earth-entanglement and free to start (like the Syrian rose) on its long journey. In this freeing for the forward journey there must, one would think, be a great sense of joy and satisfaction—even as there must be in the freeing of a May-fly from its water-bred pupa into the glory of air and sunshine. Just as it obviously is (notwithstanding some drawbacks) a joy to the Babe to enter upon its new life, so it may well be that to the dying person—notwithstanding the perils of the change, the fears of the unknown, the parting with friends, the apparent rending of cherished ties—there is a strange joy in shelling off the old husks, and in getting rid of the accumulations and dead rubbish of a lifetime. A thousand and one tiresome old infirmities and bonds of body and mind—now for the first time realized in their true meaning—slip off; and the ship of the soul, “to port and hawser’s tie no more returning,” departs with a strange thrill and quiver upon its “endless cruise.” The details of this launch and departure we cannot of course ordain. The mode of death is not always within our sphere to determine. Accident may decide, or some hereditary weakness for which the individual can hardly be held responsible. Some diseases are by their nature hard upon the patient; others are kindly in their course. In those that bring great weakness of body there is sometimes an easy passage—the earthly and corporeal part relaxing its hold, while the mind and character become heavenly-clear. In others of an inflammatory nature, or where there is great organic vitality, there may be severe and prolonged struggle. Anyhow, one can imagine the relief when the process is complete. It is not uncommon to experience a strange expansion of the spirit on occasions when the body is seriously weakened by ordinary illness. What must this expansion be when the body finally succumbs—this sense of immensely enlarged life, this impression of sailing forth toward a new and boundless ocean! How strange to stand a moment on the brink of terrestrial mortality, and to be conscious of—to _see_, even with the inner visual power—the shell one has left behind, with all its commonplace and banal surroundings: concrete indeed and material enough, but lying now outside oneself—something almost foreign to one and indifferent, abandoned on the very margin and shore of real life; to stand for a moment; and then to turn and pass inward into that subtle and immense ethereal existence, now to be learnt and explored, which lies within and informs and transfuses all our solid world, and surpasses all its boundaries! NOTE TO CHAPTER VI