"To me all creeds and systems are alike null. With you, Beulah, it
was once very different."
"Once! yes, once!" She shuddered at the wild waste into which she
had strayed.
"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."