394 IMMORTALITY. 



ceased to form part of our little world, to interact, 

 at least in the way in which we had been accus- 

 tomed, with our spirits. But it is at least as probable 

 that this result is to be ascribed to his having been 

 promoted or removed, as to his having been de- 

 stroyed. 



And for such suppositions nature offers us mani- 

 fold analogies. It would be a change similar to 

 that whereby a being which had lived the earlier 

 stages of its life in the w^ater, by a sudden change in 

 its organization, took to living in the air, and this 

 we know is the case with many insects. Hence it 

 was not by a mistaken fancy that the butterfly was 

 at all times regarded as the type of immortality. 

 For the analogy is really fairly complete : in both 

 cases there occurs an apparently catastrophic change 

 in the mode of life, a breach in the continuity of 

 existence, a passing into a new environment with 

 very different functions and conditions. And in 

 both cases also there is left behind an empty shell 

 to deride the fears of those who cannot understand 

 that identity can be preserved through all the 

 transformations of metamorphosis. To judge by 

 the first appearance of the cast-off slough, we 

 should deem the change, of which we see the 

 symbol, to have been that of death, and yet we now 

 know that it indicates a fresh phase of life. Is it 

 then so bold a conjecture that by the time when we 

 know as much of the spiritual aspects of existence 

 as we now do of the physical, the dead body may 

 seem a shell as empty as the chrysalis from which 

 the butterfly has flown, and as sure a token of re- 

 lease into a wider sphere of life ? 



But, it may be urged, is there not the great dif- 

 ficulty that the chrysalis is empty, while the organiz- 



