Continuity of existence, without break or interruption, is the fundamental idea that needs inculcation, not only among children but among ignorant people generally. And the survival, from savage times, of an inclination to associate a full measure of departed personality with the discarded and decomposing bodily remnant,—under the impression that it will awake and live again at some future day,—should be steadily discouraged. The idea of bodily resurrection, in this physical sense, is responsible for much superstition and for some ecclesiastical abuses. A nearer approach to the truth may be expressed thus:— Terrestrial existence is dependent for its continuance on a certain arrangement of material particles belonging to the earth, which are gradually collected and built up into the complex and constantly changing structure called a body. The correspondence or connection between matter and spirit, as thus exhibited, is common to every form of life in some degree, and is probably a symbol or sample of something permanently true; so that a double aspect of every fundamental existence is likely always to continue. But identity of person in no way depends upon identity of particles: the particles are frequently changed and the old ones discarded. The term “body” should be explained and emphasised, as connoting anything which is able to manifest feelings, emotions, and thoughts, and at the same time to operate efficiently on its environment. The temporary character of the present human body should be admitted for purposes of religion; it usefully and truthfully displays the incarnate part of us during the brief episode of terrestrial life, and when it has served its turn it is left behind, its particles being discarded and dispersed. Hereafter—we are taught—an equally efficient vehicle of manifestation, similarly appropriate to our new environment, will not be lacking; this at present unknown and hypothetical entity is spoken of as “a spiritual body,” and represents the serious idea underlying crude popular notions about bodily resurrection. The _ego_ has been likened to a ripple raised by wind upon water, displaying in visible form the motion and influence of the operating breath, without being permanently differentiated from the vast whole, of which each ripple is a temporarily individualised portion: individualised, yet not isolated from others, but connected with them by the ocean, of whose immensity it may be supposed for poetic purposes gradually to become aware:— “But that one ripple on the boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself For ever changing form, but evermore One with the boundless motion of the deep.”