Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/198

 and an attraction toward its ultimate Source stronger than all else beside. Here, then, I lay bare the very corner-stone of the splendid Temple of Progress, whose foundations are laid in Time, but whose turrets catch the gleams from the Eternal Sun of suns, whose warming rays diffuse themselves over every starry island in the tremendous Ocean of Being! Intuition is but an awakening of the inmost soul to an active personal consciousness of what it knew by virtue of its Divine genesis. Suffering appears to be one means toward this awakening, and the consequent intensification of the individuality and the passions of man, labor, and evil, are also agents to this end. Man is beset by evil on all sides, doubtless to the end that, in shunning it, and conserving the self-hood, he may effect the earliest possible completion and rounding out of his entire being, and, consequently, be all the better prepared to encounter the immense destiny that lies before him in the Hereafter. * * * * * * And I gazed upon the man within the chamber; the weather to him—but not to me, for I was totally unaffected—seemed to be oppressively warm; and it was exceedingly difficult for him, after a while, to overcome the somnolent or drowsy influence thus induced, and prevent himself from falling asleep. However, he made strenuous efforts to conquer the tendency, and for a time it was mastered; but, in the struggle between himself and the slumber-fay, a secret was disclosed to me, and another beautiful arcanum of the human economy revealed. The student of these pages will remember that erewhile I mentioned the astonishing fact—one of great