Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/68

 that while the soul may, both prior and subsequent to death, draw in knowledge from without—inspiration, progression, procession—it may also expand from within, and enter consecutively domain after domain in the Soul-deeps of its almost infinite being. This is aspiration, unfolding—development; and ever will the immense, the immortal thing, continue to vastate the bad, the ill, imperfect and untrue, so long as any of such remains to be thrown off, as it has been doing ever since the clock of Time struck one upon the bell on Eternity's tower! It will continue the process until that tower itself shall topple and fall with hoary age! The figure of an onion, though a homely, is nevertheless a good one, inasmuch as it offers a familiar illustration of the monad; for, first, there is the two or three external skins, after which comes layer after layer, until at last we find a center, which center contains an invisible, because a spiritual point, which constitutes the germ or seed-principle, containing, latent in its bosom, countless acres of onions, that are and are not, at the same time—fields of plenty, seeds of mighty harvests, which only need the necessary conditions to prove their power and develop their capacities. Philosophers have long sought, with their crude plummets, to sound the bottomless abysses of man's immortal soul. Spiritualists, in their turn, have tried to do the same—aye! and loudly boasted of their success. Success, forsooth! Why their lead, even when all the line attached thereto was well run out. rested on one or more of the very topmost ledges of the unfathomable and vast profound—their weights only lodged on the upper crags of one or more of the tiniest