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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: beloved in life and is still remembered with affection; none the
less his spirit went about the island clothed with terrors, and the
neighbourhood of Government House was still avoided after dark. We
may sum up the cheerful doctrine thus: All men become vampires,
and the vampire spares none. And here we come face to face with a
tempting inconsistency. For the whistling spirits are notoriously
clannish; I understood them to wait upon and to enlighten kinsfolk
only, and that the medium was always of the race of the
communicating spirit. Here, then, we have the bonds of the family,
on the one hand, severed at the hour of death; on the other,
helpfully persisting.
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