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CHAPTER VII - THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

Balfour Stewart
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Summary

“Rabbi Jacob said, ‘This world is as it were the anteroom of the world to come. Prepare thyself in the anteroom so that thou mayest be fit to enter the banquet room.’”

–Mishna, Pirke Aboth, chap. iv. par. 16.

“For I reckon, that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.”

—St. paul (Rom. viii. 18, 19).

“Eternal process moving on

From state to state the spirit walks,

And these are but the sliatter'd stalks,

Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.”

—Tennyson.

In the preceding chapters we have examined by the light of our present knowledge the possibilities contained in the visible universe. What is it good for in the way of immortality is the question we have tried to answer. It will have been seen that the reply is eminently unfavourable. If we take the individual man to begin with, we find that he lives his short tale of years, and that then the visible machinery which connects him with the past, as well as that which enables him to act in the present, falls into ruin and is brought to an end. If any germ or potentiality remains, it is certainly not connected with the visible order of things.

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Chapter
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The Unseen Universe
Physical Speculations on a Future State
 , pp. 154 - 211
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1875

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