The little book of life after death

THE LITTLE BOOK OF LIFE AFTER DEATH
BY GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY MARY C. WADSWORTH
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM JAMES
“ Indessen, freut es immer wenn man seine Wurzeln ausdehnt und seine Existenz in Andere eingreifen sieht. ”—Schiller im Briefwechsel mit Goethe. III, S. 53.
BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 1904
Copyright, 1904 , By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved Published October, 1904
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TO ISIDORE AND ELIZABETH DAUGHTERS OF HIS FRIEND CH. F. GRIMMER The Author
I  GLADLY accept the translator’s invitation to furnish a few words of introduction to Fechner’s “Büchlein vom Leben nach dem Tode,” the more so as its somewhat oracularly uttered sentences require, for their proper understanding, a certain acquaintance with their relations to his general system.
Fechner’s name lives in physics as that of one of the earliest and best determiners of electrical constants, also as that of the best systematic defender of the atomic theory. In psychology it is a commonplace to glorify him as the first user of experimental methods, and the first aimer at exactitude in facts. In cosmology he is known as the author of a system of evolution which, while taking great account of physical details and mechanical conceptions, makes consciousness correlative to and coeval with the whole physical world. In literature he has made his mark by certain half-humoristic, half-philosophic essays published under the name of Dr. Mises—indeed the present booklet originally appeared under that name. In æsthetics he may lay claim to be the earliest systematically empirical student. In metaphysics he is not only the author of an independently reasoned ethical system, but of a theological theory worked out in great detail. His mind, in short, was one of those multitudinously organized cross-roads of truth, which are occupied only at rare intervals by children of men, and from which nothing is either too far or too near to be seen in due perspective. Patient observation and daring imagination dwelt hand in hand in Fechner; and perception, reasoning, and feeling all flourished on the largest scale without interfering either with the other’s function.