Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/191

 beneath the trees on the outskirts of the New England city?" A very fair question this, and one demanding a fair answer. To it I reply thus: The human being, externally, is a multiple thing, at the bottom of which lies the invisible soul: Soul is the thinking, feeling, knowing essence; spirit is its casket; the body but its nursery-garments, the clothing of its juvenility. By means of the body, the soul, in which alone all power and faculty inheres, is enabled to come in contact with the material world. By means of its inner or spirit-body, which is but an out-creation, it holds converse with the worlds of Knowledge, Spirit and Principle. The fibrils alluded to are not mere emanations from the physical brain, or its ganglia, but they are wires, one end of which is eternally anchored in the very soul itself, which latter is, of course, the man per se. The wires, though passing through, are by no means rooted in the corporeal structure; hence, the man or woman, without a flesh-and-blood body, experiences but little, if any, difficulty in hearing sounds made in this material world. As it is with regard to hearing, so also it is, to the same degree, with reference to the power of seeing the corporeal forms of earthly things. The perfection and ease, however, with which this is done, depends upon the normal condition of the disembodied man himself. If he or she, as the case may be, is sound, sane, clear and morally healthy, its powers, as with one yet in the flesh, are augmented and positive; therefore it can, by processes already sufficiently explained, see, hear, feel, and even read, not only books, but the unexpressed thought of a person still embodied with whom he or she may for the time being be in sympathetic contact. Very seldom, however, can the recently dead do these things