he really played in our
existence. As sudden silence gives the consciousness a keener
realization of the sound that has just ceased, so death, by its
contrast, gives a vivid, realistic touch to life. We all know how
enormously the heart qualities are quickened by the death of a close
friend. The whole nature is in some degree purified and spiritualized.
Selfishness is decreased and compassion expands. Sympathy for others in
distress is born, and thus a decided evolutionary advance is made. We
have only to reflect upon the fact that separation without death
produces the same effects in a minor key, to realize the evolutionary
value of death. In constant association we grow careless and
indifferent. But an absence of a month or two enables one to get a truer
perspective of personal associations and thereafter life has new zest. A
child regards its mother with a certain degree of appreciation but a
short absence enormously increases its appreciation. All human beings
come into closer and more sympathetic association after a period of
separation, and the completeness of the separation caused by death
renders it peculiarly efficacious in the development of the spiritual
side of one's nature. It often requires death to turn attention away
from materialistic life. Frequently a family becomes completely absorbed
in material success. There is no thought at all given to the higher
life. Wealth, position, power, fame, all the vanities of the world, hold
them firmly. They become completely self-centered. Then suddenly death
enters and breaks the family circle, and the transient character of all
they had been so strenuously striving for suddenly dawns upon them, and
attention is turned to the nobler things of life. It is a well known
fact that great wars are accompanied or followed with widespread
spiritual awakening, and it is no doubt largely because the shadow of
death has fallen on tens of thousands of households.

It has sometimes been asked by doubtful critics if it would not be an
improvement on nature's plan if the sorrow caused by the death of our
friends were softened by direct knowledge of their continued existence.
It is evidently the plan of nature to have the physical life and the
astral life normally separated at our present level of evolution. Some
of the reasons have already been discussed. There are undoubtedly others
that we are incapable of understanding, and still others that we can
readily comprehend. If the h