What does it mean to be pre-eminent?

My life on earth was clouded by doubt―

Science and the forces of Nature alike seemed to drive me to the conclusion that (wo)man did not have an immortal soul.

I looked at (wo)man, and sought to read in his life, the superintending guidance of some Invisible Power, but in its place, I found a material force thrusting down the weak―the greater overpowering the lesser and no divine aid adjusting these evils.

I stretched my hands up to the sky―

I surveyed the heavens with the telescope―

I found material worlds.

Even the stars were not what they seemed―

Those bright luminaries, which awakened in the mind vague and undefined feelings of immortality when viewed by the eye of science through the mighty lens of man's invention proved to be material earths like our own matter, whirling through space propelled by the same laws of attraction and gravitation that propels our own planet.

I say that I failed to find any proof of immortality on earth.

Man grew up like the tree, waxed old and died.

Apparently, he went the way of all the earth―

If he possessed an immortal soul, it was unseen at the death of the body.

When I studied the science of development and saw that the survival of the fittest was the rule, and the good man was carried off, not because he was good, but because he was weak, and that no providence―nor spiritual power―could prevent this result.

When I discovered this I became hopeless―

My heart was saddened and discouraged―

Life seemed scarcely worth the struggle with the untoward events, which confronted it.

But when I closed my eyes on this world's disappointments, vexations and doubts, and opened them in another―a world of spirits―the load left me―

The weight was taken from my heart―doubts and sadness vanished.

It seemed so natural to revive―to live again―

I marvelled I should ever have doubted man's immortality, and on finding him merely a refined form of materiality, the enigma that puzzled me on earth was solved.

The Universal Creators of Mankind―of the inhabitants of suns and systems that wheel through space in innumerable numbers―these Creators, I repeat, are invisible to me.

I do not know their parts, nor properties, but I know this―

They have given the undying principle of progression to man―

They have stamped it on his spirit and rendered him immortal.

I will not speak of the character of this spirit-world, but I will tell you that every dwarfed aspiration of the human soul has a chance to expand and blossom here, and it is the mental and spiritual nature of man that is pre-eminent.

―Spirit John Stuart Mill