d soon follow;
and that for himself the time had come to know more of the place. I
learned from him that his last life had been an unhappy one, in a
crowded street and a slovenly home, with much evil of talk and act about
him; he had hated it all, he said, but for a little sister that he had
loved, who had kissed and clasped him, weeping, when he lay dying of a
miserable disease. He said that he thought he should find her, which
made part of his joy of going; that for a long while there had come to
him a sense of her remembrance and love; and that he had once sent his
thought back to earth to find her, and she was in much grief and care;
and that then all these messages had at once ceased, and he knew that
she had left the body. He was a merry boy, full of delight and laughter,
and we went very cheerfully together through the sunlit wood, with its
green glades and open spaces, which seemed all full of life and
happiness, creatures living together in goodwill and comfort. I saw in
this journey that all things that ever lived a conscious life in one of
the innumerable worlds had a place and life of their own, and a time of
refreshment like myself. What I could not discern was whether there was
any interchange of lives, whether the soul of the tree could become an
animal, or the animal progress to be a man. It seemed to me that it was
not so, but that each had a separate life of its own. But I saw how
foolish was the fancy that I had pursued in old days, that there was a
central reservoir of life, into which at death all little lives were
merged; I was yet to learn how strangely all life was knit together,
but now I saw that individuality was a real and separate thing, which
could not be broken or lost, and that all things that had ever enjoyed a
consciousness of the privilege of separate life had a true dignity and
worth of existence; and that it was only the body that had made
hostility necessary; that though the body could prey upon the bodies of
animal and plant, yet that no soul could devour or incorporate any other
soul. But as yet the merging of soul in soul through love was unseen and
indeed unsuspected by me.

Now as we went in the wood, the boy and I, it came into my mind in a
flash that I had seen a great secret. I had seen, I knew, very little of
the great land yet--and indeed I had been but in the lowest place of
all: and I thought how base and dull our ideas had been upon earth of
God and His care of men. We