companionship, paradoxical
though it sound, is principally due the peculiar loneliness of
childhood. For nothing is so isolating as a persistent idea which one
dares not confide.

And yet,--stranger paradox still,--was there ever any one willing to
exchange his personality for another's? Who can imagine foregoing his
own self? Nay, do we not cling even to its outward appearance? Is there
a man so poor in all that man holds dear that he does not keenly resent
being accidentally mistaken for his neighbor? Surely there must be
something more than mirage in this deep-implanted, widespread instinct
of human race.

But however strong the conviction now of one's individuality, is there
aught to assure him of its continuance beyond the confines of its
present life? Will it awake on death's morrow and know itself, or
will it, like the body that gave it lodgment, disintegrate again into
indistinguishable spirit dust? Close upon the heels of the existing
consciousness of self treads the shadow-like doubt of its hereafter.
Will analogy help to answer the grewsome riddle of the Sphinx? Are the
laws we have learned to be true for matter true also for mind? Matter we
now know is indestructible; yet the form of it with which we once were
so fondly familiar vanishes never to return. Is a like fate to be the
lot of the soul? That mind should be capable of annihilation is as
inconceivable as that matter should cease to be. Surely the spirit we
feel existing round about us on every side now has been from ever, and
will be for ever to come. But that portion of it which we each know as
self, is it not like to a drop of rain seen in its falling through the
air? Indistinguishable the particle was in the cloud whence it came;
indistinguishable it will become again in the ocean whither it is bound.
Its personality is but its passing phase from a vast impersonal on the
one hand to an equally vast impersonal on the other. Thus seers preached
in the past; so modern science is hinting to-day. With us the idea seems
the bitter fruit of material philosophy; by them it was looked upon as
the fairest flower of their faith. What is dreaded now as the impious
suggestion of the godless four thousand years ago was reverenced as a
sacred tenet of religion.

Shorter even than his short threescore years and ten is that soul's life
of which man is directly cognizant. Bounded by two seemingly impersonal
states is the personal consciousness of which he is made