to it? Most surely. But let it be said again, that death is a reality; it is not a fiction, nor a mere seeming. A man cannot possess bodily life and at the same time be dead. The two conditions are incompatible. Otherwise there would be no advantage to be gained toward the study of life by experiencing its opposite.

Shall I try to tell you, from the standpoint of experience, what death is? Perhaps it will be best to tell you first what it is not. It is not a snuffing-out like a candle, unless we could suppose one where the spark should remain quietly alive until the candle was relighted.

It is not a going to sleep, unless we assume it possible for the dream-life to be woven on to the daytime consciousness at both ends without a break, so that the dreamer, however strange may have been his dreams, and whatever the testimony of others may be, is able to say, with conscious truthfulness, I have not slept at all.

Death includes, without question, an entire suspension of bodily sensations and activities. The consciousness of being, however, remains, and with it, as a necessary consequence, the consciousness of being alive, however shut in by the enclosing walls of a senseless frame.

What is to follow does not occur to the mind. A peace that is absolute belongs to a death that is clean. Appetite of every kind is dead with the body. Desire is not; resignation takes its place. What is this resignation like? It includes a consciousness of a more potent yet kindly will, and contentment with the result of the action of that will.

The Giver has resumed His gift, the gift of life, for the benefit of him who has parted with it. The resulting peace is permeated with gratitude, not different in kind, although different in manifestation, from that which the little child expresses in every motion of his happy little body, when he seems to say continuously, I am glad to be alive. The man is glad to be dead.

Do you think it impossible that such an experience could come to any one who should afterwards recover life to describe it? Very likely. But stop for a moment and consider. When a man dies, the result may be said to manifest in a twofold way. First: To the man himself, who is, to say the the least, cut off from his customary outward activities. Second: To the world at large, where the word is passed around, Such a one is dead; and one acquaintance after another, as he hears the news, turns to a certain part of his mental organism and marks it down in black where it is not likely to be forgotten. Henceforth he will send out toward that friend, now become a name or memory, a different kind of mental current.

But wait: the word comes, Not dead after all—a false report. Immediately the operation is reversed. The black marks are rubbed out, the little switch is re-turned, and the friends all agree, to save troublesome thought, that the man who was supposed to be dead was not really so, and the old question asked by Job, If a man die, shall he live again? is prevented once more from obtruding itself.

CHAPTER XIV.

My aim is to make this book practical, that is, to clothe its thought in such garb as to render it available for use, not to scholars merely, but to all thoughtful minds.

I shall endeavor in this chapter to gather up a few missing links in my train of thought, and afterwards endeavor to give you a glimpse of the Beyond. The question I seem called upon to answer is, How can a man be alive and dead at the same time? and in order to answer it, it will be necessary to analyze the thought called death, and separate it into its various parts.

The man is dead, says local report, and the consciousness of society undergoes that natural change in regard to the man which I have described.

His name becomes associated with things that were, but no longer are. Even those who theoretically believe that the man continues to live either in happiness or misery, have, most of them, so little confidence in the theory which they have subscribed to, that they never dream of putting forth a mental current based on the theory. To all intents and purposes, society consigns the average man to annihilation, with a half-careless "Poor fellow, so he's gone. We'll see no more of him. Well, no time to weep, seeing as he didn't leave me anything. What new device for entrapping the elusive dollar shall I conjure up to-day?"

I am dead, says the man himself as the shadows which have been gathering upon his senses culminate in a rayless silence, and every thought of motion becomes a recollection, a mere theory of fancy, that will not even approach the dominion of the will.

Death, as a state of consciousness, is a thing entirely new to him, but he cannot reason on the subject. To reason is to live, to set the brain in motion, to perform mental operations; this is no longer possible.

What shall this state be compared to? It is like that of one isolated in a secret cell of his own house, the key turned on him from the outside, every avenue of communication cut off, dead to the world and all that it contains. If a total loss of appetite can be associated with the state, it might continue for an indefinite period; and if the power of thought-transference comes in, a new kind of life has been begun.

But science says that no man is really dead who still retains his consciousness, by which statement science belies its name. Calling itself knowledge, it spreads abroad its own ignorance. How many a post-mortem has been held in the hope of finding the secret chamber wherein that part of man which cannot die has gone to rest! How often the sweet peace of death has become a conscious madness, by this means, God only knows. Gentlemen, desist.

To find a chamber whose occupant is invisible debars you forever from obtaining the proof that you have found it. But perhaps it is not the soul itself that is the object of this search, but rather some special physical representative that might be found still quivering with life and so betray its master. All folly.