“_It has been remarked by one of the most distinguished physical philosophers of our day that no atmospheric vibration ever becomes extinct; that the pulses of speech, when they have done their work, and become to our ears inaudible, pass in waves away, but wander still, hither and thither through the regions of the air, eternally. He conceives that as the atmosphere comprises still within itself the distinct traces of any sound impressed on any portion of it, as there the record indestructively exists, we have only to suffer a change of position, or receive the endowment of an acuter sense, to hear again every idle word that we have spoken, and every sigh that we have caused. The truth is, that already, and within the limits of our mental nature there is a power which will effect all this. It is fully within the scope of our natural faculties of association and memory. It may be doubted whether any idea once in the mind is ever lost and past recall: it may drop indeed into the gulf of forgotten things, and the waves of successive thoughts roll over it; but there are in our nature possible and even inevitable convulsions, which may displace the waters, heave up the deep, and disentomb whatever may be fair or hideous there.... It is remarkable how slight a suggestion is occasionally sufficient to bring back vast trains of emotion. There are cases in which some particular function of the memory acquires most exquisite sensibility, and usually, as if God would warn us what must happen when our moral nature is divorced from the physical, it is the memory of conscience that maintains this preternatural watch.... And if thus the past be truly indestructible, if thus its fragments may be regathered, if its details of evil thought and act may be thus brought together and fused into one big agony,--why, it may be left to fools to make a mock at sin._” “_Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth unto his own flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption._” “_The lust when it hath conceived, beareth sin; and the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death. Be not deceived, my beloved brethren._” THE LAW ACCORDING TO THE BUDDHA. I ♦The Sacred Truth of Suffering♦ But conflict has appeared, and associates itself with the creatures which seem to have an existence apart from the mother universe. There ought to be no Self, no life apart, all such Selves or lives are abnormal. Conflict, suffering, is the inevitable result.