nature does not thus
express itself. The spark of divine life is in all, notwithstanding it
is sometimes darkly hidden. On the other hand we find no perfected
beings. The perfect heroes were merely creations of an imperfect
imagination. At our halfway stage of evolution we find neither the
absolutely good nor the hopelessly bad.

Why should the change we call death transform a human being? It is
merely the loss of one part of the mechanism of consciousness. The soul,
the thinker, has lost connection with the physical world because the
physical body has ceased to exist. The mental body and the astral body
remain and they enable him to think and feel. But he can not think more
than he knows, nor feel what he has not evolved. All that has happened
in death is that contact with the material world has been lost.

One of the misconceptions is that death brings great wisdom, and we
often hear of people getting into communication with those who have
passed on, with the hope of obtaining valuable advice. It is true that
death ushers one into a realm of wider consciousness and that in the
astral world one can see a little further ahead and take a few more
things into consideration. But--and it is a vital point--he would have
no better judgment in determining a course of action than he had while
here in the physical world.

Both mentally and emotionally he is unchanged. His grade of morality is
neither better nor worse. His tolerance or narrowness remains what it
previously was. If he was bigoted while here he is still bigoted there.
If he was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely that in the
astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains
unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development, but in a world
where emotion is the determining factor.

Death merely opens the door to a new and wider realm where the evolution
of the soul proceeds. It would be difficult to say which is the greater
misfortune--the delusions that make death the king of terrors, or the
complacent belief that if death does not end all, it at least brings the
soul to a judgment that ends all personal responsibility and settles
one's fate forever. Death can no more lessen responsibility or
transform the moral nature than sleep can change character or determine
destiny.

The theosophical conception of death is as consoling as it is
scientific. Instead of the fear of death it gives us knowledge of
continued life. Instead o