nsistent with the facts we have to deal
with, and therefore, though it may seem elaborate, the student will do
wisely to make himself familiar with it. If he were studying only the
body, and desired to understand its activities, he would have to
classify its tissues at far greater length and with far more
minuteness than I am using here. He would have to learn the
differences between muscular, nervous, glandular, bony, cartilaginous,
epithelial, connective, tissues, and all their varieties; and if he
rebelled, in his ignorance, against such an elaborate division, it
would be explained to him that only by such an analysis of the
different components of the body can the varied and complicated
phenomena of life-activity be understood. One kind of tissue is wanted
for support, another for movement, another for secretion, another for
absorption, and so on; and if each kind does not have its own
distinctive name, dire confusion and misunderstanding must result, and
physical functions remain unintelligible. In the long run time is
gained, as well as clearness, by learning a few necessary technical
terms, and as clearness is above all things needed in trying to
explain and to understand very complicated post-mortem phenomena, I
find myself compelled--contrary to my habit in these elementary
papers--to resort to these technical names at the outset, for the
English language has as yet no equivalents for them, and the use of
long descriptive phrases is extremely cumbersome and inconvenient.

For myself, I believe that very much of the antagonism between the
adherents of the Esoteric Philosophy and those of Spiritualism has
arisen from confusion of terms, and consequent misunderstanding of
each others meaning. One eminent Spiritualist lately impatiently said
that he did not see the need of exact definition, and that he meant by
Spirit all the part of man's nature that survived Death, and was not
body. One might as well insist on saying that man's body consists of
bone and blood, and asked to define blood, answer: "Oh! I mean
everything that is not bone." A clear definition of terms, and a rigid
adherence to them when once adopted, will at least enable us all to
understand each other, and that is the first step to any fruitful
comparison of experiences.

THE FATE OF THE BODY.

The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of
reconstruction. First builded into the etheric form in the womb of the
mother, it is b