PROLEGOMENA. Ixxix. 



authority of the church : Ave shall then find that 

 those deeply mysterious doctrines relating to the 

 future state of the soul, are not so repugnant 

 even to human reason, nor so incapable of 

 systematic comj.rehension, as some have foolisiily 

 imagined. Get out of the noise of the world into 

 solitude, amidst the beauties of Nature, and there, 

 abstracted from the interruptions of the passions 

 and of sordid cares, meditate 



On the End of Man. — Consider that as 

 God is everywhere, so you are enveloped 

 in the (^Veator as in a vast ocean of in- 

 telligence, from whence all creatures spring, 

 and to which they all tend as to their 

 source. You will then readily perceive that 

 your organization is a contrivance merely for 

 the dividing off of mind from the great Parent 

 Mind, that is, of individualizing, or, in other 

 words, of creating you a separate being, with 

 volition and personal identity, and placing you in 

 relation, by means of the senses, to other indi- 

 vidual beings, whom you now see endowed like 

 yourself with a free will and individual existence ; 

 and perceive that you are all moving together as 

 sentient motes in the immense sea of the Divine 

 Ubiquity ! from which you are separated only by 

 the organic envelope of your body. Your present 

 life then begins with the first union of mind with 

 matter, at the moment of conception; and you re- 



