ns and unfolds
itself. Death and birth are only the struggle of life with itself to
manifest itself in ever more transfigured form, more like itself.

And _my_ death--can that be anything different from this?--I, who am
not a mere representation and copy of life, but who bear within myself
the original, the alone true and essential life! It is not a possible
thought that Nature should annihilate a life which did not spring from
her--Nature, which exists only for my sake, not I for hers.

But even my natural life, even this mere representation of an inward
invisible life to mortal eyes, Nature cannot annihilate; otherwise she
must be able to annihilate herself--she who exists only for me and for
my sake, and who ceases to exist, if I am not. Even because she puts
me to death she must quicken me anew. It can be only my higher life,
unfolding itself in her, before which my present life disappears; and
that which mortals call death is the visible appearing of a second
vivification. Did no rational being, who has once beheld its light,
perish from the earth, there would be no reason to expect a new heaven
and a new earth. The only possible aim of Nature, that of representing
and maintaining Reason, would have been already fulfilled here below,
and her circle would be complete. But the act by which she puts to
death a free, self-subsisting being, is her solemn--to all Reason
apparent--transcending of that act, and of the entire sphere which she
thereby closes. The apparition of death is the conductor by which my
spiritual eye passes over to the new life of myself, and of a Nature
for me.

Every one of my kind who passes from earthly connections, and who
cannot, to my spirit, seem annihilated, because he is one of my kind,
draws my thought over with him. He still is, and to him belongs a
place.

While we, here below, sorrow for him with such sorrow as would be
felt, if possible, in the dull kingdom of unconsciousness, when a
human being withdraws himself from thence to the light of earth's
sun--while we so mourn, on yonder side there is joy because a man is
born into their world; as we citizens of earth receive with joy our
own. When I, some time, shall follow them, there will be for me only
joy; for sorrow remains behind, in the sphere which I quit.

It vanishes and sinks before my gaze--the world which I so lately
admired. With all the fulness of life, of order, of increase, which
I behold in it, it is but the curtain