But although it is evident from the text just quoted, as well as from other intimations in his Epistles, that St. Paul fully grasped the principle of the transmutation of the body, he himself tells us that he has not yet realized it in practice.  He says he has not yet “attained to the resurrection from the dead,” but is still pressing on towards its attainment (Ph. iii, 12).  And it is to be remarked that he is not here speaking of a general “resurrection of the dead,” but, as the word exanastasis in the original Greek indicates, of a special resurrection from among the dead; this indicates an individual achievement, not merely something common to the whole race.  From this and other passages it is evident that by “the dead” it means those whose conception of Life is limited to the four lower principles, thus #unifying# the mind with the three principles which are below it; and the same idea is expressed in a variety of ways all through the Bible.  This therefore shows that he is quite aware that knowledge of a principle does not enable us then and there to attain the completeness of the application, and if this be the case with St. Paul, we cannot be surprised to find it the same with ourselves.  But on the other hand knowledge of the principle is the first step towards getting it to work.

Well, St. Paul is dead and buried, and so I suppose will most of us be in a few years; so the question confronts us, what becomes of us then?

As Milton puts it in “Il Penseroso” we want: 

                          “to unsphere
    The spirit of Plato and unfold
    What worlds or what vast regions hold
    The immortal mind that hath forsook
    Her mansion in the fleshly nook.”

Yes, this is a question of deep personal interest to us; but as I cannot speak from experience, I will restrict myself to seeing whether we can form any sort of general hypothesis on the basis of the principles we have recognized.  What then is likely to survive?  The physical body is of course disintegrated by the chemistry of Nature.  The etheric body probably continues to retain its form longer, because it is a condensation of etheric particles wrought together by the etheric waves sent out by the Vital Soul, and is therefore not subject to the laws of chemical affinity.  The Vital Soul, being the race-principle of life in the individual,—­that principle which automatically seeks to preserve the individual from disintegration,—­probably survives longer still, until, ceasing to receive any reflex vibrations from the body, it grows gradually weaker in its sense of individual guardianship, and so is eventually absorbed into the group-soul or generic essence of the class to which it belongs.  This is probably what happens in the case of animals for want of any higher vivifying principle, and would be the same with us were it not for the fact of having such a higher principle.  In our case I should imagine that the influx of etheric waves, received