trichotomy of
man, which distinguishes soul from spirit, comes to us with such
weighty, venerable, and even sacred authority, that we may well be
content, for the moment, with confirmations that should be intelligible
to all, forbearing the abstruser questions which have divided minds of
the highest philosophical capacity. We will not now inquire whether the
difference is one of states or of entities; whether the phenomenal or
mind consciousness is merely the external condition of one indivisible
Ego, or has its origin and nature in an altogether different principle;
the Spirit, or immortal part of us, being of Divine birth, while the
senses and understanding, with the consciousness--Ahankara--thereto
appertaining, are from an Anima Mundi, or what in the Sankhya philosophy
is called Prakriti. My utmost expectations will have been exceeded if
it should happen that any considerations here offered should throw even
a faint suggestive light upon the bearings of this great problem. It
may be that the mere irreconcilability of all that is characteristic of
the temporal Ego with the conditions of the superior life--if that can
be made apparent--will incline you to regard the latter rather as the
Redeemer, that has indeed to be born within us for our salvation and our
immortality, than as the inmost, central, and inseparable principle of
our phenomenal life. It may be that by the light of such reflections
the sense of identity will present no insuperable difficulty to the
conception of its contingency, or to the recognition that the mere
consciousness which fails to attach itself to a higher principle is no
guarantee of an eternal individuality.

It is only by a survey of individuality, regarded as the source of all
our affections, thoughts, and actions, that we can realize its intrinsic
worthlessness; and only when we have brought ourselves to a real and
felt acknowledgment of that fact, can we accept with full understanding
those "hard sayings" of sacred authority which bid us "die to
ourselves," and which proclaim the necessity of a veritable new birth.
This mystic death and birth is the key-note of all profound religious
teaching; and that which distinguishes the ordinary religious mind from
spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as
merely figurative, or, indeed, to overlook them altogether.

Of all the reproaches which modern Spiritualism, with the prospect it is
thought to hold out o