Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/233

 received a new family of ideas; and my soul felt exceeding glad of this instalment of the treasures of the upper worlds. For a moment, I remained pensive and silent; and then, inspired by the ineffable presence of Thotmor and his Cynthia, who floated on beside him—his pearly arm engirdling her glorious form in an embrace, which spoke of something higher and holier than we mortals call love—I answered: "It now seems to me that Nature is the birth-place of Affection, the tomb of all evil, the primary school of human souls, the alembic of the Virtues, the gymnasia of Thought, the"—

I was forced to stop again; nor could I go on. Thotmor came to my relief, and added: "A plane inclined, beginning at Instinct, and ending in Omniscience; the telegraphic system of all Being, connecting its remotest points; the workshop of the Infinite and Eternal God; the grand orchestra of all the Symphonies, and the ladder reaching from Non-entity to the great Dome, beneath which sits in awful majesty the Lawmaker of the Universe, the Great I ."

book, which after all is but prefatory to a volume on the general subject of the life beyond, which we are, ere long, to give to the world, would be incomplete were we to neglect or omit to answer certain very pregnant questions, that must arise in the mind of the reader, as he or she proceeds in its perusal: accordingly, this section, a short one, shall be devoted to that end. As I rose in the air, and passed over a sunny region,