e free, and can express
itself much more clearly than when it was stifled by matter. The soul
and thought are one; thought is the inseparable attribute of the Ego or
individual soul. On its arrival in this world the soul is ready to
register innumerable new thoughts; it is a _tabula rasa_ upon which
nothing has been inscribed.

This is a noble thought, if true, and one that wonderfully widens our
narrow outlook. But, as I have said, I reserve my right of critical
examination. Elsewhere George Pelham says, "We have an astral
facsimile--the words are his--of our physical body, a facsimile which
persists after the dissolution of the physical body." This would seem to
be the astral body of the Theosophists. But the term "facsimile" is
perplexing, as I have always believed that the particular form which
Humanity actually has was entirely determined by the laws of our
physical universe, that it was an adaptation to its surroundings, and
that if a modification, however slight, were made in, for instance, the
laws of gravity, the human shape would undergo a corresponding
variation. Sir William Crookes has lately made some interesting
observations on this subject. But to this question I will return again.

Now, the physics of the next world must be very different from the
physics of this world, seeing that the next world is not material, or at
least that its matter is excessively subtle. How then should the shape
we men have in this world persist in the next?

Now, if we have an astral body which accompanies our Ego in the next
world, and if that astral body consists of a fluid similar to what we
suppose ether to be, or identical with that ether, this fluid must be
matter in some form, though matter obviously subject to quite other laws
than those of our world of palpable substance. Moreover, there is no
proof that the soul is not the resultant of the organic forces of this
astral body. If this astral body, as is probable, in its turn suffers
disintegration, there is no proof that the soul survives this second
disaggregation. If all these suppositions were proved, the old problem
concerning the nature of the soul would have been carried back a stage,
but it would not have been solved.

But, as things are, this is, perhaps, to carry speculation too far. Let
us curb our ambition and ask George Pelham what are the sensations felt
immediately after death. Everything was dark, he says; by degrees
consciousness returned and he awo