defying his means of destruction, from sterility in the earth induced by exhaustion, from the competition of lower animals; worse than all, his own heart may fail if the creed of the pessimist prevails. With all these is he threatened, and one would be sufficient to cause his extinction. But however it happen, and however long the end be delayed, the belief of science is that, as our species is not coeternal with the earth, as it came one day on the stage, so it will one day vanish. And the day may not be so remote, as our poet makes Lucretius say That hour perhaps Is not so far when momentary man Shall seem no more a something to himself; But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes, The very sides of the grave itself, shall pass, How absurd, then, to raise a question as to the immortality of the countless myriads of a species that in time shall itself have utterly vanished, without leaving a trace; the very memory of which shall have passed out of the consciousness of the universe, if any such be left after the disappearance of man! How presumptuous to suppose that Nature so values these countless individuals as to think it worth her pains to preserve their souls for ever! Immortality was a doctrine begotten of man's presumption, and suitable to his days of ignorance, when he believed that the earth was the central and only important body in the universe; that he himself was specially created, and wholly different from the animals; and that his soul was a most precious thing, which must at all hazards be saved in the economy of Nature. It is not a doctrine that harmonizes with the views of life and the universe that modern science discloses, still less with the more modest estimate of his own nature and merits, that the judgment of every rational man, in confirmation of the conclusions of science, must, if he is only fair and candid with himself, inevitably come to. CHAPTER VI. ON IMMORTALITY: COUNTERTHESIS. § 1. SUCH is the argument of Science, seemingly decisive against a future life. As we listen to her array of syllogisms, our hearts die within us. The hopes of men, placed in one scale to be weighed, seem to fly up against the massive weight of her evidence, placed in the other. It seems as if all our arguments were vain and unsubstantial, as if our future expectations were the foolish dreams of children, as if there could not be any other possible verdict arrived at upon the evidence brought forward. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable fact that there still exist amongst us types of mind quite distinct from the theological, that remain wholly unconvinced by the scientific logic-men who cannot and will not accept the verdict as final. There are those who persist in believing, however seemingly rigorous the reasoning, however true the premises from which the conclusion is drawn, and however apparently exhaustive the whole series of scientific arguments, that still there is a hidden vice, an undetected flaw somewhere; there is something not yet taken into account in these arguments addressed to the logical understanding; a side or aspect of our nature omitted from the scientific map of the mind, the omission of which nullifies or vitiates the posi tive argument, the consideration of which would justify our title to immortality. The poet, the mystic, the spiritualist, the moral idealist, whoever has deeply loved, whoever has greatly suffered, will not hear of a conclusion which forbids the hope in a future of redress, of reunion, of happiness; and we should not be doing justice to our theme of debate if we did not grant a hearing to some of these dissidents, who moreover can put their objections into words, not merely founded on fancy, as the men of science are wont to affirm, but apparently founded on fact, appealing to the reasoning faculty, and sometimes carrying conviction with them. Let us, then, hear the reply of the spiritualist. According to your argument, urges the latter, all thought is bound up with the bodily machine or organism, and disappears with it, and if all organisms disappear, as Science teaches they will, then all mind would also vanish from the universe. Either this must be, or mind can exist without the bodily machinery, which scientific materialism does not grant. And is this extreme scientific conclusion credible? Is it possible that mind,—the thing so splendid in its higher manifestations, with its vision of beauty, its depths of tender affection, its godlike apprehension of truth, its divine enthusiasm for right,-this subtle and wonderful essence, so slowly gathered and distilled through countless ages, as evolution teaches, should be thus recklessly spilt and lost again out of the universe? Is this wonderful and potent extract from matter, rising through life, through animal sensations, till, thrice sublimed, it became thought and spirit, which searches the secret of the universe, and through Philosophy and Science herself has partly found it,-is this wonderful quintessence, the inmost nerve and life of Philosophy, of Art, as well as of Science herself, to be thus finally wasted? Is Nature so blind and stupid, as well as so foolishly wasteful of her gathered gains, as to throw away the grandest thing-the only really great thing she had reached, and to throw it away just when she had perfected it? The thing, moreover, to attain to which it seems that all her efforts were bent, and towards which all her labours in all directions finally converged? And is it credible, or even thinkable, that all thought and consciousness should finally perish out of the universe ?-for to this length the scientific argument really goes, maintaining, as it does, that not merely my individual consciousness, and all others resembling mine, must cease, but that the human species itself must perish in process of time, together with the earth, the sun, our system, and finally all the systems of the universe. Is it thinkable that all consciousness should perish, and that eternal night and nothingness should set in? that the universe should return once again to the cosmic vapour and the eternal silence from which it first proceeded? For this is the alternative; since science has not made the provision of philosophy or religion for the preservation of mind by the postulate of an Eternal Spirit, or, at least, of a great universal mind different from all individual ones. We might have become reconciled to the belief, however insufficient the evidence for it appears to be, that the earth, the sun, nay, even all the spheres of space, should die; we might have even accepted the extinction of our hopes of individual immortality; but when we find that the same argument which destroys all these and ourselves brings us in the end to a universe of death, we must conclude there is a vice in the reasoning which leads to a conclusion so desperate and absurd. For who could really believe that this marvellous thing called mind is but a brilliant |