Chapter I: Front Matter

[Italics are marked with _underscores_.]

THE DRAMA
OF LOVE AND DEATH

_A Study_
_of Human Evolution and_
_Transfiguration_

By
Edward Carpenter

NEW YORK AND LONDON
MITCHELL KENNERLEY
1912

_Copyright 1912 by_
_Mitchell Kennerley_

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

_The Delphian Sibyl overlooking the Earth_ vii

I. Introduction 1

II. The Beginnings of Love 5

III. Love as an Art 24

IV. Its Ultimate Meanings 48

V. The Art of Dying 69

VI. The Passage of Death 87

Note on Consciousness in the Body 107

VII. Is there an After-Death State? 111

VIII. The Underlying Self 131

Note on Mediumistic Trance 156

IX. Survival of the Self 162

X. The Inner or Spiritual Body 176

XI. The Creation and Materialization of Forms 192

XII. Reincarnation 215

XIII. The Divine Soul 237

XIV. The Return Journey 248

XV. The Mystery of Personality 262

XVI. Conclusion 284

Appendix 289

_The Delphian Sibyl_

(_On her mountain-slope overlooking the Earth_)

_The coastline ranges far, the skies unfold;
The mountains rise in glory, stair on stair;
The darting Sun seeks Daphne as of old
In thickets dark where laurel blooms are fair.
The ancient sea, deep wrinkled, ever young,
With salt lip kisses still the silver strand;
In caverns dwell the Nymphs, their loves among,
And Titans still with strange fire shake the land._

_A thousand generations here have come,
And wandered o’er these hills, and faced the light;
A thousand times slight man from mortal womb
Has leapt, and lapsed again into the night.
Here tribesmen dwelt, and fought, and curst their star,
And scoured both land and sea to sate their needs;
Prophetic eyes of youth gazed here afar,
With lips half open brooding on great deeds._

_Nor dreamed each little mortal of the Past,
Nor the deep sources of his life divined,
Watching his herds, or net in ocean cast,
Deaf to th’ ancestral voices down the wind;
Nor guessed what strange sweet likenesses should rise,
Selves of himself, far in the future years,
With his own soul within their sunlit eyes,
And in their hearts his secret hopes and fears._

_Yet I—I saw. Yea, from my lofty stand
I saw each life continuous extend
Beyond its mortal bound, and reach a hand
To others and to others without end.
I saw the generations like a river
Flow down from age to age, and all the vast
Complex of human passion float and quiver—
A wondrous mirror where the Gods were glassed._

_And still through all these ages scarce a change
Has touched my mountain slopes or seaward curve,
And still the folk beneath the old laws range,
And from their ancient customs hardly swerve;
Still Love and Death, veiled figures, hand in hand,
Move o’er men’s heads, dread, irresistible,
To ope the portals of that other land
Where the great Voices sound and Visions dwell._

THE DRAMA OF LOVE
AND DEATH