"I died from the mineral and became a plant;
I died from the plant and reappeared as an animal;
I died from the animal and became a man.
Wherefore then should I fear? When did I grow less by
dying?
Next time I shall die from the man
That I may grow the wings of angels.
From the angel, too, I must advance.
All things shall perish save His face."

With an insight like unto this, a mystic need not fear because
the river flows into the sea! In spite of appearances, the idea of
life can still reign supreme. The river of death embodies a true
insight--but of a transition only, not of an abiding state. We die
to live more fully.

This sense of continuity in the flow of the stream of life, and of
the abidingness of its existence through all vicissitudes has been
strikingly expressed by Jefferies. He is sitting on the
grass-grown tumulus where some old warrior was buried two
thousand years ago, and his thought slips back over the interval.
"Two thousand years being a second to the soul could not cause
its extinction. . . . Resting by the tumulus, the spirit of the man
who had been interred there was to me really alive, and very
close. This was quite natural and simple as the grass waving in
the wind, the bees humming, and the lark's songs. Only by the
strongest effort of the mind could I understand the idea of
extinction; that was supernatural, requiring a miracle; the
immortality of the soul natural, like the earth. Listening to the
sighing of the grass I felt immortality as I felt the beauty of the