"Those lines were the first to make me grasp the possibility of having
new faculties added to our old ones in another state of existence,"
she said, "faculties which should give us a deeper insight into the
nature of things, and enable us to discover new pleasures in the unity
which may be expected to underlie beauty and excellence in all their
manifestations, as Mr. Norman Pearson puts it. Did you ever read that
paper of his, 'After Death,' in the _Nineteenth Century_? It embodies
what I had long felt, but could never grasp before I found his
admirable expression of it. 'I can see no reason,' he says, in one
passage in particular which I remember word for word, I think, it
gives me such pleasure to recall it--'I can see no reason for
supposing that _some such_ insight would be impossible to the
quickened faculties of a higher development. With a nature material so
far as the existence of those faculties might require, but spiritual
to the highest degree in their exercise and enjoyment: under physical
conditions which might render us _practically_ independent of space,
and _actually_ free from the host of physical evils to which we are
now exposed, we might well attain a consummation of happiness,
_generally_ akin to that for which we now strive, but idealised into
something like perfection.
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