78 METAPHYSICS 



We have endeavoured, inconsecutively and fragmen- 

 tarily, to trace the growth of the body from the coalescence 

 of the dual parental protoplasmic elements to the stage of 

 senile decay, when the dissolution of the materio-dynamic 

 compact is naturally accomplished, and the partners assume 

 their intrinsic individuality. At the stage of dissolution, 

 or when the partnership is broken up, we have ample 

 evidence, through our senses and reason, that the body 

 resumes in time its original inorganic character, and that 

 every atom of matter composing it is restored to mother 

 earth, as " ashes to ashes, earth to earth," leaving the 

 gross weight of the planet undisturbed and entirely 

 unaffected. It is entirely different with the non-material 

 or dynamic partner in the great compact or " combine " 

 of human life when that compact is destroyed by death, 

 or when the mind, soul, or spirit becomes disembodied. 

 At the supreme moment of the dissolution of its physical 

 envelope or dwelling-place, the central, immaterial, and 

 indestructible essence known to the human race by these 

 names, mind, soul, or spirit, leaves the body which it has 

 up till then animated, in, we have every reason to suppose, 

 a concrete, self-existent, and dynamically or spiritually 

 unchanged form, with attributes of unchanged and un- 

 changeable identity, and qualities which only imagination 

 chastened by reason can conjure up and " the mind's 

 eye " dimly perceive. 



The complex array of psycho-dynamic, and now spiritual, 

 activities, we must believe, are left intact by death, but 

 loosened from their material host they emerge into an 

 untrammelled condition of pure dynamic or spiritual 

 freedom, intact, coherent, and capable of perennial exist- 

 ence and association with kindred existences and, although 

 desire may be " father to the thought," there is every 

 reason to suppose, superior, begins. The psycho-dynamic 

 agencies here referred to, together with their related 

 materio-dynamic agencies, consist of the molecular 

 activities of every cell in the body, of the complexus of 

 sympathetic nervine agencies, and of the great systemic 

 nervous system, linked to each other by materio-dynamic 

 strands of continuity, and attached to and one with the 

 mentally endowed neurons of the <e home," " habitat," or 



