts, moreover, 
 are bodily memories, and when the newly 
 hatched chick pecks at food, it must certainly 
 have lived somehow and somewhere long be- 
 fore it was an egg. If to live for ever in the 
 future demands that we must have lived for 
 ever in the past, there is really nothing against 
 this! ''End and beginning are dreams;" mere 
 phrases of our earthly limited speech. But 
 taking things as they seem, nobody knows 
 that death stays — nor why it should stay — the 
 development of the individual. It stays our 
 perception of it in another's case; but so does 
 distance, absence, or even sleep. Birth gave 
 to each of us much ; death may give very much 
 more, in the way of subtler senses to behold^ 
 colours we cannot here see, to catch sounds 
 we do not now hear, and to be aware of 
 bodies and objects impalpable at present to us, 
 but perfectly real, intelligibly constructed, and 
 
 I 
 
32 
 
 Death- 
 
 constituting an organized society and a gov- 
 erned, multiform State. Where does Nature 
 show signs of breaking off her magic, that she 
 should stop at the five organs and the sixty 
 or seventy elements ? Are we free to spread 
 over the face of this little earth, and never 
 freed to spread through the solar system and 
 beyond it? Nay, the heavenly bodies which 
 we can discern, for all their majesty, are to 
 the ether which contains them as mere spores 
 of seaweed floating in the ocean. Are the 
 specks only filled with life, and not the space ? 
 What does Nature possess more valuable in 
 all she has labored to manufacture here, than 
 the wisdom of the sage, the tenderness of the 
 mother, the devotion of the lover, and the opu- 
 lent imagination of the poet, that she should 
 ' let these priceless things be utterly lost by a 
 quinsy, or a flux ? It is a hundred times more 
 reasonable to believe that she commences afresh 
 with such delicately developed treasures, mak- 
 
 I 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 33 
 
 ing them groundwork and stuff for splendid 
 farther living, by process of death; which, 
 even when it seems accidental or premature, 
 is probably as natural and orderly as birth, of 
 which it is the complement; and wherefrom, 
 it may well be, the new-born dead arises to 
 find a fresh world ready for his pleasant and 
 novel, but sublimated, body, with gracious and 
 willing kindred ministrations awaiting it, like 
 those which provided for the human babe the 
 guarding arms and nourishing breasts of its 
 mother. Emerson says so well, speaking of 
 the gentle and ample birth arrangements made 
 for us here, ''We are all born Princes!" As 
 the babe's eyes opened from the darkness of 
 maternal safeguard to strange sunlight on this 
 globe, so may the eyes of the dead lift glad 
 and surprised lids to ''a light that never was 
 on sea or land;" and so may his delighted ears 
 hear speech and music proper to the spheres 
 beyond, while he smiles contentedly to find 
 
34 
 
 Death- 
 
 (I 
 
 how touch and taste and smell had all been 
 forecasts of faculties accurately following upon 
 the lowly lessons of this earthly nursery! It 
 is really just as easy and logical to think such 
 may be the outcome of the "life which now 
 is," as to terrify weak souls into wickedness 
 by mediaeval hells, or to wither the bright in- 
 stincts of youth or love with horizons of black 
 annihilation. 
 
 Moreover, those new materials and sur- 
 roundings of the farther being would bring a 
 more intense and verified as well as a higher 
 existence. Man is less superior to the sensitive- 
 plant now than his re-embodied spirit would 
 probably then be to his present personality. 
 Nor does anything except ignorance and de- 
 spondency forbid the belief that the senses so 
 etherealized and enhanced, and so fitly adapted 
 to fine combinations of an advanced entity, 
 would discover without much amazement sweet 
 and friendly societies springing from, but pro- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 35 
 
 portionately upraised above, the old associa- 
 tions; art divinely elevated, science splendidly 
 expanding; bygone loves and sympathies ex- 
 plaining and obtaining their purpose; activities 
 set free for vaster cosmic service; abandoned 
 hopes and efforts realized in rich harvests at 
 last; despaired-of joys come magically within 
 ready reach; regrets and repentances softened 
 by wider knowledge, by surer foresight, and 
 by the discovery that, although in this universe 
 nothing can be ''forgiven," everything maybe 
 repaid and repaired. In such a stage, though 
 little removed relatively from this, the widening 
 of faith, delight, and love (and therefore of vir- 
 tue which depends on these) would be very 
 large. Everywhere would be discerned the 
 fact, if not the full mystery, of continuity, of 
 evolution, and of the never-ending progress in 
 all that lives towards beauty, happiness, and 
 use without limit. To call such a life '* Heaven " 
 or the *' Hereafter" is a temporary concession to 
 
 li 
 
36 
 
 Death- 
 
 the illusions of speech and thought, for these 
 words imply locality and time, which are but 
 provisional conceptions. It would rather be a 
 state, a plane of faculties, to expand again into 
 other and higher states and planes; the slow- 
 est and lowest in the race of life coming in 
 last, but each— everywhere— finally attaining. 
 After all, as Shakespeare so merrily hints, 
 ''That that is, is!" and when we look into 
 the blue of the sky we actually see visible 
 Infinity. When we regard the stars of mid- 
 night we veritably perceive the mansions of 
 Nature, countless and illimitable; so that even 
 our narrow senses reprove our timid minds. 
 If such shadows of an Immeasurable and Inex- 
 haustible Future of peace, happiness, beauty, 
 and knowledge be but ever so faintly cast from 
 what are real existences, fear and care might, 
 at one word, pass from the minds of men, as 
 evil dreams depart from little children waking 
 to their mother's kiss; and all might feel how 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 37 
 
 subtly wise he was who wrote of that first 
 mysterious night on earth, which showed the 
 unsuspected stars ; when — 
 
 .... *' Hesperus, with the host of heaven, 
 came, 
 And lo! Creation widened on man's view! 
 Who could have thought such marvels lay 
 concealed 
 Behind thy beams, O Sun ? or who could find — 
 Whilst flower and leaf and insect stood re- 
 vealed — 
 That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ? 
 Why do we, then, shun death with anxious 
 
 strife ? 
 !f Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ? " 
 
 While the above was in course of re-publi- 
 cation, it was sent to two very distinguished 
 men of science, with a request for their opinion 
 upon the reasonableness, or lack of reason, 
 in its pages. One of them, renowned for his 
 chemical investigations, returned it with ex- 
 
 i 
 
l( 
 
 /• I 
 
 38 
 
 Death- 
 
 pressions of pleasure and of general agreement 
 which have greatly encouraged this reprint. 
 The other, whose name is famous wherever 
 Science is followed, and whose researches in 
 Natural Philosophy confer imperishable lustre 
 on the Victorian era, has honored the author 
 with a letter, profoundly interesting and sug- 
 gestive, but which, from its nature and frank 
 confidences, he is not at liberty to quote. It 
 was accompanied, however, by a few memo- 
 randa upon the article, written by a highly 
 gifted friend of that illustrious correspondent; 
 and these it is permitted to append. The writer 
 says : 
 
 *'That which has been 'born' must 'die.' 
 The two are one: birth and death one event 
 which 'happens' to a being, but which is cleft 
 in twain by a little fissure we call life 
 
 **Why is life a problem at all? Why is 
 there no categorical explanation (of our conscious- 
 ness of larger life) necessarily accepted by every 
 sound mind or sane intelligence ? Is it not be- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 39 
 
 cause a scientifically exhaustive answer cannot 
 be given in the terms of time and space as we 
 now realize them ? When instead of masters 
 they become servants, when instead of blank 
 prison walls they become open doors and path- 
 ways, shall we not enter a new mental world, 
 though one firmly linked in continuity with the 
 present ? 
 
 "We need to translate the facts of physical 
 nature into those of moral, mental, and spiritual 
 nature. We need to repudiate with abhorrence 
 the whole machinery of magic and sorcery and 
 ««natural prodigy which we have confounded 
 with that which is most natural, most healthy 
 or holy — most sound and whole; that which 
 is to our mind and conscience what the brain 
 is to our physical structure — its director and 
 its interpreter. 
 
 "Most truly Mr. Arnold says that the high- 
 est must belong to the lowest in an unbroken 
 chain. And we are often rebuked by finding 
 the highest type of beauty and fitness in the 
 most despised or ' lowest ' of microscopic organ- 
 isms or even particles. On the other hand, 
 
40 
 
 Death- 
 
 f' I 
 
 the visible is not necessarily 'gross' except in 
 the sense of coarse-grained— /^r^^ in scale : our 
 whole region of sense-perception may repre- 
 sent but one fibre of the tissue of consciousness. 
 *'Let us try to realize that the current 
 phraseologies only mislead when supposed to 
 embrace actual fact becoming accessible first to 
 conception, then to consciousness and experience. 
 The general tendency of observed order seems 
 to suggest that we have a * planetary ' conscious- 
 ness, or one which naturally starts from this 
 earth as a mental centre; that since the Coperni- 
 can era began we have been gradually develop- 
 ing a 'solar' or 'systematic' consciousness, and 
 are already beginning to refer many verified 
 facts to a mental 'sun' as a centre; and that a 
 complete generalization, or satisfying answer to 
 the problems which as yet baffle us, needs a 
 'cosmicar consciousness, of which indeed the 
 fore-gleams may be discerned in the very ques- 
 tions we ask, in the very doubts suggested 
 to us, in the very paradoxes of which Nature 
 is full. Or we may consider the same order 
 as the cellular, the functional, and the organic 
 
 ^ i 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 41 
 
 consciousness. A neucleated cell might be: 
 (i) conscious of its own nucleus and of the 
 cell-world only; (2) conscious of the 'heart' 
 or 'lung' to which it belongs; and (3) conscious 
 of the complete Living Organism which is the 
 explanation of the two first, and their raison 
 d'etre, 
 
 "Such a consciousness in the three grades 
 would be strictly related and strictly natural 
 throughout. But of course the second and third 
 would successively appear, and indeed in a true 
 sense would be 'super' natural (that is, extra- 
 normal) to the first, as long as this first con- 
 sciousness (the planetary or cellular) was sup- 
 posed to include and to supply terms for the 
 whole accessible sphere of fact. 
 
 "Many other similar illustrations will occur 
 to us. 'Cellular' consciousness of the individual 
 ' I ' may be compared to the first dimension in 
 space — one line only; or to the lowest level in 
 the triad of the physical (or mechanical), the 
 chemical, and the vital as given by Clifford, 
 Littre, and all the host of scientific authorities. 
 
 "Or it might be illustrated by the 'gaseous' 
 
42 
 
 Death- 
 
 condition (as compared to the liquid and then 
 the solid) of matters — whatever that may be — 
 or perhaps to the three responses to light and 
 heat, first surface-reflection, then absorption, 
 then radiation. But of course all this takes us 
 into the dangerous region of analogy — danger- 
 ous surely for the very reason that the general 
 consciousness is so embryonic— needing, there- 
 fore, rigorous test. 
 
 **Let us at least recognize the utter futility 
 of discussion or controversy which treats the 
 average or commonly accepted notions of root- 
 questions at issue as really representative or 
 adequate. No wonder that we cannot make 
 head or tail of this or that, when in the nature 
 of things there are none to make! But it does 
 not follow, because the vertebrate order cannot 
 be properly described in terms of the protozoic, 
 that we should deliberately relapse into * agnos- 
 tic ' bits of jelly, and denounce bone, muscle, 
 or nerve as * metaphysic ' or * mysticism ' — two 
 of the worst of names to hang a dog by. Let 
 us faithfully and patiently cultivate the dawn- 
 ing * Copernican ' consciousness. Assuredly we 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 43 
 
 shall thus find all our ideals transformed by 
 being * lifted up ' into the Real. And we may 
 be sure that if our notions are rectified and en- 
 larged and deepened, language will soon begin 
 to follow, and their practically fruitful applica- 
 tion to problems of conduct, social and indi- 
 vidual, will become possible in a sense hitherto 
 despaired of by most of us." 
 
 From the same deeply thoughtful mind the 
 subjoined remarks have also been received on 
 the general subject: 
 
 *' When the Galileo of Time — surely coming 
 — shall have made conceivable if not actually 
 accessible to us, what answers in the temporal 
 sphere to the * antipodes' we know as spatial 
 fact; when we have begun to realize that 'past 
 and future * are no more absolute than the ' over 
 and under,' the 'above and below' which now 
 we know to be reversible not only in conception 
 but in physical experience, — then perhaps we 
 may alter somewhat our estimate of the com- 
 parative value of the local, temporal, sensuous 
 character of a 'fact'; and our notion of what 
 
 f/% 
 
44 
 
 Death- 
 
 constitutes its real significance. We shall learn 
 to distinguish between what is sacramental as 
 gift-bringing and representative, and what is 
 merely event-ful or occasion-al. What comes to 
 pass must ever pass away, but what is real is 
 not thus gained or lost. A * fact ' in itself as 
 evident to the senses, — apart from its meaning 
 and effect, from what it conveys and manifests 
 to intelligence, is like — the black marks upon 
 this paper, or the noises made in speaking. But 
 there is an undying reality which is conveyed 
 alike through sounds, black marks, etc., or 
 events; through the acts of an individual equally 
 with the narration of such acts, and most of all, 
 with the conception of them. That reality, that 
 substance, that precious and eternal treasure, 
 is the Meaning, the Object, the Gist of all we 
 know as fact; timeless, spaceless, yet energetic, 
 creative, fruitful. This is the reality of revela- 
 tion spiritual and material, — and more, Divinely 
 Natural; this is the reality of the Divine in 
 the Human proclaimed through incarnation; the 
 heavenly in the earthly, the holy and wholesome 
 nature in both. 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 45 
 
 ** Finally, this is the underlying quality of 
 ' phenomena ' which gives and includes all that 
 makes them worth observation, classification, 
 interpretation, application. This it is which 
 transforms all that is presented to our conscious- 
 ness — whether as things or laws or occurrences 
 — into articulate language; showing us the uni- 
 verse of 'mind and matter,' energy and motion, 
 as one vast Message of Order and of Life. 
 
 "Do we ask what difference it would make 
 if we realized that in the very nature of things 
 there can be no 'fundamental basis;' that there 
 is no permanent fixity anywhere in relation to 
 us except in a secondary sense; that the very 
 notion out of which the metaphor sprung de- 
 pends on what we now know to be false; that 
 its real origin is the primitive idea of the earth's 
 being immovably fixed and settled on a Base or 
 absolute foundation.^ Why, surely, this: 
 
 "We have all to learn alike that what seems 
 to us like the vaguest of vacancies, — that which 
 appears incapable of 'supporting' a fly, much 
 less a pebble; — that blank in which there is not 
 even an atmosphere in which to breathe and by 
 
46 
 
 Death- 
 
 means of which to move, — in the last resort 
 is just all the foundation which we have. That 
 which safely bears our 'solid world' in the 
 gulfs of space is no base or basis, no moveless 
 central * rock : ' but throbbing energies in com- 
 plex and manifold action, in swing and wave 
 and thrill; whirling us onward in mighty sweeps 
 of threefold rhythm to which our hearts are set. 
 So therefore not solidity of base or fixity of 
 status is our supreme and vital need, but mov- 
 ing power beyond our ken or senses; known 
 to us in energizing action, and working through 
 blue 'void:' impelling us in rings of spiral 
 orbit round a moving sun on which we are 
 dependent. 
 
 *'What then? Is fact less fact, or life less 
 life, or the real less real for that? No; the 
 revelation of the ' dynamical ' order succeeds 
 that of the 'statical,' only to give fresh and ever 
 fuller witness to the living truth ; the Way of life 
 itself, like the spinning world, bears us forward 
 on its bosom, more swiftly than we can journey 
 on it; and even beyond our best there ever rises 
 a better hope,— a hope which can only melt. 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 47 
 
 as the spectrum-color melts, into the white and 
 perfect Light. The secret of religion, the key to 
 theology, the essence of revelation, is not, as 
 we have fancied, a question of fixed centre 
 or immovable foundation or solid support; the 
 world of our faith, the universe of our Spiritual 
 Verity, depends, not upon final or immutable 
 'foundations,' but upon the perfect order and 
 the unchanging might of coincident forces, of 
 balanced attractions, of undulating impulses, 
 of subtle vibrations, of harmonious rhythm, of 
 spiral progression, of ceaseless and universal 
 movement; in short, upon the supremacy, not 
 of Divine stability, but of Divine Energy. And 
 this entails the transformation of all our spiritual 
 thought and apprehension. Supposing that we 
 had hitherto conceived water to be something 
 which created instead of quenching thirst; sup- 
 posing we had imagined air to be solid or earth 
 to be vaporous, or confounded the character 
 and use of a coin and a seed, or fancied our 
 blood to be stationary like our bones, cannot 
 we see how fatally our current use of metaphor 
 would have misled us ? 
 
 I 
 
 a^ 
 
\i 
 
 48 
 
 Death- 
 
 **Some of our actual conceptions have per- 
 haps been more like this than we realize. And 
 thus it is with all the prescientific ideas and 
 assumptions which we now have, willing or 
 unwilling, to unlearn ; thus it is with that vast 
 mass of metaphor which forms the very tissue 
 of our thought and speech. 
 
 *' But while losing much that we have learned 
 to cling to, we gain what is a hundredfold in 
 value, if we only have faith enough to trust 
 God now as light We find that Truth meets 
 every need afresh ; we find that never can true 
 thought outstrip our Christ. We find our liv- 
 ing Way through countless changes ; stagnation 
 dies with apathy and dread; a fearless, hopeful 
 strength is given to us; we know that nothing 
 now can daunt or harm us. Each ray of light 
 which science brings, reveals: we welcome 
 what in old days terrified us. 
 
 ** We grow and grow and feel God's touch 
 upon us; we give and give, and yet our store 
 increases; we feel the breath of coming life and 
 gladness, we see a distant dawn of living radi- 
 ance. Things which had seemed but dry and 
 
 \ 
 
 i 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 49 
 
 dusty bones begin to move, arising; the out- 
 worn weary words are vivid now; they beat 
 and glow with quick and pregnant meaning. 
 Let us go forth and greet the coming changes! 
 
 **Let us give up our own effete travesties. 
 Let us be brave and say to the God of light, 
 ' Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth ; ' not pre- 
 scribing or limiting to our pettiness the range 
 and form of the answer, but adding, ' Not our 
 will, but thine be done.' For then will come 
 an answer charged with glory. At last the 
 life through death shall stand unveiled. And 
 we shall surely wonder that we could have 
 doubted; making sorrow barren and pain mere 
 torment ; fighting against the very succor sent 
 us, the witness of the new force of conquer- 
 ing Life." 
 
 These observations seem in a high degree 
 novel, interesting, and valuable. They refer 
 chiefly — as will be seen — to that part of the 
 foregoing article which dwells upon the inherent 
 and natural impossibility, at present and in this 
 life — of answering in any language, except that 
 
 
\l\ 
 
 so 
 
 Death- 
 
 of the algebra of hope and the calculus of 
 probability, the ever importunate riddle of our 
 existence. But men would be very well satis- 
 fied with a provisional answer; and it is justly 
 recognized above that if there can be no cer- 
 tain proof one way, there can still less be 
 positive disproof the other way. As Omar 
 Khayyam says in his Ricbaiyat: 
 
 " A hair, perhaps, divides the False and True, 
 Yes! and a single Alif were the clew. 
 Could you but find it, to the Treasure-House, 
 And, peradventure, to the Master, too!" 
 
 Each great discovery of Science raises us to a 
 new height from which the horizon of possi- 
 bilities, physical and extra-physical, perpetually 
 expands; although scientific minds seem occa- 
 sionally to miss the truest and best revelation 
 of their own triumphs. There are many excel- 
 lent savants, for example, who write about 
 Evolution, which explains so much, as if for- 
 getting that it "cannot explain itself." Ad- 
 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 51 
 
 mirably has Mr. Goldwin Smith, in ''Lectures 
 and Essays," remarked upon this: "With our 
 eyes fixed on the 'Descent,' newly disclosed 
 to us, may we not be losing sight of the Ascent 
 of Man?" And the same accomplished author 
 has the subjoined passage, which bears directly 
 on the matter: 
 
 "Suppose spiritual life necessarily implies the 
 expectation of a Future State, has physical sci- 
 ence anything to say against that expectation ? 
 Physical science is nothing more than the per- 
 ceptions of our five bodily senses registered and 
 methodized. But what are these five senses? 
 According to physical science itself, nerves in a 
 certain stage of evolution. Why then should it 
 be assumed that their account of the universe, or 
 of our relations to it, is exhaustive and final? 
 Why should it be assumed that these are the 
 only possible organs of perception, and that no 
 other faculties or means of communication with 
 the universe can ever in the course of evolution 
 be developed in man ? Around us are animals 
 absolutely unconscious, so far as we can discern, 
 
 i 
 
52 
 
 Death- 
 
 of that universe which Science has revealed to 
 us. A sea anemone, if it can reflect, probably 
 feels as confident that it perceives everything 
 capable of being perceived as the man of science. 
 The reasonable supposition, surely, is that though 
 Science, so far as it goes, is real, and the guide 
 of our present life, its relation to the sum of 
 things is not much more considerable than that 
 of the perceptions of the lower orders of animals. 
 That our notions of the universe have been so 
 vastly enlarged by the mere invention of astro- 
 nomical instruments is enough in itself to suggest 
 the possibility of further and infinitely greater 
 enlargement. To our bodily senses, no doubt, 
 and to physical science, which is limited by 
 them, human existence seems to end with death; 
 but if there is anything in our nature which tells 
 us, with a distinctness and persistency equal to 
 those of our sensible perceptions, that hope and 
 responsibility extend beyond death, why is this 
 assurance not as much to be trusted as that of 
 the bodily sense itself? There is apparently no 
 ultimate criterion of truth, whether physical or 
 moral, except our inability, constituted as we 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 S3 
 
 are, to believe otherwise; and this criterion 
 seems to be satisfied by a universal and ineradi- 
 cable moral conviction as well as by a universal 
 and irresistible impression of sense." 
 
 And, farther on: 
 
 **We are enjoined, sometimes with a vehe- 
 mence approaching that of ecclesiastical anath- 
 ema, to refuse to consider anything which lies 
 beyond the range of experience. By experience 
 is meant the perceptions of our bodily senses, 
 the absolute completeness and finality of which, 
 we must repeat, is an assumption, the warrant 
 for which must at all events be produced from 
 other authority than that of the senses them- 
 selves. On this ground we are called upon to 
 discard, as worthy of nothing but derision, the 
 ideas of eternity and infinity. But to dislodge 
 these ideas from our minds is impossible; just 
 as impossible as it is to dislodge any idea that 
 has entered through the channels of the senses ; 
 and this being so, it is surely conceivable that 
 they may not be mere illusions, but real ex- 
 tensions of our intelligence beyond the domain 
 of mere bodily sense, indicating an upward 
 
i I 
 
 54 
 
 Death- 
 
 progress of our nature. Of course if these ideas 
 correspond to reality, physical science, though 
 true as far as it goes, cannot be the whole truth, 
 or even bear any considerable relation to the 
 whole truth, since it necessarily presents Being 
 as limited by space and time. 
 
 ''Whither obedience to the dictates of the 
 higher part of our nature will ultimately carry 
 us, we may not be able, apart from Revelation, 
 to say; but there seems no substantial reason 
 for refusing to believe that it carries us toward 
 a better state. Mere ignorance, arising from the 
 imperfection of our perceptive powers, of the 
 mode in which we shall pass into that better 
 state, or of its precise relation to our present 
 existence, cannot cancel an assurance, otherwise 
 valid, of our general destiny. A transmutation 
 of humanity, such as we can conceive to be 
 brought about by the gradual prevalence of 
 higher motives of action, and the gradual elimi- 
 nation thereby of what is base and brutish, is 
 surely no more incredible than the actual de- 
 velopment of humanity, as it is now, out of a 
 lower animal form or out of inorganic matter." 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 55 
 
 Yet another erudite friend comments as fol- 
 lows upon ''Death— and Afterwards": 
 
 "The argument appears to me to place in its 
 strongest form the moral presumption in favor 
 of a continued existence. It is Butler's Analogy 
 purified from the 'supernatural,' and brought 
 into harmony with Science. It still leaves on 
 my mind the difficulty, which is perhaps in- 
 superable, of balancing this moral presumption — 
 strengthened confessedly by natural analogies 
 — against the physical evidence at hand of man's 
 individual destruction, and the negative evidence 
 — or rather negation of evidence — as to the 
 existence of any other state of being. All experi- 
 ence is against attaching much weight to the 
 mere want of evidence, and I would certainly 
 allow a moral presumption to weigh more than 
 a mere negation. 
 
 **This presumed, how are we to sum up the 
 argument } That there may be a future life> the 
 article establishes beyond doubt. Does it make 
 it equally clear that it is probable there is one ? 
 It disposes of the illusion of disbelief: does it 
 
 f 
 
u\ 
 
 S6 
 
 Death- 
 
 substitute for it (as Mill thought) the presump- 
 tion that a future continuance of life is more 
 likely than the annihilation of intelligent beings ? 
 **The thesis would be much strengthened if 
 we were permitted to reason on the probability 
 that purpose underlies the things that are seen. 
 Teleology has been abused, but I think it cannot 
 be wholly set aside, and the force of the analogy 
 is immensely increased if this world be part of a 
 system of things having some intelligent end in 
 view. We cannot answer the inquiry— * Why 
 preserve matter and motion, and not conscious- 
 ness and intelligence?'— and the idea is nearly 
 irresistible that they may be preserved in states 
 of existence separable from matter and motion. 
 Suppose that, with the elimination of evils, the 
 perfection of species ensues : is that a sufficient 
 purpose for a solar system? One can hardly 
 think it. There may be vast developments on 
 this sphere, but one cannot help thinking that in 
 some way or other we must be brought by 
 correlation into connection with the rest of the 
 
 universe. 
 
 **One argument herein strikes me as ex- 
 
 \ 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 57 
 
 ceedingly strong: *Men must be prepared to 
 find themselves misled as to the plainest facts 
 about life, death, and individual development.' 
 This impresses me as a most important basis 
 of reasoning. It might be read as a caution 
 against hoping for immortality; for Nature may 
 be misleading us by dangling this bait before 
 us, and the very general diffusion of belief in 
 another world cannot, after all, per se, rank 
 much higher than pervading belief in witchcraft 
 and necromancy. But, on the whole, Nature 
 does not seem beneficent, and the better is 
 more likely to prove the true, than the worse, 
 or than 'nothing.' 
 
 '*! do not think the pretension can be sus- 
 tained that, because some sorts of life hereafter 
 will or may be continued, therefore all life will 
 or may be so continued. Much of the lower 
 vitalities may be mere scaffolding — steps to the 
 higher and more complex. 
 
 ** There is, meanwhile, another consideration 
 which adds some strength to the position taken 
 up in the article, that if there be a moral sys- 
 tem of development, then uncertainty as to the 
 
 ( 
 
ftp 
 
 I \ 
 
 I 
 
 It I / 
 
 58 
 
 Death- 
 
 future may be an essential condition of it, as 
 our natural ignorance is to the development 
 of the intellectual faculties. 
 
 '* While physical science leads without ques- 
 tion to agnosticism, 1 think you have shown 
 that there are moral and intellectual reasons 
 (backed by extremely forcible material analo- 
 gies) which restore the presumption that a 
 future life is possible, and even probable." 
 
 The point here alluded to, the educational 
 and evolutionary action of our perpetual igno- 
 rance, our endless curiosity, our ceaseless effort, 
 has truly much value. It struck Virgil in the 
 same strong light, even as regarded agriculture : 
 
 "Pater ipse, colendi 
 Haud facilem esse viam voluit, primusque per 
 
 artem 
 Movit agros, curis acuens mortalia corda, 
 Nee torpere gravi passus sua regna veterno." 
 
 How many exquisite devices of Nature are 
 carried to fulfilment in the dark! In how many 
 ways she coaxes her children of all the king- 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 59 
 
 \ 
 
 doms to her ends, by softly misleading their 
 instincts ! It is, indeed, almost like high treason 
 against her scheme to try to persuade men 
 that death is nonsense, so urgent is she to 
 have them love their present life, and cling to 
 it, and make the most of it. The philosophers 
 who take so much trouble to teach that **life 
 is not worth living," and yet go on existing 
 and discharging their social duties so admirably, 
 make one think that Nature is rather like the 
 hen-wives in Essex. When a pullet will not 
 sit, these good women pluck off the breast- 
 feathers from the recalcitrant fowls and whip 
 the bare space lightly with nettles ; whereupon 
 the hens go straight to the nest to ease their 
 skin against the nice cool eggs; and habit 
 keeps them there, to the benefit of the farm- 
 yard and the poultry market. Pride, doubt, 
 fear, ignorance, ambition, fashion, bodily needs, 
 are all in turn the nettles of Nature. 
 
 It seems, of course, very annoying and 
 
m 
 
 humiliating to be coerced or cajoled into wis- 
 dom and patience; to have to rack our brains 
 for nothing, and find the right life-path chiefly 
 by the thorns which prick us if we wander from 
 it. Thus many will sympathize with Horace 
 
 when he says: 
 
 **Quid aeternis minorem 
 Consiliis animum fatigas ?" 
 
 And also with Omar the Potter writing: 
 
 "Ah Love! Could thou and I with Fate conspire 
 To grasp this sorry scheme of Things entire, 
 Would we not shatter it to bits, and then, 
 Re-mould it nearer to our Hearts' Desire!" 
 
 The chief object of these pages, however, 
 is to suggest that all such complaints are not 
 merely idle, but foolish; that all our fears are 
 needless, and not one single hope, expecta- 
 tion, or aspiration is half great enough, or glad 
 enough, or bold enough; that the secret of 
 the Universe is, after all, an open one, like 
 that of the earth's motion, or any other tardily 
 
 * 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 6i 
 
 made intellectual discovery illuminating the 
 perpetual fact that ''things are not what they 
 seem." We fear death, but may perhaps find 
 it agreeable, interesting, and coming just at the 
 right time, whenever it comes. For Goethe it 
 was enough that '*it was common." We de- 
 bate with vast metaphysical periphrasis ''past, 
 present, and future," and shall perchance dis- 
 cover — though still short of all ultimates — that 
 there is only an eternal Now. We distress 
 ourself about maintaining our identity and upon 
 remaining individual, when, quite conceivably, 
 the lower angels laugh at our small aspirations 
 herein, and exclaim, "So soon made happy!" 
 May there not be coalesced existences, as im- 
 mensely higher and better than our little "ego" 
 as that of the tree is than those of the cells 
 which build every inch of it, from rootlet to 
 topmost twig? Pain is, truly, or was, a hor- 
 rible puzzle; but its physiological and moral 
 uses were always plain ; and Science has prac- 
 

 62 
 
 Death- 
 
 tically mastered it at last with the benign 
 discovery of anaesthetics. Hatreds, and malig- 
 nities ; selfishnesses, and social evils of all kinds 
 are very dreadful; but they plainly diminish 
 before the light of education. Probably the 
 Talmud legend is right in spirit, which says 
 that the dimple upon every man's and woman's 
 upper lip was imprinted there by the hand 
 of God, who, in creating all human flesh, 
 whispered, "It is well! " but pressed His fin- 
 ger upon our mouths to prevent us telling 
 each other what we know. And therefore, 
 since poets have the instinct of insight, and 
 see without eyes, it is no wonder to find a 
 modern man like Walt Whitman, who has 
 praised the joys of our life of sense so fluently 
 and heartily, singing of the approach of death 
 as he does in the tender dithyrambs which 
 occur in **The Passage to India," musical 
 words of faith and fearlessness with which 
 these pages shall be embellished. 
 
 and Afterwards. 
 
 63 
 
 "DEATH CAROL 
 
 " Come, lovely and soothing Death; 
 Undulate round the world; serenely arriving, 
 
 arriving, 
 In the day ; in the night, to all, to each ; 
 Sooner or later; delicate Death. 
 
 " Praised be the fathomless universe; 
 
 For life and joy ; and for objects and knowl- 
 edge curious; 
 
 And for love; sweet love. But praise! praise! 
 praise ! 
 
 For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding 
 Death. 
 
 " Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft 
 feet, 
 
 Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest 
 welcome ? 
 
 Then I chant it for thee — I glorify thee above 
 all; 
 
 I bring thee a song that when thou must in- 
 deed come, come unfalteringly. 
 
 ** Approach, strong Deliveress! 
 When it is so — when thou hast taken them, 
 
 :'l 
 

 64 
 
 Death 
 
 n 
 
 t < 
 
 < < 
 
 I joyously sing the dead, 
 Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee, 
 Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death. 
 
 From me to thee glad serenades, 
 
 Dances for thee 1 propose, saluting thee— 
 
 adornments and feastings for thee; 
 And the sights of the open landscape, and the 
 
 high-spread sky, are fitting; 
 And life and the fields, and the huge and 
 
 thoughtful night. 
 
 The night in silence; under many a star; 
 The ocean shore, and the husky whispering 
 
 wave whose voice 1 know; 
 And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well- 
 
 veil'd Death, 
 And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 
 
 Over the tree-tops 1 float thee a song! 
 
 Over the rising and sinking waves — over the 
 myriad fields, and the prairies wide: 
 
 Over the dense pack'd cities all, and the teem- 
 ing wharves and ways, 
 
 I float this carol with joy ; with joy to thee, 
 O Death!" 
 
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 One reflection more shall >be borrowed from 
 the brilliant pen to which? I lo^ tbe most': 
 striking of the above comments. It is this:* • *• 
 
 **I feel more and more how entirely wide 
 of the mark (for want of adopting your view 
 of the illusionary character of time, space, life, 
 death, etc.) must be, and must remain, our 
 controversies as to * personality, ' and the per- 
 sistence of that force which we know as 
 identity. Such expressions as 'immortality,' as 
 we understand and use them, do not merely 
 fail to cover the ground; they are but half- 
 thoughts — like the half of a man cloven in two 
 — unless complemented by corresponding terms 
 like 'in-natality.' We think of 'eternal life' as 
 something which begins but does not end; but 
 the fallacy of this becomes evident if we try to 
 think conversely of something ' eternal ' which 
 ends though it does not begin." 
 
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