HUMAN IMMORTALITY 289 



this our brains operate^ as "organs for separating 

 it into parts and giving them finite form." Again,^ 

 he says: "The transmission-theory connects itself 

 very naturally with the whole tendency of thought 

 known as transcendentalism. Emerson, for example, 

 writes: 'We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, 

 which makes us receivers of its truth and organs 

 of its activity. When we discern justice, when we 

 discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow 

 a passage to its beams.' " All this is in even keep- 

 ing with Professor James's other sentence,^ that "we 

 need only suppose the continuity of our conscious- 

 ness with a mother sea, to allow for exceptional 

 waves occasionally pouring over the dam," and with 

 the earlier one, already once quoted, that "as the 

 white radiance comes through the dome, . . . even 

 so the genuine matter of reality, the life of souls 

 as it is in its fulness, will break through our several 

 brains into this world in all sorts of restricted forms." 

 Once, and but once only, does he approach the 

 greater idealistic doctrine of an eternal Pluralism. 

 Then he says, indeed, " But it is not necessary to 

 identify the consciousness postulated in the lecture, 

 as preexisting behind the scenes, with the Absolute 

 Mind of transcendental idealism, although, indeed, 

 the notion of it might lead in that direction. The 

 Absolute Mind of transcendental idealism is one 



"^ Human Itninortality, note 3, p. 52. '^ Ibid., note 5, p. 58. 



^ Ibid., p. 27. 

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