Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/519

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No. 5.]
PSYCHOGENESIS.
503

long as its great purpose is unfulfilled? The whole process of psychic evolution is a continuous transfer of function from less to more refined, complicated, and specialized vehicles. Our most recent science has opened to us the reality of an invisible world. It is certain that there are vibrations at both ends of the spectrum of light which we do not apprehend, because our organs of sight are not adapted to them. The ether is as real as ponderable matter. We are enabled to analyze the light of stars which were never beheld by human eye. Until we know more of what we call "matter" and "energy" than we do at present, who will be so adventurous as to say that the last vehicle to which psychic action can be transferred, and the only medium to which the unity of consciousness can be attached, are the ponderable but unstable compounds that constitute the living brain? It is true that experience here finds its limit and before our eager vision the curtain falls. But perhaps the ancient wisdom was not far from the heart of truth which inspired the poet to sing:—

As large as is the unbounded Universe,
So large that little, hidden Spirit is!
The Heavens and Earth are in it! Fire and air
And sun and moon and stars, darkness and light,
It comprehends! Whatever maketh Man,
The present of him, and the past of him,
And what shall be of him,—all thoughts and things
Lie folded in the ethereal vast of it.

And, if they say: What then is left of it
When eld upon the Body's City creeps,
And breaks and scatters it: and all its walls
Fall: and the Palace of the Heart is void,
Where dwell the being, the desire, the life,
This Royal Spirit's Kingship?

Answer them:
By mortal years the Immortal grows not old!
The Âtman changes not! The Body's death
Kills not the soul! It hath its City, still,
Its Palace, and its hidden, proper life!

David J. Hill.

University of Rochester.