Terrestrial existence is dependent for its continuance on a certain arrangement of material particles belonging to the earth, which are gradually collected and built up into the complex and constantly changing structure called a body. The correspondence or connection between matter and spirit, as thus exhibited, is common to every form of life in some degree, and is probably a symbol or sample of something permanently true; so that a double aspect of every fundamental existence is likely always to continue. But identity of person in no way depends upon identity of particles: the particles are frequently changed and the old ones discarded.
The term “body” should be explained and emphasised, as connoting anything which is able to manifest feelings, emotions, and thoughts, and at the same time to operate efficiently on its environment. The temporary character of the present human body should be admitted for purposes of religion; it usefully and truthfully displays the incarnate part of us during the brief episode of terrestrial life, and when it has served its turn it is left behind, its particles being discarded and dispersed. Hereafter—we are taught—an equally efficient vehicle of manifestation, similarly appropriate to our new environment, will not be lacking; this at present unknown and hypothetical entity is spoken of as “a spiritual body,” and represents the serious idea underlying crude popular notions about bodily resurrection.
The ego has been likened to a ripple raised by wind upon water, displaying in visible form the motion and influence of the operating breath, without being permanently differentiated from the vast whole, of which each ripple is a temporarily individualised portion: individualised, yet not isolated from others, but connected with them by the ocean, of whose immensity it may be supposed for poetic purposes gradually to become aware:—
“But that one ripple on the boundless deep
Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself
For ever changing form, but evermore
One with the boundless motion of the deep.”
There is much to be said for some form of doctrine of a common psychological basis or union of minds—some kind of Anima Mundi, some World-Mind, of which we are all fragments, and to which all knowledge is in a manner accessible; but the analogy of ocean ripples or icebergs need not be pressed to support the idea of a cessation of individual existence, when a given ripple or a given iceberg subsides. All analogies fail at some point. The ocean analogy happens to suggest indistinguishable absorption, or Nirvana, but others do not. The parts of a jelly are linked together and vibrate as a whole, but each little sac of fluid is partitioned off as an individual entity; in touch with all the rest, but with a texture and a colour of its own.
Continued personality, persistent individual existence, cannot be predicated of things which do not possess personality or individuality or character: but, to things which do possess these attributes, continuity and persistence not only may, but must, apply; unless we are to suppose that actual existence suddenly ceases. There must be a conservation of character; notwithstanding the admitted return of the individual to a central store or larger self, from which a portion was differentiated and individualised for the brief period during which the planet performs some seventy of its innumerable journeys round the sun. Absorption in original source may mask, but need not destroy, identity.
Even so a villager, picked out as a recruit and sent to the seat of war, may serve his country, may gain experience, acquire a soul and a width of horizon such as he had not dreamt of; and when he returns, after the war is over, may be merged as before in his native village. But the village is the richer for his presence, and his individuality or personality is not really lost; though to the eye of the world, which has no further need for it, it has practically ceased to be.