The little book of life after death

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CO

LITTLE BOOK OF LIFE
AFTER DEATH

FROM THE GERMAN OF

USTAV THEODOR FECHHER

1

921

1905
C. 1
ROBA

THE L.ITTLE BOOK

OF

LIFE AFTER DEATH

BY

GUSTAV THEODOB FECHNEB

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY

MARY c. WADSWORTH

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
WILLIAM JAMES

" Indetien, freut et immcr wenn man teine Wurztln autdefmt
und teine Exitttnz in Andere emgreifen tieht." — Schiller iiu
Bri«fw«chMl luit Go«tUe. Ill, 8. 63.

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY

1905

ICR* ~~ ' -~^

DAI

:,

.

Copyright, 1904,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

,4/J rights reserved
Published October, 1904 '

LIBRARY

7 "> >S O CJ o
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

THE LITTLE BOOK

OF

LIFE AFTER DEATH

TO

ISIDORE AND ELIZABETH

DAUGHTERS OF HIS FRIEND

CH. F. GRIMMER

THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

/GLADLY accept the translator's
invitation to furnish a few words
of introduction to Fechner's
"Biichlein vom Leben nach dem Tode,"
the more so as its somewhat oracularly
uttered sentences require, for their proper
understanding, a certain acquaintance
with their relations to his general system.
Fechners name lives in physics as
that of one of the earliest and best de
terminers of electrical constants, also as
that of the best systematic defender of
the atomic theory. In psychology it is a
commonplace to glorify him as the first
user of experimental methods, and the
vii

INTRODUCTION

first aimer at exactitude in facts. In
cosmology he is known as the author of
a system of evolution which, while
taking great account of physical details
and mechanical conceptions, makes con
sciousness correlative to and coeval with
the whole physical world. In literature
he has made his mark by certain half-
humoristic, half-philosophic essays pub
lished under the name of Dr. Mises -
indeed the present booklet originally ap
peared under that name. In cesthetics
he may lay claim to be the earliest sys
tematically empirical student. In meta
physics he is not only the author of an
independently reasoned ethical system,
but of a theological theory worked out
in great detail. His mind, in short,
was one of those multitudinously organ-
viii

INTRODUCTION

ized cross-roads of truth, which are
occupied only at rare intervals by chil
dren of men, and from which nothing is
either too far or too near to be seen in
due perspective. Patient observation
and daring imagination dwelt hand
in hand in Fechner ; and perception,
reasoning, and feeling all flourished on
the largest scale without interfering
either with the others function.

Fechner was, in fact, a philosopher in
the "great " sense of the term, although
he cared so much less than most pMloso-
phers do for purely logical abstractions.
For him the abstract lived in the con
crete ; and although he worked as defi
nitely and technically as the narrowest
specialist works in each of the many lines
of scientific inquiry which he successively
ix

INTRODUCTION

followed, he followed each and all of
them for the sake of his one overmaster
ing general purpose, the purpose namely
of elaborating what he called the " day
light-view " of the world into greater and
greater system and completeness.

By the daylight-view, as contrasted
with the night-view, Fechner meant the
anti-materialistic view, — the view that
the entire material universe, instead of
being dead, is inwardly alive and con
sciously animated. There is hardly a
page of his writing that was not proba
bly connected in his mind with this most
general of his interests.

Little by little the materialistic gen
eration that called his speculations fan
tastic has been replaced by one with
greater liberty of imagination. Lead-

INTRO D UCTION

ers of thought, a Paulsen, a Wundt,
a Preyer, a Lasswitz, treat Fechners
pan-psychism as plausible, and write of
its author with veneration. Younger
men chime in, and Fechner's philosophy
promises to become scientifically fashion
able. Imagine a Herbert Spencer who,
to the unity of his system and its unceas
ing touch with facts, should have added
a positively religious philosophy instead
of Spencer's dry agnosticism ; who should
have mingled humor and lightness (even
though it were germanic lightness] with
his heavier ratiocinations; who should
have been no less encyclopedic and far
more subtle ; who should have shown a
personal life as simple and as conse
crated to the one pursuit of truth, —
imagine this, I say, if you can, and you
xi

INTROD UCTION

may form some idea of what the name
of Fechner is more and more coming to
stand for, and of the esteem in which it
is more and more held by the studious
youth of his native Germany. His be
lief that the whole material universe is
conscious in divers spans and wave
lengths, inclusions and envelopments,
seems assuredly destined to found a school
that will grow more systematic and
solidified as time goes on.

The general background of the pres
ent dogmatically written little treatise is
to be found in the " Tagesansicht" in
the "Zend-Avesta" and in various other
works of Fechner's. Once grasp the
idealistic notion that inner experience is
the reality, and that matter is but a
form in which inner experiences may
xii

INTROD UCTION

appear to one another when they affect
each other from the outside ; and it is
easy to believe that consciousness or
inner experience never originated, or
developed, out of the unconscious, but
that it and the physical universe are co-
eternal aspects of one self-same reality,
much as concave and convex are aspects
of one curve. " Psychophysical move
ment," as Fechner calls it, is the most
pregnant name for all the reality that
is. As " movement " it has a " direc
tion " ; as " psychical " the direction can be
felt as a " tendency " and as all that lies
connected in the way of inner expe
rience with tendencies, — desire, effort,
success, for example ; wftile as "physical "
the direction can be defined in spatial
terms and formulated mathematically or
xiii

INTRODUCTION

otherwise in the shape of a descriptive
" law."

But movements can be superimposed
and compounded, the smaller on the
greater, as wavelets upon waves. This
is as true in the mental as in the physi
cal sphere. Speaking psychologically,
we may say that a general wave of con-
sciousness rises out of a subconscious
background, and that certain portions
of it catch the emphasis, as wavelets
catch the light. The whole process is
conscious, but the emphatic wave-tips of
the consciousness are of such contracted
span that they are momentarily insu
lated from the rest. They realize them
selves apart, as a twig might realize
itself, and forget the parent tree. Such
an insulated bit of experience leaves,
xiv

--.

INTRODUCTION

however, when it passes away, a memory
of itself. The residual and subsequent
consciousness becomes different for its
having occurred. On the physical side
we say that the brain-process that corre
sponded to it altered permanently the
future mode of action of the brain.

Now, according- to Fechner, our bod
ies are just wavelets on the surface of
the earth. We grow upon the earth as
leaves grow upon a tree, and our con
sciousness arises out of the whole earth-
consciousness, — which it forgets to thank,
— just as within our consciousness an
emphatic experience arises, and makes
us forget the whole background of
experience without which it could not
have come. But as it sinks again into
that background it is not forgotten.
xv

INTRODUCTION

On the contrary, it is remembered and,
as remembered, leads a freer life, for it
now combines, itself a conscious idea,
with the innumerable, equally conscious
ideas of other remembered things. Even
so is it, when we die, with the whole
system of our outlived experiences.
During the life of our body, although
they were always elements in the more
general enveloping earth-consciousness,
yet they themselves were unmindful of
the fact. Now, impressed on the whole
earth-mind as memories, they lead the
life of ideas there, and realize them
selves no longer in isolation, but along
with all the similar vestiges left by other
human lives, entering with these into
new combinations,- affected anew by ex-
perie?ices of the living, and affecting the
xvi

INTRODUCTION

living in their turn, enjoying, in short,
that " third stage " of existence with the
definition of which the text of the present
work begins.

God, for Fechner, is the totalized
consciousness of the whole universe, of
which the Earths consciousness forms an
element, just as in turn my human con
sciousness and yours form elements of
the whole earth's consciousness. As I
apprehend Fechner (though I am not
sure], the whole Universe — God there
fore also — evolves in time : that is, God
has a genuine history. Through us as
its human organs of experience the earth
enriches its inner life, until it also " geht
zu grunde " and becomes immortal in the
form of those still wider elements of inner
experience which its history is even now

b xvii

INTRODUCTION

weaving into the total cosmic life of
God.

The whole scheme, as the reader sees,
is got from the fact that the span of our
own inner life alternately contracts and
expands. You cannot say where the
exact outline of any present state of
consciousness lies. It shades into a more
general background in which even now
other states lie ready to be known. This
background is the inner aspect of what
physically appear, first, as our residual
and only partially excited neural ele
ments, and then more remotely as the
whole organism which we call our own.

This indetermination of the partition,
this fact of a changing threshold, is the
analogy which Fechner generalizes, that
is all.

xviii

INTROD UCTION

There are many difficulties attaching
to his theory. The complexity with which
he himself realizes them, and the subtlety
with which he meets them are admirable.
It is interesting to see how closely his
speculations, due to such different mo
tives, and supported by such different
arguments, agree with those of some of
our own philosophers. Royce's Gifford
lectures, " The World and the Individ-
ual," Bradley s Appearance and Reality,
and A. E. Taylor's Elements of " Meta
physics," present themselves immediately
to one's mind.

WILLIAM JAMES.

Chocorua, tf. H., June 21, 1904.

XIX

PREFACE TO THE SECOND
EDITION

rHE first edition of this little
book appeared in the year 1 836
under the pen name of "Mises"
and was published by my friend, long
since dead, the book-deakr and com
poser, Ch. F. Grimmer. It made its
way quietly, like the first edition of its
authors life, of which the little book was
a part, while cherishing the expectation
of a second. With the years of the
one first edition, the copies of the other,
without being yet quite exhausted, are
diminishing.

While I dedicate this second edition,
issued from another friendly publishing
xxi

PREFACE

house, and under my own name, to the
beloved daughters of my departed friend,
in whom is continued for us that knew him
all that we loved in him, I believe, in
the sense of the very view which is set
forth in this book, that I am giving
it back to my friend in the way he
would best like. He has, indeed, a per
petual spiritual claim upon the earlier
material; for it onginated mainly as
the result of talks with him about an
idea of our mutual friend Billroth,
which, though cursorily expressed and
held by the latter, yet took deep root in
the heart of the author. It was a little
seed, a tree has grown from it; he has
helped to loosen the earth for it.

Let me here add a wish: that there
might be a revival of my friends songs,
xxii

PREFACE

so beautiful and so forgotten, as well as
of this half-forgotten little book. The
creation of both went on so hand in hand
during a period of daily companion-
ship, that they seem to echo and re-echo in
my memory like intermingled melodies.
Simple as their charm is, may they have
a duration even beyond that of the music
of the future; for sound drowns beauty,
yet beauty outlives sound, and what
begins loud cannot so end. But if I
did not believe that the same is true
of truth as of beauty, how should I
hope for a future for the opinions of
Ms book ?

The reason for exchanging the former

pen-name now for the author's own, was

personal. The little paper at its first

appearance was a divergence from the

xxiii

PREFACE

chief characteristics of the author's other
works; but it became the firstling of a
series of later writings, appearing under
his own name, which, in their contents,
conform to it more or less, and to which
it may therefore be added by the ascrip
tion of a common origin. Finally, their
grouping results from the consideration
that they combine with the work before us
to form a connected theory of life which
partly supports, partly is supported by
the contents of this book. A further
carrying out of this view, only briefly
developed here, may be found in the
tMrd part of the Zend-Avesta.

This edition has only been altered in
unimportant respects, extended in sev
eral, from the former.

XXIV

PREFACE TO THE THIRD
EDITION

/T is sufficient to remark that, except
by tlie addition of a note upon
page 57, and the omission of an
easily controverted appendix (on the prin
ciple of divine vision) at the close of the
last edition, the present one only differs
from the former in unimportant changes
of a few words.

The fourth edition, the first after the
authors death, is a faithfully rendered
reprint of the third, cJianged only in
form.

THE PUBLISHERS.

March, 1900.

XXV

APPENDIX TO THE FIRST
EDITION

rHE first suggestion of the idea
worked out in this paper, that
the spirits of the dead continue
to exist in the living as individuals,
came to me through a conversation with
my friend Professor Billroth, then liv
ing in Leipzig, now in Halle. While
this idea, in a series of related images,
both appealed to me and awakened
kindred ones, it took prominent sJiape,
and through a sort of enforced pro
gression extended to the idea of a higher
Ufe of spirits in God. Meanwhile the
originator, as in the philosophy of reli-
xxvii

APPENDIX, FIRST EDITION

gion in general, so especially in the doc
trine of immortality, took a quite differ
ent line from this, conforming more
directly to the church dogma, which led
him away, for the most part, if not wholly,
from this fundamental idea, so that, while
I had thought it necessary to point to
him as its author, I no longer venture
to call him its advocate. The views of
this philosopher upon the subject in ques
tion will be developed in a work by him
shortly to appear.

Written in Gastein in
August, 1835.

XXV111

LIFE AFTER DEATH

CHAPTER I

MAN lives upon the earth not
once, but three times. His
first stage of life is a continu
ous sleep ; the second is an alternation
between sleeping and waking ; the third
is an eternal waking.

In the first stage man lives alone in
darkness ; in the second he lives with
companions, near and among others,
but detached and in a light which pic
tures for him the exterior ; in the third
his life is merged with that of other souls
into the higher life of the Supreme

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Spirit, and he discerns the reality of
ultimate things.

In the first stage the body is devel
oped from the germ and evolves its
equipment for the second ; in the
second the spirit unfolds from its seed-
bud and realizes its powers for the third ;
in the third is developed the divine
spark which lies in every human soul,
and which, already here through per
ception, faith, feeling, the intuition of
Genius, demonstrates the world beyond
man — to the soul in the third stage as
clear as day, though to us obscure.

The passing from the first to the
second stage is called birth ; the transi
tion from the second to the third is
called death.

The way upon which we pass from
the second to the third stage is not
2

LIFE AFTER DEATH

darker than that by which we reach the
second from the first. The one leads to
the outer, the other to the inner aspect
of the world.

But as the child in the first stage is
still blind and deaf to all the glory and
joy of the life of the second, and his
birth from the warm body of his mother
is hard and painful, with a moment when
the dissolution of his earlier existence
feels like death, before the awakening
to the new environment without has
occurred, — so we in our present exist
ence, in which our whole consciousness
lies bound in our contracted body, as
yet know nothing of the splendor and
harmony, the radiance and freedom of
the third stage, and easily hold the
dark and narrow way which leads us
into it as a blind pitfall which has no
3

LIFE AFTER DEATH

outlet. But death is only a second
birth into a freer existence, in which
the spirit breaks through its slender
covering and abandons inaction and
sloth, as the child does in its first
birth.

Then all, which with our present
senses only reaches us as exterior and,
as it were, from afar, we become pene
trated with and possessed of in all its
depth of reality. The spirit will no
longer wander over mountain and field,
or be surrounded by the delights of
spring, only to mourn that it all seems
exterior to him ; but, transcending
earthly limitations, he will feel new
strength and joy in growing. He will
no longer struggle by persuasive words
to produce a thought in others, but in
the immediate influence of souls upon
4

LIFE AFTER DEATH

each other, no longer separated by the
body, but united spiritually, he will ex
perience the joy of creative thought ;
he will not outwardly appear to the
loved ones left behind, but will dwell
in their inmost souls, and think and
act in and through them.

CHAPTER II

THE unborn child has merely
a corporeal frame, a forming
principle. The creation and
development of its limbs by which it
reaches full growth are its own acts.
It has not yet the feeling that these
parts are its possession, for it needs
them not and cannot use them. A
fine eye, a beautiful mouth, are to him
only objects to be secured uncon
sciously, so that they may sometime
become serviceable parts of himself.
They are made for a subsequent world
of which the child as yet knows noth
ing: it fashions them by virtue of an
impulse, blind to him, which is clearly
6

LIFE AFTER DEATH

established alone in the organization of
the mother.1 But when the child, ripe
for the second stage of life, slips away
from the organ representing the provi-

1 It may thus be more clearly stated to the
physiologist : The creative principle of the child
lies, before birth, not in that which after birth
will continue to live on with him, which indeed
now is only dependence, the product, but in that
which at birth will remain behind and be cast off,
like the body of man in death placenta cum puni-
culo umbilicali, velamentis ovi eorumque liquoribufi) :
out of its activity emerges, as its continuation, the
young human being.

[In the embryonic period it seemed to the
child that the placenta was its body, and it was
actually its special embryonic body, useless in an
other stage, and rejected as refuse at the moment
of birth. Our body in human life is like a second
envelope which is useless to the third life, and for
this reason we reject it at the moment of our
second birth. Human life as compared with the
celestial is truly embryonic. ELIPHAS LEVI.]

The translator.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

sion for his former needs, it leaves it
behind, and suddenly sees itself an in
dependent union of all its created parts.
This eye, ear, and mouth now belong to
him ; and even if acquired only through
an obscure inborn sense, he is learning
to know their precious uses. The world
of light, color, tone, perfume, taste,
and feeling is only now revealed as the
arena in which the functions acquired
to that end are to operate for him, if he
makes them serviceable and strong.

The relation of the first stage to the
second recurs in a higher degree in the
relations of the second to the third.
Our whole action and will in this world
is exactly calculated to procure for us
an organism, which, in the next world,
we shall perceive and use as our Self.
All spiritual influences, all results of
8

LIFE AFTER DEATH

the manifestations which in the life
time of a man go forth from him, to be
interwoven with humanity and nature,
are already united by a secret and in
visible bond ; they are the spiritual
limbs of the man, which he exercises
during life while still bound to a spirit
ual body, to an organism full of unsat
isfied, upreaching powers and activities,
the consciousness of which still lies out
side him, though inseparably interwoven
with his present existence, yet, only in
abandoning this, can he recognize it as
his own.

But in the moment of death, when
the man is separated from the organ
upon which his acquisitive efforts were
bent here, he suddenly receives the con
sciousness of all, which as a result of
his earlier exterior life in the world
9

LIFE AFTER DEATH

of ideas, powers, and activities, still sur
vives, prevails, flowing out as from a
well-spring, while still bearing also
within himself his organic unity.

This, however, now becomes living,
conscious, independent, and, according
to his destiny, controls mankind and
nature with his own completed individual
power.

Whatever any one has contributed
during his life, of creation, formation,
or preservation, to the sum of human
idealism, is his immortal part, which,
in the third stage, will continue to
operate even if the body, to which, in
the second, this working power was
bound, were long since destroyed. What
millions who have died have acquired,
performed, and thought, has not died
with them — nor will it be undone by
10

LIFE AFTER DEATH

what the next millions shall have ac
quired, performed, and thought, but con
tinues its power, unfolds itself in them
spontaneously, impels them towards a
great goal which they do not themselves
perceive.

This ideal survival seems indeed to
us only an abstraction, and the continued
influence of the soul of the dead in the
living but an empty fancy.

But it only appears so to us because
we have no power to perceive in them
spirits in the third stage, to comprehend
a predestined and permanent existence ;
we can only recognize the connecting
link of their existence with ours, the
portion of increase within us, appearing
under the form of those ideas whieh
have been transmitted from them to
us. Although the undulating circle
ii

LIFE AFTER DEATH

which a sinking stone leaves behind it
in the water creates, by its contact, a
new circle around every rock which still
projects above the surface, it still retains
in itself a connected circumference which
stirs and carries all within its reach ; but
the rocks are only aware of the break
ing of the perfect line. We are just
such ignorant objects, only that we, un
like fixed rocks, while even still in life,
shed about us a continuous flow of
influence which extends itself not only
around others but within them.

Already, in fact, during his lifetime,
every man with his influence grows into
others through word, example, writing,
and deed. While Goethe lived, con
temporary millions bore within them
sparks from his soul, and were thereby
newly kindled. In Napoleon's life nearly

12

LIFE AFTER DEATH

the whole period was penetrated by the
force of his spirit. With their death
these tributary sources of life did not
also die ; only the motive power of a
new earth-born channel expired, and the
growth and manifestation of this, ema
nating from an individual, and in their
totality again forming an individual,
production now takes place with a
similar indwelling consciousness, incom
prehensible indeed to us, as was its
first inception. A Goethe, a Schiller,
a Napoleon, a Luther, still live among
us, thinking and acting in us, as awak
ened creative individuals, more highly
developed than at their death — each no
longer restrained by the limitations of the
body, but poured forth upon the world
which in their lifetime they moulded,
gladdened, swayed, and in their per-
13

LIFE AFTER DEATH

sonality far surpassing the influences
which we still discern as coming from
them.

The greatest example of a mighty
soul which still lives on actively in
after-ages is Christ. It is not an
empty saying that Christ lives on in his
followers ; every true Christian holds
him not only relatively but absolutely
within his heart. Every one is a par
taker in him who acts and thinks in
obedience to his law, for it is the Christ
that prompts this thinking and acting
in each. He has extended his influ
ence through all the members of his
Church and all cling together through
his Spirit, like the apple to its stem, the
branches to the vine. " For as the body
is one, and hath many members, and
all the members of that one body, being
14

LIFE AFTER DEATH

many, are one body : so also is Christ."
(1 Cor. xii. 12.1) Yet not only the
greatest souls, but every strong man
awakes in the next world in conscious
though incomplete possession of an
organism which is a union of eternal
spiritual acquirements and influences,
with a greater or smaller extent of re
alization, and more or less power to
unfold further, according as the soul
of the man himself in his lifetime has
advanced and gained ground. But he
who has clung to the earth, and has
only used his powers in pursuit of the
material life, the pleasures and needs of
the body, will find but an insignificant

1 Many biblical parallels similar to this are
placed together in Zend-Avesta III. p. 363, and
"drei Motiven und Grunden des Glaubens,"
p. 178.

15

LIFE AFTER DEATH

remnant of life surviving. And so the
richest will become the poorest if he
has only his gold to lean upon, and the
poorest the richest if he uses his strength
to win his life honestly. For what each
does here he will have there, and money
there will only count for what it brought
the consumer here.

The problems of our present spiritual
life, the thirst for the discovery of truth,
which here seems to profit us but little,
the striving of every genuine soul to
accomplish things which are merely for
the good of posterity, conscience, and
the repentance that arouses in us an
unfathomable distress for bad actions,
even though they bring us no disad
vantage here, rise from haunting pre
sentiments of what all this will bring
to us in that world in which the fruit
16

LIFE AFTLrt DEATH

of our slightest and most hidden ac
tivity becomes a part of our true self.
This is the great justice of creation,
that every one makes for himself the
conditions of his future life. Deeds
will not be requited to the man
through exterior rewards or punish
ments ; there is no heaven and no
hell in the usual sense of the Christian,
the Jew, the heathen, into which the
soul may enter after death. It makes
neither a spring upward nor a fall down
ward, nor comes to a standstill ; it does
not break asunder, nor dissolve into
the universal ; but, after it has passed
through the great transition, death, it
unfolds itself according to the unalter
able law of nature upon earth ; steadily
advancing step by step, and quietly
approaching and entering into a higher
17

LIFE AFTER DEATH

existence. And, according as the man
has been good or bad, has behaved nobly
or basely, was industrious or idle, will
he find himself possessed of an organ
ism, healthy or sick, beautiful or hate
ful, strong or weak, in the world to
come, and his free activity in this world
will determine his relation to other
souls, his destiny, his capacity and tal
ents for further progress in that world.

Therefore be active and brave. For
the idler here will halt there, the earth-
bound will be of a dull and weak coun
tenance, and the false and wicked will
feel the discord which his presence
makes in the company of true and pure
spirits as a pain, which, even in that
world, will still impel him to amend and
cure the evil which he has committed
in this, and will allow him no peace nor
18

LIFE AFTER DEATH

rest until he has wiped out and atoned
for his smallest and latest evil deed.

And if his companion spirits have for
long rested in God, or rather lived as
partakers in His thoughts, he will still
be pursued by the tribulation and rest
lessness of the earthly life, and his
spiritual disorder will torment men with
ideas of error and superstition, lead
them into vice and folly, and while he
himself is retarded on his way to
achievement in the third stage, he also
will hold back those in whom he sur
vives, upon their path from the second
to the third.

But however long the false, the evil,
and the base may still prevail and
struggle for its life with the true, the
beautiful, and the good, — yet through
the ever-increasing power of truth, and
19

LIFE AFTER DEATH

the growing force of evil's own self-
destructive results, it will at last be
conquered and abolished ; and so of all
falsehood, all evil, all impurity in the
soul of man, there wiU at last be noth
ing left. That alone is the eternal,
imperishable part of a man that is to
him true, beautiful, and good. And if
only a grain of mustard-seed of it is in
him — there could be no one without
it — so, purged of chaff and dross
through the purgatory of life, afflict
ing only the imperfect, it will sur
vive in the third stage, and, even if
late, be able to grow into a noble
tree.

Rejoice then, even you whose soul is

here tried by tribulation and sorrow ;

the discipline will avail much, which in

the brave struggle with obstacles in the

20

LIFE AFTER DEATH

path of progress you have experienced in
this life, and, born into the new life with
more strength, you will more quickly
and joyfully recover what fate has
denied you here.

21

CHAPTER III

MAN uses many means to one
end ; God one means to many
ends.

The plant thinks it is in its place for
its own purpose, to grow, to toss in the
wind, to drink in light and air, to pre
pare fragance and color for its own
adornment, to play with beetles and
bees. It is indeed there for itself, but
at the same time it is only one pore of
the earth, in which light, air, and water
meet and mingle in processes important
to the whole earthly life; it is there
in order that the earth may exhale,
breathe, weave for itself a green gar
ment and provide nourishment, raiment
22

LIFE AFTER DEATH

and warmth for men and animals.
Man thinks that he is in his place
for himself alone, for amusement, for
work, and getting his bodily and mental
growth ; he, too, is indeed there for
himself; but his body and mind are
also but a dwelling place into which
new and higher impulses enter, mingle,
and develop, and engage in all sorts of
processes together, which both consti
tute the feeling and thinking of the
man, and have their higher meaning
for the third stage of life.

The mind of man is alike indistin-
guishably his own possession and that
of the higher intelligences, and what
proceeds from it belongs equally to
both always, but in different ways.
Just as in this figure, which is intended
not for a representation but only a
23

LIFE AFTER DEATH

symbol, the central, colored, six-rayed
star (looking black here) can be consid
ered as independent and having unity
in itself; its rays proceeding from the

middle point are all thereby depend-
ently and harmoniously bound together ;
on the other hand, it appears again min
gled together from the concatenation
of the six single colored circles, each one
24

LIFE AFTER DEATH

of which has its own individuality. And
as each of its rays belongs as well to
it as to the circles, through the over
lapping of which it is formed, so is it
with the human soul.

Man does not often know from whence
his thoughts come to him : he is seized
with a longing, a foreboding, or a joy,
which he is quite unable to account for ;
he is urged to a force of activity, or a
voice warns him away from it, without
his being conscious of any special cause.
These are the visitations of spirits, which
think and act in him from another
centre than his own. Their influence
is even more manifest in us, when, in
abnormal conditions (clairvoyance or
mental disorder) the really mutual rela
tion of dependence between them and
us is determined in their favor, so that we
25

LIFE AFTER DEATH

only passively receive what flows into us
from them, without return on our part.
But so long as the human soul is
awake and healthy, it is not the weak
plaything or product of the spirits which
grow into it or of which it appears to
be made up, but precisely that which
unites these spirits, the invisible centre,
possessing primitive living energy, full
of spiritual power of attraction, in which
all unite, intersect, and through mutual
communication engender thoughts in
each other, this is not brought into
being by the mingling of the spirits,
but is inborn in man at his birth ; and
free will, self-determination, conscious
ness, reason, and the foundation of all
spiritual power are contained herein.
But at birth all this lies still latent
within, like an unopened seed, awaiting
26

LIFE AFTER DEATH

development into an organism full of
vital individual activity.

So when man has entered into life
other spirits perceive it and press for
ward from all sides and seek to add his
strength to theirs in order to reinforce
their own power, but while this is suc
cessful, their power becomes at the same
time the possession of the human soul
itself, is incorporated with it and assists
its development.

The outside spirits established within
a man are quite as much subjected to
the influence of the human will, though
in a different way, as man is dependent
upon them ; he can, from the centre of
his spiritual being, equally well produce
new growth in the spirits united to him
within, as these can definitely influence
his deepest life ; but in harmoniously
27

LIFE AFTER DEATH

developed spiritual life no one will has
the mastery over another. As every
outside spirit has only a part of itself in
common with a single human being, so
can the will of the single man have a
suggestive influence alone upon a spirit
which with its whole remaining part lies
outside the man ; and since every human
mind contains within itself something
in common with widely differing out
side spirits, so too can the will of a
single one among them have only a
quickening influence upon the whole
man, and only when he, with free
choice, wholly denies himself to single
spirits is he deprived of the capacity to
master them.

All spirits cannot be united indis
criminately in the same soul ; therefore
the good and bad, the true and false
28

LIFE AFTER DEATH

spirits contend together for possession
of it, and the one who conquers in the
struggle holds the ground.

The interior discord which so often
finds place in men is nothing but this
conflict of outside spirits who wish to
get possession of his will, his reason, in
short, his whole innermost being. As
the man feels the agreement of spirits
within him as rest, clearness, harmony,
and safety, he is also conscious of their
discord as unrest, doubt, vacillation,
confusion, enmity, in his heart. But
not as a prize won without effort, or
as a willing victim, does he fall to the
stronger spirits in this contest, but,
with a source of self-active strength
in the centre of his being, he stands
between the contending forces within
which wish to draw him to themselves,
29

LIFE AFTER DEATH

and fights on whichever side he chooses ;
and so he can carry the day even for
the weaker impulses, when he joins his
strength to theirs against the stronger.
The Self of the man remains unendan-
gered so long as he preserves the inborn
freedom of his power and does not be
come tired of using it. As often, how
ever, as he becomes subject to evil spirits,
is it because the development of his
interior strength is hindered by dis
couragement, and so, to become bad,
it is often only necessary to be careless
and lazy.

The better the man already is, the
easier it is for him to become still better ;
and the worse he is, so much the more
easily is he quite ruined. For the good
man has already harbored many good
spirits, which are now associated with
30

LIFE AFTER DEATH

him against the evil ones remaining
and those freshly pressing for entrance,
and are saving for him his interior
strength. The good man does good
without weariness, his spirits do it for
him ; but the bad man must first over
come and subdue by his own will all the
evil spirits which have striven against
him. Moreover, kin seeks and unites
itself to kin, and flees from its opposite
when not forced. Good spirits in us
attract good spirits outside us, and the
evil spirits in us the evil outside. Pure
spirits turn gladly to enter a pure soul,
and evil without fastens upon the evil
within. If only the good spirits in
our souls have gained the upper hand,
so of itself the last devil still remain
ing behind in us flees away, he is not
secure in good society ; and so the soul

LIFE AFTER DEATH

of a good man becomes a pure and
heavenly abiding place for happy in
dwelling spirits. But even good spirits,
if they despair of winning a soul from
the final mastery of evil, desert it, and
so it becomes at last a hell, a place fit
only for the torments of the damned.
For the agony of conscience and the
inner desolation and unrest in the soul
of the wicked are sorrows which, not
they alone, but the condemned spirits
within them also, feel in still deeper
woe.

CHAPTER IV

WHILE the higher spirits not
only dwell in individual men,
but each extends itself into
many, it is they who unite these men
spiritually, whether of one form of
faith or truth, of one moral or political
leaning. All men who have any spirit
ual fellowship with each other belong
to the body of one and the same spirit
together, and follow the ideal which has
thereby been born within them, as mem
bers one of another. Often an idea
lives at one time in a whole nation,
often is a mass of men moved to one
and the same action ; that is a mighty
spirit which seizes them all in one con-
3 33

LIFE AFTER DEATH

tagious influence. Not alone, indeed,
through the spirits of the dead do these
alliances occur, but countless new-born
ideas flow from the living to the living ;
all these ideas, however, which go forth
from the living into the world are
already parts of its future spiritual
organism.

Now when two kindred spirits meet
in human life and are merged together
through their common sentiments, while
simultaneously, through their differing
traits, they mutually influence and en
rich each other, at the same time the
associations, races, nations, to which
each first belonged, enter into spirit
ual association and enrich each other
through their spiritual possessions. So
the development of the third stage of
life in mankind goes on hand in hand
34

LIFE AFTER DEATH

inseparably with that of the progress
of humanity. The gradual formation
of the state, of sciences, of the arts, of
human intercourse, the growth of this
sphere of life to an ever-increasing
harmoniously constructed whole, is the
result of this union of innumerable
spiritual individualities which live in
humanity and fashion it into great
spiritual organisms.

How otherwise could these glorious
realms, based upon such unalterable
principles, be formed out of the tangled
egotism of individuals, who, with their
short-sighted eyes, from the centre could
see no circumference, and at the cir
cumference could discern no centre, if
the higher spirits, seeing clearly through
the whole, did not control the machin
ery, and, while they all press around the
35

LIFE AFTER DEATH

common divine centre, and so in their
godlike part meet together, also lead
the men whom they influenced, united
on to higher goals.

But beside the harmony of spirits
which meet and fraternize amicably,
there is also a conflict of those whose
existence is in disagreement, a struggle
which will at last wear itself out,
so that the eternal in its purity shall
alone survive. Traces of this warring
of forces are manifested by mankind
in the rivalry of systems, in sectarian
hatred, in wars and revolutions between
princes and people, and the nations
among each other.

The mass of men enter into all these

great spiritual movements with blind

faith, blind obedience, blind hatred and

rage ; they hear and see nothing with

36

LIFE AFTER DEATH

their own spiritual ears and eyes ; they
are driven by alien spirits toward objects
and goals of which they themselves
know nothing ; they allow themselves
to be led through slavery, death, and
terrible affliction, like a flock following
the call of the higher leadership.

There are, indeed, men who engage
in this great agitation, acting and lead
ing with clear consciousness and deep
purpose. But they are only voluntary
means to great predestined ends ; being
able, indeed, through their free action to
determine the quality and rapidity, but
not the goal of progress. Those only
have had great influence in the world
who have recognized the spiritual ten
dency of the time in which they lived
and have directed their free action and
thought into that tendency: equally
37

LIFE AFTER DEATH

strong men who have resisted it have
been overthrown. Every one who has
set before him higher aims, and knows
better ways thither, has chosen a new
central point for his motive power ; not
as a blind tool, but as one who from
his own impulse and understanding
serves righteousness and wisdom. The
brow-beaten slave does not render the
best service. But in whatever way men
begin to serve God here they will carry
further there, as partakers of His divine
glory.

CHAPTER V

IT is, indeed, possible for the spirits
of the living and the dead to meet
unconsciously in many ways, and
also consciously only on one side.
Who can pursue and trace out this
whole line of communication ? Let us
say briefly : they meet together when
in mutual consciousness, and the dead
are present wherever they are so con
sciously.

One means there is of attaining the
highest conscious meeting between the
living and the dead ; it is the memory
of the living for the dead. To direct
our attention to the dead is to awaken
theirs to us, just as a charm which
39

LIFE AFTER DEATH

is found in a living person encourages
a corresponding attraction toward the
one perceiving it.

Although our memory of the dead
is but a new consciousness, in retro
spect, of the results of their known life
here, yet the life on the other side will
be led conformably to that in this world.

Even when one living person thinks
of another, a conscious mutual impulse
may be aroused : but it is inoperative
because of the still present confines of
the body. Once released, however, by
death, that consciousness seeks its own
realm and is then borne upon a current
the more swift and strong, as it has
previously been exerted and manifested
with frequency and power.

Now just as one and the same physi
cal blow is felt at the same time by
40

LIFE AFTER DEATH

the giver and the receiver, so is it but
a single shock of consciousness that is
experienced on both sides when one
recalls the dead to memory. Realizing
alone this earthly side of consciousness,
we err because we fail to discern the
other : and this failure brings results of
error and loss.

One beloved person is parted from
another, a wife from a husband, a
mother from a child. In vain do they
search in a distant heaven the part
of their lives that has been torn from
them ; in vain they reach out into the
void with eye and hand after that which
in reality has never been taken away
from them ; because out of the exterior
relations of mutual adjustment and
understanding, the threads of which
are now broken, has sprung out of the
41

LIFE AFTER DEATH

depths of interior consciousness a deep
and unobstructed union, as yet unfamil
iar and unrecognized.

I saw once a mother anxiously seeking
through garden and house for her living
child which she was carrying in her
arms. Still more mistaken is he who
seeks for his dead in a remote and
deserted place, when he had but to
look within to find him still present.
And if she does not find him wholly
there, did the mother then completely
possess her child even while she was
carrying him in her arms ? The satis
factions of the outward relations, the
spoken word, the glance of the eye, the
personal care, she can no more have or
give ; now for the first time she has
those of the inner life ; she must simply
recognize that there is such an interior
42

LIFE AFTER DEATH

relation with its advantages. No word
is spoken, no hand extended to the one
who we think is not present. But if
we knew all, a new life is to begin for
the living and the dead, and the dead
gain thereby as well as the living.

If we think of the dead rightly,
not merely holding him in mind, he is
at that moment present. If you can
deeply summon him, he must come, if
you hold him fast, he must remain,
if sense and thought are strong enough
to bind and retain him. And he will
perceive whether we think of him with
love or with hatred ; and the stronger
the love or the stronger the hatred, the
more clearly he will discern it. Once,
indeed, you had a remembrance of the
dead — now you are able to use that
remembrance ; you can still knowingly
43

LIFE AFTER DEATH

bless or torment the dead with your
memories, be reconciled to them or re
main in a state of conflict — not alone
consciously to you but also to them.
Have the best constantly in mind, and
be careful only that the memory that
you yourself are to leave behind shall
be a blessing to you in the future. Well
for him who leaves behind him a treasure
of love, esteem, honor, and admiration
in the memory of men. Such enrich
ment is his gain in death, since he ac
quires the condensed consciousness of
the whole earthly estimate concerning
him ; he grasps in full measure the
bushel, of which in life he could count
but a few kernels. This belongs to
the treasure which we are to lay up
in heaven.

Woe to him who is followed by exe-
44

LIFE AFTER DEATH

cration, cursing, and a memory full of
dread. Those whom he influenced in
this life will not release him in death ;
this belongs to the hell which is await
ing him. Every reproach that pursues
him is like an arrow which, with sure
aim, enters into his inmost soul.

But only in the totality of results
which evolves itself from good and evil
alike is justice fulfilled. The righteous
who were here misunderstood must in
evitably suffer from it there as from a
misfortune ; and to the unrighteous an
unjust reputation will serve as an out
ward advantage ; therefore, keep your
good name as pure as possible here below
and " hide not thy light under a bushel."
But among the spirits in that other
sphere even misunderstanding shall
cease ; what was here held as false
45

LIFE AFTER DEATH

shall there be found true and by in
crease be given additional weight.
Divine justice overcomes at last all
human injustice.

Whatever awakens the memory of
the dead is a means of calling them to
us.

At every festival which we devote to
them they rise up ; they float about
every monument which we raise to
them ; they listen to every song with
which we praise their deeds. A life
germ for a new art ! How antiquated
had these old dramas become, produced
over and over again to the weary spec
tators. Now all at once, above the
ground floor with its expanse of old
onlookers, there is revealed, as it were,
an encircling realm from which a higher
company is seen to be looking down,
46

LIFE AFTER DEATH

and straightway it becomes the highest
aim of men to grow into the likeness
of those above rather than those below,
to realize, not the desires of those below,
but of those above.

The scoffers scoff and the churches
contend. It is a question of a secret,
irrational to some, rational to others,
both because to one and the other a
greater mystery remains unrevealed,
from the disclosure of which comes
quite clearly and obviously the rock
upon which the mind of the scoffer and
the unity of the church have been
wrecked. For it is only a supreme
example of a universal law in which
they discern an exception to and above
all laws.

Not alone through the consecrated
bread and wine does Christ reach His
47

LIFE AFTER DEATH

followers at the Holy Supper ; partake
of it in pure remembrance of Him, and
He, with His thought, will be not only
with you, but in you ; the more deeply,
as you hold Him more closely in your
heart ; the more vitally, with so much
the more strength will He fortify you ;
yet, without communion with Him, the
sacrament remains but meal and water
and common wine.

48

CHAPTER VI

THE longing in every man to
meet again after death those
who were most dear to him
here, to have communication with them,
renewing the old relations, will be sat
isfied in a more perfect degree than
was ever anticipated or hoped for.

For in that life those who were united
here by a common spiritual bond will
not only meet but will have become
one through this bond ; there will be
for them a unified soul belonging with
a common consciousness to both. For
already, indeed, are the dead with the
living, as are the living themselves,
bound together by countless such com-
4 49

LIFE AFTER DEATH

mon ties ; but only when death loosens
the knot and removes the body which
envelops every living soul, will there
be added to the union of consciousness
the consciousness of union.

Every one in the moment of death
will perceive that he still has a place
and belongs in the company with those
gone before, from whom through com
mon interests he has received help, and
so will not enter into the third world as
a strange guest, but like one long ex
pected, to whom all with whom he was
here united through a common faith,
knowledge, and love, will stretch out
their hands to draw him to themselves
as a partaker of their existence.

Into similar deep fellowship shall we
also enter with those great dead who
long before our time wandered through
50

LIFE AFTER DEATH

the second stage of life, and upon whose
example and teaching our own spirit
was moulded. So, whoever here lived
wholly in Christ will there be also wholly
in Him. Yet his individuality will not
be extinguished in the higher one, but
only gain in power from it, and at the
same time reinforce the strength of the
higher. For those souls which have
grown together as one through their
moments of sympathy, gain force each
from the other for itself, and at the
same time confirmation as individuals
through the union of their diversities.

So, many souls will mutually
strengthen each other in the greater
part of their nature ; others are con
nected only by a few corresponding
qualities.

Not all these ties based upon cer-

LIFE AFTER DEATH

tain spiritual experiences in common
will be permanent, but they will be so
when they are within the realm of truth,
beauty, and virtue.

All that does not bear within itself
eternal harmony, even if it survives this
life, will yet at last come to naught and
will cause a separation of those souls
which for a time had been united in an
unworthy alliance.

Most spiritual perceptions which are
developed in the present life, and which
we take over into the next, bear, it is
true, a germ of truth, goodness, and
virtue within themselves, but enveloped
in a large addition of unessential false
ness, error, and corruption. Those spirits
which remain united through such im
pulses may so continue or they may
separate, according as they both agree
52

LIFE AFTER DEATH

to hold fast to the good and the best,
and to abandon the evil by their separa
tion from evil spirits, or according as
one seizes on the good and the other on
the evil.

Those souls, however, which have
seized together upon a form or an idea
of truth, beauty, or goodness in their
eternal purity, remain thereby united
to all eternity and in like manner pos
sess these ideals as a part of themselves
in everlasting unity.

The comprehension of the higher
thought by advanced souls means there
fore their growth through this thought
into greater spiritual organisms, and as
all individual ideas have their root in
the universal, so at last will all souls, in
fellowship with the highest, be absorbed
into the divine.

53

LIFE AFTER DEATH

The spiritual world in its consum
mation will therefore be, not an assem
bly, but a tree of souls, the root of which
is planted on earth and whose summit
reaches to the heavens.

Only the highest and noblest spirits,
Christ, the geniuses, the saints, are able
to reach, out of their full knowledge,
the centre of divinity face to face ; the
smaller and lesser ones have their roots
in these, as boughs in branches and
twigs in boughs, and are thus con
nected midway indirectly through them
with the highest of the high.

And so dead geniuses and saints are
the true mediators between God and
man ; partaking of the thought of God
they are able to convey it to man,
and at the same time feeling and un
derstanding human sorrows, joys, and
54

LIFE AFTER DEATH

desires, they are able to lead him to
God.

Yet the worship of the dead stands
in relation to the deified worship of
nature, at the very beginning of re
ligion, half related and half separated ;
the most savage nations have retained
it in its cruder, the most civilized in its
higher form. And where to-day is there
one which does not preserve a large
fragment of it as its corner-stone ?

And so there should be in every town
a shrine for its greatest dead, built
near or in the temple of God, and let
Christ as heretofore dwell in the same
temple as God himself.

55

CHAPTER VII

" "1 ^OR now we see through a glass,

darkly ; but then face to face :

now I know in part ; but then

shall I know even as also I am known."

- 1 Cor. xiii. 12.

Man lives here at once an outer and
an inner life, the first all visible and
audible in look, word, writing, in out
ward affairs and works, the last percep
tible to himself only through interior
thoughts and feelings. The continua
tion of the visible into the exterior is
easily followed ; the development of
the unseen remains itself invisible, but
yet goes on. Rather the inner life of
man progresses, with his outer life, as
56

LIFE AFTER DEATH

its nucleus, to form the nucleus of the
future life.

In fact, that which goes out visibly
and perceptibly from man during his life
time is not the only thing that ema
nates from him. However small and
fine the vibration or impulse may be by
which a conscious emotion is carried to
our minds, yet the whole play of con
scious emotions is borne by an inward
mental action, it cannot die out with
out producing effects of its kind in us
and at last beyond us ; only we cannot
follow them into life outside. As little
as can the lute keep its playing to itself,
it is borne out beyond it, so little can
our minds ; to the lute or the mind
belongs only that which is closest to it.
What an infinitely complex play of
subtle waves having their origin in our
57

LIFE AFTER DEATH

minds may spread itself over the gross
lower realm of action, perceptible to the
outward eye and ear, like the fine rip
ples on the large waves of a pond, or
the flat designs on the surface of a
closely woven carpet, which takes from
them its whole beauty and higher mean
ing. The physicist, however, recognizes
and follows only the action of the lower
exterior order, and does not concern
himself with the finer, which he does
not perceive. But even if he does not
perceive it, yet knowing the principle,
does he dare deny the result?1

1 Whether one attributes nervous energy to a
chemical or an electrical process, one must still
regard it, if not simply as the play of the vibra
tion of minutest atoms, yet as in the main ex
cited or accompanied by this, whereby the
imponderable has a larger part than the ponder-

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Therefore, what we have absorbed
from souls through the influences of
their outward perceptible life in this
world does not yet comprise their whole
being ; but, in a way incomprehensible
to us, there still remains in their nature,
besides that outward part, a deeper,
indeed the chief part of their existence.
And if a man had spent and ended his
life on a desert island without ever hav
ing come in contact with another human
life, he would have firmly retained
his inner existence, awaiting a future
development, which in this world he

able. Vibrations, however, can only apparently
expire by extending themselves into their envi
ronment, or if indeed they disappear for a time
through translation of their living strength into
so-called elasticity, yet, according to the law of
the conservation of energy, they await a revival
in some other form.

59

LIFE AFTER DEATH

could not find through intercourse with
others. If on the other hand a child
had lived but a moment, it could not
die again in eternity. The least im
pulse of conscious life surrounds itself
with a circle of influences, just as the
briefest tone, which in a moment seems
to die, throws out vibrations which
reach out into infinity, beyond those
standing near by and listening ; for no
influence expires in itself, and each pro
duces others of its kind into eternity.
And so will the soul of the child go on
developing from this conscious begin
ning like that of the man left in isola
tion, only otherwise than as if beginning
from an already advanced development.
Now, just as man in death first re
ceives the full consciousness of what he
has produced spiritually in others, so also
60

LIFE AFTER DEATH

in death will he acquire for the first time
complete knowledge and use of what
he has cultivated in himself. What
ever he has gathered during life of spirit
ual treasure, what fills his memory or
penetrates his feeling, what his intelli
gence and imagination have created,
remain forever his! Yet its whole
connection remains dark in this life ;
thought merely passes through with a
light-giving ray and illuminates what
Hes on the narrow line of his life, the
rest remaining in obscurity. The soul
here below never realizes all at once the
entire depth of its fulness ; only when
one of its impulses draws another into
union with itself does it emerge for an
instant from the darkness, only to sink
back again in the next. So man is a
stranger to his own soul and wanders
61

LIFE AFTER DEATH

about within it as he may, or wearily
seeking the way to his life's end, and
often forgets his best treasures, which,
aside from the glowing path of thought,
lie sunken in the darkness which covers
the wide region of his soul. But in the
moment of death, in which an eternal
night darkens the eye of his body, light
will begin to dawn in his soul. Then
will the centre of the inner man kindle
into a sun which illuminates his whole
spiritual nature, and at the same time
penetrates it as with an inner eye, with
divine clearness. All which was here
forgotten will he recover there, indeed
he only forgot it here because it went
before him into the other world ; now
he finds it again collected. In that
new universal luminousness he will no
longer be obliged to seek out wearily
62

LIFE AFTER DEATH

what he would fain appropriate, separat
ing his own from what he must reject,
but at a glance he is able to under
stand himself wholly, and at the same
time to perceive the true relations be
tween unity and diversity, connection
and separation, harmony and discord,
not only according to one line of thought
but equally according to all.1 As far as
are the flight and vision of the bird above
the slow crawling of the blind worm
which perceives nothing beyond what
its sluggish body touches, so greatly

1 Even in this world, at the approach of death
(by narcotics, in imminent drowning, or in exal
tation) there occur flashes of recognition of the
spiritual meaning of things, examples of which
are recorded in Zend-Avesta III. s. 27, and
(cases of threatened drowning) in Fechner's Cen-
tralblatt fiir Naturwiss. und Anthropologie, 1853,
s. 43 u. 623.

63

LIFE AFTER DEA TH

will the higher knowledge transcend
that of the present. And so in death,
with the body of man will also pass
away his mind, his understanding, in
deed the whole finite dwelling-place of
his soul, as forms become too narrow
for its existence, as parts which are of
no further use in an order of things in
which all knowledge which they had
to seek and discover gradually, labori
ously, and imperfectly, he now has
openly revealed, possessed, and enjoyed.
The self of man, however, will subsist
unimpaired in its full extent and de
velopment through the destruction of
its transitory forms, and, in the place of
that extinct lower sphere of activity,
will enter into a higher life. Stilled is
all restlessness of thought, which no
longer needs to seek in order to find
64

LIFE AFTER DEATH

itself, or to approach another to come
into conscious mutual relations. Rather
begins now a higher interchange of spir
itual life ; as in our own minds thoughts
interchange together, so between ad
vanced souls there is a fellowship, the
all-embracing centre of which we call
God, and the J>lay of our thoughts is
but tributary to this high communion.
Speech will no longer be needed there
for mutual understanding, and no eye
for recognition of others, but as thought
in us comprehends and relates itself to
thought, without the medium of ear,
mouth, or hand, unites or separates
without exterior restraint or prohibition,
so comforting, intimate, and untram
melled will mutual spiritual communi
cation be, and nothing will remain
hidden in one from the other. All
5 65

LIFE AFTER DEATH

sinful thoughts which here slink away
into the dark places of the mind, and all
which man wrould be glad to cover up
from his kind with a thousand hands,
become known to all. And only the
soul which has been quite pure and
true here can without shame come into
the presence of others in that world;
and he who has been misunderstood
here on earth will there find recognition.
And even in its individual life will
the soul through self-inspection become
aware of every deficiency and every
remnant, left behind from this life, of
imperfection, disturbance, and discord,
and not only will it recognize these
defects, but feel them, all in common,
with the same force as we our bodily
infirmities. But as thoughts can be
cleansed from all that is unworthy, and
66

LITJ: Arn:n

in moments of insight be united to still
higher thoughts, each becoming thereby
perfected in that which was lacking,
even so will souls in their mutual in-
tercourse find the path of progress to
wards perfection.

CHAPTER VIII

DURING his lifetime man has
not only spiritual but also
material relations with nature.
Heat, air, water, and earth press upon
him from all sides, and go out from him
back again, creating and transforming
his body ; but as these elements, which
outside of man only operate side by side,
meet and mingle in him, they form a
combination, that of man's bodily sensa
tion, and at once this bodily sensation
cuts off man's inner being from the sen
sations of the outer world. Only through
the windows of the senses is man able to
look out from his bodily frame and real
ize the outer world and, as it were, in
68

LIFE AFTER DEATH

small handfuls to draw something from
it.

But when man dies, with the destruc
tion of his body that combination is
loosened, and, released from its bondage
to it, the soul will now return to nature
with full freedom. He will no longer
be conscious of the waves of light and
sound only as they strike eye and ear,
but, as the waves roll forth into the sea
of ether and the sea of air, he will not
merely feel the blowing of the wind and
the wash of the waves against his body,
but will himself murmur in the air and
sea ; no more wander outwardly through
verdant woods and meadows, but him
self consciously pervade both wood and
meadow and those wandering there.

Therefore nothing is lost to him in the
transition to the higher stage, except

69

LIFE AFTER DEATH

implements, the limited use of which
he can dispense with in an existence
in which he will carry and perceive
within himself fully and directly all
which in the lower stage came to him
only fitfully and superficially through
their dull mediation. Why should we
take over into the life to come eye or
ear to obtain light and sound from the
spring of living nature, when the cur
rent of our future life will merge as
one with the waves of light and sound.
Even more !

The human eye is only a little radiant
spot upon the earth, arid only gets the
impression in the firmament of points
of light. Man's longing to know more
of the universe is not here gratified.

He discovers the telescope and mag
nifies with it the surface, and so the
70

LIFE AFTER DEATH

capacity of his eye ; in vain, the stars
still remain little points.

Now he believes that he will attain
in the next world what this life cannot
grant, the final satisfaction of his curios
ity ; that once in heaven he will imme
diately perceive all that has been hidden
from his earthly eyes.

He is right; but he does not reach
a heaven because he receives wings to
fly from one planet to another or even
into an unseen heaven over the visible
one ; where in the nature of things
could wings exist to that end ? He
does not learn to know the whole uni
verse, by being slowly borne from one
planet to another in ever-repeated
birth ; no stork is there to carry chil
dren from one star to another ; — his
eye does not gain the capacity for

LIFE AFTER DEATH

the infinite ethereal depths by being
made into a great telescope ; the prin
ciple of earthly sight will no longer
suffice ; — yet he will attain to all, in
that, as a conscious part of the other
life in the great heavenly existence that
holds him, he wins a place in its high fel
lowship with other divinely illuminated
beings. A new vision ! Not for us here
below, because no one of us has reached
that plane. In the firmament the earth
itself swims like a great eye wholly
immersed in the vast star spaces, and
swinging around therein, to receive from
all sides the impact of waves which
cross each other millions and millions of
times and yet cause no disturbance.
With this eye will man some time
learn to discern the heavens, while the
forward surging of his future life, with
72

LIFE AFTER DEATH

which he pierces it, meets and presses
against the wave of the surrounding
ether, and with finest pulsations pene
trates the universe. Learn to see!
And how much will man have to learn
after death ! For he must not think
that, at the first entrance, he will possess
the whole divine perception for which
the future life will offer him the means.
Even here the child first learns to see
and hear ; for what he sees and hears
in the beginning is uncomprehended
appearance, is mere sound without
meaning — at first indeed only bewilder
ment, astonishment, and confusion ; and
nothing different does the new life offer
to the new child at first. Only what
man brings with him from this life, the
composite echo of memories of all he
has done and thought and been here,
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LIFE AFTER DEATH

does he see, in the transition, all at once
clearly lighted up within itself, yet still
he remains primarily only what he was.
Neither does any one think that the
glory of the other world shall result
otherwise to the foolish, the idle, and
the bad, than to make them feel the
discord of their lives, and to empha
size the necessity for reform. Already
in the present life man brings with him
an eye to behold the whole glory of
heaven and earth, an ear to hear music
and the speech of man, an understand
ing to grasp the meaning of all this ;
what does it avail to the foolish, the
indolent, and the bad ?

As the best and the highest in this

life so is also the best and the highest

in the other only there for the best

and the highest, because alone by such

74

LIFE AFTER DEATH

understood, wished for, and acquired.
Therefore, the higher man of the next
world alone can gain a comprehension
of the conscious intercourse in the exis
tence into which he has passed with
other divine beings, entering with them
himself into this fellowship.

Who knows whether the whole earth,
revolving in an ever slowly narrowing
orbit, will not return to the heart of
the sun from which it came, after eons
of years, and then a sun life of all
earthly creatures will begin ; and where
is the need of our knowing this now ?

75

CHAPTER IX

SPIRITS of the third stage will
dwell, as in a common body, in
the earthly nature, of which man
kind itself is a part, and all natural pro
cesses will be the same to them as they
are to us in our bodies. Their sub
stance will encompass the forms of the
second stage as a common mother, just
as those of the second stage surrounded
those of the first.

Every soul of the third stage appro
priates as its own share of the universal
body only what it in the earthly realm
has developed and accomplished. What
a man has changed in this world by his
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LIFE AFTER DEATH

life in it, that constitutes his further life
in the universal existence.

This consists partly of definite accom
plishments and deeds, partly of actions
continuously recurring, just as the
earthly body is made up of fixed parts
and of parts which are movable and
supported by the fixed ones.

All life circles of the higher spirits
intersect each other, and you ask how
it is possible that such numberless cir
cles can intersect without disturbance,
error, or confusion.

Ask rather first, how it is possible
that innumerable undulations in the
same pond, waves of sound in the
same air, waves of light in the same
ether, pulses of memory in the same
mind intersect, that, finally, the count
less life circles of man, bearing their
77

LIFE AFTER DEATH

great future, already in this life inter
sect without disturbance, error, or con
fusion. Rather a far higher plane of
life and growth is achieved through
these vibrations and memories reach
ing from this present life to the one
beyond.

But what separates the circles of con
sciousness which cross each other ?

Nothing separates them in any of
those details in which they cross each
other ; they have all characteristics in
common ; only each stands in different
relations from the other ; that separates
them in general and distinguishes them
in their higher individuality. Ask again
what distinguishes or separates circles
which intersect ; nothing separately ;
yet you easily observe an outward dif
ference yourself in general ; still more
78

LIFE AFTER DEATH

easily will centres which are themselves
self-conscious also distinguish an inner
difference.

Perhaps you have sometimes received
from a distant place a letter written
across both ways. How do you de
cipher both writings ? Only by the
coherence which each has in itself.
In like manner is crossed the spiritual
handwriting with which the page of the
world is filled ; and each is read by it
self, as if it occupied the whole space,
and the others, too, which overlie
it. Not merely two, but innumerable
letterings make a network of record
on the earth ; the letter, however, is
but an inadequate symbol of the
world.

Still, how can consciousness continue
to preserve its unity in so large an ex-
79

LIFE AFTER DEATH

tension of its ground, how withstand the
law of the threshold of consciousness ? 1
Ask first, how it can preserve its unity
in the smaller expanse of the body, of
which the larger one is only the contin
uation. Is, then, your body, is your

1 This empirical law of the relation between
body and soul consists in the fact that conscious
ness everywhere ceases, if the bodily activity
upon which it depends sinks below a certain de
gree of strength, which is called the threshold.
Now in proportion as it extends itself more widely,
can it the more easily, on account of the accom
panying weakness, fall below this level. As the
total consciousness has its threshold, which makes
the dividing line between sleeping and waking in
the whole man, so, too, is it with the details of
consciousness, whence it comes that during wak
ing now this, now that idea presents itself or sinks
out of sight, according as the particular activity
upon which it depends rises above or sinks below
the special threshold. (Compare " Elem. der Psy-
chophysik," Kap. X, XXXVIII, XXXIX, and
XLII.)

80

LIFE AFTER DEATH

brain a point ? or is there a central spot
within as seat of the soul ? No.1 As it
is now the nature of the soul to main
tain the limited composite of your
body, so in the future will it be to
unite the greater composite of the
greater body. The divine spirit knits
together, indeed, the whole fabric of the
world ; — or would you seek even for
God in one point ? In that other world
you will only acquire a larger part of
His omnipresence.

If you fear that the wave of your fu
ture life will not in its extension reach
the threshold which here it surmounts,
remember that it does not spread itself
into an empty world, — then, indeed,

1 Concerning this, compare " Elemente der
Psychophysik," Kap. XXXVII, and " Atomen-
lehre," Kap. XXVI.

6 8l

LIFE AFTER DEATH

would it sink helplessly into an abyss,
— but into a realm, which, as the eter
nal foundation of God, at the same time
becomes the foundation of your life, for
only in virtue of the divine life is the
creature able to live at all.1

1 In order not to permit an apparent contra
diction of the above-mentioned speculation to the
psychophysical doctrine of the combined-threshold
(upon which the most enlightening word is in
Wundt's philos. Stud., IV, s. 204 u. 211), note the
following : If the psychophysical life-wave (to
continue the use of this concise expression) of
man, made up of components of the most manifold
sort, should spread out into a world which con
tained only different components, then, indeed,
must it be assumed that it, in its extension, would
fall below the combined-threshold here under
consideration. Since, however, the psychophysi
cal undulatory sea of the universe, among its other
components, comprehends also such as are like to
those of the human life-wave, and indeed of the
most varying height or intensity, therefore such as
already rise above or come near the level of the
82

LIFE AFTER DEATH

So a wren upon the back of an eagle
can easily soar above a mountain-top,
for which task he himself would be too
weak, and at last, from the back of the
eagle, fly still a bit higher than the eagle
has flown with him. But God is the
great eagle as He is the little bird.

How can man after the death of the
body do without his brain, so marvel
lously constructed, that contained every
impulse of his mind, that carried the
further evolution of those impulses into
still greater strength and fulness ? Was
it formed in vain ?

Ask the plant how it can do without
the seed, when it bursts from it to grow

combined-threshold and are only raised still
higher by the similar ones which join them, so is
the result of the above speculation placed on a
somewhat more solid basis. (Note to the third
edition.)

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LIFE AFTER DEATH

into the light, that wonderful creation
which, through the impulsion of its in
ner germ, builds itself still further from
within. Was it created for nothing ?

Where, indeed, can be found a struc
ture so wonderful as your brain, to re
place it in the other world, and where,
indeed, is there one that surpasses it;
yet the future brain will surely tran
scend this present one.

But is not your whole body a finer
and more highly organized creation
than eye, ear, brain ? — not beyond each
part ? So, and unspeakably more, the
world, of which mankind with its state,
its knowledge, art, and traffic is but a
part, exceeds your little brain, the part
of this part. If you would rise to a
higher point of view, only see in the
earth, not merely a ball of dry earth, air,
84

LIFE AFTER DEATH

and water; it is a greater and higher har
monious creation than you, a divine
product, with a more wonderful life and
action in its substance than you carry in
your little brain, with which you con
tribute but an atom to its life. In vain
you will dream of an after-life, if you
fail to recognize the life about you.

What does the anatomist see when he
examines the brain of man ? A tangle of
white filaments, the meaning of which
he cannot decipher. And what does
it see in itself ? A world of light, tones,
thoughts, memories, fancies, sensations
of love and hate. And so realize the
relation of that which you, standing out
side the world, see in it, to that which
it sees in itself, and do not require
that both, the outer and the inner, shall
appear more alike in the totality of the
85

LIFE AFTER DEATH

world than in you, who are but a part
of it. And only because you are a
part of this world, see in yourself also a
part of that which it sees in itself.

And finally, do you perhaps still ask
why our ultimate body, as we call it,
only awakens in the other life after we
have expelled it here in this earthly
realm, and why it is already the con
tinuation of our limited body ?

That which in this narrower existence
dies, is indeed destroyed ; it is nothing
but an instance of the same universal law
which prevails through the whole of
this world ; a proof that it still con
tinues into the next. Doubter, if you
must always reason alone from this life

— be it so.

i

The living strength of consciousness
never really rises anew, is never lost,

86

LIFE AFTER DEATH

but, like that of the body upon which it
rests, can only change its place, its form,
its manner of dissemination in time and
space, only sink to-day or here, to mount
to-morrow or elsewhere ; only rise to-day
or here, to sink to-morrow or elsewhere.1
For the eye to be awake so that you
see consciously, the ear must be hushed
to sleep ; to arouse the inner world of

1 Indisputably this law, analogous to the so-
called law of the conservation of energy in the
physical realm, is in some way connected with
it through the fundamental relation of spirit to
body, without the connection being clearly estab
lished, or shown to be derivable psychophysically
from the physical law, since the essence of psycho-
physical energy itself is not clearly denned. The
law must therefore be inferred from facts such as
are above mentioned ; and, without being exactly
and fully proved, it acquires thereby a probability
which qualifies it to serve as a basis for such views
as are here in question.

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LIFE AFTER DEATH

thought, the outward senses must be
subdued into quiescence ; a pain in the
smallest spot can quite exhaust your
soul's consciousness. The more the
light of observation is dispersed, the
more feebly is any single part illumi
nated ; the more clearly it strikes one
point, the more all else enters into dark
ness ; to reflect upon some one thing
means abstraction from all besides. For
your present freshness you have to
thank your sleep since yesterday, the
more deeply you sleep to-day the more
brightly you will awake to-morrow, and
the more vigilantly you have passed the
waking hours the more profoundly you
will sleep.

But the sleep of man in this world is
in reality only a half sleep, which allows
the body to wake again because it is
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LIFE AFTER DEATH

still present ; not until death is the
full sleep which allows a new awaking
because the body is no longer there ;
yet the old law is still present, which
demands an equivalent for the former
consciousness, and hence the new body
as a continuation of the old ; therefore a
new consciousness will also be present
as an equivalent and continuation of
the old.

As a continuation of the old ! For
that which enables the body of the old
man to still bear the consciousness which
the body of the child, no atom of which
is longer his, bore, will enable the future
body to bear the same consciousness
which was in the body of the aged man,
of which it no longer possesses an atom.
So it is that every successor preserves
within himself and is built up by the
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LIFE AFTER DEATH

continuation of the actions of him who
bore the earlier consciousness. This
is therefore a law, which ordains the
onward march of the life here from to
day to to-morrow, and from this life to
the other. And can there be another
law so fundamental as this of the eter
nal survival of man ?

And so do not ask, how it is that
effects which you produce in this out
ward world, which are outside you, shall
still belong to you more than any
others which are also outside. It is be
cause the former much more than the
latter have gone out from you. Every
cause retains its effects as an eternal
possession. But in truth your effects
have never gone out from you ; even
in this world they formed the uncon
scious continuation of your existence,
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LIFE AFTER DEATH

only awaiting the awakening to new
consciousness.

As little as a man can ever die who
has once lived, so little could he be
awakened to life had he not lived be
fore ; it is only that he had not lived
as an individual. The consciousness
with which the child awakes at birth
is only a part of the eternal, pre-exist
ing, universal, divine consciousness which
has concentrated itself in the new soul.
We can indeed as little follow the ways
and the changes of the living force of
consciousness as those of the vital
energy of the body.

But are you afraid that human con
sciousness, because born out of the
universal, will again flow back into it ;
then look at the tree. Many years
passed before the branches came out of

LIFE AFTER DEATH

the trunk ; but once there they do not
go down into it again. How would
the tree grow and develop if this hap
pened ? So too will the life tree of the
world grow and unfold itself.

After all, the strong argument in
this world for the other is not from
reasons unknown to us, nor from sup
positions which we make, but it is from
facts that we do know that we base
our conclusions on the greater and
higher facts of the future life, thereby
strengthening and confirming a faith,
practically demanded, depending upon
a higher point of view and to be set in
living relations with life. Indeed, if
we did not need this faith, wherefore
strengthen it ; yet how use it, if it re
main unsupported.

92

CHAPTER X

THE soul of man permeates his
whole body ; when it abandons
the body, forthwith the body
dies ; yet light of consciousness of the
soul is now here, now there.1

1 In scientific terms one can say: Consciousness
is everywhere ; it is awake when and wherever
the bodily energy underlying the spiritual, the
so-called psychophysical, exceeds that degree of
strength which we call the threshold. (Compare
p. 80, note.) According to this, consciousness can
be localized in time and space. The highest point
of our psychophysical activity wavers, as it were,
from one place to another, wherewith the light of
consciousness changes its place, only that during
this life it fluctuates back and forth within our
body simply, indeed, within a limited part of this

93

LIFE AFTER DEATH

We have just seen it wandering
back and forth within the narrow body,
lighting up in turn the eye, the ear, the
inner and the outer senses, finally, in
death, to depart from it wholly, just as
one, whose little house in which he has
for long moved about back and forth
is destroyed, goes out into the open and
begins a new pilgrimage. Death makes
no division between the two lives except
to allow the exchange of the narrower
scene of action for the wider. And as
little as the light of consciousness is
always and everywhere the same in this
life, where it can be so interrupted and
dispersed, so will it be in the future life.

body, and in sleep sinks quite below the thresh
old, above which, on waking, it rises again.

(Compare on this point. "Elemente der Psy-
chophysik," II. Kap. 40 und 41.)

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LIFE AFTER DEATH

It is only that the field of action is un
speakably larger, the possible extension
wider, the ways freer, the points of view
higher, embracing all the lower ones of
this world.

But even in this life exceptionally, in
rare cases, we see the light of conscious
ness wander out of the narrower body
into the wider and return again, bring
ing news of what happens in distant
spaces, in distant time. For the length
of the future depends on the breadth of
the present. Suddenly a rift shows it
self in the otherwise forever closed door
between this life and the other, to close
again quickly — the door, which will
wholly open in death, and only then
will open never more to be closed. But
a mere glance through the rift in advance
is not profitable. Yet the exception to
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LIFE AFTER DEATH

the law of this life is only an example
of the greater law of life which embraces
at once the two worlds.

It may happen that the earthly body
falls asleep in one direction deeply
enough to allow it in others to awaken
far beyond its usual limits, and yet not
so deeply and completely as to awaken
no more. Or, to the subjective vision
there comes a flash so unusually vivid
as to bring to the earthly sense an
impression rising above the threshold
from an otherwise inaccessible distance.
Here begin the wonders of clairvoyance,
of presentiments, and premonitions in
dreams : pure fables, if the future body
and the future life are fables ; otherwise
signs of the one and predictions of the
other ; but what has signs exists, and
what has prophecies will come.

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LIFE AFTER DEATH

And yet there are no signs in the
normal life of this world. The present
has to build the heavenly body only for
the future, not yet to see and hear with
the eye and ear that are to be. The
blossom does not thrive that is pre
maturely broken off. And even if one
can assist his faith in the future life by
belief in these traces of its shining into
the present life, yet one should not build
upon it. Healthy faith is based upon
fundamentals and limits itself to the
highest point of view of normal life, of
which it forms a part.

You have hitherto believed that the
light form in which a dead person ap
pears to you in remembrance is merely
your own interior illusion. You are
mistaken ; it is itself a reality, which,
with conscious step, not only comes to
7 97

LIFE AFTER DEATH

you but enters into you. The earlier
form is still its spiritual raiment ; only,
no longer fettered with its former dense
body and wandering inactive in its com
pany, but transparent, light, divested of
its earthly burden, for the moment it is
now here, now there, following the voice
of each one who calls to the dead, or of
itself appearing to you, to suggest the
thought of the dead. Indeed the com
mon conception of the appearance of
souls in the future life has always been
of light, immaterial forms, independent
of the limits of space, and so, though
unintentionally, the truth has been
reached.

You have also heard ghosts spoken
of. Doctors call them phantasms, hal
lucinations. So they are for the liv
ing, yet, at the same time, they are
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LIFE AFTER DEATH

actual apparitions of the dead, as we
call them. For though they be the
weaker forms of memory in us, how
should they not also be the more
pronounced corresponding apparitions.
Therefore, why still dispute whether
they are the one or the other when they
are at once both. And why be afraid
of ghosts, when you do not fear the
remembered forms within you which
they already are.

And yet the reason for this is not
wanting. Unlike the forms you have
yourself summoned or which of them
selves steal gently and peacefully into
the fabric of your inner life, mingling
helpfully with it, they advance, and
surprise you, with overpowering force,
apparently coming before you, really
entering into you and bringing into your
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LIFE AFTER DEATH

mind far more dismay than comfort.
To live at once in the two worlds makes
a morbid existence. The dead and the
living should not communicate. To ap
proach the dead so nearly as to see them
as clearly and objectively as they are able
to see each other means for the living
already a partial death ; hence the terror
of the living before such apparitions of
the dead ; it is also a partial backsliding
of the dead away from the realm beyond
death into that this side of it ; from this
comes the saying — and perhaps more
than saying — that only those spirits
wander about which are not quite re
leased, which still by heavy fetters are
earth-bound. To drive away the un-
blest, call for the help of a better and
stronger spirit; but the best and the
strongest is the Spirit of all spirits.
100

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Who can harm you under His protec
tion ? And so is verified the saying that
before the voice of God every evil spirit
vanishes.

Meanwhile in this sphere of spiritual
sickness faith itself is threatened with
the contagion of superstition. The
simplest way to guard oneself against
the coming of ghosts is not to be
lieve in their coming ; for to believe
that they come is to meet them half
way.

As they are able to appear to eacli
other, I said. For the same apparition
which is against the order of this world
is but taken prematurely from the order
of the other. The dwellers in the other
world will appear to each other in a
luminous, clear, full, and objective form,
of which we in our memory of them
101

LIFE AFTER DEATH

have but a weak echo, a dim outline
drawing, because they pervade each
other with their full and complete be
ing, only a little part of which reaches
each of us through memory of them.
Only there as well as here attention
needs to be focussed upon the appear
ance in order to behold it.

Now, it may still be asked : how is it
possible that they so unite and appear
so objectively and definitely to each
other ? But ask first, how is it possible
that what is received by you as the sem
blance of a living person, and what is
conveyed to your brain by the memory
of a dead one — and there is nothing
else before you to base it upon — appears
in the one case as an objective percep
tion, but in the other as a circumscribed
memory ? The no longer exact impres-
102

LIFE AFTER DEATH

sion which underlies the mental picture
deludes you as to the outline of the
form from which it proceeded in the
beginning. You cannot know why
from the plane of this world ; how can
you expect to know from that of the
other ?

And so I repeat : do not conclude
from arguments of this world which
you do not know, nor from suppositions
which you make, but from facts clear
to you here as to the greater and
higher facts of the life to come. Any
single conclusion may be erroneous ; even
that one which we have just reached ;
therefore, do not be satisfied with any
isolated proof: the final conviction in
regard to them, which we have to de
mand before and beyond every conclu
sion, will be the best support of our
103

LIFE AFTER DEATH

faith below, and our best guide on the
upward path.

But once lay hold upon faith directly
from above, and the whole path of be
lief which will lead us upwards opens
easily before us here.

104

CHAPTER XI

YET how easy all would be for
faith if man could but accustom
himself to see more than a mere
word in the saying with which he has
played for more than a thousand years,
that in God he lives and moves and
has his being. Then were faith in
God one with his own eternal life, he
would see his own eternal life as belong
ing to that of God himself, and in the
advancement of his future above his
present stage of life would perceive
only a loftier structure above a lower
one in God, such as he already has
latent within him ; he would compre
hend the greater from the lesser model,
105

LIFE AFTER DEATH

and in the union of both the whole, of
which he is but a part.

Perception in you dissolves, and mem
ory ascends from it within you ; your
whole life of intuition dissolves in God,
and a higher existence of recollection
rises from it to God ; and like mem
ories in your mind, so the spirits of
the other world communicate within in
the divine mind. It is only one step
above another on the same ladder which
leads, not to God, but upwards within
Him, who in Himself is at once the
base and the summit. With that say
ing void of thought, how empty God
was ; in its full significance, how rich
He is!

Do you, then, know how the further
spiritual life of perception is possible ?
You know only that it is real ; but it is
106

LIFE AFTER DEATH

only possible to a soul. You can there
fore, although ignorant how it is possi
ble, easily believe in the reality of a
future for your whole soul within a
higher one ; you must only believe that
there is a higher soul, and that you
are it.

And again, how easy it would all be
for faith, if man could habitually see a
truth in that further word, that God
lives and moves and has His being in all.
Then it were not a dead, but, through
God, a living world, out of which man
is building his future body and is thereby
creating a new abode within the dwell
ing place of God.

But when will this vitalizing faith
become a living one ?

He who makes it living will himself
be made alive.

107

CHAPTER XII

YOU ask as to the whether. I
answer with the how. Faith
does without the question
whether ; but if asked, the one answer
is through the how ; and so long as the
how does not stand fast, the whether
will not cease from troubling.

Here stands the tree ; many a single
leaf may fall from it ; yet its root and
its unity are firm and perfect. It will
always develop new branches, and new
leaves will continue to fall ; the tree
itself will not fall : it will put forth
blossoms of beauty, and instead of being
rooted in faith, it will bear the fruits of

faith.

108

Cf)t ^orlti Beautiful

BY LILIAN WHITING

The world beautiful about which she writes is
no far-off' event to which all things move, but
the everyday scene around usfilled by a spirit
which elevates and transforms it. — Prof.
Louis J. Block, in The Philosophical Journal.

ratorto Beautiful JFirst Series

Comprising; THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL; FRIEND
SHIP ; OUR SOCIAL SALVATION ; LOTUS EATING ; THAT
WHICH is TO COME.

EJje aEorltr Beautiful. Seeonti Series

Comprising ; THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL ; OUR BEST
SOCIETY ; To CLASP ETERNAL BEAUTY ; VIBRATIONS ;
THE UNSEEN WORLD.

Stye aSorto Beautiful EJjtrtr Series

Comprising; THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL; THE ROSE
OF DAWN; THE ENCIRCLING SPIRIT-WORLD; THE
RING OF AMETHYST ; PARADISA GLORIA.

.3 vols. Cloth, $1.00 per volume. Decorated cloth,
$1.25 per volume. Padded calf or full crushed morocco,
$3.50 per volume.

I know of no volumes of sermons published in recent years
which are so well fitted to uplift the reader, and inspire all that is
finest and best in his nature, as are the series of essays entitled
"The World Beautiful," by Lilian Whiting.— B. O. FLOWBB, in
The Coming Age.

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jfrom Breamianti jbtnt

Ucrgeg of tfje 3Ltfe to Come

BY LILIAN WHITING

Author of " THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL,"
"AFTER HER DEATH," "KATE FIELD :
A KECORD," "A STUDY OF ELIZA
BETH BARRETT BROWNING," etc.

New edition. With additional poems. 16mo. Cloth,
extra, $1.00. Decorated cloth, $1.25. Padded calf or
full crushed morocco, gilt edges, $3.50.

Lilian Whiting's verse is like a bit of sunlit landscape on a
May morning. — Boston Herald.

Graceful, tender, and true, appealing to what is best in the
human heart. — The Independent.

The poems express and reveal her inmost nature, full of affec
tion, longings, appreciation of others, belief in the nearness of the
other world. She seems to me to have gained a higher outlook
than most of us in a spiritual as well as in an intellectual way.—
KATB SANBOBN.

Full of faith in the divine care and a perception of the near
ness of the spirit world. Its poems of love and friendship are
most tender and noble. — New Church Messenger.

There is in them a sympathetic human touch, an insight born
of love and sorrow, which will bring the quiet, responsive tears to
many a reader's eye. — The Chautauquan.

There is a perfection of form and poetic beauty in all her
verses, and one cannot take up the book and turn to any page with
out being touched by the elevating and inspiring statements that
guided the pen of the author. — Boston Home Journal.

I never saw anything on earth before which looked so much as
if just brought from heaven by angel hands as this new edition of
" From Dreamland Sent. " In the golden sunshine of an Italian
morning I have heard the silver trumpets blow. This exquisite
book reminds me of them. — SARAH HOLLAND ADAMS.

Of the new edition of "From Dreamland Sent," Julia Ward
Howe says: "Its tender and devout spirit matches well the
Easter lilies that adorn it."

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after Her Beat!) .

BY LILIAN WHITING

Author of " KATE FIELD : A Record,"
"THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL," etc.

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Comprising : WHAT LACKS THE SUMMER ? FROM
INMOST DREAMLAND; PAST THE MORNING STAR; IN
Two WORLDS ; DISTANT GATES OF EDEN ; UNTO MY
HEART THOU LIVEST So ; ACROSS THE WORLD I
SPEAK TO THEE; THE DEEPER MEANING OF THE
HOUR.

We find a firm belief in the possibility of communion with the
spiritual world, dignified by a beautiful philosophy inspiring high
thoughts and noble purposes. — Whig and Courier.

Opening either of the three volumes of " The World Beau
tiful" series, and the collection of verse entitled "From Dream
land Sent," one beholds the idealist and the poet. But opening
44 After Her Death," he beholds the scientist as well. . . For all her
psychic theories and experiences she not only courts, but com
mands, the most thorough investigation of the world's ablest scien
tists, as Sir William Crookes, F. W. H. Myers, Lord Kelvin, and
Alfred Russel Wallace. She is an epoch-making writer. . . My
conviction is that every preacher, reformer, religious editor, and
Christian worker should read the books by Lilian Whiting. —
REV. W. H. ROOBBS, in The Christian Standard.

" After Her Death " has given me the light and help I have
•o long craved ; it has given me comfort and strength which no
other book has ever done. In giving these truths to the world in
her own beautiful way, which does not harshly wound in the thing*
which have been almost a part of us, Lilian Whiting has bridged
over a great chasm, and provided one of the greatest needs of our
time. — COKDKLIA L. COMMORE.

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Ci)e ^gTictorp of tfje

BY VICTOR CHARBONNEL

Translated from the French by EMILY
WHITNEY. With an introduction by
LILIAN WHITING, author of "The
World Beautiful," "A Study of Eliza
beth Barrett Browning/' etc.

16mo. Cloth, extra, $1.50.

Our whole criticism might be expressed in the brief exhor
tation — read it. ... There is not a page which has not some im
petus to reflection, some suggestion for a higher life, and all given
with an originality of mind, a felicity of expression, a simplicity
of phrase that fix the thought instantly and clearly. —Literary

Since Emerson wrote his immortal essays, and Maeterlinck
advanced his beautiful theories, no finer book on the spiritual life
has been written. — GJBO. 8. GOODWIN, in Philadelphia Item.

Not only is there a striking originality of thought throughout
the book, but a style which, losing comparatively little in the ad
mirable translation by Miss Whitney, reaches the high French
standard of lucidity and ease. — New York Commercial Advertiser.

He makes a forceful appeal for living the life of one's own soul
and the development of one's own personality by its own inner
power. His whole message bids us look within ; it gets at the
roots of things ; his style is admirably clear, terse, and vigorous. —
Detroit Free Press.

The volume takes up the relations of the individual soul to
the universe and treats them in a way that is practical, but is also
marked by high spiritual aspiration. . . The book has great purity
and beauty of style, and is, all in all, a notable piece of literature.
Los Angeles Times.

His words are helpful and stimulating, his optimism contagious
and inspiring. He has a faculty for putting things in a form which
lingers in the memory. — Brooklyn Times.

Some of the noblest thoughts contained in this book . . find
expression in the prayer with which it closes. — Chicago Evening
Post.

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