we may then begin to
comprehend why the hero, sacrificing his life on pure altruistic
grounds, sinks as his life-blood ebbs away into a sweet dream, wherein

All that he wishes and all that he loves,
Come smiling round his sunny way,

only to wake into active or objective consciousness when reborn in the
Region of Happiness, while the poor unhappy and misguided mortal who,
seeking to elude fate, selfishly loosens the silver string and breaks
the golden bowl, finds himself terribly alive and awake, instinct with
all the evil cravings and desires that embittered his world-life,
without a body in which to gratify these, and capable of only such
partial alleviation as is possible by more or less vicarious
gratification, and this only at the cost of the ultimate complete
rupture with his sixth and seventh principles, and consequent ultimate
annihilation after, alas! prolonged periods of suffering.

Let it not be supposed that there is no hope for this class--the sane
deliberate suicide. If, bearing steadfastly his cross, he suffers
patiently his punishment, striving against carnal appetites still
alive in him, in all their intensity, though, of course, each in
proportion to the degree to which it had been indulged in earth-life.
If, we say, he bears this humbly, never allowing himself to be tempted
here or there into unlawful gratifications of unholy desires, then
when his fated death-hour strikes, his four higher principles reunite,
and, in the final separation that then ensues, it may well be that all
may be well with him, and that he passes on to the gestation period
and its subsequent developments.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Book ii., from lines 666-789. The whole passage bristles
with horrors.]

[Footnote 2: xii. 85. Trans., of Burnell and Hopkins.]

[Footnote 3: From the translation of Dhunjeebhoy Jamsetjee Medhora,
_Zoroastrian and some other Ancient Systems_, xxvii.]

[Footnote 4: Trans., by Mirza Mohamed Hadi. _The Platonist_, 306.]

[Footnote 5: _The Sacred Books of the East_, iii, 109, 110.]

[Footnote 6: _Secret Doctrine_, vol. i. p. 281.]

[Footnote 7: See _ibid._, p. 283.]

[Footnote 8: _Isis Unveiled_, vol. i. p. 480.]

[Footnote 9: Theosophical Manuals, No. 1.]

[Footnote 10: _The Heroic Enthusiasts_, Trans., by L. Williams. part ii.
pp. 22, 23.]

[Footnote 11: _Cremation_, Theosophical Siftings, vol. iii.]

[Footnote 12: _Man: Fragments o