The community of man is a necessity; a separate existence, an anomaly. We are dependent and interdependent upon one another. Man cannot escape his fellow-man. In the remotest desert his spirit is still in communication with him. If it were not so, who would not at times want to flee all, escape from all?
I have but one fear—inability, for some reason or other, to finish my work. I feel like the heroine of a celebrated German novelist, travelling about with a trunk filled with gold, which she distributed among the deserving poor as fast as she came across them. Meanwhile she was in constant fear lest her life should ebb out before all was distributed, and its precious contents lost to those for whom they were intended. If there were any way of imparting this knowledge other than by writing it down, I would gladly resort to it. But how can I reach the few who are capable of and willing to take up these questions, except by communicating them to the many? These "few" will be found in all parts of the world, for these truths apply to all men, independent of sex, race, or country.
My cry is not for recognition. My personality might be blotted out, like that of millions of others, without its being noticed, yet, by virtue of this trust which has been reposed in me, what a loss it would be! My cry is for investigation and the coöperation of others, so that this work may be carried on independent of myself. Meantime, I cannot transfer this task to others. I must first explain all that it is in my power to explain. I can then shift it from my shoulders onto theirs. They must be educated up to it before they can take hold of it as I have taken hold of it.
When I first announced my discoveries, I gave all I possessed, supposing others would see as I saw and comprehend as I did; having no doubt but that the world would at once acknowledge their truths and accept their precepts. I have since found that the world can get along very comfortably with a vast amount of want of knowledge. I therefore made up my mind not to be quite so rash again in making it my beneficiary, not till I was better prepared for the purpose; this other book of mine having been finished rather hastily in the erroneous belief that this knowledge was at once and imperatively needed.
Since publishing this previous book I have also found, which I did not know at that time, that my very mode of investigation (by means of introspection) was new; that no one had ever looked into matters of this kind in the manner I had; besides, it seems strange that in this age of keen investigation of the most trivial matters, no one should have deemed it worth his while to look into these more important subjects.
Regarding the anatomical investigations of the larynx, and anatomical, coupled with physiological, investigations generally, let me ask a question: Supposing a palace with a million apartments, each one in succession more luxuriously furnished than its predecessor, would they avail anything to its sole inhabitant, if that inhabitant were blind?
We have obtained a fair conception of the wonderful palace, the human body, its numberless apartments and their luxurious furnishings, but do not comprehend their meaning, except in a remote and unsatisfactory mechanical sense. We are the blind that inhabit it. Most of these apartments will remain meaningless to our understanding until we ascertain what use the sovereign, the soul, which reigns therein, is making of them, not only mechanically, but spiritually as well. For the soul lives in them all, though it is supposed that it lives only in its throne-room of the brain and that it never descends from the throne set up in the same.