I have now shown the four conditions which our dual constitution in relation to life and death makes possible. Some enlarging on these topics, which concern us all, may not be unprofitable. We all enter life in the first described condition, with body and soul both alive, the body visible and tangible, the soul more or less so, according as its environments since conception have favored its growth. Comparatively few of us ever reach the second condition I have described, in which the body remains alive while the soul is utterly dead. The protests of this, which is called the immortal part of us, because the death of the body in itself does not impair its vigor, usually prevent so great a calamity from occurring. Some kind of a compromise is entered into, by which the soul is allowed a certain amount of freedom, on condition that the body shall remain undisturbed in its favorite pleasures. Sometimes one day in the week is selected, in which the soul is permitted to rule. Sometimes a single department of life's activities is placed under its charge, and to meet the man on the favored day, or to have dealings with him in this favored department, gives you a very exalted idea of the individual. Sometimes in his business relations a man will be found conscientious in the extreme, while in his family he acts the tyrant and the brute. Sometimes his family almost worship him, while thousands speak his name with detestation. In either case the body, not the soul, the outer and visible, not the inner invisible self, is the leading factor in the man, and the court of last resort. The man is still in slavery to the mortal; he has no knowledge of any life except the earth-life; the faith-knowledge which he might have, were his soul given its freedom and permitted to use its higher powers, is shut out by the disorder of his condition, wherein a servant in rank, the body, rules over the prince entitled to the throne. This is the prevailing condition of the human family to-day, the difference between most people in this respect being merely one of degree, some giving the prince more, and some less of freedom. A few millions at most have given the nominal power into his hands, retaining the real for bodily uses. To curry favor with these, tens of millions profess to have done the same. In thousands only is the soul truly regnant, and these are widely scattered, and more or less hidden, lest they be driven out of life. CHAPTER XVI.