crowning glories.

It is just in this spirit of the Modenese poet that mankind has sought to take away from death its sting, from the grave its victory. That solemn moment in which, for those who have gone before and for us who are to follow, the eye of sense beholds naught save the ending of the world, the entrance upon a black and silent eternity, the eye of faith declares to be the supreme moment of a new birth for the disenthralled soul, the introduction to a new era of life compared with which the present one is not worthy of the name. Τίς δ’ οἶδέν, exclaims Euripides,

Who can tell but that this which we call life is really death, from which what we call death is an awakening? From this vantage ground of thought the human soul comes to look without dread upon the termination of this terrestrial existence. The failure of the bodily powers, the stoppage of the fluttering pulse, the cold stillness upon the features so lately wreathed in smiles of merriment, the corruption of the tomb, the breaking of the ties of love, the loss of all that has given value to existence, the dull blankness of irremediable sorrow, the knell of everlasting farewells,—all this is seized upon by the sovereign imagination of man and transformed into a scene of transcending glory, such as in all the vast career of the universe is reserved for humanity alone. In the highest of creatures the Divine immanence has acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the dissolution of the flesh and assert an individuality untrammelled by the limitations which in the present life everywhere persistently surround it. Upon this view death is not a calamity but a boon, not a punishment inflicted upon Man, but the supreme manifestation of his exceptional prerogative as chief among God's creatures. Thus the faith in immortal life is the great poetic achievement of the human mind, it is all-pervasive, it is concerned with every moment and every aspect of our existence as moral individuals, and it is the one thing that makes this world inhabitable for beings constructed like ourselves. The destruction of this sublime poetic conception would be like depriving a planet of its atmosphere; it would leave nothing but a moral desert as cold and dead as the savage surface of the moon.

We have now to consider this supreme poetic achievement of man—his belief in his own Immortality—in the light of our modern studies of evolution; we must notice some distinctions between its earlier and later stages, and briefly examine some of the objections which have been alleged in the name of science against the validity of the belief.

Here, as in all departments of the efflorescence of the human mind, the beginnings were lowly, and necessarily so. Nothing very lofty or far-reaching could be expected from the kind of brain that was encased in the Neanderthal skull. Among existing savages there are tribes concerning which travellers have doubted whether they possess ideas that can properly be called religious. But wherever untutored humanity exists we find the conception of a world of ghosts more or less distinctly elaborated; the thronging simulacra of departed tribesmen linger near their accustomed haunts, keenly sensitive to favour or neglect, and quick to punish all infractions of the rules which the stern exigencies of life in the wilderness have prescribed for the conduct of the tribe. This crude primeval ghost-world is thus already closely associated with the ethical side of life, and out of this association have grown some of the most colossal governing agencies by which the development of human society has been influenced. It is therefore not without reason that modern students of anthropology devote so much time to animism and fetishism and other crude workings of that savage intelligence of which the primeval ghost-world is a product.

It is not at all unlikely that the savage's notion of ghosts may have originated chiefly in his experience of dreams, and this is the explanation at present most in favour. The sleeping warrior ranges far and wide over the country, while he chases the buffalo and joins in the medicine dance with comrades known to have died yet now as active and as voluble as himself, but suddenly the scene changes and he is back in his familiar hut surrounded by his people who can testify that he has not for a moment left them. It is not unlikely, I say, that the notion of one's conscious self as something which can quit the material body and return to it may have started in such often-repeated humble experiences. It can hardly be doubted, however, that this savage conception of the detachable conscious self is simply the primitive phase of the Christian conception of the conscious soul which dwells within the perishable body and quits it at death. Through many stages of elaboration and refinement the sequence between the two conceptions is unmistakable.

At this point the materialist interposes with an argument which he regards as crushing. He reminds us that if we would estimate the value of an idea, as of a race-horse or a mastiff, it is well to take a look at its pedigree. What, then, is to be said—he scornfully asks—of a doctrine of personal immortality which when reduced to its lowest terms is seen to have started in a savage's misinterpretation of his dreams? What more is needed to prove it unworthy of the serious attention of a scientific student of nature? On the other hand, the student whose mood is truly scientific will feel that one of mankind's cardinal beliefs must not be dismissed too lightly because of the crudeness and error in that primitive stratum of human thought in which it first took root. In his perceptions within certain limits the savage is eminently keen and accurate, but when it comes to intellectual judgments that go at all below the surface of things his mind is a mere farrago of grotesque fancies, wherein, nevertheless, some kernels of truth are here and there embedded. It is a long way from the dragon swallowing the sun to the interposition of the moon's dark body between us and that luminary. The dragon was a figment of fancy, but the eclipse was none the less a fact.

Now if we may take an illustration from the workings of an infant's mind, it is pretty clearly made out that as baby sits propped among his pillows and turns his eyes hither and thither in following his mother's movements to and fro in the room, she seems in coming toward him to enlarge and in going away to diminish in size, like Alice in Wonderland. It is only with the education of the eye and the small muscles which adjust it that the larger area subtended on the retina instantly means comparative nearness and the smaller area comparative remoteness. At first the sensations are interpreted directly, and the impression upon baby's nascent intelligence is a gross error. The mother is not waxing great and small by turns, but only approaching and receding. If, however, we consider that in baby's mind the enlarged retinal spot means more and the diminished spot less of the pleasurable feelings excited by a familiar and gracious