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ic Drama of
1 Love and Death

A Study of Human Evolution and
Transfiguration JT j+ JT jr JT

Edward Carpenter

Author of "The Art of Creation," "Towards Democracy,"
etc.

London : George Allen & Company, Ltd.
Ruskin House, Rathbone Place Mcmxii

Printed by BALLANTYNB, HANSON & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

CONTENTS

CHAF. PAGH

The Delphian Sibyl overlooking the Earth . vii

I. INTRODUCTORY I

II. THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE ... 5

III. LOVE AS AN ART „ ... 24

IV. ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS . 48
V. THE ART OF DYING .... 69"

VI. THE PASSAGE OF DEATH .... 87
NOTE ON CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BODY . 107

VII. Is THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE? . Ill

VIII. THE UNDERLYING SELF .... 131

NOTE ON MEDIUMISTIC TRANCE . . 156

IX. SURVIVAL OF THE SELF . . . .162

X. THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY . .176
XL THE CREATION AND MATERIALISATION OF

FORMS. . . . . . .192

XII. REINCARNATION . . .215

XIII. THE DIVINE SOUL . -237

XIV. THE RETURN JOURNEY .... 248
XV. THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY . 262

XVI. CONCLUSION . . • 284

APPENDIX . . . 290

INDEX . . 294

THE DELPHIAN SIBTL

(On her mountain-slope overlooking the Earth)

The coastline ranges far, the skies unfold ;

The mountains rise in glory, stair on stair ;
The darting Sun seeks Daphne as of old

In thickets dark where laurel blooms are fair.
The ancient sea, deep wrinkled, ever young,

With salt lip kisses still the silver strand ;
In caverns dwell the Nymphs, their loves among.

And Titans still with strange fire shake the land.

A thousand generations here have come,

And wandered o'er these hills, and faced the light ;
A thousand times slight man from mortal womb

Has leapt, and lapsed again into the night.
Here tribesmen dwelt, and fought, and curst their star.,

And scoured both land and sea to sate their needs ;
Prophetic eyes of youth gazed here afar,

With lips half open brooding on great deeds.

The Delphian Sibyl

Nor dreamed each little mortal of the Past,

Nor the deep sources of his life divined,
Watching his herds, or net in ocean cast,

Deaf to th* ancestral voices down the wind ;
Nor guessed what strange sweet likenesses should rise,

Selves of himself, far in the future years,
With his own soul within their sunlit eyes,

And in their hearts his secret hopes and fears*

Yet I — / saw. Tea, from my lofty stand

I saw each life continuous extend
Beyond its mortal bound, and reach a hand

To others and to others without end.
I saw the generations like a river

Flow down from age to age, and all the vast
Complex of human passion float and quiver —

A wondrous mirror where the Gods were glassed.

And still through all these ages scarce a change

Has touched my mountain slopes or seaward curve,
And still the folk beneath the old laws range,

And from their ancient customs hardly swerve ;
Still Love and Death, veiled figures, hand in hand,

Move o'er men's heads, dread, irresistible,
To ope the portals of that other land

Where the great Voices sound and Visions dwell.

ERRATA

Page 61, notes l and - at foot of page. For } read

and for 2 read 1.

,, 92, last line; for 'problems' read ' problhnes?
,, 126, last line ; for le/an' read 'Man.'

The Dravta of Loi't and Death.

some other mode or existence. wucii
comes, breaking into the circle of our friends,
words fail us, our mental machinery ceases to
operate, all our little stores of wit and wisdom,
our maxims, our mottos, accumulated from daily
experience, evaporate and are of no avail. ^These
things do not seem to touch or illuminate in any
effective way the strange vast Presence whose
wings darken the world for us. And with Love,
though in an opposite sense, it is the same.
Words are of no use, all our philosophy fails—
whether to account for the pain, or to fortify
against the glamour, or to describe the glory of
the experience.

These fiures, Love and Death, move through

The Delphian Sibyl

Nor dreamed each little mortal of the Past,
Nor the deep sources of his life divined.

Complex of human passion float and quiver —

A wondrous mirror where the Gods were glassed.

And still through all these ages scarce a change

Has touched my mountain slopes or seaward curve,
And still the folk beneath the old laws range,

And from their ancient customs hardly swerve ;
Still Love and Death, veiled figures, hand in hand,

Move o'er men's heads, dread, irresistible,
To ope the portals of that other land

Where the great Voices sound and Visions dwell.

THE DRAMA OF LOVE
AND DEATH

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

LOVE and Death move through this world of
ours like things apart- — underrunning it truly, and
everywhere present, yet seeming to belong to
some other mode of existence. When Death
comes, breaking into the circle of our friends,
words fail us, our mental machinery ceases to
operate, all our little stores of wit and wisdom,
our maxims, our mottos, accumulated from daily
experience, evaporate and are of no avail. These
things do not seem to touch or illuminate in any
effective way the strange vast Presence whose
wings darken the world for us. And with Love,
though in an opposite sense, it is the same.
Words are of no use, all our philosophy fails —
whether to account for the pain, or to fortify
against the glamour, or to describe the glory of
the experience.

These figures, Love and Death, move through

The Drama of Love and Death

the world, like closest friends indeed, never far
separate, and together dominating it in a kind of
triumphant superiority ; and yet like bitterest
enemies, dogging each other's footsteps, undoing
each other's work, fighting for the bodies and
souls of mankind.

Is it possible that at length and after ages we
may attain to liberate ourselves from their over-
lordship — to dominate them and make them our
ministers and attendants? Can we wrest them
from their seeming tyranny over the human race,
and from their hostility to each other ? Can we
persuade them to lay aside their disguise and
appear to us for what they no doubt are — even
the angels and messengers of a new order of
existence ?

It is a great and difficult enterprise. Yet it is
one, I think, which we of this generation cannot
avoid. We can no longer turn our faces away
from Death, and make as if we did not perceive his
presence or hear his challenge. This age, which
is learning to look the facts of Nature steadily in
the face, and see through them, must also learn to
face this ultimate fact and look through it.
And it will surely — and perhaps only — be by
allying ourselves to Love that we shall be able
to do so — that we shall succeed in our en
deavour.

For after all it is not in the main on account
of ourselves that we cherish a grudge against the
'common enemy' and dispute his authority, but
for the sake of those we love. For ourselves

Introductory

we may be indifferent or acquiescent; but some
how for those others, for those divine ones who
have taken our hearts into their keeping, we
resent the idea that they can perish. We re
fuse to entertain the thought. Love in some
mysterious way forbids the fear of death.
Whether it be Siegfried who tramples the flaming
circle underfoot, or the Prince of Heaven who
breaks his way through the enchanted thicket, or
Orpheus who reaches his Eurydice even in the
jaws of hell, or Hercules who wrestles with the
lord of the underworld for Alcestis — the ancient
instinct of mankind has declared in no uncertain
tone that in this last encounter Love must
vanquish.

It is in the name, then, of one of these gods
that we challenge the other. And yet not
without gratitude to both. For it is Azrael's
invasion of our world, it is his challenge to us,
that (perhaps more than anything else) rivets our
loyalty to each other. It is his frown that
wakes friendship in human souls and causes them
to tighten the bonds of mutual devotion. In
some strange way these two, though seeming
enemies, play into each other's hands ; each holds
the secret of the other, and between them they
conceal a kindred life and some common intimate
relation. We feel this in our inmost intuitions ;
we perceive it in our daily survey of human
affairs; and we find it illustrated (as I shall
presently point out) in general biology and the
life-histories of the most primitive cells. The

The Drama of Love and Death

theme, in fact, of the interplay of Love and
Death will run like a thread-motive through this
book — not without some illumination, as I would
hope, cast by each upon the other, and by both
upon our human destiny.

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE

As I have just suggested, the great human
problems of Love and Death are strangely and
remarkably illustrated in the most primitive
forms of life ; and I shall consequently make
no apology for detaining the reader for a few
moments over modern investigations into the
subjects of cell-growth, reproduction and death.
If this chapter is a little technical and complex
in places, still it may be worth while delaying
over it, and granting it some patient considera
tion, on account of the curious light the study
throws on the rest of the book and the general

questions therein discussed.

Love seems to be primarily (and perhaps
ultimately) an interchange of essences. The
Protozoa — those earliest cells, the progenitors
of the whole animal and vegetable kingdom — grow

c •

by feeding on the minute particles which they
find in the fluid surrounding them. The growth
continues, till ultimately, reaching the limit of con
venient size, a cell divides into two or more por
tions ; and so reproduces itself. The descendant
cells or portions so thrown off are simply con
tinuations, by division, of the life of the original

The Drama of Love and Death

or parent cell — so that it has not unfrequently
been said that, in a sense, these Protozoa are
immortal, since their life continues indefinitely
(with branching but without break) from genera
tion to generation. This form of reproduction
by simple budding or division extends even up
into the higher types of life, where it is some
times found side by side with the later sexual
form of reproduction, as in the case of so-called
parthenogenesis among insects. It is indeed a kind
of virgin-birth ; and is well illustrated in the
vegetable world by the budding of bulbs, or
by the fact that a twig torn from a shrub and
placed in the ground will commonly grow and
continue the life of the parent plant ; or in
the lower stages of the animal world, where,
among many of the worms, insects, sponges,
&c., the life may similarly be continued by
division, or by the extrusion of a bud or an
egg, without any sex-contact or sex-action
whatever.

This seems in fact to be the original and
primitive form of generation ; and it obviously
depends upon growth. Generation is the super
fluity, the vfipi?, of growth, and connects itself
in the first instance with the satisfaction of
hunger. First hunger, then growth, then re
production by division or budding. And this
process may go on apparently for many genera
tions without change — in the case of certain
Protozoa even to hundreds of generations. But
a time comes when the growth-power and energy

The Beginnings of Love

decay, and the vitality diminishes1 — at any rate,
as a rule.2 But then a variation occurs. Two
cells unite, exchange fluids, and part again. It
is a new form of nourishment ; it is the earliest
form of Love. It is a very intimate form of
nourishment ; for it appears that in general the
nuclei themselves of the two cells are shared and
in part exchanged. And the vitality so obtained
gives the cells a new lease of life. They are
in fact regenerated. And each partner grows
again actively and reproduces itself by budding
and division as before. Sometimes the two
uniting cells will remain conjoined; and the
joint cell will then generate buds, or in some
cases enlarge to bursting point, and so, perishing
itself, break up into a numerous progeny.3

1 "In November 1885, M. Maupas isolated an infusorian
(Stylonichiapustulata),&&& observed its generations till March
1886. By that time there had been 2 1 5 generations produced by
ordinary division, and since these lowly organisms do not con
jugate with near relatives, there had of course been no sexual
union. — What was the result ? At the date referred to, the family
was observed to have exhausted itself. The members, though
not exactly old, were being born old. The sexual division
came to a standstill, and the powers of nutrition were also lost"
(Evolution of Sex, Geddes and Thomson, 1901, p. 177).

2 See, however, Evolution of Sex, p. 178, where a case is
recorded of 458 generations of another infusorian apparently
without degeneration. See also The Cell, by Dr. Oscar Hertwig
(Sonnenschein, 1909), p. 292.

3 The exchange of life-elements between two individuals is
well illustrated 'in the case of the infusorian Noctiluca. Two

Noctilucas, A and B, Mf"B~) coalesce '•> ancl then later divide

again along a plane (indicated by dotted line) at right angles to
the plane of contact. Two new individuals are thus formed,
and each Noctiluca has absorbed half of the other. Their
activities are regenerated and they begin a new life.

The Drama of Love and Death

So far there seems to be but little differentia
tion between Hunger and Love. Love is only
a special hunger which leads cells to obtain
nourishment from other cells of the same species ;
and generation or reproduction in these early
stages, being an inevitable accompaniment of
growth, follows on the satisfaction of love just
as it follows on the satisfaction of hunger.
Rolph's words on the relation of these two im
pulses (quoted by Geddes and Thomson) are
very suggestive. He says : — " Conjugation occurs
when nutrition is diminished. ... It is a neces
sity for satisfaction, a growing hunger, which
drives the animal to engulf its neighbour, to
'isophagy.' The process of conjugation is only
a special form of nutrition, which occurs on a
reduction of the nutritive income, or an increase
of the nutritive needs."

And so far there is no distinction of sex. It
is true there may be sex in the sense of union or
fusion between two individuals ; but there is no
distinction of sex, in the sense of male and
female. In the Protozoa generally there is
simple union or conjugation between cells, which,
as far as can be observed, are quite similar to each
other. It is a union between similars ; and it
leads to growth and reproduction. But both
union and reproduction at this early stage exist
quite independently of any distinctive sex-action,
or any differentiation of individuals into male and
female.

At a later period, however, Sex comes in. It
8

The Beginnings of Love

is obvious that for growth (and reproduction) two
things are necessary, which are in some degree
antagonistic to each other — on the one hand the
pursuit and capture of food, which means activity
and force, and on the other hand the digestion

and assimilation of the food, which means
quiescence and passivity. And it seems that at a
certain stage — in general, when "animals" have
already been formed by the conjunction of many
protozoic cells in co-operative colonies — this
differentiation sets in, and some individuals
specialise towards activity and the chase, while
others (of the same species) specialise towards
repose and assimilation. The two sets of
qualities are clearly only useful in combination
with each other, and yet, as I have said, they are
to some degree contrary to each other ; and
therefore it is quite natural that the two corre
sponding groups of individuals should form two
great branches in each race, diverse yet united.

These two branches are the male and female —
the active, energy-spending, hungry, food-ob
taining branch ; and the sessile, non-active,
assimilative and reproductive branch. And by
the division of labour consequent on the forma
tion of these two branches the whole race is
benefited ; but only of course on condition that
the diverse elements are reunited from time to
time. It is in the fusion of these elements that
the real quality and character of the race is
restored ; and it is by their fusion that develop
ment and reproduction are secured.

The Drama of Love and Death

In some of the Infusorians 1 there seems to be
a beginning of sex-differentiation, and fusion
takes place between two individuals slightly
differing from each other ; but as we have already
seen, in most of the Protozoa the union is a
union of similars — that is, as far as can at present
be observed, though of course there is a great
probability that here also there is generally some
difference which supplies the attraction and the
value of union.2

It is in the Metazoa generally, and those forms
of life which consist of co-operative colonies of
cells, that sex-differentiation into male and
female begins to decisively assert itself. Here —
since it is obviously impossible for all the cells of
one individual to fuse with all the cells of another
— certain special cells are set apart in each
organism for the purpose of union or conjuga
tion ; and it seems quite natural that in the
course of time the differentiation spoken of above,
into male and female, should set in — each in
dividual tending to become decisively either
masculine or feminine — both in the sex-cells or
sex-apparatus, and (though in a less marked
degree) in the general ' body ' and structure.

In the lower forms of life, generally, as among

1 As in Volvox ; see Evolution of Sex > p. 138.

2 And we may say also here that it is even supposable that
the special differentiation which we call male and female is only
one out of many possible sex-differentiations — the important
and main condition being that the differentiations, whatever
they are, should be complementary to each other, and should
together make up the total qualities and character of the race.

The Beginnings of Love

the amphibia, fishes, molluscs, &c., the male and
female sex-cells — the sperm and the germ — do not
conjugate within either of the parent bodies, but
are expelled from each, in order to meet and fuse
in some surrounding medium, like water. There
the double cell, so formed, develops into the new
individual. But in higher forms the meeting
takes place, and the first stages of development
ensue, 'within one of the bodies. And, as one
might expect, this occurs within the body of the
female. For the female, as we have said, repre
sents quiescence, growth, assimilation. The germ
or ovum is large compared with the spermato
zoon ; it is also sessile in habit. The spermato
zoon, on the other hand, is exceedingly active.
And so it seems natural that the latter should
seek out the germ within the body of the female.
Just as, in general, the female animal remains
impassive and quiescent, and is sought out by
the male, so the female germ remains at home
within the female body, and receives its visitor
or visitors there. And the whole apparatus of
connexion is symbolical of this relation. The
body of the female is the temple in which the
sacred mystery of the union or fusion of two
individuals is completed, as a means to the birth
or creation of a new individual.

Yet though the female is thus privileged to
be the receptacle and sanctum of the life-giving
power, it must not be thought that this argues
superiority of the female, as such, over the
male. The process of conjunction is sometimes

The Drama of Love and Death

spoken of as a fertilisation merely, implying
the idea that the ovum or female element is
the main thing, and that this only requires a
slight impulse or stimulus from the male side
for its powers of development to be started and
set in operation. But though it is true that the
ovum can in many cases of the lower forms of
life be started developing by the administration
of a chemical solution or even a mechanical
needle-prick, this development does not seem to
continue ; and modern investigation shows that
in normal fecundation an absolute equality reigns,
as far as we can see, between the two contracting
parties and their contributions to the new being
that has to be formed.

Nothing is more astounding than the results of
these investigations ; and they not only show us
that the protozoic cells (and sex-cells), instead
of being very simple in structure, are already
extremely complex, and that their changes in
the act of fertilisation or fusion are strangely
elaborate and systematic; but they suggest that
though to us these cells may represent the
microscopic beginnings of life in its most primi
tive stages, in reality they stand for the first
visible results of long antecedent operations, and
indicate highly organised and, we may say,
intelligent forces at work within them.

The mere process by which a primitive cell
divides and reproduces itself has an air of
demonic intelligence about it. Roughly, the
process may be described as follows. The

The Beginnings of Love

nucleus appears to be the most important por
tion of a cell. Certainly it is so as regards the
supply of hereditary and formative material—
the surrounding protoplasm fulfilling more of a
nutritive and protective function. Within and
through the liquid of the nucleus there spreads
an irregular network of a substance which is
(for a purely accidental reason) called chromatin.
As long as the nucleus is at rest, this network
is fairly evenly distributed through it ; but the
first oncoming of division is signalled by the
break-up of the chromatin into a limited and
definite number of short, threadlike bodies — to
which the name chromosomes has been given.

These chromosomes, after some curious evolutions,
finally arrange themselves in a line across the
middle of the nucleus ; and they are apparently
governed in this operation, and the whole split
ting of the cell is governed, by a minute, star-
like and radiating centre (called centrosome\
which first appearing outside the nucleus and
in the general protoplasm of the cell, seems to
play a dominant part in the whole process.
This centrosome, when the time comes for the
cell-division, itself divides in two, and the two
starlike centres so formed (which are to become
centrosomes of the two new cells), slowly move
to opposite ends or poles of the original cell —
all the time, as they do so, throwing out raylike
threads or fibrils which connect them somehow
with the chromosomes and which seem to regulate
the movements of the latter, till, as described,

The Drama of Love and Death

the latter form themselves in a line across the
centre of the cell, transversely to the line join
ing the poles. At this stage, then, we have a
tiny, starlike centrosome at each end of the cell,
and a transverse line of chromosomes between.
(Also, during the process the wall or enclosing
membrane of the nucleus has disappeared and
the general contents of cell and nucleus have
become undivided.) It is at this moment that
the real division begins. The chromosomes —
of which it is said that there are always a definite
and invariable number for every species of plant
or animal,1 and which are now generally sup
posed to contain the hereditary elements or
determinants of the future individual — these
chromosomes have already arranged themselves
longitudinally and end-on to each other across
the middle of the cell. They now, apparently
under the influence of the radiating points at
each pole, split longitudinally (as one splits a
log of wood) — so that each chromosome,
dividing throughout its length, contributes one
half of itself to one pole and one half to the
other. The halves so formed separate, and
approach their respective poles ; and at the same
time the cell-wall constricting itself along the
equatorial line, or line of separation, soon
divides the original cell into two. Mean
while the chromosomes in each new division
group themselves (not round but) near their

1 As sixteen for a human being, twelve for a grasshopper,
twenty-four for a lily, and so forth.

The Beginnings of Love

respective poles or centrosomes, and a new
nucleus membrane forming, encloses each group,
so that finally we have two cells of exactly the
same constitution as the original one, and with
exactly the same number and quality of chromo
somes as the original.1

The whole process seems very strange and
wonderful. No military evolutions and forma
tions, no complex and mystic dance of initiates
in a temple, with advances and retreats, and
combinations and separations, and exchanges of
partners, could seem more fraught with intelli
gence.2 Yet this is what takes place among
some of the very lowest forms of life, on the
division of a single cell into two. And it is
exactly the same, apparently, which takes place
in the higher forms of life when the single cell

1 For diagram and illustration of this whole process, see
Appendix, infra, p. 289. Also see August Forel's 77ie Sexual
Question (English translation; Rebman, 1908), pp. 6 and n;
The World of Life, by A. R. Wallace, ch. xvii. p. 343 ; The
Plant Cell, by H. A. Haig (Griffin, 1910), ch. viii. ; and other
books.

2 Stephane Leduc, in his Thcorie Physico-che'miquc de la -vie
(Paris, 1910), endeavours to trace all the above phenomena to
the simple action of diffusion and osmose (see ch. viii., on Karyo-
kincsis) but though the resemblance of some of the forms above
described to diffusion-figures is interesting — as also is their
resemblance to the forms of magnetic fields — this does not
prove \h.<&\\ genesis either from diffusion or magnetism. It only
makes probable that some of the phenomena in question are
related to the very obscure forces of diffusion or magnetism — a
thing which of course is already admitted and recognised. With
regard to all this the reader should study the astonishing re
surrection of the mature blow-fly from the mere milky pap
which is all that the pupa at a certain stage consists of. (See
The Biology of the Seasons, by J. Arthur Thomson, 1911.)

The Drama of Love and Death

which is the result of the fusion together of
the sperm-cell and the germ-cell, divides and
subdivides to form the ' body ' of the creature.
As is well known, the joint cell divides first into
two; then each of the cells so formed divides
into two, making four in all ; then each of
these divides into two, making eight; then each
into two again, making 16, 32, 64, and so on
— till they number the thousands, hundreds of
thousands, millions, which in effect build up
and constitute the body. And at each division
the process is carried out with this amazing
care and exactness of partition described — so that
every cell is verily continuous and of the same
nature with the original cell, and contains the
same nuclear elements, derived half from the
father and half from the mother. Yet in the
process a differentiation has set in, so that in
the end each cell becomes so far modified as to
be adapted for its special position and function
in the body — for the skin, mucous membrane,
blood corpuscles, brain, muscular tissue, and so
forth.1 It is worth while looking carefully at
the body of an animal, or one's own body, in
order to realise what this means — to realise that
the entire creature, in all its form and feature,

1 " In every known case an essential phenomenon of fertilisa
tion is the union of a sperm nucleus of paternal origin with an
egg nucleus of maternal origin, to form the primary nucleus of
the embryo. This nucleus . . . gives rise by division to all
the nuclei of the body, and hence every nucleus of the child
may contain nuclear substance derived from both parents"
(The Cell in Development and Inheritance, by E. B. Wilson,
Macmillan Co., 1904, p. 182).

The Beginnings of Love

its colouring, marking, swiftness of limb, com
plexity of brain, and so on, has provably been
exhaled from a single cell, is indeed that original
cell with its latent powers and virtue made mani
fest^ and to remember that that original cell
was itself the fusion of two parent cells, the
male and the female.

A word, then, upon this matter of the fusion
of the two parent cells in one. Here, again, two
very remarkable things appear. One refers to
the equality of the sexes; the other refers to
the onesidedness (or deficiency or imperfection)
which seems to be the characteristic and the
motive power of the phenomenon of sex.

With regard to the first point, we saw that

among the Protozoa conjugation occurs for the

most part between two individual cells which

are alike in size and (to all appearance) alike

in constitution ; and this conjugation leads to

reproduction. But when among the higher

forms sex begins to show, the conjugating cells

—sperm-cell and germ-cell — are generally unlike

in size, and^ often in the higher animals extremely

unlike—as in the human spermatozoon and ovum,

of which the latter is a thousand times the

volume of the former ; l and this has sometimes

led, as remarked before, to an exaggerated view of

the preponderant importance of one sex. But

the curious fact seems to be that when the

spermatozoon of the human or higher animal

1 The latter, of course, being just discernible by the naked
eye.

17 B

The Drama of Love and Death

penetrates the ovum, there is a preliminary
period before its nucleus actually combines with
the nucleus of the ovum, during which the
nucleus rapidly absorbs nourishment from the
surrounding protoplasm, and grows — grows till
it becomes of exactly the same size as the nucleus
of the ovum. The situation then is that there
are two nuclei of the same size and both charged
with chromatin of the same general character,
in close proximity, and waiting to fuse with
each other.

The product of that fusion is a new being ;
and as far as can at present apparently be ob
served, the parts played by the two sexes in the
process are quite equal. There may be difference
of function but there is no inequality. " Both
male and female cells," says Professor Rolleston,1
" prepare themselves for conjugation long before
it takes place, and neither of them can be said
to be a more active agent in fertilisation than
the other. Not ' fertilisation ' but ' fusion ' is
the keyword of the process. The mystical con
ception, as old as Plato, of the male and female
as representing respectively the two halves of
a complete being, turns out to be no poetic
metaphor. As regards the essential features of
reproduction, it is a literal fact."

The second remarkable point has to do with
the onesidedness of sexual conjugation, and the
complementary nature of the exchange involved.

1 Parallel Paths, by T. W. Rolleston (Duckworth, 1908),

P-53-

The Beginnings of Love

This is truly noteworthy and interesting. It
is evident that if the sperm-cell and germ-cell
simply coalesced, containing each the amount of
chromatin characteristic of the species — say sixteen

chromosomes in the case of the human being

the result would be a cell with double the proper
amount, say thirty-two chromosomes, i.e. an amount
belonging to another species. "What happens is
that each of the reproductive cells, male and
female, prepares itself for conjugation by getting
rid of half its chromosomes. Two divisions of
the nucleus take place, not as in the ordinary
fashion of cell-division, when the chromosomes
split longitudinally, but in such a way that,
in each division, four of the sixteen chromo
somes (making eight in all) are bodily expelled
from the nucleus and from the cell, when they
either perish, or, in some cases, appear to help
in forming an envelope of nutritive matter
round the germ-cell. These divisions are called
'maturation divisions,' and until they are accom
plished fecundation is impossible." 1 Thus the
two nuclei, having each their number of chromo
somes reduced to half the normal number (in
this case to eight), are now ready to coalesce

1 Parallel Paths, p. 52. See also, for further accounts, The
Evolution of Sex, pp. 112-14 ; The Plant Cell, by H. A. Haig,
pp. 121, 123 ct seq.; Die Vcrerbung, by Dr. E. Teichmarm
(Stuttgart, 1908), pp. 39, 40, &c. Throughout it must be
remembered that these 'maturation' processes in the genera
tive cells are not only exceedingly complex, but also very various
in the various plants and animals ; and the reader should be
warned against too easily accepting ready-made descriptions
and generalisations supposed to fit all cases.

The Drama of Love and Death

and so form a new cell with the proper number
belonging to the species (i.e. sixteen). This cell
is the commencement of the new being, and,
as already described, it divides and re-divides,
and the innumerable cells so formed differentiate
themselves into different tissues, until the whole
animal is built up.

Says Professor E. B. Wilson : — " The one fact
of maturation that stands out with perfect clear
ness and certainty amid all the controversies
surrounding it, is a reduction of the number of
chromosomes in the ultimate germ [and sperm]
cells1 to one half the number characteristic of
the somatic cells. It is equally clear that this
reduction is a preparation of the germ [and
sperm] cells for their subsequent union, and a
means by which the number of chromosomes is
held constant in the species." 2

This extrusion or expulsion by each of the
conjugating cells of half its constituent elements
is certainly very strange.3 And it seems strangely
deliberate.4 Various theories have been formed
on the subject, but at present there is apparently
no satisfactory conclusion as to what exactly takes

1 Here and elsewhere in his book Professor Wilson uses
"germ-cells" to include "sperm-cells"; and I have indicated
this by the bracket.

2 The Cell, p. 285.

3 It appears that in the ordinary conjugation of Protozoa a
quite similar process is observable.

* " Nowhere in the history of the cell do we find so unmis-
takeable and striking an adaptation of means to ends or one
of so marked a prophetic character, since maturation looks
not to the present but to the future of the germ [and sperm]
cells" (The Cell, p. 233).

The Beginnings of Love

place. Some think that in the one case certain
male elements are expelled, and in the other
case certain female elements ; and anyhow it seems
probable that a complementary action sets in, by
which each prepares itself to supply a different
class of elements from the other, thus rendering
the conjunction more effectual. Plato has been
already quoted with regard to male and female
being only the two halves of a complete original
being. He also says (in the speech of Socrates
in the Banquet] that the mother of Love was
Poverty, and that Love " possesses thus far his
mother's nature that he is ever the companion
of Want." And it would appear that in the
most primitive grades of life the same is true,
and that two cells combine or coalesce in order
to mutually supply some want or deficiency.

Anyhow, in the process just described two points
stand out pretty clear : first, the exact equality
of the number of chromosomes contributed by
sperm-cell and germ-cell to the fertilised ovum —
which seems to indicate that the descendant being
has an equal heredity from each parent l — though
of course it does not follow that both heredities
become equally prominent or manifest in the

1 It might be said that, notwithstanding- this, the female
obviously has the greater sway, on account of the conjunction
taking place within the body of the mother, and subject to
all her influences. But there is a curious compensation to this
in the fact that while after conjugation the centrosome of the
germ-cell disappears, the male centrosome is retained and be
comes the organ of division for the new cell, and consequently
for the whole future body. (See Parallel Paths, p. 56 ; also
Professor E. B. Wilson in The Cell, p. 171.)

The Drama of Love and Death

descendant body ; and secondly, that the same is
true of all the cells in this new body — that they
each contain the potentialities of the joint cell from
which they sprang, and therefore the potentialities
of both parents.

These amazing conclusions concerning the
origins of life and reproduction — here, of course,
very briefly and imperfectly presented — cannot
but give us pause. Contemplating the evolutions
and affinities of these infinitely numerous but
infinitely small organisms which build up our
visible selves, and the strange intelligence which
seems to pervade their movements, the mind
reels — somewhat as it does in contemplating the
evolutions and affinities of the unimaginable
stars.1 We seem, certainly, to trace the same
laws or operations in these minutest regions as
we trace in our own corporeal and mental rela
tions. Cells attract each other just as human
beings do ; and the attraction seems to depend,
to a certain degree, on difference. The male
spermatozoon seeks the female ovum, just as the
male animal, as a rule, seeks and pursues the
female. Primitive cells divide and redivide and
differentiate themselves, building up the animal
body, just in the same way as primitive thoughts
and emotions divide and redivide and differen
tiate themselves, building up the human mind.
But though we thus see processes with which

1 " That a cell can carry with it the sum total of the heritage
of the species, that it can in the course of a few days or weeks
give rise to a mollusk or a man, is the greatest marvel of
biological science " ( The Cell, p. 396).

The Beginnings of Love

we are familiar repeated in infinitesimal miniature,
we seem to be no nearer than before to any
' explanation ' of them, and we seem to see no
promise of any explanation. We merely obtain
a larger perspective, and a suggestion that the
universal order is of the same character through
out — with a suspicion perhaps that the explana
tion of these processes does not lie in any
concatenation of the things themselves, but in
some other plane of being of which these con
catenations are an allegory or symbolic expression.
In portions of the following chapters I shall trace
more in detail the resemblance or parallelism
between these processes among the Protozoa and
some of our own experiences in the great matters
of Life and Love and Death.1

1 For summary of the conclusions of this chapter, see
Appendix, infra, p. 289.

CHAPTER III

LOVE AS AN ART

THE astounding revelation of the first great love
is a thing which the youthful human being can
hardly be prepared for, since indeed it cannot
very well be described in advance, or put into
terms of reasonable and well-conducted words.
To feel — for instance — one's whole internal
economy in process of being melted out and
removed to a distance, as it were into the keeping
of some one else, is in itself a strange physio
logical or psychological experience — and one
difficult to record in properly scientific terms !
To lose consciousness never for a moment of
the painful void so created — a void and a hunger
which permeates all the arteries and organs, and
every cranny of the body and the mind, and
which seems to rob the organism of its strength,
sometimes even to threaten it with ruin ; to
forego all interest in life, except in one thing —
and that thing a person ; to be aware, on the
other hand, with strange elation and joy, that
this new person or presence is infusing itself
into one's most intimate being — pervading all the
channels, with promise (at least) of marriage and
new life to every minutest cell, and causing

Love as an Art

wonderful upheavals and transformations in tissue
and fluids; to find in the mind all objects of
perception to be changed and different from what
they were before ; and to be dimly conscious that
the reason why they are so is because the back
ground and constitution of the perceiving mind
is itself changed — that, as it were, there is another
person beholding them as well as oneself — all
this defies description in words, or any possibility
of exact statement beforehand ; and yet the
actual fact when it arrives is overwhelming in
solid force and reality. If, besides, to the
insurgence of these strange emotions we add-
in the earliest stages of love at least — their be
wildering fluctuation, from the deeps of vain
longing and desire to the confident and ecstatic
heights of expectation or fulfilment — the very
joys of heaven and pangs of hell in swift and
tantalising alternation — the whole new experience
is so extraordinary, so unrelated to ordinary work-
a-day life, that to recite it is often only to raise
a smile of dismissal of the subject — as it were
into the land of dreams.

And yet, as we have indicated, the thing,
whatever it is, is certainly by no means insubstantial
and unreal. Nothing seems indeed more certain
than that in this strange revolution in the rela
tions of two people to each other — called " falling
in love" — and behind all the illusions connected
with it, something is happening, something very
real, very important. The falling-in-love may
be reciprocal, or it may be onesided ; it may

The Drama of Love and Death

be successful, or it may be unsuccessful ; it may
be only a surface indication of other and very
different events ; but anyhow, deep down in the
sub-conscious world, something is happening. It
may be that two unseen and only dimly suspected
existences are becoming really and permanently
united ; it may be that for a certain period, or
(what perhaps comes to the same thing) that
to a certain depth, they are transfusing and
profoundly modifying each other ; it may be
that the mingling of elements and the transforma
tion is taking place almost entirely in one person,
and only to a slight degree or hardly at all in
the other ; yet in all these cases — beneath the
illusions, the misapprehensions, the mirage and
the maya, the surface satisfactions and the
internal disappointments — something very real is
happening, an important growth and evolution
is taking place.

To understand this phenomenon in some slight
degree, to have some inkling of the points of
the compass by which to steer over this ex
ceedingly troubled sea, is, one might say, indis
pensable for every youthful human creature ;
but alas ! the instruction is not provided — for
indeed, as things are to-day, the adult and the
mature are themselves without knowledge, and
their eyes without speculation on the subject.
Treatises on the Art of Love truly exist — and
some (for the field they cover) very good ones,
like the An Amatona of Ovid or the Kama-sutra

of Vatsayana ; but they are concerned mainly

Love as an Art

or wholly with the details and technicalities of
the subject — with the conduct of intrigues and
amours, with times and seasons, positions and
preparations, unguents and influences. It is like
instructions given to a boatman on the minutiae
of his craft — how to contend with wind and
wave, how to use sail and oar, to steer, to tack,
to luff to a breaker, and so forth ; all very good
and necessary in their way, but who is there
to point us our course over the great Ocean,
and the stars by which to direct it ? The later
works on this great subject — though not despising
the more elementary aspects — will no doubt
have to proceed much farther, into the deep
realms of psychology, biological science, and
ultimately of religion.1

As we have just said, Love is concerned with
growth and evolution. It is — though as yet
hardly acknowledged in that connexion — a root-
factor of ordinary human growth ; for in so
far as it is a hunger of the individual, the satis
faction of that hunger is necessary for individual
growth — necessary (in its various forms) for
physical, mental and spiritual nourishment, for
health, mental energy, large afFectional capacity,
and so forth. And it is — though this too is
not sufficiently acknowledged — a root-factor of
the Evolution process. For in so far as it

1 Havelock Ellis's very fine essay on "The Art of Love"
(see his Studies in tJie Psychology of Sc.r, vol. vi. ch. xi.) must
also be mentioned, as including much of the subject matter
of the above treatises, but having a very much wider scope
and outlook.

The Drama of Love and Death

represents and gives rise to the union of two beings
in a new form, it plainly represents a step in
Evolution, and plainly suggests that the direction
of that step will somehow depend upon the
character and quality of the love concerned.
Thus the importance, the necessity, of the study
of the art of love is forced on our attention.
It has to be no longer a subterranean, unrecog
nised, and even rather disreputable cult, but an
openly acknowledged and honorable department
of human life, leading in its due time to broad
and commonsense instructions and initiations for
the young.

Casting a glance back at the love-affairs of
the Protozoa, as briefly described in the preceding
chapter, there certainly seems to be a kind of
na'lve charm about them. The simple and whole
hearted way in which on occasions they fuse
with one another, losing or merging completely
their own separate individualities in the process;
or again part from each other after having ex
changed essences in a kind of affectionate can
nibalism ; the obvious and unconcealed relation
between love and hunger ; the first beginnings
of generation ; and the matter-of-fact manner in
which one person, when he finds it convenient,
divides in half and becomes two persons, and
after a time perhaps divides again and becomes
four persons, and again and again until he is
many thousands or millions — and yet it is im
possible to decide (and he himself probably is

Love as an Art

not quite clear) as to whether he is still one
person or different persons — all this cannot fail
to excite our admiration and respect, nor to
give us, also, considerable food for thought.

One of the first things to strike us, and to
suggest an application to human life, is the
importance of Love, among these little creatures,
for the health of the individual. The authors
of The Evolution of Sex say in one passage (p. 178) :
" Without it [conjugation], the Protozoa, which
some have called ' immortal,' die a natural
death. Conjugation is the necessary condition
of their eternal youth and immortality. Even
at this low level, only through the fire of love
can the phoenix of the species renew its youth."
And again, in another passage (p. 277), referring
to the conclusions of Maupas : " Already we have
noted this important result, that conjugation is
essential to the health of the species." Thus
it appears that, in these primitive stages, fusion
more or less complete, or interchange of essences,
leads to Regeneration and renewal of vitality —
and this long before the distinct phenomena of sex
appear. It leads to Regeneration first, and so
collaterally, and at a later period, to Generation.

Somehow — though it is not quite clear how —
this view of the importance of love to personal
health has been sadly obscured in later and
Christian times. The dominant Christian attitude
converted love, from being an expression and
activity of the deepest human life and joy, into

being simply a vulgar necessity for the propagation

The Drama of Love and Death

of the species. A violent effort was made to
wrench apart the spiritual and corporeal aspects
of it. The one aspect was belauded, the other
condemned. The first was relegated to heaven,
the second was given its conge to another place.
Corporeal intercourse and the propagation of
the race were vile necessities. True affection
dwelt in the skies and disdained all earthly
contacts. And yet all this was a vain effort to
separate what could not be separated. It was
like trying to take the pigments out of a picture ;
to call the picture "good," but the stuff it was
painted with " bad."

And so, owing to this denial, owing to this
non-recognition of love (in all its aspects) as
necessary to personal health, thousands and
'thousands of men and women through the cen
turies — some " for the kingdom of heaven's
sake," and some for the sake of the conventions
of society — have allowed their lives to be maimed
and blighted, their health and personal well-being
ruined. The deep well-spring and source of human
activity and vitality has been desecrated and choked
with rubbish. That some sort of purpose, in
the evolution of humanity, may have been ful
filled by this strange negation, it would be idle
to deny ; indeed some such purpose — in view
of the wide prevalence of the negation, and its
long continuance during the civilisation period —
seems probable. But this does not in any way
controvert the fact that it has in its time caused
a disastrous crippling of human health and

Love as an Art

vitality. Human progress takes place, no doubt,
in sections — one foot forward at a time, so to
speak ; but this does not mean that the other
foot can be permanently left in the rear. On
the contrary, it means its all the more decided
advance when its turn arrives.

To-day we seem at the outset of a new era,
and preparing in some way for the rehabilitation
of the Pagan conception of the world. The
negative Christian dispensation is rapidly ap
proaching its close ; the necessity of love in its
various forms, as part and parcel of a healthy
life, is compelling our attention. No one is
so poor a physiognomist as not to recognise the
health-giving effects of successful courtship — the
heightened colour, the brilliant eye, the elastic
step ; the active brain, the prompt reflexes, the
glad outlook on the world. Indeed the effect
upon all the tissues — their nourishment, growth,
improvement in tone, and so forth — is extra
ordinary ; and yet — remembering what has been
said about Love and Hunger — quite natural.
For, after all, we have seen that every cell in
the body is a re-plica of the original cell from
which it sprang ; and so the love which reaches
one probably in some way reaches all. And
there is probably not only union and exchange
(in actual intercourse) between two special sex-
cells ; but there is also (all through the period
of being "in love") an etheric union and ex
change going on between the body-cells gener
ally on each side ; and a nourishment of each

The Drama of Love and Death

other by the interchange of finest and subtlest
elements.

That this mutual exchange and nutrition may
take place between the general cells of two bodies
is made all the more probable from the experi
ments already alluded to with regard to chemical
fertilisation — whereby it has been shown that
some ova or egg-cells may be started on a process
of subdivision and growth by treatment with
certain chemicals, such as weak solutions of
strychnine, or common salt, apart from any
fertilisation by a spermatozoon.1 Now since—
when the body is once fairly formed — its further
growth and sustenance is maintained by continued
division and subdivision of the body-cells, this
stimulus to growth may easily (we may suppose)
be supplied by the subtle radiations and reactions
from another body within whose sphere of in
fluence it comes — radiations and reactions suffi
ciently subtle to pass through the tissues to the
various cells, and of course sufficiently charac
teristic and individual to be in some cases, as we
have supposed, highly vitalising and stimulating
— though in other cases of course they may be
poisonous and harmful. Of course, also, it is
only love that supplies and is the vitalising
relation.

So intense, at times, is this vitalising force, and

1 See The Cell, by E. B. Wilson, p. 391 ; Das Leben, by Jacques
Loeb (Leipzig, 191 1), pp. 10-20, &c. It seems also to be thought
that gall-formations on plants, tumors on animal bodies. £c., are
instances of such chemical or indirect fertilisation.

Love as an Art

so ardent the need of it, that the whole body
leaps and throbs in pain. Plato, in his poetic
way, explains the scorching sensation in all the
skin and tissues by feigning that it is caused by
the wing-feathers of the soul sprouting every
where (i.e. according to our view, in every little
cell). Nevertheless, his words on the subject are
singularly pregnant with meaning. For he says
(in the Ph<edrus} : " Whenever indeed by gaz
ing on the beauty of the beloved object, and
receiving from that beauty particles -which fall and
flow in upon it (and which are therefore called
'desire'), the soul is watered and warmed, it is
relieved from its pain, and is glad ; but as soon as
it is parted from its love, and for lack of that
moisture is parched, the mouths of the outlets by
which the feathers start become so closed up by
drought, that they obstruct the shooting germs ;
and the germs being thus confined underneath, in
company of the desire which has been infused,
leap like throbbing arteries, and prick each at the
outlet which is closed against it ; so that the soul,
being stung all over, is frantic with pain." x

This fusion of complementaries, then, which
is the characteristic of fertilisation, takes place
between the lovers — not only in respect of their
sex-cells, but probably also to a considerable
degree in respect of their body-cells. And
though with any mortal lovers the complementary
nature of the fusion can hardly be so complete as

1 Translation by J. Wright, M.A., Golden Treasury Series.
P- 57-

33 C

The Drama of Love and Death

to restore the full glory of the race-life, yet very
near to that point it sometimes comes, filling
them with mad and immortal-seeming ecstasies,
and excusing them indeed for seriously thinking
that the wings of their souls have begun to grow !
In lesser degree this complementary fusion and
exchange is doubtless the explanation (or one
explanation) of that very noticeable point — the
strange way in which lovers after some years come
to resemble each other — in form and feature, in
facial expression, tone of voice, carriage of body,
handwriting, and all sorts of minute points.

I suppose at this point it will be necessary to
explain that the recognition of love (in all its
aspects) as a general condition of human health,
does not mean a recommendation of wild indul
gence in any and every passion — necessary,
because in these cases it seems to be generally
assumed that the proposer of a very simple
thesis means a very great deal more than he says !
It is here that the necessity of education comes
in ; for hitherto public instruction and discussion
in these matters have been so defective that folk
have been unable to talk about them except in a
hysterical way — hysterical on the one side or the
other. The positive value of love, its positive
cultivation as a gracious, superb, and necessary
part of our lives has hardly (at least in the
Anglo-Saxon world) entered into people's minds.
To teach young things to love, and how to love,
to actually instruct and encourage them in the art,

Love as an Art

has seemed something wicked and unspeakable.
Says Havelock Ellis : l " Whether or not
Christianity is to be held responsible, it cannot be
doubted that throughout Christendom there has
been a lamentable failure to recognise the supreme
importance, not only erotically but morally, of
the art of love. Even in the great revival of
sexual enlightenment now taking place around us
there is rarely even the faintest recognition that in
sexual enlightenment the one thing essentially
necessary is a knowledge of the art of love. For
the most part sexual instruction, as at present
understood, is purely negative, a mere string of
thou-shalt-nots. If that failure were due to the
conscious and deliberate recognition that while
the art of love must be based on physiological
and psychological knowledge, it is far too subtle,
too complex, too personal, to be formulated in
lectures and manuals, it would be reasonable and
sound. But it seems to rest entirely on ignor
ance, indifference, or worse."

It is, I think, not unfair to suppose that it is
this indifference or vulgar Philistinism which is
largely responsible for the sordid commercialism
of the good people of the last century. Finding
the lute and the lyre snatched from their hands
they were fain to turn to a greater activity with
the muck-rake.

Love is a complex of human relations —
physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and so

1 Psychology of Sex, vol. vi. p. 517.
35

The Drama of Love and Death

forth — all more or less necessary. And though
seldom realised complete, it is felt, and feels
itself, to be imperfect without some representa
tion of every side. To limit it to the expres
sion of one particular aspect would be totally
inadequate, if not absurd and impossible. A
merely physical love, for instance, on the sexual
plane, is an absurdity, a dead letter — the enjoy
ment and fruition of the physical depending so
much on the feeling expressed, that without the
latter there is next to no satisfaction. At best
there is merely a negative pleasure, a relief,
arising from the solution of a previous state of
corporeal tension. And in such cases intercourse
is easily followed by depression and disappoint
ment. For if there is not enough of the more
subtle and durable elements in love, to remain
after the physical has been satisfied, and to hold
the two parties close together, why, the last state
may well be worse than the first !

But equally absurd is any attempt to limit,
for instance, to the mental plane, and to make
love a matter of affectionate letter-writing merely,
or of concordant views on political economy ; or
again, to confine it to the emotional plane, and
the region of more or less sloppy sentiment ; or
to the spiritual, with a somewhat lofty contempt
of the material — in which case it tends, as hinted
before, to become too like trying to paint a
picture without the use of pigments. All the
phases are necessary, or at least desirable — even if,
as already said, a quite complete and all-round

Love as an Art

relation is seldom realised. The physical is de
sirable, for many very obvious reasons — including
corporeal needs and health, and perhaps especially
because it acts in the way of removal of barriers,
and so opens the path to other intimacies. The
mental is desirable, to give form and outline to
the relation ; the emotional, to provide the some
thing to be expressed ; and the spiritual to give
permanence and absolute solidity to the whole
structure.

It is probably on account of this complex
nature that for any big and permanent relation
ship of this kind there has to be a rather slow
and gradual culmination. All the various ele
ments have to be hunted up and brought into
line. Like all great ideas love has its two sides
—its instantaneous inner side, and its complex
outer side of innumerable detail. In consciousness
it tends to appear in a flash — simple, unique, and
unchangeable ; but in experience it has to be
worked out with much labour. All the elements
have to come into operation^ and to contribute their
respective quota to the total result. If we re
member what happens when the spermatozoon
and the ovum coalesce (see ch. ii. p. 19) — the
extraordinary changes and disturbances which are
induced in the chromatin elements of both nuclei,
the fusion of the nuclei, and the ultimate ranging
of the chromosomes in a line (for the formation
of the new being) in such a way that every
element is represented and contributes its share
to the process — we cannot but be struck by the

The Drama of Love and Death

strange similarity to our own inner experience :
how love searches the heart, drags every element
of the inner nature forward from its lurking-
place, gives it definition and shape, and somehow
insists on it being represented, and, so to speak,
toeing the line. We shall return to this point
later. Here I only wish to insist on the com
plexity of the process, in order to show that
for any big relationship plenty of time has to be
allowed. Whichever side of the nature — mental,
emotional, physical, and so forth — may have
happened to take the lead, it must not and
cannot monopolise the affair. It must drag the
other sides in and give them their place. And
this means time, and temporary bewilderment
and confusion. It is curious how ' falling in
love ' has this very effect — how it paralyses for
a time — inhibiting the mental part and even the
physical ; how the smart talker becomes a dumb
ass, and the man about town a modest fool, and
the person who always does the right thing seems
compelled to do everything wrong — as if a con
fusion were being created in the mind, analogous
to that which we have observed in the cells.
When we add to these considerations the extra
ordinary differences between persons, and between
the proportions in which the elements of their
characters are mixed, it is obvious how extremely
complex the conditions of any one decent love-
relation must be, and what tact and patience in
the handling it may require.

The ignorance, therefore, which causes a young
38

Love as an Art

man, husband or lover, to think that the hurried
completion of the sexual act is at once the initia
tion and the fulfilment of love, is fatal enough.
It marks more often the end than the beginning
of the affair. For, contrariwise, time and plenty
of time has to be given in order to allow the
central radiation in each case to have its perfect
work. Is it too fanciful to suppose that the
centrosome, which makes its appearance in the
protozoon on its approach to conjunction, and
which seems to rule the rearrangement of the
chromatin elements within it, is the analogue
of the radiating force in human courtship which
so strangely sifts out and remoulds the elements
of the lover's personality ? Does the magic of
the centrosome correspond in some sense to the
glamour, so well known in human affairs ? And
do they both proceed from some deep-hidden,
profoundly important manifestation of the life,
the energy, the divinity if you will, of the Race ?
How strange is this matter of the glamour,
and its decisiveness in awakening love by its
presence, or leaving it cold by absence ! Here
is a story of a woman who, dreadfully disfigured
in countenance by an accident in the hunting-
field, called herfance to her, and nobly offered him
his freedom ; and he ... accepted it ! Accepted
it, because, quite really and truly, the destruction
of her physical beauty had for him shattered
the Vision and the divinity. And here is another
similar story where, contrariwise, the man immedi
ately confirmed his love and devotion — because

The Drama of Love and Death

for him the glory around her was more illumined
by her nobility of feeling than it could be
darkened by her bodily defect.

Such glamour, working away in the hidden
caverns of being, may at last, like Bruno's " fabro
vulcano," weld two souls into one, and bring
to light a real, a profound, and perhaps eternal
union. It is after all that inner union which
is the real thing; which gives all its joy to
intercourse, and penetrating down into the world
of sense, redeems that world into a thing of
glory and beauty. For the complete action of
that creative and organising force plentiful time
must be given ; and the two lovers must possess
their souls in patience till it has had its full
and perfect work. Ovid in his Ars Amatoria
has many lines on this subject. " Let the youth,"
he says, " with tardy passion burn, like a damp
torch" ..." Non est Veneris properanda voluptas" . . «
" Quod datum ex facili longum male nutrit amorem"
(Love easily granted may not long endure), and
so forth. And though these passages no doubt
refer mainly to what may be called the practical
conduct of amours, yet they have also a very
pointed application to the more important aspects
of the grand passion. A long foreground of
approach, time and tact, diffusion of magnetism,
mergence in one another, suffering, and even pain
— all these must be expected and allowed for —
though the best after all, in this as in other
things, is often the unexpected and the un
prepared.

Love as an Art

And if the man has to allow time for all
the elements of his nature to come forward and
take their part in the great mystery, all the more
is it true that he has to give the woman time
for the fulfilling of her part. For in general
it may be said (though of course with exceptions)
that love culminates more slowly in women than
in men. Men concentrate obviously on the
definite part they have to play ; but in women
love is more diffused and takes longer to reach

the point where it becomes an inspired and
creative frenzy of the whole being. Caresses,
tendernesses, provocation, sacrifices, and a thou
sand indirect influences have to gradually conspire
to the working out of this result ; and not
infrequently the situation so arising demands
great self-control on the part of the man. Yet
these things are worth while. " The real mar
riage," says some one, " takes place when from
their intense love there comes to birth another
soul — apart from each, and invisible, yet joining
them together, one hand ahold of each- — a radiant
thing born of the sun and stars, which though
tender and fragile at first, grows just like a
bodily child, and leads them on, and dances
with them."

They are worth while, all these labours and
troubles, and delays and sacrifices, if only out
of them can be forged a fair and infrangible

^ D

union. As in all the arts, so in the greatest

of the arts, no lasting result can be attained
without such labour. Nor indeed without some

degree of pain and suffering. Young folk and
inexperienced may think it is not so. They may
think that by a lucky stroke and practically
without effort a man may write a " Blessed
Damozel " or carve in marble a " Greek Slave" ;
but all experience points differently, and shows
that directly or indirectly to such works have
gone infinite labour and patience. And so to
the conceiving and shaping of a perfect alliance
between a man and a woman must always go
much of suffering — for it is by suffering that
the souls of human beings are wrought into form
and carved to fitness for each other.

Is it seriously — when one comes to think of
it — possible to imagine love without pain?
Figure to yourself, O man, a courtship absolutely
undenied, from the first accepted, even en
couraged, with complaisantly unresisting bride,
smiling parents, fair-weather prospects, and cash
unlimited ! How awfully dull ! Does not the
stoutest heart quail at the suggestion ? Or if
such a mating might be deemed pleasant as far
as its accessories and conditions were concerned,
could it yet be termed Love ?

For Love, if worth anything, seems to demand
pain and strain in order to prove itself, and
is not satisfied with an easy attainment. How
indeed should one know the great heights except
by the rocks and escarpments ? And pain often
in some strange way seems to be the measure
of love — the measure by which we are assured
that love is true and real ; and so (which is

Love as an Art

one of the mysteries) it becomes transformed
into a great joy. Yes, if men could only un
derstand, here is one of the most precious of
the mysteries, and the solving of a great
riddle.

But that the course of true love does gener
ally not run smooth is understood, more or less,
by every one. And it is woman's strange and
imperious instinct — even though at considerable
suffering to herself — to see that it doesn't run
smooth. Ellis practically bases1 the whole of
the evolution of modesty on this instinct — reach
ing far down in the animal kingdom — by which
the female constantly throws difficulties and
obstacles in the way of courtship (by her coy
nesses, contrarieties, changeable moods, and so
forth) ; thus calling out in the male all his
ingenuity, his impetuosity, his energy,, in over
coming them ; rousing dormant elements of his

.
nature ; delaying consummation and giving time

for his character and all his qualities to con
centrate ; and indirectly having a like effect
upon herself. So that ultimately by this method
a maximum of passion and agitation is produced,
and in the case of the human being love pene
trates to the very deeps and hidden caverns of
the soul. Such is the genesis of Modesty — not
by any means Nature's denial of love, but rather
the crafty old dame's method of rendering love,
by temporary obstacles, all the more insurgent
and irresistible — her method of making it less

1 Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. i.
43

The Drama of Love and Death

superficial, of deepening the channels and render
ing them more profound.

Practically, and as a matter of policy, a too
easy consent to another's love is a mistake.
The barb only sticks when the bait is withdrawn.
Ovid, it will be remembered, advises that "the
lover should be admitted by the window, even
when the door is quite accessible, and really
more convenient " ; x and most girls (though they
have not read Ovid) know instinctively that
this is the right policy ! Nothing is so hateful
to a real lover as an easy, accommodating, altruistic
affection — thoroughly Christian in sentiment, and
with no more shape of its own than a pillow !
Romance flies at the mere mention of Christian
altruism ; and the essence of love is romance.

Hence not only technical obstacles, but essential
differences are necessary to the growth of the
passion. Differences of age, differences of sex,
differences of class, temperament, hereditary
strain, learning, accomplishment, and so forth —
if not too great — are all necessary and valuable.
They all mean romance, and contribute to that
exchange of essences which we saw was the
primitive protozoic law. It is quite probable
that the abiding romance between the sexes —
so much greater as a rule than that between
two of like sex — is due to the fact that the
man and the woman never really understand
each other ; each to the other is a figure in
cloudland, sometimes truly divine, sometimes

1 Ars. Am. iii. 605.
44

Love as an Art

alas ! quite the reverse ; but never clear and
obvious in outline, as a simple mortal may be
expected to be.

But to return to the subject of pain and suffer
ing. There is something more in their work
than merely to reveal to the lover the extent
or the depth of his own love. They have
something surely to do with the inner realities
of the affair, with the moulding or hammering
or welding process whereby union is effected
and, in some sense, a new being created. It
seems as if when two naked souls approach, or
come anywhere near contact with each other,
the one inevitably burns or scorches the other.
The intense chemistry of the psychic elements
produces something like an actual flame. A
fresh combination is entered into, profound trans
formations are effected, strange forces liberated,
and a new personality perhaps created ; and the
accomplishment and evidence of the whole pro
cess is by no means only joy, but agony also,
even as childbirth is.

All one can reasonably do is to endure. It
is no good making a fuss. In affairs of the
heart what we call suffering corresponds to what
we call labour or effort in affairs of the body.
When you put your shoulder to the cart-wheel
you feel the pain and pressure of the effort,
but that assures you that you are exercising a
force, that something is being done ; so suffering
of the heart assures you that something is being
done in that other and less tangible world. To

The Drama of Love and Death

scold and scowl and blame your loved one is
the stupidest thing you can do. And worse
than stupid, it is useless. For it can only alien
ate. Probably that other one is suffering as
well as you — possibly more than you, possibly
a good deal less. What does it matter ? The
suffering is there and must be borne ; the work,
whatever it is, is being done ; the transformation
is being effected. Do you want your beloved
to suffer instead of you, or simply because you
are suffering ? Or is it Pity you desire rather
than Love.

On the other hand, these things borne in silence
have, I believe, an extraordinary effect. They
pull people to you by quite invisible cords. As
I have said, the fact of heart-strain and tension
shows that there is a pressure or pull being exerted
somewhere. Though the cord be invisible, there
is someone at the other end (though not perhaps
quite the one you supposed) who responds.

Words anyhow, in matters of love, are rather
foolish ; they are worse than foolish, they are
useless ; and again they are worse than useless,
for they are misleading. Love is an art. " It
must be revealed by acts" says a Swiss writer,
" and not betrayed by words." And Havelock
Ellis, speaking further of the mistake of relying
on declarations and asseverations, says : 1 " This
is scarcely realised by those ill-advised lovers who
consider that the first step in courtship — and
perhaps even the whole of courtship — is for a

1 Psychology of Sex, vol. vi. p. 542.

Love as an Art

man to ask a woman to be his wife. That is so
far from being the case that it constantly happens
that the premature exhibition of so large a de
mand at once and forever damns all the wooer's
chances." And in another passage he says : J
"Love's requests cannot be made in words, nor
truthfully answered in words : a fine divination
is still needed as long as love lasts."

Love is an art. As no mere talk can convey
the meaning of a piece of music or a beautiful
poem, so no verbal declaration can come anywhere
near expressing what the lover wants to say.
And for one very good and sufficient reason
(among others) — namely, that he does not know
himself! Under these circumstances to say any
thing is almost certainly to say something mislead
ing or false. And the decent lover knows this and
holds his tongue. To talk about your devotion
is to kill it — moreover, it is to render it banal and
suspect in the eyes of your beloved.

Nevertheless though he cannot describe or
explain what he wants to say, the lover can fee! it
— is feeling it all the time ; and this feeling, like
other feelings, he can express by indirections —
by symbols, by actions, by the alphabet of deed
and gesture, and all the hieroglyphics of Life and
Art. Like the animals and the angels and all
the blessed creatures who don't /#//£, he can com
municate in the ancient, primasval, universal
language of all creation, in the language which
is itself creation.

1 Ibid. p. 544.
47

CHAPTER IV

ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS

"To talk about your devotion is to kill it.*'
Perhaps one ought even to say that to talk at all is
to kill it ! One often thinks what divine and
beautiful creatures — men and women — there are
all around, how loving and loveable, how gracious
in their charm, how grand in their destiny! —
if indeed they could only be persuaded to remain
within that magic circle of silence. And then
alas ! one of these divinities begins to talk — and
it is like the fair woman in the fable, out of
whose mouth, whenever she opened it, there
jumped a mouse! The shock is almost more
than one can bear. Not that the shock proceeds
from the ignorance displayed — for the animals
and even the angels are deliciously ignorant —
but from the revelations which speech uncon
sciously makes of certain states of the soul — from
the strange falsity which is too often heard in the
words, and in the very tones of the voice.

But Love burns this falsity away. That is
why love — even rude and rampant and outrageous
love — does more for the moralising of poor
humanity than a hundred thousand Sunday
schools. It cleans the little human soul from

Its Ultimate Meanings

the clustered lies in which it has nested itself — •
from the petty conceits and deceits and cowardices
and covert meannesses — and all the things that
fly from the tip of the tongue directly the mouth
opens. It burns and cleans them away, and
leaves the lover speechless — but approximately
honest !

Love is an art, and the greatest of the Arts —
and the truth of it cannot be said in words ; that
is, in any direct use of words. You may write
a sonnet, of course, to your mistress's eyebrow;
but that is work, that is doing something ; it
is or is trying to be, a work of Art — and anyhow
your mistress is not obliged to read it ! Or
you may take a more decisive line to express
your feelings — by slaying your rival, for instance,
with a sword. That is allowable. But to bore
the lady with protestations, and to demand
definite replies (that is, to tell lies yourself, and
to compel her to tell lies), is both foolish and
wicked.

The expression of Love is a great art, and
it needs man's highest ingenuity and capacity
to become skilled in it — but in the public mind
it is an art utterly neglected and despised, and
it is only by a very few (and those not always
the most ' respectable ') that it is really cultivated.
It is a great art, for the same reason that the

• r

expression of Beauty is a great art — for the
reason that Love itself (like Beauty) belongs
to another plane of existence than the plane
of ordinary life and speech.

49 D

The Drama of Love and Death

Speech is man's great prerogative, which
differentiates him from the other creatures, and of
which he is, especially during the Civilisation
period, so proud. The animals do not use it,
because they have not arrived at the need of
it ; the angels do not use it, because they have
passed beyond the need. It belongs to the
second stage of human consciousness, that which
is founded on self-consciousness — on the rooted
consciousness of the self as something solitary,
apart from others, even antagonistic to them,
the centre (strange contradiction in terms !) even
among millions of other centres, to which every
thing has to be referred. The whole of ordinary
speech proceeds, and has proceeded, from this
kind of self-consciousness — is generated from
it, describes it, analyses it, pictures it forth and
expresses it — and in the upshot is just as muddled
and illusive and unsatisfactory as the thing it
proceeds from. And Love, which is not founded
on that kind of self-consciousness — which is
in fact the denial of self-centration — has no
use for it. Love can only say what it wants
by the language of life, action, song, sacrifice,
ravishment, death, and the great panorama of
creation.

Self-consciousness is fatal to love. The self-
conscious lover never ' arrives.' The woman
looks at him — and then she looks at something
more interesting. And so too the whole modern
period of commercial civilisation and Christianity
has been fatal to love ; for both these great

5°

Its Ultimate Meanings

movements have concentrated the thoughts of
men on their own individual salvation — Christi
anity on the salvation of their souls, and com
mercialism on the salvation of their moneybags.
They have bred the self-regarding consciousness
in the highest degree ; and so — though they
may have had their uses and their parts to play
in the history of mankind, they have been fatal
to the communal spirit in society, and they have
been fatal to the glad expression of the soul in
private life.

Self-consciousness is fatal to love, which is the
true expression of the soul. And it is curious
how (for some occult reason) the whole treatment
of the subject in our modern world drives it
along this painful mirror-lined ravine — how the
child is brought up in ignorance and darkness,
amid averted faces and frowns, and always the
thought of self and its own wickedness is thrust
upon it, and never the good and the beauty of
the loved one ; how the same attitude continues
into years of maturity ; how somehow self-
forgetting heroisms for the sake of love are made
difficult in modern life ; how even the act of
intercourse itself, instead of taking place in the
open air — in touch with the great and abound
ing life of Nature — is generally consummated in
closed and stuffy rooms, the symbols of mental
darkness and morbidity, and the breeding-ground
of the pettier elements of human nature.1

1 "The disgrace which has overtaken the sexual act, and
rendered it a deed of darkness, is doubtless largely responsible

The Drama of Love and Death

We have said that for any lasting alliance, or
really big and satisfactory love-affair, plenty of
time should be given. Perhaps it is a good rule
(if any rule in such matters can be good) never to
act until one is practically compelled by one's
feelings to do so. At any rate, the opposite
policy — that of letting off steam, or giving
expression to one's sentiments, at the slightest
pressure — is an obvious mistake. It gives no
chance for the depths to be stirred, or the big
forces to come into play. Some degree, too,
of self-repression and holding back on the part
of the man gives time, as we have said, for the
woman's love-feelings to unfold and define them
selves. But there is a limit here, and even
sympathy and consideration are not always in
place with love. There is something bigger —
titanic, elemental — which must also have its
way. And, after all, Force (if only appropriately
used) is the greatest of compliments. I think
every woman, in her heart of hearts, wishes to be
ravished ; but naturally it must be by the right
man. This is the compliment which is the most
grateful of all to receive, because it is most
sincere ; and this is the compliment which is the
most difficult of all to pay — because nothing but

for the fact that the chief time for its consummation among
modern civilised peoples is the darkness of the early night in
stuffy bedrooms when the fatigue of the day's labours is
struggling with the artificial stimulation produced by heavy
meals and alcoholic drinks. This habit is partly responsible
for the indifference or even disgust with which women some
times view coitus" (H. Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
vol. vi. p. 558.)

Its Ultimate Meanings

the finest instinct can decide when it is appro
priate ; and if by chance it is inappropriate the
cause is ipso facto ruined.

Nature prizes strength and power ; and so
likewise does love, which moves in the heart of
Nature and shares her secrets. To regard Love
as a kind of refined and delicate altruism is, as we
have already hinted, drivelling nonsense. To the
lover in general violence is more endurable than
indifference ; and many lovers are of such tempera
ment that blows and kicks (actual or metaphori
cal) stimulate and increase their ardour. Even
Ovid — who must have been something of a gay
dog in his day — says, " non nisi laesus amo"
There is a feeling that at all costs one must come
to close quarters with the beloved — if not in the
mimic battles of sex, then in quite serious and
hostile encounters. To reach the other one
somehow, to leave one's mark, one's impress on
the beloved — or vice versa to be reached and to
feel the impress — is a necessity. I sometimes
think that this is the explanation of those strange
cases in which a man, mad with love, and unable
to satisfy his passion, kills the girl he loves. I
don't think it is hypothetical jealousy of a
possible other lover. I think it is something
much more direct than that — the blind urge to
reach her very actual self, even if it be only with
knife or bullet. I am sure that this is the
explanation of those many cases of unhappily
married folk who everlastingly nag at each other,
and yet will not on any account part company.

The Drama of Love and Death

They cannot love each other properly, and yet
they cannot leave each other alone. A strange
madness urges them into continual contact and
collision.

But yet possibly there is even something more
in the whole thing, on and beyond what is here
indicated. In the extraordinary and often agoni
sing experiences attending the matter of ' falling
in love,' great changes, as we have already
suggested, are being wrought in the human being.
Astounding inner convulsions and conversions
take place — rejections of old habits, adoptions of
new ones. The presence of the beloved exercises
this magical selective and reconstructive influence
— and that independently to a large degree of
whether the relation is a happy and ' successful '
one, or whether it is contrary and unsuccessful.
The main thing is contact, and the coming of one
person into touch with the other.

We have seen, in the case of the Protozoa, the
amazing fact of the * maturation-divisions ' and
the * extrusion of polar bodies ' as a preparation
for conjugation — how, when the two cells which
are about to unite approach each other, changes
take place already before they come into contact,
and half the chromatin elements from one cell
are expelled, and half the chromatin elements
also from the other. What the exact nature of
this division and extrusion may be is a thing not
yet known, but there seems every reason to believe
that it is of such a character as to leave the
residual elements on both sides complementary to

Its Ultimate Meanings

one another — so that when united they shall
restore the total attributes of the race-life, only
perhaps in a new and unprecedented combination.
The Protozoa in fact ' prepare ' themselves for
conjugation and realisation of the race-life, by
casting out certain elements which would interfere
with this realisation. And we may well ask our
selves whether in the case of Man the convulsions
and conversions of which we have spoken have
not the same purpose and result, or something
much resembling it. Whatever really takes place
in the unseen world in the case of human Love,
we cannot but be persuaded that it is something
of very far-reaching and long-lasting import ; and
to find that the process should often involve great
pain to the little mortals concerned seems readily
conceivable and by no means unnatural.

The complementary nature of love is a thing
which has often been pointed out — how the dark
marries the fair, the tall the short, the active the
lethargic, and so forth. Schopenhauer, in his
Welt ah Wills und Vorstellung has made a special
study of this subject. Plato, Darwin, and others
have alluded to it. It seems as if, in Love, the
creature — to use Dante Rossetti's expression —
feels a "poignant thirst and exquisite hunger"
for that other one who will supply the elements
wanting in himself, who will restore the balance,
and fill up the round of the race ideal. And as
every one of us is eccentric and out of balance
and perfection on one side or another, so it almost
seems as if for every one there must be, on the

The Drama of Love and Death

other side, a complementary character to be found
— who needs something at any rate of what we can
supply. And this consideration may yield us the
motto — however painfully conscious we may be
of our own weaknesses and deficiencies and follies
and vices and general ungainliness — the motto of
" Never despair ! " Innocent folk, whose studies
of this subject have been chiefly perhaps derived
from penny novelettes — are sometimes inclined
to think that love is a stereotyped affair occurring
in a certain pattern and under certain conditions
between the ages of 18 and 35 ; and that if you
are not between these ages and are not fortunate
enough to have a good complexion and a nicely
formed aquiline nose, you may as well abandon
hope ! They suppose that there is a certain thing
called a Man, and another certain thing called a
Woman, and that the combination of these two
forms a third quite stereotyped thing called
Marriage, and there is an end of it.

But by some kind of Providential arrangement
it appears that the actual facts are very different
— that there are really hundreds of thousands of
different kinds of men, and hundreds of thousands
of different kinds of women, and consequently
thousands of millions of different kinds of mar
riage ; that there are no limits of grace or comeli
ness, or of character and accomplishment, or even
of infirmity or age, within which love is obliged
to move ; and that there is no defect, of body or
mind, which is of necessity a bar — which may
not even (to some special other person) become

Its Ultimate Meanings

an object of attraction. Thus it is that the ugly
and deformed have no great difficulty in finding
their mates — as a visit to the seaside on a bank-
holiday speedily convinces us ; a squint may be a
positive attraction to some, as it is said to have
been to the philosopher Descartes, and marks
of smallpox indispensable to others ; * while I have
read of a case somewhere, where the man was
immediately stirred to romance by the sight of a
wooden leg in a woman ! 2

But apart from these extreme instances which
may be due to special causes, the general prin
ciple of compensation through opposites is very
obvious and marked. The fluffy and absurd
little woman is selected by a tall and statuesque
grenadier ; the tall and statuesque lady is made
love to by a man who has to stand on a chair to
kiss her ; the society elegant takes to a snuffy
and preposterous professor ; the bookish scholar
(as in jude the Obscure] to a mere whore ; the
clever beauty (as inL'/iomme qui rii) to a grinning
clown ; and of course the ' wicked ' man is always
saved by the saintly woman. The masculine,
virago-like woman, on the other hand, finds a man
who positively likes being beaten with a stick ;
and the miaowling, aimlessly amiable female
gets a bully for a husband (and one can only say,
" Serve them both right ") . . . Finally, the well-
formed aquiline nose insists on marrying a pug

1 See H. Ellis, vol. v. pp. n and 12.

2 See also Kraft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis, 7th edition,
p. 165.

The Drama of Love and Death

nose — and this apparently quite regardless of
what the other bodily and mental parts may be,
or what they may want.

Everyone knows cases of quite young men
who only love women of really advanced age,
beyond the limit of childbirth ; and these are
curious because they seem to point to impelling
forces in love beyond and independent of genera
tion and race-perpetuation, and therefore lying
outside of the Schopenhauerian explanations.
And similarly we all know cases of young girls
who are deadly earnest in their affection for quite
old men, men who might well be their fathers
or grandfathers, but hardly, one would think,
their husbands. In these cases it looks as if the
young thing needs and seeks a parent as well
as a lover — the two in one, combined. And
where such love is returned, it is returned in
a kind of protective love, rather than an amative
love — or at any rate as a love in which the
protective and amative characters are closely
united.

Similarly there are numbers of cases in which
mature or quite grown men and women only love
(passionately and devotedly) boys and girls of
immature age — their love for them ceasing from
its ardour and intensity when the objects of devo
tion reach the age, say, of twenty or twenty-one.
And in many of these cases the love is ardently
returned. Here, again, it is evidently not a case
of generation or race-perpetuation, but simply of
compensation — the young thing requiring the

Its Ultimate Meanings

help and protection of the older, and the older
requiring an outlet for the protective instinct — a
case of exchange of essences and qualities which
(if at all decently and sensibly managed) might
well go to the building up of a full and well-
rounded life on either side.

In all these cases (and the above are of course
only samples out of thousands) we seem to see
an effort of the race-life to restore its total
quality — to restore it through the operation of
love — either by completing and rounding out the
life of the individuals concerned, or by uniting
some of their characteristics in the progeny. I
say ' seem to see,' because we cannot well suppose
that this gives a complete account of the matter,
or that it explains the whole meaning of Love ;
but it at any rate suggests an important aspect of
the question. The full quality of the race-life is
always building itself up and restoring itself in
this manner. A process of Regeneration is always
going on. And this process, as suggested before,
is more fundamental even than Generation — or
it is a process of which Generation is only one
department.

Regeneration is the key to the meaning of
love — to be in the first place born again in some
one else or through some one else ; in the second
place only, to be born again through a child. As
in the Protozoa, so among human beings, genera
tion alone can hardly be looked upon as the
primary object of conjugation ; for, among the
latter, out of myriads of unions vast numbers

The Drama of Love and Death

are as a matter of fact infertile, and a consider
able percentage (as indicated above) are quite
necessarily infertile, and yet these infertile unions
are quite as close, and the love concerned in them
quite as intense and penetrating, as in the case
of the fertile ones. " If a girl were free to choose
according to her inclinations," says Florence Farr
in an eloquent plea for the economic independ
ence of women,1 " there is practically no doubt
that she would choose the right father for her
child, however badly she might choose a life-long
companion for herself." In this passage the
authoress seems to suggest (perhaps following
Schopenhauer) that the generation of a perfect
child is the one main even though unconscious
purpose of love-union, and that the individual
parent-lives may instinctively be sacrificed for
this object. And there no doubt is so far truth
in this, that the tremendous forces of love often
pay little respect to the worldly conveniences and
compatibilities of the lovers themselves, and that
often (as indeed also among the Protozoa) the
parent's life is rudely and ruthlessly sacrificed for
the birth of the next generation. Still, even so,
I think the statement as put here is risky, both
as a matter of fact and as a matter of theory.
Would it not be more correct or less risky to
say : " If a girl were free to choose, she would
choose the man who most completely compensated
and rounded out her own qualities, physical and
mental (and so would be likely to get her a fine

Modern Woman : Her Intentions, p. 30.
60

Its Ultimate Meanings

babe), even though he might not prove the best
of companions ? "

It is curious, as we have suggested before, how
married folk often quarrel to desperation on the
surface, and yet seem to have a deep and per
manent hold on each other — returning together
again even after separation. It seems in these
cases as if they mutually obtained a stimulus
from each other, even by their strife, which they
could not get elsewhere. Irae amanthim red-
integratio amoris. The idea, too, that the great
and primal object of union is to be sought in
the next generation has something unsatisfactory
about it. Why not in this generation ? Why
should the blessedness of mankind always be
deferred to posterity ? It is not merely, I take
it, the perpetuation of the race which is the pur
pose of love, but the perfection of the race, the
completeness and adequacy of its self-expression,
which love may make possible to-day just as well
as to-morrow. Ellen Key, in that fine book,
Liebe und EheJ- expresses this well when she
says : " Love seeks union, not only in connec
tion with the creation of a new being, but also
because two beings through one another may become
a new being, and a greater than either could be
of itself alone."

The complementary nature of sex-attraction
was made much of by that youthful genius Otto
Weininger, who in his book, Sex and Character?

1 English edition; Heinemann. 1906.

2 Fischer, Berlin, p. 192.

The Drama of Love and Death

has a chapter on the laws of Sexual Attraction ;
in which, in the true German manner, he not
only gives an algebraic formula for the different
types of men and women, but a formula also
for the force of attraction between any two
given individuals — which latter of course becomes
infinite when the two individuals are exactly
complementary to each other ! Dr. Magnus
Hirschfeld, in his very interesting work, Die
Tranruestifen* goes even more into detail than
does Weininger on the subject of the variations
of human type in special regard to sex-charac
teristics. Sex-characteristics, he explains, may
be divided into four groups, of which two are
physiological, namely the primary characteristics
(the sex organs and adjuncts) and the secondary
(the hair, the voice, the breasts, and so forth) ;
and two are psychological or related (like love-
sentiment, mental habit, dress, and so forth).
Each of the four groups includes about four
different elements ; so that altogether he tabu
lates sixteen elements in the human being — each
of which may vary independently of the other
fifteen, and take on at least three possible forms,
either distinctly masculine, distinctly feminine,
or intermediate. Calculating up the number of
different types which these variations would thus
give rise to, he arrives at the figure 43,046,721 !
— which figure, I think we may say, we need
not analyse further, since it is certainly quite
large enough for all practical purposes ! And

1 Berlin, 1910, p. 290.
62

Its Ultimate Meanings

really though we may mock a little at these
fanciful divisions and dissections of human nature,
they do help us to realise the enormous, the
astounding number of varieties of which it is
susceptible. And if again we consider that among
the supposed forty-three millions each variety
would have its counter type or complementary in
dividual, then we realise the enormous number
of perfect unions which would be theoretically
possible, and the enormous number of distinct and
different ways in which the race-life could thus
find adequate and admirable expression for itself.
However, we are here getting into a somewhat
abstract region. To return to the practical, the
complementary idea certainly seems to account
for much of human union ; for though there are
but few cases in which the qualities of the
uniting parties are really quite complementary
to each other, yet it is obvious that each person
tends to seek and admire attributes in the other
which he himself possesses only in small degree.
At the same time, it must not be forgotten
that some common qualities and common ground
are necessary as a basis for affection, and that
sympathy and agreement in like interests and
habits are at least as powerful a bond as admira
tion of opposites. It sometimes happens that
there are immense romances between people of
quite different classes and habits of life, or of
quite different race and colour ; and they see,
for the moment, flaming ideals and wonder-
worlds in each other. But unions in such cases

The Drama of Love and Death

are doubtful and dangerous, because so often
the common ground of sympathy and mutual
understanding will be too limited ; and hereditary
instincts and influences, deep-lying and deep-
working, will call the wanderers away, even from
the star which they seek to follow.

Sympathy with and understanding of the person
one lives with must be cultivated to the last
degree possible, because it is a condition of any
real and permanent alliance. And it may even
go so far (and should go so far) as a frank
understanding and tolerance of such person's other
loves. After all, it seldom happens, with any one
who has more than one or two great interests
in life, that he finds a mate who can sympathise
with or understand them all. In that case a
certain portion of his personality is left out
in the cold, as it were; and if this is an impor
tant portion it seems perfectly natural for him
to seek for a mate or a lover on that side too.
Two such loves are often perfectly compatible
and reconcileable — though naturally one will be
the dominant love, and the other subsidiary, and
if such secondary loves are good-humouredly
tolerated and admitted, the effect will generally
be to confirm the first and original alliance all
the more.

All this, however, does not mean that a man
can well be ' in love ' with two women, for
instance, at the same time. To love is a very
different thing from being ' in love ' ; and the
latter indicates a torrent-rush of feeling which

Its Ultimate Meanings

necessarily can only move towards one person at a
time. (A standing flood of water may embrace and
surround several islands, but it cannot very well
flow in more than one direction at once.) But
this torrent-rush does not last forever, and in
due time it subsides into the quiescent and lake-
like stage — unless indeed it runs itself out and
disappears altogether.

Against this running out and disappearance it
is part of the Art of Love to be able to guard.
It has sometimes been argued that familiarity is
of necessity fatal ; and that it is useless to
contend against this sinister tendency implanted
in the very nature of love itself. But this con
tention contains only a very partial truth. It
is true that in physical love there is a certain
physical polarity which, like electric polarity,
tends to equate itself by contact. The exchange
of essences — which we saw as a chief phenomenon
of conjugation, from the protozoa upwards —
completes itself in any given case after a given
time ; and after that becomes comparatively quies
cent. The same with the exchange of mental
essences. Two people, after years, cease to ex
change their views and opinions with the same
vitality as at first ; they lose their snap and
crackle with regard to each other — and naturally,
because they now know each other's minds per
fectly, and have perhaps modified them mutually
to the point of likeness. But this only means,
or should mean in a healthy case, that their
interest in each other has passed into another

65 E

The Drama of Love and Death

plane, that the venue of Love has been removed
to another court. If something has been lost
in respect of the physical rush and torrent, and
something in respect of the mental breeze and
sparkle, great things have been gained in the ever-
widening assurance and confidence of spiritual
unity, and a kind of lake-like calm which indeed
reflects the heavens. And under all, still in the
depths, one may be conscious of a subtle flow
and interchange, yet going on between the two
personalities and relating itself to some deep
and unseen movements far down in the heart of
Nature.

Of course for this continuance and permanence
of love there must be a certain amount of con
tinence, not only physical, but on the emotional
plane as well. Anything like nausea, created
by excess on either of these planes, has to be
avoided. New subjects of interest, and points
of contact, must be sought ; temporary absences
rather encouraged than deprecated ; and lesser
loves, as we have already hinted, not turned into
gages of battle. Few things, in fact, endear one
to a partner so much as the sense that one can
freely confide to him or her one's affaires de
cceur; and when a man and wife have reached
this point of confidence in their relation to each
other, it may fairly then be said (however shock
ing this may sound to the orthodox) that their
union is permanent and assured.

Nothing can, in the longer enduring values of
love, well take the place of some such chivalrous

Its Ultimate Meanings

mutual consije.rat.-on vchic.h reaches the finest
fcSres of the hear:. 2".: c rTers 2 rerfej't lree..:om
even there. El. en K: v — to quote her I'rfrr Lubr
wnJ £./;/'• 2£-air. — s.v. s.. lv Fidelity rin love i can
never be promised, b.:t IT. ay be cr/;»7 ;jfrr.:.'h every
,:av :" a:ui s.he con:.:nue&, "I: is si- :.hit th;s
rr.::h — ^h:;h ^-;.> j.eir enough :o :.he ch:vi.]ro'i:<,
^en:.::-ent ci '.':.•: c..d co;;r:s ot Love — rr. .->: still
•>•:•-:. 2v he insi>te.: on. One ot the reasons, in
fiJt, whic.h these coi:r;s c^v*. u->'' l^ve •w/as not.
i.'on'.r;a::h:e vfitr. M.:.rrii.c". '* '^ ' '"^* *-h? "^:'e j-o.:ld
never e\?c;: rr::" hi.r h.;s"r;i.nd the tne con>.:.:en-
r.iori t.'."..-.t the L: e.r is b>o-n~ to exhibit, beca..se
the ";^:ter only re:e.i-:-* i? ^ tavo-r wr.it t.he
h;i>b«.n^ ti.ke.5 as h:s r:^ht." To r reserve love
t:-.r.~..ch vears ir.vt ve.ars '» :th t.r.:s halo c.l ro~
r/.anj-e still aS/ut it., an.: t.*:* ten.:eme5;f OT
ttevo:io>n vhi:h n-.ei.n> a daiiv rene^re^ c:^ c,i
tree^^n*. . :> :n.tt:x* a ^re.i.t Ar:. It. :s a creat
an.: ,::nh;.::t Art. but one vr.::.h :> a>;>..re.:iy
"worth while."

Tne ration- a '.toilet her. an.: :n all :r> a>?«erts. :f
A sx\-n.:e.rt".:'i thine: an^ perhar*.. as re.ir.arkc.::
before, t.-.e less sai.: aSout. it. the better' Wren
•people — 1 wo.;i.: s.av — t-ome. /not with out clatter)
a:*..: r.tter vo.: their hearts, *.:o not pay ///.' rr. .-:..".
attention. \V'.-.it thev clfer max- be genuine., or
it ir.av not — t:\ev ihe.rr.se. Ires probab.v j:o not
know. Nor olo *:,v als-o fail into a i:ke :r.:<:ra.ke.
otYe.rinc somethin which ou have not the ower

The Drama of Love and Death

* to give — or to withhold. Silence and Time alone
avail. These things lie on the knees of the
gods ; which place — though it may seem, as
someone has said, * rather cold and uncomfort
able ' — is perhaps the best place for them.

-.J~L_-__~ il-i<. '

"T^Z .LIT IF I7T-TC-

~i lav* iu;£^-rtf;-2ri in tr.e .J.L-T: rarer tnar ^ome iay
icssihiv wt ma 7 ir~'^e it in intelligent lan dung
,T j.s7'~ inci :t2 "roci-tms. :v 'vmcn it .engtn. tne

'a^^ricic 1:1 d rr'.enclv nv-.nitv ;cec:ent to our

i;iC sri'nniz -f -leaven. ''' :-.i inrii^nT
mer* tnev .la'^'i recline -i:s v^rv r^acv i
ami i^ies. A.ic, is :n.cica-^c :n :ne ctiT^t or
i":3 r'.cic. TV^ mav fiiriv ^xrec' :ne sarr.e ccn-
::*:":icn vi r^siri to :r_e x~"'-i" na:ura_ event
ir.'i rrccr^s firrr.cd Deat::. The time h.as come
•vr.tn "^"- ir: r"a--v ca^cc. urcn to race up to
thr: fi:t -:r our decease from the rresent ccn-
i:t:-:ns cf hr'i. pcv'iical ir.d mental ; when we are
caileC u"<^n to stucv a~c to u.nC'.jrstano. this ract,
a.i' i bv under5tancir:2 -O bee-: me masters cr the
chaiiZ- which it re r resents — and abie to convert
it to our sreat use and ac vantage.

Hitherto — ii I shall have occasion presently to
point out — there has been singularly little study

The Drama of Love and Death

of this science, either from the clinical, the
physiological, or the psychological points of view ;
and the art of dying, for example (which is the
subject of this chapter), seems to have been
entirely neglected.

No doubt it may be said that this is a difficult
art — difficult to study, and more difficult still to
practise ; yet, after all, that seems only the more
reason for approaching it. The art of avoiding
death commands much attention, and there are
hundreds and thousands of books on that subject ;
yet since none can really avoid the experience and
all must sooner or later pass through it, it might
be thought that the art of meeting one's end
with discretion and presence of mind would at
least command as much attention.

There ought, one would say — and considering
the continual presence of this great ocean wait
ing to receive us — to be lessons on the subject of
its navigation free of charge, and available for all
who wish, just as there are lessons in swimming for
sailors. And though it may be true that since,
as a rule, one cannot die more than once, it is
difficult to obtain the needed practice, yet even
so one may with perseverance get some approach
to doing so. There are a good many recorded
cases of people who have apparently died, and
after an interval of a few minutes or a few hours
have come to life again. I knew a married
lady, some years back, who after a long period
of illness was given up by the doctors, and
gradually sank till to all appearances she passed

The Art of Dying

away. The medical man pronounced life to he
extinct, and the relatives began to make the
usual arrangements for her funeral. However,
being devoted to her children, and anxious to see
them through a critical period, she had made up
her mind not to die, and being a woman of strong
will she clung to her resolution. Two or three
hours elapsed, and then, to the surprise and joy
ot her friends she returned from * the other side '
— alter which she lived three or four years, suffi
ciently long to carry out what was needed for
her family. And though in this case she had
no very distinct experience to report of another
state of existence, yet the fact of her *will to
live ' having persevered through the sleep or „
apparent death ot her body and upper mind, was
sufficient to convince her ot survival ot some sort
on a deeper plane, and to disarm all tear and
hesitation when death finally came.

Probably, on the ordinary mental plane, death
very much resembles sleep, and its actual arrival
is almost imperceptible; but, in the deeper
regions ot the mind, there are not untrequently
signs or suggestions ot a great awakening. An
expression ot ecstasy often overspreads the
features; sometimes there are sudden apparent
recognitions ot friends who have already passed
away ; l in many cases there seems to be a ore at

^ *

extension ot memory and percept-ion ; and in not

1 See chapter on "Visions of the living'' in Dt\iit: : its
("<///.»v.v •;//</ /'//<•//<>///.-•/;./, by Carrinyton ami Meadei -(101 i) : also
;nj>\i, ch. vi. p. 103.

The Drama of Love and Death

a few a distinct sensation of flying or moving
upwards.1 To these and other similar considera
tions I shall return later. At present I would
prefer to keep to the more physical aspects of
the question ; but even so far, one cannot help
feeling that — whatever collateral drawbacks there
may be in death — in the way of painful illness,
parting with friends, disturbance and abandon
ment of plans, and so forth — the experience
itself must be enormously interesting. Talk
about starting on a journey ; but what must the
longest sea-voyage be, compared with this one,
with its wonderful vista, and visions, and voices
calling ? And again, since it is an experience
that all must go through, and that countless
millions of our fellows have gone through and
are still continually going through, for that very
reason alone it has a fascination ; and one feels
that had one the opportunity to avoid it one
would hardly wish to do so.

As I have said, it is curious that there is next to
no instruction or guidance commonly provided or
accessible in this matter. I mean especially on
the physical side. What are our medical folk
doing ? There are lots of books on childbirth
and the science of parturition, and the best
methods of making the transition easy ; but
when it comes to the end of life and the event
corresponding and complementary to birth, there
is little except silence and dismay.

1 See H. Pieron, "Contribution a la Psychologic des Mour-
ants," in Revue Philosophique, Dec. 1902.

The Art of Dying

The usual course of preparation for this most
important event seems to be (barring accidents)
something as follows: — a physically unhealthy
and morally stupid life, which inevitably leads to
degenerative tendencies and ultimately to distinct
disease ; then one or two breakdowns, which lead
to panic, and the summoning of doctors ; then
partial recovery, and a repetition da capo of the
whole series, without any the least improvement
in the general style of life ; then of course worse
breakdown and panic, leading at last to violent
drugs, injections, operations, and so forth, in the
hope of prolonging existence a few hours ; and
finally death arriving, not graciously, but in the
sense of a dismal defeat and rout to everybody
concerned ; and to the patient a hurried, confused
and embittered end, robbed of all decency and
dignity.

Now this won't do ! When one thinks of the
deaths of animals — so composed on the whole—
the calm, the quietude, the dignity even, and the
absence as a rule of very acute or obvious suffer
ing ; or when one thinks of the very similar con
ditions of death among many savage peoples ; one
cannot but ask, Why this difference ? One cannot
but say, It really will not: do for us ' the heirs of
all the ages ' to go on behaving in this feeble and
foolish way — leading lives which utterly unfit us
for the inevitable end of life, and stricken with
most incompetent panic and dismay when the very
thing arrives which we have foreseen and which
we have had such ample time to prepare for.

The Drama of Love and Death

Death — from whatever point of view we look
at it — seems to be a break-up of the unity of the
creature.1 It is a dislocation and to some degree
a rending asunder. But such dislocation and
break-up may be of a healthy and normal type,
or it may be unhealthy and of the nature of
disease. In the first case it may chiefly consist
in the getting rid or shedding off of an out-worn
husk, which is simply left behind — much in the
same way as the chrysalis sheath of a moth or
other insect is left behind, or as the husks of a
growing bud or bulb are peeled off. Many an
old person seems to die in this way — the body
being the scene of little or no disturbance or
conflict, but simply withering up, while often at
the same time the spiritual nature of the man
becomes strangely luminous and penetrating.
Here there is a certain dislocation, but no pain
ful rending asunder. The centre of life seems
merely to retire to a more inward and subtle
region, where it perchance nourishes an even
brighter flame than before ; and the outer body is
peeled off as a sort of outworn shell. But in
other cases death is undoubtedly very different.
Instead of the one centre simply withdrawing
inward in the way indicated, while at the same
time preserving almost to the last a general
unity of the creature, rebellious and insubordi
nate centres spring up and introduce serious
conflict into the organism. These are of course

1 See Civilisation : its Cause and Cure (George Allen, 2s. 6d.),
pp. 1 1-2 1.

The Art of Dying

diseases, or centres of disease — either in the body,
like tumours, alien growths, nests of microbes,
and so forth ; or in the mind, like violent
passions, greeds, anxieties, fears, rigid habits.
And forming thus independent centres they tear
and rend the body and mind between them till at
last death supervenes — not at all on account of
the voluntary withdrawal of the inner person to
more ethereal regions, but simply through the
destruction of the organism in which that person
functions.

It is evident (whatever view one may take of
that inner person and its perduration into other
regions of existence) that the former mode of
death is the more normal, natural and desirable
of the two, and the one which we should en
courage and cultivate ; and that the latter is
likely to be painful, undignified, and even re
pulsive.

From this point of view, to strengthen the
organising, regulating power of the body, as
against local growths and insurgencies, seems (in
general terms) the best line to take — the best
way of prolonging life, and of rendering death
fairly easy and negotiable. The outlying centres
• — as represented by the various organs and
faculties, both of the body and of the mind —
have to be kept during life in subordination to
the main centre, and as far as possible in decent
harness and exercise, so as to become neither
too slack on the one hand, nor too rowdy and
insolent on the other. In this way, when the

The Drama of Love and Death

vital forces decay, these organs and faculties
remain still subservient to the central being, and
becoming comparatively quiescent make room for
its further passage and development. There are,
indeed, some cases of death, in which the whole
inner spirit and consciousness of the man seems
to pass on unchanged, while the rabble rout of
the body simply falls away, or is left behind, like
a disused garment or husk as we have said.

It should, however, be noted that the strengthen
ing of the organising and regulating forces does
not and must not mean the introduction of rigid
and quasi-tyrannical habits (however * good '
such habits may be supposed to be). The in
terior Person — as we shall see later — is far too
great and free to be adequately represented by
any such habits or regulations, even the ' best,'
and they really belong to the lower mind or
body. Their dominance leads to an ossifying
or woodening and valetudinarian tendency in
the organism, which is as bad in its way as the
uncontrolled or inflammatory tendency.

To avoid these opposite pitfalls, and to live
sanely and sensibly, in a certain close touch with
Nature and with the roots of human life, is no
doubt difficult, especially under the ordinary
conditions of civilisation ; yet it is surely well
worth while — both for the sake of life itself and
for the termination of it. And to keep a certain
command of the situation during the mid-period
of one's day is probably the best way towards
commanding the situation at the end. But the

The Art of Dying

ordinary medical methods — with their drugs,
their stimulants, their sleeping-draughts, their
operations, their injections of morphia, serums,
and so forth, are surely acting all the time in
the opposite direction. Their tendency surely
is to confuse and weaken the central agency,
while at the same time they excite and some
times madden the local centres — till not un fre
quently the patient dies, confused, unconscious,
wrecked, and a mass of disorders and corruption.
The launching of a ship on the great ocean is a
thing that is prepared for, even during all the
period when the vessel is being built and per
fected. I am not a professional ; but will no
one write a manual on the subject, even from
the medical and physiological point of view
— How to prepare for death. . . . How to go
through this great change with some degree of
satisfaction, command, and intelligence? Above
all, may we have a truce to the so common and
unworthy conspiracies between doctors, nurses,
and relatives, by which for the sake of keeping
the patient a few hours (or at most a few days)
longer alive, the unfortunate one — instead of
being let alone and allowed to die peacefully as
far as may be, and as indeed in nine cases out
of ten he himself desires— is on the contrary
tormented (defenceless as he is) with operations,
inoculations and medical insults of all kinds up
to the very last ? The thing has become a
positive scandal ; and though the ignorant im
portunities of lay relatives may sometimes be

The Drama of Love and Death

deplorable, yet the prospect in one's last moments
of falling into the hands of professionals is even
worse, and adds a new terror to dissolution. It
is at any rate a consolation to know that what
ever pains and torments of illness may have
preceded, they generally pass away before the
end ; and notwithstanding such current expres
sions as ' death-agonies,' ' last struggle,' and
so forth, the hour of death itself is mercifully
calm and peaceful. Walt Whitman, who, in his
hospital labours in the American Civil War,
must have been present at a vast number of
deathbeds, has recorded that in the great
majority of cases the end comes quite simply, as
an ordinary event of the day, " like having your
breakfast." " Death is no more painful than
birth," says Dr. Edward Clark in his book on
Visions: a Study of False Sight;1 and most
doctors will agree to the general truth of this
expression.

There is a certain sacredness in Death, which
should surely be respected. There is too, we
may say, in most cases, a sure instinct which
comes to the patient of what is impending and of
what is needed ; and every effort should be made
to secure to the sufferer a quiet period during
which he may effect the passage, for himself,
disturbed as little as possible by the grief of
friends or the interferences of attendants.

1 See Carrington and Meader on Death : its Causes and
Phenomena, p. 300.

The Art of Dying

II. PSYCHICAL

We may now discuss the subject in hand some
what more from the psychical side. Not that in
these matters the physical and the psychical can
ever be completely dissociated, but that having
in the preceding section leaned more to the
physical side it may be convenient now to lean
rather to the psychical.

And there is certainly an advantage here —
namely, that from this side we may not unreason
ably say that the art of dying can be practised : '
it is really possible to approach or even perhaps
to pass through Death on the mental plane, by
voluntary effort. Most people regard the loss
of ordinary consciousness (apart from sleep) with
something like terror and horror. The best way
to dispel that fear is to walk through the gate
oneself every day — to divest oneself of that
consciousness, and, mentally speaking, to die
from time to time. Then one may get ac
customed to it.

Of all the hard facts of Science : as that fire
will burn, that water will freeze, t'hat the earth
spins on its axis, and so forth, I know of none
more solid and fundamental than the fact that if
you inhibit thought (and persevere) you come
at length to a region of consciousness below
or behind thought, and different from ordinary
thought in its nature and character — a conscious
ness of quasi-universal quality, and a realisation
of an altogether vaster self than that to which

The Drama of Love and Death

we are accustomed. And since the ordinary con
sciousness, with which we are concerned in
ordinary life, is before all things founded on
the little local self, and is in fact ^//-conscious
ness in the little local sense, it follows that to
pass out of that is to die to the ordinary self and
the ordinary world.

It is to die in the ordinary sense, but in another
sense it is to wake up and find that the ' I,'
one's real, most intimate self, pervades the universe
and all other beings — that the mountains and the
sea and the stars are a part of one's body and that
one's soul is in touch with the souls of all
creatures. Yes, far closer than before. It is
to be assured of an indestructible immortal life
and of a joy immense and inexpressible — "to
drink of the deep well of rest and joy, and sit
with all the Gods in Paradise."

So great, so splendid is this experience, that it
may be said that all minor questions and doubts
fall away in face of it ; and certain it is that in
thousands and thousands of cases the fact of its
having come even once to a man has completely
revolutionised his subsequent life and outlook on
the world.

Of exactly how this inhibition of Thought
may be practised, and of all its collateral results
and implications it would be out of place to speak
now.1 Sufficient at present to say that with the

1 Reference may be made to the Upanishads (" Sacred books
of the East," vols. i. and xv.) ; to the Bhagavat Citaj to R. M.

The Art of Dying

completion of this inhibition, and the realisation
of the consequent change of consciousness — even
if it be only for a time — the ordinary mental self,
with all its worries, cares, limitations, imperfec
tions, and so forth, falls completely off, and lies
(for the time) like a thing dead ; while the real
man practically passes onward into another state
of being.

To experience all this with any degree of ful
ness, is to know that you have passed through
Death ; because whatever destruction physical
death may bring to your local senses and faculties,
you know that it will not affect that deeper Self.
I mean that having already become aware of
your real self as pervading the life of other creatures,
and moving in other bodies than your so-called own,
it clearly does not so very much matter whether
the one body remains or passes. It may make
a difference certainly, but not a fatal or insuperable
difference. The vast ocean of the consciousness
into which you have been admitted will not
be profoundly affected, even by the abstraction
of a pearl-shell from its shore.

We have spoken of the Protozoa more than
once in these connexions ; and it has been said
that the Protozoa have been considered immortal
because, though they divide into separate cells
or organisms, the life remains continuous ; and

Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness (Purdy Publishing Co., Chicago) ;
to the Raja Yoga Lectures, by Vivekananda (New York, 1899) ;
to the Ancient Wisdom, by Annie Besant ; The Art of Creation,
and A Visit to a Gnani, by E. Carpenter ; and to many
other works, of course.

Si F

The Drama of Love and Death

because though some of the descendant cells may
die yet the life goes on — so that even in the
hundredth generation the self or ego of a par
ticular cell may be identical with that of the
first parent. And in the case we are considering
we have something similar, for when the common
life of souls is once recognised and experienced,
it is clear that nothing can destroy it. It simply
passes from one form to another. And we may
perhaps say that as the Protozoa attain to a
kind of immortality below death, or prior to
its appearance in the world, so the emancipated
or freed soul attains to immortality above and
beyond death — passing over death, in fact, as
a mere detail in its career.

I say, this heart and kernel of a great and
immortal self, this consciousness of a powerful
and continuing life within, is there — however
deeply it may be buried — within each person ;
and its discovery is open to everyone who will
truly and persistently seek for it. And I say
that I regard the discovery of this experience—
with its accompanying sense of rest, content,
expansion, power, joy, and even omniscience and
immensity — as the most fundamental and im
portant fact hitherto of human knowledge and
scientific enquiry, and one verified and corro
borated by thousands and even millions of human
kind. Doubtless, as already suggested, questions
may arise and will arise as to the exact nature
of this continuing life, its exact relation to the
local personal consciousness, as well as to what

The Art of Dying

is called the subliminal self — how far definite
personality and memory go with it, and so forth.
These questions we may return to later. At
present let vis simply rest on the experience itself.
When Death is at hand, or its oncoming
cannot long be delayed, there is still that to
remember, to revert to, to cling to. And the
more often we have made the experience our
very own, in life, the easier will it be to hold
on to at the close. Whatever physical death
may bring — in the way of pain or distress or
dislocation of faculty — there still remains that
indefeasible fact, the certainty of the survival
of the deepest, most universal portion of our
natures. In some cases this deepest consciousness
does itself remain so clear, so strong that — even
through all the obscurations of illness and bodily
weakness — death practically brings no break;
the body is shed off, more or less like a husk
or chrysalis (with effort and struggle perhaps,
but without anguish and despair) ; and the human
being passes on to realise under some other form
the divine life which he has already partially
entered into. 1 think it evident that this is
the state of affairs which we ought to put before
ourselves as the goal of our endeavour. It
would seem the only condition which secures
a sense of continuity in death, or which does
not carry with it some threat of failure or ex
tinction. And it suggests to us that our per
sistent and unremitted effort during ordinary
life should be to realise and lay hoid of this

The Drama of Love and Death

immortal Thing, to conquer and make our own
this very Heart of the universe. It suggests
that every magnanimous deed, every self-forget
ting enthusiasm, every great and passionate
love, every determined effort to get down into
the heart and truth of things and below the
conventional crust, does really bring us nearer
to that attainment, and hasten the day when
mankind at large shall indeed finally obtain
the victory ; and the passage into and through
death shall appear natural and simple and clear
of obstruction, and even in its due time desirable.

It is clear, however, that in a great number
of cases this deepest consciousness, even if it
has occasionally during life been reached by the
person concerned, has not been sufficiently firmly
established to endure through times of sickness,
bodily weakness, and mental decay ; while again,
perhaps in the vast majority of cases, the previous
realisations have been almost nil, or at most
have been too few or too slight to count for
much. What are we to say in such cases as
these ? Even if with the eye of faith or philosophy
the bystander may seem to see the immortal
spark shining, what consolation or assistance
is that to the sufferer himself, who does not
perceive or feel it ? What is likely to be his
experience of dissolution ? and what may he
fairly expect or look to as any sort of solution
of the obscure problem ?

To get any kind of answer to these questions
and any clear idea of what really happens in

The Art of Dying

the great majority of cases — when the break-up
which we call dissolution arrives — it will be
necessary to analyse roughly the nature of Man.
We shall then see what are the various elements
of that nature, and what their probable destina
tion, respectively. And for the purpose in hand
I think we may divide the complete human
being into four sections — though remembering of
course that the classification proposed, or any
such classification, can only be very rough and
tentative — namely, into (i) the eternal and im
mortal Self, of which we have already spoken ;
(2) the inner personal ego or human soul ; (3)
the outer personality or animal self; and (4) the
actual body. Of these, (i), the eternal Self, is
the germ or root of the whole human being ;
and I think we may even say that all the sections
and elements of our human nature are really
manifestations or outgrowths from this root
(though of course in most cases unconscious of
their real belonging or their real source). Then
(2), the inner personal self or human soul, in
cludes the finer and subtler elements of ' char
acter' — which we know so well in our friends,
yet find so difficult to describe, but which are
roughly denoted by such words as affection,
courage, wit, sympathy, love of beauty, sense of
equality, freedom, self-reliance, determination,
and so forth; while (3), the outer personality
or animal soul (not at all of course to be de
spised), is concerned with the more terrestrial
desires and passions like pride, ambition, love

The Drama of Love and Death

of possession, jealousy, and especially those that
relate themselves directly to the body, e.g. desires
of food, drink, sex, ease, sleep, and so forth ;
and finally, (4), the body, includes all the material
organs and parts. Other and intermediate sub
divisions may be and sometimes are made, but
these four will probably suffice for the present —
remembering, as already said, that they have
only a rough value : hard and fast lines and
divisions in such matters being impossible, and
the nature of man being really continuous and
not built in sections ; remembering, too, with
regard to all four divisions, that the elements
of them are not at all times present in conscious
ness, but to a large degree remain unconscious
or hidden or subliminal.

CHAPTER VI

THE PASSAGE OF DEATH

ALLOWING, then, that our human nature may
be roughly divided as above into four main con
stituents, the destiny of two of these at death
seems pretty clear. It is clear that (i) the central
self remains (whether " we " know it or not)
the same as it ever was, and ever will be, eternal,
shining in glory and irradiating the world. It
goes on, to be the birth-source, may be, of
numberless lives to come. On the other hand,
it is equally clear that (4) the actual visible
tangible body dies, perishes, and is broken up.
Though it may return, in its elements and through
what we call Nature, into the great birth-source,
it ceases as an individual • body to exist, and
passes even before the eyes of onlookers into
other forms. The fate of these two portions of
the human entity can hardly be doubted' — of
the innermost central portion, continuance, with
but slow or secular change, if any ; of the
outermost material shell, immediate decay and
dissolution.

What, then, may we suppose is the destiny of
the other two portions, the human and the
animal part ? I think we may fairly suppose that

The Drama of Love and Death

they each share to a considerable degree the
destiny of that extreme to which they are closest
related. The outer personality or animal life,
(3), is most closely related to the body. Its
passions and desires (though in themselves psy
chical and mental entities) look always to the
body for their expression and satisfaction. It
is difficult to suppose them functioning without
the body. We cannot, for instance, very well
imagine the passion for drink without some kind
of mouth or gullet through which to work
(though of course it may carry on a sort of
dream-activity by representing these channels to
itself, or creating mental images ®f them). And
similarly of the passion of personal vanity, or
the passion of sex : they refer themselves always
to the body, in some degree or other.

It is clear then, I think, that when the body
in death breaks up, these psychic elements which
function through it and correspond to the various
parts and organs — these passions and desires, and
with them the whole animal being — are to some
extent involved in the ruin. They are (in most
cases) smitten with dire suffering and confusion.
A terrible misgiving and dismay assault them ;
and with the break-up and disruption of the body
they too experience the agonies of disruption, and
foresee their own dissolution and death.1

1 If I seem here to personify unduly these psychic elements
and to ascribe to them too much in the way of consciousness
and intelligence, I must refer for explanation to the Note at
the end of this chapter.

The Passage of Death

Yet to conclude from this that these elements
do absolutely perish, would, I think, be a mistake.
For these passional entities and this animal soul,
though they seek the body and manifest them
selves through it, are not the same as the body.
They have a creative power within them.1 The
drunkard, as suggested, deprived of his liquor,
represents furiously to himself in imagination the
act of drinking : he dreams a gullet a yard long
and an endless swallow — and in doing so he

actually moulds and modifies his swallowing
apparatus. The vain man and the sexual simi
larly mould and modify their bodies ; they con
tribute to the building of the shapes which they
use. And this sort of process going on through
the ages has created the forms of the animals and
mankind, and their respective members and organs.2
All these things are the expression and manifesta
tion and output of the psychical entities and
passions and qualities underlying — which them
selves are implicit in the world-soul, which indeed
have grown up and manifested themselves out of
the world-soul, and which still deeply though
hiddenly root back into it.

The most reasonable and obvious answer, then,
to the question, What becomes of the animal life
and its satellite passions when the body dies ?
seems to be that under normal conditions they
die too — in the sense that they cease to be mani
fest. They die, like the body, only with this

1 See ch. vii., itifra, p. 119.

2 See The Art of Creation, ch. xii. pp. 209, 210.

The Drama of Love and Death

difference, that being psychical — i.e. having a con
sciousness and a self underlying, while the body
dies back into earth and air, they die back into
the psychic roots from which they originally sprang
— that is, into that form of the Self or World-
soul of which they are the manifestation — as, for
instance, in the case of the animals, into the self
or soul of the race ; in the case of undeveloped
man, partly into the soul of the race and partly
into the human soul which is affiliated to the soul
of the race ; and in the case of perfected man,
entirely into the human soul or inner personality
which, having now found and established its
union with the supreme and eternal Self, is no
longer dependent on the soul of the race, but has
entered into a divine and immortal life of its own.
Thus in entirely normal cases, both of animals
and man, we should conclude that the animal soul
at the time of bodily death may return perfectly
calmly and naturally into its own roots (as fern-
fronds die back in winter), and the whole process
may fulfil itself quite simply and graciously and
with a minimum of suffering. But this can only
be expected to happen in instances where in
stinctively (as in healthy animals and primitive
men) or intentionally (as among a few of man
kind) the perfect unity, physical and mental, of
the organism has been preserved. In such cases
each desire and passion, standing in a close and
direct relationship to the spirit or self of the
whole organism, is easily and willingly indrawn
again at the appointed time ; and there is little

X \u>

,3>
V*

The Passage of Death

or no struggle or agony. But in the great masses
of mankind — especially in the domains of civilisa
tion — where this unity has been lost, it is easily
seen that many of the passional elements, loosed
from the true service of the informing spirit,
carry on a mad and violent career of their own ;
and to curb these or reduce them to orderly ac
quiescence and subordination is almost impossible.
On the contrary, with the general weakening of
the total organism they often break out into
greater activity. The ruling passions, " strong in
death,'! push themselves to the fore and tyrannise
over the failing or ageing man, and render his
actual dissolution stormy and painful ; and not
only so, but they sometimes generate phantasmal
embodiments of themselves which haunt the dying
man, or even become visible to outsiders.

Frederick Myers, dealing with this subject,1
invents the term psychorrhagy for this tendency
of portions of the psyche under certain conditions
to break loose from the whole man ; and thinks
that this process takes place not only at death,
but that there are some folk born with what he
calls a psychorrhagk diathesis^ who are consequently
peculiarly apt for throwing off phantasms of
one kind or another. He says : 2 — " That which
* breaks loose ' on my hypothesis is not the whole
principle of life in the organism ; rather it is
some psychical element probably of very varying
character, and definable mainly by its power of

1 Hitman Personality, &>c., ch. vi.

2 Ibid. p. 196, edition 1909, edited by L. H. Myers.

The Drama of Love and Death

producing a phantasm, perceptible by one or
more persons, in some portion or other of space.
I hold that this phantasmogenetic effect may
be produced either on the mind, and consequently
on the brain of another person — in which case
he may discern the phantasm somewhere in his
vicinity, according to his own mental habit or
prepossession — or else directly on a portion of
space, * out in the open/ in which case several
persons may simultaneously discern the phantasm
in that actual spot."

Myers then proceeds to give a great number
of very interesting and extremely well-attested
cases of such phantasms, ranging from merely
momentary apparitions of persons during their
life or at the hour of their death to the persistent
haunting of houses over a long period. And
I mention this in order to show that there is
good authority now for believing it possible not
only that phantasms may be generated by the
disintegration of the diseased or dying organism,
^ which will haunt the patient himself; but that
K\ in cases the psychic elements generating these
phantasms may be powerful enough to create
a ghostly body which may endure, surviving
the earth-body, and manifesting itself to out
side observers on occasions for a considerable
time.1

1 For evidence on the subject of Phantasms, Wraiths,
Haunted Houses, and so forth, see Phantasms of the Living,
by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore ; and The Report on the
Census of 'Hallucinations, Proceedings of the Psychical Research
Society, vol. x. ; also L'inconnu et les problems psychiques, by

The Passage of Death

So much for the fate of the outer personality
or animal part. Now with regard to (2), the
inner personality or human soul, we may ask,
What becomes of that ? And the answer particu
larly interests us, because it is with this section
that we — or at least the more thoughtful of
mankind generally — identify " ourselves." It is
probable that almost any reader of these pages
would credit his " I " or " self," not to the one
universal Being (to union with whom he may
nevertheless distantly aspire), nor to the group
of terrestrial desires and interests which we have
termed the animal being, but rather to that
constellation of nobler character which we have
called the human soul. This, he will say, is
the self that truly interests, that most deeply
represents, me. Tell me, what becomes of that ?

I think it is obvious that in the hour of death
there are only two directions in which that
human soul can turn, in which "we" can turn.
We can turn for help either outwards towards
the region of the animal self, or inwards towards
the central universal self. And I think it equally
obvious that the latter direction can alone really
supply our need. At first no doubt it may
be natural to seek outwards ; but now alas !
in the hour of dissolution the man discovers
that all that region of his nature, in which
indeed he has often found comfort before, is

Camille Flammarion ; and Lombroso's chapter on Haunted
Houses, in his book Fenomeni Jpnotici e Spiritid (Turin, 1909),
ch. xii. ; also ch. viii. of the present book, infra.

The Drama of Love and Death

becoming involved in the ruin above described.
Large portions of his animal faculties are already
being torn away — or are sinking into lethargy
and sleep. His bodily organs are losing their
vitality ; some of them have already become
useless. His mental faculties — especially the more
concrete and external faculties, like the memory
of events and names — are becoming disintegrated.
True, his general outlook may in cases seem to
become wider and more serene as death approaches,
and his inner character and personality to become
more luminous and gracious ; but it is a perilous
passage on which he is embarked and in general
threatening clouds gather round. The conscious
ness is painfully invaded by the lesser mentalities
which surround it ; the ruling passions domineer;
silly little habits and tricks, of mind and body,
obsess the man ; phantoms and delirium overpower,
or seek to overpower, him ; he is astonished and
perturbed to find himself on the fringe of a
world in which figures, half-strange half-familiar,
come and go, and force themselves upon him
with an odd persistence and a rather terrible kind
of intelligence. It requires all his presence of
mind to gather himself together, to hold his
own, to suppress the rebel rout, and to find
amid all the flux something indomitable and sure
to which to cling.

There is clearly only one thing to cling to —
and this must be insisted on — only that one
great redeeming: universal Self of which we have

o . _

spoken : only that superb omnipresent Life which

The Passage of Death

we find in the very central depth of our souls.
(And fortunate he who has already so far taken
refuge in this, that the wreck and ruin of the
visible world and the mortal onset of Death
cannot dislodge him !) That alone is fixed and
sure ; and to that the personal man must turn.

And I think we may say that it is not merely
the personal soul's highest duty and best welfare
to turn in this direction; but that in a sense and
by the law of its nature it must do so. For
even in those cases where the man does not
recognise this universal Being within, nor con
sciously believe in and hold on to the same, still
is it not true that unconsciously he is very near
and very closely related ? For all the great
qualities which we have already described as
characterising the most intimate human soul, are
they not just those which must relate it to the
universal Self? I mean such things as Equality
• — the sense of inner equality with all human and
other creatures ; Freedom — the sense of freedom
from local and material bonds ; Indifference —
indifference as to fate and destiny ; Magnanimity ;
abounding Charity and Love ; dignity ; courage ;
power — all these things, are they not obviously
the qualities which dawn upon the personal soul
and colour it when it is coming into touch with
the universal ? Are they not the natural ' sign
and symbol ' of union or partial union with that
Self? And more: are there not other things
belonging more distinctly to the unconscious and
subliminal region (which we shall deal with

The Drama of Love and Death

presently) — I mean such things as deep memory,
intuition, clairvoyance, telepathy, prophetic
faculty, and so forth — which point to the same
conclusion ?

The inner personal soul of man is surely
already conjoined to the universal, and must
cling to it by its very nature. And though the
man may not exactly be conscious of this union ;
though he may hardly really know the depth
of his own nature ; though, notwithstanding his
own splendid qualities of character, some thin
film may yet divide him from awareness of the
all-redeeming Presence ; yet none the less that
Presence is there ; and is the core and centre
of his being.

That being granted, it seems clear that in the
disintegration of death the inner personality
(whether consciously or unconsciously) will cling
to the eternal self within it. And this seems to
be the explanation of the part played by Religion
in the history of the world, and its close con
nexion with death. The different religions being
lame attempts to represent under various guises
this one root-fact of the central universal Life,
men have at all times clung to the religious
creeds and rituals and ceremonials as symbolising
in some rude way the redemption and fulfilment
of their own most intimate natures — and this
whether consciously understanding the interpre
tations, or whether (as most often) only doing
so in an unconscious or quite subconscious way.

Happy, I say, is the man who has so far
96

The Passage of Death

consciously taken refuge and identified himself
with the great life that the onset of death fails to
disturb or dislodge him. For him a wonderful
passage is prepared — amazing indeed and be
wildering, baffling at times and exhausting, yet
by no means dismaying or terrifying. But for
the ordinary mortal who has not yet arrived at
this — for whom the Presence (beheld perhaps
intermittently before) is now clouded and with
drawn from his decisive reach — for such a man
it would seem best and most natural simply to
gather and compact himself together as firmly
as possible, and detaching his mind as well as he
can from its earthly entanglements and hindrances,
to launch forth boldly, and with such faith and
confidence as he can muster, on his strange
journey. There is a plant of the Syrian deserts
—the Rose of Jericho — about the size of our
common daisy plant, and bearing a similar flower,
which in dry seasons, when the earth about its
roots is turned into mere sand, has the presence
of mind to detach itself from its hold altogether
and to roll itself into a mere ball — flower, root
and all. It is then blown along the plains by
the wind and travels away until it reaches some
moist and sheltered spot, when it expands again,
takes hold on the ground, uplifts its head, and
merrily blooms once more. Like the little Rose
of Jericho, the human soul has at times to draw
in its roots (which we may compare to the animal
part) and separate them from their earthly en
tanglement ; even the sun in heaven, which it

07 G

knows distantly for the source of its life, may be
obscured ; but compacting itself for the nonce
into a sturdy ball, it starts gaily on its far
adventure.

May we presume at all to speculate on the
soul's actual passage out of this world and its
experiences on the way? No doubt there are
queer things to be encountered ! I think it is
obvious that if the soul passes out of this ter
restrial world of ours into another state of exis
tence (definite, but quite imperceptible to our
present senses) there must be a borderland region
in which phenomena occur of an intermediate
character — faintly and fitfully perceptible by our
present faculties, but lacking in the solidity and
regularity of our present world ; borderland
phenomena in two senses, as being due (a) partly
to the break-up of our present senses and the
present stage of existence, and (£) partly to the
glimmering perception of forms and figures be
longing to a farther stage.

With regard to (tf), it is of course common
for the mind to ' wander,' and for all sorts
of phantoms and hallucinations to obsess and
cloud it in the last stages of illness ; and these
vagaries of the mind are no doubt due to or
connected with excess or deficiency of circulation
in the brain> and morbid physical conditions of
one kind or another. But it is possible that
a wider and more general view than that may
be taken concerning them. I have already re
ferred the reader to the Note at the end of

The Passage of Death

this chapter. All our desires and passions are
psychical entities, having a life and consciousness
of their own, though affiliated to the total soul
within which they work. All our organs and
functions are carried on by intelligences, similarly
affiliated yet in degree independent. Under
normal conditions " we " are unaware of these
entities and intelligences — it is only when they
rebel that they come decisively to our notice.
In disease, mental and physical, there is rebellion.
We become painfully conscious of the inde
pendent and often undesired activity of our
organs, and of our passions — and so, unfortun
ately for them, do our friends ! In morbid states
of mind and body certain functions, certain
passions, take on an independent vitality to such
a degree that at last they endue a kind of per
sonality and give rise to strings of phantasms
which we believe to be real. In dreams, though
there is not exactly rebellion, the higher powers
of the mental organism being at rest, the lesser
functionaries similarly display an extraordinary
and impish activity and present us with amazing
masquerades of actual life.

What then, we may ask, does probably happen
in the moment of death, when the organism has
become wasted and enfeebled by disease, and when
the nucleus of the man, the inner personality,
has compacted itself together into close compass in
preparation for its long journey? What happens
to all those marginal desires which have chiefly
occupied themselves with the affairs of the body

The Drama of Love and Death

or lower mind — those innumerable little spirits
and imps which (as we discover in dreams, or by
closely watching our waking thoughts) are con
tinually planning and scheming their own little
successes and gratifications ? What happens to
the thousand and one intelligences which carry
on the functions and processes of the organism ?
and whose labours, now that the bodily life is
coming to an end, are no more needed ? Is
there not a danger — or at least a likelihood — of
this strange masquerade of dreamland, of these
painful obsessions of disease, being repeated with
ever -increased intensity? True, that if the
organism has been kept so well in hand during
life as to cause all outlying passions and desires
to weaken and become quiescent simultaneously
with the body — or at least to go back quietly
into the kennels of a long sleep — like a pack of
hounds when the chase is over — then these
phantoms, these obsessions, may in that last hour
be conspicuous by their absence. But since in
the vast majority of cases this is not, and cannot
be so, it seems more probable that as a rule
the departing soul will make its exit, not only
through the perishing bodily part, but through
a mass of debris, as it may be called, of the mind
(chiefly though perhaps not entirely " the animal
mind"), through a cloud of tags and tatters of
mentality, thrown off in the final crisis. It seems
probable that just as the actual body, bereft at
death of its one pervading vitality, breaks out in
a mass of corruption or minute multitudinous

IOO

The Passage of Death

life, so there is a tendency, at any rate, for the
lower mind to break out into a strange ghostly
rabble — a cloud of phantasms, exhaled and pro
jected from the dying person. Of these phan
tasms most, no doubt, are only visible to the
patient himself (though that does not render
them any more agreeable as visitors) ; others are
discernible by clairvoyants present ; while others
again are distinctly seen even by persons at a
distance in space or time — as in the numerous
and well-authenticated instances of "wraiths."
The picture is not altogether pleasant, but it has
a certain general congruity with admitted facts,
and with a fairly-accepted body of tradition
and theory ; and provisionally I suppose we may
accept it.

It seems likely, then, that the passage of the
inner self, or human soul, out of this life and its
delivery in another world, the other side of death,
may very closely correspond to Birth — to the
birth of a babe under ordinary conditions into this
world. Just as the babe, when being born, passes
through the lower passages of the body, so the
human self at death is expelled inwardly through
all the debris and litter of the mind, into another
less material and more subtle world than ours.
And just as the pangs of childbirth are bad — •
but they are so mainly beforehand and in prepara
tion, while the actual delivery is swift and a vast
relief — so, in cases, the pains and anguish in
preparation for death may be great (the squealing
of demons torn from their hold on the soul, the

101

The Drama of Love and Death

cries of intelligences cut off from their co-operative
life and source of sustenance in the body, the
fears and distress of the animal mind, the yellow
fury of the passions, and the death-struggles of
the various organs !) yet the final passage itself
may be calm and gracious and friendly.

Anyhow, as in other cases of human experi
ence, it would be a mistake to depict this one
as by any means uniform in its character. On
the contrary, it is probably susceptible of great
variety. The Head of a Department (if it be
comes necessary for him to leave his post) may
find, in one case, that he is turned out, so to
speak, with kicks — that he has to run the
gauntlet of the execrations of his subordinates ;
or in another case he may leave amid the expres
sion of every good wish, and along a path made
pleasant and easy for him ; or again he may go
" trailing clouds of glory," and with a retinue of
followers behind him, who refuse to remain now
that their leader is departing. Some such differ
ences possibly, and we may say probably, present
themselves in the passage of death. The experi
ence of childbirth varies to an extraordinary
degree. We hear of Indian tribeswomen who
only go aside for an hour while their people are
on the march, and then rejoin them again at the
next halting-place. And who knows but what
Death and the preparation for it might be as easy
—if only the doctors and the sky-pilots would
hurry up and tell us something really useful,
instead of spending their time in vivisecting the

The Passage of Death

wretched animals, or in mumbling over ancient
creeds ?

Now, with regard to the second kind of border
land phenomena, (£), the glimmering perception
in death of forms and figures or conditions of
being belonging to a farther stage of existence : I
do not propose at present to dwell upon this
matter at any length. But with modern psychical
research there has come a good deal of evidence
to show that on deathbeds it not at all unfre-
quently happens that distinct and ardent re
cognition of departed friends takes place ; and
though, no doubt, it may seem possible to explain
these as cases in which the simple memory of a
departed friend is very powerfully resuscitated,
still this explanation hardly covers a good many
cases — such as those for instance in which the
dying person was unaware that the friend had
died, and yet apparently recognised him as a
visitor from the beyond-world.1 Also of course,
modern research has brought forward some amount
of testimony in favour of actual communications
with the departed through the agency of entranced
mediums ; so that, though this whole matter is still
sub judice, we may with fair reason suppose that
both in trance-conditions and in the hour of
death there are not merely apparitions and
phenomena due to disintegrations on this side of
the border, but also some kind of real communi
cations and manifestations from the other side.

Anyhow, it is clear that each person's experience

1 See Hereward and Carrington, op. cit. pp. 318-27.
103

The Drama of Love and Death

of death is likely to depend a good deal on the
question as to where the centre of gravity of
his self-consciousness is placed ; and that — as a
part of the Art of dying — the object of our
endeavour should be to throw (during life) the
self-consciousness inward into that part of our
being which is durable and immortal in its nature,
into that part in which we are united, and feel
our union, with other creatures, into that portion
where the word itself (self-consciousness) ceases to
have a petty and sinister meaning and becomes
transformed with a glorious signification. In
that case it is indeed likely that the soul may be
endowed beforehand with divine vision. It must
be our object, by throwing our consciousness
always that way, to strengthen the power of the
inner soul over the outer personality and all its
functions, and at the same time to rivet more
and more the hold of that inner soul on the
One Self (the source of all vitality and centre of
limitless power, if we only understand it so) —
so that ultimately the outer and animal person
ality (though always beautiful in its nature and
not to be despised) ceases largely to have an
independent and unco-ordinated vitality of its
own, or to be the scene of uncontrolled activities
and conflict, and becomes more the expression
and instrument of the inner self: to such a
degree indeed that at the dissolution of the body
the animal soul, passing into slumber, easily dies
down to its deep roots in the human soul, there
of course to await its future reawakening, and

104

Consciousness in the Body

thus leaving the latter liberated from earth-
entanglement and free to start (like the Syrian
rose) on its long journey.

In this freeing for the forward journey there
must, one would think, be a great sense of joy
and satisfaction — even as there must be in the
freeing of a May-fly from its water-bred pupa
into the glory of air and sunshine. Just as it
obviously is (notwithstanding some drawbacks)
a joy to the Babe to enter upon its new life,
so it may well be that to the dying person —
notwithstanding the perils of the change, the
fears of the unknown, the parting with friends,
the apparent rending of cherished ties — there is
a strange joy in shelling off the old husks, and
in getting rid of the accumulations and dead
rubbish of a lifetime. A thousand and one tire
some old infirmities and bonds of body and mind
—now for the first time realised in their true
meaning — slip off; and the ship of the soul, " to
port and hawser's tie no more returning," departs
with a strange thrill and quiver upon its "endless
cruise."

The details of this launch and departure we
cannot of course ordain. The mode of death
is not always within our sphere to determine.
Accident may decide, or some hereditary weak
ness for which the individual can hardly be held
responsible. Some diseases are by their nature
hard upon the patient ; others are kindly in their
course. In those that bring great weakness of
body there is sometimes an easy passage — the

105

The Drama of Love and Death

earthly and corporeal part relaxing its hold, while
the mind and character become heavenly-clear.
In others of an inflammatory nature, or where
there is great organic vitality, there may be severe
and prolonged struggle. Anyhow, one can
imagine the relief when the process is complete.
It is not uncommon to experience a strange ex
pansion of the spirit on occasions when the body
is seriously weakened by ordinary illness. What
must this expansion be when the body finally
succumbs — this sense of immensely enlarged life,
this impression of sailing forth towards a new
and boundless ocean ! How strange to stand a
moment on the brink of terrestrial mortality,
and to be conscious of — to see, even with the
inner visual power — the shell one has left behind,
with all its commonplace and banal surroundings :
concrete indeed and material enough, but lying
now outside oneself — something almost foreign
to one and indifferent, abandoned on the very
margin and shore of real life ; to stand for a
moment ; and then to turn and pass inward into
that subtle and immense ethereal existence, now
to be learnt and explored, which lies within and
informs and transfuses all our solid world, and
surpasses all its boundaries !

106

Consciousness in the Body

NOTE TO CHAPTER VI

In order not to burden this already rather lengthy
chapter with matter which may not be needed, I append
here some general considerations for those who have
not given much attention to the subject of the various
grades of consciousness in the body- — -considerations
tending to show that the various parts and passions
of the body and mind have a life and intelligence of
their own, and that the whole human organism is
a hierarchy (not always perfectly harmonious) of psychic
entities.

We generally allow of course that our central or
dominant selves are alive and conscious (though no
doubt we use those epithets with a rather sad vague
ness). But having allowed that, the extraordinary
phenomena of variable and alternating personality compel
us to admit that there may be many such centres
within one person, each of which though now buried
may in its turn become dominant and take conscious
lead, and which must therefore be credited with life
and intelligence (even if an alien life and intelligence
to "our own"). Even the most ordinary brain-centres
are in the habit of carrying on whole departments of
the bodily organisation with an independent intelligence
of their own, and are sometimes liable under the in
fluence of some excitement (like drink, or religion, or
some enthusiasm) to take possession of the whole man
and transform him into another creature — exhibiting in
doing so a strange degree of invasive vitality and alert
ness. It is quite certain that the myriad microscopic
cells of the body are alive, each with its own little
particular life ; and the more one studies these cells the
more difficult it is not to credit them each, in their

107

The Drama of Love and Death

degree, with a particular consciousness or intelligence.
And each body-organ again, composed of a congeries
or colony of body-cells, has a life of its own on and
beyond that of its component cells, and exhibits curious
signs too of intelligence and emotion, which often
(especially in sickness) affect the moods and thoughts
of the entire man.

The whole of the subconscious world, in fact — that
world which only occasionally breaks through into the
upper consciousness — must be allowed to be alive, and
in its various degrees methodical and calculating. This
is well seen in the phenomena of dreams and of
hypnotism, in both of which the most acute and dia
bolical ingenuity is often shown — as of weird imps
working in dark chambers of the brain quite unbe
known to their supposed lord and master ; or in the
extraordinary phenomena of trance and 'automatic'
speaking and writing; or in telepathy and clairvoyance;
or again in the craftiness of utter lunatics ; or in
the strange evasions and mental dodgery which (as
just hinted) are induced by diseases of certain organs ;
or in the phenomena of mental healing, where an
appeal to the subconscious intelligence in any and
every corner of the body is often followed by extra
ordinary response ; or in the subtle instinctive know
ledge and perception of babes, and of animals, long
before s^consciousness has developed ; or again, in
the sly cunning of ancient dotards ; or in the com
plex bodily reflexes carried on perfectly unknown to
ourselves during life ; or in the continued function
ing of some of the organs after death. In all these
cases, and in scores of others not mentioned, it is
clear that the majority of the processes of the human
system are carried on by minor intelligences. They
are indeed carried on by crowds of minor intelli
gences — to which we accord the epithet 'automatic,'
and which no doubt we regard as mechanical, as

1 08

Consciousness in the Body

long, that is, as they work smoothly and without
friction and opposition. But when they do not do
so, when pain, disease and lunacy cut in — when a
violent burn sets the epithelial cells screaming, and
the scream comes into our consciousness as the vibra
tion of pain ; when a diseased liver twists the events
of life and the faces of our friends into malignant
shape and mien ; when lust and hypochondria people
the mind with phantoms ; and drink makes all the
functions mad ; — then we say we are " possessed with
devils," then we recognise, if only on the dark side^
the pervading intelligence or intelligences of the
body.

It is like the Head of a Department, as I have said,
whose subordinate officials are working under him agree
ably and harmoniously. As long as that is the case,
he may have in his mind a general outline of the work
ing of the Department. He probably is ignorant of
most of the details ; he certainly does not know person
ally many of his subordinates, but he superintends the
working of the whole. Presently, however, occurs
something of a strike or emeute ; whereupon he discovers
that vast numbers of his men are intelligently discussing
questions or problems of whose existence he was almost
ignorant ; personalities appear before him whom, before,
he knew at most only by name ; and they argue their
case with an acumen and vitality which surprises him.
For the first time, in this revolt of his department, he
comes to realise the amount of intelligent activity which
is at work within it, beneath the surface. So it is
with us in the case of disease. In health we have
no trouble, unity prevails. As long as 'we' are on
top, and the intelligences which carry on the body are
working on friendly terms with us, their minds do not
intrude into our realm, and we are practically unaware
of them. But when through our mismanagement or
other cause dissension breaks out, then indeed we realise

109

The Drama of Love and Death

what kind of forces they are with which we have to
deal, and of what a wonderful hierarchy of intelligences
the body is composed.1

1 Dr. Morton Prince's study, The Dissolution of a Personality
(Longmans, 1906), should be read, as going deeply into the
whole subject. He suggests (p. 530) the use of the word " co-
consciousness," to indicate the secondary chains of mental
operation which coexist side by side with or beneath the
primary. Dr. R. Assagioli, in his pamphlet // Subcosciente
(Florence, 1911), also follows the same line.

CHAPTER VII

IS THERE AN AFTER-DEATH STATE?

IN the last chapter Death was compared to Birth,
and it was said that probably the passage of
the human soul into another world, on the other
side of death, exactly corresponded to Birth —
to the birth of a babe into this world. And
certainly, seeing these apparent movements Into
the visible and away from it again, it is very
natural to assume that there is such another
and hidden world, and to speculate upon its
nature.

But it may fairly be asked, is there after all
any reason for supposing that there is a definite
state of existence of any kind on that side?
Is it not quite likely that there is only vacancy
and nothingness, or at best a mere formless
pulp (of ether and electrons, or whatever it may
be) out of which souls are born and into which
they return again at death ? It is this question
which I propose to discuss in the present chapter.

Historically speaking, we know of course that
early and primitive folk, letting their imaginations
loose, peopled that ' other side ' and rather pro
miscuously, with all sorts of fairy beings and
phantom processions. Giant grizzly bears, divine

The Drama of Love and Death

jackals, elves, dwarfs, satans, holy ghosts, lunar
pitris, flaming sun-gods, and so forth, ruled
and raged behind the curtain — in front of which
the shivering mortal stood. But as time went
on, the growing exactitude of thought and science
made it more and more impossible to idly accept
these imaginings ; and it may be said that about
the middle of last century these cosmogonies — •
for the more thoughtful among the populations
of the Western world — finally perished, and
gave place for the most part to a simple negative
attitude. It was allowed that intelligences and
personalities (human and animal) moved on this
side of the veil, and were plainly distinguishable
as operating in the actual world ; but they, it
was held, were more or less isolated and probably
accidental products of a mechanical universe.
That mechanical arrangement of atoms, and so
forth, which we could now largely map out
and measure, and which doubtless in the future
we should be able completely to define — that
was the universe, and somehow or other included
everything. One of its properties was that it
would run down like a clock, and would eventuate
in time in a cold sun and a dead earth — and there
was an end of it ! Any intelligent existence
behind or on the other side of this veil of
mechanism was too problematical to be worth
discussing ; in all probability on that side was
mere nothingness and vacancy.

Such, very roughly stated, was the attitude
of the fairly intelligent and educated man about

112

Is there an After-Death State ?

fifty years ago, but since that time the outgrowths
of science and human enquiry have been so
astounding as to leave that position far behind.
The obvious signs of intelligence in the minutest
cells, almost invisible to the naked eye, the
very mysterious arcana of growth in such cells
(partly described in a former chapter), the myriad
action of similarly intelligent microbes, the strange
psychology of plants, and the equally strange
psychic sensitiveness (apparently) of metals, the
sudden transformations and variations both of
plants and animals, the existence of the X and
N rays of light, and of countless other vibrations
of which our ordinary senses render no account,
the phenomena of radium and radiant matter,
the marvels of wireless telegraphy, the mysterious
facts connected with hypnotism and the subliminal
consciousness, and the certainty now that tele
pathic communication can take place between
human beings thousands of miles apart — all these
things have convinced us that the subtlest forces
and energies, totally unmeasurable by our instru
ments, and saturated or at least suffused with
intelligence, are at work all around us. They
have convinced us that gloomy phrases about
cold suns and dead earths are mere sentiment and
nonsense. Cold worlds there may certainly be,
but nothing is more certain than that worlds on
worlds, and spheres on spheres, stretch behind and
beyond the actually seen — spheres so microscopic
as to totally elude us, or so vast and cosmic as
to elude, spheres of vibrations which elude,.

113 H

The Drama of Love and Death

spheres of other senses than ours, spheres
aerial, ethereal, magnetic, mental, subliminal.
The iris-veil of our ordinary existence may truly
be rent, but the visible world, the world we
know, is no longer now a film on the surface
of an empty bubble, but a curtain concealing
a vast and teeming life, reaching down endless,
in layer on layer, into the very heart of the
universe. And whereas, in the former time of
which I have been speaking, we might have
agreed that life could not well continue after
the death of the body, to-day we should, as a
first guess, be inclined to think that life is more
full and rich on the other side of death than
on this side. " I do not doubt," says Whitman,
" that from under the feet and beside the hands
and face I am cognisant of, are now looking
faces I am not cognisant of, calm and actual
faces — I do not doubt interiors have their interiors,
and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the
eyesight has another eyesight, and the hearing
another hearing, and the voice another voice."

We come, then, to this problem of Death and
Birth in a similarly modified spirit, and with a
predisposition to believe that they do really
indicate passages from one definite world or
plane or region of existence to another. And
here is the place to point out, and to guard
ourselves against, a common error in the use
of the word Death. Death is not a state. There
may be an after-death state; but death itself is
the passage into that state, or — better — the

114

Is there an After-Death State ?

passage out of the present state. So Birth is
not a state. There may be a pre-birth state;
but birth itself is the passage into the present
state. Either we pass through death into another
life and condition of being ; or else we are ex
tinguished. In the former case there is clearly
no state of death ; and in the latter case there
is no such state — because there is no self to be
dead or to know itself dead. As Lucretius
says,1 endeavouring to disabuse man of the fear
of the grave : —

" So to be mortal fills his mind with dread,
Forgetting that in real death can be

No self, to mourn that other self as dead,
Or stand and weep at death's indignity."

Birth and Death, then, we may look upon as
two contrary movements, to some degree com
plementary and balancing each other ; and it
is possible that thus, from consideration of the
one, we may be able to infer things about the
other. One such thing that we may be able to
infer is that Love presides over, or is intimately
associated with, both movements.

The connexion of Love with Birth is of course
obvious. In some profound yet hidden way,
almost throughout creation, the birth or genera
tion of one creature is connected with the pre
cedent love and sex-fusion of two others. And

the connexion of Love with Death, though not

.
so prominent, can similarly almost everywhere

1 De Rerum Natura, iii. 890, translated by Mr. H. S. Salt.

The Drama of Love and Death

be traced. The whole of poetry in literature
teems with this subject ; and so does the poetry
of Nature ! If we are to believe the Garden
of Eden story, Love and Death came into the
world together ; and it certainly is curious that
in the age-long evolution of animal forms the
same thing seems to have happened. The Pro
tozoa at first, propagating by simple division,
were endued with a kind of immortality. But
then came a period when a pair found they
could enter into a joint life of renewed fecundity
by fusing with each other. They literally died
in each other, and rose again in a numerous
progeny ; so that love and death were simul
taneous and synonymous. Sometimes parturition
and death were simultaneous. The mother-cell
perished in the very act of giving birth to her
brood. Then again came the aggregation of cells
into living groups — the formation of 'colonial*
organisms ; and it was then that distinctive sex-

o »

differentiation and sex-organs appeared, and with
the capacity of sex also the capacity of death
through the disruption of the colony. Every
where love is associated with death. The ex
penditure of seed in the male animal is an
incipient death ; the formation of the seed
vessel, and the glory and colour of the flower
ing plant, are already the signs of its decay.
"Both Weismann and Goette," say Geddes and
Thomson,1 " note how many insects (locusts,
butterflies, ephemerids, and so forth) die a few

1 See Geddes and Thomson, Evolution of Sex (1901), p. 275.

116

Is there an After-Death State ?

hours after the production of ova. The ex
haustion is fatal, and the males are also involved.
In fact, as we should expect from the katabolic
temperament, it is the males which are especially
liable to exhaustion. . . . Every one is familiar
with the close association of love and death in
the common May-flies. Emergence into winged
liberty, the love-dance, and the process of ferti
lisation, the deposition of eggs, and the death of
both parents, are often the crowded events of
a few hours. In higher animals, the fatality
of the reproductive sacrifice has been greatly
lessened, yet death may tragically persist, even
in human life, as the direct Nemesis of love."
George Macdonald, in one of his books
(Phantasies, vol. i. p. 191), feigns a race of
beings, for whom death is not so much the
'nemesis' of love, as its natural and inevitable
outcome. Seized by a great love, too great for
mortal expression, " looking too deep into each
other's eyes," they (with great presence of mind,
it must be said !) breathe their souls out in
death, and so take their departure to another
world. Heine touches the same note in his
poem, the " Asra " : —

" Ich bin aus Jemen,
Und mein stamm sincl jene Asra,
Welche sterben wenn sie lieben."

And scores of scarcely noticed paragraphs in
our daily papers, brief tales of single or double
suicide, present us with a dim outline of how

117

The Drama of Love and Death

— even in the mean conditions and surroundings
of our modern days — every now and then there
comes to one or other a longing, a passion, and
a revelation of a desire so intense, that, breaking
the bounds of a useless life, it demands swift
utterance in death.

Some deep and profound suggestion there is in
all this — some hint of a life whose very form and
nature is love, and which finds its deliverance and
nativity only through the abandonment of the
body — even as our ordinary life, conceived in
love, finds its delivery into this world through
what we call birth. At the very least it suggests
that Death may have a great deal more to do
with Love, and may be more deeply allied to it
than is generally supposed. And it may suggest
that the two things, being in some sense the most
important occupations of the human race, should
be frankly recognised as such, and should both be
accordingly prepared for.

Another thing, about which we may be able to
infer something from the analogy between Birth
and Death, is the fate of the soul at death. If
we can trace in any way the relation of the soul
to the body at the time of the first appearance of
the latter, that may shed light on the relation
which will hold at its disappearance. We cannot
certainly define very strictly what we mean by
the word ' soul ' ; but we are all very well aware
that associated with our bodies, and in some sense
pervading them with its intelligence, is a conscious
(as well as subconscious) being which we call the

118

Is there an After-Death State ?

self or soul ; and we are all puzzled at times to
understand what is the relation between this and
the body. Now we have seen (ch. ii.) the
genesis of the body from a single fertilised cell
or germ almost microscopic in size, and its
growth by continual and myriadfold division
into, say, a human form ; and we have seen that
every cell in the perfect and final form — every
cell, of eye, or liver, or of any part or organ —
is there by linear descent or division from that
first cell, though variously adapted and differen
tiated during the process. We are therefore
almost compelled to conclude that that intel
ligent self (conscious or subconscious) which we
are so distinctly aware of as associated with our
mature bodies was there also, associated with the
first germ.1 It may not truly have been outwardly
manifest or unfolded into evidence at that primi
tive stage. It could not well be. But it was
there, even in its totality, and unless it had been
there, we could not now be what we are. The
conscious and subconscious self has been within
us all along, unfolding and manifesting itself
with the unfoldment and development of the
body; and indeed to all appearances guiding
that development. And more, we may fairly
say — having regard to the mode of development
of the tissues — that it dwells even in its entirety
within every normal and healthy cell of our

1 See ch. ii. p. 18, supra; also, for amplification of this view,
Myers's Human Personality, op. cif,, edition 1909, pp. 90, 91.

119

The Drama of Love and Death

present bodies, and is the formative essence
thereof.

Let me give an illustration. Sometimes in the
morning you may see a bush glittering all over
with dewdrops ; every leaf has such a tiny jewel
hanging from it. If now you look you will see
in each dewdrop a miniature picture of the far
landscape. Or, to take a closer illustration,
some shrubs have, embedded in the very tissue
of their leaves, tiny transparent and lens-like
glands which yield to close scrutiny similar
miniatures of the world beyond. Exactly, then,
like these plants, we may think of the whole
human body as trembling in light — each cell
containing (if we could but see it !) a luminous
image of the presiding genius or self of the
body.

The question is often asked : Where is the
self? does it reside in the head, or in the heart,
or perhaps in the liver? is it an aural halo
pervading and surrounding the body, or is it a
single microscopic cell far hidden in the interior, or
is it an invisible atom ? Here apparently is the
answer. It animates every cell. It pervades the
whole body, and seeks expression in every part
of it. Some cells, as we have said before, are
differentiated so as to express especially this
faculty, others to express especially that; but
the human soul or self stands behind them all.
Look at a baby's face, and its growing sparkling
expression — an individual being coming newly into
the world, obviously seeking, feeling, tentatively

Is there an After-Death State ?

finding its way forward — every morning a thin
nest veil falling from its features ! Playing
through the whole body, is an intelligence, seek
ing expression. Helen Keller, the girl both deaf
and blind, describes most graphically her agonising
experiences at the age of six or seven, when her
growing powers of body and mind demanded
the expression which her physical disabilities so
cruelly denied. " The desire to express myself
grew,"1 she says; "the few signs I used became
less and less adequate, and my failures to make
myself understood were invariably followed by
outbursts of passion. I felt as if invisible hands
were holding me, and I made frantic efforts to
free myself." And then most touching, the
description of her relief, " the thrill of surprise,
the joy of discovery," when she at last, about
the age of ten, was able to utter her first intel
ligible words. In some degree like Helen
Keller's is perhaps the experience of every babe
that is born into the world.

It seems to me, therefore, that each person is
practically compelled to think of his 'self as
moving behind or as associated with or animating
every cell in the healthy body ; and as having
been so associated with the first germ of the
same, even though that was a thing well-nigh
invisible to the naked eye. You were there,
you are there now, at the root of your bodily
life. You may not, certainly, except at moments,
be distinctly conscious of this your complete
1 The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller (1908), p. 17.

The Drama of Love and Death

relation to the body ; but, as we have already said,
the term self must be held to include the large
subconscious tracts which occasionally flash up
into consciousness, and which, when they do so
flash, almost always confirm this relation ; nor
must we lose from sight the still more deeply
buried physiological or animal soul, whose opera
tions we seem to be able to trace from earliest
days, guiding all the complex of organic growth
and development, and apparently conscious in
its own way with a very wonderful sort of in
telligence.1

All this compels us, I think, not only to picture
to ourselves the mental self or soul as associated
with the body, and taking part in its development
from the first inception of the latter ; but also
to picture that self as in its entirety considerably
greater and more extensive than the ordinary
conscious self, and even as greater than any
bodily expression or manifestation which it
succeeds in gaining. We are compelled, I think,
to regard the real self as at all times only partially
manifested.

I think this latter point is obvious ; for when,
and at what period in life, is manifestation com
plete ? Certainly not in babyhood, when the
faculties are only unfolding ; certainly not in
old age, when they are decaying and falling
away. Is it, then, in maturity and middle life ?
But during all that period the output of expression

i For a further account of the subliminal or underlying self,
see next chapter.

122

Is there an After-Death State ?

and character in a man is constantly chang
ing ; and which of all these changes of raiment
is completely representative ? Do we not rather
feel that to express our real selves every phase
from childhood through maturity even into ex
treme old age ought to be taken into account?
Nay, more than that ; for have we not — perhaps
most of us — a profound feeling and conviction
that there are elements deep down in our natures,
which never have been expressed, and never can
or will be expressed in our present and actual
lives? Do we not all feel that our best is only
a fraction of what we want to say ? And what
must we think of the strange facts of multiple
personality? Do they not suggest that our real
self has facets so opposite, so divergent, that
for a long time they may appear quite discon
nected with each other ; until ultimately (as
has happened in actual cases) they have been
visibly reconciled and harmonised in a new and
more perfect character?

With regard to this view, that the real person
is so much greater than his visible manifestation,
Frederick Myers and Oliver Lodge have used
the simile of a ship. And it is a fine one. A
ship gliding through the sea has a manifestation
of its own, a very partial one, in the waterworld
below — a ponderous hull moving in the upper
layers of that world — a form encrusted with
barnacles and sea-weed. But what denizen of
the deep could have any inkling or idea of the

real life of that ship in the aerial plane — the

123

The Drama of Love and Death

glory of sails and spars trimmed to the breeze
and glancing in the sun, the blue arch of heaven
flecked with clouds, the leaping waves and the
boundless horizon around the ship as she speeds
onward, the ingenious provision for her voyage,
the compass, the helmsman and the captain direct
ing her course ? Surely (except in moments of
divination and inspiration) we have little idea
of what we really are ! But there are such
moments — moments of profound grief, of passion
ate love, of great and splendid angers and
enthusiasms, which dart light back into the
farthest recesses of our natures and astonish us
with the vision they disclose. And (perhaps
more often) there are moments which disclose
the wonder-self in others. If we do not recognise
(which is naturally not easy !) our own divinity,
it is certain that we cannot really love without
discovering a divine being in the loved one — •
a being remote, resplendent, inaccessible, who
calls for and indeed demands our devotion, but
of whom the mortal form is most obviously a
mere symbol and disguise. There are times
when this strange illumination falls on people
at large, and we see them as gods walking : when
we look even on the tired overworked mother
in the slum, and her face is shining like heaven ;
or on the ploughboy in the field with his team,
and see the mould and the material of ancient
heroes. Yet of what is really nearest to them
all the time these folk say nothing, and we are

astonished to find them haggling over halfpence

124

Is there an After-Death State ?

or seriously troubled about wire-worms. It is
as if a play, or some kind of deliberate mystifica
tion, were being carried on — with disguises a
little too thin. We see, as plain as day — and
nothing: can contravene our conclusion — that it

is only a fraction of the real person that is
concerned.

Your self, then, I say — covering by that word
not only all that you and your friends usually
include in it, but probably a good deal more-
existed, with all its potentialities and capacities
even in association with the first primitive germ
of your present body.1 That germ was micro
scopic in size, and its inner workings and trans
formations were ultra-microscopic in character.
We do not know whence they originated ; and

1 The only alternative to this seems to be to suppose that
the ' soul ' comes into association with the body, not at the
very first inception of the latter, but at some later pre-natal
or post-natal stage, when the body is already partially or wholly
built up by the primitive process- of cell-division — that the soul
then takes possession of the organism so formed, and makes
use of it for self-expression; and finally at death discards it.
This theory — though it seems a possible one, and in accordance
with the apparent 'possession' and control of the bodies of
trance mediums by independent spirits — presents some diffi
culties. One difficulty is the absence of any obvious or ac
knowledged period when such entry of the soul takes place ;
another is the difficulty of seeing how a real and effective
harmony could be permanently established between a body
already formed and organised on hereditary lines, and an inde
pendent soul entering on its own errand at a later date. These
(and other) difficulties, however, are not insuperable, and it may
well be, in the great variety of Nature, that the process of in
carnation actually docs take place in both ways — i.e. in the
way outlined in this note, as well as (more generally) in the
way mentioned in the text.

125

The Drama of Love and Death

whether we think of the soul which was associ
ated with them as ultra-microscopic in its nature
or as fourth-dimensional does not much matter.
We only perceive that it, the soul, must have
been there, in an unseen world of some kind,
pushing forward towards its manifestation in the
visible.1 I do not think we can well escape this
conclusion.

But if we conclude that the soul existed before
Birth, or, more properly, at or before conception,
in some such invisible world, then that it should
so exist after Death is equally possible, nay,
probable. For after conception, by continual
multiplication and differentiation of cells, the
soul framed for itself organs of expression and
manifestation, and thus gradually came into our
world of sight and sense and ordinary intelli
gence ; and so, by some reverse process, we may
suppose that in decay and death the soul gradu
ally loses these organs and their co-ordination,
and retires into the invisible. Whatever the
nature of this invisible may be — whether, as I say,
a world of things too minute for human percep
tion, or too vast for the same, or whether a
world which eludes us by the simple artifice of
everywhere and in everything running parallel
to the things of the world — only in another
dimension imperceptible to us — in any case it
seems reasonable to suppose that the soul is
still there, fulfilling its nature and its destiny,

1 See The Art of 'Creation, ^908, p. 82 et seq. Compare also
Bergson's "elan vital," in L Evolution CrJatrice, p. 100 et seq.

126

Is there an After-Death State ?

of which its earth-life has only been one
episode.1

And if the apparent loss of consciousness (the
loss of the ordinary consciousness at any rate)
which often takes place during the death-change,
seems to point to extinction and not to continu
ance, I think that that need not disturb us. For
in sleep, in our nightly sleep, the same suspension
of the ordinary consciousness takes place, as we
very well know ; yet all the time the subcon-
sciousness is functioning away — sorting out sounds,
bidding us wake for some, allowing us to sleep
through others, discriminating disturbances, carry
ing on the physiologies of the body, posting
sentinels in the reflexes — and guarding us from
harm — till untired in the morning it knits to
gether again the ravelled thread of the ordi-
& • i i • • •

nary consciousness and renews our waking activi
ties. And if this happens in our ordinary and
nightly sleep, it seems at any rate possible that
something similar may happen in death. Indeed

1 The Upanishads, whose authority on these subjects Is surely
great, seem often to try to express the other-dimensional
nature of the soul by a paradox of opposites. " The self,
smaller than small (or more subtle than subtle), greater than
great, is hidden in the heart of each creature" (Katha-Up. I.
Adh.2 valli,20 ; also Svetasvatara-Up. III. Adh. 20)— or again,
" The embodied soul is to be thought like the hundredth part
of the point of a hair, divided into a hundred parts ; he is to be
thought infinite" (Svet.-Up. v. 9). And the last quoted
passage continues : — " He is not woman, he is not man, nor
hermaphrodite; whatever body he assumes, with that he is
joined (only) ; and as by the use of food and drink the body
grows, so the individual soul, by means of thoughts, touching,
seeing and the passions, assumes successively in various places
various forms in accordance with his deeds."

127

The Drama of Love and Death

there is much evidence to show that while at the
hour of death the supraliminal consciousness
often passes into a state of quiescence or abeyance,
the subliminal, or at any rate some portion of
the subliminal, becomes unusually active. Audi
tion grows strangely keen — so much so that it is
sometimes difficult to tell whether the things
heard have been apprehended by extension of the
ordinary faculty or whether by a species of clair-
audience. Vision similarly passes into clairvoy
ance, the patient becomes extraordinarily sensitive
to telepathic influences, and knows what is
going on at a distance ; l and not only so, but
he radiates influences to a distance. All the
phenomena of wraiths and dying messages, now
so well substantiated — of apparitions and im
pressions projected with force at the moment of
death into the minds of distant friends — prove
clearly the increased activity and vitality (one may
say) of the subliminal self at that time ; and this
points, as I say, not to extinction and disorganisa
tion, but perhaps to the transfer of consciousness
more decisively into hidden regions of our being.
One hears sometimes of a dying person who,
prevented from departure by the tears and en
treaties of surrounding friends, cries out " Oh !
let me die ! " and one remembers the case,
above mentioned, of the apparently dead mother
who, so to speak, called herself back to life by
the thought of her orphaned children. Such
cases as these do not look like loss of continuity ;

1 See Myers, op. cit. p. 233, on Clairvoyance of the Dying.
128

Is there an After-Death State ?

rather they look as if a keen intelligence were
still there, well aware of its earth-life, but drawn
onwards by an inevitable force, and passing into a
new phase, of swifter subtler activity in perhaps
a more ethereal body.

That the human soul does pass through great
transformations— moul tings and sloughings and
metamorphoses — and so forward from one stage
to another, we know from the facts of life.
Physiologically the body takes on a new phase at
birth, and another at weaning and teething, and
another at puberty, and another in age at the
' change of life,' and so on ; and transformations
of the soul or inner life (some of them very re
markable) are associated with these outer phases.
The last great bodily change is obviously accom
panied — as we have just indicated — by the de
velopment or extension of hidden psychic powers.
What exactly that final transformation may be,
we can only at present speculate ; but we can see
that, like the others, when it arrives it has already
become very necessary and inevitable. At every
such former stage — whether it be birth, or teeth
ing, or puberty, or what not — there has been
constriction or strangulation. The growing inner
life has found its conditions too limited for it,
and has burst forth into new form and utterance.
In this final change the bodily conditions alto
gether seem to have grown too limited. With
an irresistible impulse and an agonising joy of
liberation the soul sweeps out, or is fearfully
swept, into its new sphere. Sometimes doubtless

129 I

The Drama of Love and Death

the passage is one of pain and terror ; far more
often, and in the great majority of cases, it is
peaceful and calm, with a deep sense of relief;
occasionally it is radiant with ecstasy, as if the
new life already cast its splendour in advance.1

Yes, we cannot withhold the belief that there
is an after-death state — a state which in a sense
is present with us, and has been present, all our
lives ; but which — for reasons that at present we
can only vaguely apprehend — has been folded
from our consciousness.

1 Even on the battlefield, after the battle, faces of the dead
have been observed with this expression upon them.

CHAPTER VIII

THE UNDERLYING SELF

ALLOWING, then, the great probability of the
existence of an after-death state, and of a survival
of some kind, the question further arises : Is that
survival in any sense personal or individual ? or
does it belong to some, so to speak, formless
region, either below or above personality ? It is
conceivable of course that there may be survival
of the outer and beggarly elements of the mind,
below personality ; or it is conceivable that the
deepest and most central core of the man may
survive, far beyond and above personality ; but in
either case the individual existence may not con
tinue. The eternity of the All-soul or Self of
the universe is, I take it, a basic fact ; it is from
a certain point of view obvious ; we have already
discussed it, and, as far as this book is concerned,
it is treated so much as an axiom that to argue
further without it would be useless. That being
granted, it follows that if the soul of each human
being roots down ultimately into that All-self,
the core of each soul must partake of the eternal
nature. But as far as it does so it may be beyond
all reach or remembrance or recognition of per
sonality.

The Drama of Love and Death

Such a conclusion — whatever force of convic
tion may accompany it — is certainly not altogether
satisfactory. I remember that once — in the course
of conversation with a lady on this very subject —
she remarked that though she thought there
would be a future life she did not believe in the
continuance of individuality. " What do you
believe in, then?" said I. "Oh," she replied,
"I think we shall be a sort of Happy Mass!"
And I have always since remembered that ex
pression.

But though the idea of a happy mass has its
charms, it does not, as I say, quite satisfy either
our feelings or our intelligence. There is a
desire for something more, and there is a per
ception that Differentiation and Individuation
represent a great law — a law so great as probably
to extend even to the ultimate modes of Being.
And though a vague generality of this kind
cannot stand in the place of strict reasoning or
observation, it may make us feel that personal
survival is at any rate possible, and that a certain
amount of speculation on the subject is legiti
mate.

At the same time we have to bear in mind
that the subject altogether is a very complex one,
and that we have to move only slowly, if we
want to move forward at all, and to avoid having
to retrace our steps. We must not too serenely
assume, for instance, that we at all know what we
are ! We have already (ch. v.) analysed to some
degree the constitution of the human being, and

132

The Underlying Self

found it complicated enough in its successive
planes of development. We have now to re
member that — at least on the two middle planes,
those of the human soul and the animal soul-
there is another subdivision to be made, namely
between that part which is conscious and that
which is only subconscious ; so that further com
plications inevitably arise. We may not only
have to consider, as in the chapter referred to,
which of these planes may possibly carry survival
with it, but again whether such survival may be
in the conscious region, or only in the subliminal
or subconscious. This chapter will be largely
occupied with a consideration of the subliminal
or underlying portion of the self, and it will
be seen that that is probably of immense extent
and variety of content compared with the surface
or conscious portion ; but it will also be seen
that there is no strict line of demarcation between
the two, and that a continual interchange betwixt
them is taking place, so that for the present
at any rate it is safest to give the word ' self
its widest scope and make it include both portions
and every mental faculty, rather than limit its
application.

In attacking the subject, then, of the Survival
of the Self, I suppose our first question ought
to be : What is the test of survival, what do
we mean by it ? And to this, I imagine, the
answer is, Continuity of Consciousness. This
would seem to be the only satisfying definition.

The Drama of Love and Death

Consciousness is necessary in some form or other,
as the base and evidence of our existence ; and
continuity in some degree is also necessary, in
order to link our experiences together, as it were
into one chain. Continuity, however, need not
be absolute. The chain of consciousness may
apparently be broken by sleep, or it may be
broken by a dose of chloroform, or by a blow
on the head ; but it may be re-knit and resumed.
It may pass from the supraliminal state to the
subliminal, and again emerge on the surface.
It may even be discontinuous ; but as long as
Memory bridges the intervals we get the sense of
continuity of life or personality.1 Supposing a
body of memories — of life say in some village
of ancient Egypt — suddenly opened up in one's
mind, as vivid and consistent and enduring as
one's ordinary memory of childhood days, it
would be natural to conclude that one really had
pre-existed in that village ; it would be difficult
not to make that inference. And similarly if
at some future time, and in far other than our
present surroundings, the memory of this one's
earth-life should emerge again, vivid and personal
as now, the being thus having that memory would,

1 It is of course quite possible that our ordinary consciousness
is discontinuous, even down to its minutest elements, and that
it is only made up of successive and separate sensations which,
as in a cinematograph, follow each other with lightning speed.
But even this almost compels us to the assumption of another
and profounder and more continuous consciousness beneath,
which is the means of the synthesis and comparison of these
sensations.

134

The Underlying Self

we suppose, conclude that, he had once lived this
life here on earth.

Thus Memory would be the arbiter of survival
and of the continuity (on the whole) of con
sciousness. Frederick Myers, indeed, goes so
far as to define consciousness as that which is
" potentially memorable " x — thus suggesting that
memory is a necessary accompaniment of any
psychic state to which we can venture to give the
name of consciousness.

It may indeed seem precarious to rest our test
of survival on so notoriously fallible, and even at
times fallacious, a thing as Memory ; but one
does not see that there is anything better, or that
there is any alternative ! The memory may not
be continuously enduring and operative ; but if
at any future time one should be persuaded of
having survived from this present life, it must,
one would say, be by memory in some form or
other, of this present life. And it must be
remarked that though memory is fitful and
fallible, these epithets apply mainly to the supra-
liminal memory, to that superficial memory which
we make use of by conscious effort, and which
often fails us in the moment of need. Deep
below this we dimly perceive, and daily are
becoming more persuaded of, the existence of
vast and permanent but latent stores, which from
time to time emerge into manifestation ; and
more and more our psychologists are inclining
to think that the supraliminal self gains its
1 Human Personality, op. tit. p. 29.
135

The Drama of Love and Death

memories by tapping these stores, and that its
lapses and oblivions are more due to failure in
the tapping process than to any failure of the
memory stores themselves. Indeed not a few
psychologists are now asking whether it is not likely
that every psychic experience carries memory with
it, and so is preserved in the great storehouse.

I have already, in the last chapter, spoken of
the so-called subliminal self as, among other things,
a wonderful storehouse of memory ; and I pro
pose now to occupy a few pages with the more
detailed consideration of the nature of that self;
because, as we are discussing the question of
survival, our discussion, as I have just said, ought
obviously to include the under as well as the
upper strata of consciousness. We cannot very
well confine our meaning and our enquiry to the
little brain-self only, and leave out of considera
tion the great self of the emotions and impulses
• — of genius, love, enthusiasm, and so forth.1
No, we must include both — the more intimate,
though more hidden, self, as well as the self of
the fagade and the front window.

This hidden self is indeed an astounding thing,
whose extent and complexity grows upon us as
investigation proceeds. For when the term
* subliminal ' was first used it had apparently a
fairly simple connotation— as of some one obscure
and unexplored chamber of the mind ; but now
instead of a single chamber it would seem rather
some vast house or palace at whose door we

1 See The Art of Creation^ pp. 105-8.
136

The Underlying Self

stand, with many chambers and corridors — some
dark and underground, some spacious and well
lighted and furnished, some lofty with extensive
outlook and open to the sky ; and the modern
psychologists are puzzling themselves to find
suitable names for all these new domains — which
indeed they cannot satisfactorily do, seeing they
know so little of their geography !

I can only attempt here — very roughly I am
afraid, and unsystematically — to point out some of
the properties and qualities of the underlying or
hidden or subconscious self — whichever term we
may like to use. In the first place, its memory
appears to be little short of perfect, and at any
rate to our ordinary intelligence and estimate,
nothing short of marvellous. When a servant
girl, who can neither read nor write, reproduces,
in her wandering speech during a nervous fever,
whole sentences of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,
which she could not possibly understand, and
which had only fallen quite casually on her ears
years before from the lips of an old scholar (who
used to recite passages to himself as he walked
up and down a room adjoining the kitchen in
which the girl at that time worked 1) ; we per
ceive that the under or latent memory may catch
and retain for a lengthy period, and with strange ac
curacy, the most fleeting and apparently superficial

1 This well-known case, given by Coleridge in his Biographia
Lzteraria, is amply confirmed by scores of similar cases which
have been carefully examined into and described by modern
research.

137

The Drama of Love and Death

impressions. When Dr. Milne Bramwell instructs
a hypnotised subject to make a cross on a bit
of paper exactly 20,180 minutes after the
giving of the order ; and the patient, having of
course emerged from the hypnotic sleep, and
gone about her daily work, and having no
conscious remembrance of the command, does
nevertheless at the expiration of the stated
number of days and minutes take a piece of paper
and make the said cross upon it,1 we can only
marvel both at the persistence and accuracy of
memory which the subliminal being displays, and
at the strict command which this being may
exercise in its silent way over the actions of the
supraliminal self. When we are repeatedly told
that in the moment of drowning, people re
member every action and event of their past life,
though we may doubt the exact force of the
word * every,' we cannot but be convinced that an
enormous and astounding resurgence of memory
does take place,2 and we cannot but suspect that
the memorisation is somehow on a different plane
of consciousness from the usual one, being
simultaneous and in mass instead of linear and
successive. Or when, again, a * calculating boy '
or prodigy of quite tender years on being asked
to find the cube-root of 31,855,013 instantly
says 317, °r being given the number 17,861

1 See Proceedings S.P.R. vol. xii. pp. 176-203 ; quoted by
Frederick Myers, Hiwnan Personality, ch. v.

2 This is contested by H. Ellis in his World of Dreams,)
p. 215, but not very successfully, I think.

138

The Underlying Self

immediately remarks that it consists of the
factors 337 x 53,1 \ve are reduced to the alternative
suppositions, either that the boy's subconscious
self works out these sums with a perfectly amaz
ing rapidity, or that it has access to stores of
memory and knowledge quite beyond the experi
ence of the life-time concerned. In all these
cases, and hundreds and thousands of others
which have been observed, the memory of the
subliminal self — whether manifested through
hypnotism, or in sleep or dreams, or in other
ways — seems to exceed in range and richness, as
well as in rapidity, the memory of the supra-
liminal self; and indeed Myers goes so far as to
say that the deeper down one penetrates below
the supraliminal, the more perfect is the remem
brance : that, in cases where one can reach
various planes of memory in the same subject,
" it is the memory furthest from waking life
whose span is the widest, whose grasp of the
organism's upstored impressions is the most
profound."2 This is, I think, a very important
conclusion, and one to which we may recur
later.

1 See Myers, op. cit. ch. iii. p. 66 ; also T. J. Hudson's
interesting account of Zerah Colburn, in Psychic Phenomena,
(1893), p. 64.

2 Op. cit. p. 100. De Quincey, it will be remembered, in a
well-known passage of his Confessions, says : — " Of this at least
I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible
to the mind; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a
veil between our present consciousness and the secret in
scriptions on the mind ; accidents of the same sort will also
rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the
inscription remains forever."

139

The Drama of Love and Death

But the hidden being within us does not show
this extraordinary command of mental processes
merely in technical matters. Its powers extend
far deeper, into such regions as those of Genius
and Prophecy. The wonderful flashes of intui
tion, the complex combinations of ideas, which
at times leap fully formed and with a kind of
authority into the field of man's waking con
sciousness, obviously proceed from a deep in
telligence of some kind, lying below, and are the
product of an immensely extended and rapid
survey of things, brought to a sudden focus.
They yield us the finest flowers of Art ; and some
at any rate of the most remarkable instances of
Prediction. For though there may be — and pro
bably is — a purely clairvoyant prophetic gift, freed
as it were from the obscuration of Time, yet it
cannot be doubted that much or most of prophecy
is simply very swift and conclusive inference de
rived from very extensive observation.

These flashes and inspirations are clearly not
the product of the conscious brain ; they are felt
by the latter to come from beyond it. They are,
in the language of Myers, "uprushes from the
subliminal self." And even beyond them there
are things which come from the same source —
there are splendid enthusiasms, and overwhelming
impulses of self-sacrifice, as well as mad and
daemonic passions.

Yet again, it is not merely command of mental
processes that the subconscious being displays, but
of the bodily powers and processes too. Intelligent

140

The Underlying Self

itself to the marvellous degrees already indicated,
it is evident also that its intelligence penetrates
and ordains the whole body. Every one has
heard of the stigmata of the Crucifixion appearing
on the hands and feet of some religious devotee,
as in the celebrated case of Louise Lateau. Dr.
Briggs of Lima once told a hypnotised patient
that " a red cross would appear on her chest every
Friday during a period of four months " — and
obediently the mark appeared.1 A whisper in
such cases is often sufficient ; and the latent
power swiftly but effectually modifies all the
complex activities and functions of the organism
to produce the desired result. What an extra
ordinary combination of elaborate intelligence and
detailed organising power must here be at work !
And the same in the quite common yet very
remarkable cases of mental healing, with which
we are all now familiar !

Sometimes again — quite apart from any oral
suggestion or apparent outside influence — we find
the subjective being taking most decisive command
of a person's faculties and actions. This happens,
for instance, in somnambulism, when the sleep
walker perhaps passes along the narrow and peril
ous ridge of a roof or wall with perfect balance
and sureness of foot — adjusting a hundred muscles
in the most delicate way, and yet with total un
consciousness as far as the supraliminal self is
concerned. Or it happens sometimes — even more

1 See Journal S.P.R. vol. iii. p. 100 ; also T. J. Hudson,

op. at. p. 153.

141

The Drama of Love and Death

remarkably — to people in full possession of their
waking faculties, at some moment when extreme
danger threatens to overwhelm them. John Muir
in his The Mountains of California^- describes
how when scaling the very precipitous face of a
cliff he found himself completely baffled, at a great
height from the ground, and unable to proceed
either up or down. He was seized with panic and
a trembling in every limb, and was on the point
of falling, when suddenly a perfect calm and assur
ance took possession of him, and somehow — he
never quite knew how — with an astonishing agility
and sure-footed ness he completed the ascent, and
was saved. " I seemed suddenly to become pos
sessed of a new sense. The other Self — bygone
experiences, Instinct or Guardian Angel — call it
what you will — came forward and assumed con
trol. My trembling muscles became firm again,
every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through
a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positive-
ness and precision with which I seemed to have
nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft

upon wings, my deliverance could not have been
more complete."

Masterlinck, in his chapter on " The Psychology
of Accident " (in Life and Flowers], describes how
in the nerve-commotion of danger, Instinct, "a
rugged, brutal, naked, muscular figure," rushes
to the rescue. "With a glance that is surer
and swifter than the onrush of the peril, it takes
in the situation, then and there unravels all its

1 New York, 1903, p. 64.
142

The Underlying Self

details, issues and possibilities, and in a trice
affords a magnificent, an unforgettable spectacle
of strength, courage, precision, and will, in which
unconquered life flies at the throat of death."
And similar instances — of instinctive presence of
mind, and an almost miraculous development of
faculty in extreme danger — are within the know
ledge of most people. The subliminal being
steps in quite decisively, and the ordinary con
scious mind feels that another power is taking
over the reins.

But there is another faculty of the subjacent
self which must not be passed over, and which
is very important — I mean the image-forming
power. This is one of the prime faculties of
all intelligent beings, lying at the very root of
creation ; and it is a faculty possessed to an ex
treme and impressive degree by the self " behind
the scenes." I have discussed this subject gener
ally at some length in my book The Art of
Creation, and need not repeat the matter here,
except to allude to a few points. The image-
forming faculty is a natural attribute of the
conscious mind, in all perhaps but the lowest
grades of evolution ; at any rate it is difficult
to think of a mind at all like ours without this
faculty. This faculty is most active when the
mind is withdrawn into itself, in quietude. In
his study or when burning the midnight oil the
writer's brain teems, or is supposed to teem,
with images ! But in sleep the image-forming
activity is even greater. It then shows itself in the

i43

The Drama of Love and Death

subconscious mind, in the world of dreams, whose
bodiless creations are more vivid and energetic
than those of our waking hours, and have a
strange sense of reality about them. But again,
in the deeper sleep of trance still more vivid
images are produced. A young student hypno
tised imagines himself to be Napoleon, then to
be Garibaldi, then to be an old woman of ninety,
then to be a mere child. He acts the parts of
these characters, imitates their handwriting, their
voices, issues proclamations to his soldiers in the
name of the first two, assumes the shaky penman
ship of childhood and of old age ; and all in
the course of half-an-hour or so.1 The images
thus formed in the deep trance of the young man
are so vivid, so powerful, so dramatic, that they
take possession of the organism and compel it
to become the means of their manifestation. In
mediumistic ranee the same thing happens.
There may be suggestion from outside, or there
may not, but in the depth of the medium's mind
images are formed which speak and act through
the entranced person, making use in doing so
of the marvellous stores of memory and know
ledge which the inner mind has at command, and
sorely puzzling the spectators at times, as to
whether the performance is merely histrionic or
whether by chance it indicates a bona fide com
munication from the dead.2

1 See Lombroso, Fenomeni ipnotid e spiritid, Turin, 1909,
pp. 28-31.

2 I leave the question of the possibility of the latter open for
the present. See Note at end of this chapter.

144

The Underlying Self

This energetic dramatic quality of the image-
forming faculty is tremendously important. It
has not been enough insisted upon ; and it has
been greatly misunderstood and misrepresented.
It is, as I say, a root-property of creation. It is
seen everywhere in the healthy activity of the
human mind, in its delight in romance and
imagination, in the play of children, the stage,
literature, art, scientific invention — the sheer joy
of creation, going on everywhere and always. Lay
the conscious and controlling and selective power
of the upper mind at rest, in the trance-condition,
and you have in the deeps of the subliminal self
this primal creative power exposed. Offer to it
the lightest suggestion, and there springs forth
from that abyss a figure corresponding, or a
dozen figures, or a whole procession ! The mere
delight of creation calls them forth. Could any
thing be more wonderful ? What a strange
glimpse it gives us of the possibilities of Creation.

Some people seem to be quite shocked at the
idea that this subliminal mind, or whatever it
is that possesses these marvellous powers, should
act these parts, and lend itself to unsubstantial
and quasi-fraudulent representations. But why
accuse of deception ? It is a game — the great
game we are all of us playing — the whole Creation
romancing away ; with endless inexhaustible fer
tility throwing out images, ideas, new shapes and
forms forever. Those forms which hold their
own, which substantiate themselves, which fill a
place, fulfil a need — they win their way into the

145 K

The Drama of Love and Death

actual world and become the originals of the
plants, the animals, human beings, works of art,
and so forth, which we know. Those which
cannot hold their own pass back again into the
unseen. In the far depths of the entranced
medium's mind we see this abysmal process going
on — this fountain-like production of images taking
place — the very beginnings of creation. It is
the sheer joy of manifestation. As one gives a
musician a mere hint or clue — a theme of three
or four notes — and immediately he improvises a
spirited piece of music ; so is it with the hyp
notised person or with the medium. One gives
him a suggestion and he immediately creates the
figures according. And so it is for us, to direct this
wonderful power, even in ourselves — not to call it
fraudulent, but to make use of it for splendid ends.
Doubtless it can be used for unworthy ends.
It is easy to understand that the mediumistic
person, finding this wonderful dramatic and
creative faculty within himself or herself, is some
times tempted to turn it to personal advantage ;
and succumbs to the temptation. The dramatic
habit catches hold of the waking self, and renders
the person tricky and unreliable.1 But below
it all is creation, and the instinct of creation —
the power that gives to airy nothing a local

1 This was no doubt, for instance, the case with Eusapia
Paladino — as admitted by her warmest supporters. But it
does not contravene the fact, proved by most abundant evi
dence and experiment, of the astounding physical phenomena
which from her early childhood accompanied her, and in some
strange way exhaled from her.

146

The Underlying Self

habitation, the genius of the dramatist, of the
artist, of the inventor, and the very source of the
visible and tangible world.

For from the Under-self — as exposed in the
state of trance, or in extreme languor and ex
haustion of the body, or in the moment of death,
or in dreams, or even in profound reverie —
proceed (strange as it may seem) Voices and
Visions and Forms, things audible and visible
and tangible, things anyhow which are com
petent to impress the senses of spectators so
vividly as to be for the moment indistinguish
able from the phenomena, audible, visible and
tangible, of our actual world. Amazing as are
the materialisations connected with mediums —
the figures which appear, which speak, which
touch and are touched, the faces, the super
numerary feet and hands, the sounds, the lights,
the movements of objects — all in some way
connected with the medium's presence — these
phenomena are now far too well established and
confirmed by careful and scientific observation
to admit (in the mass) of any reasonable
doubt.1 And similarly with the wraiths, or

1 It is impossible, for instance, to read slowly and in detail
such works as A. R. Wallace's Miracles and Modern Spirit
ualism, William Crookes' Researches into Spiritualism^ C.
Lombroso's Fcnomcni ipnotici e spirilid^ and to note the
care and exactness with which in each case experiments
were conducted, tests devised, and results recorded, without
being persuaded that in the mass the conclusions (confirmed in
the first two instances by the authors themselves after an
interval of twenty or thirty years) are correct. Already a long
list of scientific and responsible men, like Charles Richet

147

The Drama of Love and Death

phantoms which are projected from dying or
lately dead persons, the evidence for them in
general is much too abundant and well attested
to allow of disbelief.1 What an extraordinary
story, for instance, is that given by Sir Oliver
Lodge in his Survival of Man (p. 101) — of a
workman who having drunk poison by mistake,
appeared in the moment of death, with blue
and blotched face to his employer, to whom he
was greatly attached, and told him not to be
deceived by the rumour that he (the workman)
had committed suicide ! Yet the story is fully
and authoritatively given in the Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research, vol. iii. p. 97, and
cannot well be set aside. But if such things
happen in the hour of death, so do they also
happen in the dream-state.2 The dreamer has
a vivid dream of visiting a certain person, and
is accordingly and at that time, seen by that

(professor of physiology at Paris), Camille Flammarion (the well-
known astronomer), Professor Zollner of the Observatory at
Leipzig, C. F. Varley the electrician, Sir Oliver Lodge of
Birmingham, have made important contributions to the evidence;
while others, like Professor De Morgan the mathematician,
Professor Challis the astronomer, Sergeant Cox the lawyer, and
Professor William James the psychologist, have signified their
general adhesion.

1 For references see supra, ch. vi. p. 92, footnote.

8 See Phantasms of tlie Living, vol. ii. p. 289, also the ex
perience of Mrs. A., given in Footfalls onthe Boundary of Another
World, by R. Dale Owen, 1881, p. 256 et seq. This latter
book, which is a mine of well-authenticated information, has
suffered somewhat from its rather sensational title. The author,
however, was an able, distinguished, and reliable man, son of
Robert Owen of Lanark, Member of Congress in the United
States, and U.S. minister at Naples.

148

The Underlying Self

person. And in the state of reverie the same.
It is at times sufficient to think profoundly of
any one, or to let one's inner self go out towards
that person, in order to cause an image of oneself
to be seen by him.

It will of course be said, and often is said,
that those phenomena are only hallucinations,
and have no objective existence. But the suffi
cient answer to that is that the things also of our
actual world are hallucinations in their degree,
and certainly have no full objective existence.
The daffodil in my garden is an hallucination in
that degree that with the smallest transposition
of my senses, its colour, its scent, and even its
form might be quite altered. What we call its
objectivity rests on the permanence of its rela
tions — on its continued appearance in one spot,
its visibility to different people at one time, or
to one person at different times, and so forth.
But if that is the definition of objectivity,
it is obvious that the forms which have been
seen over and over again, and under strict
test-conditions, in connexion with certain
mediums, have had in their degree an objective
existence.

In America, in connexion with Kate Fox
(one of the earliest and most spontaneous and
natural of modern mediums), a certain Mr.
Livermore — a thoroughly capable business man
of New York — came into communication as it
seemed with his deceased wife. She appeared
to him — not in one house only, but in several

149

The Drama of Love and Death

houses — over and over again ; sometimes only
the head, sometimes the whole figure ; her ap
pearance was accompanied by inexplicable sounds
and lights ; she communicated sometimes by
raps, sometimes by visibly writing on blank
cards brought for the purpose ; and these pheno
mena extended over a period of six years and
388 recorded sittings, and at many of the
sittings were corroborated by independent wit
nesses.1 It is difficult to imagine hallucinations
or deceit maintained under such circum
stances.

In England (in connexion with the medium
Florence Cook) the figure " Katie King " appeared
to Sir William Crookes a great number of times
during three years (1881-84) and was studied
by him and Mr. C. F. Varley, F.R.S., with
the greatest scientific care. Her apparition often
spoke to those present, was touched by, and
touched them, wrote, or played with the children.
It often came outside the cabinet, and three
times was seen by those present simultaneously
with, and by the side of, the entranced medium.
The figure was taller than the medium and
different in feature ; Crookes observed its pulse
and found it making 75 beats a minute to the
medium's 90, and so forth.2

Professor Richet, the French scientist, examined

1 See R. Dale Owen, The Debatable Land (\%j\\ pp. 385-40x3.

2 See Crookes' Researches in Spiritualism, pp. 104 et seq.
See also the book New Light on Immortality, by Fournier
d'Albe, pp. 218 et seg., where the evidence is given in great
detail.

150

The Underlying Self

with great care the phantasm " Beni Boa," which
appeared to him some twenty times in connexion
with the Algerian medium Aisha ; he obtained
several photographs of it, and observed its pulse,
its respiration, and so forth.1 Lombroso, the
author of many scientific works, and a man who
to begin with was a complete sceptic on these
matters, assures us that at the sittings of Eusapia
Paladino he saw his own mother (long dead)
a great number of times, and that she repeatedly
kissed him.2 In connexion with Mme. D'Esper-
ance 3 the girlish figure of " Yolanda " appeared
and disappeared very frequently during a period
of ten years, and was well known to frequenters
of her circle; and in 1896 a committee formed
by some twenty-five high officials and well-known
persons in Norway publicly attested the repeated
appearance at her seances of a very beautiful
female figure who glided among the sitters,
grasped their hands, gave them messages, and
so forth, and disappeared before their eyes m
a misty cloud.4 Such evidence of the objectivity
of seance figures could be rather indefinitely
multiplied. But the same may be said, though
perhaps less conclusively, of various ghosts and
other manifestations, whose relations to certain
persons or places or houses seem quite definite

1 See Phcnomcnes de la Ville Carmen, avec documents
nouveanx; Paris, 1902.

2 C. Lombroso, Fenomcni ipnotid e spiritici, p. 193.

3 See Shadow-land (\yo(>).

4 See pamphlet Materialisations, by Mme. D'EspeVance
(Light Publishing Co.)

The Drama of Love and Death

and well established — and not imfrequently
steadily recurrent under the same conditions.1

Without going into the vexed question of
whether these and the like manifestations are
merely products or inventions of the trance-mind
of the medium or other person concerned, or
whether some at least of them are the work or
evidence of separate ' spirits ' — leaving that ques
tion open for the present — we may still say
that all these things are actual creations — creations
of the hidden self of Man in some form or
other; not so assured, certainly, and not so
permanent as the well-known shapes of outer
Nature ; abortive creations, if you like, which
come a little way forward into manifestation,
and then retreat again ; but still creations in
the same sense as those more established ones ;
and wonderfully revealing to us the secret of
the generation and birth of all the visible world.

That we should have, all of us, this magic
source somewhere buried within — this Aladdin's
lamp, this vase of the Djinns, this Pandora box
of evil as well as of good, is indeed astounding ;
and must cause us, when we have once fully
realised the fact, to envisage life quite differently
from what we have ever done before. It must

1 See, for instance, the account of the haunted mill at
Willington, given at some length by Mr. W. T. Stead in the
Review of Reviews for Jan. 1892 ; also the Memoirs of the
Wesley Family, vol. i. pp. 253-60 ; and Whitehead's Lives of
the Wesleys, vol. ii. pp. 120-66 ; also Footfalls, by R. Dale
Owen, book iii. ch. ii.

152

The Underlying Self

cause us to feel that our very ordinary and
daily ^self — which we know so well (and which
sometimes we even get a little tired of) is only
a fraction, only a flag and a signal, of that
great Presence which we really are, that great
Mass-man who lies unexplored behind the very
visible ^ and actual. Difficult or impossible as
this^ being may be to define, enormously complex
as it probably is, and far-reaching, and hard
to gauge, yet we see that it is there, undeniably
there — a being that apparently includes far
extremes of faculty and character, running parallel
to the conscious self from low to high levels,1
having in its range of manifestation the most
primitive desires and passions, and the highest
feats of intellect and enthusiasm ; and while
at times capable of accepting the most frivolous
suggestions and of behaving in a humorous or
merely capricious and irresponsible manner, at
other times capable, as we have seen, of taking
most serious command and control of the whole
physical organism, and as far as the spiritual
organism is concerned, of rising to the greatest
heights of prophecy and inspiration.2

1 See Myers, op. cit. p. 1 54. As many writers have remarked,
the term 'superconscious' might often be more applicable
than ' subconscious.'

2 With regard to this question of hypnotism and crime,
T. J. Hudson says (Psychic Phenomena, p. 129) that it is almost
impossible to persuade a hypnotic to do what he firmly believes
to be wrong. And Myers maintains that whatever the sub
liminal being may be, it is never malignant. " In dealing
with automatic script, for instance, we shall have to wonder
whence come the occasional vulgar jokes or silly mystifications.

153

The Drama of Love and Death

I say, then, that we must include in this problem
of survival both the ordinary upper and conscious
self and the deep-lying subjective and subconscious
(or superconscious) being. Just as the organising
power of the Body includes the Cerebro-spinal
system of nerves on the one hand, and the Great-
Sympathetic system on the other, so the organism
of the soul includes the supraliminal and sub
liminal portions. The two must be taken to
gether, and either alone could only represent a
fraction of the real person. The exact relation
of these two selves to each other is a matter
which can only become clear with long time and
study of this difficult subject. It may be that
the subliminal self is destined to become conscious
in our ordinary sense of the word. It may be,
on the other hand, that the conscious self is
destined to rise into the much wider consciousness
of the subjective being. There is a great deal
to suggest that the supraliminal self is only the
front as it were of the great wave of life ; and
that the brain consciousness is only a very special
instrument for dealing with the surroundings
and conditions of our terrestrial existence — an
instrument which will surrender much of its value

We shall discuss whether they are a kind of dream of the
automatist's own, or whether they indicate the existence of
unembodied intelligences on the level of the dog or the ape.
But, on the other hand, all that world-old conception of
Evil Spirits, of malevolent powers, which has been the basis
of so much of actual devil-worship and so much more of vague
supernatural fear : — all this insensibly melts from the mind
as we study the evidence before us" (Op. cit. p. 252).

The Underlying Self

at death and on mergence with the larger and
differently constituted consciousness which under-
runs and sustains it. That the two selves are
in constant communication with each other, and
that they are both intelligent in some sense, is
obvious from the facts of suggestion^ by which
often the lightest whisper so to speak from the
upper is understood and attended to by the under
self; while, on the other hand, the under-self
communicates with the upper, sometimes by inner
Voices heard and Visions seen, sometimes by
automatic actions, as in dream- or trance-writing,
sometimes even by Sounds and Apparitions so
powerful as to appear at least external.

So we cannot but think that the question of
survival may ultimately resolve itself very much
into the question of the more complete and
effectual understanding between these different
portions of the self. When they come into
clear relation with each other, when the unit-
man and the Mass-man merge into a perfect
understanding and harmony, when they both
become conscious of their affiliation to the great
Self of the universe, then the problem will be
solved— or we may perhaps say, the problem
will cease to exist.

The Drama of Love and Death

NOTE TO CHAPTER VIII
ON TRANCE-PHENOMENA

It may seem rash or unbalanced to dwell, in the
preceding chapters, on trance and mediumistic phenomena
as much as I have done, considering that they are in
some sense abnormal — that is, they are unusual, and
comparatively few people have an opportunity of verify
ing them ; also they may (it is said) be abnormal in
the sense of being the products of conditions so special
or even so morbid that conclusions drawn from them
can have no general importance or value.

There is a certain fashion in such matters, and with
large sections of the public and during a long period it
has no doubt been the habit simply to dismiss all con
sideration of this subject, as for one reason or another
unadvisable. But now these phenomena in general (or
enough of them to constitute a solid body of observation)
are so thoroughly corroborated that it would be mere
affectation to pass them by ; and the best science
nowadays refuses to ignore exceptional happenings on
account of their exceptionality — recognising that these
very happenings often afford the key to the explanation
of more common events.

The phenomena connected with mediums and seances
have been so amazing and unexpected that they have
often produced a kind of fear and dismay. The religious
people have been terrified at the prospect of having to
acknowledge miracles not connected with the Church ;
or of having to confess to the resurrection of John Smith
as well as of Jesus Christ. The scientific folk (in many
or most quarters) being always just on the point of
completing their pet scheme of the universe — whatever
it may happen to be at the time — have naturally been
in no mood to admit new facts which would totally

156

Trance Phenomena

disarrange their systems ; and have therefore, with a
few brilliant exceptions, consistently closed their eyes
or looked another way. And the general public, not
without reason, has feared to embark on a subject which
might easily float it away from the dry land of practical
life, into one knows not what sea of doubt or even
delusion.

But these difficulties attend at all times the introduc
tion of a new subject — or at least of one which is new
to the generation concerned ; and can of course not be
allowed to interfere with the candid and impartial ex
amination of the subject, or with the assimilation, as
far as feasible, of its message. It should certainly, I
think, be admitted that there are dangers attending the
new science — or rather attending the hasty and careless
investigation of it — just as there are attending any other
science. There is no doubt that the phenomena con
nected with it are so astounding that they in some
cases unhinge people's minds, or at least for the time
upset them ; and what we have already said once or
twice of the frequent bodily exhaustion of the Medium,
not to mention the occasional exhaustion of the sitters,
must convince us that the greatest care should be
exercised in connexion with trance-conditions, and that
the whole subject should be studied with a view to
discovering its proper and best handling. It is clear —
whatever view is taken of the process — that a certain
disintegration of the organism, and even of the person
ality of the medium, is liable to occur, one portion
of the organism acting in a manner and under influences
foreign to another portion, and that such disintegration
oft repeated or long continued may be liable to produce
a permanent degeneration of physique or even possibly
demoralisation of character. If there is a danger in
this direction — and the extent of the danger should
certainly be gauged — equally certainly it ought to be
minimised or averted by the proper conditions. On the

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The Drama of Love and Death

other hand, while noting this danger, we should not
leave out of mind that some evidence points in the
other direction — namely, to the favorable effects and
influences of trance when rightly conducted.1 We may
also in this connexion allude to the changed attitude of
the general mind to-day towards Hypnotism — a subject
allied to that which we are considering. Fifty years
ago the word had a sinister sound, and hypnotism and
mesmerism were thought to be inventions of the devil
and agencies of all evil. To-day they are recognised
as a great power for good, and in at least two hospitals
(in France) as the main instrument of healing. Naturally,
when people are ignorant of a subject, or only in the
first stages of knowledge with regard to it, they mis
handle and misunderstand it. It may well happen there
fore that with better understanding ofmediumship and
trance-conditions, some of their drawbacks or less favor
able aspects may pass out of sight.

Mediums and trance- phenomena — prophecy, second
sight, speaking in strange tongues, the appearance of
flames and lights, and of figures apparently from the
dead — are things that have been known all down history,
and recognised almost as a matter of course, both among
quite primitive peoples like the Kaffirs, or the Aleuts or
the Mongolians, or among the more cultured like the
Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, Chinese, and so forth.
The Bible teems with references to wizards and
* necromancers ' (note the meaning of the word) ; and the
story of the Witch of Endor gives us a penetrating
glimpse into what was evidently a common practice of
'consultation.' These phenomena have never been so
common as to break up and disorganise the routine of
ordinary life, yet they have always been there, and
recognised, as on the fringe or borderland — in somewhat
the same way as the knowledge or recognition of Death

1 See Mediumship, by James B. Tetlow (Keighley, 1910),
price 6d.

158

Trance Phenomena

docs not interfere with daily life or prevent us making
engagements; though we know it may do so at any time.
And beyond any direct uses that trance-communication
and manifestations may have now, or may have had in
the past (a matter on which no doubt there is a good
deal of difference of opinion), we may fairly suppose that
as examples of real things and of a real world lying just
outside the sphere of our ordinary and actual experience
they may be of immense value — both as delivering us
from a cramped and petty belief that we have already
fathomed the possibilities of the universe, and as giving
us just a hint and a glimpse of directions in which we
may fairly look for the future. That we should for the
present be limited for the most part to a definite sphere
of activity, or to a definite region of creation, seems only
natural. " One world, please, at a time ! " said
Thorcau when on his deathbed he was plagued by some
pious person about the future life ; and if we in our
daily life were entangled in the manifestations of two
very different planes of existence it might be greatly
baffling. At the same time, the occasional hint or
message from another plane may be of the greatest help.
Condensations and manifestations (as of beings from
such other plane) may be abnormal at present. They
may be rare, they may occur under unexpected and even
unhealthy conditions, they may cause dislocations of
mind and of morals, they may be confused and confus
ing. All these things we should indeed in some degree
expect ; and yet it may not follow that these objections
will continue. It is quite possible that in the future
they will disappear. As I have had occasion to say
many times, every new movement or manifestation of
human activity, when unfamiliar to people's minds, is
sure to be misrepresented and misunderstood. It appears
in humble guise, without backing or patronage, forcing
its way to light in the most unlikely places, "to the
Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness,"

The Drama of Love and Death

often distorted and out of shape owing to its very birth-
struggles, and for the very same reason diffident at first
and uncertain of its own mission. Possibly a time is
coming when Mediumship, instead of being left over (as
not unfrequently now) to quite ignorant and uncultured
specimens of humanity, and being exercised in haphazard
careless fashion, or for monetary gain, or personal vanity,
will be looked upon as a sacred and responsible office,
worthy of and requiring considerable preparation and
instruction, demanding the respect of the public, yet
thoroughly criticised, both in method and result, by
intelligent examination and logic. Possibly a time is com
ing when messages and manifestations from another plane
than that of our daily life will come to us under the
most obviously healthy and sane conditions, and will be
fully recognised as having value and even, in their way,
authority.

For the present — allowing (as I do) the absolute
genuineness of a great body of ' spiritualistic ' phenomena
— there still is (owing to various causes already indicated)
considerable doubt as to who or what the manifesting
beings or forces are. I suppose the main theories on the
subject may be gathered under the following heads : —
that the manifesting powers are (i) Images, more or less
unconsciously projected from the Medium's own mind ;
or, in the case of raps, and so forth, emissions of force
from the medium's body ; (2) that they are the same
projected from the minds or bodies of other persons
present ; (3) that they are independent Beings, making
use of the medium's or other person's organism for the
purpose of expression ; or (4) that there is a blending of
these actions.

I think everyone who has studied the matter practically
admits the first explanation in some degree ; most
people perhaps allow the second and fourth ; but a good
many — though not all — exclude the third. With

1 60

Trance Phenomena

regard, however, to this last theory (that there really are
occasional messages or manifestations from the dead — or
from 'the other side ') there certainly seems to be a very
considerable residuum of evidence which, though not
absolutely conclusive, is favorable to it ; and there
certainly are a considerable number of eminent and
responsible men — like Myers, Lodge, Lombroso, and
others — who, though not dogmatic, profess themselves
inclined to accept the theory, on the evidence so far
available. For myself — having so little personal and
direct experience in this field — I do not feel in a position
to form a definite opinion, and am content to leave the
evidence to accumulate.

161

CHAPTER IX

SURVIVAL OF THE SELF

IN the last chapter we pointed out that for any
adequate understanding of the subject before us
the self must be taken to include the more
obscure and subconscious portion of the mind,
as well as the specially conscious portion with
which we are most familiar. There is a constant
interaction and flow taking place between the
two parts, and to draw a strict line dividing
them would be impossible. Indeed it would
rather appear that growth comes largely by their
blending and throwing light on each other. We
also brought forward some considerations to
show the nature of the underlying or sub
conscious self — its immense extent, the swiftness
of its perceptions, and so forth. If then, to
continue our argument, there should come a time
(in death) when the outer and more obvious ego
merges, or at least comes into closer relation,
with the under-self, it would seem likely that
the surviving consciousness would be greatly
changed from its present form, and would take on
something of the instantaneous wide-reaching
character of what has been called the Cosmic
Consciousness. And this is a conclusion much

162

Survival of the Self

to be expected, and surely also much to be
desired. However one may envisage the matter,
it hardly seems possible to imagine an after-
death consciousness quite on the same plane as
our present consciousness. (This, too — one may
say in passing — probably explains the difficulty
we experience in holding direct communica
tion with the dead — the same sort of difficulty,
in fact, that the outer mind during life has in
directly reaching the inner mind.) Myers 1
speaks of our supraliminal life as merely a
special phase of our whole personality, and sug
gests that there are good reasons for thinking
that there is a relation — " obscure but indisput
able — between the subliminal and the surviving
self." Under these circumstances it would seem
natural to enquire what definite reasons there
may be for thinking that the subliminal self
survives; and I shall occupy this chapter
largely with that question.

(i) In the first place, from the observed pro
cess of the generation and growth of the body
from a microscopic origin, we have already
argued (chapter vii.) the probability of the pre-
existence in a sub-atomic or fourth-dimensional
state of the being which is manifested in the
body, and therefore the probability of the con
tinuance of that being after the dissolution of
the body. And this argument must include the
Under-self, which is responsible for so much
of the organisation and growth and sustentation

1 Op. dt. pp. 168-69.
163

of the body, as well as the Upper ; and may
well lead us to infer that both upper and under
selves continue after death — only conjoined in
some way, and with some added experience gained
during life.

(2) In the second place, we are struck by the fact
that continuous Memory — which we decided to
be the very necessary condition of survival — is
just the thing which is so strong in the sub
jective being and so characteristic of it. The
huge stores of memory — and of quite personal
and individual memory — which this being has at
command, their long dormancy and their extra
ordinary resurgence at times when conditions
call them forth, are a marvel to the investigator,
and make us feel that it is hardly probable that
they are all swept away at death. Even if
dormant at the time of death, it seems not un
likely that here again later conditions may awake
them once more to life.

But, (3), we have a great deal of evidence to
show that, as a matter of fact, the underlying
self is especially active at the moment of death.
The whole phenomenon of ' wraiths ' — now in the
mass so amply proved 1 — the projection of phan
tasms sometimes to an immense distance,2 by
persons in articulo mortis — goes to show its

1 See a long chapter on " Manifestations de Mourants " in
C. Flammarion's L'lnconnu,

3 As in the case of a man drowning in a storm off the
island of Tristan d'Acunha, who was seen at the same
hour in a Norfolk farmhouse. Phantasms of the Living^
vol. ii. p. 52.

164

Survival of the Self

intense energy and vitality (if one may use the
word) at that moment. And the vivid resur
gences of memory at the same moment (or in any
hour of danger) point in the same direction.
T. J. Hudson, and others, insist that the sub
jective mind never sleeps — that whatever drowsi
ness, or faintness, or languor may overpower the
upper or self-conscious mind, the under mind is
still acutely awake and operant, and if this is
(as it appears) true with regard to sleep, it may
well also be so even with regard to death.

Again, (4), the Telaesthetic faculty of the
under-self (I mean during life) — its power of
clairvoyantly perceiving things and events at a
distance, even in minutest details — is a very
wonderful fact — a fact that is amply established,
and one that must give us pause. Here are
vision and perception at work without eyes or
ears, or any of the usual bodily end-organs1—
and acting in such a way as to suggest or practi
cally to prove that the soul has other channels
or instruments of perception than those connected
with the well-known outer body. Every one has
heard of cases of this kind. They are common
on the borderland of sleep, or in dreams, and —
what especially appeals to us here — they are very
common in the hour of death. If the soul (as
is evidently the case) can perceive without the
intermediation of mortal eye or ear ; then—
though we may conclude that these special organs
have been fashioned or developed for special

1 See further on this subject ch. xi, infra, p. 211.
165

The Drama of Love and Death

terrene use — we may also conclude that, without
them, it would still continue to exercise percep
tion, developing sight and hearing and other
faculties along lines with which at present we are
but slightly acquainted. These faculties spring
inevitably deep down out of ourselves, and will
recur again doubtless wherever we are. . . .
" Were your eyes destroyed, still the faculty of
sight were not destroyed ; out of the same roots
again as before would another optic apparatus
spring." !

And the same may be said, (5), about the tele
pathic faculty — that is, the power (not of per
ceiving but) of sending impressions or messages
to a distance. This power which the under-self
has of communicating with the under-selves of
other persons, and often at a great distance, is
one of the best-established facts in the new
psychology ; and again, it is very pregnant with
inference. It shows us the soul acting vividly
along certain lines independent as far as we can
see of the known body, certainly along lines in
dependent of the known organs of expression.
It compels us to conclude a possible and even
probable activity quite apart from that body.
With this telepathic power, or as an extension
of it, may be classed the image-projecting
faculty, which we have already seen to be peculi
arly active in death. And it may be appropriate
here to notice that in quite a number of the
cases of wraiths or phantasms projected (in forty

1 Towards Democracy, p. 490.
166

Survival of the Self

cases out of three hundred and sixteen as given
by Edmund Gurney in Proceedings S.P.R. vol. v.
p. 408) the apparition was seen after the death had
occurred — though within twenty-four hours after.
This may directly indicate an after-death activity
of the person who projected the image, or it may
merely indicate a delay of the telepathic impres
sion on its way, or in the subconscious mind of
the recipient, previous to emerging in the latter's
conscious mind.1

All these things are strongly indicative. They
do not give the impression that at death the
underlying self is in the act of perishing. On
the contrary, they point to its continuance, and
if anything increased activity ; while at the same
time the strongly personal character of many of
the phenomena referred to — the wonderfully dis
tinct personal memories, the very personal images
or phantasms projected, the telepathic appeal to
nearest and dearest friends — all suggest that^the
continuing activity does not merely tail off into
an abstract life-force or vague stream of tendency,
but is of a distinctly personal or individual
character.

There is another consideration, (6), on which
I may dwell for a moment here. The passion of
Love, whether considered in its physical or in
its psychical and emotional aspects, is notably
a matter of the subjective or subliminal life.
The little self-conscious, logical, argumentative

1 For a discussion of this question, see Myers, op. cit. ch. vii.
on Phantasms of the Dead.

167

The Drama of Love and Death

personality is completely routed by this passion,
which seems to spring from the great depths of
being with Titanic force, full-armed in its own
convictions, and overturning all established orders
and conventions. It surely must give us a deep
insight into the nature of that hidden self from
which it springs. Yet nothing is more noticeable
about the passion than its recklessness of mortal
life — nothing more noticeable than its willingness
to sacrifice all worldly prospects and the body
itself in the pursuit of its ends. Even the most
physical love, as we have said already (chapter
vi.), has a strange relation to Death, and often
slays the very object of its desire :—

" For each man kills the thing he loves,
Though each man does not die."

While the more emotional form of the passion
almost rejoices in its contempt of life and its
willingness to face dangers and death for the sake
of the beloved. It says as plain as words: — "I
can fulfil myself and my purposes all right,
even without this mortal part which you hold so
dear " ; and unless we think that the hidden being
who thus speaks is a perfect fool, we must con
clude that it is aware of a life surpassing that of
the body.

Such a continuing life we no doubt have evi
dence of, and indeed commonly admit to exist, in
the Race-life ; and as a first approximation it seems
natural and obvious to interpret the underlying
or subliminal self as being simply the Race-self.

168

Survival of the Self

In the case of the lower and less developed
forms of creation, perhaps this is the wisest thing
to do. In default of more detailed and perfect
knowledge, we may easily assume that in a shoal
of several million herrings or in a ' culture ' of
several billion microbes the underlying self of
each particular herring or microbe is practically
identical with the self of the race concerned.
But in the case of man and some of the higher
animals it is not so easy to do this. We find a
strongly individual element in his subconscious
mind, which must also be accounted for. I have
already alluded to the stores of individual memory
which this mind retains, thus differentiating it
from others ; and I have alluded to the intensely
individual phantasms which it projects. And
now again we are brought face to face with the
greatly individual character of its love-passion.
However much the love-passion may be symbolical
of the life of the race, and deeply implicated in
the same (and both of these it certainly is), still
— except in its lower forms — there is nothing
vague and general and undifferentiated about that
passion ; on the contrary, it is most strongly per
sonal and sharply outlined. Why is it that out
of the hundred thousand people that a man may
meet only one will arouse this tremendous re
sponse ? Why is it that every great love in its
depth seems different from every other ? Do
not these things suggest a profound difference
of outline in the subconscious beings them
selves from whom these loves proceed ? These

169

The Drama of Love and Death

beings are manifestations and organic expres
sions of the Race — yes. But they are also
deeply individual and different — each one from
the" other.

And here we seem to come upon the first
emergence of the solution of the problem before
us. The self of which we are in search has —
especially through its subconscious part — a vast
continuing life, affiliated to the life of the race
and beyond that to the cosmic life of the All ; but
it also has a strongly individual outline and char
acter. Nursed in the womb of the Race during
countless ages, like a babe within its mother,
passing through numberless reincarnations in a
kind of collective way, and in more or less un
consciousness of its supreme and separate destiny,
it at last in Man attains to the clear sense of
individuality, and (through much suffering) is
set free to an independent existence ; being finally
exhaled from earth-mortality into a cosmic life
under other conditions of space and time than
ours.

Difficult as this conception of a continued
individual existence may be to hold to in
view of the terrible and eternal flux of general
Nature, and difficult as it may be to under
stand in all detail ; yet, as I say, it is Love
which compels us to the insight of its truth.
It is Love which has the clear conception of
the uniqueness of the beloved, it is love which
positively refuses to believe in her (or his)
annihilation, it is love alone which in the hour

170

Survival of the Self

of loss can face the awful midnight sky, and
dare to siner : —

"Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace,

Sleep, holy Spirit, blessed soul !
While the stars burn, the moons increase.
And the great ages onward roll"

And it is in the meeting of lovers that the heavens
open, allowing them to see — if only for a moment
— the eternities to which they both belong.

There are no doubt other considerations — I
mean those connected with medium istic and so-
called spiritualistic phenomena — which point to
wards the conclusion of an individual survival of
some kind after death ; but although this kind
of evidence is likely to prove in the end of im
mense value, it is possible that the time has not
yet quite come when it can be completely sub
stantiated, tabulated, and effectively utilised ; at
any rate I do not feel myself in a position to so
deal with it. It has also to be said that a great
deal of this evidence (relating to actual communi
cations from the dead) is necessarily of so very
personal a character that it can only appeal to the
individual persons concerned, and however con
vincing it may be to them does naturally not
carry the same conviction to the world at large.
I shall therefore for the present pass these con
siderations by, and, on the strength of the
arguments already brought forward, assume the
general truth of man's survival.

171

The Drama of Love and Death

The course of the argument has been some
what as follows. In the first place, we have
urged the enormous possibilities (disclosed by
modern investigation) of other life than that
which we know — thus enlarging the bounds of
the likely, and weakening the argument from
improbability. In the second place, we have
pointed out that continuance of memory seems
the best test of survival ; that even in our law
courts (as in a Tichborne case) it is not so
much the facts of feature and form as the facts
of memory which are relied on to prove identity.
Thirdly, we have argued that not only the supra-
liminal but also the subliminal self must be con
sidered in this matter, and that probably the
surviving self will arise from a harmony or con
junction between these two. Fourthly, we have
shown that in respect of memory and many other
matters the subliminal self shows a quite re
markable activity even in the hour of bodily
death — which does not certainly suggest its de
cease and cessation from existence. Fifthly, we
have seen that all through life the soul has
faculties (of clairvoyance, transposition of senses,
and so forth) which point to its independence
of the material body. Sixthly, that through
love it reaches a deep conviction of its own
duration beyond the life of the body. And,
seventhly, we have suggested that it is largely
through the supraliminal and self-conscious life
that the sense of identity and individuality is

educed and finally established.

172

Survival of the Self

Proceeding, then, further along these lines, the
next and obvious question which arises is, In
what sort of body is this continuing life mani
fested ? That it must be manifested in some
sort of body is, I think, clear. If we had only
arrived at the conclusion that at death the
human being merged in the All-soul, or became
an indistinguishable portion of the ' Happy
Mass ' — that his individual memory flowed out
into the great ocean of the world-memory and
became lost in it, and that his power of in
dividual action or perception passed away in
like manner — why then the question of a
continuing body could not well arise, or at
farthest stretch such body could only be thought
of as something indistinguishable from the
entire universe. But if there is any truth in
the idea of an individual survival, then it
seems clear that there must be some kind of
form, to mark the bounds of the individual,
and to give outline to his relations to other
individuals — whether those relations be active
and invasive or passive and receptive ; there
must be some surface of resistance and separa
tion.

With this question I shall deal in the next
chapter. Before, however, going into any de
finite theory of this 'soul-body,' it may be
useful to dwell for a moment on general con
siderations. In the first place, it is clear that
if the individual survives, he does not do so in
any fixed and unchanging form. The form of

The Drama of Love and Death

the individual is not fixed in this earth-life ;
nor can we expect or wish it to be so in any
other life. As long as there is a continuous
stream of experience and memory, going on from
this life to another life, and from that perchance
to others — that is all we can expect to find.
There may, indeed, be a fixed and transcendent
Individuality, an aspect of the Universal, at the
root of all these experiences, but with that we
are hardly concerned at this moment — only with
the stream of personal manifestations which pro
ceed from it — everchanging yet linked together
from hour to hour. In the second place, though
we have dwelt upon and emphasised the idea of
separateness and differentiation, in the surviving
self, in contra-distinction to the idea of fusion
in a formless aggregate, yet it is clear here too
that the common life and bonds must hold
individuals together, just as much as, if not
more than, in the earth-life. The salient facts
of telepathy, sympathy, clairvoyance, and so
forth convince us that souls, freed to some
extent from their grosser present envelopes,
will react upon each other in the future, or
in that farther world, more swiftly and more
intimately than they do now. And as they
progress from stage to stage, developing indi
vidualities and differences always on a grander
and grander scale, so they will also develop
through love their organic union with each

O CD

other. It seems possible, indeed, that growth
will largely take place through love-fusion ; till

i74

Survival of the Self

at length, rising into the highest ranges of
combined Individuality and Universality, the
transformed consciousness of each soul will take
on its true quality — " that of space itself—
which is at rest everywhere."

17$

CHAPTER X

IN order to form a conception of what kind of
body the surviving Self may have, it seems best
for the moment to go back to the genesis of
our present body. We saw (chapter vii.) that
we were compelled to suppose, even in the first
germ of our actual body an intelligent form
of some kind at work, which while gathering
up and representing race-memories of the past,
presided over and directed their rehabilitation in
the present, thus building up the present body
according to a certain pattern — (though subject
of course to modification by outer difficulties
and obstacles). From the very first, the exceed
ing complexity and delicacy of the movements
within the germ-cells, combined with the decisive
ness of their divisions and differentiations, and
the perfection and adaptation of the bodily
structures and organs ultimately produced, all
point in the suggested direction.1 At the same
time, we were compelled to concludethat this form,
whose first manifestations in the tiny germ-cell
evidently originate from quite ultra-microscopic

1 See supra, ch. ii. p. 15 ; also The World of Life, by
A. R. Wallace, ch. xvii. " The Mystery of the Cell."

176

The Inner or Spiritual Body

movements, was itself invisible, invisible through
belonging either to an ultra-microscopic world,
or to a world of a fourth-dimensional or other
order of existence. I think, therefore, that for
the present we may accept that conclusion, and
fairly suppose that some such invisible form under
lies the genesis of each of our bodies.

But at the same time the conclusion of invisi
bility must not be supposed to carry with it
the conclusion of immateriality. Quite the con
trary. A creature living in the two-dimensional
world formed by the water-film on the surface
of a pond might have no conception of the
water-world below or the air-world above — both
of which might be quite invisible to it ; all
the same a fish or a bird breaking through the

r DO

surface would instantly cause some very powerful
and very material phenomena there ! And again,
though atoms and electrons individually may
be quite invisible, it is only a question of their
number and the force of their electric charges,

as to how far they intrude upon what we call
the material world. Also, we must remember
that invisibility or imperceptibility does not by
any means imply non-occupation of space. On
the contrary again. For four-dimensional exis
tence carries with it an occupation of space which
is quite miraculous to us — as, for instance, the
power of appearing in two places at the same
time ; while a number of ultra-microscopic atoms,
by their electrostatic attractions and repulsions,
may maintain definite relations of distance from

177 M

The Drama of Love and Death

each other, and may altogether constitute a cloud
of considerable size and complex organisation —
quite imperceptible as a rule, yet occupying a
definite area and fully capable of affecting
material things.

It may be a question, then, whether it is not
some such invisible cloud — perhaps of quite
human size and measurement — which at con
ception begins to enter the fertilised germ-cell,
stimulating it to division, and penetrating further
and further into the newly-formed body-cells,
as by thousands and millions they divide and
multiply to form the growing organism. What
ever it is, it is something of infinitely subtle
organisation and constitution, representing the
inmost vitality of the body, and not that inmost
vitality in a merely general sense, but the vitality
of every portion and section of the body. It
establishes itself within the gross body (or it
builds that body round itself) and becomes the
organiser and provider of its life ; maintains its
form and structure during life, fortifies it against
change and disease, and wards off as long as it
can the arrival of death.

What, then, of Death ? Why, granted so much
as we have supposed, it seems easy to suppose
that at death this inner body passes away again.
It just leaves the gross body behind and passes
out of it. For a fourth-dimensional being this
must be easy to do ! But not to presume too
much on other-dimensional conditions, if we only
assume the inner body to be such a cloud of

178

The Inner or Spiritual Body

atoms or electrons as already mentioned, the
passage of such atoms through the tissues of the
gross body would be entirely in accordance with
the well-known facts of osmose and the diffusion
of liquids and gases, and would present no ex
ceptional or impossible problem. Through cell-
walls and muscular and other tissues such atoms
would pass, conceivably maintaining still their
relative ' form ' and organisation with regard to
each other, and forming a cloud similar to that
which entered the germ and other cells at con
ception (though of course so far modified by
the life-experience), and leaving now the gross
body devitalised, and doomed to slow corrup
tion and to serve only as material for lower
forms.

One would not, of course, venture on con
jectures so speculative as the above, if it were
not that long tradition and history, and even
modern experience, so singularly confirm or favour
their general truth. The conception of a cloud-
like ghost — sometimes visible, sometimes invisible1
—leaving the body at death, roaming through
the fields of Hades or some hidden world, and
from time to time revisiting the glimpses of
the moon and the gaze of wondering mortals —
penetrates all literature and tradition. Among
all primitive peoples it seems to be accepted
as a matter of course ; it informs the legends

1 Of the conditions which may cause the invisible cloud
to become visible we shall speak farther on.

179

The Drama of Love and Death

and the drama and the philosophies of the more
cultivated ; it claims detailed historical instances
and proofs l (as in the case of Field-marshal von
Grumbkoff, to whom the wraith of King Frederick
Augustus announced his own death — which had
just occurred ; or in the case of the poet Petrarch,
to whom Bishop Colonna made a similar an
nouncement) ; and in modern times it has met
with extraordinary and in many quarters quite
unexpected confirmation at the hands of scientific
investigation.

To this evidence of general probability that
at death a vital and subtle yet substantial inner
body is withdrawn from every part and portion
of the gross body, we may add the evidence,
such as it is, from actual sensation and experience.
In the hour of death and in allied physical
changes sensations are experienced corresponding
to such a conclusion. Though necessarily there
is little quite direct evidence, for the actual
moment of death, yet in the just preceding stage,
of extreme weakness, the sensation of depletion
in every part of the body, and of withdrawal,
as of a hand being drawn out of a glove, is very
noticeable. (And it may be remarked that clair
voyants not unfrequently observe, at death itself,

1 See, for a list of these, Flammarion's L'lnconnu, pp. 565-69 ;
also Lombroso's Fenomeni ipnotici, &c. p. 199. The numer
ous quasi-historical records of the appearance after death of the
saints (generally in a cloud-like form) must also not be passed
over ; though, on account of these records being connected
with the various churches, they are necessarily subject to
suspicion !

180

The Inner or Spiritual Body

a luminous cloud of the general outline and
shape of the dying person being slowly distilled,
head first, from his or her head.) Furthermore,
in the state of ecstasy — which is closely allied
to death — the same sensation of withdrawal is
experienced. The person seems to himself to
stand outside and a little beyond his own body—
and doubtless this experience is denoted in the
very etymology of the word. In trance the
same : the medium experiences the extreme
of exhaustion while some portion of her vital
being is functioning (as it appears) outside.
Under anaesthetics it is a common experience
to dream that one has left the body and is flying
through space. (See The Art of Creation, p. 18.)
And again, in the case of love — whose close
relation to death we have several times already
noted — whether it be in the strain of emo
tional desire or the stress of the physical orgasm
this 'hand from the glove' sensation is often
most acute and seems to suggest that every
portion of the body is contributing its part to
the process in hand ; which indeed in this case
of love may very fairly be supposed to con
sist in a transfer of the cloud-like organism
(or a large part of it) to the other person
concerned.

There are cases, too, where in a kind of dream-
consciousness the sensation of the self passing
out through walls and other obstacles is so
powerful as to leave an impress on the mind
ever after. Such is the case already alluded to

181

The Drama of Love and Death

(chapter viii. p. 148, supra] from Footfalls on the
Boundary of Another World ', where a lady half
waking from sleep " felt herself carried to the
wall of her room, with a feeling that it must
arrest her further progress. But no ; she seemed
to pass through it into the open air. Outside
the house was a tree ; and this also she appeared
to traverse as if it interposed no obstacle." She
thus passed to the house of a lady friend, held
a conversation with her, and in her dream
returned. But afterwards the friend reported
that she had seen the apparition that night and
conversed with it. Similarly a young friend of
mine, dreaming one night that his mother (in
the same house) was ill, was intensely conscious
of dashing — not along corridors and through
doorways but through the partition walls of two
rooms — into the chamber where his mother slept,
when finding her all right he returned ; and the
experience was so vivid that it remained with
him for days afterward.

Taking all these considerations together, we
may say that there is a strong general probability
in favour of the proposition put forward. And it
is interesting and important to find that at this
juncture modern science is coming out from her
old haunts and beginning seriously to tackle a
question which she has hitherto for the most
part evaded or ignored. The whole of the
psychology and even physiology of Death have
(as I have previously remarked) been sadly

neglected ; but now and of late quite a number

182

The Inner or Spiritual Body

of books on this subject have been published,1
and a good deal of scientific activity is moving in
that direction.

Professor Fournier d'Albe, in his book New
Light on Immortality? has made some very
interesting suggestions — which though they may
not as yet be accounted more than suggestions,
seem to be in the right direction, and certainly
acquire some authority from his intimate^ com
mand of the modern discoveries in Physics as
well as in the field of Psychical Research. His
view is that every one of the twenty-five thousand
million million cells which constitute say the
human body has probably some 'centrosome'
or other vital point within it, which is in fact the
governing and organising power of that cell. Such
point or collection of points, though 'material,'
may likely weigh only a ten-thousandth part of the
cell-weight. Hence if this 'soul' was abstracted
from each cell, the total weight of the twenty-five
thousand billion souls resulting would be only a
ten-thousandth part of the body weight, or about
a fifth of an ounce ! But these soul-fragments
or psychomeres as he calls them, would together
make up the total soul of the man, and — as
already explained — might not only by their nega
tive and positive charges maintain certain spatial
relations and organisation with regard to each

1 We may mention Death : Its Causes and Phenomena, Car-
rington& Header (London, 1911) ; and the list of works quoted
in the same book, p. 540 et seq.

2 Longmans, 1908.

183

The Drama of Love and Death

other, but would, owing to their extreme minute
ness, easily pass through the tissues and liberate
themselves from the gross body. Thus a human
soul, weighing a fraction only of an ounce, but of
like shape and size to the human body, and of
intense vitality and subtlety, might disengage
itself at death, to begin a fresh career and to
enter into a new life — leaving the existing body
to fall to ruin and decay. Further, Professor
Fournier d'Albe, greatly bold in speculation, sur
mises that such a spiritual body, discharging the
atmosphere from its interior frame, might quite
naturally rise in the air till it attained its posi
tion of equilibrium at a great height up — say
in a region 35-80 miles over the earth, which
would thus become the (first) abode of the
departed.

Whatever may be said about the details of
this theory, and whatever difficulties they may
present, the main outlines — as I have already
indicated — seem quite feasible and probable, and
in line with world-old belief and tradition. And
certain details (which we shall return to again)
are powerfully corroborated by modern obser
vation.

Meanwhile it is interesting to find, in corro-
boration of the general theory, that some ex
periments lately carried out, in weighing the
body before and after death, have apparently
yielded the result of a decided loss of weight at
or very shortly after, the moment of Death.
Dr. Duncan M'Dougall, experimenting with

184

The Inner or Spiritual Body

considerable care, found that one of his patients
lost f- ounce precisely at death ; * another lost
\ ounce, with an additional loss of I ounce during
the next few minutes, after which no further
loss took place ; another yielded very nearly the
same result ; and so on. Thus we have the old
Egyptian idea of the weighing of the soul after
death resuscitated in a very practical form in
modern times — only with the medical prac
titioner in the place of Thoth, the great assessor
of the Underworld ! And it would be satis
factory to know how far modern observation of
a normal soul weight corresponds with ancient
speculation in the matter. It is curious anyhow
to find that Fournier d'Albe's estimates are so
nearly corroborated by Dr. M'Dougall ; and we
must await with interest further and perhaps
more detailed observations along the same
line.

Another line along which something seems to

have been done by hard and fast science to
corroborate the general theory of the extrusion of
a cloud-like spirit form from the body at death,
is in the matter of photography. Dr. Baraduc,
in his book, Mes Morts : leurs manifestations (1908),

1 " At the end of three hours and forty minutes he expired,
and suddenly, coincident with death, the beam end of the scale
dropped with an audible stroke, hitting against the lower
limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The
loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce." See
reference given by Carrington and Meader, op. cit. p. 373.
The reports of the experiments are apparently given in the
annals of the American Society for Psychical Research for
June 1907.

185

The Drama of Love and Death

gives an account of photographs which he took
of his wife's body within an hour after death and
of his son's body (in the coffin) nine hours after
death. When developed the plates all showed
cloud-like emanations hovering over the corpses,
not certainly having definite human outline, but
apparently shot through by lines and streaks of
light. And though here again the experiments
are not conclusive, they so far are corroborative,
and may be taken to indicate a direction for
further enquiry.

This last I think we are especially entitled to
say, on account of what has been already done in
the way of photographing the cloud-figures (some
of them very definite in outline) which are found
to emanate on occasions from mediums in the
state of trance. For notwithstanding the doubt
which has commonly been cast on all such
photographs and notwithstanding the very obvious
ease with which cameras can be manipulated and
shadow-figures of some kind fraudulently pro
duced, the evidence for the genuineness of some
such ' spirit ' photographs is — to any one who
really studies it — beyond question. The cele
brated "Katie King," who appeared at seances in
connexion with the medium Florence Cook, and
during a period of two years or more was seen by
some hundreds of people — and especially studied
by Sir William Crookes — was photographed
several times under test conditions.1 Professor

1 See a long account in the Spiritualist Tor I5th May 1873 >
also given by F. d'Albe, op. cit. p. 220 et seq.

1 86

The Inner or Spiritual Body

Charles Richet, who when he first heard of
Crookes' conclusions was convulsed with laughter
over their supposed absurdity, afterwards con
fessed his error,1 for time after time he not only
saw a phantasm (" Beni Boa ") in connexion with
the Algerian medium Aisha, but obtained
photographs of the same.2 Dr. A. R. Wallace,
in a long note, pp. 190, 191 of his book, Miracles
and Modern Spiritualism, gives a careful descrip
tion of his own experiments in this line. Several
different figures were at different times photo
graphed in connexion with Mme. D'Esperance ;
and the very detailed account, with illustrations,
which she gives of these phenomena in ch. xxvii.
of her book, Shadowland, must give the un
believer pause. And so on.3 The evidence is so
abundant, and on the whole so well confirmed,
that we are practically now compelled to admit
(and this is the point in hand) that cloud-like
forms of human outline emanating from a
medium's or other person's living body may
at times be caught by the photographic plate.
And this is important because it removes the
phenomenon from the region of the fanciful or

1 See R. J. Thompson's Proofs of ^ Life after Death (1906).

2 See Phenomenes de la Villa Carmen, by Charles Richet,
Paris, 1902 ; also Lombroso, op. cit. pp. 194-96.

3 Mr. H. Carrington, in his Physical Phenomena of Spiritual
ism, has described in detail fraudulent methods of photography
with which he is well acquainted. Nevertheless he seems to
believe that some cases of 'spirit photography' are genuine,
and gives instances ; see his book already quoted Death, &=c. pp.
359 et seq. See also Mr. E. T. Bennett's book on Spiritualism,
with introduction by Sir Oliver Lodge, pp. 113-20.

187

The Drama of Love and Death

imaginative and gives it automatic and objective
registration.

That these forms occurring and occasionally
photographed in connexion with mediums are
independent ' spirits ' or souls is of course in no
way assumed. They may be such, or (what
seems more likely) they may be simply extensions
of the spiritual or inner body of the medium.
The point that interests us here is that their
appearance in either case points to the actual
existence of such an inner body, capable of being
extruded from the gross body, and of becoming
the seat and manifestation of intelligence. Further
than that we need not go at present.

But it will be objected, if the inner or spiritual
body is, as has just been supposed, of such a subtle
and tenuous nature as to be in itself quite invisible,
what connexion can this have with phantoms
that can be photographed, or that can be seen, or
that can be actually touched and handled ? This
question — the question as to how an excessively
rare and tenuous and invisible being may gradu
ally condense and materialise so as to come first
within the region of photographic activity, and
then within the region of normal visibility, and
so on into audible and tangible and material
existence and operation, I shall discuss more at
length in the next chapter. Suffice it here to
point out that the general consensus of thoughtful
opinion on this subject at the present time points
to a probable condensation of some kind, and
utilisation of such suitable materials as may be to

188

The Inner or Spiritual Body

hand, by which the subtle inner body gradually
clothes itself in an outer and denser garment.
Whether with Fournier d'Albe we suppose a
soul-like core to every single cell, or whether we
take a more diffused and general view, in any
case we seem compelled to believe that our
actual bodies are carried on by organising powers
distributed in centres throughout the body.1 If
by any means these vital centres were separated
from the gross body, it would still seem natural
for them to continue their organising activity
whenever they were surrounded with suitable
material. And if, as seems likely, in the case of
mediums and seances, a considerable quantity of
loose floating organic material is commonly
evolved from the bodies of those present, such
effluences might be quickly caught up and con
densed by any such vital centres present into
more or less visible forms and figures.

If, by way of illustration, we were to suppose
an army-corps to represent a gross body, then
the officers, from corporals to general, would
represent the inner or organising soul ; and all
these officers together, though really being a
'body,' would constitute a mass so small and so
scattered compared with the mass-body of the
army, that in comparison they would be invisible,
and might easily all pass out and away from the
army without being observed. They might pass
out and conceivably organise another army-corps
elsewhere ; but the result on that left behind (of

1 See The Art of Creation^ ch. vi.
189

The Drama of Love and Death

which they were really the soul) would soon be
seen in its complete disintegration and collapse.
Now suppose further that in a neighboring nation,
across the frontier, there was a' great deal of
disaffection existing — that large masses of the
people there were out of touch with their own
Government (the case of a medium in trance),
and waiting for some one to come and organise
them. Then it is easy to imagine the small
group of officers aforesaid passing across the
frontier (quite unseen and unobserved) and
immediately on doing so finding ready to their
hands a quantity of material just suitable for
their activity. In a wonderfully short time the
various officers would begin to organise the
various departments of a new army-corps ; the
people would flock to their standard. Even in
a day or two the faint outline of a new political
form or movement would show itself; and in a
week this might become substantial enough to
exhibit serious manifestations of force !

The general application of this to the question
in hand is obvious enough. But there is
another point which it illustrates — a point which
we have raised before. I am convinced that
science will never yield any very fruitful under
standing of the world, until it recognises that
life and intelligence (of course in the broadest
signification) pervade all the phenomena of
Nature. It is perfectly useless to try to explain
human development, human destiny, mental
activity, the forces of nature, and so forth, in

190

The Inner or Spiritual Body

terms of dead matter. No explanation of such
a kind could possibly be satisfying. And more
and more it is becoming clear that even what
we call the inorganic world is as subtle and
swift in its responses as what we call the organic.
Many difficulties must inevitably arise in any
attempted solution of the problem before us—
that problem which is generally denoted by " the
nature of the soul and its relation to the body " ;
but we shall never arrive at any harmonious view
of the whole question until we are persuaded,
and practically assume, that life and intelligence
in some degree are characteristic of all that
we call ' matter ' as well as of all we call
mind, and pervade the whole structure of the
universe. We shall then see that the forces, for
instance, which organise and direct the human
body, even down to its minutest parts, are prob
ably just as individual and intelligent in their
action as those (to take the example just given)
which organise and direct an army-corps.

191

CHAPTER XI

ON THE CREATION AND MATERIALISATION
OF FORMS

I HAVE suggested more than once, in preceding
chapters of this book, and in The Art of Creation
and elsewhere, that in the ordinary evolution of
thought, in dreams, in trance and in other

O '

psychic states, we are witness of a process which
is continually and eternally going on, by which
the faintest invisible forms and outlines, the
merest cloud-currents of the inner soul, gradu
ally condense themselves, pass into visibility,
tangibility, and so forth, and (if the process is
continued) ultimately take their place among the
substantial things of the outer world.

Hitherto this thought has been applied in
certain departments of enquiry, but I am of
impression that its considerable and world-wide
significance has been missed. Freud, in his

Traumdeutung) insists that behind the dream, and
inspiring its action and symbolism there always
lurks an emotion, a desire, a wish. And Have-
lock Ellis (though with due caution) corrobo
rates this. He speaks * of " the controlling power
of emotion on dream-ideas," and says, " the

1 The World of Dreams (Constable, 1911), p. 107.
192

On the Materialisation of Forms

fundamental source of our dream-life may be said
to be emotion." That is, an emotion (from
whatever source) arises in the mind. Vague and
cloudlike at first, it presently takes form, and
(if in sleep) clothes itself with the imagery of a
dream, which becomes at last vivid and dramatic
and real, to a degree which astounds us. But
dream-life is only a paraphrase, so to speak, of
waking life — a phase largely corresponding to
the waking life of children 1 and animals ; and
in waking life the same thing happens. A wish
or desire appears in the background of the mind ;
it moves forward and becomes a definite thought
and a plan ; then it moves forward again and be
comes an action ; the action creates a result ; and
the desire finally establishes itself or its image in
the actual world. These emotions and desires
and the images which spring from them have a
certain vitality and growth-power of their own.
The figures in dreams move of themselves and
concatenate with each other of their own accord
—much as the figures do in a drama, as
Coleridge long ago observed — and as the waking
thoughts of all of us do, when we leave them
a little to themselves and to go with loose rein.
More than that ; in some cases waking thoughts
or passions become powerful enough to take
possession of the whole man and embody them
selves in his deeds — sometimes to heroic, some
times to criminal ends. Or, taking possession
of portions of the man, they precipitate conflict
1 The World of Dreams, p. 190.

193 N

The Drama of Love and Death

within him. The dramatic quality of dreams
is evidently due to the different figures or
incidents of the dream being inspired by different
qualities or experiences of the dreamer ; and in
the waking man the same process may lead to
tragic struggles and disintegrations of personality.
In hysteric patients, where the central controlling
power is weak, the very thought or fear of a
disease may seize upon a certain centre in the
body and simulate there all the symptoms of that
disease ; or a mental image may seize upon a
certain portion of the brain, and break up the
personality with strange new manifestations.

In all these cases, and scores of others which
we cannot consider now, the same action is taking
place — by which invisible psychic and spiritual
forces, for good or evil, are ever pressing forward
into the manifest, and condensing themselves into
visible and even tangible forms, or taking pos
session of existing forms for the purpose of ex
pression and manifestation. And here' we have
(as I think will be seen one day) the whole
rationale of Creation — we have the conception
which brings into line the phenomena of the
visible and material world and their genesis, with
the genesis of thoughts in our own minds, and
their passage into visibility and expression ; we
have the conception which unites the mental and
material, and which makes the whole Creation
luminous with meaning. Especially is this ob
vious to-day, when the theory of electrons is
introducing us to a world as far finer and subtler

194

On the Materialisation of Forms

than the atom, as the atom is finer and subtler
than the tangible world of our experience ; and
is suggesting that these finest states of matter
are of the nature of electrical charges, which,
again, are quite analogous to mental states.1
Thus we have, almost forced upon us as the
key to the creation of visible forms, the con
ception of a process of condensation by which
the most subtle thought and emotion does in
course of time (brief or lengthy) tend to manifest
itself in material shape, and may ultimately take
on the most persistent and quasi-indestructible
forms.

Reverting, then, to the subject of last chapter,
we see that a ' spiritual ' body — that is, a material
body of a texture so fine and so swiftly plastic
as to be the analogue of thought — is a conception
quite in line with the conclusions of modern
science ; and that granted the existence of such
a thing, 'it is quite in line also to conclude that
it would tend towards condensation and mani
festation in grosser and more visible form. I
gave in that chapter some general outline of how
such condensation might take place. I now pro
pose to consider this process more in detail, and
to give some evidence as to its actually taking
place.

There is something perhaps a little comic

about the idea of spirit photography — something

which has thus helped to retard its acceptance.

1 See Electrons, by Sir Oliver Lodge (George Bell, 1910).

195

The Drama of Love and Death

The busy photographer with his camera is so
banal, and sometimes so obnoxious, a figure,
that to think of him photographing a ghost,
or the spirit of a dead relation, verges on bathos
or the burlesque. Nevertheless, Nature does not
attend to our canons in such matters, and in
reality the thing is perfectly feasible and in
order. It is well known that the photographic
plate is most sensitive to the violet end of the
spectrum — that it is this end which has the
actinic quality. Moreover, it is known that the
actinic quality extends beyond this end, and that
there are ultra-violet rays which we cannot see,
and which yet are photographically powerful.
But the violet rays, as is also well known, are
those whose light-waves are smallest — being only
about half the size of the red waves ; 1 and the
ultra-violet rays are still smaller. Consequently,
by means of the violet end of the spectrum,
information can be got about small objects and
infinitesimal details which would elude the more
ordinary light. A particle, in fact, may be so
small that it would reflect the violet waves, while
it would be unable to reflect the red — just as a
boat floating on the water will reflect and turn
back tiny ripples, while it will simply be tossed
about by good-sized waves. Advantage has been
taken of this in microscopy, and by ingenious
arrangements photographs of objects under the

1 Say, in millionths of an inch, fifteen millionths for the
violet (at the dark line A), and twenty-seven millionths for the
red (at B.).

196

On the Materialisation of Forms

microscope can now be taken by ultra-violet light,
so as to show the very minutest details.

The application of this to the question before
us is clear. If there be a spiritual body, com
posed of particles so infinitesimal as to be — to
begin with — far beyond the limits of visibility,
yet gradually condensing and accreting to them
selves other and subsidiary particles, there might
come a time when such a cloud-form would
approach the limit of visibility— the molecules of
which it was composed having grown so far.
It would be perfectly natural, then, for a body
composed of such molecules to come into the
region of possible photography in the camera
through the ultra-violet rays before it came into
the region of visibility to the human eye by
means of ordinary light. And thus the seeming
paradox may be accounted for — of the appearance
of spirit-forms, or even thought-forms, on the
photographic plate which are not yet discernible
by the eye. At a later stage of materialisation
the form may of course yield an image both to
the eye and to the camera.1

Again, in this connexion, it is often urged
against the reality of spirit-forms, ghosts, and
so forth, that they cannot bear a strong light ;
and this is held to dispose of all their claims
for consideration. But what has just been said
shows that on the contrary such an effect is just
what might be expected. The delicate growing
structure, whose particles were just large enough

1 See, for examples, ch. x. pp. 186-7, supra.
197

The Drama of Love and Death

to reflect the smaller light-waves, might easily be
broken up and quite disintegrated by the larger
and more powerful waves of a strong glare —
just as, in fact, our forms, which can endure
light, are broken up and disintegrated by the
still larger waves of intense heat. Katie King,
who, as before mentioned, appeared so many times
in connexion with the medium Florence Cook,
was frequently seen to fade away if the light
was too strong. " At the earlier seances she
could only come out of the cabinet for a few
seconds at a time, once or twice during the
seance ; she had to go back quickly into the
cabinet to gather fresh power from her medium,
saying that the strong and unaccustomed bril
liancy of the light made her ' melt quite away.' " l
And Nepenthes, that finely formed and beautiful
figure which appeared in connexion with Mme.
D'Esperance, was more than once seen, by a large
company assembled, to walk by the side of the
medium up to the open French window at the
end of the room and then to disappear as she
came into the full daylight.2

Photographs, it may be noticed, of forms
appearing at seances, or in connexion with sitters,
vary from mere cloudlike masses without or
almost without shape to very distinct human
figures with much detail of feature and dress,3

1 See document signed by five responsible witnesses and
published in the Spiritualist of i5th May 1873.

2 See Matcrialisatio ns, by Mme. D'Esperance, a lecture given
in 1903 in London (Light Publishing Co.).

3 See illustrations in Shadowland, passim.

198

On the Materialisation of Forms

• — the same figure being often recognised in
various stages of clearness and definition. And
this is interesting because it entirely corroborates
the observations made in hundreds of seances,
and in other cases, in which a form is first dis
tinguished by the eye as a faintly luminous
cloud, and gradually grows in distinctness and
definition till it becomes visible in all detail, and
even tangible. Mme. D'Esperance, whose book,
Shadowland, should be read on account of its
intelligent handling and obvious sincerity, as well
as on account of the remarkable phenomena re
ported, describes (p. 151) the first occasion on
which a 'materialisation' appeared to her : — " One
evening, for some reason or other, we were sitting
without a lighted lamp. The daylight had not
faded when we commenced the sitting, but
though it grew dark no one suggested making
a light. Happening to glance over to the part
of the room where the shadows were deepest
it seemed to me that there was a curious cloudy
luminosity standing out distinct and clear from
the darkness. I watched it for a minute or
two without saying anything, wondering where
it came from and how it was caused. I thought
it must be a reflection from the street lamps
outside, though I had never seen it like that
before. While I watched, the luminous cloud
seemed to concentrate itself, become substantial,
and form itself into a figure of a child, illumi
nated as it were by daylight that did not shine
on it but, somehow, from within it — the darkness

199

The Drama of Love and Death

of the room seeming to act as a background,
throwing up by contrast every curve of the form
and every feature into strong relief." And in
another passage she says: — "As soon as I have
entered the mediumistic cabinet my first im
pression is of being covered with spider webs.
Then I feel that the air is filled with substance,
and a kind of white and vaporous mass, quasi-
luminous, like the steam from a locomotive, is
formed in front of the abdomen. After this
mass has been tossed and agitated in every way
for some minutes, sometimes even for half-an-
hour, it suddenly stops, and then out of it is
born a living being close by me." l

Another figure — that of Yolande (a young
woman) — is mentioned in the same book (p. 254)
as appearing again and again out of such a
filmy cloudy patch on the floor. Similarly,
Professor Richet noticed over and over again

1 The cobwebby sensation alluded to above is often men
tioned by other writers. Dr. J. Maxwell, in his Metaphysical
Phenomena (Duckworth, 1905), p. 329, describes a case in
which the radiation of force from the fingers of a medium was
great enough to move a small statuette five or six inches dis
tant, and absolutely without contact ; but the phenomenon was
accompanied by a " Spider-web or cobwebby sensation in the
hands." The author of that interesting book Interwoven
(Boston, 1905, copyright by S. L. Ford), speaks of "the
protoplasmic vapour of the inner man," and says (p. 15):" It is
this frail vapour which comes out at death and tries to form
into spiritual body" ; and again (p. 19) : " I notice at death that
nature draws or relieves the fire of the ganglia first and all the
lines of sensation in light which were running down the nerves.
It looks like white seaweed, very light and airy and fragile • . •
a veil of shining which is scarcely substance because of its
white fire."

200

On the Materialisation of Forms

the outgrowth of a figure (Beni Boa) from a
white cloud. " Near the cabinet we could see,
betwixt the curtain and the table, a whitish globe
forming, luminous, and rotating on the floor ;
from this globe Beni Boa sprang." The figure
would then walk round the room and disappear
again ; but after a time the white cloud would

O *

again form and Beni Boa reappear. And Pro
fessor Lombroso, alluding to this, says : l — " This
observation is of great importance, since it is
not possible to attribute to fraud the formation
of a luminous patch on the floor which trans
forms itself into a living being." Further,
Lombroso says : — " Five photographs were ob
tained at these sittings by magnesium and chlorate
of potash light, with a Kodak and with a Richard
stereoscopic apparatus simultaneously, which fact
excludes the possibility of photographic fraud ;
and all the plates were developed in Algeria by
an optician who was unaware of what had pre
ceded. On the plates appeared a tall figure
wrapped in a white mantle" (and similar to the
figure which the seven sitters present at the
seances had seen).

I have alluded to this cloud-formation before as
characteristic of an early stage of the appearance
of these figures, and as suggesting a process of
condensation going on. Lombroso, from various
considerations which he brings forward (p.

1 Fcnomeni ipnotici, &c. p. 195.

2 Namely, the highly charged electrostatic condition of
mediums, the luminous clouds floating near them, the stars and

20 1

The Drama of Love and Death

seems convinced that the phenomena of these
forms are largely connected with radio-activity. He
says : — " It would seem that these bodies belong
to that further state of matter, the radiant state,
which now at last has established a firm footing
in science — and which thus offers the only hypo
thesis which can reconcile the ancient and uni
versal belief in the persistence of some form of
life after death with the postulates of science
which maintain that without organ there can be
no function." This radio-active condition of
matter is of course that finest and most active
state represented by the electrons — in which each
electron is excessively minute,1 yet moves at
enormous speed, and carries with it an electric
charge. It connects itself with condensation in
this way, that "an electric charge assists vapour
to condense," and " where ions (i.e. positively or
negatively charged particles) are present in con
siderable numbers a thick mist will form when
ever the space is saturated with vapour." 2 And
Fournier d'Albe says : 3 — " In the physical theory
of ionisation and condensation we have become
familiar with the fact that the smallest charged
particles are the most effective promoters of con
densation. In fact, it would suffice to extract a

rays of light in their vicinity, the photographic activity of their
emanations, and so forth.

1 So much smaller than the atom that " if the earth repre
sented an electron, an atom would occupy a sphere with the
sun as centre and four times the distance of the earth as
radius." See Electrons, by Oliver Lodge, p. 98.

a Ibid. pp. 82, 83.

3 Immortality, p. 148.

202

On the Materialisation of Forms

very small proportion of the innumerable electrons
within the body to bring about a vigorous con
densation in the moist air around it."

Thus it is quite probable that the cloud-
formation, which in general precedes the manifes
tation of distinct figures, is due to condensation,
and in part at any rate to a condensation of water-
vapour on the accreting particles of the spirit-
body. And this is made the more probable by
the strong sensation of cold which so frequently
accompanies these appearances, and which is a com
mon accompaniment of condensation. Crookes,
in his Researches, emphasises this in connexion
with almost all the phenomena, and says * they
" are generally preceded by a peculiar cold air,
sometimes amounting to a decided wind. I have
had sheets of paper blown about by it, and a
thermometer lowered several degrees. On some
occasions . . . the cold has been so intense that
I could only compare it to that felt when the
hand has been within a few inches cf frozen
mercury." Some such sensation seems to be
quite a common experience, and the authoress
of Shadowland, speaking of her earlier sittings
(p. 228"), says : — " It was not long before the same
strange disturbances in the air began as on the
previous occasion. I felt my hair blown and
lifted by currents of air, and cool breezes played
about my face and hands."

Thus (with the corroborating evidence of

1 Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism (Burns, 1874),
p. 86.

203

The Drama of Love and Death

Crookes' thermometer) we may suppose that, after
all, the cold airs and shivering sensations which
seem so often to accompany apparitions may not
be merely subjective to the observer, but may be
real phenomena due to physical condensations
taking place in his immediate proximity. More
over, it has to be noted that the condensations
may not be merely of water-vapour, but of other
substances as well, namely (according to an opinion
now gaining ground), of fine matter or effluences
provided by the bodies of the sitters present (or
some of them) as well as by the body of the
medium. The passage last quoted from Shadow-
land continues : " then began a strange sensation,
which I had sometimes felt at seances. Frequently
I have heard it described by others as of cobwebs
being passed over the face, but to me, who watched
it curiously, it seemed that I could feel fine
threads being drawn out of the pores of my skin."
And in another passage x the same writer describes
the cloud which precedes a materialisation as
" a slightly luminous haze " which often appears
"about the head, shoulders, elbows and some
times the knees and feet (of the medium). Fre
quently it gathers slowly at the fingers, increasing
in density till it resembles a slight transparent
film of slightly luminous cotton wool." Further,
she explains that it goes on condensing till it
becomes cobwebby and perceptible to touch. The
evidence generally seems to show that these clouds
are of the nature of effluences from the medium

1 Materialisations, p. 12.
204

On the Materialisation of Forms

or other person present ; and the above quotation
affords corroboration of that view and makes
easily intelligible the great exhaustion from which
mediums often surfer on these occasions. It
suggests also that the condensation is by no means
of water-vapour only, but of other substances
drawn from the interior vitality of the persons
concerned, and necessary for the building up of
the apparitional form.

It is difficult in the case, for instance, of " Katie
King," who, as already said, appeared hundreds
of times during two or three years, or of Estella
Martha, who appeared to her husband during five
years and in 380 or more seances in connexion
with the medium Kate Fox,1 not to believe that
such figures are (as we should say) really the
individuals they profess to be, and not mere
thought-forms or images projected from the
medium's under-mind. But whichever view we
take, it is obvious that they are centres in some
degree, of intelligent force or vitality, centres
which, though in their essence rare and tenuous
as thought or feeling, succeed in clothing them
selves with a certain grade of corporeality by the
use of the materials at hand, and in so coming
into visible manifestation. And this general
view is confirmed by the fact, so often observed,
that when the same figure appears repeatedly, it
does, as time goes on, acquire skill and adroit
ness in carrying out the process of condensa
tion or whatever it is, which is concerned, and

1 R. Dale Owen, The Debatable Land, p. 399.
205

The Drama of Love and Death

consequently comes into manifestation and activity
more quickly and decisively. Also, it may be
noted, and has often been observed (as in the
case of the said Estella Martha and many others),
that by practice the figure attains the power of
enduring strong light — that is, its state of con
densation reaches a point of solidity almost
comparable with that of our tissues, which are not
as a rule disintegrated by light.

The radio-activity of the ' inner being ' also
helps to explain the extraordinary manifestations
of sheer physical force in these connexions.
Some of these manifestations have been so
astonishing, that that fact alone has caused them
to be disbelieved ; but though, of course, fraud
has played a part in such phenomena, and has
to be guarded against, it is now quite evident
that in a multitude of cases fraud does not enter
at all.

Eusapia Paladino, for instance — though cap
able of little fraudulences — was obviously the
seat of extraordinary powers not to be explained
by these. Mr. Carrington, who made a special
study of this medium, and who (as I have said
before) has also made a special study of fraudu
lent methods in so-called spiritualism, vouches
most strongly for the great exhibitions of inex
plicable force in her vicinity — especially perhaps
in the way of kvitations. He says: — "Every
one who has studied Eusapia's phenomena knows
that practically every seance (for some reason)
commences with table-levitations — this, whether

206

On the Materialisation of Forms

they are wanted or not ! It seems the necessary
programme, and it is almost invariably carried out.
Seeing them time after time, one can obtain a
very fair idea of their nature and reality. And
I may say that I now consider these levitations as
well established as any other physical facts. They
are not open to the objection to which most
psychical phenomena are subjected — that they
cannot be repeated or induced and studied experi
mentally, as one would study other physical facts
— for they can be induced and studied in just
this laboratory manner. I have probably seen
several hundreds of these levitations now, under
every conceivable condition and in excellent light,
and I consider them so far established that, as
Count Solovovo said, " the burden of proof is now
on the man who asserts that they are not real,
not upon the man who asserts that they are"
These are pretty strong words, and by a very
responsible observer ! And then Mr. Carrington
proceeds with a detailed account of these and
other physical phenomena.1

Some years ago, the reports and accounts of
such phenomena were generally at once dismissed
as absurd and incredible ; but by a remarkable
coincidence the last few years have seen the
wonderful development of the science of radio
activity — dating from the epoch-making experi
ments of Crookes, in 1879 and earlier. These
experiments, curiously enough, were worked out
during much the same period as Crookes'

1 See Annals of Psychical Science, Report 1910-11.

207

The Drama of Love and Death

researches into spiritualistic phenomena, and have
led to the shedding of much light upon the
latter. For the new science developed from
them, and already more or less popularised,1
compels us to suppose that the most enormous
forces lurk all around, within the very structure
of the atom itself — which of course is totally
invisible to our eyes. The new facts observed,
with regard to radium and other such substances,
seem to compel the supposition that each atom
is composed of an immense number (say 100,000)
of highly charged electrical particles moving each
with huge velocity — a velocity at any rate com
parable to that of light. The dissociation of
such atoms and the liberation of their constituent
particles develops a fabulous energy. When it
is calculated that one gramme or fifteen grains
of matter (say the weight of thirty postage
stamps) moving with the speed of light, would
have energy enough to lift the British Navy to
the top of Ben Nevis (Crookes) ; or that one
milligramme (say the sixty-sixth part of a grain
of wheat) at the same speed would represent the
energy of fifteen million foot-tons (Lodge) ; or
when, according to J. J. Thomson, the combined
speed and mass of the electrons within such a
milligramme of matter would total up to the
work represented by a hundred million kilogram-
metres ; 2 then we can at any rate see — whatever

1 See Gustave Le Bon's Evolution of Matter (Walter Scott
Publishing Co., 1907).

2 See Le Bon, p. 45.

208

On the Materialisation of Forms

small variations there may be in the estimates —
how immense are the potentialities of the tiniest
points of matter ; how each minutest atom
comprehends, as Shelley says, "a world of loves
and hatreds" (i.e. positive and negative electric
charges) ; we realise that no manifestations of
unexpected power are per se incredible ; and we
are indeed rather inclined to wonder how it is
that these great inter-atomic energies do not
more often force themselves on our attention !

It is evident that any such condition of being
as we have supposed in the case of the 'inner'
or ' spiritual ' body, might afford means for the
liberation — even from a single atom — of forces
amply sufficient for the most * miraculous ' phe
nomena ; and we are led to wonder and to ask
whether it may not be the case that, after all,
our gross bodies are really a hindrance rather
than a help — whether it may not be true that
the powers we could exert without them and
independently of muscles and sinews and hands
and feet would be far greater than those we
actually do exert by means of these organs and
appendages ; whether, in fact, our gross bodies
do not exercise a limiting effect, confining our
activities to certain very clearly specified direc
tions, and within certain very definite bounds ?
At any rate, this point of view is worth con
sidering.

Certainly the well-established facts of telepathy,
and the equally well-established facts of the pro
jection of phantoms from persons dying, or passing

209 O

The Drama of Love and Death

through great danger, to friends even at a great
distance, seem to show that the inner self of
one person can send out rays or in some way
impress itself on the inner self of another far-off
person ; * and this, under the theory of electrons
moving at prodigious speed, seems not impossible.
For though there is a difficulty in supposing
ordinary physical vibrations or radiations to reach
effectively from one person to another (say a
thousand miles away) on account of the law of
space itself, which makes such radiations diminish
in intensity as the square of the distance increases,
yet in the case of electrical radiations it seems
possible to suppose two people related to each
other as positive and negative poles — in which
case the radiations of electric charges would pass

along lines connecting the two, and with com-

. . f .

paratively little loss of intensity. Our present

rather crude and lumbering bodies probably im
pede these subtle exertions of force ; and the
fact (already noted once or twice) of the greater
activity of people in the telepathic or phantasmo-
genetic directions, when they are themselves out
wardly in a dying or exhausted condition, seems
to point to a considerable liberation of these
powers after death.

On the other hand, the well-established facts
of perceptivity at a great distance, or without
the mediation of the gross body and the usual

1 For cases of hypnotic trance induced in one person by the
telepathic action of another person at a distance, see Myers,
op. cit. p. 1 60.

210

On the Materialisation of Forms

end-organs, point in the same direction. Con
siderable investigations have been made in this
subject ; and not only is the evidence for occasional
clairvoyance at a distance well established, but
there are curious cases in which the faculty
of sight or of hearing seems to be transferred
from its natural organ to some other part of
the body, as of seeing with the knee, or the
stomach, or the finger tips. Myers gives con
siderable attention to this subject, and thinks that
Professor Fontan's experiments1 "cannot lightly
be set aside " ; while Lombroso quotes an hysteri
cal patient of his own, a girl of fourteen, who
lost the sight of her eyes, but was able to read
perfectly with the lobe of her left ear ! Later
on, in the same patient, the sense of smell
concentrated itself in the heel of her foot ! Mrs.
Piper, as is well known commonly raises her
hand for the sitter to speak into, as if it were
her ear. And in cases of somnambulism the
sleepwalker will sometimes move securely through
difficult or dangerous places with eyes absolutely
closed. All these things seem to point to an
aboriginal power of perception independent of
the end-organs. It is obvious that if in the
course of evolution our present faculties of sight,
hearing, and so forth have been developed from
the diffused sensitivity of an amoeba or some
such creature, then those faculties must have
existed, in their undifferentiated state, in the
amceba ; or, to put the matter another way,
1 Revue Philosopliique, August 1887.

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The Drama of Love and Death

the faculty of sight clearly does not reside in
the cornea of the eye, or in the crystalline lens,
or even in the retina itself; which are merely
an apparatus evolved for dealing with the details
of the matter. The retina catches the light-
disturbance, and the optic nerve conveys it to
the brain, and the brain-cells are agitated by it ;
but where does sight come in ? At some point,
doubtless, the agitations of the brain-cells or
of their internal molecules are seen and inter
preted ; but the being that sees and interprets
them may (we had almost said must) be capable
of directly seeing and interpreting similar agita
tions in the outer world — that is, it may or must
by its nature be capable of seeing the events of
the outer world without the mediation of the
end-organs or the brain. Frederick Myers, dealing
with this subject, says : — " I start from the thesis
that the perceptive power within us precedes and
is independent of the specialised sense-organs,
which it has developed for earthly use. ' It is
the mind that sees and the mind that hears, the
other things are blind and deaf.' ' He thinks
that in the development or unfolding of life
on our planet "certain sensibilities got themselves
defined and stereotyped upon the organism by
the evolution of end-organs. Others failed to
get thus externalised ; but may, for aught we
know, persist nevertheless in the central organs."

1 Myers, op. cit. p. 149.

2 Ibid. p. 144. See also Henri Bergson's L! Evolution
Crtatrice, p. 102, on the canalisation of the senses.

212

On the Materialisation of Forms

It is evident — however we may explain the
matter — that activities and sensibilities do persist
and manifest themselves in the human organism
quite independent of the ordinary and stereo
typed end-organs, and this fact must go far to
persuade us, not only that there is an inner, a
more subtle, and a more durable body than
that which we usually recognise, but that in
some respects this latter body is a limitation
and a hindrance to the activity of the former,
and to the swiftness and range of the percep
tions of the soul.

What, then, it will naturally be asked, is the
object or purpose or use of our incarnation in
this grosser body? — why, if there is such an
ethereal or spiritual frame within, should it
thus tend to accrete denser particles upon itself
and ultimately to clothe itself in a vesture of
so opaque and material a nature ? It would
be rash to attempt to answer so profound a
question offhand — off one's own bat as it were ;
and still more rash perhaps to accept any of
the ready-made answers which are offered in
such profusion, and in so many different jargons
and lingos, by the sects and schools, from the
Gnostics and Theosophists to the most philistine
of the chapels and churches. Yet if one may
venture a suggestion, it would seem rather likely
that the object and purpose and use of this
process by which the soul is entangled in matter,
and its operation and perception so strangely

213

The Drama of Love and Death

hampered and limited, is — limitation ; that limita
tion itself and even hindrance are part and parcel
of the great scheme of the soul's deliverance.
But the further consideration of this I will defer
to a later chapter.1

1 See chapter xiii. p. 243.

214

CHAPTER XII

REINCARNATION

THERE is a good deal of talk indulged in, on
the subject of Reincarnation — talk of a rather
cheap character. One does not quite see what
is the use of saying that the ego will be reincar
nated again some day, unless one has some sort
of idea what one means by the ego, and unless
one has some understanding of the sense in
which the word ' reincarnation ' is used. If it
is meant that your local and external self, approxi
mately as you and your friends know it to-day-
including dress, facial outline, professional skill,
accomplishments, habits of mind and body, in
terests and enthusiasms — is going to repeat itself
again in five or five hundred years, or has already
appeared in this form in the past ; one can only
say "impossible!" and "I trust not!" For
all these things depend on date, locality, heredity,
surrounding institutions, social habits, current
morality, and so forth, which — though they have
certainly played their part in the spirit's growth

must infallibly be different at any other period

(short of the whole universe repeating itself).
And anyhow to have them repeated again da
capo at some future time would be terribly dull

215

The Drama of Love and Death

But if you say " Of course I don't mean anything
so silly as that" it becomes incumbent on you
to say what you do mean.

Supposing, for instance, you had been planked
down a baby in the Arabian desert, and grown
up to maturity or middle age there, instead of
where you are, would any of your present-day
friends recognise you ? Where would be your
charming piano-playing, your excellent cricket,
your rather sloppy water-colour painting, your
up-to-dateness in the theatrical world? Where
your morality (with three wives of course), or
your religion (something about 'Christian dogs'),
or where your British sang froid and impeccability?
And if it is obvious that in such a case as this
you would, owing to the changed conditions,
be changed out of all recognition, much more —
one might say — would this be the case if you
had been born five hundred years ago, or were
to be born again five hundred years hence.
Your whole outlook on life, and its whole
impress on you, would be different.

Of course I am not meaning, by these remarks,
to say that reincarnation is in itself impossible
or absurd ; that would be prejudging the question.
All I mean at present is that if we are going
to study this subject, or theorise upon it, it
is really necessary to define in some degree the
terms which we use. I do not say that you,
the reader, might not be reincarnated, but I
think it is clear that if you were, we should
have a good deal of trouble in following and

216

Reincarnation

finding you ! It is clear that the you, so reap
pearing, would not be your well-known local
and external self, but some deep nucleus, difficult
perhaps for your best friend to recognise, and
possibly even unknown or unrecognised by your
self at present. And similarly of some friend
that you love for a thousand little tricks and
ways. We all have such friends, and at times
cherish a sentimental romance of their being
restored to us in some future ason habited in
their old guise and with their well-worn frocks
and coats. But surely it is no good playing
at hide-and-seek like that. The common diffi
culties about the conventional heaven — the diffi
culty about meeting your old friend who used
to be so good at after-dinner stories, about
meeting him with a harp in his hand and sitting
on a damp cloud — is no whit the less a difficulty
whatever future world may be the rendezvous.
He would be changed (externally) and we should
be changed, and it might well happen that if
we did seem to recall any former intimacy we
should both feel like strangers, and be as shy
and tentative in our approaches to each other
as school-children.

What do we mean by the letter " I " ? and
what do we mean by the word Reincarnation ?
These two questions wait for a reply.

The first is a terribly difficult question. It
lies (though neglected by the philosophers them
selves) at the root of all philosophy. Perhaps
really all life and experience are nothing but an

217

The Drama of Love and Death

immense search for the answer. What do we
mean by the Ego ? It is a sort of fundamental
question, which it might be supposed would
precede all other questions, but which as a
matter of fact seems to be postponed to all
others, and is the last to be solved. All we
can at the outset be sure of in the way of
answer is the enormous extent and depth of
the being we are setting out to define.
We sometimes think of the ego as a mere
point of consciousness, or we think of the
ordinary self of daily life as a fragile and
ephemeral entity bounded by a few bodily
tissues and a few mental views and habits.
But even the slight discussion of the subject
in former chapters of this book (chapters
vi., vii., and so forth) has revealed to us
the vast underlying stores and faculties which
must be included — the wonderful powers of
memory, the subtle capacities of perception
at a distance, or without the usual organs of
sight and hearing, the power of creating
images out of the depths of one's mind, and
of impressing them telepathically upon others,
the faculty of clairvoyance in past and future
time, and so forth. The more we try to fathom
this ego, with which we supposed ourselves so
familiar, the more we are amazed at its laby
rinthine profundity, and the more we are as
tonished to think that we should ever have
ventured to limit it to such a petty formula and
conventional symbol as we commonly do — not

218

Reincarnation

only in our judgment of friends, but even in
our estimate of ourselves.

Reincarnation, as we have already said, can
hardly be the reappearance, in a new life on
earth (or even in some other sphere), of the very
local and superficial traits which we know so
well in ourselves and our friends — which are
mainly a response to local and superficial con
ditions, and which mainly constitute what we
call our personalities. If reincarnation does occur,
it must obviously consist in the reappearance or
remanifestation of some such very interior self
as we have just spoken of — some deep individu
ality (as opposed to personality), some divine
asonian soul, some offshoot perhaps of an age
long enduring Race-soul, or World-self — and in
that sort of sense only shall I use the word in
future.

In that sense the idea is feasible and illumina
tive. It explains the obvious limitations and
localism of our personalities, as being more or
less passing and temporary embodiments of our
true selves ; and it represents the latter as im
mense store-houses of experience from all manner
of places and times, and similarly as centres of
world-activity operating in different fields of
time and space. At the same time, it presents
various difficulties. For one thing, it poses the
difficulty that for each of us this vast interior
being is, as a rule, so deeply buried that both
oneself and one's friends are only faintly conscious
— if at all — of its true outline. And if one does

219

The Drama of Love and Death

not recognise this being, of what use is it to us ?
It is true that we sometimes meet people who at
first sight give us a strong impression of far-back
intimacy ; but this is only a vague impression and
hardly sufficient to afford proof of pre-existence.
The only way of meeting this difficulty seems to
be to suppose, as residing in this inner being or
true self, another order of consciousness, faint
intimations of which we even now have, and by
which, as it grows and develops, we may some
day clearly recognise our true selves and true
nature.

Another difficulty is that (as already said) for
any satisfactory sense of survival continuity of
memory is needed ; and we should have to suppose
that the memory of each earth-life was continued
into and stored up in this deeper soul or aeonian
self. Memory would not normally pass from
one embodiment or incarnation to another, but
each stream would flow into the central self and
there be stored. And I think we may admit
that this is by no means impossible. Indeed there
are not a few facts (some already mentioned)
with regard to the recovery of memory which
make the matter probable. Though any given
earth-life in a given form could not be repeated,
the memory of such an earth-life, fresh and clear,
may survive for an indefinite time in the crystal
mirror of the deeper consciousness.1 And it is

1 It seems probable, from many considerations, that at a
certain depth within us — in the region of what has been called
the cosmic consciousness — memory does in nowise fade, and

220

Reincarnation

perhaps allowable to suppose that in this way,
and with the lifting of the opaque veil of our
present consciousness, we may some day come
clearly into the presence of friends we have lost.

Here again, however, one has to be on one's
guard. The mere fact of remembering (or think
ing one remembers), in this our terrestrial life
and with our terrestrial consciousness, some
detail or other of a previous terrestrial life, proves
little — for, for aught we know, quite apart
from our psychic selves, a streak of memory of
more physical origin from some ancestor may
have come down even several generations, and
may be surviving in one's brain.1 Indeed it is
extremely probable that all organic matter carries
memory with it, and not unlikely that inorganic
matter does so too. If you thought, for instance,
that you remembered seeing Charles the First
beheaded — if you had a rather distinct picture in
your mind of the scene at Whitehall, which you
afterwards found by investigation to be corrobor-

ated in its details, you might at first jump to the
conclusion that you had really lived at that time,
and witnessed the scene. But after all it might
merely be that an ancestor of yours had been

the past is always present, but, as Bergson says, the ordinary
conscious intellect tends to only select from this mass what is
needed for impending action, and has consequently become
limited by this tendency.

1 See the work of Richard Semon on the mneme as a main
factor of organic life (Die Mneme als erhaltendes Prinsip im
WccJisel dcs organiscJien GescheJicns, Leipzig, 1904) ; also
quoted by Auguste Forel, The Sexual Question (English
edition, Rebman, 1908), pp. 14-17.

221

The Drama of Love and Death

there, and that the vividly impressed picture had
somehow persevered in some subterranean channel
of memory and emerged again in your mind.
Even then you might contend that since it was
your memory, you must have been there — or at
any rate some fraction of yourself in the ancestor,
which now has become incorporated in your per
sonality. There are a good many stories of this
kind going about, which point to the possibility
of the transmission of shreds of remembrance
through hereditary channels, and suggest the idea
of an active Race-memory, or Earth-memory,
in itself continuous — a storehouse of experiences,
but fed continually by the individuals of the race,
and coruscating forth again in other individuals.1
Indeed one can hardly withhold belief in the
existence of such a larger life, or identity, ' rein
carnated ' if one likes to use the expression, in
thousands or millions of individuals ; but to be
satisfactorily assured of the reincarnation of one
distinct and individual person is another thing,
and would almost demand that there should be
forthcoming not only shreds and streaks of
remembrance, but a pretty continuous and con
sistent memory of a whole former life.

Thus the whole question which we are discussing
is baffled and rendered the more complex by the
doubt as to what is meant by the word " I." It is
clear, from what we have already said, that one
person may use it to indicate ( i ) the quite local and
superficial self ; while another may have in mind
1 See An Adventure, Macmillan & Co., 1911.

227

Reincarnation

(2) a much profounder being (the underlying
self) whose depths and qualities we have by no
means fathomed ; while others, again, may be
thinking (3) of the self of the Race or the Earth,
or (4) the All-self of the universe.

I present these questions and doubts, not — as
I have said — for the purpose of discrediting the
possibility of Reincarnation, but by way of show
ing how complex and difficult the problem is,
and how much some exact thought and definition
is needed in dealing with it. At the same time,
in pleading for exact thought I would also urge
that in avoiding the whirlpools of sentimentalism
we should be careful not to fall upon the rocks
of a dry and barren formalism. Systems of hard
and fast doctrines on these subjects — even though
issued with all the authority of ancient tradition,
and enunciated in a long-dead jargon — are the
most unfruitful and uninspiring of things. They
seem to contain no germ of vitality and are liable
to paralyse the mind that feeds upon them.
Besides the drawback — as I have pointed out
before— that all such systems are inevitably false.
Nature does not, in any department, work upon
a cut-and-dried system ; and while at the outset
of an investigation we often seem to discern
something of that kind, further study invariably
discloses an astounding variety of order and
method. It may be well therefore to be prepared
to find a ^ general principle of Reincarnation in
operation in the world, but worked out, in actual
fact, in a great variety of ways.

223

The Drama of Love and Death

Certainly there comes into our minds, at a
certain grade of their development, a deep per
suasion of the truth in some sense, of reincarnation
—that " the Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
hath had elsewhere its setting." It blossoms,
this persuasion, in a curious way, in the very
depths of the mind ; and in moments of inner
illumination, or deep feeling, is discerned in a
way that seems to leave no room for doubt. At
the same time, it not only has this intuitive sanc
tion, but it commends itself also to the intellect,
because at a certain stage we perceive very clearly
both how vast is the whole curve of progress
which the soul has to cover from its first birth
to its final liberation, and how tiny is the arc
represented by a single lifetime — the two thoughts
almost compelling us to believe in a succession of
lives as the only explanation or solution. We
are compelled towards a practical belief in Rein
carnation, and yet (as above) we have to confess
that our conception of what it really is, or what
we mean by it, is only vague. This, however,
is no more than what happens in a hundred other
cases. The young bird starts building a nest for
the first time, driven by some strange instinct to
do so, and yet it can only have a very dim notion
of the meaning and uses the nest will subserve
when finished. And we found our lives on deep
intuitions — of social solidarity, of personal re
sponsibility, of free will, and so forth — and yet
it is only later and by degrees that we learn

what these things actually mean.

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Reincarnation

Referring, then, to the four alternative forms
of the self given two or three pages back, and
taking the last first, we may say definitely, I
think, that as far as the self of each one of us is
identified (4) with the All-self of the universe,
its reincarnation is assured. Its reincarnation
indeed is perpetual, inexhaustible, multitudinous
beyond words, filling all space and time. Though
the consciousness of this self is deeply buried,
yet it is there, in each one of us. Occasionally —
if even only for a moment — it rises to the surface,
bringing a sense of splendour and of joy inde
scribable — the absolute freedom and password of
all creation, the recognition of oneself every
where and in all forms. But this phase of the
self — I need hardly say — is for the most part
hidden ; and more common is it perhaps for the
Race-self (3) to rise into our consciousness with
more or less distinct assurance that we live again
and are re-embodied in other members of the race
to which we belong. The common life of the race
carries us away and overmasters us with a strange
sense of identity and community of being.
Heroisms and devotions — as of men dying for
their country, or bees for their hive — spring from
this ; and superb intoxications of joy. The
whole of the life of primitive races and tribes, and
the life of the animals and insects, illustrates it — in
warfares, migrations, crusades, frantic enthusiasms,
mad festivals — the genius of the race rushing on

• O

from point to point, inspiring its children, incarnat
ing itself without end in successive individuals.

225 p

The Drama of Love and Death

It is not so uncommon, I say, for us to be able
to identify ourselves with this great Race-self,
and to feel its thrill and pulse within our veins.
And it might well be thought that with these
two forms of reincarnation (3) and (4) and the
immense joy they bring, we should be content :
even as all the tribes of the animals and the
angels are content.

But it seems that man — when the civilisation-
period sets in, and after that — is not content.
The little individual soul, now first coming to
the consciousness of its own separateness, sets up
a claim for an immortality and a reincarnation of
its very own — apart from the Race-self, apart
even from the Divine self. It demands that its
ego should continue indefinitely into the farthest
fields of Time — a separate entity, perpetually re-
embodied. Can such a claim — in the light of
what has been said above — be possibly conceded?

Certainly not. We have seen the absurdity
of supposing that the local and superficial self
(i) can ever recur again or be re-embodied in
that form, except as a mere matter of memory (or
possibly of a repetition of the whole universal
order). And as to the underlying self (2), what
ever exactly it may be, there are a thousand
reasons for seeing that as a wholly separate entity
the same must be true of that. I may refer the
reader to The Art of Creation, the whole argument
of which is to show that even the mere attempt to
think of itself as a separate entity involves the human

soul in hopeless confusion and disintegration ;

226

Reincarnation

and I may remind the reader that we know
of nothing in the whole universe which is thus
separate and apart, and that the conception,
whether from a physical point of view or a
psychological point of view, is impossible to main
tain. That being so, there remains only to con
sider the possibility of the underlying self or
individual soul being re-embodied — not as an
absolutely separate entity, but as affiliated to
some greater Life which shall afford the basis of
successive incarnations. The problem is narrowed
down, practically to the question whether the
individual may not obtain some kind of individual
reincarnation through the Race-self, or possibly
through the All-self of the universe.

And here I will state what I personally think
and believe about this problem, leaving the
reasons for the present to commend themselves.
I think that in the early stages — in animal and
primitive human life — the Race-self is para
mount ; that each individual self proceeds from
it, in much the same way as a bud proceeds
from the stem of a growing plant, or even as
a single cell forms part of the tissue of the
stem ; and is absorbed into it again at death.
There are no individual and death-surviving
souls produced, apart from the Race-soul. .In
the great race or family of bunny-rabbits, for
instance- — though there are certainly individual
differences of character — just as there are differen
tiations of tissue-cells in the stem of a plant —

it is difficult to believe that there are individual

227

The Drama of Love and Death

and immortal souls. Each little self springs from
the race, and is an embodiment of it, represent-
ing in various degree its characteristics; and at
death — in some way which we do not yet quite
understand x — returns thither, yielding its ex
periences to the stores of the race-experience.
The same is probably true of the great mass of
the higher animals, even up to the primitive and
earliest Man. The Race-self in all these cases
moves onwards, upgathering the experiences of
the individuals, wise with their united know
ledge, and rich with their countless memories.
And these tracts again, of experience, knowledge
and memory, largely in a vague and generalised
form, but sometimes in sharp, individualised and
detailed form, are transmitted from the Race-self
to its later individuals and offshoots. Thus a kind
of broken reincarnation occurs, by which streaks
of memory and habit pass down time from one
individual to another, and by which perhaps — in
us later races — the persistent ' intimations of im
mortality ' and persuasions of having lived before
are accounted for.

I think that this process, of mixed and broken
reincarnation, may go on for countless genera
tions — the animal or animal-human souls so
differentiated from the race-soul returning con
tinually to the latter at death. But that a
period may come when the Race-self (illustrated
by the growing plant-stem) may exhibit distinct
buds — the embryos, as it were, of independent

1 See infra, ch. xiv. p. 255 ; also E. B. Wilson, The Cell, p. 433.
228

Reincarnation

souls — which will not return and be lost again
in the race-soul, but will persevere for a long
period and continually attain to more differentia
tion and internal coherence and sense of
identity. In such cases any reincarnations that
occur connected with these buds — though mingled
with the race-life — will become much less broken
than before, and more distinctly individual ; till
at last a phase is reached when such a soul-bud,
almost detached from the race-life, may be reincar
nated (or let us say ' re-embodied ') as a separate
entity, with a kind of immortality of its own.

It must be at this stage that the characteristic
human soul of the Civilisation-period is evolved
— which coheres quite firmly round itself, which
protests and revolts against death, which even
largely throws off its allegiance to the race-soul,
and to the laws and solidarities of the race-life,
and which has an enormous and overweening
sense of identity and self-importance, claiming
for itself, as I have just said, a kind of separate
persistence. Here ensues, as may be imagined,
a terrible period of confusion and trouble— the
whole period of competitive civilisation. The
splendid claim of identity and immortality is
made ; but for the time being it is spoiled by
what we call 'selfishness,' the mirror is cracked
through ignorance. The Soul has disowned her
allegiance to mere instinct and the race-self, and
has yet not found a firm footing beyond — is only
floundering in the bogs of self-consciousness and
anxiety. What kind of Re-embodiment may

229

The Drama of Love and Death

talong to this period we shall best perhaps see
when we have considered the further course of
the argument.

For at last the process of transition completes
itself. The human soul tossed about beyond
endurance at length discovers within itself a
divine Nucleus — a nucleus of growth and life
and refuge and security, apart from its own
fragility, auite apart from the race-life, inde
pendent or all the latter's laws and conventions
and sanctions and traditions, independent of caste
or colour, of world-period or locality ; and from
that moment it (the soul) rests; it ceases (like
the little rose of Jericho) from its desert wander
ings ; it radiates itself and begins to grow from
a new centre ; it is born again ; it becomes the
beginning of what may be called a Divine Soul.
The man becomes conscious of an ethereal body
forming within, unassailable or at least un-
destroyable by Death ; and it is probable that,
during this period, the subtle organism which we
have already termed the Inner or Spiritual Body
(ch. x.) is actually forming and defining and, so
to speak, consolidating itself. The subtle body of
a more perfect being is forming — a body which can
pass unharmed through walls, fire, water, which
can navigate the air and the planetary spaces,
and which is built on the basis of the ether,
itself the all-pervading life-substance of creation.
A divine soul is coming to expression, an ego
indeed, marvellously different and distinct from
all other egos, and ever more majestic and unique

Reincarnation

growing ; but rooted deep in the universal self,
and ever from that root expanding and sharing
the life of that self and of all its children.

With the formation of this divine soul, re-
embodiment in its complete and adequate sense
commences. The spiritual or subtle body formed
within the gross body retains its characteristics
after the death of the latter (many of which
characteristics no doubt hardly gained expression
in the one life just ended) — and passes on to other
spheres, there to assume more or less definitely
material bodies according to the sphere and the
conditions in which it may need to move. It
may seek re-embodiment on earth through ordin
ary heredity and childbirth — in which case pre
sumably it enters into the growing germ, and
moulds the development of the latter to an
adequate, if not to a quite perfect and unsullied,
expression of itself. If the reincarnation is to
be into ordinary human and terrestrial life, this
is probably the only available method. And
it would seem that some advanced and well-
nigh perfect souls do adopt this method, ap
pearing as infants with a kind of divinity
about them, and a germinal purity so great
as to seem to proceed from an ' immaculate
conception.'

But to most, in this stage, the toil and tedium
of passing through embryonic life and physical
birth and infancy may well appear intolerable ;
and since by now they have developed the subtle
or spiritual body and the powers belonging to it,

231

The Drama of Love and Death

this ordeal is no longer necessary. The subtle
body can — as we have gathered from former
chapters — by a process of condensation clothe
itself in a visible or even tangible vesture,1 and
may function, at any rate for a time, in such outer
or apparitional form without going through all
the abracadabra of birth. If on the earth, such
functioning can only be very temporary, owing
to the difficulty here of the conditions, and of
the supply of the necessary condensation-material ;
but in other and less ponderous spheres the diffi
culty is probably much less, and the formation
of suitable bodies comparatively easy. Anyhow,
it will be seen that reincarnation of this second
kind is unitary and single in character instead of
being divided or fragmentary ; it is unalloyed
instead of being broken and mixed ; 2 and a
vision rises before us, in connexion with it,
of ever-growing forms and more perfect life-
embodiments carrying out, one after another in
long succession, the evolution and expression of
each divine soul or separate ray of universal
being.

Thus in answer to query two, on an early page
of this chapter, we may say that there are two
kinds of reincarnation proper — quite different
from each other: — (i) That of the race-self,
in which the individual members of the race

1 Though this process, it would appear, requires practice^
and is not learned at once.

a See the frequent description of the unusual beauty and
radiancy of the forms seen in connexion with trance-mediums
and circles.

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Reincarnation

share only in a streaky fashion, each going back
at death into the race-soul, and emptying its
memories and experiences into that soul for
general sporadic inheritance, but not for trans
mission in mass to any one later individual ; and
(2) that of the individual who has found his
divine soul and evolved his inner body to a
point where it cannot be broken up again ; and
who is thus reincarnated or re-embodied complete
through successive materialisations or condensa
tions, in other spheres and without again under
going the ordinary race-birth and death.

But though these two represent the normal
forms of reincarnation, a third kind should be
added which represents the transition from one
to the other, and which is important for us
because it mainly covers the period in which we
now are — the great period of civilisation. We
saw how the soul of the animal is so close to
the race-self, and so little differentiated from it,
that it probably returns quite easily into the race-
self at death ; and this is likely to be the same
with very early or primitive man. But when
the distinctly human soul begins to form and
to shape itself, it does not so easily forget its
individuality and obliterate itself in that from
which it sprang. And so we have the tenta
tive, half-formed human soul, by no means well
assured of itself, or certain of its own powers,
and by no means perfect or contented, but much
persuaded of its own importance, and anxiously
seeking reincarnation as a separate entity — and

233

The Drama of Love and Death

seeking this by the only means available to it,
i.e. through heredity and birth as a member of
the race.

It is a painful situation and experience. The
soul, as human and not animal soul, is longing
to separate itself from the race, to mark its
distinction and independence — yet it has not, so
far, found the divine nucleus which alone can
give it real independence ; and it can only gain
expression and manifestation through the race-
self and the ordinary paraphernalia of birth and
death. It has learned no other way. Moreover,
it is not yet completely differentiated from the
race-self. It thus arrives at what can only be
a very mingled and broken expression. Some
father-stream and some mother-stream uniting,
as it were, in the psychological neighborhood
of this half-formed soul, give it the desired
opportunity ; and blending itself with them it
comes down into the world — a being of triple
nature, embryonic and incompletely formed in
itself, and utilising as best it can the diverse
elements of its maternal and paternal sources.
Its career, consequently, and its life on earth, are
marked by a continual inner struggle and con
flict — both physiological and psychological (due
to the effort of the soul to bend the race-life
and the elements of corporeal heredity to its
own uses), and in strange contrast both with
the hardihood and calm insouciance of the
> animals, in whom the race-life is untampered,
and with the transparent health and serenity of

234

Reincarnation

those other beings in whom the divine soul has
finally established its sovereignty.

Such, briefly described, are I believe the out
lines of the reincarnation story. To put it in
a few words, the whole process by which the
race-self evolves and finally gives birth to myriads
of free, independent and deathless individuals
curiously resembles, and may well be illustrated
by a certain biological phenomenon common both
in the vegetable and the animal worlds. Some
growing stem or portion of tissue, perhaps of a
plant, perhaps of a sponge or higher organism,
is at first of a simple homogeneous character,
fairly uniform and undifferentiated : but after a
time it exhibits knobs and inequalities, which
presently define themselves in a sort of botryoldal
or clustered bud-like growth (as, for instance,
in the spadix of an arum or the ovary of a
mammal) ; finally these knobs or buds become
entirely distinct and fully formed, and are thrown
off ' free,' as seeds (in the case of plants and
animals), or gemmules (in the case of sponges),
or spores (in ferns and mosses), or as fresh and
complete individuals in many aquatic creatures —
in any case to enter on the beginnings of a free
and independent life of their own. This kind
of process, anyhow, is found in every department
of biology, and it may well be that it extends
upward even into the highest domains. The
growing stem — proliferating cells without number,
which are born and die in a kind of even uniformity
within the limits of the stem — corresponds

235

The Drama of Love and Death

to the race-self in its early stages ; the forma
tion of knobs and buds in various degrees of
clustered development corresponds to the partial
growth of human souls out of the race-soul ; and
the liberation of the buds and germs corresponds
to the liberation of the human souls into the
freedom of a universal life.

236

CHAPTER XIII

THE DIVINE SOUL

THE liberation of buds and germs, as in the
biological processes alluded to in the last chapter,
is in general connected with sex, and brought
about by its operation. And similarly, I think
we may say that the liberation of human souls
and their disengagement from the race-matrix is
brought about by love. I have already pointed
out (ch. ix.) the intensely personal and indi
vidualising character of human love. If one can
imagine a love-relation going on between two
members of a race — two portions, as it were, of
the race-soul — at present only slightly individua
lised, one can see how the attraction to each
other, the drawing away from their surroundings,
the excitement, the agitation, all tend to further
their growth as individuals — to give them form,
apart from the matrix in which they are em
bedded, and definition and character. Of course
all experience does this, but most of all and most
deeply does love. It breeds souls out of the
Race-self, and finally brings them away to an
independent life. "It is for this that the body
exercises its tremendous attraction — that mortal
love torments and tears asunder the successive

23?

The Drama of Love and Death

generations of mankind — That underneath and
after all the true men and women may appear,
by long experience emancipated."

As said in an early chapter, in love, though
we do not know exactly what is happening, we
are persuaded that something very profound and
far-reaching is working itself out. And one
such thing, I am sure, is the liberation of the
soul of the lover — and in less degree, the soul
of the loved one. The tremendous experiences
and convulsions, the profound stirrings, and the
wrenchings from old ties and associations, do at
last not only build the soul up into a distinct
individuality, but they dig it up from its roots
in the race and plant it out in the great Eden
garden of emancipated humanity — the beginning
of a new career.1

Another thing that I think is happening is
that when love is strongly reciprocated the
elements (as we have seen several times already),
whether physical or psychical, pass over from
one to the other and are interchanged — regenera
ting and immensely enlarging the life and capacity
of each individual. This happens, I believe, in
all grades of the universal life, from the Protozoa

1 It may easily be understood, I think, that the process by
which the distinct soul is thus built up may last several life
times. That is, there may be a long period during which the
budding soul still entangled in the race-life may be reincarnated
jointly with the race-soul in a kind of mixed way — family and
race-characteristics mingling with and obscuring its expression
— though these incarnations would become ever less mixed
and more individual in character till the day of the soul's final
disentanglement.

238

The Divine Soul

upwards. Two individuals drawn together inter
change some elements of their being, and grow
thereby into a larger and grander life ; or may
even in cases fuse completely into one individual
person. As Swedenborg says somewhere :—
"Those who are truly married on earth are in
heaven one Angel."

Thirdly, I think that the reciprocated love of
two sometimes creates a new soul. We are
familiar with the idea that the love (sexual)
of two bodies commonly creates a new body ;
and there is an age-long tradition that the same is
true in the world of souls. There is in that
world also, not only regeneration but generation.
"Love is the desire of generation in the beauti
ful, both with relation to the soul and the body"
says Plato ; * and Ellen Key, in a passage already
quoted above (ch. iv. p. 61), says that " two beings
through one another may become a new being, and
a greater than either could be of itself alone."

By love a new soul is sometimes generated which
takes possession of both persons, and which
suggests — as in the Swedenborg phrase above —
that in some other sphere they really become one.
And by love, we may also think, between man
and wife, a new soul or soul-bud is sometimes
created, which may descend into and vivify the
physical germ of their future child.

To consider this last point a moment. The
connexion between heredity and the individual
self is very mysterious. We acknowledge our

1 In the Symposium — Shelley's translation.
239

The Drama of Love and Death

descent, and what we owe, both mentally and
bodily, to our parentage ; but we are fain to
think of our ego as something apart, something
not to be confused with parents, and by no
means merely derivative from them. Sometimes
indeed there is great harmony between this ego
and the parental inheritance, sometimes much the
reverse ; sometimes the line between the two is
doubtful and uncertain. What is the explanation
of all this? and what are the true facts of the
relationship ?

Does it not seem likely that in the intense
organic excitement which attends sexual union,
this excitement — especially if strong love be also
present — reaches right down into the soul-depths
of each person, stirring these also, and the race-
oversoul at that point, most profoundly. So
that at the same moment that the germ of a
bodily child is being fertilised, there is formed in
the race-soul a soul-bud corresponding, which
consequently descends into the physical germ and
becomes its organising life — the soul-bud thus
being related to the souls of the parents, some
what as the physical germ is related to their
bodies ? It springs, in fact, from a related portion
of the race-oversoul.

Or again, does it not seem likely that in some
cases, instead of a quite new bud being formed,
the profound stirring of the race-life in that
vicinity causes some older and more developed
soul-bud — which has perhaps already had some
earth-experiences — to wake into activity and take

240

The Divine Soul

possession of the germ ? In the first case
mentioned the child born will be singularly like
the parents, and in nature harmonious with them,
with very little extraneous in its character, and
with the fair prospect before it of a smooth and
even career. But in this latter case, though the
child will be harmonious with the parents it will
have great depths beside, of authentic character
of its own which will show out as time goes on.

And again, if deep love be absent, and conse
quently there is no special birth or awakening of
souls in that region where they should be related
to the body which is being born — what is likely
to happen ? Is it not likely that some other
soul-bud or soul which chance or other indication
of destiny may bring that way, may enter in and
possess the developing organism ? And is it not
likely, then, that strife and conflict and doubt may
also enter in, causing a character of mixed
elements, possibly leading to heroic developments,
but also probably to a broken or tragic life-
story ?

As in the earliest and most primitive develop
ments of life, so in the latest and most exalted,
the soul is born through love, and through love
it grows and expands. It may indeed be asked
whether any other way is possible. Oppositions
and conflicts may give form to the growing
thing, and help to carve its outlines; but this
gives it expansion. Every profound attachment
necessarily modifies and enlarges the man. It

241 Q

The Drama of Love and Death

pulls him out of his little orbit into a wider
path — even if for the moment with some amount
of eccentricity. Something is incorporated in his
life which was not part of it before — something
possibly which he did not before appreciate or
understand. What we now are — whether men
tally or physically — is an epitome of multitudinous
loves in the past. The very cell-alliances which
constitute our bodies are the records of endless
heart-yearnings and romances (dating from far-
back ages, and even now enduring) among a tiny
people to us well-nigh invisible. And we may
ask ourselves whether in the regions above and
beyond our present life there may not be soul-
alliances and even soul-fusions, by which we
humans in our turn build up the very life of the
gods? Plato in his Symposium, speaking of the
strange desire of lovers for each other, makes

Aristophanes say : 1 — " But the soul of each mani
festly thirsts for, from the other, something
which there are no words to describe, and divines
that which it seeks, and traces obscurely the foot
steps of its obscure desire. If Vulcan should say
to persons thus affected, ' My good people, what
is it that you want with one another ? ' And if,
while they were hesitating what to answer, he
should proceed to ask — ' Do you not desire the
closest union and singleness to exist between you,
so that you may never be divided night or day ?
If so, I will melt you together, and make you
grow into one, so that both in life and death ye

1 Shelley's translation.
242

The Divine Soul

may be undivided. Consider, is this what you
desire ? Will it content you if you become that
which I propose? '--We all know that no one
would refuse such an offer, but would at once
feel that this was what he had ever sought ; and
intimately to mix and melt and to be melted
together with his beloved, so that one should be
made out of two." And we may think — though
this strange and intimate longing is never fulfilled,
as we know, in the actual earth-life — that it still
may possibly be an indication (as happens in other
cases) of something which really is working itself
out in the unseen world.

It was suggested, in the end of chapter xi.
above, that limitation and hindrance are a part of
the cosmic scheme of the creation of souls, and
that there is a purpose in these things, in regard
to this mortal life. It was also suggested that
the profound soul-stuff of which we are made is
capable of infinitely swifter and more extended
perceptions than those of which we are usually
aware ; and that there is a good deal of evidence
to show that perceptive powers of this kind —
quite independent of the usual end-organs of
sight, hearing, taste, and so forth, still linger
buried deep down within us. The question then
naturally arises, If this limitation of faculty really
exists as a fundamental fact of our mortal life,
what purpose does it subserve ? — And the answer
to this is, I think, very clear.

It subserves the evolution of Self-consciousness
and of the sense of Identity. It is obvious that

243

The Drama of Love and Death

diffused faculties and perceptions, however swift
and powerful, could never have brought these
gifts with them. It was only by pinning sensi
tiveness down to a point in space and time, by
means of a body, and limiting its perceptions by
$ means of bodily end-organs, that these new values
could be added to creation — the local self and
the sense of Identity. All the variety of human
and animal nature, all the endless differences of
points of view, all diversity and charm of form
and character and temperament must be credited
to this principle ; and whatever vagaries and de
lusions the consequent growth of self-consciousness
and selfness may have caused, it is incontestable
that through the development of Identity man
kind and all creation must ultimately rise to a
height of glory and splendour otherwise un
imaginable.

And not only limitation but also hindrance.
These things give an intensity and passion to life,
and a power and decisiveness to individuality, the
absence of which would indeed be sad. As a
water-conduit by limiting the spread of the stream
and confining it in a close channel gives it velocity
and force to drive the mill, so limitation and
hindrance in human life give the individualised
energy from which, for good or evil, all our
world-activities spring. As the Lord says in
Goethe's Prologue to Faust : —

" Of all the spirits of denial
The mischief-maker I most tolerate,
244

The Divine Soul

For man's activity doth all too soon unravel ;

Of slumber he seems never satiate ;

Therefore I gladly hand him to a mate

Who'll plague and prick, and play in fact the Devil."

Over a long period in this cosmic process this
action, we may think, goes on. The vast and
pervasive soul-stuff of the universe, in its hidden
way omniscient and omnipresent, suffers an ob
scuration and a limitation, and is condensed into
a bodily prison in a point of space and time;
but with a consequent explosive energy incalcul
able. The Devil — diaboks the slanderer and the
sunderer, the principle of division— reigns. To
him, the ' milk and water ' heaven of universal but
vague benevolence is detestable. He builds up
the actual, fascinating, tragic, indispensable world
that we know. Selfishness and ignorance, the
two great Powers of discord and separation, are his
ministers ; the earth is his theatre of convulsive
hatreds and soul-racking passion ; and our mortal
life, instead of being the fair channel of cosmic
activities, becomes a " stricture knot," as Whitman
calls it, and a symbol of disease.

But this diabolonian process is only one segment
of the whole. After the long descent and con
densation and imprisonment of the spirit in its
most limited and inert and self-regarding forms,
after its saturation in matter, and its banishment
in the world of death and suffering, the rising
curve of liberation sets in, and the long process
of its return. It is through love mainly, as
we have seen, that this second process works

245

The Drama of Love and Death

itself out. From point to point through unison
with others, by absorbing something from their
experience, by sharing a wider life, the spirit's
manifestation grows. By this the great tree of
organic life spreads upon the earth ; by this each
0 race-stem multiplies its tissues and expands ;
by this the buds of human souls are formed ;
and by this the souls themselves are freed to
independent life, and ultimately to circle again
"dancing and sporting" as Plutarch says, "like
joyous satellites round about their sun in heaven."
There is continual Transformation ; but there
is also continuity from end to end. For every
being there is continuance, but continuance only
by change. Each soul is a gradual rising to
consciousness of the All-soul ; a gradual liberation
and self-discovery of the divine germ within it.
First the race-soul rising towards this conscious
ness, and then the individual souls thrown off,
rising each independently towards the same. It
is when the latter are moving over from their
(instinctive and so to speak organic) community
with the race-soul to a distinct and separate
knowledge of and allegiance to the divine germ
now declaring within themselves, that all this
period of confusion and dismay, naturally enough,
occurs— this that we have called the period of
Civilisation and the Fall of man — the period
in which indeed we are now so fatefully involved.
But it is in this period too that ' divine souls '
are formed, and their feet first set upon the
path of splendour.

246

The Divine Soul

Love indicates immortality. No sooner does
the human being perceive this divine nucleus /
within himself than he knows his eternal destiny.
Plunged in matter and the gross body he has
learned the lesson of identity and separateness.
All that the devil can teach him, he has faithfully
absorbed. Now he has to expand that identity,
for ever unique, into ever vaster spheres of
activity — to become finally a complete and finished
aspect of the One.

247

CHAPTER XIV
THE RETURN JOURNEY

WE have seen that there is some reason for
believing that simultaneously with the birth or
coming to consciousness of what we have called
the divine soul, there occurs within us the forma
tion of a ' spiritual ' or very subtly material body.
This body, if only composed of atoms, may easily
be so fine and subtle as to pass practically un
changed through ordinary gross matter — the walls,
for instance, and other obstacles that surround
us. (At this moment there is an astronomical
theory current that the stellar universe consists
of two vast star-systems which are passing in
nearly opposite directions right through each other.}
If composed of electrons its subtlety and pervasive
powers must be much greater. Moreover, its
fineness and subtlety would make it difficult of
destruction. The ordinary agents of death —
physical violence, water, fire, and so forth —
would, as already pointed out, "hardly reach it ;
and it is easy to suppose that it might continue
onwards and perdure in stability and activity for
thousands of years. Even the Atom of matter,
which is now regarded as a complex system
of electrons, is supposed to have an immensely

248

The Return Journey

extended lifetime — nearly two thousand years in
the case of Radium, and much longer in the
case of all other substances ; and if two thousand
years or thereabouts is the minimum lifetime
of an atom, it is not difficult to suppose that
the lifetime of a subtle body composed as
above described may be equally or much more
extended.

During its lifetime the radio-active atom,
slowly disintegrating, pours out a prodigious
amount of energy; and in the process apparently
is transformed and takes on other characters and
qualities. Radium for instance, or rather some
products of its disintegration, are thought to
take on the characters of Helium and of Lead.
And similarly we have every reason to believe that
the subtle body of Man is continually pouring
out energy on all sides, radiating like a sun — pour
ing out mental states, sensible forms, influences
of all kinds, even images of itself, and so continu
ally entering into a wider life and touch with
others, and undergoing a slow transformation
of its outer form. At the same time — and
leading to the same results — it is continually
storing up in its recesses impressions and memories
for the seed of future expression and development.

It may be imagined that the gross terrestrial
body — though splendidly necessary for the
localising of the Self, and the establishment of the
sense of identity, and for the electric accumulation
of stores of emotion and passion, and so forth —
acts on the whole in such a way as to greatly

249

The Drama of Love and Death

hamper and limit the activities of the inner body ;
and we can imagine that (as at death and under
other special conditions) the liberation from the
gross body is naturally accompanied by an enor
mous extension of faculty. The soul in its
new and subtler form passes out into an im
mensely wider sphere of action and perception —
so much so, indeed, as to make direct converse
between the two worlds (the new world it is in,
and the old one it has left) difficult to establish
and very difficult permanently to maintain. The
author of Interwoven says (p. 221) that the first
body and the second body differ greatly in their
chemical particles, " and so the same degree of
sight and hearing is not possible. . . . We have
just as much trouble to see the outsides of things
as mortals have to see the insides."

Nor can we place a necessary limit to the
birth of finer bodies. There may be a succession
of such things. The electron brings us very
near to a mental state ; for whereas an Atom —
conceived as similar to the speck of dust which
one can roll between one's fingers, only much
more minute — seems to have no relation to
mentality, a tiny electric charge, capable of convey
ing a shock, comes very close ! And at that
stage the truth becomes apparent that the inner
intelligent being in all things is the core, and
the body is only the surface of contact — the
surface, in fact, along which one intelligence
administers shocks to another ! With liberation
from the gross body that surface may grow

250

The Return Journey

enormously extended, and it may become possible
to touch or see, or to render oneself visible or
tangible, to others far beyond all ordinary possi
bilities of contact or perception.

The succession of finer bodies may exist in
any gradation, from what we call gross matter
to the subtlest ether of emotion. At any rate
we can see that at every stage there will be
a finer body which is more of the nature of
thought, and an outer and coarser which is
less so. As the gifted author of The Science
of Peace, Bhagavan Das, says : — " At each stage
the Jiva-core (i.e. the core of the living individual)
consists of matter of the inner plane, while its
outer upadhi (or sheath) consists of matter of
the outer plane ; and when a person says, I think,
I act, it means that the matter of the inner core,
which is the I for the time being, is actually,
positively, modified by, or is itself modifying
in a certain manner, the outer real world." The
inner film of matter (or mind), as he says, " is
posing and masquerading, for the time being,
as the truly immaterial Self."

This central Self we can never wholly reach,
but the movement of each divine soul is towards
it ; and the assurance and salvation of each
soul is in the growing sense of union with it.
The personal self can only ' survive ' by ever
fading and changing towards the universal. Our
inner identity is fixed, but our outward identity
we can only preserve by, as it were, forever

losing it.

251

The Drama of Love and Death

After life's fitful fever — after the insurgence
and resurgence of passions ; after the heart
breaking struggles which are forced upon some
for the sake of a mere material footing upon the
earth ; after the deadly sufferings which others
must undergo in order to gain scantiest allowance
and expression of their inner and spiritual selves ;
after the mortal conflict and irreconcilableness of
material and mental needs ; the battles with
opponents, the betrayal of friends, the fading and
souring of pleasures, and the dissipation of ideals
— the consent of mankind goes to affirm and
confirm the conclusion that sleep is well, sleep is
desirable. As after a hard day's labour, when the
sinews are torn and the mind is racked, Nature's
soft nurse commends a period of rest and healing
— so it would seem fitting that a similar period
should follow, for the human soul, on the toil and
the dislocation of life.

It seems indeed probable — and a long tradition
confirms the idea — that the human soul at death
does at first pass, with its cloud-vesture of
memories and qualities, into some intermediate
region, astral rather than celestial (if we may use
words which we do not understand), some
Purgatory or Hades, rather than Paradise or
Olympus ; and for a long period does remain
there quiescent, surveying its past, recovering
from the shocks and outrages of mortal experi
ence, knitting up and smoothing out the broken
and tangled threads, trying hard to understand
the pattern. It seems probable that there is a

252

The Return Journey

long period of such digestion and reconcilement
and slow brooding over the new life which has to '
be formed. Indeed when one comes to think of
it, it seems difficult — if there is to be continuance
at all — to imagine anything else. When one
thinks of the strange contradictions of our mortal
life, the hopelessly antagonistic elements, the
warring of passions, the shattering of ideals, the
stupor of monotony : the soul like a bird shut in
a cage, or with bright wings draggled in the mire ;
the horrible sense of sin which torments some
people, the mad impulses which tyrannise over
others ; the alternations of one's own personality
on different days, or at different depths and planes
of consciousness ; the supraliminal and the sub
liminal ; the smug Upper-self with its petty
satisfactions and its precise and precious logic,
and the great Under-self now rising (in the hour
of death) like some vast shadowy figure or genius,
out of the abyss of being — when one thinks of
all this one feels that if there is to be any sanity
or sequence in the conclusion, it must mean a long
period of brooding and reconciliation, and of re
adjustment, and even of sleep.

At first it may well be a troubled period, of
nightmare-like confusion ; but at last there must
come a time when harmony is restored. The
past lifetime is spread out like a map before one
— all its events fall into their places, composed
and clear. The genius, rising from the depths,
throws a strange light upon them. " This was
necessary. That could not have been otherwise.

253

The Drama of Love and Death

And that again which seemed so fatal, do you
not now see its profound meaning ? " The soul
surveying gradually redeems the past. It comes
to understand. Tout comprendre, cest tout par-
donner. It beholds, far down, the little fugitive
among the shadows, pursued by the hideous and
imbecile mask — the sense of Sin — and, recognis-

* O

ing a fleeting embodiment of itself, it smiles :
for that mask has been seen through and is use
less any longer. It beholds another — or is it the
same ? — pursued by the Terror of Death ; and
again it smiles : for that shadow — like the vast
moonshadow in a total eclipse of the sun, which
seemed so solid and all-devouring, has swept by ;
it has been passed through, and it was only a
shadow.

And it may well be also that this whole process
of reconciliation and adjustment and the building
up of diverse elements into one harmonious being
may occupy more than one such interval between
two lifetimes; it may require several periods of
incubation, so to speak. Looking at the matter
from the physical side, and seeing how the inner
and subtle body has probably to be formed dur
ing all this time — as in a chrysalis — -and differen
tiated into an independent life, it seems likely
that several intervals of outer rest and inner
growth may be needed, and a series of successive
moultings ! But in the end, when the string of
earth-lives is finished, and the reconciliation is
complete, then the essential, the divine, self has
become manifest, and is ready for a whole new

254

The Return Journey

world, a new order of experience, even to the
farthest confines of the universe.

I have suggested in a former chapter that
Memory — that very wonderful faculty — is prob
ably our best test of Identity, our best test of
Survival. If we apply this canon to the evolution
of the independent soul out of the race-life, it
may help us. When an animal dies, the group
of memories, which is its life's-experience, prob
ably passes back and is transmitted in a more or
less diffused way into the general race-life or
soul.1 In the case of some higher animals it is
possible that the memory-group thus returning
may cohere for a time or to a certain degree, and
not be immediately diffused. In the case of the
higher types of Man it is probable that such group
may cohere for a long time and rather persistently ;
and though embedded in the general race-life and
memory, and much mingled with and modified
by these, it may still form to some degree an
independent centre of intelligence and organisa
tion (something like a nerve-plexus in the brain
or body). It will form, in fact, what I have
already called a soul-bud or budding soul, and
will be capable of that mixed or partial reincarna
tion of which I have spoken — in which some

1 What the physical medium of this transmission may be—
whether the germ-plasm of Weismann, or some subtle aura
which connects the members of a race together, or anything
else — is a question to which the answer at present is not very
clear.

255

The Drama of Love and Death

truly individual streaks of memory will be mixed
with general memories of the race-life.

But after each successive reincarnation the
group of memories returning — and allying them
selves to the former groups — will necessarily give
more and more definition to such budding soul,
till at last the time will come when its individuality
will be complete ; its severance from the race-
life will follow as a matter of course ; and it will
float out into the sea of the all-pervading and
divine consciousness.

During this budding period of the human
soul, which generally speaking may be said to
coincide with the civilisation-period of human
j history, the memory of each earth-life will go
back into the race-soul there to swell the nucleus
of the individual soul which is being brought to
birth ; but it will not generally revive into evi
dence in the next earth-life> for being so deeply
buried within, it will be too much overlaid by
external layers and happenings to come distinctly
into consciousness. It is not probably till the
completion of the whole series of its earth-lives
that the soul will resume all these memories and
come into its complete heritage. Then, at some
deep stage or state all its incarnations (clarified
and comprehended) will become manifest to it —
a glorious kingdom beyond the imagination of
man at present to conceive. All its various lives
it may live over again ; but with as much differ
ence in its understanding of their meaning as there
is between an accomplished player's rendering

256

The Return Journey

of a piece of music, and a child's first stumbling
performance of the same.

It will perceive that, in a sense, it has pre-existed
from eternity. For though certainly there was
a time when it first sprang as a bud from the
Race, and entered into a gradually evolving and
self-defining series of personal lives, yet that
first bud was itself but a particular limitation
and condensation of the Race-self; and that again,
far back and beyond, a limitation through many
intermediate stages of the All-self. It (the
human-divine soul) will perceive that it pre
existed from eternity as the All-self; that it
suffered in its time the necessary obscurations and
limitations ; that it abdicated the high prerogative
of universal consciousness ; and that it was born
again as a tiny Cinderella-spark ; destined to rise
through all the circles of personal and individual
life, and the enacting of the great drama of
Love and Death — the great cycle of Evolution
and Transfiguration — once more to the eternal
Throne.

The glory of that Heaven where the All-self
dwells radiant as the Sun, and each lesser or
partial soul knows itself as a ray conveying the
whole light, but in a direction of its own — we
need not dwell on or attempt to portray. As
the emancipated soul, just described, may include
the personalities of many earth-lives and bodies ;
so there may be — probably are — larger inclusive
selves, special gods, having troops of souls united

257 R

The Drama of Love and Death

to them in the bonds of love and devotion.
Telepathic radiations, travelling as it were on
lines of light, and with the velocity and direct
ness of light, bring each unit into possible touch
with every other, and over an enormous field.
As the modern theory of electricity supposes that
every electric charge, however small, or associated
with the smallest atom, is connected by lines of
force with some other and complementary charge
somewhere — even perhaps at a practically infinite
distance • — negative with positive, and positive
with negative ; so the idea is suggested that in
the free world of the spirit every need felt by
one atom of personality anywhere is felt also and
answered to by some complementary impulse and
personality somewhere. In the bringing together
of these needs and affections, in the recovery
and the building up and the presentation in
sensible form of all the worlds of memory,
slumber infinite possibilities, and the outlines of
endless situations and developments. The in
dividual is clearly not lost in any ' Happy Mass ' ;
but may contribute to the formation of such a
thing in the sense that he comes into such wide
and extended touch with others as to have a
practically unlimited range of experience, memory,
knowledge, creative power, and so forth, to
draw on.

Nor is there any call to think of a bodiless
heaven or bodiless state of being in any plane of
existence. The body in any stage or state is,
I repeat, a surface of contact. Wherever one

258

The Return Journey

intelligent being comes into touch with another
— whether actively, by impressing itself on the
other, or passively by being impressed — there
immediately arises a body. There arises the
sense of matter, which is in fact the impression
made by one being upon another. The external
senses, of sight, hearing and the rest, are modi
fications or limitations of more extended inner
faculties, of vision, audition, and so forth. The
actual world of Nature which we know, in the
bodies of the woods and streams, and of animals
and men, is built up out of the material of our
senses; out of the kind of impressionability of'
which our senses are susceptible ; but if these
materials, of our sight and hearing and touch
and taste, were altered but slightly in their range, ,
the whole world would be different. They
would create for us another world. And so,
if these present end-organs of sense were de
stroyed, the soul, furnished with the inner facul
ties corresponding, would create another world
of sense and of Nature, which would become
the medium of expression and communication on
that new plane, and the material of its bodily
manifestation there. At present, owing to en
tanglement in the grosser senses, life is certainly
in the main a matter of food and drink, of sex,
of money-making, and the exercise of rather
rude recreations and arts. With a finer range
of sense, there would still remain the roots and
realities of these things ; the need of sustenance
would still survive in the finer body, and the

259

The Drama of Love and Death

need of interchange and the indrawing of vitality ;
the hunger of union and of intercourse would
remain — to be expressed in some shape or other;
the delight in music and in beauty of form would
be no less, though sounds and colours might be
different from those we know ; and all the
faculties that we have — and others too that are
now only embryonic with us — would demand their
exercise and expression. Out of such demands
and needs would arise a corresponding world.

I have suggested above (ch. xi.) how, deep in
the subliminal self, there lies a marvellous faculty
of producing visible and audible phenomena —
Visions and Voices and Forms. Out of the
depths of being these can be evoked, and bodied
forth into the actual world.1 In other words, each
such Self, in its moods of power, can call forth its
own thoughts and mental images with such force
as to impress them irresistibly on others within its
range — with such force, in fact, as to give them a
material vesture and location. What we have said
of the vastness and range of the human Under-
self, of its swift interrelation with others, of the
immensity of its memory extending far back into
the deeps of time, must convince us that its
powers of creation must be correspondingly won
derful. The phenomena exhibited by entranced
mediums, and by hypnotised subjects, are only a
sample of these powers ; but they hint dimly to
us that when we understand ourselves, and what

1 And not only out of the abysmal deeps of Man, but also
out of the hidden soul of the Earth, and other cosmic beings.

260

The Return Journey

we are, and when we understand others, and what
they are, Time and Space and Estrangement will
no longer avail against us ; they will no longer
hinder us from recognition of each other, nor
hold us back from the spheres to which we
truly belong, and the fulfilment of our real needs
and desires.

Man is the Magician who whether in dreams
or in trance or in actual life can, if he wills it,
raise up and give reality to the forms of his desire
and his love. It is not necessary for us feverishly
to pursue our loved ones through all the fading
and dissolving outlines of their future or their
past embodiments. They are ours already, in the
deepest sense — and one day we shall wake up to
know we can call them at any moment to our
side ; we shall wake up to know that they are
ever present and able to manifest themselves to
us out of the unseen.

261

CHAPTER XV

THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY

IT will have been noticed that throughout this
book there has been a tendency to return again
and again to the question of what we mean by
the Self. As I have said before (see ch. xii., supra],
one might very naturally suppose that as the ego
underruns all experience, and we cannot make
any observation of the world at all except through
its activity, the general problem of the nature of
the ego would be the first to be attacked, and the
very first to be solved; whereas, curiously enough, it
seems to be the last ! Only towards the conclu
sion of philosophical speculation does the impor
tance of this problem force itself on men's minds.
Nevertheless, I think we may say that in the de
partment of philosophy it is the great main
problem which lies before this age for solution ;
and that one of the greatest services a man can do
is — by psychologic study and manifold experi
ence, by poetical expression, especially in lyrical
form, and by philosophic thought and investiga
tion — to make clear to himself and the world
what he means by the letter * I,' what he means
by his ' self.'

To the unthinking person nothing seems

262

The Mystery of Personality

simpler, more obvious, than his own existence—
and hardly needing definition. Yet the least
thought shows how complex and elusive this
' self is. It is one of those cases with which the
world teems — a juggle of the open daylight — in
which an object appears so perfectly simple, frank,
innocent, and without concealment, and yet is
really profoundly complex, deliberate, and un
fathomable.

The most elementary considerations easily illus
trate what I mean.1 When we speak of the ego,
do we mean the self of to-day, or of yester
day, or of some years back — or possibly some
years in the future when we shall have found the
expression now unhappily denied us? Do we
mean the self of boyhood, or even of babyhood?
or do we mean that of maturity, or of old age ?
Do we mean the self indicated by the mind alone,
or by the spirit, apart from the body ? or do we
mean that indicated specially by the body, or even
(as some folk seem to consider) by the clothes?
It would be very puzzling to be asked to place
one's finger, so to speak, on any one of these
manifestations as really and completely repre
sentative. Rather perhaps we should be inclined,
if pressed, to say that our real self was something
underrunning all these forms — that it required
all the expressions, from infancy, through matu
rity even to old age, and all the apparatus of
body and mind, in order to convey its meaning;
and that to pin it down to any particular moment

1 See supra, ch. vii. p. 122.
263

The Drama of Love and Death

of time, or to any particular phase of the material
or spiritual, would be to do it a great injustice.

If so, we seem at once compelled to think of
the Self as something greatly larger than any
ordinary form of it that we know, as something
perhaps on a different plane of being — under-
running, and therefore in a sense beyond, Time ;
and similarly underrunning, and therefore in a
sense beyond, both body and mind. And this
all the more, because, as I have said on an earlier
page, we all feel that at best much of our real
selves remains in life-long defect of expression ;
and that there are great deeps of the Under-self
(as in chapter viii.) which, though organically re
lated to our ordinary consciousness, are still for
the most part hidden and unexplored. All, in
fact, points to the existence within us of a very
profound Self, which so far we may justifiably
conclude to be much greater than any one known
manifestation of it ; which requires for its expres
sion the forms of a lifetime ; and still stretches on
and beyond ; which perhaps belong to another
sphere of being — as the ship in the air and the
sunlight belongs to another sphere than the hull
buried deep in the water.

But we may go further in our exploration of
the " abysmal deeps." We have once or twice
in the foregoing chapters alluded to the possi
bility of the self dividing into two personalities,
or even more. We have supposed, for instance,
that at death the psychic organism may possibly
split up — some more terrestrial portion remaining

264

The Mystery of Personality

operant and active on the earth-plane, ami some
other portion removing to a subtler aiul more
ethereal region. Are we — we may ask — and
those others who propound the same ideas,
talking nonsense in doing so? Is it anyhow
possible tor a self to be active in two bodies or
in two places at the same time? It may indeed
seem impossible and absurd — until we envisage
the actual tacts; but when we do so, when we
study the tacts of the alternation ot personalities,
so much in evidence at the present time, when
we find that two or more personalities, or
coherent bodies ot consciousness, may not only
succeed each other in one human organism, but
may simultaneously be active in the same,1 when
we find that there is such a tiling as k bilocation,'
and that the apparition of a person may come
and deliver a message while the original person
is tar away and otherwise engaged, when we
notice carefully our own internal psychology and
find that we not untrequently "talk to our
selves" and in other ways behave as two persons
in one bo.ly we see that the absurdity or un
likelihood ot the suggestion may not by any
means be so great as supposed, and that we may
alter all be torccd to largely remodel our con
ception ol what Personality is."

1 Scr nuti1 .it IMH! of chapter vi.

'•• Sec, tor inM.itur. HOIIUM'S ( ',/V.ovi', bl<- \i-, lnu¥s fa)i i'f .wy.,
ulicir Oilvssctis speaks \\ith thr !;lioM ot llnvulrs in 1 Lulus;
Imt u 1-1 f\|>l.mii-il tli.it Hercules himself is in llr.iven: -

"Then in his iuij;lii 1 ln'hrUl hiis'.o lloioulos, phantom lomlir,
L'luuUoiu 1 s.iy, lor i ho hoio himself is aiuonj; iho immortals."
265

The Drama of Love and Death

That one Personality should divide into two
or more may seem to be foreign to our habitual
views ; yet we must remember that worms,
annelids, and molluscs of various kinds commonly
so divide ; and though it is puzzling to think
what becomes of the 'I' or 'self of a sea-
anemone when the latter is cut in twain and each
part goes its way as a new creature, we must not
therefore refuse to envisage the fact and the

problem thus flowing from it. As to the Pro
tozoa, which certainly exhibit signs of consider
able intelligence, fission of one cell into two or
more is one of the most normal and frequent
events of their lives. The same, of course, is
true of the elementary cells of the human body ;
the fission even of whole organs of the body is
not uncommon, though more pathological in char
acter; and the fission of the personality, as just
mentioned, is quite frequent ; and in some cases
— as in the well-known case of Sally Beauchamp —
very striking, on account of the furious apparent
opposition developed between one portion and
another.1

The conception therefore of Personality must,
it would seem, include the thought of possible
bilocation — that is, of possible manifestation in
two places at the same time ; and it must not
refuse the thought of inclusion — i.e. of one
personality being possibly included within another

1 In this case, described by Dr. Morton Prince in his Dissocia
tion of a Personality (see note to ch. vi., supra), at least four
or five distinct personalities were recognisable in the one
woman.

266

The Mystery of Personality

— as of living and intelligent cells within the
body.1 Furthermore, we must not only allow
division of self as one of the attributes of per
sonality, but also apparently, fusion with other
selves. This may seem far-fetched and un
reasonable at first, but on consideration we
cannot but see that in one degree or another it
is quite in the order of Nature. The Protozoa,
of course, quite frequently combine with each
other, and so make a new start in life ; in the
higher organisms the sperm-cell and germ-cell
fuse completely for the conception of the off
spring, and the organisms themselves fuse par
tially and interchange elements during the process
of conjunction; and in the psychology of love
among human beings we notice a similar fusion,
and sometimes also almost a confusion, of per
sonalities.

The little self-conscious mind (of the civilised
man) no doubt protests against all this. It de
sires to think of itself as a separate and definite
entity, distinct from (and perhaps superior to)
all others ; and it finds any theories of possible
fission or fusion of personalities quite baffling and
impracticable. Yet in the light of the All-self—
the key-thought of this book — the whole thing is
obvious, and there is really no difficulty, except
perhaps in the linking up (through memory) of
the continuity of each lesser self.

What we said in the last chapter, namely that
"the personal self-consciousness can only survive

1 See The Art of Creation, pp. 80, Si.
267

The Drama of Love and Death

by ever fading and changing towards the uni
versal," must be borne in mind. Continual ex
pansion is a normal condition of consciousness.
Time is an integral element of it.1 Consciousness
must continually grow. Through memory it
preserves the past, through the present it adds
to its stores. The author of The Science of Peace
illustrates the subject (p. 303) by asking us to
consider the spheres of consciousness of various
officials in a country whose departments more
or less overlap each other : " There are admini
strative officers in charge of each department,
whose consciousness may be said to include the
consciousness of their subordinates in that de
partment, to exclude those of their compeers,
and to be in turn included in those of their
superiors. The more complicated the machinery
of the government, the better the illustration
will be of inclusions and exclusions and partial
or complete coincidences, and overlappings and
communions of consciousness. At last we come
to the head of the government, whose conscious-

ness may be said to include the consciousnesses,
whose knowledge and power include the know
ledges and powers, of all the public servants in
the land, and whose consciousness is so expanded
as to enable him to be in touch with them all and
feel and act through them all constantly. An
officer promoted through the grades of such an
administration would clearly pass through ex
pansions of consciousness. . . . Such expansion

1 See Bergson's L Evolution Crtatrice throughout.
268

The Mystery of Personality

of consciousness, then, is not in its nature more
mysterious and recondite than any other item
in the world-process, but a thing of daily and
hourly occurrence. In terms of metaphysic it
is the coming of an individual Self into relation
with a larger and larger not-self."

In the light of the All-self, I say, the difficulties
disappear. It is the question of Memory (explicit
or implicit) which seems to decide the limits
of personalities and their survival. The One
Self is experiencing in all forms, but the stores
of experience and memory are kept separate.
Here is a man who has a Town house and a
Country house and an Italian villa. When he
changes his abode from one to the other he
becomes to a great extent a different person.
His surroundings and associations, his pursuits
and occupations, his dress and habits, his language
may be, are changed. It may even happen that
each of his three lives goes on growing and
expanding after its own pattern, and becoming
more and more different from the two others ;
and yet the ultimate person behind them all
remains the same. Is it not possible that the
lives of us human beings may go on expanding
and growing each according to its own law,
and yet the ultimate individual or Being behind
them all may remain the same ?

If a worm be supposed to have memory (and
worms no doubt have memory in some degree),
then it might well be supposed that, if divided
in two, each of the parts would inherit the

269

The Drama of Love and Death

said memory complete. But from that moment
the experiences of the two portions, moving in
different directions, would bifurcate, and the
future stores of memory would be different.
Thus we should have a bifurcation of the stream
of memory, and a bifurcation of personality —
until ultimately, as time went on, and the common
memory faded into the background, the two
new personalities would begin to feel themselves
almost quite separate. Is not this again something
like what may have happened to ourselves from
Creation's birth? The stream of life has bifur
cated and bifurcated till we have lost our common
memory and have become convinced of the ab
solute separation of our personalities one from
the other ?

On the other hand, the conjunction and fusion
of two streams of memory in one is as probable
and intelligible as the bifurcation of one into
two. Two protozoa fuse ; but the race-self
in one is the same as in the other, and in reality
the process is only a fusion of organic memories
and experiences. A man who had been in the
habit of changing every year from his Town
to his Country house might some day find it
convenient to combine his establishments in one
suburban residence. Certainly if he had so far
forgot himself that in changing houses he had
always quite changed his memories, then it would
seem impossible to him to combine the two lives
in one. Otherwise there would be no difficulty
in the process. The stores of one establishment,

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The Mystery of Personality

with their associations and memories would after
a time (and not without some maturation-divisions
and extrusions!) be got into relation with the
stores of the other establishment ; and the two
bodies of memory and association would settle
down together.

All this seems to suggest to us that our con
ception of personality must be considerably altered
from its ordinary form, and rendered more fluent,
in order to tally with the real facts. There is
no such thing as a fixed and limited personality,
of definite content and character, which we can
credit to our account, or to the account of our
friends. All is in flux and change, the conscious
ness ever enlarging, the ego which is at the root
of that consciousness ever growing in the know-
ledge of itself as a vital portion of the All-self.
That last alone is fixed ; that alone as the ' uni
versal witness ' is permanent. But the streams of
memory and experience, by which from all sides
that central fact and consciousness is reached,
are infinite in number and variety. It is in the
continuity of a stream of memory that what
we call personality must be supposed to consist ;
and when this continuity covers not only a single
life, but extends from life to life, then we must
find a new name for the persistent being and call
him not a personality, but if we will, an individu
ality. Such individualities must exist by millions
and billions ; they must be as numerous as all
the possible lines of experience (and these are

271

The Drama of Love and Death

quasi-infinite in number) by which the soul may
grow from its birth in the simplest speck of
matter to its realisation of divine and universal
life. The author (Bhagavan Das) of 'The Science
of Peace illustrates this infinitude of individualities,
and how they are all contained in the All-self,
and each in a sense as an aspect of the One,
by the simile of a museum or gallery. " If
a spectator," he says (p. 289), "wandered un-
restingly through the halls of a vast museum or
great art gallery, at the dead of night, with a single
small lamp in one hand, each of the natural
objects, the pictured scenes, the statues, the
portraits, would be illumined by that lamp in
succession for a single moment, while all the
rest were in darkness, and after that single
moment would fall into darkness again. Let
there now be not one but countless such spectators,
as many in endless number as the objects of
sight within the place, each spectator wandering
in and out incessantly through the great crowd
of all the others, each lamp bringing momentarily
into light one object, and for only that spectator
who holds that lamp." Then he goes on to
say that each line or succession of experiences
might represent an individuality ; each individu
ality in the end would reach the totality of
experience, but in a different order and in a
different manner from any other ; and all the
individualities would all the time — though chang
ing themselves — remain within the unchanging
intelligence of the absolute, and would only be

272

The Mystery of Personality

exploring that intelligence each in a different order.
"For," he again says (p. 317), "an individuality
can no otherwise be described, discriminated and
fixed, than by enumerating the experiences of that
individual, by narrating its biography."

We may also illustrate the matter by tne con
ception of a Tree. A single leaf at the end of
a twig may seem to have a little separate self of
its own ; but it is very ephemeral. It perishes
with the season and another leaf takes its place.
There is a deeper self, in the twig, which endures,
and from which new leaves spring. And again
the twig springs from a small spray, which is the
source of other twigs and leaves. Should the leaf
desire to trace its complete and total self it would
have to follow its life-line through the twig and
the spray, to the branch, and so right down to
the central trunk. It could not stop at any
halfway point, and say, This is my final self.
But on its way to the trunk, at different points,
it would find that its sap or life was flowing into
other twigs and leaves, as well as the twig and
leaf first mentioned. It would come into relation,
so to speak, with other bodies beside the first.
If we were to call the first leaf and twig a per
sonality we should have to call some deeper self
involving many twigs and leaves an Individuality,
and so on to the All-self of the tree. The self
of every leaf would approach the main trunk
along a different line, and through various ranges
of individuality ; but all would ultimately par
ticipate in one whole.

273 S

The Drama of Love and Death

I think some such view is clearly the most
satisfactory way of looking at the matter. We
are all essentially one ; our differentiation from
each other does not consist in differences in the
central ego, but in the different lines of experience
and memory. We can none of us boast, at any
point, of a rounded, definite and stationary self,
apart from all others ; but we are all approaching
the universal from different sides. Yet, also, it
is perfectly true that consciousness is born in us
first through our very limitations. Through the
very obstacles that surround us, and through the
things that seem to divide us from others, first
simple consciousness and then self-consciousness
are born. Then comes a time when the limita
tions and the barriers become intolerable. The
soul that at first gloried in them comes to find
the burden of self-consciousness too great. Why
should it be forever John Smith? As Mrs.
Stetson says : —

" What an exceeding rest 'twill be
When I can leave off being Me ! . . .
Done with the varying distress
Of retroactive consciousness ! . . .
Why should I long to have John Smith
Eternally to struggle with ? "

When the consciousness arises of this fact, that
we need not be tied to John Smith forever — that
our real self is far vaster, and essentially one with
others, then in each of us the Divine Soul is born ;
a vista of glory and splendour opens in front, and

274

The Mystery of Personality

on all sides the barriers fall to the ground. On
the way to this supreme conclusion the stream of
memories which one calls oneself may of course
take on form after form ; it may bifurcate, or it
may fuse with other streams. That does not
very much matter. The real identity, once estab
lished, can hardly be lost. For every leaf there is
a channel of sap which connects it with the main
trunk. Personality is real, but it yields itself up in
the greater Individual of which it is the expression ;
and the individual or divine soul is real — enduring
perhaps many thousands of years — but it yields
itself up ultimately in the All. Finally, in that
union, Memory itself, in its mortal form, ceases,
for it is swallowed up in actual realisation, in the
power of actual presence in all space and time.
The divine soul which has thus completed its union
needs memory no more. It is there wherever it
desires to be. As the author of Siderische Geburt
(Berlin, 1910) says, "We mortals are separated
from the divine all-embracing universal Vision ;
and Memory is only a first glimmering reawaken
ing — a beginning of renewed seraphic life and a
coming into relation with all that lies beyond the
little world-corner of our presence."1

At first sight, and to one who does not yet
realise the inner unity of being, these views on
the nature of Personality and Individuality may

1 " Der Beginn des erneutcn seraphischen Lebens und
Einbeziehung alles dessen, was ausser der Gegemvartsenge
liegt."

275

The Drama of Love and Death

appear strange and even painful. For such a
person the thought of the dissociation of his
' self,' of its separation into two or more parts—
either in life or in death — and the divergence of
the two parts from each other, must be grotesque
and terrible, and verging even towards madness.
And so also must be the thought of the possible
dissociation of the personalities of his friends.
And yet it may be necessary for us at length and
by degrees to understand and assimilate such a
view. Certain it is that as we come to under
stand it, we shall see that any dissociation that
may occur can only be of the superficial elements
—something of the nature of a divergence of the
chains of memory ; and that dissociation of the
real and intimate Self is a thing quite impossible.
We shall see that by degrees the Self may learn
to deal with such dissociations, and to express
itself in various guises, and in more than one
personality at a time. If, for instance, there
does occur at death a certain break-up of the
psychic organism — if the animal soul, and the
human soul, and the divine soul do to a certain
extent part from each other and go along different
ways, we may see that it is quite possible that
the personal stream of memory may correspond
ingly branch in different directions. One portion
of the consciousness, having always been animal
and terrestrial in character, may identify itself
mainly with the animal vitality of the residue and
its corresponding memories — and may persevere
for some time as a wandering passional centre,

276

The Mystery of Personality

liable to attach itself to the organisms of living
folk, or to figure as a 'ghost' of very limited
activities and occupied with eternal repetitions
of the same action ; another portion, more dis
tinctly human, may linger in some intermediate
state, partly in touch with the earth-life and the
souls of mortal friends, yet partly drawn onward
into wider spheres ; and may function on for a
long time in a kind of dreamland — creating
perhaps the objects of its own consumption till
it wearies of them, or building up imaginative
worlds of occupations and activities similar to our
own, as in "the happy hunting grounds" of
Indians, or the worlds described from time to
time by mediumistic ' controls.' And again a
third portion may pass into that far wider and
grander state of being which we have described —
that of the 'divine' soul which recognises its
equality and unity with all others, and its freedom
of the whole universe. In all these cases the
main stream of memory, branching, must pour
itself into the section of life which follows, and
render the latter quite continuous with the former
—though naturally with some differences, both

in the memories transmitted, and in the degree of

i b

continuity, in each case.

We may apply these considerations to the
question of the messages and apparitions from
the unseen world which have been alluded
to in former chapters. How far or in what
special way these communications really represent
the active and continuing consciousness of our

277

The Drama of Love and Death

departed friends is a question which is generally
admitted to be most doubtful and difficult. And
its difficulty is not lessened, I think, by our
conclusions (so far) on the nature of Personality.
If the stream of a man's earth-life memory may
diverge at death into two or more streams, then
it must remain difficult for us to say whether the
communication which is coming to us proceeds
from a mere overflow of that stream, which has
eddied itself, so to speak, into the brain of
the medium ; or from some ' astral ' shell of
the departed one, which has already begun decay
ing and dissipating, in our atmosphere ; or again
from the true soul of the man which is pushing
forward into the world beyond. Probably we do
not yet know enough about the matter to form
decisive judgments. In either case the memory
exhibited may be surprisingly perfect. And it
seems to me that in most cases nothing but
personal evidence and personal detail, even down
to the minutest points, can decide — and even
then not in such a way as to decide for others.
And perhaps it is best and most natural so. In
our world of ordinary life it is so. If an apparent
stranger turns up from the other side of the
earth and claims a far-back acquaintance ; if
another makes the same claim over the telephone ;
if a known friend behaves strangely, and we
are in doubt whether to attribute his conduct
to bona fides or to incipient madness; in these
and a thousand other cases, personal relationship
and personal understanding (though by no means

278

The Mystery of Personality

unerring) count for more than all science and
legal proof. And perhaps this is the healthiest
way to take the subject : not to be over curious
or speculative or sentimental, but where solid
help and a permanent and useful relationship
seems to be gained, there to accept the communi
cations as so far commending and justifying
themselves.

If, as I have just said, there is something a
little disquieting and even terrible in the thought
that our personality may thus be subject to
rupture or dissociation into two or more portions,
that matter after all depends upon how we look
upon it — whether from below, as it were, or
from above. There is nothing particularly terrible
in the thought that our bodily organs and parts—
our " Little Marys," and so forth — may have
(probably do have) very distinct personalities of
their own. We look down upon them, so to
speak, and include them. And we shall one day
no doubt, and in the realisation of our greater
selves, have the splendid experience of including
two (or more) bodies — of having them at our
service, and available for command and expression.
Even now we are sometimes conscious of having
one envelope of a more ethereal and intense
nature, swift and far-reaching both in movement
and perception in the innermost regions, and
another more local body, in touch with terrestrial
life. And there would be nothing surprising or
dreadful in finding, after death, that an ethereal
and a terrestrial body were both still at our

279

The Drama of Love and Death

command — though both perhaps more developed
and more differentiated from each other than
at present ; — or even that we might be capable
of inhabiting several such bodies.

It is of course puzzling, under our ordinary
conceptions of Space and Time, to imagine how
it could be possible to deal with several bodies
at the same time ; but in reality it is no more
puzzling than the problem which we habitually
solve every day and every hour of our lives.
How do we, for instance, deal with and dispose
the activities of our hands and our feet and our
eyes and our brain, with simultaneous care, say,
in walking through the streets ? We inhabit
these separate organs, these distinct personalities,
simultaneously, and ordain their movements and
gather in their perceptions by the act of attention.
Attention in the world of the spirit corresponds
to extension in the physical world. Whatever
your spirit attends to, that some physical radia
tion from yourself extends to. And similarly if
you had bodies in different worlds and regions,
by the simple act of attention your spirit would
reach them. Nevertheless — to return to the one
body and the various organs, like hands and feet
and eyes, which we seem to have under control — •
it is clear that our minds could not possibly
overlook all the details of their management,
unless there were some general ordaining spirit
in the body which was in close touch and
sympathy, and ready to act with and aid us ;
and similarly it is clear that we could not ordain

280

The Mystery of Personality

and organise any movement of a secondary body
at a distance — even though ' belonging ' to us—
unless there were a spirit, in that body and the
intervening spaces, in touch and sympathy with
ours. It is the knowledge that there is such a
community of life, such an abounding Self, which
gives the ' divine ' soul its great joy and its great
power — " for whatever he desires, that he obtains
from the Self." He who knows has indeed the
freedom of the universe, and of all its powers —
who knows that the Spirit of the whole is his
own.

It is natural therefore to suppose that that
portion of the consciousness which has circled and
centred very definitely and conclusively round
the All-self — or such aspect of the same as
specially belongs to it ; or (what perhaps comes
to the same thing) has circled very definitely
round the divine soul of a loved one; will pass
through death easily and without much loss of
continuity. It will with its attendant memories
pass easily and continuously into the inmost
sphere ; or (to put the matter in another way)
remaining in that sphere it will simply become
aware that a mass of husks have been shed off,
which clouded it. It will become aware of the
glorious state of being to which it has always
implicitly belonged, and of its connexion with
not one only but many bodies.

It may be — and I think one almost feels that
it must be — that the most intimate self of any of

us cannot be realised short of externalisation in

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The Drama of Love and Death

a vast number of separate manifestations or lives.
One has the impression with regard to one's body,
that "this is one of my bodies"; or that "this
body represents a portion of myself"; but one
does not feel "this body represents my total,
complete and final self." And as we have just
suggested that in a more intimate state of being
we may become distinctly aware of having rela
tion to several bodies simultaneously, so the
world-old doctrine of reincarnation in its general
form has long suggested that our most intimate
selves are related to a great number of bodies in
succession to each other in Time. The higher or
inner Individual — of agelong and asonian life — is
reincarnated (it is said) thousands of times ; thus
to embody that aspect of the Divine which it
represents.

These embodiments may be in forms by no
means resembling each other — though doubtless
there will be a thread of similarity running
through ; and one embodiment may have little
idea (except in moments of inspiration) of its
relation to the others, or of any continuity of
memory between itself and the others. Yet the
memories of these lives and embodiments passing
into the inner sphere are ultimately gathered
together and drawn up to constitute that
most glorious world of each Being of which
we have spoken — a world in which each over
looks and ordains its various lives and mani
festations as from a mountain-top. These are

indeed " the ageless immortal gods who seek

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The Mystery of Personality

ever to come in the forms of men " —whom
we ever and anon seem to feel and hear knock
ing at the inner door of our little local selves,
as though they would gain admittance and
acknowledgment.

283

CHAPTER XVI
CONCLUSION

AND so we seem to find — in the farthest and
loftiest reaches of life, as in its first beginnings-
Love and Death strangely linked and strangely
related. Changing their form but not their
essence they accompany us to the last ; and we
forebode them, in the final account, as no longer
the tyrannous and often terrible over-lords of our
mortal days, but rather our most indispensable
companions without whom life in its higher ranges
could not well be maintained.

For a time, certainly, we cling to our limited
and tiny self-life and consciousness ; and deem
that all good resides in the careful guarding of
the same. But again there comes a time when
the bounds of personality confine and chafe beyond
endurance, when an immense rage sweeps us far
out into the great ocean ; when to save our lives
we deliberately lose them ; when Death becomes
a passion even as Love is.

The mystery of mortal life clears, or dissolves
away, by our passing in a sense beyond personality ;
and the hour arrives when we look down on these
local days, these self-limitations, as phases — phases

284

Conclusion

of some far vaster state of being. Death is the
necessary door by which we pass from one such
phase to another ; and Love is even a similar
door.

Growing silently within there emerges at last
something which has its home in the great spaces,
which dives under and through Death, and is the
companion of Titanic and Cosmic beings ; some
thing strangely surpassing all barriers and limits,
and strangely rinding identity by fusing and losing
it in the life of others ; something which at times
seems almost mockingly to abandon its own
identity and rise creative in new forms — sporting
in the great ocean ; and yet can somehow instantly
recall its past and the tiny limits from which it
first sprang — trailing for ever with it the wonder
ful cloud-wreaths of earth-memory and association,
and the myriad fragrance of personal remembrance.
" What art thou then ? " says the poet, addressing
his departed friend : —

" What art thou then ? — I cannot guess ;
But tho' I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power
I do not therefore love thee less."

Even in the farthest spheres the poignant syllables
' I ' and ' Thou ' will surely still be heard ; and a
thousand deaths shall not avail to exhaust their
meaning or to make of Love a pale and cold
abstraction.

The memory of the earth-life and of personal

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The Drama of Love and Death

identity is never lost ; but it passes out into that
far greater form, the memory and resumption into
a coherent Whole of many lives, and the sense of
an Individuality which has value because it is
merged in and is an expression of the All.
Memory indeed changes from being the faint
dream-shadow that we know, of things in the
past, to being the things themselves, actual and ever
present at our command ; and with this finding
of the inner soul and heart's core of all beings it
becomes possible to live over again with them the
days gone by, in all detail and with ever deeper
understanding of their true meaning.

The supra-liminal returns into harmony with
the subliminal ; the individual life and the mass-
life are reunited. With the overpassing of the
local and terrestrial self we are liberated into a
fluid region where a thousand personalities yield
their secrets and their co-operation into our hands.
With the releasing of our attention from personal
objects and terrestrial gains, materials and people
correspondingly cease to obstruct. They find
nothing which they can obstruct ! The body
moves freely about the world ; life ceases to be
the ' obstacle race ' and the queer perpetual vista
of barricades which it mostly now is ; and a fortiori
the soul moves freely, because truly for the
redeemed soul it is possible to feel that all things
and creatures are friendly, all beings a part of
itself. These and many other such realisations
are indeed possible now — even in our present
terrestrial state — under those rare conditions when

286

Conclusion

the divine creature which is within the mortal
body achieves a momentary deliverance, and under
which we sometimes pass out of our little mundane
dream into that other land where the great Voices
sound and Visions dwell.

287

APPENDIX

1. Every kind of cell or other organism has a natural
limit of size (dependent partly on the relation between
surface and volume).

2. When that limit is reached, superfluity of nutrition
and growth tends to bring about Reproduction.

3. Reproduction begins with simple division or bud
ding.

4. Conjugation in its primitive form (as among
protozoa where there is no distinction of sex) takes place
between similars, and is an exchange to some degree of
cell-contents.

5. It apparently affords a superior nutrition, and is
a kind of Regeneration, essential to the continued health
of the species, and favorable to reproduction.

6. Hunger and Love are thus related at this stage.

7. Later, conjugation takes place between dissimilars
(of the same species) ; and the distinct phenomena of
sex appear — of male and female.

8. Reproduction by simple division or budding leads to
a kind of * immortality,' since each descendant cell is
continuous, in a sense, with the original one.

9. This simple division or virgin-birth process may
go on to many generations — even to hundreds among
the Protozoa.

10. But since at some time or other conjugation is
apparently necessary in order to restore vitality, the
immortality at this point ceases to be an individual
immortality, and becomes rather a joint or racial
immortality.

11. The main thing in conjugation would appear to

290

Appendix

be that the two factors should be complementary to each
other, however differentiated, so that in their union the
whole race-life should be restored, and the Regeneration
therefore be complete.

12. The special sex-differentiation called male and
female depends on the separation of the active from the
sessile qualities (and other qualities respectively related
to each) into two great branches.

13. Since the female takes the sessile part she appears
sometimes as the goal and object of conjugation, and the
more important factor ; but actual observation so far
shows each factor, male and female, to be equally
important.

14. In the fertilised ovum there are an equal number
of chromosomes derived from each parent ; and if the
female provides the shrine in which the new develop
ment takes place, the male (centrosome) appears as the
organising genius of the process.

15. This process, by which a fertilised germ-cell
divides and redivides, and so builds up a ' body,' is quite
similar to that by which a protozoon divides and re-
divides to form a numerous colony.

16. A 'body' indeed is such a colony, co-operatively
associated in definite form, of which all the millions of
cells are practically continuous with the original fertilised
germ, and one with it.

17. Every cell in such a body has apparently the same
nuclear elements as the original cell, equally derived
from both parents ; but is differentiated so far as to be
able to fulfil its special part in the body.

1 8. The process of division of these microscopic cells
is strangely exact and complex ; and the various elements
of the nucleus seem to be themselves divided into two,
on each occasion, with strange preciseness.

19. The constituent cells of each race of animals have
always a certain number of nuclear threads or chromo
somes — fixed for that particular race.

29 1

Summary of Chapter II

20. When, therefore, a sperm-cell and germ-cell
unite, they each first extrude or expel half the number
of their chromosomes, so that after union the joint cell
is provided again with the precise number of chromo
somes characteristic of the race.

21. The exact nature of these * maturation' divisions
and expulsions is far from clear ; but it would seem that
they are carried out in such a way as, while retaining
always the basic elements of the Race, to secure a
continual and endless sorting of these into new com
binations.

22. These complex evolutions occurring, as described,
in the interior of the most primitive cells, look as much
like the last results of some far antecedent or invisible
operations (of which we know nothing), as like the first
commencement of the visible organic world with which
we are acquainted.

292

DIAGRAM OF CELL-DIVISION

(FOUR CHROMOSOMES ONLY) To face p. 292.

i. Cell, nucleus, centrosome
and chromatin before
division.

3. Centrosomes go apart ;
nucleus-wall dissolves.

2. Division of centrosome
and formation of chromo
somes.

4. Chromosomes range
alone; central line.

5. Chromosomes split
longitudinally.

6. And draw towards their
respective centrosomes.

7. Fresh nucleus- walls
formed ; the whole cell
divides.

8. Two new cells formed
with chromatin as before.

INDEX

AFTER-DEATH State : is there
such a thing ? 1 1 1 et scq.

Art of Creation, The, quoted,
126, 136, 143, 181, 192, 226,
267

Art of Love, The, 24 et seq. ;
Ovid, Vatsayana, Havelock
Ellis on the, 26, 27 ; an
honorable Art, 28 ; value in
Education, 34, 35 ; Ovid
quoted, 40, 44, 53 ; greatest
of Arts, 49 ; neglected and
despised, 49

Assagioli, R., quoted, no

Azrael, 3

BARADUC, Dr., photographing
the body at Death, 185

Bergson, Henri, quoted, 126,
221 ; canalisation of the senses,
212 ; Time an integral ele
ment of consciousness, 268

Bilocation, Hercules simultan
eously in Hades and in Heaven,
265 ; 266

Birth of the soul through love,

4i, 45

Bruno, Giordano, quoted, 40
Bucke, R. M., on Cosmic Con
sciousness, 8 1

CARRINGTON on Death quoted,
71, 103, 183, 185 ; on Pheno
mena of Spiritualism, 187 ;
and fraud, 206

Cell-division, 6, 12, 13, &c. ;
diagram of, facing p. 292

Cell-souls or psychomeres, 183

Centrosome, 13, organ of cell-
division, 21, 183 ; its ana
logue in human courtship, 39

Chromatin, 13

Chromosomes, 13, 14, 19 et seq. ;
equal number contributed by
sperm and germ, 21

Clairvoyance, 101, 165, 211 ; in
death, 104, 128

Coleridge's Diogyaphia literaria
quoted, 137 ; also 193

Communication with the dead,
103, 144, 161, 171, 278

Consciousness below Thought,
79 ; its relation to Death, 80,
8 1 ; and to survival of death,
82, 83; continuity of, 134;
cosmic, 162 ; orders and ranks
of consciousness, 268

Consciousness and intelligence
in the Body, 99, 107 et seq.,
190, 191

Cook, Florence, the medium, 150

Cox, Sergeant, 148

Creative power of the subliminal
self in all beings, 143 et seq.,
192 et seq., 260

Crookes, Sir William, quoted,
147, 150, 1 86 ; on sensation of
cold accompanying manifesta
tions, 203 ; psychical and
physical discoveries during
same period, 207

D'ALBE, Fournier, quoted, 150;
his theory of a spiritual or
ethereal body, 183 et seq.

Dale Owen, his Footfalls quoted,

294

Index

148, 152, 182 ; his Debatable
Land quoted, 150, 205

Das, Bhagavan, quoted, 251,
268, 272, 273

Death, Neglect of study of, 69,
72, 73, 182 ; case of apparent,
70; ecstasy in, 71, 130; re
cognition of lost friends in,
71, 103; extension of memory
in, 71, 164; sensation of
flying in, 72 ; a break-up of
organic unity, 74 ; how to
minimise the evils of, 76, 77 ;
sacredness and naturalness of,
78 ; what happens at death,
ch. vi. ; impressions in the
moment of, 105, 106 ; Death
not a state, 114; corresponds
to Birth, 101, 114; a passion
like Love, 284

Defects no bar to Love, 56

De Morgan, Professor, 148

De Quincey quoted, 139

Descartes quoted, 57

D'Esperance, Mme., 151 ; Sha
dow-land quoted, 151, 187,
199 ; pamphlet Materialisa
tions quoted, 151, 198

Devil, the, his good work, 245,
247

Displacement of senses, 211

Doctors and their follies, 72, 77,
78

Dreams, their meaning, Freud,
Ellis, &c., 192 ; their dramatic
quality, 194 ; a key to the
Creation -process, 195

Dying, the Art of, 69 et seq., 76,
77, 104 ; neglect of subject
hitherto, 69, 70 ; especially by
medical men, 77, 102

ECSTASY, 181 ; in death, 71,
130, 285

Ego, The, What is it ? 218, 222,
230, 240, 251, 263 et seq.;
need of attacking this ques
tion, 262 ; beyond Time, 264 ;
ever growing in knowledge,

271 ; even to highest spheres,
286

Electrons, size compared with
Atom, 202 ; their relation to
the atom, 208 ; enormous
energy, 208 ; pervasive power
and indestructibility of body
composed of, 248 ; bring us
near mentality, 250

Ellis, Havelock, quoted, 27, 35,
43, 46, 47, 57, 138

Ethereal body, The, 176 et seq. ;
of ultra-microscopic substance,
lf>3. J77 '• m cloud form, 178
et seq., 199 ; capable of
passing through gross mat
ter, 178, 182, 184 ; its weight,
183, 185 ; extrusion at death,
185 ; compared to staff of an
army-corps, 189, 190; capable
of condensation and accretion
into visibility, 197, 203 ; pos
sible radiative power, 210, 249 ;
period of formation, 230 ; ex
tension of its power at death
of gross body, 250

FARR, Florence, quoted, 60

Faust, Goethe's, quoted, 244

Fertilisation, natural, n ; arti
ficial, 12, 32

Fission and fusion of cells, ch.
ii. ; of personalities, 275 et
seq.

Flanimarion, Camille, quoted.
93, 148; on wraiths, 164, 180

Forel, A., quoted, 15

Fox, Kate, the medium, 149 ;
and Estella Martha, 205

Fusion of souls, 242 ; into life of
the gods, 242

GEDDES and Thomson quoted,
8, 10, 16, 29, 1 16

Germ and sperm cells, conjuga
tion and fusion, n, 17, 33

Gods, the, 242, 257, 282, 285

Growth through love-fusion, 5,
10, 31, 174

295

Index

Guardian Angel, the, 142
Gurney, Edmund, quoted, 167

HAIG, H. A., quoted, 15, 19
"Happy Mass, "the, 132, 173,258
Haunted Houses, 92, 152
Heine quoted, 117
Hercules and Alcestis, 3
Hirschfeld, Dr., Die Transves-

titen quoted, 62
Hudson, T. J., quoted, 139, 141,

153- J6S

Hypnotic experiments, 138, 141,
144

IMAGE-FORMING faculty, the,
145 et seq.

Immortality, of Protozoa, 6, 29,
81, Appendix; of human
beings, 82 et scg., 87, 106,
ch. viii., ch. ix., p. 225

Individuality, below personality,
219 et scq., 269, 271, 286; in
dividualities innumerable, 27 1 ;
illustrated by spectators in a
museum, 272 ; and by life of a
tree, 273 ; may include many
personalities, 279 ; memories
ultimately stored in, 282 ; its
limitation intolerable, 284 ;
an expression of the All-self, 287

Instruction in the Art of Love,
value of, 34, 35

Intermediate state after death,
252

Interwoven quoted, 200, 250

JAMES, Professor William, 148

" KATIE King," 150, photo
graphed, 1 86 ; numerous
manifestations, 205. See
Florence Cook.

Keller, Helen, 121

Key, Ellen, quoted, 61, 67, 239

LATEAU, Louise, case of, 141
Le Bon quoted, 208

Leduc, Stephane, Diffusion-
theory of life, 1 5

Limitation caused by our gross
bodies, 210, 211, 259 ; part of
the cosmic scheme, 214, 243 ;
developing sense of Identity,
244-45, 257

Lodge, Oliver, the ship of the
soul, 123 ; quoted, 148, 161,
187, 195, 202

Loeb, Jacques, quoted, 32

Lombroso, C., quoted, 93, 144,
147, 151, 161, 180, 187, 201

Love, an interchange of essences,
5, 31, 32, 65, 238 ; love and
hunger, 8, 27, 31 ; " falling in
love," 24, 25, 38, 54 ; Love
and Evolution, 27, 28 ; love
and health, 29 ; and Chris
tianity, 30, 35 ; a complex of
human relations, 35 et seq. ;
demands pain and difficulties,
42, 45 ; an actual flame, 45 ;
magic of silence in, 46, 47, 48,
68 ; better than Sunday
schools, 48 ; self-conscious
ness fatal to, 50, 51 ; com
mercialism and upholstery
fatal, 51 ; Force the greatest
compliment, 53 ; comple
mentary nature of love, 55-
59 ; infinite varieties of, 56,
62 ; restoration of Race-life,
59 ; common ground of sym
pathy in, 63 ; Freedom
necessary in, 67 ; breeds souls
out of the Race, 237, 239

Love and Death : their challenge
to each other, 2 ; and to us,
3 ; their connexion through
out Nature, 1 1 5 et seq. ; and
the human world, 168 et scq.,
284 et seq.

Love-murders, 53 ; and quarrels,
61

Lucretius quoted, 115

MACDONALD, George, quoted,

117

296

Index

McDougall, weighing of body at
Death, 184

Maeterlinck quoted, 142

Mass-man, The, 153, 155 ; and
the individual man reunited,
287

Materialisation of forms, ch.
viii., ch. xi., pp. 145 et seq. ;
in connexion with mediums,
148 et scq. ; described, 199,
201 ; " cobwebby sensation "
preceding, 200. 204 ; sensa
tion of cold accompanying,
203 ; fraud not sufficient ex
planation, 206

Maturation-divisions, 19, 20 ;
in human love, 54, 271. See
also Appendix.

Maupas quoted, 7, 29

Maxwell, Dr. J., quoted, 200

Mediumistic Trance, 156 et seq. ;
among all nations, 158 ; ex
haustion of medium and other
dangers, 157 ; mediumship in
the future to become a re
sponsible office, 1 60

Memory, 134; arbiter of sur
vival, 135 ; activity at Death,
164 ; stored below Personality,
220, 256 ; reference to Semon,
221 ; Race-memory, 222 ;
forming of soul-bud through,
255 ; bifurcation of streams
of, 270 ; memory a glimmer
of universal consciousness,
275 ; becomes actuality, 287

Modesty, nature of, 43

Muir, The Mountains of Cali
fornia quoted, 142

Myers, Frederick, 91 ; quoted,
119, 123, 128, 135, 138, 140,
153, 161, 167, 212

•" NEPENTHES," 198
Noctiluca, 7

Odyssey of Homer quoted, 265
Orpheus and Eurydice, 3

PAGAN outlook, renewal of, 3 r
Paladino, Eusapia, 146, 151 ;

question of fraud, 206
Pandora box within us, 152
Parthenogenesis, 6
Perception without end-organs,

165, 21 1, 212
Personality, its cleavage, 28,

265, 276 ; fissions and fusions,

266, 267 ; defined by Memory,
269 et seq. ; no such thing as a
fixed and limited, 271 ; a phase
of Individuality, 275, 284

Phantasms, 92, 94, 98, 101, 148 ;
seen in connexion with
mediums, 149 et seq.; photo
graphed, 1 86 et seq.

Phantasms of the Living quoted,
148, 164 ; Phantasms of the
Dead, 167

Photographs of " spirits," 186
et seq., 196 et scq. ; by ultra
violet rays, 197 ; with stereo
scopic apparatus, 201

Plato quoted, 18,21,33,239,242

Plutarch quoted, 246

Pre-existence, 134, 257

Prince, Morton, The Dissociation
of a Personality, 1 10

Protozoa, growth and reproduc
tion, 5 et seq. ; Regeneration,
7 ; fusion, 10 ; immortality
of, 6, 29, 8 1

Psychical Research Society, 92,
141, 148

Psychorrhagy, 91

RACE-LIFE, the, 168 ; con
nexion with Love and Death,
169 et seq. ; reincarnation
through the, 219 ct seq., 227
et seq. ; compared to plant-
stem, 228 ; souls bred out of,

237

Radio-activity of ' spirit '-
forms, maintained by Lom-
broso, 202 ; supported by
Fournier d'Albe, 202. See
also 206

297

Index

Re-embodiment contrasted with
Reincarnation, 229 et seq., 232,
233 ; possibility of dealing
with several bodies, 280 et
seq.

Regeneration, 7 ; more funda
mental than generation, 59, 61

Reincarnation, meaning of the
word, 215 et seq., 223 ; a fact
in some sense, 224 ; must be
through some World-self, 225,
et seq. ; " broken reincarna
tion," 228, 234 ; through a
"soul-bud," 229, 240, 255;
without re-birth on earth, 232,
233 ; compared with certain
biological processes, 235

Resemblance produced between
lovers, 34

Resurrection, the, 156

Richet, Professor C., 147, 150,
187, 200

Rolleston, Professor, quoted, 18,
19, 21

Rose of Jericho, the, 97, 230

SCHOPENHAUER quoted, 55

Self, the universal, 85, 87, 94 et
seq.; 104, 131, 225, 257

Self-consciousness, 80 ; born
through limitation, 274, 286

Sense or body-world in every
sphere, 259

Sex, beginnings of, 9, 10 ; in the
Metazoa, 10; male and female,
9 ; equality of, 12 ; differ
ences, 9, u, 22. See also
Appendix.

Siderische Geburt quoted, 275

Siegfried and Brynhilde, 3

Somnambulism, 141

Soul, the animal, its fate, 88 et
seq., 104

Soul, the divine, 230, 237 et seq. ;
period of incubation before
its birth, 254 ; its experiences,
285 et seq. ; beyond Time,
264 ; companion of Titanic
beings, 258

Soul, the human, its constitution,
85, 86 ; its fate in death, 93
et seq., 252 ; its divinity, 124 ;
its transformations and
moultings, 129 ; liberation
into freedom, 170, 236, 2461
born through love, 41, 241
Soul-buds, 229, 240, 255, 256
Speech, not used by the animals

and the angels, 50
Spiritualistic phenomena, some
at least genuine, 160 ; theories
concerning, 160
Stead, W. T., quoted, 152
Stetson, Mrs., quoted, 274
Subconscious self, the, asso
ciated with the first germ,
119; resides in the whole
body, 1 20 ; animates every
cell, 1 20 ; and extends be
yond, 122, 123 ; before birth,
125 ; after death, 126 ;
activity at the hour of death,
128, 164, 1 66 ; survival of,
133 ; a storehouse of memory,
I36, 139 J its vastness, 137 ;
manifested in Genius, Pro
phecy, &c., 140 ; its image-
forming power, 143, 145 et
seq., 148 et seq., 260 ; in
cluding extremes of character,
153 ; " never sleeps," 165
Survival of Individual, 131 et
seq., 162 et seq., 170 et seq. ;
both subliminal and supra-
liminal, 154, 155; general
arguments for, 172
Summary of Ch. II., 290
Swedenborg quoted, 239

TELEPATHY, 113; in the hour
of death, 128, 166 ; in the
beyond-world, 258
Tennyson quoted, 171, 286
Tetlow, J. B., on Mecliumship,

158

Thomson, J. J., quoted, 208
Towards Democracy quoted, 80,

i 66, 282

298

Index

Transformations, in the body,
129; in the soul, 129, 130,
175, 246, 254

UPANISHADS, the, 80 ; quoted,

127

VARLEY, C. F., 148, 150

Visions and Voices, their evoca
tion from the depths of Being,
ch. viii., p. 155, 260, 288

WALLACE, A. R., quoted, 15,
147, 187

Weininger, Otto, quoted, 61
Weismann quoted, 116, 255
Wesley Family, Memoirs quoted,

152

Whitman quoted, 105, 114, 245
Wilson, E. B.,on The Cell, quoted,

16, 20, 21, 22, 32, 228
Witch of Endor, 158
Wraiths, 92, 128, 164, 166

1 80

" YOLANDA," 151, 2OO

ZULLNER, Professor, 148

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