ON LIFE AFTER
DEATH
PEGHNER
V
THE UNIVERSITY
OF ILLINOIS
LIBRARY
fHILOSBPHY
DEPARTMENT
Return this book on or before the
Latest Date stamped below. A
charge is made on all overdue
books.
U. of I. Library
11148-S
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH
PROF. G. T. FECHNER
ON
LIFE AFTER DEATH
FROM THE GERMAN
OF
GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER
BY
DR. HUGO WERNEKKE
Head Master of Weimar Realtfymnasium
Third Edition
CHICAGO AND LONDON
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1914
Copyright 1906
by
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
CHICAGO
TO
THE MEMORY OF
THE REVERED AUTHOR,
WHO ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY KINDLY
j ACCEPTED THE FIRST ENGLISH VERSION OF
THE PRESENT LITTLE BOOK
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH
K
J FROM
The Translator.
c-
364508
"... El nacer
Y el morir son parecidos."
La vida es sueno: I. 678.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
FECHNER'S famous essay, Das Bitch-
lem vom Leben nach dem Tode,
which in this present shape 1 hopes
to be made welcome to the English-reading
public, came out originally in 1835. But
in the age of romanticism, strange to say,
it seems to have met with little more favor
than in the ensuing period of materialism,
when Buchner and Moleschott proclaimed
a creed attainable without much mental ef-
fort. A second edition, therefore, slightly
altered, 2 was not undertaken till 1866. A
third edition, in 1887, bore witness, on the
1 It is a revision of our first edition, published in
1882 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington,
London. While this new edition was in preparation,
another translation came out in the United States,
by Maria C. Wadsworth (Boston 1905).
2 The alterations, throughout in the shape of omis-
sions, are slight in extent, but characteristic of the
author's mental development. He thought it advisa-
ble to suppress certain passages, in which his philo-
7
8 PREFACE.
one hand, that the new generation had be-
gun to appreciate the booklet, and on the
other hand, that its author, with his mind
constantly fixed on the highest problems of
moral and natural philosophy, still upheld
the views set forth in one of his earliest
publications. A fourth and a fifth reprint
came out, after his death, in 1900 and
1903.
It was a long and laborious life, though
outwardly uneventful, which closed on No-
vember 18th, 1887. Gustav Theodor
Fechner was born, on April 19th, 1801, at
Gross-Sarchen, a small village in the Ober-
lausitz, which at present belongs to the
Prussian province of Silesia, whereas in
the beginning of the last century it was
under the Elector of Saxony. Hence it
was at the ancient Saxon university, in
Leipzig, that Fechner went through his
course of studies, and where in 1834, he
was appointed professor of physics. His
sophic imagination might be considered to have taken
too daring a flight. They will be found, with a
reference to their original place in his deductions, at
the end of this translation.
PREFACE.
sphere of activity was not confined to the
delivering of public lectures. He wrote,
and translated from the French, science
textbooks, and conducted several maga-
zines of a scientific character. The obser-
vations preparatory to his publications on
galvanism and electro-magnetism proved
injurious to his eyesight, so that for some
time he was obliged to give up all writing
and lecturing. It was, however, so far re-
stored as to enable him to labor for many
successive years in the fields of scientific in-
vestigation and philosophical and meta-
physical speculation.
His standard work Elemente der Psy-
chophysik was published in 1859 (with im-
portant additions issued in 1877 and
1882). Slowly, at least in the beginning,
but steadily and very honorably, it has
made its way among men of science, at
home and abroad. Fechner's Law, the
fundamental law of psychophysics (stating
that sensation varies in the ratio of the log-
arithm of impression) has become a term
of international currency.
"It will never be forgotten," says
10 PREFACE.
Wundt, 3 "that Fechner was the first to in-
troduce exact methods, exact principles of
measurement and experimental observa-
tion for the investigation of psychic phe-
nomena, and thereby to open the prospect
of a psychological science, in the strict
sense of the word. When Herbart had a
similar aim in view, he failed to find the
way towards it. The chief merit of Fech-
ner's method is this : that it has nothing to
apprehend from the vicissitudes of philo-
sophical systems. Modern psychology has
indeed assumed a really scientific character,
and may keep aloof from all metaphysical
controversy."
If among the divers branches of psychol-
ogy, aesthetics seemed least of all suscepti-
ble of scientific treatment, it was Fechner
again, who attempted, and successfully at-
tempted, an Introduction to ^Esthetics
(Forschule der jEsthetik, 1876), based on
experiment and analysis. He modestly
speaks of it as a "rhapsodic" discussion of
3 Gustav Theodor Fechner. Rede zur Feier seines
hundertjahrigen Geburtstags gehalten von Wilhelm
Wundt. Leipzig 1901.
PREFACE. 11
various questions, but he clearly shows the
way to solve the proposed problems not
on the basis of a priori principles, by the
descending process or the way "from
above," as he likes to describe it, but by ob-
servation and induction, by the ascending
process, the way "from below." He dwells
upon the connection of the problems on
hand with the more general investigation
of the causes of pleasure. Beginning with
pleasing objects of the simplest description
(geometrical figures, for instance), and
proceeding to analyze works of art, he
finds out experimentally what it is that
makes things pleasant or unpleasant, and
formulates the principles of aesthetic
pleasure.
The long and varied list of Fechner's
publications, in the shape of detached es-
says, pamphlets and greater works, opens
with the writings of "Dr. Mises" such as
A Demonstration that the Moon is made
of Iodine, A Panegyric of the Medical Art
of the Present Time, Four Paradoxes, 4 '
4 The Paradoxes dexterously proved by Dr. Mises
are these, That the shadow is a living being; That
12 PREFACE.
Stapelia Mixta* and at the first sight it
may seem hard to realize the identity of
Dr. Mises, with his sometimes exuberantly
fantastic humor, and Professor Fechner,
the scientist and philosopher. And yet the
sympathetic reader will understand how
the one could develop into the other. There
is similarity of style between them, and
there is, strange as it may sound, relation-
ship of subject. The Anatomy of Angels,
for instance, which reads very like a fairy-
tale, turns out to be a humorous prelude
to the fundamental conception of the
space has four dimensions; That witchcraft is a reality;
That the world was made not by a creative but by a
destructive principle.
5 The whimsical choice of this title is thus face-
tiously explained by the author: "I was anxious to
follow the fashion with my little book, sending it out
under the name of some flower. But finding that the
recent publications were adorned with the names of
almost all the children of Flora which I knew, I was
rather at a loss, till a Stapelia mixta, placed outside
my window, caught my eye, a flower of a somewhat
sombre color, dotted with glaring bright specks, and
exhaling an odor, that the carrion-flies will lay their
eggs on it by mistake. As little as a Christian, I said
to myself, will ever call his baby Judas Iscariot, as
little can a fashionable author have called his book
after that flower. And so my hesitation was removed."
PREFACE. 13
planet-world, on which the first part of his
Zend-Avesta is based. Originally the
Booklet on Life after Death, dedicated to
two young ladies, the daughters of Fech-
ner's friend Grimmer, a Leipzig book-
seller, also bore the name of Dr. Mises.
Here, however, the author is quite grave.
The subject of the second part of Zend-
Avesta (which did not appear till 16
years afterwards) is here previously
sketched, with a forcible eloquence and
great warmth of feeling. The author con-
fines himself to stating his ideas, the dog-
matic tone is prevalent, the reasoning by
analogy, a peculiar modification of the in-
ductive method, which is the characteristic
feature of his later works, is less obvious
here.
Another little book of a preliminary
character, on the Summum Bonum (Vber
das hochste Gut, 1846) briefly stating the
ethical principles more fully expounded in
Zend-Avesta, was followed, in 1848, by an
elaborate discussion of what Fechner terms
u the Soul-Question" the problem of the
soul. In Nanna, or the Soul-Life of Plants,
14 PREFACE.
he upholds that the same reasons which
cause us to assume the existence of a mind
or soul 6 in the bodies of man and of ani-
mals, viz. : the evident design in their bod-
ily organization, the helpful interaction of
their organs, the reaction upon, and adap-
tation to, outward conditions, must induce
us to assume that there is a soul in plants as
well. From the tenet that the organized
beings inferior to man must have a soul, or
rather do not consist of a body and soul,
but are body and soul in one, like man him-
self, he proceeded to the higher and grand-
er conception, that the beings superior to
man, the celestial bodies, must likewise
have an inward life, underlying, or con-
comitant with, their outward life that, in
fact, the whole universe is alive, not a dead
bulk, but an animated being, a wonderful
organism of the sublimest order. This
grand doctrine was ingeniously and elo-
8 It may be as well to state here that Fechner, with
his skill in minute research and his mastery of lan-
guage, has little taste for certain subtleties of termin-
ology, so that in his writings, as in our translation,
the terms mind, soul, spirit, are used with very little
difference of meaning.
PREFACE. 15
quently set forth in Zend-Avesta, or the
Things of Heaven and the Hereafter
(Zend-Avesta, oder tiber die Dinge des
Himmels und des Jenseits), published in
1851, in three volumes, of which the first
and second contain his ideas on the relation
of human life to divine life and the life of
the universe, whereas the subject of the
third is the relation of our present life to
the life to come. He sums up his ideas in
the following paragraphs :
Syllabus of the Theory of Heavenly Things.
(Zend-Avesta, Chap. XX.)
1. According to a quite justified, though not
exactly current view, the earth comprising in
the term water, air, animals, plants, in short,
everything that by the force of attraction is re-
tained on it represents, in the same way as the
human body, a system based on the continuity of
substance and closely held together by mutual and
purposeful interaction, made up of a variety of
parts and subordinate systems, and going through,
in never-ending evolution, a variety of periodical
and cyclical motions, of which general system of
parts and motions the human body constitutes an
inferior system.
16 PREFACE.
2. Examining the various points of resem-
blance as well as of difference between man and
earth, we discover on the one hand an agreement
between them in every point which in any theory
of the relation between body and soul has been es-
tablished as characteristic of a spiritual individual-
ity connected with a material organism, whereas
their undeniable differences make it evident that
the earth is an individuality of higher and more
independent life than man's lower and more re-
strained life.
3. As our bodies belong to the greater and
higher individual body of the earth, so our spirits
belong to the greater and higher individual spirit
of the earth, which comprises all the spirits of
earthly creatures, very much as the earth-body
comprises their bodies. At the same time the
earth-spirit is not a mere assembly of all the spirits
of the earth, but a higher, individually conscious
union of them. Our own individuality and in-
dependence, which are naturally but of a relative
character, are not impaired but conditioned by this
union. If any meaning is to be connected with
the term in current use when we speak of a "spirit
of mankind," we must identify it with the spirit
of the earth.
4. Considering that the earth is one of the
celestial bodies, and reasoning again from analogy,
we are led to view those bodies, the stars, as en-
PREFACE. 17
dowed with an individual spirit each, and thus
forming a realm of another and higher order of
beings, in which we may indeed discover such
characteristics as we have reason to ascribe to be-
ings of a higher order than ours. This view of
ours coincides with the belief of many human
races, which at all times, as long as they were in
close contact with nature, looked upon the hosts
of heaven as divine beings and wherein our own
popular belief in angels has its roots.
5. As all the stars, considered materially, be-
long to the material universe, so all the spirits of
stars belong to the spirit of the universe, i. e., the
divine spirit. At the same time their own indi-
viduality and independence is as little impaired
by this circumstance as our own spirits are by their
connection with the earth-spirit: it is their com-
mon link, their highest conscious union.
6. The divine spirit is one, omniscient and
truly all-conscious, i. e., holding all the conscious-
ness of the universe and thus comprising each indi-
vidual consciousness of his creatures in a higher
and the highest connection.
7. As the earth, far from separating our bodies
from the universe, connects and incorporates us
with the universe, so the spirit of the earth, far
from separating our spirits from the divine spirit,
forms a higher individual connection of every
earthly spirit with the spirit of the universe.
18 PREFACE.
This circumstance does not abolish the blessed
fact that we have in Christ the highest mediator
between God and man.
Syllabus of the Theory of the Hereafter
(Zend-Avesta, Chap XXXI.)
1. When a man dies, his spirit will not be
absorbed in the greater and higher spirit of
which it was born to an individual existence; on
the contrary, his relation to that spirit will become
clear and conscious, and his whole spiritual prop-
erty will appear in a higher light. By that higher
spirit the earth-spirit as well as the divine spirit
may be understood, as it is the spirit of the earth
that connects us with God.
2. Our present life and our future life may
aptly be compared to a life of perceptions and a
life of reminiscences. Or we may say that the
higher spirit to whom we belong will transfer
us in death from his lower life, of perceptions,
to his higher life, of reminiscences. As now we
share his perception life, without losing our in-
dividuality and relative independence, we shall
share, in a like manner, his reminiscence-life.
3. The relation between the spirits of that
higher stage and those of our lower stage, which
are connected into one spiritual realm, finds its
analogy in the connection of our own spheres of
PREFACE. 19
reminiscences and perceptions. As our percep-
tions derive a higher significance from our rem-
iniscences, and as our reminiscences are constantly
influenced by our perceptions, which come to asso-
ciate themselves with them, so do the spirits of
the higher stage give a higher significance to our
spiritual life and are in their turn influenced by
ours ; though at the same time they live their own
higher and freer life, in their relations to each
other and to the higher spirit.
4. As our reminiscences require a less sharply
defined place in our brain than our perceptions,
so are the spirits of the higher stage less closely
tied to earthly substance, though they, like our
reminiscences, cannot entirely do without it. Now
the material foundation of our reminiscences,
whatever it may be, grows from the material of
our perceptions (the images of outward objects,
for instance, produce effects in our brain, with
which, when perception has ceased, reminiscence
will be connected), so will the material existence
connected with the spiritual life in the hereafter
grow from our present existence.
5. Our future spheres of existence though all
incorporated in the same great body, the earth,
will not disturb, confuse or efface each other.
Even here our spheres of existence necessarily
cross and intersect each other, as the means of
our mutual intercourse, which in the hereafter
20 PREFACE.
will only increase in intimacy, variety and con-
sciousness; and in our brain the material changes
connected with our reminiscences cross and inter-
sect each other, leaving them nevertheless undis-
turbed and uneffaced.
6. As in our present life the body which at any
period is the vehicle of our mind, has grown from
the body which was its vehicle in a former period,
so in our future life the material vehicle of our
spiritual existence must have grown, to preserve
our individuality, from the vehicle of our present
spiritual existence. This condition is indeed real-
ized in our individual sphere of actions, in the
totality of which everything is stored up that
during our present life has produced any effect
in our body.
7. The extinction of our present life seems to
be the condition for the transition of conscious-
ness from its present sphere to the continuation of
it. A similar antagonism is observable in the
various spheres of our consciousness, as long as
it is connected with, and therefore confined by,
our narrower body.
8. The moral side of our view is this, that it
explains how every man produces the conditions
of a blessed or unblessed existence hereafter, in
the consequences of his inward and outward acts
during his present existence. The man who in
this life tried to understand the divine order of
PREFACE. 21
things and to act in accordance with it, doing
what is good, within himself and in the world,
will have the final salutary effects of it as a re-
ward; the man whose thoughts and actions have
been bad, who wrought evil in this world, will
have to bear the consequences of it as a punish-
ment which consequences will increase on him
till he turn from his evil way.
9. Our views are not in contradiction with the
teachings of Christianity, from which after all
they deviate only in some less essential points.
Pointing out the real meaning of certain teach-
ings, which are sometimes taken in a more or less
figurative or symbolical sense, they may serve to
fortify Christian conviction and promote Chris-
tian life.
The Authors Creed.
(Zend-Avesta, Chap. XXXII.)
I. I believe in one God, eternal, infinite, om-
nipresent, all-mighty, all-knowing, all-loving, all-
just, all-merciful, through whom comes and goes
and has its being whatever there comes and goes
and is, who lives and moves and has his being in
everything as everything in him; who knows
everything that is known and can be known ; who
loves all his creatures in one as he loves himself;
who does will what is good and does not will
what is evil; who in the course of time directs
22 PREFACE.
everything to its own good end; who is merciful
even to the wicked, so as to make his very punish-
ment the means of his improvement and final
salvation.
2. I believe that God has bestowed certain
parts or sides of his spiritual essence on individ-
ual creatures, this earth being one of them, filled
with its own spirit, as a portion of the divine
essence, which again, in an individual manner,
fills all the individual creatures of the earth, so
that all of us, human beings, animals and plants,
are children of God from and in and through
this spirit, though man alone enjoys the privilege,
which involves a duty, of becoming conscious of
his eternal father's will and of his own fellow-
ship in a higher spiritual community.
3. I believe that Christ, son of God from and
in and through the spirit that fills the earth as a
portion of the divine essence, is not only one of
us, but above us, as we are destined through his
mediatorship to become children of God and
attain a higher spiritual union than through our
mere natural birth.
4. I believe that there is nothing either un-
natural or supernatural in God's universal order
and dispensation, though there may result uncom-
mon and unexampled effects from uncommon and
unexampled causes, so that in the whole of
Christ's life and work there was nothing un-
PREFACE. 23
natural or supernatural, only that he was the
cause, such as never had been nor ever will be
again, of effects that never had been but will
remain and go on growing forever.
5. I believe, that the one right way to the
salvation of mankind is by true love of God and
of one's neighbor, truly practised as it has been
commanded by Christ, and that cherishing this
love and practising it is the one thing whereby in
a higher sense we shall be made of one spirit.
6. I believe that the teaching and community
of Christ will not decrease, but increase, so that
one day every human being shall belong to it;
even what is not given in this life, shall be given
hereafter.
7. I believe that the community or church of
Christ is the body that is forever filled with his
spirit, and that the teaching of Christ, duly
preached, read, interpreted, received and acted
upon, with baptism and eucharist duly admin-
istered and received, are the principal means of
keeping Christ's spirit alive in his community or
church and of incorporating, strengthening and
preserving its members.
.8. I believe in a resurrection and an eternal
life of man, as a consequence and continuation
of his present life, whereof we have an example
in Christ, our present body and life being only a
small seedcorn of a freer and more refined body
24 PREFACE.
and life, which shall be ours, when our spirit is
to live in a house not made by hands, which will
last forever, in heaven, where everything shall
be made known that now is hidden from us, and
where we shall see clearly, what now we see in
part, as in a glass, darkly, and where those that
are here spiritually united in and through Christ,
shall see him and each other face to face. I be-
lieve that this fleeting present life is a prepara-
tory stage to eternal life, and that everyone in his
good or evil intentions, his good or evil deeds,
produces the conditions of his future life, that his
works shall follow him and that he will reap
what he has sown.
9. I believe that the purport of the divine com-
mandments is not to spoil man's pleasure and
happiness, but to regulate and direct his will and
his doings to the purpose of promoting the great-
est possible happiness of them all. I believe that
to will and do according to this purpose is the
duty of man, and that thereby he will be in
accordance with God's commandments, even in
cases when there is no express commandment.
10. I believe that the consequences of evil
actions are such that in the course of time they
will bring about their own punishment, and
those of good actions, finally to bring about their
own reward. I believe that the consequences of
this life will extend to the hereafter, where such
PREFACE. 25
justice will be fully administered as was only
begun or postponed here. I believe that the pun-
ishment of the wicked and the reward of the good,
when longer postponed, will finally come on the
more decidedly, and will continue to increase
till the bad man shall have been compelled to
mend his way, and till the good man shall have
given himself up completely to the divine mercy.
I believe that the free will of man may alter the
way towards that end, but not the end itself. I
believe that this is not the working of a lifeless
order of things, but that this order is due to the
indwelling of the divine spirit.
Fechner's next work, Professor Schlei-
den und der Mond (1856) was more than
an apology of his Nanna; it was a new at-
tempt, repeated in the books On the Soul-
Question (1861) and The Three Motives
and Arguments of Belief (Die drei Motive
und Grunde des Glaubens, 1863), to rouse
the world from its materialistic slumber
a task which he was well aware would re-
quire "a good deal of breath.'* When Dar-
win's views began to attract universal at-
tention, Fechner, with a wonderful sagacity
and a comprehensiveness of mind certainly
not frequent in a man of his age, assimi-
26 PREFACE.
lated them into his own system, giving
them a new foundation, and at the same
time deriving from them a new support to
his own theories. This was done in his
treatise Some Ideas on the Creation and
Evolution of Organisms (Einige Ideen zur
Schopfungs, und Entwickelungsgeschichte
der Organismen 1873). In The Day-
light-View versus the Night-View (Die
Tagesansicht gegeniiber der Nachtansicht
1879) he gave a new exposition and
apology of his metaphysical system, the
subject being essentially the, same as in
Zend-Avesta) re-arranged and condensed.
It appears from this and from some minor
publications of his latter years, that to the
end of his life Fechner's efforts lay invari-
ably in the same direction, attempting to
bring about a reconciliation, so much need-
ed in our days, of science and religion, by
looking not at one side of the universe
only, but diligently examining it in its two
aspects, the material and the spiritual. The
scientist still seems little inclined to ap-
proach the latter ; his habits of thought will
not permit him to enter upon such discus-
PREFACE. 27
sions. On the other hand, it seems only
natural, as Wundt says, that "the adher-
ents of modern mysticism should have
claimed Fechner as one of their own."
Baron Reichenbach, the discoverer of Od,
engaged his interest, "almost by violence,"
till Fechner yielded to attend some of his
experiments. In 1877, when Henry Slade
was in Germany, Fechner received many
an invitation to join spiritistic seances.
Professor Zollner was his friend, and he
could not refuse to be present, with W.
Weber, the physicist, and Scheibner, the
mathematician, during the experiments
with Slade, which Zollner afterwards de-
scribed in such an enthusiastic tone of con-
viction that most of his previous admirers
began to doubt of his sanity of mind. Fech-
ner speaks of them with great reserve. He
does not undertake to deny from the out-
set the possibility of the so-called spiritistic
phenomena, but he yields with reluctance
to the empirical reasons for acknowledging
their reality. His daylight-view can exist
with or without spiritism, but he would
prefer to do without it. "For though the
28 PREFACE.
two views coincide in some material points,
so that our view may find and to some de-
gree does find a support in spiritism, the
character of its abnormal phenomena is in-
convenient and prejudicial to the quiet
progress of reasoning." At the same time
he confesses u that, to be insensible to the
amount and weight of evidence in favor of
spiritistic phenomena, would be equivalent
to contempt of experimental science. If
spiritism be preposterous, the means com-
monly adopted to refute it are still more
preposterous. On other occasions infer-
ences are drawn from successful experi-
ments, neglecting those that were unsuc-
cessful; in the case of spiritism, however,
its adversaries draw their inferences en-
tirely from unsuccessful experiments, re-
jecting those that were successful. On
other occasions the investigator of a new
field of experience makes it his object to
find out the conditions for successful ex-
periment; in the present case the condi-
tions are all made a priori. If an experi-
ment made in the dark or with insufficient
light be successful, it counts for nothing,
PREFACE. 29
because the result was not obtained by
daylight; but if it is successful under more
favorable conditions, by daylight, it counts
again, for nothing, owing to the nature
of the result." Fechner makes this re-
mark, as he declares, "not from sympathy
with spiritism, but from a sense of justice
due to the subject and the persons; for
even though one should like to get rid of
spiritism at any expense, it ought not to be
done at the expense of truth."
The considerate way in which Fechner,
with a truly philosophical attitude, express-
es his opinion in this case, and which in
fact never seems to leave him in his re-
searches, is certainly apt to secure to his
views a more than transitory appreciation.
H.W.
WEIMAR, 1905.
On Fechner's Birthday.
CHAPTER I.
MAN lives on earth not once, but three
times: the first stage of his life is
continual sleep; the second, sleep-
ing and waking by turns ; the third, waking
forever.
In the first stage man lives in the dark,
alone; in the second, he lives associated
with, yet separated from, his fellow-men,
in a light reflected from the surface of
things; in the third, his life, interwoven
with the life of other spirits, is a higher
life in the Highest of spirits, with the
power of looking to the bottom of finite
things.
In the first stage his body develops itself
from its germ, working out organs for the
second; in the second stage his mind de-
velops itself from its germ, working out
organs for the third ; in the third the divine
germ develops itself, which lies hidden in
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 31
every human mind, to direct him, through
instinct, through feeling and believing, to
the world beyond, which seems so dark at
present, but shall be light as day hereafter.
The act of leaving the first stage for the
second we call Birth; that of leaving the
second for the third, Death. Our way
from the second to the third is not darker
than our way from the first to the second :
one way leads us forth to see the world out-
wardly ; the other, to see it inwardly.
The infant, in the first stage, is blind and
deaf to all the light and all the music of the
second stage, and having to leave its moth-
er's womb is hard and painful, and at a cer-
tain moment of its birth the dissolution of
its former life must be like death to it, be-
fore it wakens to its new existence. In the
same way we, in our present life, with all
our consciousness bound up within this nar-
row body, know nothing of the light, the
music, the freedom, and the glory of the
life to come, and often feel inclined to look
upon the dark and narrow passage which
leads towards it, as a little lane with "no
32 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
thoroughfare" to it. Whereas death is
merely a second birth into a happier life,
when the spirit, breaking through its nar-
row hull, leaves it to decay and vanish, like
the infant's hull in its first birth. And
then all those things which we, with our
present senses, can only know from the
outside, or, as it were, from a distance, will
be penetrated into, and thoroughly known,
by us. Then, instead of passing by hills
and meadows, instead of seeing around us
all the beauties of spring, and grieving that
we cannot really take them in, as they are
merely external : our spirits shall enter into
those hills and meadows, to feel and enjoy
with them their strength and their pleasure
in growing; instead of exerting ourselves
to produce, by means of words or gestures,
certain ideas in the minds of our fellow-
men, we shall be enabled to elevate and
influence their thoughts, by an immediate
intercourse of spirits, which are no longer
separated, but rather brought together, by
their bodies; instead of being visible in our
bodily shape to the eyes of the friends we
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 33
left behind, we shall dwell in their inmost
souls, a part of them, thinking and acting
in them and through them.
CHAPTER II.
THE infant, when in its mother's
womb, has merely a body-spirit
the Formative Principle. Its ac-
tions are limited to growing, to producing
and developing its several limbs and or-
gans. It does not feel them as its own
property, it does not use them, nor is it
able to use them. A beautiful eye, a beau-
tiful mouth are merely beautiful objects to
the infant; it has produced them without
being aware that one day they shall be
useful parts of its own self. They are
made for a world to come whereof it
knows nothing, fashioned through some
mysterious impulse, the origin of which
must be traced back to the organization of
its mother. 1 As soon, however, as the
infant, matured for the second stage of
*For the physiologist I would express it more dis-
tinctly, thus. The formative principle of the infant
lies, before its birth, not in those parts which are to
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 35
life, leaves its primary organs behind, it
grows self-conscious, feels itself an inde-
pendent unity of all its self-created organs :
the eye, the ear, the mouth henceforth are
its own; and having produced them
through some innate impulse, unconscious-
ly, it now learns to use them, rejoicing in
its strength; a world of light, of colors,
sounds, odors, tastes, reveals itself through
the organs produced for those purposes.
Now, the relation of the first stage of
life to the second will recur, in a climax, in
the relation of the second stage to the
third. In a way similar to the one just
alluded to, all our volitions and actions in
this world are intended to produce an
organism, which in the world to come we
shall perceive and use as our own new
Self. All the mental influences, all the
results due to the actions of a person in his
continue living after its birth, but rather in those which
in birth, must be left behind and decay, as the body of
man decays in death (placenta cum funiculo umbilical!,
velamentis ovi, eorumque liquoribus) ; thus the human
being, born into the world, grows out of the infant's
activity, as a continuation of it.
36 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
lifetime, which spread all over mankind
and all over the earth, are, even at present,
bound up together by a mysterious, invis-
ible bond, thus forming a person's spiritual
organs, fashioned during his life and com-
bined into a spiritual body, an organism of
continually active powers and effects, of
which, though indissolubly connected with
his present existence, he has at present no
consciousness.
In the moment of death, however, when
man has to part with those organs in which
his powers of acting lay, he will, all at
once, become conscious of all the ideas and
effects which, produced by -his manifold
actions in life, will continue living and
working in this world, and will form, as
an organic offspring of an individual stem,
an organic individuality which only then
becomes alive, self-conscious, self-active,
ready to act through the human and nat-
ural world, of its own will and power.
Whatever a person contributes, in his
life, towards creating, transforming, or
preserving the ideas pervading the human
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 37
and natural world, is his own imperishable
portion, able to act for itself in the third
stage of life, though the body to which,
during the second stage, it was inherent,
be long since decayed. The thoughts and
actions of so many millions that are gone,
are not gone with them, neither shall they
be obliterated by the thoughts and actions
of the many millions that are to come after
them; in them and with them they shall
grow, and act, and impel them towards one
great aim unseen by themselves.
We are inclined to look upon this ideal
continuation of our lives as a mere ab-
straction, and to consider the continued
influence which the spirits of the dead ex-
ercise on the minds of the living as an idle
fantasy. So it seems to us, because we
lack the appropriate senses wherewith to
perceive the spirits of the third stage, in
their real existence, pervading the depths
of the Universe : we only perceive the ties
which unite their existence with our own,
viz. : those very ideas which they left be-
hind for us to share with them. The circle
38 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
of waves which a falling stone produces on
a surface of water calls forth other circles
round every rock rising above the surface
within its reach; for all that it remains one
continual circle, producing and encircling
all the rest, whereas the rocks perceive it,
so to speak, only in part, as a fragment.
We are such rocks ourselves, unconscious
of the encircling waves, though, unlike
those fixed objects, we produce, every one
of us, a continual circle of actions all
around us, encircling and crossing those
produced by our fellow-men.
In fact, every person, in his lifetime,
takes hold of, and grows into the minds of
others, by his words and works, spoken,
written, or acted.
While Goethe was still alive, thousands
of contemporaries bore within them some
sparks from the light of his genius, which
afterwards kindled up into new light.
While Napoleon was still alive, his power-
ful genius exercised its influence on the
whole generation almost; and when the
one and the other died, the germs which
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 39
had fallen into other minds, did not die
with them, they grew, and developed them-
selves, constituting in their total an in-
dividual being, as their origin had been
from an individual. And these new in-
dividual beings we must assume to be
provided, though in a manner incompre-
hensible to us, with self-consciousness, as
well in their present state as they were
before. Goethe, Schiller, Napoleon, Luth-
er, are still alive among us, self-conscious
individuals thinking and acting with us, in
a higher state of development now, no
longer bound up within a narrow body,
but pervading the world which they in
their lifetime instructed, edified, delighted,
ruled, and producing effects even far sur-
passing those of which we are generally
aware.
The most striking instance of a great
spirit living and working on through the
ages we see in Christ. You must not think
it an empty saying, that He liveth in those
who believe in Him. Every true Christian
carries Him within him, not in a symbolical
40 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
meaning, but in life and reality; every one
that thinks and acts according to His mind
is a partaker in Him; for it is the spirit of
Christ that causes in him such thinking and
acting. He is diffused through all the
members of His body, the Church, and
they are all united through His spirit, like
apples clinging to a tree, or branches at-
tached to a vine : "For as the body is one,
and hath many members, and all the mem-
bers of that one body, being many, are one
body: so also is Christ." ( 1 Cor. xii. 12.)
And like those great and this Greatest of
spirits, every true worker shall waken in
the world to come with an individuality, an
^organism of his own making, comprising
thousands of effects and productions, filling
a narrower or wider sphere, endowed with
more or less power of growth and develop-
ment, even as their spirits in |this life
moved more or less actively in their
spheres of labor. The man that has been
groveling on the ground, employing his
mental faculties only in moving, feeding,
pampering his body, will become a very
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 41
insignificant being hereafter. The richest
will then be the poorest, if he has only
used his money that he may not have to
use his powers, and the poorest may turn
out the richest, if he has used his powers
to do his duty in this world. For what-
ever a man uses and puts out at present
will be his own hereafter; but the pound
that was kept and laid up in a napkin will
be taken away entirely.
The mysteriousness of our present in-
ward life, the thirst after truth, which
sometimes is of but little avail here below,
the desire of every honest mind to work
for the good of posterity, the sense of
regret and trouble of mind caused by the
consciousness of a wicked deed, even
though unaccompanied by present disad-
vantages, all such phenomena arise from
a dim presentiment of what our fate will
be hereafter, when we shall reap the fruit
of our slightest and most secret acts.
Behold in this the wonderful justice of
the Universe, leaving it to every being to
prepare for himself the conditions of his
42 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
future existence. There are no outward
rewards and punishments for our actions,
there is no heaven or hell in the popular
meaning of the word, with Christians,
Jews and Gentiles for the spirits of the
dead to ascend or descend to, by a leap as
it were; but there is no dead stop either,
no absorption of the soul into the universe :
the spirit of man has to go through his
great climacteric disease, death; after
which his development will continue, in and
for a higher life on this earth of ours. The
foundations of that higher development,
in accordance with the laws of creation,
must be sought for on a lower stage ; and
according as a man, in this life, has been
good or bad, has acted nobly or meanly,
worked hard or neglected his work, he will
find, in after-life, an organism of his own,
healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or hateful,
strong or weak; his self-chosen way of act-
ing in this world will determine his rela-
tion to other spirits, his faculties and tal-
ents, his whole destiny during his develop-
ment in that other world.
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 43
"Let us then be up and doing I" For he
who walks at a slow pace here will be lame
there ; he who opens not his eyes here will
be weak-sighted there ; who practises deceit
and wickedness will feel at variance with
all the good and faithful spirits, and that
feeling will be so painful in him as to impel
him even in the other world, to amend the
evil he did in this world; nor will he find
rest and peace until his least and last
offence be repented and atoned for. When
other spirits rest in peace with God, par-
taking of His thoughts, the wicked ones
will go about restless, through the sorrows
and changes of earthly life, and their spir-
itual disorder will infect other men with
error and superstition, with folly and vice ;
and while they, in the third world, lag
behind on the way towards perfection, they
will keep back those in whom they live, on
their way from the second world to the
third.
Hence, meanness, wickedness, untruth,
may hold their sway for a time against
generosity, honesty, godliness; but in the
44 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
end they will be overcome by the increas-
ing power of the good, they will be brought
to nought through their own deeds, by the
increasing evil consequent thereon, and
nothing shall remain in any man's spirit
that is false and vile and impure ; only what
is true, good, and beautiful, is to be our
eternal, imperishable portion, of which if
there be but a mustard-seed in any of us
(and there can be no human being utterly
destitute of it), all dross and chaff which
are yet around it will be consumed in the
purging fire of our third life, a fire of tor-
ment for the wicked only and in the end,
be it ever so late, it will grow up into a
noble tree.
And you, too, rejoice, whose spirit is
being tried and refined here below by grief
and suffering. You are only learning to
be patient and persevering in removing
every obstacle which would hinder your
progress, and on being born into a higher
life will find yourself the better enabled to
make up for all it has been your lot on
earth to leave undone.
CHAPTER III.
MAN uses many means to obtain one
end, God makes one means serve
many ends.
The plant thinks it is here merely for its
own sake, intended to grow, to toss in the
wind, to drink in light and air, to prepare
colors and odors as an ornament for itself,
to play with bees and butterflies. And
it is here for itself, no doubt, but for the
earth as well, a tiny organ of the earth
for light, air, and water, to meet there and
work together for the benefit of the whole
terrestrial system ; it is intended to breathe
for the earth, to make a verdant garment
for the earth, to prepare food, raiment,
and fuel, for man and beast.
Man thinks he is here merely for his
own sake, intended to enjoy himself, to
toil and labor for his growth in body and
mind. And he is here for himself, no
doubt, but his body is a dwelling-place for
46 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
higher spirits as well, to enter into, to
commune and work together there, and
thus to direct his mind to think and feel in
various ways, and help him to be fit for
the life to come.
Man's mind is therefore, simultaneous-
ly, his own property, and the property of
those higher spirits; and whatever comes
to pass in it, equally belongs to both sides,
only in a different sense and manner.
Thus, in our diagram, the many-colored
star in the middle stands for itself, an inde-
pendent individual figure, whose several
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 47
rays shoot from, and are kept together by
a common centre ; and again that same star
appears to be formed by the six single-
colored circles, each of which is again an
independent individual figure, so that every
ray belongs to the central star as well as to
the intersecting circles. Behold in this
not a likeness, but a symbol, of the human
soul.
We often wonder whence such a thought
came into our minds. Some longing, or
some melancholy, or happy mood will come
over us we know not how or why. An in-
ward voice persuades us to act, or exhorts
us to forbear acting, though all the time we
are not conscious of any motive of our own
tending one way or other. This is the
influence of spirits entering into us, think-
ing and acting in us from centres different
from our own. Such influence is still more
striking in certain abnormal conditions of
the mind in clairvoyance or mental dis-
order when the relation of mutual de-
pendence has been decided in their favor,
making us entirely passive under their in-
48 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
fluence, without any reaction on our own
part. As long, however, as our mind is
awake and healthy it cannot become a mere
plaything, without a will of its own, of the
spirits that have grown into it and become
a living part of it. For such a healthy
human mind is an invisible life-centre of
spiritual attraction, a connecting link for
divers spirits, who are thus enabled to hold
communion with each other, and to engen-
der thoughts within us. They do not,
however, create the mind, which is the in-
born property of each individual person,
with free-will, self-determination, self-
consciousness, reasoning power, and all
other mental faculties comprised therein.
At the time of our birth, it is true, all these
faculties are folded up as in a germ, look-
ing forward to being developed into an or-
ganism of individual life and reality.
Now, upon our entering this life those
spirits draw near on all sides, trying to
make use of our faculties for themselves,
in order to increase their own sphere of
activity, in a certain direction, and if they
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 49
succeed in doing so, a new impulse in that
same direction is given to our own mind
in its development.
Those ingrown spirits, in their turn, are
subject, though in a different way, to the
influence of the human will. They in-
fluence and direct a man's mind, they also
receive new impressions from the store of
his spiritual life. In a mind harmoniously
developed, none of these influences has the
mastery over the others. For every con-
comitant spirit shares only a certain part
of his own self with one individual person;
hence the will of that person can exercise
only a limited influence on him whose
sphere lies for the greater part without
him; and as every human mind forms a
rally-point for many spirits, it can only be
liable to a limited influence from each of
them. If a man, however, of his own
choice would submit entirely to be guided
by them, he would lose his control over
their influences.
There are spirits opposed to each other,
so that their presence in the same human
50 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
mind is incompatible; therefore the good
and the evil spirits, the true and the false,
dispute with each other the possession of
our souls. The inward strife which so fre-
quently we experience is just such a strug-
gle of spirits trying to take possession of
our will, our reason, in short, our whole
inward life. As a person feels the agree-
ment of the spirits within him, in peace,
quiet, and harmony of his own self, he also
feels their strife, in inward trouble, con-
fusion, doubt and despondency. But man
need not become an inert and restless prey
for the stronger spirits in that combat; he
stands with his own active powers, in the
midst of the contending elements each of
which tries to draw him to itself; he may,
in such strife, side with and help that party
he chooses, and may thus decide the victory
even in favor of the weaker side, adding
his own strength to that of the spirit
against the stronger ones. Thus his in-
dividuality, his own self, will remain unen-
dangered as long as he preserves his inborn
strength and freedom, nor tires of using
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 51
them. If, nevertheless, he is led on by
evil spirits, it is from the difficulty he may
find in using his own inward strength; and
so, to become bad, it is enough to be care-
less and lazy.
The better a man's character is, the
more easy it will be for him to become still
better; and the worse he is, the more easily
he will be utterly ruined. For a good man
has received many good spirits within him-
self, who, uniting their powers with his,
will save him some effort in getting rid of
the evil spirits that have remained in him
or approach him. Therefore, doing good
does not weary a good man; he has his
good spirits to help him, whereas a wicked
man, to follow any good intentions he may
have formed, must first overcome, by his
own efforts, the evil spirits that resist his
intentions.
Besides, kindred spirits will find, and as-
sociate with, each other, fleeing from con-
trary ones, if not forced to stay. The good
spirits within us call other good spirits
around us, and the evil spirits within us
52 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
attract the evil ones. Pure spirits rejoice
to come and live in a pure mind, but out-
ward evil takes hold of the evil within us.
If good spirits in increasing numbers take
their abode in our soul, the last devil that
had lingered there will soon flee away, they
are no fit company for him; and thus the
soul of the good man becomes a pure heav-
enly dwelling for blessed spirits, abiding
there in sweet company. But even good
spirits when they see the impossibility of
reclaiming a soul from the predominant
evil ones, will desert it, and so it becomes
a hell, a place full of the torment of the
damned. For the pangs of conscience,
and the trouble and restlessness in the
minds of the wicked are torments not only
felt by themselves, but by the evil spirits
within them as well, even with more in-
tensity.
CHAPTER IV.
THE higher spirits, living as they are
not in an individual man, but each
living and acting in many, are spir-
itual bonds between those persons, uniting
them all in the same belief, the same truth,
the same moral or political tendency. All
the persons who have any spiritual fellow-
ship between them, belong to the body of
one spirit, and as co-ordinate members of
it, work out the ideas which they have
received from that spirit. Sometimes an
idea lives at one time in a whole nation,
a great number of people are moved to
one great common enterprise. There is a
mighty spirit coming over them all, pene-
trating them all. Such universal influences,
however, are not only brought about by
the spirits of the dead; also numberless
new-born ideas of the living influence those
living around them ; but all the ideas which
a living person sends forth into the world
54 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
are also elements and members of his fu-
ture spiritual organism.
Now, wherever two kindred spirits meet
on earth, growing into one through their
common qualities, and influencing and en-
riching one another through their different
qualities, the communities, nations, or gen-
erations, to which they formerly belonged
individually, enter into spiritual com-
munion as well, increasing thereby the men-
tal stores and powers of each other. Thus
the development of spiritual life in the
third stage is closely connected with the de-
velopment and progress of mankind. The
gradual formation and growth of states,
the progress of science and art, of com-
merce and trade, the development of all
these spheres into larger and larger bodies
harmoniously organized, is the conse-
quence of numberless spirits living and
moving among men and growing together
into greater spiritual organisms.
How could it be possible for all those
important spheres of life to take shape on
great immutable principles, if they were
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 55
to rely on the confused selfish actions of
individuals too short-sighted to see from
the centre to the circumference, or from
the circumference to the centre? How
could it be possible, were not this activity
influenced by higher spirits, who see clear-
ly through the whole system, and, crowd-
ing round the common divine centre, and
uniting their divine elements, direct men,
between them, towards higher aims?
But as there is a harmony of spirits kind-
ly meeting and helping each other, so is
there also a conflict of spirits, in which all
earthly and finite concerns must in the end
destroy one another, leaving the things
eternal to survive in their purity. Symp-
toms of this conflict may also be observed
in the human world, in the antagonism of
systems, the hatred of parties, the wars
and revolutions between sovereigns and
nations.
The majority of men stand amid these
great spiritual movements, with blind
faith, blind obedience, blind hatred and
fury, neither hearing with their own ears
56 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
nor seeing with their own eyes, but directed
by other spirits towards ends and aims of
which they know nothing, allowing them-
selves to be led on through misery, slavery,
and death, following the impulse of those
higher spirits like a herd of cattle.
On the other side, there are men who,
both acting and directing, influence the
movement with clear consciousness and in-
ward independence. But, after all, they
are only voluntary means to great pre-
destined ends, whose free actions may in-
deed determine the way and rate of the
progress, but not its end and object. Those
men who have accomplished great things
in the world, were enabled to do so by
their insight into the spiritual tendency of
the period in which they lived, and they
succeeded because they made their free
acting and thinking agree with that ten-
dency, while other men, perhaps just as
great and sincere, failed, because they op-
posed that tendency. That first class of
men were elected by the Spirit who knows
which ways are best for which ends, to be
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 57
new centres for his moving powers, not in
the manner of blind tools, but of living in-
struments serving his wisdom and justice,
of their own free will and with their own
powers of intellect. It is not the slave
under the taskmaster that does the better
work. And what they begin to work in
the service of God beneath, they will con-
tinue hereafter, when they are partakers
of His heavenly kingdom.
CHAPTER V.
ON many occasions when the spirits of
the living and dead meet, they may
both be unconscious of the meeting;
or the consciousness may be on one side
only who is there that could follow or
fathom such intercourse ! So let it be
understood that, whenever we speak of
their meeting each other, we mean that
they meet consciously, and whenever we
speak of the presence of the dead, we mean
that they are present consciously.
There is one means of meeting con-
sciously for the living and the dead: it is
the memory of the living for the dead.
To direct our attention to the dead is to
attract their attention towards us, just as
an outward impression on a living person
will direct his attention to the place where
it acts upon him.
Our memory of the dead is indeed noth-
ing but a consequence of their own con-
scious life beneath; a consequence brought
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 59
to our consciousness; but their whole life
in the hereafter is made up of the conse-
quences of their present life.
Even when one living person thinks of
another, it may cause some influence on his
mind; but it is of no effect, as his conscious-
ness is held within the bonds of his earthly
frame. But consciousness set free by
death seeks its own place, yielding to the
influences exercised upon it the more easily
and decidedly, the more easily and decid-
edly those influences have been exercised
before.
A stroke in the physical world is always
felt double, by him that strikes and by him
that is struck : so a stroke of consciousness,
produced by thinking of a dead person, is
connected with a double sensation. It is a
mistake to think of the share only which
our present life has in that mental act, un-
mindful of the share of the life hereafter :
a mistake and neglect which cannot remain
without their consequences.
If a lover has lost his beloved one, a
husband his wife, a child its mother, it is in
60 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
vain for them to look to distant heavens
for the piece torn off their own lives, strain-
ing their eyes and stretching out their
hands into vacancy for that which has
never been really taken away from them;
it is only the thread of bodily communica-
tion that is broken ; the intercourse through
their outer senses, whereby they both un-
derstood each other, has given way to an
immediate connection through their inner
senses, though they have not yet learned to
understand it.
I saw a mother once looking anxiously
about the house and garden for her own
living child which all the time she was
carrying in her arms. A greater mistake
than hers is the mistake of her who will
look for her dead child in some distant
space, whereas it would suffice to look into
her own self to find it. And if she does
not find it there entire, was it entire, was it
all her own, strictly speaking, while she
carried it in her arms? It is true, the ad-
vantages of outward intercourse, of out-
ward words, looks, and care-taking are lost
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 61
to both; the advantages of an inward inter-
course have only begun now, if she would
only recognize that there is such an inward
intercourse and see the advantages it has.
Nobody will speak to or shake hands with
a person whom he supposes to be absent;
but if you once know better, and have
learned to see in a clearer light, there will
be for you a new life of the living with
their dead, and the dead will gain by this
knowledge no less than the living.
If you think of a dead person earnestly
and intensely, not only the thought of him
or her, but the dead person himself will be
in your mind immediately. You may in-
wardly conjure him, he must come to you;
you may hold him, he must stay with you,
if you only fix your thoughts upon him.
Think of him in love or in hatred, he will
be sure to feel it ; think of him with strong
love, with stronger hatred, he will feel it
the more strongly. Up to this you have
had your memories of the dead, now you
know the use of them; henceforth you will
be able at will to make a dead person
62 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
happy or miserable, through thinking of
him, to reconcile yourself to him or quarrel
with him, consciously for him as well as for
yourself. Do so, then, but always for a
good purpose, and take care that the mem-
ory which you leave behind one day may be
to your own advantage.
Blessed the man who left behind him a
store of love, of respect, and veneration, in
the memory of men. What he left behind
in his present life he will gain after death,
acquiring a comprehensive consciousness of
all that is thought of him by those who re-
main behind; he will thus carry home the
bushel of which he had but single grains
to count in his lifetime. Such are the
treasures which we are bidden to lay up for
heaven.
Woe to the man whom curses and exe-
crations, a memory of terror, follow!
What followed him in this life will over-
take him in death: this is part of the hell
that awaits him. Each cry of misery that
is sent after him will turn out a sharp ar-
row reaching him to pierce his very heart.
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 63
Full justice is done to every man : it con-
sists in the totality of the consequences of
both his good and evil actions. The good
man who was misjudged here must suffer
from that circumstance for sometime, here-
after, as from an outward evil; and his
false glory will follow the unjust man as
an outward good; therefore, it will be well
for you to keep your good name unsullied
and not to hide your light under a bushel.
But among the spirits hereafter there will
be no misjudging; what was weighed amiss
here will be set right above, and will be
overweighed by an addition to the other
side of the balance. Divine justice shall
finally overcome all injustice of the earth.
Whatever wakens the memory of the
dead is a means of calling them to our
side. At every festival arranged to com-
memorate them, they rise; round every
statue which we erect in their honor, they
float; to every song celebrating their noble
acts, they listen. Here is a vital germ for
a new phase of art! Art has grown so
old, so tired of repeating old spectacles
64 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
before the old lookers-on again and again;
here is another tier of boxes opening, as
it were, above the pit filled with the old
spectators ; now we know of a company of
a higher class looking down from above,
and the noblest object of art will be, hence-
forth, to please those above, no longer
those below; but the people below ought
to be pleased with that which is approved
of above.
The scoffers go on scoffing and the
churches continue quarrelling scoffing
and quarrelling about a mystery which the
scoffers say is repugnant to reason, and
which the churches declare is above reason ;
for a greater secret has remained con-
cealed from both parties, the opening of
which removes at last, in a very simple
and easy manner, the difficulty which has
defied the reason of scoffers and disturbed
the harmony of the churches; it is simply
the greatest illustration of a universal law,
wherein they would see an exception to
and above all law. It is not in a mere
body of flour and water that Christ is re-
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 65
ceived by the faithful partaker of His holy
Supper. If you receive it in the thought
of Him, He is with His thoughts not only
near you, but within you ; the more earnest-
ly you think of Him the more closely He
will unite Himself with you. But if you
do not think of Him at all, you eat and
drink nothing but common bread and com-
mon wine.
CHAPTER VI.
THE longing of every man to be, after
his death, once more united with
those he loved most dearly in this
life, shall be fulfilled in a more perfect
degree than you ever thought of or hoped
for.
Those who were united in their life by
a common spiritual element shall, in the
hereafter, not only meet, but grow to-
gether, through that very element which
shall become a mutual organ of their spir-
its, of which they both partake with equal
consciousness. For even now the dead and
the living, as well as the living among each
other, are grown into one by numberless
elements of that kind, elements which they
have in common ; but not till death has un-
done the bonds in which this frame of ours
holds every soul of the living, will the
union of their consciousness be enhanced
into a consciousness of their union. In the
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 67
moment of death every one will realize the
fact that what his mind received from
those who died before him, never ceased
to belong to their minds as well, and thus
he will enter the third world not like a
strange visitor, but like a long expected
member of the family, who is welcomed
home by all those with whom he was here
united in the community of faith, of knowl-
edge, or of love.
We shall also enter into close fellow-
ship with the great spirits of those who
lived, in their second stage of life, long
before us, but whose great example and
wisdom served to form our own minds.
Thus he who lived here entirely in Christ
will be entirely in Christ hereafter; nor is
his individuality to be extinguished within
a higher individuality; nay, he will be es-
tablished, and receive new strength, and
at the same time be able to strengthen
others. For such spirits as are grown
into one by their common elements must
profit by each other's strength, while, at
the same time, they influence each other
68 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
through their different elements. Some
spirits will strengthen each other in many
parts of their character, while others have
only few points of coincidence and of mu-
tual interest; some of these alliances
brought about by the kindred elements in
different spirits may be dissolved again,
but those whose tendency is towards truth,
virtue, and beauty will continue.
All things which have no elements of
eternal harmony in them, though continu-
ing beyond this life, must one day vanish
away, thereby separating those spirits who
for some time were united in an unworthy
alliance working for no good.
Though the different elements of human
spirits contain, for the greater part, some
germ of the true, the beautiful, and the
good, that germ is, in this life, covered up
and encumbered with much that is trifling,
corrupted, false, and wrong. The spirits
united by such elements may, in after-life,
either remain united or not: for they may
either hold what is right and good, leaving
that which is wrong and wicked to the evil
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 69
spirits whose company they shun; or some
of them may keep the good, others the bad,
elements.
On the other hand, spirits united by their
mutual ownership of some element or idea
of the true, the beautiful, or the good, in its
eternal purity, will remain united by them
for ever, sharing for ever the same spirit-
ual property.
In the same measure, therefore, as the
higher spirits comprehend the eternal
ideas, they will grow together in larger
spiritual organisms; and as the roots of all
individual ideas are in general ideas, and
theirs again in more general and universal
ideas, so at last will all the spirits be
united in wonderful organization with
the greatest of spirits, with God.
Thus the spiritual world, in its perfec-
tion, is not a mere gathering together of
spirits, but it may be likened to a living
tree of spirits, with its roots in the earth
and its crown reaching throughout the
heavens.
Only the greatest and noblest spirits, as
70 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
Christ and His Saints, are able to reach,
immediately, with the best part of their be-
ing, the inward height and greatness of
God; the smaller and minor spirits take
root in them as twigs in branches, and
branches in trees, connected, through their
mediation, with the highest essence of the
most High.
Dead geniuses and saints are, therefore,
the true mediators between God and men,
partaking, on one side, of the ideas of God
and communicating them to men, and feel-
ing, on the other side, the joys and suffer-
ings of mankind and communicating them
to God.
In the very beginnings of religious life
the worship of the dead was closely con-
nected with the worship of deified nature;
the savage races have retained the greater,
the civilized races the higher part of those
views, and there is no people or community
that do not hold more or less of them as a
chief article of faith. Therefore, every
town ought to have a shrine for their own
great dead, which might be built close by,
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH, 71
or right within the temple of God, whereas
Christ alone ought to be always worshiped
in the same place with God himself.
CHAPTER VII.
"Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then
face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I
know even as also I am known." 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
MAN leads both an outward and an
inward life in this world; the one
visible and perceptible for every
one in his looks, words, works, and deeds ;
the other perceptible only for himself in
his thoughts and emotions. The continua-
tion of the visible life into the world
around may be easily traced, the continu-
ation of the invisible life remains invisible,
but is by no means wanting. For as man's
inward life forms the centre of his present
existence, its continuation will form the
centre of his future existence.
Indeed, the effects which a person pro-
duces in a form visible and perceptible to
the living, are not the only emanation from
him. However minute and gentle a vibra-
tion connected with some conscious move-
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 73
ment within our mind may be and all our
mental acts are connected with, and ac-
companied by, such vibrations of our brain
it cannot vanish without producing con-
tinued processes of a similar nature, within
ourselves, and, finally, around ourselves,
though we are not able to trace them into
the outer world. As little as the lute can
keep its music to itself, so little can our
brain. The music of sounds or of thoughts
originates in the lute or in the brain, but
does not stay there: it spreads beyond
them.
What a wonderfully complicated play of
vibrations of a higher order, originating
in our brain, may be going on along with
the coarser and lower play that strikes our
eyes and ears, something like the most deli-
cate ripple on the big waves of a lake, or
the finely traced ornaments on the surface
of a carpet, which receives its whole value
and higher meaning from them. The man
of science knows and studies the play of
waves of a lower order only, little caring
for those of a higher order. He does not
74 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
perceive them, but knowing the principle,
he ought not to neglect the inferences that
may be derived from it. 1
Therefore, the effects produced by hu-
man spirits are not limited to their con-
tinued influence upon us by means of their
perceptible outer life in the present stage:
along with this outer part there is in our
nature another imperceptible inner part,
even the essential part of the human being.
Suppose a man to have lived and died in
some desert island without any direct in-
fluence on other people's lives: he must
continue in his individuality, in expectance
of future development, having been unable
1 Whether we attribute the action of the nerves to
chemical or electrical processes, we either ascribe them
to the vibrations of ultimate particles, or at least
assume them to be evoked by or connected with them,
though the imponderable substance may herein be of
greater moment than the ponderable. Now vibrations
can only seem to die out, in so far as they spread in-
definitely in all directions; or, if dying out for a time,
transformed into energy or tension, they are able to
begin afresh, in some form or other, in accordance with
the law of the conservation of energy.
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 75
to develop himself in this life through
intercourse with his fellow-men. In the
same way a child, which has been alive
only for a moment, can never die again.
The shortest moment of conscious life
produces a circle of influence around
it, just as the briefest tone that seems gone
in a second, produces a similar circle, which
carries the tone into endless space, far
beyond the persons standing by to listen;
for no action, or effect, is utterly destroyed,
it goes on producing new effects of its
kind for ever. Thus the mind of a child
will develop itself from that one conscious
moment, as well as the mind of that iso-
lated man, but in a different way from what
it would have done when beginning from
a more developed state.
It is only in death that a man becomes
fully conscious of all the influence he exer-
cised on other men's minds; in the same
way will he acquire only in death full pos-
session and use of what he has fashioned
within himself. What mental treasures he
gathered in all his life, what fills his mem-
76 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
ory, what pervades his feelings, what his
mind and fancy created, will remain his
property for ever. The connection and
interdependence of all these mental stores
remains dark to us in this life. Thoughts
will occasionally pass through this treas-
ure-house, lighting up with their rays the
little corner that lies on their way, and
leaving the rest in obscurity. Our mind
never realizes its inward fulness all at once.
Detached ideas only, happening to find a
new idea to associate with, will emerge
from the dark for a moment, to sink back
into the dark the next moment. Thus man
is a stranger to his own mind, in which
he gropes in the dark, trusting to his syl-
logisms to guide him, and often forgetting
the best of his treasures, which happen to
lie out of his way concealed by the dark-
ness which covers the regions of the human
spirit. In the moment of death, however,
when eternal night sinks down on his bodily
eyes, a new day will break upon his spirit;
the centre of the inner man will kindle into
a sun, which sheds its radiance over all his
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 77
spiritual stores, and at the same time pene-
trates into and looks through them as an
inward eye of unearthly keenness. All
that he had forgotten here, he will find
again there; he only forgot it because it
went to the hereafter before him, where he
finds it all gathered up for him, in a new
and universal light, which saves him the
trouble of collecting what he wants to as-
sociate, and dividing what he wants to
separate. At a glance he will be able to
survey all that is in him, his various ideas
in their relations of agreement and con-
tradiction, of connection and separation
not confined to one particular direction of
his thoughts, but looking into every direc-
tion at once. There are instances of per-
sons approaching such a state of inward
illumination, even in this life, in cases of
approaching death, as by drowning, or in
somnambulism, or narcosis, and such like.
As high as the flight and sight of a bird
mount above the lowly path of the blind
crawling caterpillar, that knows of nothing
but what it touches in its slow movements,
78 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
so far will that higher state of knowledge
surpass our present state. So that in death
not only our body, but our senses, our in-
tellect, the whole constitution of our mind,
must be cast off, as forms too narrow for
our life hereafter, as useless members for
a new order of things, where everything
that we could approach and investigate
but slowly and imperfectly with such earth-
ly organs, will be immediately within our-
selves, for us to look through, to know,
and to enjoy. Every man's own self, how-
ever, in the middle of that dissolution of
temporary forms, will remain unimpaired
in its whole extent and development, and
there will be for him a new and higher life
instead of the inferior kind of activity
which has been extinguished. The turmoil
of thoughts is hushed; they need no longer
come and go, and move about, to become
conscious of their relation to each other.
The present intercourse of thoughts will
give way to a higher intercourse, between
spirits and spirits. And as the intercourse
of human thoughts takes place in human
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 79
spirit, so the intercourse and communion
of spirits will take place in that higher
spirit whose all-connecting centre we call
God. For them no language is required
to understand, no eye to see and recognize
each other. Just as one thought of ours
understands and influences another with-
out the mediation of mouth, ear, or hand;
as thoughts meet and part without an out-
ward link or separation; so secret, close,
and immediate will the communion of
spirits be. There is nothing those spirits
will be able to conceal from each other;
every sinful thought that lurked here in
some dark corner of the mind, everything
a man would like to cover up from his
fellow-men with a thousand hands, will lie
clear and open to every spirit. Only those
spirits, therefore, that were all pure and
true in this life, will be able to meet other
spirits unashamed hereafter; and those
that were set aside and misjudged here will
be understood and appreciated hereafter.
Again, every spirit will with a self-
penetrating eye perceive all his own de-
80 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
fects, all he left unfinished, imperfect, and
discordant within himself here, and per-
ceiving these defects will feel them with
the same keenness of sensation with which
we feel our bodily defects. And as in the
human mind one thought may help to free
the other from all that is deficient in it,
and as they associate into higher thoughts,
supplying in this wise what is imperfect in
each of them: just so the communion of
spirits will serve them as a means of prog-
ress towards perfection.
CHAPTER VIII.
MAN'S relations with nature, in this
life, are of a material as well as
of a spiritual kind. Heat, air,
water, earth enter into and issue from him
in every direction, forming and changing
his body. Around him, they move side by
side, within him they meet and combine,
and in their combination make up a frame,
which shuts off his bodily sensations 2nd
whatever there is still deeper than these
within him, from immediate contact y/ith
the outer world. Thus he looks and feels
into the outer world through the windows
of his senses, and draws fragmentary
knowledge out of it as in little buckets.
After his death, however, when his bod-
ily frame sinks into decay, the spirit, fet-
tered and encumbered no longer, will roam
throughout nature in unbound liberty.
Then he will feel the waves of light and
sound not only as they strike his eyes arid
82 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
ears, but as they glide along in the oceans
of air and of ether; he will feel not only
the breathing of the wind and the heaving
of the sea against his body bathing in them,
but float along through air and sea him-
self; he will no longer walk among verdant
trees and fragrant meadows, but conscious-
ly pervade the fields, and forests, and men
as they walk about them.
Thus, what he loses in passing to a high-
er stage of life are nothing but organs the
imperfect aid of which he can gladly dis-
pense with in a state of existence where he
shall feel, and perfectly and actually take
in, everything that, on a lower stage, lay
outside his own self and could not be ap-
proached but by such slow mediation. Why
should we take our eyes and ears with us
into the life to come, to draw in light and
sound from living nature's well, when the
waves of that future life shall move in
harmony and union with the very waves of
light and sound? Nay, more : The human
eye, though kindred to the sun, is but a tiny
thing, perceiving of the glory of the skies
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 83
but little sparkling dots. Man's longing
to know more of the heavens is not grati-
fied in this life. Though he invent tele-
scopes to enlarge the power and capacity
of his eyes, it is in vain the stars are only
so many dots for him. So he hopes to at-
tain in the life to come what his present
life cannot afford him, he trusts to have
his longings satisfied when he shall go to
heaven, and to see, henceforth, distinctly
everything that was hidden from his earth-
ly sight And he is right in hoping so,
though he shall not receive wings to go to
heaven and fly from star to star with, or
from the heavens visible above us to higher
heavens yet unseen; there are no such
wings in the nature of things. Nor is he
to see the heavens in being carried from
one star to another in a succession of new
births; there is no stork to carry babies
from star to star. Nor will his eye receive
more visual power to penetrate into the
farthest distances of heaven, by being
turned into the largest kind of telescope;
the principle of our earthly vision would
84 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
prove insufficient there. When, as a con-
scious part of the great celestial body that
carries and holds him the Earth he con-
sciously partakes in the intercourse,
through light, between this and other heav-
enly beings: then shall he see his longing
gratified.
What, a new kind of sight? Well, it
would not be fit for men below, just as our
present sight would not suffice for the heav-
ens above. 1 Through heavenly space the
Earth floats along, an enormous eye, im-
mersed in an ocean of the light which pro-
ceeds from numberless stars, and wheeling
round and round to receive, on all sides,
the impact of its waves, which cross and
cross again, a million of times, without
ever disturbing each other. It is with that
eye man shall one day learn to see, meeting
with the spreading waves of his future
life the outward waves of the surrounding
ether, and undisturbed by the encountering
1 Lest this assumption, apparently involving serious
difficulties, might be considered thoughtless, I shall
more fully explain the meaning of it in an appendix.
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 85
waves, penetrating, with its most subtle
vibrations, into the depths of heaven.
Learn to see, indeed! A great many
things man will have to learn after his
death. For you must not expect that you
shall take in, on your very entrance into it,
the whole splendor of heaven, which is in
store for the life to come. Even here a
child must learn to see and hear; what it
sees and hears in the beginning are sights
and sounds meaningless for it, dazzling,
stunning, confusing. The same will be the
case, in the life to come, with what is of-
fered to the new senses of the new child.
Only what man takes away with him of this
life, the remembrance of all he has done,
thought, and been here, he will see clearly
and distinctly within him, as soon as he
enters that new life: though this will pri-
marily leave him very much the same man
he has been. And you may be sure that
the foolish, the idle, the wicked shall profit
by the glory of the hereafter only so far as
they are made to see the discord of their
lives, and are compelled, in the end, to give
86 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
up their old, evil ways. Even for his pres-
ent life man has received an eye to see all
the marvels of heaven and earth, an ear to
drink in the sounds of music and of human
speech, an understanding to grasp the
meaning of all these things yet, what is
the use of eye, ear, or mind to the foolish,
the idle, the wicked?
The best and highest things of the life
to come, as well as of the present life, are
only for the best and highest men, who
alone understand, appreciate, and help to
produce them. Thus only the higher class
of spirits will be enabled to understand,
and take an active part in, the conscious
intercourse of the celestial being that car-
ries them with other beings of the "com-
pany of heaven."
Whether, after aeons of years, this earth
of ours, revolving round the sun in closer
and closer orbits, shall return to the womb
whence it issued, for a new, solar life to
begin for all earthly creatures who
knows ? And would it behoove us to know,
at present?
CHAPTER IX.
THE spirits of the third stage will
dwell in the regions of this Earth,
whereof mankind itself forms a
part, as in a common body, and all the
processes in nature will be to them the
same as the processes in our bodies are to
us at present. Their body will enclose the
bodies of the second stage of life as a com-
mon mother, just as the bodies of the sec-
ond stage enclose those of the first. But a
spirit of the third stage has for his own
share the common body which he con-
tributed to form and develop during his
earthly life. Whatever in this world has
become, through the existence of a certain
human being, different from what it would
have been without him, helps to constitute
his new existence, grown out of the com-
mon root of all existence, and made up,
partly of solid institutions and works, part-
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
ly of moving and spreading effects, similar-
ly to the way our present body is made up
of solid material, and of changeable ma-
terial kept together by the solid.
Now, as the spheres of existence where-
in the lives of higher spirits move must
necessarily intersect, the question arises
how is it possible for such numberless
spheres to cross and recross each other
without disturbing and confusing each
other. But you may as well ask how it is
possible for numberless water waves to
cross in the same lake, for numberless
air waves to cross in the same atmos-
phere, for numberless waves of light
to cross in the same ether, for numberless
waves of memory to cross in the same
brain, for numberless spheres of human
lives the germs and substructions of their
after-lives to cross in this world without
disturbing and confusing each other. On
the contrary, they only produce a move-
ment and life, of a higher order, of those
waves, those memories, those lives of the
second, and also of the third stage.
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 89
But what is there that keeps those cross-
ing spheres of consciousness asunder?
Nothing is there to keep them asunder in
any particular points of coincidence, for
they all have their points in common,
though they belong to each of them in a
different manner: this is what separates
them and distinguishes them as individuals.
Or would you ask what there is to distin-
guish or separate the intersecting wave
circles? You are able to distinguish them
outwardly, though they are all alike; and
it must be much easier for spheres of con-
sciousness to distinguish each other and
themselves inwardly.
When you get a letter from India or
Australia having its pages crossed with
writing in different directions, how do you
manage to distinguish the two sets of lines?
Simply by the inner connection of each set.
Now, the world may be compared to such
a sheet crossed with divers sets of writing,
in ever so many directions, every set read-
ing itself as it stands by itself, and reading
as well the other sets by which it is crossed.
90 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
But that letter is only a very inadequate
symbol of the world.
How, then, can consciousness remain
one, when spread over such an extended
space? Is there not the law about "the
Threshold of Consciousness" P 1 You may
as well ask how can it remain one in the
more limited space of your body, of which
that more extended space is only a con-
tinuation. Your body, your brain, are
they mere points? Or is there one partic-
ular point in them, the seat of the soul?
There is no such point. The nature of
your soul at present is to maintain the
'This empirical law of the reciprocity of body and
mind states, that consciousness is extinguished when-
ever the bodily activity on which it depends, sinks
below a certain degree of strength, called the Thresh-
old. The more extended this activity, the more it will
be weakened, and the more easily it will sink below
the threshold. There is such a threshold for our con-
sciousness as a whole the limit between sleeping and
waking and a particular one for every particular
sphere of the mind. Hence, in the waking state, the one
or the other idea will rise up or sink in our mind, ac-
cording as the particular activity on which it depends
rises above, or sinks below, its respective threshold.
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 91
connection between all the parts of your
small body; hereafter it will be, to main-
tain the more extensive connection of all
the parts of your larger body. The spirit
of God maintains the connection of the
whole Universe, and would you look for
God in a point? And one day you shall
more fully partake of His ubiquity.
Or, if you are afraid that the waves of
your future life may be too extended to rise
to the threshold which they reach and over-
step in this life, you ought to consider that,
far from spreading into an empty world
where they would indeed sink into an abyss,
they spread into a world, which, as the
eternal foundation of the spirit of God,
will be a foundation of yours as well : for
it is only as supported by and enclosed in
the divine life that any creature can live.
The little wren, carried on the eagle's
back, can easily soar above the mountain
tops, which she could never do for herself;
she can even fly a little higher, above the
eagle's back where she rested. But both
eagle and wren remain in the care of God.
92 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
Another question arises how, after
death, we shall be able to exist without our
brain, that wonderful structure which at
present supports all our mental activity, de-
veloping itself in the same measure as that
activity grows and develops itself was
it given to us for no purpose ? It would be
the same question, how the plant can exist
without the seed out of which it burst forth
into life, and grows into light: the seed,
another such wonderful structure, develop-
ing itself more and more through its own
vitality; was that seed made for no pur-
pose?
Now you ask, is there, in all the world
around us, another structure as wonderful
as the human brain, that might take its
place in after-life, or is there any structure
even superior to it: for the life to come
will no doubt be superior to the present
life. But is not your body, as a whole, a
larger and grander structure than your eye,
your ear, your brain, or any of its parts?
And again the world of which mankind,
with their commonwealths, their sciences,
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 93
arts, and commerce form only a part, is
in the same degree, nay, in an unspeakably
higher degree, superior to your little brain,
which is only a part or particle of that part.
To gain a higher view of the subject, you
must not take the earth for a mere ball of
land and water and air; the earth is indeed
a larger and higher individual creature
than yourself, a heavenly being, with a
more wonderful living and moving on its
surface than you carry about in your own
little brain, contributing thereby your own
small share to the earth life. It is vain
for you to dream of a life to come, if you
fail to recognize the life around you.
What does the anatomist see in a man's
brain? It is to him a labyrinth of whitish
filaments, the meaning of which he cannot
read. And what does the brain see in it-
self? A world of light, and sound, and
thoughts, associations, fancies, emotions of
love and hatred. This will help you to
realize the difference between that which
you see of the world, looking at it from the
outside, and that which the world sees
94 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
within itself. Then you will no longer
expect that in the world as a whole the
inside and the outside ought to resemble
one another more than in the case of your-
self, as a part of the world. And only
because you are a part of the world you are
enabled to see within yourself a part of
that which the world sees in itself.
Finally, you may ask what it is that in
after-life, and not till then, wakens our
larger body, so to speak. For that body
exists at present, growing and spreading
into the outer world as a continuation of
our present narrow body. Well, it wakens
from the very fact that this narrow body
falls asleep, or rather decays. It is only
an instance of the universal rule, which
prevails throughout this present life,
whence we conclude that it will continue
hereafter. In your sceptic way, you in-
sist on drawing all your conclusions from
this life; so you ought to draw this one
also.
Conscious energy is in fact never pro-
duced afresh, nor can it be absolutely de-
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 95
stroyed. Similar to the body with which
it is connected, it may change its place,
form, and activity, in time and space.
When it sinks to-day in one place, it will
rise in another place to-morrow. That
your eye may be awake, may see conscious-
ly, your ear must go to sleep for a while ;
that your mental activity may be roused,
your senses must sleep for a while; a feel-
ing of pain in some minute part of your
body may for a time extinguish all your
consciousness. When directed to a large
range of subjects at once, the light of at-
tention will necessarily shine but feebly on
the details; when it is concentrated on one
point, all the rest will recede into darkness;
to reflect on something is to abstract from
other things. You are awake to-day be-
cause you slept yesterday, and the more
active you have been in waking, the sound-
er will be your sleep.
Now, in this life, our sleep, in a certain
sense, is only half-sleep, allowing the old
man to waken again, because the old man
is still here ; in death our sleep will be full
96 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
sleep, out of which shall waken a new man,
for the old man is not: but the old rule
holds good again, which demands an equiv-
alent of your former consciousness ; and as
there is a new body instead of the old one,
being a continuation of the same, so there
will be a new consciousness, as an equiva-
lent and continuation of the old one.
A continuation, I say; for whatever pre-
serves, in the old man, the consciousness
that dwelled in the body of the child,
though there is not an atom of it left in his
body, will preserve, in his future life, the
same consciousness that dwelled in the
body of the old man, of which not an atom
will be left in the new body. For in either
case the new body preserves the effects of
the former body, the organ of his former
consciousness, and is itself the outgrowth
of it. Thus there is one principle for the
continuation of our present life, from this
day to the morrow, and for the continua-
tion of the present life into the life to
come. And could there be any principle
but an eternal one for the eternal con-
tinuation of human life?
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 97
As little need you ask, how it is that the
effects produced by you in this world, which
have spread around and beyond yourself,
belong to you more properly and more
closely than any other effects lying beyond
your sphere. The reason for this is in
their origin from you. Every cause
retains its effects as an eternal prop-
erty. And, after all, your acts never went
beyond you; even in this life, they formed
an unconscious continuation of yourself,
only waiting to be wakened to new con-
sciousness.
As little as a man, when once alive, can
ever die again, as little could he have wak-
ened into life had he not been alive before;
only he was not alive individually. The
consciousness which wakens in a child at
its birth is only a part of the eternal and
universal consciousness concentrated in this
new soul. To follow this living power of
consciousness through all its ways and
changes involves no greater difficulty than
following the living power of the body.
Perhaps you are afraid that human con-
98 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
sciousness, being born of the universal con-
sciousness, may be again absorbed into the
same. Behold the tree ! What a time it
took for the stem to grow branches; but
once here they cannot be swallowed up into
the stem again, else the tree could not grow
and develop itself : but the tree of universal
life must grow and develop itself as well.
After all, to draw any conclusion from
this life about the hereafter, we must not
take our stand on unknown causes or self-
made premises; but on known facts, from
whence to proceed to the greater and high-
er facts of after-life, and thus to strengthen
and support our belief from below, in addi-
tion to higher arguments, and vitally to
connect this belief with practical life. If
we did not need this faith, we should re-
quire no support for it; but what would be
its use without such support?
CHAPTER X.
THE human soul is spread throughout
the body; when the soul departs the
body decays. But the conscious-
ness of the soul is in different places at
different times. 1 You may watch it wan-
dering about in our narrow body, now
corresponding with the eye, now with the
ear, with the outer and inner senses. In
death, it will wander beyond our body, like
a man who, having had his little house de-
stroyed wherein he moved about for years,
x Or, to express it more exactly, consciousness is
present and awake when and where the activity of the
body underlying the activity of the mind the psycho-
physical activity exceeds that degree of strength
which we call the threshold. According to this view,
consciousness can be localized in time and space. The
summits of the waves of our psycho-physical activity
move and change about from place to place, though
confined, in this life, to our body, even to a limited part
of our body, and in sleep they sink below the threshold
to rise again in waking.
100 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
leaves it for ever to wander to distant
countries. Death separates our two lives
only so far as it takes us from the narrow
scene of our wanderings to a wider one.
Now, in this life consciousness cannot be
in every place at once; the same in after-
life. But the range of its wanderings will
be incomparably wider, with freer roads,
with higher points of view, embracing all
the lower ones of the present life.
Even in this life it may happen, though
very rarely, that the light of consciousness
wanders from the narrow body into the
larger body, and returning home gives in-
formation about things which are taking
place far away in space, or things which,
springing from present circumstances, will
take place in some future time: for the
length of the future rests on the breadth
of the present. Sometimes a little rift will
open, and quickly close again, in the other-
wise closed door between this world and
the next, the door which only death shall
open for ever and aye. Nor is it well for
us to peep through those rifts before the
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 101
time. But such exceptions to the rule of
our present life are still in harmony with
the greater rule which embraces both this
life and the life hereafter.
Sometimes the narrower body will fall
asleep to a certain extent, in an uncommon
way, wakening in a no less uncommon way,
in another direction, beyond its usual
limits, though not so completely as to
awaken no more. Or, some part of our
larger body is impressed with such uncom-
mon intensity as to draw our consciousness,
for a while, away from our narrower body,
to rise above the threshold in an unusual
place. Hence the wonders of clairvoy-
ance, of presentiments, and dreams mere
fables, if our future body and our future
life are fables, otherwise signs of the one
and predictions of the other : and if a thing
has its signs, it must exist; if it has predic-
tions, it will come.
However, all those things are no signs
of a healthy life. For in this life we have
only to build up our bodies for the here-
after, not to see or hear with the eyes and
102 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
ears of the hereafter. A flower when
opened before its time will not thrive. And
though our belief in a life to come may
be supported by such occasional glances
caught in this life, it must not take its foun-
dation on them. A sound and healthy be-
lief is founded on arguments, and it reaches
to the highest points of view of a healthy
life, being itself essential to the health and
integrity of such a life.
Did you take the faint image in which
a dead person appears in your memory for
a mere inward semblance? If so, you are
mistaken; it is more than that, it is your
friend's own self, consciously coming, not
only near you, but into you. His former
shape is still the garment of his soul,
though no longer encumbered with his for-
mer solid body and wandering slowly along
with him, but transparent and light, free
from earthly burdens, changing its place
in a moment, at the call of every person
who thinks of him, or even entering into
your mind of his own accord, thus causing
you to remember him who is dead. The
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 103
old idea, so generally adopted, of the souls
of the dead as light, bodiless, unbounded
by space, is quite a correct view of the
subject, without earnestly meaning to be so.
You have also heard of ghosts appear-
ing what the doctors call phantasms or
hallucinations. They are indeed halluci-
nations of the living, but, at the same time,
real manifestations of the dead. The faint
images in our memory are such manifesta-
tions, those vivid apparitions are only the
more so. It is no use worrying whether
they be one thing or the other, for they
are really both things at a time. And as
you are not frightened by the images with-
in you, being present manifestations of
spirits, you need no more be frightened by
the apparitions before you. Though,
after all, in a certain sense, there is reason
for being frightened. The images of the
memory are either called up by yourself,
or they come, quietly and peacefully, in
the course of your inner life as helps to its
development; the other class of manifesta-
tions come unbidden, too strong to be kept
104 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
back, standing before you it seems, but, in
reality, standing within you, not to help,
but rather to disturb the working of your
inner life; such a presence is an abnormal
one, belonging at the same time to this life
and the next. The dead and the living
ought not to hold intercourse in this way.
To see dead persons almost as distinctly
and objectively as spirits see each other, is
almost death to the living; hence the fright
of the living caused by their presence. And
as, in those cases, the dead return half-
way from the realms beyond the grave to
the land this side the grave, popular belief
not an unfounded belief, perhaps will
have it that only those spirits walk about
here that are not released yet, but still
earth-bound with a heavy chain. To drive
away the unblessed spirit, call for the help
of a better and mightier one; but the best
and the mightiest is the one Spirit above all
spirits. In His protection, what can harm
you? Popular belief agrees in this that
evil spirits will vanish when the name of
God is called upon.
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 105
There is, however, in this matter great
danger of belief degenerating into super-
stition. The simplest means, after all, of
keeping ghosts away is, not to believe in
their coming. For believing that they may
come is going half-way to meet them.
"Spirits see each other," I said just now.
I argue that such appearance, which is con-
trary to the order of things at present, is
only anticipated from the order of things
to come. Clearly, distinctly, objectively,
the inhabitants of the hereafter will see
each other, in the same shape of which we
in this life preserve but a faint likeness, a
dim contour, in our memory. For they
interpenetrate each other with their whole
nature, of which a small portion only en-
ters our minds when we remember them.
In order to attract them, it will be neces-
sary to direct one's attention towards them,
in after-life as well as at present.
Now you may ask, How is it possible for
those that interpenetrate each other to ap-
pear to each other objectively, in a distinct
shape? You may as well ask, How is it
106 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
possible that that something which, in your
brain, produces the idea of a living person,
or the memory of a dead person (and this
is all you have to base it upon), appears to
you as an outward object, a definite recol-
lection ? The effects that produce your rec-
ollection have no distinct shape themselves,
yet they bring before you the distinct out-
lines of the person from whom they orig-
inally proceeded. You cannot tell why it
is so, in this life; how can you expect to
know more of the hereafter?
Thus, I say again, do not draw infer-
ences from supposed present causes un-
known to you, nor from premises of your
own invention; but from present facts
known to you and all, to arrive at the
greater and higher facts of the hereafter.
Any single inference may be erroneous, so
you must not stick to all the particulars;
but the accordance of all the different in-
ferences, pointing towards that which is
before and above all inference, will be the
best support for our belief from below,
and the best guide to the regions above.
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 107
But if, from the beginning, you would take
your footing above, the whole path of be-
lief which is to lead you upward might slip
from under your feet.
CHAPTER XL
THERE would be no more difficulties
for our belief, could we only make
up our minds to take the word that
has been a fine saying for more than a thou-
sand years, that "in God we live, and move,
and have our being," for more than a
word, or rhetorical phrase. In that case
our belief in God and in our own eternal
life would be one; we should then look
upon our own life as part of God's eternal
life, and should consider the height of our
future life above this present life as a
higher step within God, from that lower
step where we are placed in Him now; a
better insight into the things below would
enable us better to comprehend higher
things, and from their mutual connection
we should comprehend the great whole of
which we only form a part.
When your perceptions are gone out of
your consciousness, recollections will rise
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 109
out of them. Thus your whole earthly life
of perceptions in God will be gone one day,
but a higher life of recollections in God
will have risen out of it; and as your rec-
ollections move and associate within your
head, the spirits of the hereafter move and
associate within the Divine head. It is
only one step higher on the same ladder,
which does not lead to God, but higher up
in God, who holds within Himself top and
bottom of that ladder. How empty must
God appear to those who take the above-
mentioned text for an empty sound; how
full is God through the full significance of
those words !
Do you pretend to know how, in your
present stage, a life of perceptions is pos-
sible in your mind? You know nothing
but that there is such a life, which, being a
spiritual life, is only possible in a spirit.
So there can be no difficulty for you to be-
lieve although you know not how it is
possible that there will be a life hereaf-
ter, of your whole spirit in a higher spirit;
110 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
if you only believe that there is a higher
Spirit, and yourself in Him.
And again, there would be no more diffi-
culties for our belief, if we could make up
our minds to take for true that other word,
that in everything God liveth, and moveth,
and hath His being. Then there would be
no dead world for us, but a living world,
out of which every human being builds up
his own future body, as a new house built
up within the house of God.
When, oh, when, will that life-giving
faith become alive among us? The fact
that it is a life-giving faith shall make it
alive.
CHAPTER XII.
YOUR question was, whether it would
be; my answer is how it will be.
Faith renders your question as to
the Whether unnecessary; but if the ques-
tion is asked, there is that one answer as
to the How. And as long as that How has
not been settled, the Whether will not cease
to come and go.
Here is the tree ; let one or the other of
its leaves drop away, if only its root be
struck deeply and firmly in the ground:
new branches and new leaves will grow and
drop away again, but the tree will stand
and bring forth blossoms of beauty, and
instead of taking its root in faith, bear
fruits of faith.
APPENDIX I.
ON THE PRINCIPLE OF HEAVENLY VISION,
VISION may be produced on several
principles. If an opaque screen
were placed in front of the retina
with only a tiny opening in it, we could see
through that opening, as every luminous
point of the outer world would send a slen-
der ray of light through it, and the rays
crossing in the opening would produce an
image, inverted, on the retina. But such
vision by means of slender rays would be
rather dim ; that is not the way in which we
see on earth. By another principle a trans-
parent lens is placed in front of the retina
which concentrates the whole cone of light
emitted from every luminous point of the
outer world, into a spot of the retina. This
makes vision much more distinct; and this
is the actual principle of earthly vision, or
rather of the external process of it; it does
not explain the real act of seeing. For the
APPENDIX. H3
soul does not see immediately the points of
the image on the retina; vision, as a mental
act, is produced by the vibrations propa-
gated into the brain, the different vibra-
tions proceeding from one point being felt
in one ; whatever proceeds from a common
source is perceived as one in the soul,
though we cannot tell how a complex proc-
ess in space is condensed into a simple per-
ception in the mind. It is, after all, nat-
ural enough for one and the same thing to
afford a different appearance when seen
from different points of view an inner or
an outer one and it is a general experi-
ence concerning the connection between
body and soul that a simple psychic act is
based on a physical complex, or, that the
physically complicated is psychically con-
centrated into something simple and one
in itself. Vision may be explained through
this law, and could hardly be explained
differently, from the impossibility of prov-
ing a simple seat of the soul.
Now, a third principle of vision may be
conceived, viz., the principle of interpene-
114 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
tration of the psycho-physical emanations
(i. e., physical processes producing psy-
chical effects) of two opposite points, the
perception of either point being produced
in the other immediately, by uniting those
various emanations in one. And what holds
good for two separate points, would do for
two separate systems of points. This
would be the most perfect vision, the points
of the objects appearing to each other im-
mediately and in their full intensity, in pro-
portion with the power produced by the in-
terpenetrating emanations, whereas in our
earthly vision it is not the points of the
objects that are seen, only their images on
the retina.
I imagine that there could be a mode of
vision on this principle. The emanations
of celestial bodies, meeting each other in
space, do indeed correspond to it, suppos-
ing that luminary vibrations, or concomi-
tant vibrations of a higher order, may be
considered as psycho-physical movements
(which supposition is nowise contrary to
experience). There has indeed always
APPENDIX. 115
been an inclination to connect our own
mental life with movements of imponder-
able substance; nor can there be anything
to prevent our connecting such movements
in the outer world with a mental life of a
higher order. Even our human eye would
not exactly require a lens in front of the
retina to receive point-shaped impressions
from outward points, if the retina itself,
and each successive stratum of it, which
now intercept outward emanations on their
way to our psycho-physical system, should
offer a surface of sensitive points to re-
ceive, and meet with their own emanations,
directly and without any check or hind-
rance, the impression of the outward vi-
brations : as in the case of the luminary
emanations of stars.
What, then, is the use of earthly eyes?
It is this that in their connection with our
other senses, they help to form organs for
effects of a higher order, organs which we
call Men, who in their turn are connected,
and united into an organism of a higher
order than man, which we call Earth!
116 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
New vibrations go forth, no doubt, from
the central points in which the fibres of the
optic nerve terminate in the brain, vibra-
tions propagated through the fibres be-
tween those points, and producing, where
they meet, through the total of impressions
caused by the single points, the perceptions
of real objects: in the same way we may
assume the perceptions of all the heavenly
beings to be embraced in a higher Divine
perception.
Two naked men are evidently under the
same outward conditions, reciprocally, as
two stars; however, they do not see each
other with their skins ; for the psycho-phy-
sical system of man is inside him, closed
up behind his skin, whereas that of the
Earth is spread out over its surface, having
its ultimate ramifications in the human be-
ings that live on that surface. Now, there
is one place in the skin affording an en-
trance to our psycho-physical system, name-
ly, the eye, whereby men do indeed see
each other. The rest of the emanations
which they interchange, spread beyond
APPENDIX. 117
them into the greater psycho-physical sys-
tem, without affecting their own respective
consciousness.
I do not say that every point in this the-
ory is well established, but I hope I have
given a right idea of a right principle. It
is no demonstration, it is only a remark,
which I hope will prove the germ, still half-
buried in darkness, to a great luminous
world-conception. My speculations, as laid
down in this last and in the foregoing chap-
ters, will become better established on
larger and firmer grounds, and will be
more generally adopted, when the science
of psycho-physics, now only in its infancy,
shall see its object not in an isolated theory
of the relations between body and mind in
the particular human and animal organ-
isms, but in a universal theory of the rela-
tions between the mental and the material
principles of the universe. Such a time, of
which this purports to be a harbinger, shall
come. To the materialist and the idealist
my views must at present appear foolish-
ness, just as the materialism and idealism
118 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
of our days will one day appear foolishness
in their turn.
APPENDIX II.
THE following passages contained in
the first Edition in the places here
referred to, were suppressed by the
Author in the later editions.
( Page 70, after line 15). It ought, how-
ever, to be remembered that though in the
third stage the spirit of man may rise to-
wards God, the third stage is not the high-
est attainable. In that stage the spirit of
man, having passed through this life, will
more fully comprehend the working of God
in the life of the earth. However, God
manifests himself in still higher stages of
life, which we are in the habit of vaguely
describing as the heavens. To them man
aspires during the third stage, preparing
himself to live there in a succeeding stage.
Nothing in the life of the earth will be con-
cealed from man while in the third stage.
The greatest spirit of that stage will by
God's appointment be governors of the
120 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
earth. But into that higher life, beyond
the earth, man will have to be born through
a second death.
(Page 82, line 17.) This earth of ours,
of which mankind forms a part, is to the
spirits of the third stage a common body,
and all the processes of nature are to them
what the processes of our own body are to
us. Their body encloses the bodies of the
second stage, as the bodies of the second
stage enclose those of the first. Each lower
sphere of life is enclosed in a higher
sphere, into which it is one day to open.
The one grows in and through the other,
by means, as it were, of nerves connecting
the two. But there is no connection of
consciousness between the two. No sphere
of life is clearly aware of the greater
sphere which encloses it, and which it is
one day to occupy. Thus man in his pres-
ent stage is like the seed growing and de-
veloping itself as part of the plant, with-
out knowing about the light-life of the
plant, which shall one day be its own life,
when in death it has left its mother-plant.
APPENDIX. 121
(Page 85, line 19, after the colon.) The
earth, the body of the spirits of the third
stage, is self-contained, but connected with
a greater body, the Sun, by the emanating
light and the general gravitation as the
child is connected with its mother's body by
the navel-string, receiving through it its
impulses of life. And as the embryo, while
connected with its mother, goes on growing
and unfolding itself, till in its first birth it
passes into the mother's own sphere of life,
and as man, after his birth, while connected
with the earth, goes on growing and un-
folding himself, till in death he shall pass
into the earth's own sphere of life, so the
spirits of the third stage, being connected
with the sun, will go on unfolding them-
selves, till on the fourth stage they shall
pass into the sun's life. In this way man,
having gone through his round of the three
stages of earth-life, is to begin a new round
in a higher world another celestial body
so that the highest stage of his earth-life
is like an embryo-state for the lowest stage
of that higher-world life. And so the earth
122 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
may be compared to an egg, from which
the sun breeds spirits, that they may rise to
the sun on wings of light.
In their stage of sun-life the spirits, by
means of light and gravitation, will see and
feel through space, and commune with
planets and suns, as far as light and gravi-
tation reach. Their common light-sense
will enable the sun's inhabitants to survey
at a glance the varieties of life and motion
in all the planets as clearly as we now sur-
vey our nearest surroundings; and so,
though born on one individual planet out
of the many, we shall know them all with-
out having to pass a lifetime on each of
them. The spirits who, while living on
several planets, remained strangers to each
other, will meet on the sun, in the same
sphere of life, whence each of them may
look back upon the scene of his own former
life as well as on the scenes of evolution of
all the rest. And in a succeeding stage the
spirits of the individual sun will be born
into the vast ocean of suns, which knows of
no bounds but boundlessness. And in a
APPENDIX. 123
still higher stage they will reach the eter-
nal source of space and time, itself indepen-
dent of space and time and finally even
they will outgrow all space and time, being
received into God's everlasting glory.
Chapter IX (conclusion). Therefore be
ye of good courage in your outlook beyond
the grave; do not heed the sayings of ig-
norance, proclaiming that in death, when
man's body is given back to the dust of the
earth, his spirit shall lose itself in the abso-
lute. Of a truth, man shall return to the
absolute, though not after his first death,
but after his last, and not like the raindrop
that is swallowed up in the ocean from
which it originally came, but like the butter-
fly that leaves its caterpillar's skin behind,
to move about freely and joyfully in its
pure parental element. The last death of
man, or of any spirit, is indeed an addition,
of a new individual and independent ele-
ment evolved in and through its various
stages of life, to the grea.t Principle of all
existence, undetermined in the beginning of
creation, but destined to be determined and
124 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
evolved by this very addition. The abso-
lute is not a grave-yard for decaying
corpses ; it is the birth-place of the children
of God that have grown into angels, who
are as eyes and ears and hands to God,
whereby he governs all the lower spheres,
down to this present world of ours.
AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT TO FIRST
EDITION.
r "T l HE idea worked out in this little
book, that the spirits of the dead
continue to exist as individuals in
the living, was first suggested to me
through a conversation with my friend
Professor Billroth, 1 then living in Leipzig,
now in Halle. The idea appealing to a
series of kindred thoughts lying ready in
my own mind, and engendering new ones,
finally assumed the present shape, enlarged
by a kind of spontaneous evolution into the
idea of a higher life of spirits in God. In
'Johann Gustav Friedrich Billroth, born 1808 at
Lubeck, died 1836 at Halle, where in 1834 he had been
appointed professor of theology. He must not be con-
fused with Theodore Billroth, the famous anatomist.
Prof. Billroth's chief work, here alluded to (but, as it
seems, undeservedly neglected in our days), was pub-
lished after his death by Prof. Erdmann, of Halle:
Vorlesungenuber Religionsphilosophie: Leipzig, 1837.
126 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH.
the meantime the originator's own way of
thinking has taken a different direction
from ours, in the philosophy of religion in
general, and especially in the doctrine of
immortality, so that he seems for the most
part, if not entirely, to have abandoned the
fundamental idea. Nevertheless, I have
felt obliged to mention him as its origina-
tor, though I may no longer speak of him
as its advocate. As far as I know he will
expound his own views on the subject in
a philosophical work shortly to appear.
Written at Gastein,
August, 1835.
INDEX.
Absolute not a grave-yard, 124.
^Esthetics, Introduction to, 10.
After-life, Description of, 41-43.
Angels, Anatomy of, 12; Belief in, 17.
Apparitions, 103.
Art, Germ for a new phase of, 64.
B
Billroth, J. G. F., 125.
Birth, 31.
Blessed or unblessed existence, 20.
Blessed the man, 62.
Body, Celestial, 121.
Body-spirit, Infant has, 34.
Bodies of the three stages, 87.
Brain, a world of emotions, 93; and lute, 73; Mental
acts accompanied by vibrations of, 73; Without
brain after death, 92.
Buchner, F. K. C. L., 7.
Butterfly, Man like a, 123.
Caterpillar, Man like a, 123.
Celestial body, 121.
127
128 INDEX.
Child alive a moment cannot die, 75.
Christ, Church of, 23; in the Lord's Supper, 65;
Christ liveth, 39; son of God, 22; the mediator,
18; to be worshiped with God, 71; United in,
24; United with, in the hereafter, 67.
Christ's body, the Church, 40; life not supernat-
ural, 22f.
Christianity, 21.
Church, The, Christ's body, 40; of Christ, 23.
Churches and scoffers, 64.
Circle of influences, 75.
Circles, Intersecting wave, 89; of waves, 37f.
Clairvoyance, 47, 101.
Color-star, 46.
Commandments of God, 24.
Communion of Spirits, 79, 80.
Conscious energy, 94; Conscious in death, 75.
Consciousness, Continuation of, 20; not reabsorbed
in universal, 98 ; Set free by death, 59 ; Threshold
of, 90, 99; Transition of, 20; Union of, enhanced
by death, 66; Universal, 97; wanders, 99, 100.
Continuation of life, 96.
D
Darwin, Charles, 25.
Dead geniuses and saints, mediators, 70.
Dead, The, and living, Meeting of, 58; how they
arise, 63; Image of, in memory, 102; in your
mind, 61; Influence of, 53; made happy or mis-
erable, 62; Real manifestations of the, 103;
Shrine for great, 70; Spirits of the, 37; Thoughts
INDEX. 129
of the, not gone, 37 ; within us, 60 ; Worship of
the, 70.
Death, 31; a climacteric disease, 42; a new day, 76;
a second birth, 32; After death, liberty, 81;
Conscious in, 75 ; Consciousness set free by, 59 ;
enhancing union of consciousness, 66 ; First and
last, 123; In the moment of, 36; Man will learn
after, 85.
Desert island, Man on, 74.
Divine germ in the third stage, 30; Divine life, 91;
Divine perception, 116; Divine spirit all-con-
scious, 17.
Earth; a common body, 120; an embryo-state, 121;
an enormous eye, 84; an individuality, 16, 93;
a system, 15; and mankind, 16; bound spirits,
104; like an egg, 122; -spirit, 17ff; the body of
the spirits of the third stage, 121.
Earthly eyes, Use of, 115.
Earthly vision, 83, 113.
Egg, Earth like an, 122.
Embryo-state, The Earth an, 122.
Eucharist, Christ in the, 65.
Evolution, 26.
Eye; an entrance, 116; Earth an enormous, 84.
Eyes, Use of earthly, 115.
Fechner, Gustav Theodor; Dates of Birth and Death,
8; on spiritism, 29; Pseudonym of, 11; Works:
Elements of Psychophysics, 9; Introduction to
130 INDEX.
^Esthetics, 10; Four Paradoxes, 11; Anatomy of
Angels, 12; Stapelia Mixta, 12; Zend Avesta,
13, 15, 21, 26; Summum Bonum, 13; Nanna or
the Soul-Life of Plants, 13 ; Professor Schleiden
and the Moon, 25; On the Soul Question, 25;
The Three Motives and Arguments of Belief,
25; Some Ideas on the Creation and Evolution
of Organisms, 26 ; The Daylight- View versus the
Night- View, 26.
Fechner's Law, 7.
Fellowship with great spirits, 67.
Future life one of reminiscences, 18.
G
Ghosts, 103.
God, Belief in, 21ff; Christ to be worshiped with,
71 ; In Him we live, 108 ; lives in everything,
110; Our life part of God's life, 108.
God's Commandments, 24; ubiquity, 91.
Goethe, J. W. v., 38, 39.
Good, Increasing power of, 44.
Grave, Outlook beyond the, 123.
Grave-yard, Absolute not a, 124.
H
Hallucinations, 103.
Heavens, Hopes of, 83.
Heavenly things, 15.
Hell, 41, 52.
Herbart, J. F., 10.
Hereafter; How to arrive at facts of, 106; Justice
in the, 25 ; Senses too narrow for, 78 ; Spirits of
INDEX. 131
the, 109; Spirits united in the, 69; United in the,
66; United with Christ in the, 67.
Illumination, State of, 77.
Infant has body-spirit, 34.
Interpenetration, 114; of spirits, 105.
Intersecting wave circles, 89.
Isolated man, Mind of an, 75.
J
Justice, 63; in the hereafter, 24; of the universe, 41.
Larger body, Our, 101.
Life, part of God's life, 108.
Light-sense, 122.
Living and dead, Meeting of, 58.
Longing gratified, 84.
Lute and brain, 73.
Luther, M., 39.
M
Means and ends, 45.
Mediator, Christ a, 70.
Mediators, Dead geniuses and saints are, 70.
Mental acts accompanied by vibrations of the
brain, 73.
Mind of man, 46.
Mises, Dr. (Pseudonym of Fechner), 11, 12, 13.
Moleschott, Jacob, 7.
Mother looking for child, 60.
132 INDEX.
N
Name to be kept unsullied, 63.
Nanna, or the Soul-Life of Plants, 13.
Napoleon, 38, 39.
O
Od, 27.
P
Paradoxes, Four, Footnote, 11.
Perceptions; Present Life one of, 18; and remi-
niscences, 19.
Phantasms, 103.
Placenta, Footnote, 35.
Plants, The Soul-Life of, 14.
Present life one of perceptions, 18.
Present stage like a seed, 120.
Presentiments, 101.
Psychophysics, 117; Elements of, 9.
Psychophysical emanations, 114.
Punishment and Reward, 24, 25, 41, 43, 62.
Reichenbach, Baron, 27.
Reminiscences; Future Life one of, 18; and percep-
tions, 19.
Resurrection of man, 23.
Reward and punishment, 24, 25, 41, 43, 62.
S
Scheibner, 27.
Schiller, F. v., 39.
Schleiden, M. J., 25.
INDEX. 133
Scoffers and churches, 64.
Seed, Present stage like a, 120.
Self unimpaired, Man's, 78.
Sense organs dispensed with, 82.
Senses; too narrow for hereafter, 78; Windows
of, 81.
Shrine for great dead, 70.
Sight, A new kind of, 84.
Slade, Henry, 27.
Sleep and Waking, 95.
Soul, Symbol of the, 47.
Spheres intersect, 88.
Spirit tried here, 43.
Spirits; cannot conceal their thoughts, 79; Close Fel-
lowship with the great, 67; Communion of, 79,
80; continue as individuals, 125; engender
thoughts within us, 48 ; entering into us, 47 ;
Harmony of, 55; Higher, 55; Immediate inter-
course of, 32; in God, 126; Kindred, 51, 54;
of the hereafter, 109; of the third stage, 87; see
each other, 105; Strife between, 49, 50, 55;
try to make use of us, 48; united in the here-
after, 69.
Spiritism, 27, 28 ; Fechner on, 29.
Spiritual; body, 36; movements, 55; world like a
tree, 69.
Stages of life. See s. v. Three stages of life.
Stapelia Mixta, 12.
Stork to carry babies, No, 83.
Strife between spirits, 49, 50, 55.
Summum Bonum, 13.
Superstition, Danger of, 105.
Symbol of the soul, 47.
134 INDEX.
Telepathy (not mentioned, but probably implied),
32, 59, 79.
Thoughts of the dead not gone, 37.
Three Stages of Life, 30f, 35f, 121; Bodies of, 87;
First Stage, 31; Second (present) Stage, like a
seed, 120; Third Stage, 54, 119; Spirits of, 87, 121.
Threshold of consciousness, 90, 99.
Tree of spirits, 69.
U
Union of consciousness enhanced by death, 66.
United in the hereafter, 66.
Universe, alive, 14.
V
Vibrations, Footnote, 74; of brain, Mental acts ac-
companied by, 73.
Vision, 112, 113, 114.
W
Wadsworth, Maria C., 7.
Waking and sleep, 95.
Weber, W., 27.
Woe to the man, 62.
Wren on eagle's back, 91.
Wundt, Wilhelm, 10, 27.
Zend-Avesta, 13, 15, 21, 26.
Zollner, Professor, 27.
