It may be said that what is intangible ought to be invisible; but that does not follow. The Ether is a medium for vision, not for touch. Ether and Ether may interact, just as matter and matter interact; but interaction between Ether and matter is peculiarly elusive.] CHAPTER VII 'RESURRECTION OF THE BODY' "Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never." EDWIN ARNOLD In the whole unknown drama of the soul the episode of bodily existence must have profound significance. Matter cannot only be obstructive, even usefully obstructive,--by which is meant the kind of obstruction which stimulates to effort and trains for power, like the hurdles in an obstacle race,--it must be auxiliary too. Whatever may be the case with external matter, the body itself is certainly an auxiliary, so long as it is in health and strength; and it gives opportunity for the development of the soul in new and unexpected ways--ways in which but for earth life its practice would be deficient. This it is which makes calamity of too short a life. But let us not be over-despondent about the tragedy of the present. It may be that the concentrated training and courageous facing of fate which in most cases must have accompanied voluntary entry into a dangerous war, compensates in intensity what it lacks in duration, and that the benefit of bodily terrestrial life is not so much lost by violent death of that kind as might at first appear. Yet even with some such assurance, the spectacle of thousands of youths in full vigour and joy of life having their earthly future violently wrenched from them, amid scenes of grim horror and nerve-wracking noise and confusion, is one which cannot and ought not to be regarded with equanimity. It is a bad and unnatural truncation of an important part of each individual career, a part which might have done much to develop faculties and enlarge experience.