AS JOHN watched his enemy disappear through the seeming solid barrier, it was borne home to him that physical violence was useless in destroying his enemy in the new order of things. He did not attempt pursuit, but sitting down with his back against a tree, he gave himself up to contemplation. All his life he had been taught to reason from cause to effect, but he had always had a premise with which to start. Now, however, he was cast into a vast sea of perplexity.

John, like his parents before him, had been deeply religious and the orthodox teachings had been an accepted fact, as true beyond question. He had tried so to live that when he passed through the portal called death he would ascend to everlasting glory and be taken into the bosom of God as a reward for being constant to the precepts of such teachings.

There was no halfway according to what had been taught him. A person either went to heaven or to hell. Yet he was dead, and here was neither. He must have some premise on which to build, or he would go insane from it all.

Determinedly he took hold of himself and became calm by that very effort. He was surprised how easily he could do this, but did not dwell long on the cause, being thankful that he could marshal his mental faculties at all. He lay back on the grass and again he noticed that his thoughts were like a voice and he served or rather listened to what his mind would say. Surely, he was not two beings—one to listen while the other spoke, and one to observe while the other obeyed. Yet it must be so, for he was doing it. With growing wonderment he watched this phenomena.

“This is life,” he reasoned. “You are more alive, John, than you were before tonight. Now you know that the solid material things are not real. They are only transitory and do not last. Your body, if it had been real, would have lasted; while here you are alive and your body is dead. You are intelligent, yet your body must have been unintelligent, or it, too, would be alive.