It appeared that, since
intercourse between the two worlds had first begun, it had been the
constant effort of the spirits to teach this truth to men; but the stupid
refusal of the latter to comprehend had till now baffled every attempt.
How it had been possible that men who had reached the point of believing
in immortality at all should be content to rest in the inadequate and
preposterous conception that it only attached to the latest phase of the
individual, was the standing wonder of the spirit world.
It was as if one should throw away the contents of a cup of wine, and
carefully preserve the dregs in the bottom.
That so loose an association of personalities as the individual, and
those personalities so utterly diverse, no two of them even alive at the
same time, should have impressed even the most casual observer as a unit
of being--a single person--was accounted a marvel by the angels. If men
had believed all the members of a family to have but one soul among them,
their mistake would have been more excusable, for the members of a family
are, at least, alive at the same time, while the persons of an individual
are not even that.
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