appearance? Is there a man so poor in all that man holds dear that
he does not keenly resent being accidentally mistaken for his
neighbor? Surely there must be something more than mirage in this
deep-implanted, widespread instinct of human race.

But however strong the conviction now of one's individuality, is
there aught to assure him of its continuance beyond the confines of
its present life? Will it awake on death's morrow and know itself,
or will it, like the body that gave it lodgment, disintegrate again
into indistinguishable spirit dust? Close upon the heels of the
existing consciousness of self treads the shadow-like doubt of its
hereafter. Will analogy help to answer the grewsome riddle of the
Sphinx? Are the laws we have learned to be true for matter true also
for mind? Matter we now know is indestructible; yet the form of it
with which we once were so fondly familiar vanishes never to return.
Is a like fate to be the lot of the soul? That mind should be
capable of annihilation is as inconceivable as that matter should
cease to be. Surely the spirit we feel existing round about us on
every side now has been from ever, and will be for ever to come.
But that portion of it which we each know as self, is it not like to a
drop of rain seen in its falling through the air? Indistinguishable
the particle was in the cloud whence it came; indistinguishable it
will become again in the ocean whither it is bound. Its personality
is but its passing phase from a vast impersonal on the one hand to
an equally vast impersonal on the other. Thus seers preached in the
past; so modem science is hinting to-day. With us the idea seems the
bitter fruit of material philosophy; by them it was looked upon as
the fairest flower of their faith. What is dreaded now as the
impious suggestion of the godless four thousand years ago was
reverenced as a sacred tenet of religion.