Why is human life so cheap? Why can it not be made to resist flying lead? Why is it so frail as to succumb to the thrust of cold steel? Why was it not made invulnerable, so that water could not drown and fire could not consume? Man, how conceited thou art when thy pulse beats and thy blood is warm! How haughty, god-like, immortal thou art when thou sittest alone and uninterruptedly pursuest thy egotistic schemes and intrigues! But, alas! thy dreams depart and thou must face cold, brutal realities. What a pitiful sight thou presentest now! Thou runnest against a mass of granite, cement, and steel, or against the exploding nitroglycerin, which is thine own handiwork, and thou art reduced to atoms, thou art blown to nothingness, whence thou perhaps didst come. How fragile thou art! Is this not the thought that agitates those who reflect upon the horrors of war and the destiny of mankind?

But are we not made for some other and better purposes than being merely material, physical, sensual, earthly, corporeal? Has not human existence more significance than a mere sentient organism whose life is as delicate as a drop of dew? Are we not capable of being more than what we appear to the senses? Are we not also living in a realm which transcends the world of sense and perception? To these questions I answer most definitely, and say "yes." However weak and helpless and flickering like a

solitary lamplight before the wind, we are most assuredly more than a corporeal existence. Our limbs may be torn to pieces, our brains be smashed to nothing, our bones be ground to powder; but our deeds, our thoughts, our feelings will survive. It is in the realm of sense and perception that we are born and die. In the realm where our true being resides there is no such thing as birth and death. In the spiritual -kingdom ours is an eternal growth, a perpetual unfolding, a never-ending development. The flesh will decay and return to dust, but the spirit which consists of our noble deeds and thoughts forever rejuvenates itself. It is like the snake's shedding its skin: the bodily existence is the skin, which is cast off whenever the spirit so desires. It is immaterial how the body fares, for the spirit is the master and its commands have to be obeyed at all hazards. The spirit decides when and how its outer integument shall be renewed. To be more exact and literal, the spirit which is immortal has limited itself to effect its own differentiation and development under the bodily condition. The body is therefore needed to complete the mission of the spirit, but the body is so created as to be subservient to the spirit and to be willing to carry out what the latter wills.

In ancient Oriental mythology we have a divine phenix, the only one of its kind and of remarkable beauty, that living five or six hundred