CHAPTER XII
YOU ask as to the whether. I answer with the how. Faith does without the question whether; but if asked, the one answer is through the how; and so long as the how does not stand fast, the whether will not cease from troubling.
Here stands the tree; many a single leaf may fall from it; yet its root and its unity are firm and perfect. It will always develop new branches, and new leaves will continue to fall; the tree itself will not fall: it will put forth blossoms of beauty, and instead of being rooted in faith, it will bear the fruits of faith.
The World Beautiful
By LILIAN WHITING
The world beautiful about which she writes is no far-off event to which all things move, but the everyday scene around us filled by a spirit which elevates and transforms it.—Prof. Louis J. Block, in The Philosophical Journal.
The World Beautiful. First Series
Comprising; The World Beautiful; Friendship; Our Social Salvation; Lotus Eating; That which is to Come.
The World Beautiful. Second Series
Comprising; The World Beautiful; Our Best Society; To Clasp Eternal Beauty; Vibrations; The Unseen World.
The World Beautiful. Third Series
Comprising; The World Beautiful; The Rose of Dawn; The Encircling Spirit-World; The Ring of Amethyst; Paradisa Gloria.
3 vols. Cloth, $1.00 per volume. Decorated cloth, $1.25 per volume. Padded calf or full crushed morocco, $3.50 per volume.
I know of no volumes of sermons published in recent years which are so well fitted to uplift the reader, and inspire all that is finest and best in his nature, as are the series of essays entitled “The World Beautiful,” by Lilian Whiting.—B. O. Flower, in The Coming Age.
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From Dreamland Sent
Verses of the Life to Come
By LILIAN WHITING
Author of “The World Beautiful,” “After Her Death,” “Kate Field: A Record,” “A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” etc.
New edition. With additional poems. 16mo. Cloth, extra, $1.00. Decorated cloth, $1.25. Padded calf or full crushed morocco, gilt edges, $3.50.
Lilian Whiting’s verse is like a bit of sunlit landscape on a May morning.—Boston Herald.
Graceful, tender, and true, appealing to what is best in the human heart.—The Independent.
The poems express and reveal her inmost nature, full of affection, longings, appreciation of others, belief in the nearness of the other world. She seems to me to have gained a higher outlook than most of us in a spiritual as well as in an intellectual way.—Kate Sanborn.
Full of faith in the divine care and a perception of the nearness of the spirit world. Its poems of love and friendship are most tender and noble.—New Church Messenger.
There is in them a sympathetic human touch, an insight born of love and sorrow, which will bring the quiet, responsive tears to many a reader’s eye.—The Chautauquan.
There is a perfection of form and poetic beauty in all her verses, and one cannot take up the book and turn to any page without being touched by the elevating and inspiring statements that guided the pen of the author.—Boston Home Journal.
I never saw anything on earth before which looked so much as if just brought from heaven by angel hands as this new edition of “From Dreamland Sent.” In the golden sunshine of an Italian morning I have heard the silver trumpets blow. This exquisite book reminds me of them.—Sarah Holland Adams.
Of the new edition of “From Dreamland Sent,” Julia Ward Howe says: “Its tender and devout spirit matches well the Easter lilies that adorn it.”
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| After Her Death | The Story of a Summer |
By LILIAN WHITING
Author of “Kate Field: A Record,”
“The World Beautiful,” etc.
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Comprising: What Lacks the Summer? From Inmost Dreamland; Past the Morning Star; In Two Worlds; Distant Gates of Eden; Unto My Heart Thou Livest So; Across the World I Speak to Thee; The Deeper Meaning of the Hour.
We find a firm belief in the possibility of communion with the spiritual world, dignified by a beautiful philosophy inspiring high thoughts and noble purposes.—Whig and Courier.
Opening either of the three volumes of “The World Beautiful” series, and the collection of verse entitled “From Dreamland Sent,” one beholds the idealist and the poet. But opening “After Her Death,” he beholds the scientist as well.... For all her psychic theories and experiences she not only courts, but commands, the most thorough investigation of the world’s ablest scientists, as Sir William Crookes, F. W. H. Myers, Lord Kelvin, and Alfred Russel Wallace. She is an epoch-making writer.... My conviction is that every preacher, reformer, religious editor, and Christian worker should read the books by Lilian Whiting.—Rev. W. H. Rogers, in The Christian Standard.
“After Her Death” has given me the light and help I have so long craved; it has given me comfort and strength which no other book has ever done. In giving these truths to the world in her own beautiful way, which does not harshly wound in the things which have been almost a part of us, Lilian Whiting has bridged over a great chasm, and provided one of the greatest needs of our time.—Cordelia L. Commore.
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The Victory of the Will
By VICTOR CHARBONNEL
Translated from the French by Emily Whitney. With an introduction by Lilian Whiting, author of “The World Beautiful,” “A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” etc.
16mo. Cloth, extra, $1.50.
Our whole criticism might be expressed in the brief exhortation—read it.... There is not a page which has not some impetus to reflection, some suggestion for a higher life, and all given with an originality of mind, a felicity of expression, a simplicity of phrase that fix the thought instantly and clearly.—Literary World.
Since Emerson wrote his immortal essays, and Maeterlinck advanced his beautiful theories, no finer book on the spiritual life has been written.—Geo. S. Goodwin, in Philadelphia Item.
Not only is there a striking originality of thought throughout the book, but a style which, losing comparatively little in the admirable translation by Miss Whitney, reaches the high French standard of lucidity and ease.—New York Commercial Advertiser.
He makes a forceful appeal for living the life of one’s own soul and the development of one’s own personality by its own inner power. His whole message bids us look within; it gets at the roots of things; his style is admirably clear, terse, and vigorous.—Detroit Free Press.
The volume takes up the relations of the individual soul to the universe and treats them in a way that is practical, but is also marked by high spiritual aspiration.... The book has great purity and beauty of style, and is, all in all, a notable piece of literature.—Los Angeles Times.
His words are helpful and stimulating, his optimism contagious and inspiring. He has a faculty for putting things in a form which lingers in the memory.—Brooklyn Times.
Some of the noblest thoughts contained in this book ... find expression in the prayer with which it closes.—Chicago Evening Post.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] It may thus be more clearly stated to the physiologist: The creative principle of the child lies, before birth, not in that which after birth will continue to live on with him, which indeed now is only dependence, the product, but in that which at birth will remain behind and be cast off, like the body of man in death (placenta cum puniculo umbilicali, velamentis ovi eorumque liquoribus): out of its activity emerges, as its continuation, the young human being.
[In the embryonic period it seemed to the child that the placenta was its body, and it was actually its special embryonic body, useless in another stage, and rejected as refuse at the moment of birth. Our body in human life is like a second envelope which is useless to the third life, and for this reason we reject it at the moment of our second birth. Human life as compared with the celestial is truly embryonic.
Eliphas Levi.]
The translator.
[2] Many biblical parallels similar to this are placed together in Zend-Avesta III. p. 363, and “drei Motiven und Gründen des Glaubens,” p. 178.
[3] Whether one attributes nervous energy to a chemical or an electrical process, one must still regard it, if not simply as the play of the vibration of minutest atoms, yet as in the main excited or accompanied by this, whereby the imponderable has a larger part than the ponderable. Vibrations, however, can only apparently expire by extending themselves into their environment, or if indeed they disappear for a time through translation of their living strength into so-called elasticity, yet, according to the law of the conservation of energy, they await a revival in some other form.
[4] Even in this world, at the approach of death (by narcotics, in imminent drowning, or in exaltation) there occur flashes of recognition of the spiritual meaning of things, examples of which are recorded in Zend-Avesta III. s. 27, and (cases of threatened drowning) in Fechner’s Centralblatt für Naturwiss. und Anthropologie, 1853, s. 43 u. 623.
[5] This empirical law of the relation between body and soul consists in the fact that consciousness everywhere ceases, if the bodily activity upon which it depends sinks below a certain degree of strength, which is called the threshold. Now in proportion as it extends itself more widely, can it the more easily, on account of the accompanying weakness, fall below this level. As the total consciousness has its threshold, which makes the dividing line between sleeping and waking in the whole man, so, too, is it with the details of consciousness, whence it comes that during waking now this, now that idea presents itself or sinks out of sight, according as the particular activity upon which it depends rises above or sinks below the special threshold. (Compare “Elem. der Psychophysik,” Kap. X, XXXVIII, XXXIX, and XLII.)
[6] Concerning this, compare “Elemente der Psychophysik,” Kap. XXXVII, and “Atomenlehre,” Kap. XXVI.
[7] In order not to permit an apparent contradiction of the above-mentioned speculation to the psychophysical doctrine of the combined-threshold (upon which the most enlightening word is in Wundt’s philos. Stud., IV, s. 204 u. 211), note the following: If the psychophysical life-wave (to continue the use of this concise expression) of man, made up of components of the most manifold sort, should spread out into a world which contained only different components, then, indeed, must it be assumed that it, in its extension, would fall below the combined-threshold here under consideration. Since, however, the psychophysical undulatory sea of the universe, among its other components, comprehends also such as are like to those of the human life-wave, and indeed of the most varying height or intensity, therefore such as already rise above or come near the level of the combined-threshold and are only raised still higher by the similar ones which join them, so is the result of the above speculation placed on a somewhat more solid basis. (Note to the third edition.)
[8] Indisputably this law, analogous to the so-called law of the conservation of energy in the physical realm, is in some way connected with it through the fundamental relation of spirit to body, without the connection being clearly established, or shown to be derivable psychophysically from the physical law, since the essence of psychophysical energy itself is not clearly defined. The law must therefore be inferred from facts such as are above mentioned; and, without being exactly and fully proved, it acquires thereby a probability which qualifies it to serve as a basis for such views as are here in question.
[9] In scientific terms one can say: Consciousness is everywhere; it is awake when and wherever the bodily energy underlying the spiritual, the so-called psychophysical, exceeds that degree of strength which we call the threshold. (Compare p. [80], note.) According to this, consciousness can be localized in time and space. The highest point of our psychophysical activity wavers, as it were, from one place to another, wherewith the light of consciousness changes its place, only that during this life it fluctuates back and forth within our body simply, indeed, within a limited part of this body, and in sleep sinks quite below the threshold, above which, on waking, it rises again.
(Compare on this point. “Elemente der Psychophysik,” II. Kap. 40 und 41.)
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.