the body, has lost touch with other
Selves, that Death has been a gulf instead of a gateway between
embodied and disembodied Souls.

* * * * *

APPENDIX.

The following passage on the fate of suicides is taken from the
_Theosophist_, September, 1882.

We do not pretend--we are not permitted--to deal exhaustively with the
question at present, but we may refer to one of the most important
classes of entities, who can participate in objective phenomena, other
than Elementaries and Elementals.

This class comprises the Spirits of conscious sane suicides. They are
_Spirits_, and not _Shells_, because there is not in their cases, at
any rate until later, a total and permanent divorce between the fourth
and fifth principles on the one hand, and the sixth and seventh on the
other. The two duads are divided, they exist apart, but a line of
connection still unites them, they may yet reunite, and the sorely
threatened personality avert its doom; the fifth principle still holds
in its hands the clue by which, traversing the labyrinth of earthly
sins and passions, it may regain the sacred penetralia. But for the
time, though really a Spirit, and therefore so designated, it is
practically not far removed from a Shell.

This class of Spirit can undoubtedly communicate with men, but, as a
rule, its members have to pay dearly for exercising the privilege,
while it is scarcely possible for them to do otherwise than lower and
debase the moral nature of those with and through whom they have much
communication. It is merely, broadly speaking, a question of degree;
of much or little injury resulting from such communication; the cases
in which real, permanent good can arise are too absolutely exceptional
to require consideration.

Understand how the case stands. The unhappy being revolting against
the trials of life--trials, the results of its own former actions,
trials, heaven's merciful medicine for the mentally and spiritually
diseased--determines, instead of manfully taking arms against a sea of
troubles, to let the curtain drop, and, as it fancies, end them. It
destroys the body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentally
as before. It had an appointed life-term determined by an intricate
web of prior causes, which its own wilful sudden act cannot shorten.
That term must run out its appointed sands. You may smash the lower
half of the hand hour-glass, so that the impalpable