There are many apples falling to the ground, but we are not inspired with the knowledge that the actuating force is gravity.

One of the best ill.u.s.trations, to show the difference between a "live"

and a "dead" person, can be had from that excellent invention called the "film" or "plate," and which is so remarkably used in the camera.

When that sensitive composition of chemicals that forms the "film" and which produces such a vivid and lasting likeness of ourselves is freshly made, it possesses that vital something we call "life."

But allow this film to remain unused for a period of time, and it will no longer be able to perform its remarkable work. It will not possess the "life" to take a picture or to record an impression.

If a premature "exposure" of the film is made, it loses its vital quality because of the mixture with other elements, or because of the evaporation of its const.i.tuent parts.

It is not necessary to a.n.a.lyze all the properties of that film to show the principle whereby it performs its wonderful work. The general principle, showing its marvelous use while intact and its utter uselessness when its composition is no longer the same, should be sufficient to ill.u.s.trate the comparison.

This ill.u.s.tration can with force and conviction be applied to the peculiar quality and nature of our "soul" and brain. As long as the brain is incased within our skull, and fully protected from contact with any other substance to alter or to change its integrity, it will perform all that is warranted of it. In the case of our brain, though, besides the importance of keeping it protected from outside chemical action, the vital element concerned in its continuity of life lies in the importance of keeping it constantly nourished and supplied with the remarkable qualities of the vital substance of blood.

The moment the blood supply to the brain is stopped, our brain loses its most important const.i.tuent, with the ultimate and inevitable result of inertia, decomposition and decay. When this condition happens we are then "dead" and, like the proverbial egg, "all the King's horses and all the King's men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again."

If we possessed a soul, and it were of a permanent and special quality, it would maintain its impressions and remember its existence.

It could pa.s.s through innumerable periods and know its many and varied journeys.

Even memory, so unreliable in our short life, bespeaks the utter impossibility of such a thing as a soul with a permanent and lasting existence.

That which we call the "soul" is nothing but a chemical composition, that can and _does_ lose its permanency while we are still alive.

We are acquainted with a number of chemical compositions that must remain in a pacific state to maintain their ident.i.ty, so those chemical forces that compose our "soul" must perforce maintain their equilibrium.

If we are stunned, or suffer any of the many conditions that upset chemical compounds and compositions, we, for the time being, suffer either "unconsciousness" or some other form of mental disability.

If we are shocked too severely, we become totally and permanently impaired, and suffer violent fits and fearful rages, insanity or imbecility.

Different shocks, and even forms of disease, result in certain action upon our chemical brain, which causes it to lose only part of its ability. Extreme high fever is only one form of illness which causes the brain to lose its stability and run rampant and unbridled.

If I were fully cognizant of all forms and degrees of disease, I could recite exactly how they act and in what degree they harm the delicate organism of our brain. In many instances shocks or diseases too powerful for our brain to withstand, cause that portion of our brain that may control our speech, our sight, our hearing, our limbs or other organs to lose its power, with the consequence that we must suffer and be handicapped with what is properly called "a great affliction."

Science to-day has discovered that great truth, and has not only catalogued the different portions of the brain in their individual departments or capacities, but, by a master stroke of surgery, can correct and remedy those impaired parts, and give back to the human being the use of those valuable organs that the invisible agents of Nature had taken away.

So, instead of the brain's possessing a "soul," we find it, only in a more delicate degree, a mechanical formation such as we discovered our body to be.

But if we possess a soul and it is capable of pa.s.sing through the many and varied stages that life suffers, what becomes of its impressions?

What and where are the benefits of its retention?

Where is the soul when we are in a state of unconsciousness? Surely, if the soul were ever present to guard and maintain life, it would be standing by and using its power when it is most needed. We have no occasion for help when we are not in danger. It is when power can be used and exercised that it should be manifested.

Even love, the great compelling force of our life, is subject to the variations of our chemical "soul," its attractions and repulsions.

If two form the unit of reproduction, and love is the great mating medium of Nature, then once it is animated, once it is brought into existence, it should endure permanently, and the possessors should at least enjoy their blissful companionship until the end. But no. Nature would entice, and then destroy, this most consuming feeling of life.

Two persons can start life with the most irresistible attraction and irrepressible love and within a very short time, unless they guard their love with every means and weapon of advanced thought and reason, Nature, through her duplicity, will provide searching eyes to alienate their affection, causing a wretchedness unparalleled in the mental miseries of mankind's life.

The saddest state of all is when two persons, with the sacred devotion of love, cohabit and the happy result is loving children, and yet while this happy family, free from Nature's pitfalls and snares, are living in a peaceful and blissful state, there exists the ever-menacing "devil" who tempts the loving wife and mother to follow the will-o'-the-wisp--and thereby undoes and destroys the greatest kingdom of life.

The devoted husband and father, by the flash of an eye, and the charm of a face, can forsake his sacred ties of devotion and become a degenerate and outcast, with death as his only salvation. In either case Nature stands by with a sneer upon her lips, and G.o.d forgets his obligation to his children. But the final a.n.a.lysis proves beyond doubt that the physical attraction is responsible for this action; and who can deny that it is the chemical attraction of two forces that produced this irresistible desire?

XII

If the life we live be a kindergarten or infancy of a larger and better life somewhere else, Nature defeats her own ends, because myriads pa.s.s on, leave here, with the most dwarfed intellects, utterly unprepared to live here, and much less prepared to live in a higher state and on a more lofty plane.

Were such a condition true, that this is but a transitory existence, we should all have to go through the same schooling of life, and be indelibly impressed with its lesson, with conviction and understanding that the same mistakes would never be repeated, or the acquired knowledge would be constantly and forever used.

There would be no deaths in infancy, as each child born would be purposely sent here; neither would there be premature deaths, as no one could leave without "learning his lesson."

There would be a fixed standard of knowledge and development that we would be required to attain. Knowledge, or whatever condition Nature imposed, would be our destiny, and we would devote our entire life to its acquirement.

As it is, we bend our efforts and use our strength to avoid and to escape the acquisition of knowledge.

If our life were given to us in order to pa.s.s through a school of experience, the simplest truths would immediately manifest themselves to our minds, and conviction would be instant and permanent.

But how sadly untrue is this premise!

For thousands, aye, for millions of years, the people have been stupefied with the most ignorant and foolish superst.i.tion. An instance that will present with great force an ill.u.s.tration of the utter folly of the contention that we are living on this planet as a lesson in school, lies in the fact that for thousands of years people not only believed but religiously guarded the belief that the earth was flat.

Even to-day, with irrefutable demonstrations of the truth, there are some people who either cannot, or will not, accept it.

As desirable as this theory of a transitory state may be, it is even contrary to Nature herself. The entire scheme of Nature seems to be fashioned upon the same principle as our life. The fearful struggle of the elements involved squares identically with our own existence. Even the gigantic constellations, flying with an incalculable velocity, leaving destruction and desolation in their tracks, meet in their ignorant and blind journey the same fate as we meet. Recent astronomical discoveries speak of a struggle constantly taking place in those areas.

The belief of an existence after death is so untenable in the face of many scientific discoveries of to-day, and of the irrefutable facts that are constantly staring us in the face, that an instance or two are all that are necessary to prove the fallacy of such a belief.

Under many circ.u.mstances we are unable to recognize our own blood relations after a lapse of a certain length of time. Parents fail to know their children; and children their parents. This is equally true in every comparison and degree of relationship. Features and characteristics undergo such a decided change and transformation that recognition is ofttimes even impossible. Even the law courts are continually called upon to determine the proper ident.i.ty of persons, to establish the ownership of property by other means than by personal identification. Most remarkable of all, under new conditions, we do not recognize ourselves within the interval of only a few seconds!

Try this if you would seek proof, and convince yourself that recognition of your own personality is momentarily impossible, and that you must resort to other senses than that of sight to identify yourself.

Put a wig upon your head, blacken your face, "make up" your features, and when you have finished and are completely unaware of your changed appearance, look into the mirror for your reflection and feel the sensation of the startling fact that you know not yourself.

We speak of changes so radical in a person's appearance that we often say we could not recognize him "in a thousand years."

What a ridiculous presumption it is, then, to maintain that we live after death when _all_ senses are gone and perception is dead!

Again, how anyone can say that when we die we go to "heaven" is too childish to consider, because when we die, instead of going up and to heaven, we are put deep into the ground to moulder and to rot away.

What a far-fetched conclusion it is to a.s.sume that we live after death, minus all the physical characteristics and under conditions utterly incomprehensible to our minds! Even if, at death, the body turned into invisible gases it would mean and prove absolutely nothing.

If we live after death, by what means can one person communicate with another?

We cannot feel, because we have no hands.