profoundly abstruse one; it would be impossible to explain within the
brief space still remaining to us, how the conditions immediately
after death differ so entirely as they do in the case (1) of the man
who deliberately _lays down_ (not merely _risks_) his life from
altruistic motives in the hope of saving those of others; and (2) of
him who deliberately sacrifices his life from selfish motives, in the
hope of escaping trials and troubles which loom before him. Nature or
Providence, Fate, or God, being merely a self-adjusting machine, it
would at first sight seem as if the results must be identical in both
cases. But, machine though it be, we must remember that it is a
machine _sui generis_--

Out of himself he span
The eternal web of right and wrong;
And ever feels the subtlest thrill,
The slenderest thread along.

A machine compared with whose perfect sensitiveness and adjustment the
highest human intellect is but a coarse clumsy replica, _in petto_.

And we must remember that thoughts and motives are material, and at
times marvellously potent material, forces, and we may then begin to
comprehend why the hero, sacrificing his life on pure altruistic
grounds, sinks as his life-blood ebbs away into a sweet dream, wherein

All that he wishes and all that he loves,
Come smiling round his sunny way,

only to wake into active or objective consciousness when reborn in the
Region of Happiness, while the poor unhappy and misguided mortal who,