originate from the contemplation of the phenomena of dreams
and shadows and echoes, but arose rather from the inexpugnable
self assertion of consciousness, its inability to feel itself non
existent. This persistency of consciousness, following it in all
its imaginative flights of thought beyond the death of the body,
was the cause of the mythological creativeness of the barbaric
mind. And thus the elaboration of the imagery of ghosts and a
ghostly realm was not the precursor, but the result of a belief in
another life. The belief sprang directly out of the feeling of a
continuous being unconquerably connected with human self
consciousness, and is independent of the imagery in which it has
been clothed, may clothe itself in endless forms of imagery, and
survive their removal on the discovery of their incompetence.

Besides, the savage himself was, after all, not so far out of the
way. His mythology was not a mere fiction concreted into fact by
superstition. He was on that track of analogy which, when cleared,
will be, perhaps, the luminous highway to universal truth. The
savage was obscurely conscious that the objects which appeared
around him as solid material realities had their immaterial
correspondences within his spirit. The tree, the stone, the
flower, the star, the beast, the man, had within him correspondent
mental images or ideas just as real as they, but without sensible
qualities, and incapable of hurt. With creative wonder he
recognized a symbol or analogy of this inner world in the shadow
and the reflection. The shadow or the reflection is a representation
of its original, but without material substance.

See, it lies there, wavering, on the rock, or in the water. No
arrow can pierce it, no club bruise it, no pestle pulverize it, no
chemistry disintegrate it. It is an emblem of the immaterial and
indestructible spirit, revealed in the outer world of matter,
where everything changes and passes away except the noumena under
the phenomena. No wonder it stirred the brooding fancy of the
ignorant, but prophetic primitive man, and made it teem with poesy
and personification.

Freely, then, let us brush aside the mythological extravagance and
irrational errors in the entire cosmopolitan doctrine of a future
life, but beware of rejecting the fact itself of immortality until
we have better grounds than have yet been afforded by the
accumulating insight of literary history. As the world moves on,
and the human m