1 74 Traces of Unity in the 



apportioned organization the body celestial, instead of 

 the body terrestrial to bring before every human soul 

 the collective experience of its whole past existence. 

 And this this, perchance, is the dread book of judg- 

 ment in whose mysterious hieroglyphics every idle word 

 is recorded ! Yea, in the very nature of a living spirit, 

 it may be more probable for heaven and earth to pass 

 away than that a single act a single thought shall be 

 loosened or lost from that living chain of causes, to all 

 whose links, conscious or unconscious, the free-will, our 

 only absolute self, is co-extensive and co-present." 



As bearing directly upon these remarks, De Quincey 

 also writes : " I was once told by a near relative of 

 mine (a woman of masculine understanding and unim- 

 peachable veracity) that, having in her childhood fallen 

 into a river, and being on the very verge of death but 

 for the assistance which reached her at the last critical 

 moment, she then saw her whole past life, clothed in its 

 forgotten incidents, arrayed before her as in a mirror, not 

 successively, but simultaneously ; and that she had at 

 the same time a faculty developed as suddenly for com- 

 prehending the whole and every part. This, from some 



opium experiences, I can believe And of 



this I feel assured, that there is no such thing as ultimate 

 forgetting ; traces once impressed upon the memory are 

 indestructible. A thousand accidents may, and will, in- 

 terpose a veil between our present consciousness and the 

 secret inscriptions in the mind. Accidents of the same 

 sort will also rend away this veil. But alike, whether 

 veiled or unveiled, the inscriptions remain for ever ; just 

 as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light 

 of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light 

 which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are 



