Raymond; or, Life and Death: With examples of the evidence for survival of memory and affection after death.Lodge, Oliver, Sir
Religion
Raymond; or, Life and Death: With examples of the evidence for survival of memory and affection after death.
Lodge, Oliver, Sir
Future life; Lodge, Raymond, 1889-1915 (Spirit); Spiritualism; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British
Once more, then. Although there may be undue simplification of the
complex, there is also an undue complication of the simple; it is
easy to invent unnecessary problems, to manufacture gratuitous
difficulties, to lose our way in a humanly constructed and quite
undivine fog. But the way is really simple, and when the fog lifts
and the sunshine appears, all becomes clear and we proceed without
effort on our way: the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err
therein. The way, the truth, and the life are all one. Reality
is always simple; it is concrete and real and expressible. Our
customary view of the commonest objects is not indeed the last word,
nay, rather, it is the first word, as to their nature; but it is a
true word as far as it goes. Analysing a liquid into a congeries
of discrete atoms does not destroy or weaken or interfere with its
property or fluidity. Analysing an atom into electrons does not
destroy the atom. Reducing matter to electricity, or to any other
etherial substratum, does not alter the known and familiarly utilised
properties of a bit of wood or iron or glass, in the least; no, nor
of a bit of bone or feather or flesh. Study may superadd properties
imperceptible to the plain man, but the plain man's concrete and
simple view serves for ordinary purposes of daily life.
And God's view, strange to say, must be more akin to that of the
plain man than to that of the philosopher or statistician. That is
how it comes that children are near the kingdom of heaven. It is
not likely that God really makes abstractions and "geometrises."
All those higher and elaborate modes of expression are human
counters; and the difficulties of dealing with them are human too.
Only in early stages do things require superhuman power for their
apprehension; they are easy to grasp when they are really understood.
They come out then into daily life; they are not then matters of
intellectual strain; they can appeal to our sense of beauty; they
can affect us with emotion and love and appreciation and joy; they
can enter into poetry and music, and constitute the subject-matter
of Art of all kinds. The range of art and of enjoyment must increase
infinitely with perfect knowledge. This is the atmosphere of God.
"Where dwells enjoyment, there is He." We are struggling upwards into
that atmosphere slowly and laboriously. The struggle is human, and
for us quite necessary, but the mountain top is serene and pure and
lovely, and its beauty is in nowise enhanced by the efforts of the
exhausted climber, as he slowly wins his way thither.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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