Proceeding, then, further along these lines, the next and obvious question which arises is, In what sort of body is this continuing life manifested? That it must be manifested in some sort of body is, I think, clear. If we had only arrived at the conclusion that at death the human being merged in the All-soul, or became an indistinguishable portion of the 'Happy Mass' that his individual memory flowed out into the great ocean of the world-memory and became lost in it, and that his power of individual action or perception passed away in like manner-why then the question of a continuing body could not well arise, or at farthest stretch such body could only be thought of as something indistinguishable from the entire universe. But if there is any truth in the idea of an individual survival, then it seems clear that there must be some kind of form, to mark the bounds of the individual, and to give outline to his relations to other individuals-whether those relations be active and invasive or passive and receptive; there must be some surface of resistance and separation.

With this question I shall deal in the next chapter. Before, however, going into any definite theory of this 'soul-body,' it may be useful to dwell for a moment on general considerations. In the first place, it is clear that if the individual survives, he does not do so in any fixed and unchanging form. The form of

the individual is not fixed in this earth-life; nor can we expect or wish it to be so in any other life. As long as there is a continuous stream of experience and memory, going on from this life to another life, and from that perchance to others that is all we can expect to find. There `may, indeed, be a fixed and transcendent Individuality, an aspect of the Universal, at the root of all these experiences, but with that we are hardly concerned at this moment-only with the stream of personal manifestations which proceed from it-everchanging yet linked together from hour to hour. In the second place, though we have dwelt upon and emphasized the idea of separateness and differentiation, in the surviving self, in contra-distinction to the idea of fusion in a formless aggregate, yet it is clear here too that the common life and bonds must hold individuals together, just as much as, if not more than, in the earth-life. The salient facts of telepathy, sympathy, clairvoyance, and so forth convince us that souls, freed to

extent from their grosser present envelopes, will react upon each other in the future, or in that farther world, more swiftly and more intimately than they do now. And as they progress from stage to stage, developing individualities and differences always on a grander and grander scale, so they will also develop through love their organic union with each other. It seems possible, indeed, that growth will largely take place through love-fusion; till

at length, rising into the highest ranges of combined Individuality and Universality, the transformed consciousness of each soul will take on its true quality-"that of space itself—which is at rest everywhere."

CHAPTER X

THE INNER OR SPIRITUAL BODY

In order to form a conception of what kind of body the surviving Self may have, it seems best for the moment to go back to the genesis of our present body. We saw (chapter vii.) that we were compelled to suppose, even in the first germ of our actual body an intelligent form of some kind at work, which while gathering up and representing race-memories of the past, presided over and directed their rehabilitation in the present, thus building up the present body according to a certain pattern-(though subject of course to modification by outer difficulties and obstacles). From the very first, the exceeding complexity and delicacy of the movements within the germ-cells, combined with the decisiveness of their divisions and differentiations, and the perfection and adaptation of the bodily structures and organs ultimately produced, all point in the suggested direction.1 At the same time, we were compelled to conclude that this form, whose first manifestations in the tiny germ cell evidently originate from quite ultra-micro

1 See supra, ch. ii. p. 15; also The World of Life, by A. R. Wallace, ch. xvii. "The Mystery of the Cell."

scopic movements, was itself invisible, invisible through belonging either to an ultra-microscopic world, or to a world of a fourth-dimensional or other order of existence. I think, therefore, that for the present we may accept that conclusion, and fairly suppose that some such invisible form underlies the genesis of each of our bodies.

But at the same time the conclusion of invisibility must not be supposed to carry with it the conclusion of immateriality. Quite the contrary. A creature living in the two-dimensional world formed by the water-film on the surface of a pond might have no conception of the water-world below or the air-world above-both of which might be quite invisible to it; all the same a fish or a bird breaking through the surface would instantly cause some very powerful and very material phenomena there! And again, though atoms and electrons individually may be quite invisible, it is only a question of their number and the force of their electric charges, as to how far they intrude upon what we call the material world. Also, we must remember that invisibility or imperceptibility does not by any means imply non-occupation of space. On the contrary again. For four-dimensional existence carries with it an occupation of space which is quite miraculous to us-as, for instance, the power of appearing in two places at the same time; while a number of ultra-microscopic atoms, by their electrostatic attractions and repulsions, may maintain definite relations of distance from