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LIFE AFTER DEATH

LIFE AFTER DEATH

CHAPTER I

PRIMITIVE CONCEPTIONS OF THE SOUL AND A FUTURE

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LIFE

1. The Soul and its Discovery

T is impossible in the compass of a chapter to present the various conceptions of an after life which have existed in the history of the human This would require several volumes by itself and hence I can but refer to them in the most general way. Even then I shall have in mind only the relation of these beliefs to their unity in psychic phenomena. It is probable that the differences of all the world religions can be unified in psychic phenomena. If that be true we are on the track of their origin, in spite of an evolution that has taken some of them so far away from the original as to have destroyed the traces of it, at least for any superficial observation. It is also true that the traces might actually be there, were we in possession of the knowledge that would enable us to see them.

I do not know any better proof of this last remark than Herbert Spencer's discussion of Ghosts and another life. One who is familiar with the phenomena that have come under the observation of psychic re

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