tion, this most awful of beliefs, I cry: "Throw off
these tyrants of the mind. Emancipate yourselves from this fearful
ignorance and mental bondage!" What a burden will be lifted from their
lives and what a glorious freedom they will experience!

If we are to die, let us die in perfect calmness and in perfect peace.
Let us become firmly convinced that, once we are dead, no thought, no
act, can possibly harm us. We are beyond the pale of Nature's pangs. We,
the individuals that we were, are free from everything. We are at rest,
and forever.

X

But after this life with all our pains and sorrows, what then? What is
there to repay us for living?

I answer:

_Nothing!_

I have no misgivings about the "future." I am firmly convinced that
there is no "after life," that when we "breathe our last" we arrive at
our eternity. We are "one with yesterday's seven thousand years." We are
like the flower which, "once blown, forever dies."

I firmly believe that life as now manifested in our bodies is a
combustible force identical with that of any other form of life. No less
so than the "seed" of the flower is different from the "germ" of the
wheat.

Both are forces!

So are we!

They may be different manifestations, but fundamentally they are the
same.

In fact, the very force that manifests itself in a mechanical instrument
made by man is the identical substance that rules the organs, and
charges the brain of our being. In the same manner that the force
dissipates itself in the mechanical instrument made by man, and no
longer gives motion to its parts, so the force that animates our being
dissipates itself and is no longer capable of giving motion to our parts
and organs.

As man's instruments are dependent upon many channels for their complete
performance, so the human brain and body have their many dependencies
that must fully and properly be nourished to maintain their power.

Each day science draws another veil from the mystery of life.

Our eye is but a chemical camera, that we have not only reproduced, but
even improved upon.

Our voice is nothing but a vibration, that we have not only reproduced
and improved upon, but whose minutest modulations we have recorded in
innumerable duplications.

Our ear is but a drum, that carries and conveys to the brain the
vibrations of our voice, and that function we have reproduced and even
improved upon by the instrument we call the telephone.

The telegraphic