Bernard Capes

“ A dead man can’t sneeze.”
“How about people’s hair continuing to grow after death? Deprived of its Ego, you know, it cannot grow. It even ceases, according to your theory, to be hair at all.”
“I might challenge you to produce a single authentic instance of its having so grown. But grant that, on occasion, it does; is it not possible to conceive certain cells charged, not continuously but periodically, with the vital principle, and capable of surviving for an independent period on their last-acquired store.”
“M—well—yes, I suppose,” I said.
“Why, look here,” said Carleon. ”

“ WE had been talking fitfully, as the train sped on, of things suggested, perhaps, by that sense of volant instability with which a rapid journey in a third-class brake-van is wont to possess one—the mysteries of Life and Death, and the greater mystery of Life-in-Death, to wit. ”

“ Naturally, in all mundane philosophy we have to start from a given point. Who or what arbitrarily set that point it is idle to surmise. We know only that it was set this side of Chaos, by something that inhabited the other side.”
“Well, you say that the something in us is our functions. ”

“ But they occur, when some part of you impinges upon some part of an ancient impression, inhabiting an Ego or Egos, which was once common to you both or all. If you do see what is called a ghost, you may be sure that some remote sympathy was shared between you and that apparition in a former existence. ”