Page:Alchemyofhappiness en.djvu/88

80 of the man who ate him, will that portion rise with the eater or with the man who was eaten?...

They say, moreover, that man is created from seed, that seed is derived from food, and that food is derived from the milk, the fat or the flesh of an animal: now with which of all these will the ingredient rise up ? Again, suppose the hand of a thief has been cut off, and he afterwards leads a life of good works and enters Paradise. Must he enter Paradise, where nothing maimed or defective can enter, without his hand, or will he enter with his hand, notwithstanding his good works were not performed when he possessed that hand? The source of all these perverse speculations is in the pretence of those who say that in the day of assembly, the mould reappears and that the spirit follows in its train, that if it was not for the mould there would be no semblance of man, and that the permanency of the spirit results from its connection with the body.

If, O seeker, you say that the well known language of the wise in the law and in discourse is, that at death a man becomes non-existent, and that he exists afterwards in the resurrection with this identical body, and that our language contradicts theirs, we reply. He who merely follows in the track of the language used by others, will never acquire a knowledge of the truth. However, the words you have cited are not those, either of people of intelligence or of imitators. For the intelligent and learned know that the body is not annihilated at death, but that the materials of which it is composed are separated, and that it is this separation which they call death. The imitator has likewise heard from the doctors of the law, that the spirit lives eternally after death.

It is well known that spirits are divided into two classes, in one of which all blessed spirits are embraced and in the other all miserable spirits. With respect to the blessed spirits God says, "Think not that those who have been slain on