could now see that, given any
life at all, this is exactly the line upon which we should expect to
move? Nature and evolution are averse from sudden disconnected
developments. If a human being has technical, literary, musical, or
other tendencies, they are an essential part of his character, and to
survive without them would be to lose his identity and to become an
entirely different man. They must therefore survive death if
personality is to be maintained. But it is no use their surviving
unless they can find means of expression, and means of expression seem
to require certain material agents, and also a discriminating audience.
So also the sense of modesty among civilised races has become part of
our very selves, and implies some covering of our forms if personality
is to continue. Our desires and sympathies would prompt us to live
with those we love, which implies something in the nature of a house,
while the human need for mental rest and privacy would predicate the
existence of separate rooms. Thus, merely starting from the basis of
the continuity of personality one might, even without the revelation
from the beyond, have built up some such system by the use of pure
reason and deduction.

So far as the existence of this land of happiness goes, it would seem
to have been more fully proved than any other religious conception
within our knowledge.

It may very reasonably be asked, how far this precise description of
life beyond the grave is my own conception, and how far it has been
accepted by the greater minds who have studied this subject? I would
answer, that it is my own conclusion as gathered from a very large
amount of existing testimony, and that in its main lines it has for
many years been accepted by those great numbers of silent active
workers all over the world, who look upon this matter from a strictly
religious point of view. I think that the evidence amply justifies us
in this belief. On the other hand, those who have approached this
subject with cold and cautious scientific brains, endowed, in many
cases, with the strongest prejudices against dogmatic creeds and with
very natural fears about the possible re-growth of theological
quarrels, have in most cases stopped short of a complete acceptance,
declaring that there can be no positive proof upon such matters, and
that we may deceive ourselves either by a reflection of our own
thoughts or by receiving the impressions of the medium. Profess