Its Relation to Life. Its Immortality. Its loving purpose. Its Relation to Evolution.

“To die, to sleep,—To sleep! perchance to dream! ay there’s the rub.”—Shakespeare.

In preceding chapters I have so frequently made the statement that life and death are one and the same, that it seems almost superfluous to say another word on the subject. But I am willing, even at the risk of seeming pedantic, to re-state the argument, which is not only simple and easy of comprehension, but at the same time both scientific and rational.

Without desiring to enter upon the realm of metaphysics in this book, it will be sufficient to say that we use the term Life in its fullest sense, and not in the restricted one of consciousness. Consciousness itself being but one expression of life.

Two Irishmen walking along a road came upon a turtle. It had been decapitated and its head lay some distance away from its body. “Begorra,” says Pat, “he’s dead sure enough. His head’s cut off.” Mike picked up a stick and punched the turtle’s feet, who immediately withdrew them inside his shell. “No,” says he, “he’s aloive. See him move.” “You’re a fool[45] Mike,” says Pat. “He’s dead I tell you. Don’t you see his head’s cut off.” “He’s aloive,” said Mike, “you can see him move.” The argument became heated, Mike insisting that a dead turtle couldn’t move, and Pat being equally insistent that no turtle with his head cut off could be alive. The matter was about to be referred to the Irishman’s court of last resort, when a Dutchman, passing along, an armistice was established, and the matter referred to him for decision. The Dutchman examined the turtle and discovered it had been killed in a supposedly most effective manner by having its head cut off. Mike’s test with the stick, however, revealed the ability on the part of the turtle for pretty lively activity. He then arose and delivered himself, “Gentlemen, dot turtle iss dead all right,—but it don’t know it.”

Every area of being,—of the universe, is eternally alive. It doesn’t always KNOW it.

We repeat, there is one—can be but one—Be-ing. This being is not mind, nor its product matter. Ether is only a refined form of matter. Mind is adjudged to be a still more refined form of that same matter. But being is Substance. You may call it Spirit (or meaning) or you may call it God. Paul called it Faith, and said “by it and of it the worlds were made.”

We call it Electricity. Every infinitesimal[46] electron of this substance, as we have stated, is by-polar or sexual. Attracting and repelling, embracing and separating. This eternal, inherent or natural law of their being is Life,—energy, activity. The resultant of these activities:—the worlds and all that in them is.

Suppose a great mass of type moved by an inherent, automatic, continuous impulse. Its integral component letters forever arranging themselves into words, phrases, sentences, etc. For illustration: The letters E-V-I-L create the word Evil. Rearrange the same letters and your word Evil disappears and the word L-I-V-E, Live, appears, or is born, created, evolved, whatever. The energy, the auto-activity would be one and the same. The disintegration and disappearance of one word, and the re-adjustment of letters and appearance or creation of another word being equally the resultant of the same letters, with their same inherent energy and impulse. You might call one part of the process Creation and another part Destruction, but the process is one and continuous. Your division is merely hypothetical, or assumed. What is destroyed? The letters remain, and their inherent energy or impulse remains—all there was at any time.

The integral, component particles—electrons—of the one only eternal substance, are the letters comprising the universe. Their inherent,[47] automatic, eternal energy, activity—Life—forever spelling out words and sentences, etc., that go to make up the Book of Life. They arrange themselves as earthquake or pestilence, famine, murder, birth, disease, old age, death, sunshine, flowers, music, painting, sculpture, art, laughter, tears, whatever. What are these terms but names for the varied activities of life? Life is all there is. Wh............