But whilst the cuttle-fish swims out
of the zone of opacity created by himself, the theologian remains in
his, fighting the obscurity with logic--for that purpose the poorest of
all devices. You cannot guide an emotional boat with an intellectual
rudder. Something to me much more convincing than reason, tells me that
our bodies will not be long in their graves before we shall again begin
to live; and my feeling is, that, though consciousness will at the death
of this body be obscured for a time, it will not be lost for a _long_
time. I feel that almost at once after death the mystery of conscious
individuality will again assert itself. Refined by this life, as the
molecular construction of inorganic matter is refined by passing through
organic life, so the consciousness lately within the molecules of your
discarded body, will not be as the consciousness within like molecules
of mineral or of vegetable matter; for it will be your consciousness
--_your_ consciousness, created by God and developed by His edict
--developed after slumbering for ages within the mineral; awakening
to quicker action in the vegetable world; touching the domain of
conscious memory in lower animals; aroused to keener moral and
intellectual existence in your late body, and at last made ready for a
new mystery--what, we know not--in another world, possibly in the
direction of what we might call a 'fourth dimension' of consciousness.
Pages:
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218