intensely materialistic as to seem grotesque in our more truly spiritual age. Popular conceptions of heaven to-day abound in symbolism that is confessedly a mere reflection from the world of matter; insomuch that persons of sufficient culture to realize the inadequacy of these popular images are wont to avoid the difficulty by refraining from putting their hopes and beliefs into any definite or describable form. Among such minds there is a tacit agreement that the unseen world must be purely spiritual in constitution, yet no mental image of such a world can be formed. We are all agreed that life beyond the grave would be a delusion and a cruel mockery without the continuance of the tender household affections which alone make the present life worth living; but to imagine the recognition of soul by soul apart from the material structure in which we have known soul to be manifested, apart from the look of the loved face, the tones of the loved voice, or the renewed touch of the long vanished hand, is something quite beyond our power. Even if you try to imagine your own psychical activity as continuing without the aid of the physical machinery of sensation, you soon get into unmanageable difficulties. The furniture of your mind consists in great part of sensuous images, chiefly visual, and you cannot in thought follow yourself into a world that does not announce itself to you through sense impressions. From all this it plainly appears that our notion of the survival of conscious activity apart from material conditions is not only unsupported by any evidence that can be gathered from the world of which we have experience but is utterly and hopelessly inconceivable.

The argument here summarized is in no way profound or abstruse; it is extremely obvious, and as its propositions cannot well be controverted, it has had great weight with many people. I dare say it may be held responsible for the larger part of contemporary skepticism as to the future life. People have grown accustomed to demanding scientific support for doctrines, whereas this doctrine is not only destitute of scientific support but lands us in inconceivabilities; is it not, then, untenable and absurd? Such is the common argument. There are those who seek to meet it with inductive evidence of the presence of disembodied spirits or ghosts which hold direct communication only with certain specially endowed persons known as mediums. Concerning such inductive evidence it may be said that very little has as yet been brought forward which is likely to make much impression upon minds trained in investigation. If its value as evidence were to be conceded, it would seem to point to the conclusion that the grade of intelligence which survives the grave is about on a par with that which in the present life we are accustomed to shut up in asylums for idiots. On the whole the mediumistic ideas and methods are frankly materialistic, their alleged communications with the other world are through sights and sounds, and if their pretensions could be sustained the result would be simply the rehabilitation of the primitive ghost-world. Their theory of things moves on so low a plane as hardly to merit notice in a serious philosophic discussion.

To return to the argument that the doctrine of the survival of conscious activity apart from material conditions is unsupported by experience and is inconceivable, we may observe that it is inconceivable just because it is entirely without foundation in experience. Our powers of conception are narrowly determined by the limits of our experience, and when that experience has never furnished us with the materials for framing a conception we simply cannot frame it. Hence we cannot conceive of the conscious soul as entirely dissociated from any material vehicle.

Now we are prepared to ask, How much does this famous argument amount to, as against the belief that the soul survives the body? The answer is, Nothing! absolutely nothing. It not only fails to disprove the validity of the belief, but it does not raise even the slightest prima facie presumption against it. This will at once become apparent if we remember that human experience is very far indeed from being infinite, and that there are in all probability immense regions of existence in every way as real as the region which we know, yet concerning which we cannot form the faintest rudiment of a conception. Within the past century the study of light and other radiant forces has furnished us with a suggestive object-lesson. The luminiferous ether combines properties which are inconceivable in connection. How curious to think that we live and move in an ocean of ether in which the particles of all material things are floating like islands! But how amazing to learn that this ocean of ether is also an adamantine firmament! Is not this sheer nonsense? an ocean firmament of ether-adamant! Yet such seems to be the fact, and our philosophy must make the best of it. Now suppose that all this world were crowded with disembodied souls, an infinite throng most aptly called "the majority," a thousand or more on every spot in space as broad as the point of a cambric needle, in what way could we become aware of their existence? Clearly in no way, since we have no organ or faculty for the perception of soul apart from the material structure and activities in which it has been manifested throughout the whole course of our experience. There we will suppose are the countless millions, the existence of any one of whom, could we detect it, would suffice to demonstrate the doctrine of a future life, and yet, for lack of the requisite means of communication, all this evidence is inaccessible. Such an illustration shows that "the entire absence of testimony does not even raise a negative presumption except in cases where testimony is accessible." The reason is obvious. Until we can go wherever the testimony may be, we are not entitled to affirm that there is an absence of testimony. So long as our knowledge is restricted by the conditions of this terrestrial life, we are not in a position to make negative assertions as to regions of existence outside of these conditions. We may feel quite free, therefore, to give due weight to any considerations which make it probable that consciousness survives the wreck of the material body.

We are now in a position to see the fallacy of Moleschott's often-quoted aphorism, "No thought without phosphorus!" When this saying was a new one, there were worthy people who felt that somehow it was all over with man's immortal soul. With phosphorus you light your candle, and with phosphorus you discover Neptune and write the Fifth Symphony; how charmingly simple and convincing! And yet was anything save a bit of rhetoric really gained by singling out phosphorus among the chemical constituents of brain tissue rather than nitrogen or carbon? Suppose the dictum had been, "No thought without a brain." The obvious answer would have been, "If you refer to the present life, most erudite professor, your remark is true, but hardly novel or startling; if you refer to any condition of things subsequent to death, pray where did you obtain your knowledge?"

Nevertheless this point cannot be disposed of simply by exhibiting the flaw in Moleschott's rhetoric. His remark rests upon the assumption that conscious mental phenomena are products of the organic tissues with which they are associated. This is of course the central stronghold of materialism.