"What are the questions that have so long disturbed you?"
"Questions, sir, which, all my life, have been printed on evening sun-flushed clouds, on rosy sea shells, on pale, sweet, delicate blossoms, and which I have unavailingly sought to answer for myself. There are mysteries in physics, morals, and metaphysics that have wooed me on to an investigation; but the further I wander, deeper grows the darkness. Alone and unaided I have been forced to brave these doubts; I have studied, and read, and thought. Cloudy symbolisms mock me on every side; and the more earnestly I strive to overtake truth the tighter grow my eyes. Now, sir, you are much older; you have scaled the dizzy heights of science and carefully explored the mines of philosophy; and if human learning will avail, then you can help me. It is impossible for you to have lived and studied so long without arriving at some conclusion relative to these vexing questions of this and every other age. I want to know whether I have ever lived before; whether there is not an anterior life of my soul, of which I get occasional glimpses, and the memory of which haunts and disquiets me. This doubt has not been engendered by casual allusions to Plato's 'reminiscence theory'; before I knew there was such a doctrine in existence I have sat by your study fire, pondering some strange coincidences for which I could not account. It seemed an indistinct outgoing into the far past; a dim recollection of scenes and ideas, older than the aggregate of my birthdays; now a flickering light, then all darkness; no clew; all shrouded in the mystery of voiceless ages. I tried to explain these psychological phenomena by the theory of association of ideas, but they eluded an analysis; there was no chain along which memory can pass. They were like ignes fatui, flashing up from dank caverns and dying out while I looked upon them. As I grew older I found strange confirmation in those curious passages of Coleridge and Wordsworth, [Footnote: Coleridge's "Sonnet on the Birth of a Son." Wordsworth's "Ode—Intimations of Immortality.">[ and continually I propound to my soul these questions: 'If you are immortal, and will exist through endless ages, have you not existed from the beginning of time? Immortality knows neither commencement nor ending. If so, whither shall I go when this material framework is dissolved? to make other frameworks? to a final rest? Or shall the I, the me, the soul, lose its former identity? Am I a minute constituent of the all-diffused, all-pervading Spirit, a breath of the Infinite Essence, one day to be divested of my individuality? or is God an awful, gigantic, immutable, isolated Personality? If so, what medium of communication is afforded? Can the spiritual commune with matter? Can the material take cognizance of the purely spiritual and divine?' Oh, sir! I know that you do not accept the holy men of Galilee as His deputed oracles. Tell me where you find surer prophets. Only show me the truth—the eternal truth, and I would give my life for it! Sir, how can you smile at such questions as these—questions involving the soul's destiny? One might fancy you a second Parrhasius."
She drew back a step or two and regarded him anxiously, nay, pleadingly, as though he held the key to the Temple of Truth, and would not suffer her to pass the portal. A sarcastic smile lighted his Apollo-like face, as he answered:
"There is more truth in your metaphor than you imagined; a la Parrhasius, I do see you, a tortured Prometheus, chained by links of your own forging to the Caucasus of Atheism. But listen to—"
"No, no; not that! not Atheism! God save me from that deepest, blackest gulf!" She shuddered, and covered her face with her hands.
"Beulah, you alone must settle these questions with your own soul; my solutions would not satisfy you. For thousands of years they have been propounded, and yet no answer comes down on the 'cloudy wings of centuries.' Each must solve to suit his or her peculiar conformation of mind. My child, if I could aid you I would gladly do so; but I am no Swedenborg, to whom the arcana of the universe have been revealed."
"Still, after a fashion, you have solved these problems. May I not know what your faith is?" said she earnestly.
"Child, I have no faith! I know that I exist; that a beautiful universe surrounds me, and I am conscious of a multitude of conflicting emotions; but, like Launcelot Smith, I doubt whether I am 'to pick and choose myself out of myself.' Further than this I would assure you of nothing. I stand on the everlasting basis of all skepticism, 'There is no criterion of truth! All must be but subjectively, relatively true.'"
"Sir, this may be so as regards psychological abstractions; but can you be contented with this utter negation of the grand problems of ontology?"
"A profound philosophic writer of the age intimates that the various psychological systems which have so long vexed the world are but veiled ontologic speculations. What matters the machinery of ideas, but as enabling philosophy to cope successfully with ontology? Philosophy is a huge wheel which has been revolving for ages; early metaphysicians hung their finely spun webs on its spokes, and metaphysicians of the nineteenth century gaze upon and renew the same pretty theories as the wheel revolves. The history of philosophy shows but a reproduction of old systems and methods of inquiry. Beulah, no mine of ontologic truth has been discovered. Conscious of this, our seers tell us there is nothing now but 'eclecticism'! Ontology is old as human nature, yet the stone of Sisyphus continues to roll back upon the laboring few who strive to impel it upward. Oh, child, do you not see how matters stand? Why, how can the finite soul cope with Infinite Being? This is one form— the other, if we can take cognizance of the Eternal and Self- existing Being, underlying all phenomena, why, then, we are part and parcel of that Infinity. Pantheism or utter skepticism—there is no retreat."