the foolishness of the flesh be purged away, and we shall be pure, and hold converse with other pure souls, and recognise the pure light everywhere, which is none other than the light of truth." Hence the wise man leaves with joy a world where his higher and ethereal sense is trammelled by evil and impurity; and his whole life is but a preparation for death, or rather an initiation into the mysteries of the unseen world. Many, as they say, join the procession in such mysteries; but few are really chosen for initiation.
No fear that our souls will vanish like smoke, or that the dead sleep on for ever, like Endymion. Our souls are born again; and as life passes into death, so, in the circle of nature, the dead must pass into life; for if this were not so, all things must at last be swallowed up in death.
Again, we have in our minds latent powers of thought—ideas of beauty and equality—which are not given us at our birth, and which we cannot have learnt from experience. Such knowledge is but the soul's recollection of a previous state of existence.
"Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised."[1]
It is only the mortal part of us (Socrates continues) that dies when earth returns to earth. The pure soul, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world—to the divine, the immortal, and the rational; where she dwells in bliss, in company with the gods, released from the errors and follies of men, their fears, their
- ↑ Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality.
