THEO. You may if you like. Only remember that births differ, and that there are births of “still-born” beings, which are _failures_ of nature. Moreover, with your Western fixed ideas about material life, the words “living” and “being” are quite inapplicable to the pure subjective state of _post-mortem_ existence. It is just because, save in a few philosophers who are not read by the many, and who themselves are too confused to present a distinct picture of it, it is just because your Western ideas of life and death have finally become so narrow, that on the one hand they have led to crass materialism, and on the other, to the still more material conception of the other life, which the spiritualists have formulated in their Summer-land. There the souls of men eat, drink, marry, and live in a paradise quite as sensual as that of Mohammed, but even less philosophical. Nor are the average conceptions of the uneducated Christians any better, being if possible still more material. What between truncated angels, brass trumpets, golden harps, and material hell-fires, the Christian heaven seems like a fairy scene at a Christmas pantomime. It is because of these narrow conceptions that you find such difficulty in understanding. It is just because the life of the disembodied soul, while possessing all the vividness of reality, as in certain dreams, is devoid of every grossly objective form of terrestrial life, that the Eastern philosophers have compared it with visions during sleep. DEFINITE WORDS FOR DEFINITE THINGS. ENQ. Don’t you think it is because there are no definite and fixed terms to indicate each “Principle” in man, that such a confusion of ideas arises in our minds with respect to the respective functions of these “Principles”? THEO. I have thought of it myself. The whole trouble has arisen from this: we have started our expositions of, and discussion about, the “Principles” using their Sanskrit names instead of coining immediately, for the use of Theosophists, their equivalents in English. We must try and remedy this now. ENQ. You will do well, as it may avoid further confusion; no two theosophical writers, it seems to me, have hitherto agreed to call the same “Principle” by the same name.