Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/23

 tympanum to receive, auditory nerves to conduct, nor external ear, to collect these waves of sound. It seemed to me, that one of the two prevalent theories must be false; either sound is not material, or that the Spirit of a human being is;—for I had not the shadow of a doubt, but that I was really, and forever, an inhabitant of the soul-world. If sounds are material, how was it possible for me to hear them, being a Spirit? If a Spirit is but a refined form of matter, then the notion of its eternal durability, is a false one, and there must come a period when it too, like the body, must dissolve away. These things troubled me. I had passed to death, not as a sluggard, and careless of what might await me, but with every faculty keenly awake. Nor do I suppose five minutes elapsed after I emerged from my body, ere I was perfectly alive to all that surrounded me. I distinctly saw certain familiar things, and recognized them; but there was not any difficulty in comprehending the rationale of this; for I perceived that solar light was not the only source of illumination the earth possessed. Indeed, there is no such thing as darkness. The life of all things is light, and although sun, moon, and stars should hide behind an impenetrable veil, yet the things of earth would still be visible to the sight of the soul. There are two other sources of light; first, the electrical emanations from every material object illumine them, and whatever may be near; and second, the air itself, which fleshly lungs inhale, is but the outer garb of a finer and magnetic sea, which not only encircles the earth, but stretches away in all directions to