And although we have no right to go a step beyond the bare recognition of its existence and although all words regarding it are misleading if used in any other than a symbolic sense, we must remember that since the complex vision is conscious of itself as a unity, whatever this "something" may be which is the centre and core of our living personality, it must at least be a definite irreducible "monad," "something" that cannot be resolved into anything else, or accounted for by anything else, or explained in terms of anything else, or "caused" by anything else; "something" that may, perhaps, at last be annihilated; but that while it lives must remain the vividest reality we know. Insanity and disease may obstruct and cloud the soul. Outward circumstances may drive the soul back upon itself. But while it lives it lives in its totality and when it perishes, if it be its destiny to perish, it perishes in its totality. While the soul lives we may sink into it and have no fear; and yet all the while we have no right to say anything about it except that it exists. Truly it is a tragic commentary upon the drama that we call our life, that we should find our ultimate "rest" and "peace" in so bare, so stark, so austere, so irrational a revelation as this! But surrounded as we are by the menace of eternal nothingness it is at least something to have at the background of our life a living power of this kind, a power which can endure unafraid the very breaking point of disaster, a power which can contemplate the possibility of annihilation itself with equanimity and unperturbed calm. It will be noted that I have been compelled to use once and again the term "eternal nothingness." This is indeed an inevitable aspect of what the soul visualizes as possible. For since the soul is the creator and discoverer of all life, when once the soul has ceased to exist, non-existence takes the place of existence, and nothingness takes the place of life. Speculatively we have the right, although the complex vision is silent on that tremendous question, to dally with the idea of the survival of the soul after the death of the body. But this must for ever be an open question, not to be answered either negatively or affirmatively, not to be answered by the intelligence of any living man. All we can say is that it seems as if the death of the body destroyed the complex vision; and if the complex vision is destroyed it seems as though non-existence were bound to take the place of existence, and as though nothingness were bound to take the place of everything. The oriental conception of "Nirvana" is no more than a soothing opiate administered to a soul that has grown weary of its complex vision and weary of its irreducible personality. To imagine oneself freed from the burden of personal consciousness, and yet in some mysterious way conscious of being freed from consciousness, is a delicious and delicate dream of life-exhausted souls.