The future life in the light of modern inquiry

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THE FUTURE LIFE IN THE LIGHT
OF MODERN INQUIRY

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

CHRISTIANITY AND THE MODERN MIND

FAITH, THE GREATEST POWER IN THE WORLD

A BOOK OP PRAYERS FOR PERSONAL AND
PUBLIC USE

THE NEW LIFE

GOD'S MEANING OF LIFE

PRAYER ; WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES

PRAYERS FOR TO-DAY, WITH A SERIES OF
MEDITATIONS FROM MODERN WRITERS

I

THE FUTURE LIFE
IN THE LIGHT OF
MODERN INQUIRY

BY
REV. SAMUEL McCOMB

Co-author of ** Religion and Medicine"
Author of '• Prayers for To-day," etc.

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1919

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Copyright, 1919, bt
DODD, aiEAD AND COMPANY, INO.

VOtt (Butnn & Coben Companp

BOOK MANUFACTURERS
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY

To

My Mother
In Grateful Memory and Sacred Hope

PREFATORY NOTE

The author offers no apology for the publica-
tion of this book. The subject is indeed well-
worn, and there is much plausibility in the
aphorism that ^'nothing new has been said for
immortality since Plato, and nothing new
against it since Epicurus." Yet this is not to be
taken too literally. Our newer knowledge has
deprived many ancient arguments of the pres-
tige which they once enjoyed, and has, at the
same time, opened up fresh paths of reflection
and suggested the lines along which the thoughts
of coming generations are likely to run. More-
over, the world in our day is shaking and the
hearts of men are failing them for fear. Every-
one is bound to say what he can on behalf of a
belief that cannot but steady and reassure the
human soul amid the perils that now beset it.
Cordial thanks are due and are hereby ten-
dered to Dr. Walter F. Prince for his gener-
osity in preparing the materials of Chapter IX,
especially for his clear outline of the Fisher
case, a fuller exposition of which he will set
forth in a volume now being made ready for the

viii PREFATORY NOTE

press. Grateful acknowledgment must also be
made of Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester's kindness
in reading a portion of the proofs and in making
several valuable suggestions. Chapter IV has
already appeared as an article in the Contempo-
rary Review for June, 1919, and in the Ameri-
can Journal of Psychical Research for the same
month.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ^^^^

I. What is Immortality? ... 1

II. Immortality and the Modern Man 13

III. The Desire for Immortality . 39

IV. Hindrances to Belief in Immor-

tality 55

V. The Moral Argument ... 83

VI. Jesus Christ and the Future

Life 100

VII. Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? . 120

VIII. The Argument from Psychical

Research 140

IX. Specimens of the Evidence Sup-
plied BY Psychical Research . 166

X. The Practical Value of Belief

in Immortality .... 218

THE FUTURE LIFE IN THE LIGHT
OF MODERN INQUIRY

THE FUTURE LIFE IN THE LIGHT
OF MODERN INQUIRY

CHAPTER I

WHAT IS IMMORTALITY?

It is important at the outset to make clear the
sense in which our terms are used. The
pantheist, the positivist, and even the agnostic
assert immortality no less fervently than the
orthodox Christian, but it will be admitted that
a conception so loose and featureless can hardly
admit of argument. It is unfortunate that the
word ^'immortality'' has been used with such
ambiguity that the problem has been obscured
and a subject difficult enough in itself has been
rendered still less amenable to thought.

A widespread popular usage interprets im-
mortality as in a strict sense the life everlasting.
But whether the soul will last forever is and
must remain always a question for faith. Here
knowledge and science are dumb. We know not
what vicissitudes may be in store for the soul in

1

2 THE FUTURE LIFE

the measureless reaches of infinite time. The
survival of physical death might well raise the
presumption or the hope that a being capable
of surmounting such a barrier would also prove
equal to any changes that may befall in the life
to come. But beyond this we cannot go.

By immortality is here meant the survival of
bodily death of that part of man which is called,
variously, mind, soul, self, spirit, individuality,
personality, or whatever other term may be
held to be synonymous with these. The time-
honoured word ^^soul" is as good as any other
— if only we are careful to make sure of what
we mean by it. Modern men cannot away with
the notion that the *'soul" is a mysterious en-
tity, distinct from, and, so to say, standing over
against thoughts, volitions, and feelings, itself
knowing no change, while these, like the ever-
shifting pictures of a magic-lantern, come and
go and never continue in one stay. The more
we try to grasp this entity, the more it eludes
us. It is a metaphysical abstraction for which
we can find no meaning or purpose : and so the
psychologist refuses to recognize it and is con-
tent to leave it to the preacher and the scholastic
philosopher. Today what we mean by the
**sour' is simply a limited stream of thoughts,
volitions, and feelings, partly conscious, partly

WHAT IS IMMORTALITY? 3

subconscious, yet also a stream able to recall
its past states, and to recognize these states
as its own. This finite unitary consciousness
is connected with a body in a relationship in-
describably intimate. But both the psychical
and physical elements imply a greater reality
to which they belong and out of which they
have emerged. If any reader feels that this
view makes the soul too much of a mere phe-
nomenon, perhaps the definition of a well-
known man of science will prove more helpful :
^^The soul is that controlling and guiding prin-
ciple which is responsible for our personal ex-
pression and for the construction of the body
under the restrictions of physical condition
and ancestry. In its higher development it
includes also feeling and intelligence and will
and is the storehouse of mental experience.
The body is its instrument or organ, enabling
it to conceive and to convey physical impres-
sions, and to affect and be affected by matter
and energj^ When the body is destroyed, there-
fore, the soul disappears from physical ken;
when the body is impaired, its function is inter-
fered with and the soul's physical reaction be-
comes feeble and unsatisfactory. Thus has
arisen the popular misconception that the soul
of a slain person or of a cripple or paralytic,

4 THE FUTURE LIFE

has been destroyed or damaged; whereas only-
its instrument of manifestation need have
been affected. The kind of evils which really
assault and hurt the soul belong to a different
category.'' ^

It really does not matter, so far as the prob-
lem of immortality is concerned, how w^e define
the soul, if only we refuse to reduce it to a func-
tion or a by-product of brain-processes. Our
idea of the nature of the future life will in-
deed be affected by our conception of the
spiritual content of the soul, but the fact
of the future life is independent of all such
theories.

Now, the question in which w^e are interested
today is not, Is the soul endlessly existent? but,
Does the soul survive the experience of death
and preserve a sense of its identity? If and
when we are able to answer this question in the
affirmative, we may go on to enquire as to the
nature and we may even speculate as to the
conditions of the life beyond. The point to be
emphasized just now is that immortality means
the individual's survival of death, the per-
sistence of personal consciousness in spite of
physical dissolution.

Many who are unable to believe in this con-

* Sir Oliver Lodge: Man and the Universe, pp. 165, 166.

WHAT IS IMMORTALITY? 5

quest over death, cannot bear the thought that
all the garnered treasures of human character
are thrown to the dust heap, and hold that the
moral and spiritual values attributed to the sur-
vival of personality can be retained and con-
verted into an ethical inspiration by the posthu-
mous working of our influence in the lives and
characters of unborn generations. The solidar-
ity of the race is indeed a truth which science
has especially graven on the minds of modern
men. No man stands alone. No life is lived unto
itself alone. We are one with our environment.
Our deepest convictions are shaped in part at
least by men and women who have long since
mouldered in their graves. And we, in turn, by
our words and deeds, affect our contemporaries
and shall affect those who come after us, for
good or ill, for happiness or misery. It is, in-
deed, a solemn thought that every act we do
leaves its mark upon the texture of our spiritual
nature, and at the same time goes forth to
work out its appointed consequences in the life
of humanity. Our little lives like rivulets rush
to swell the vast tide of the race's common
life, each making its contribution to the mighty
whole. All this is deeply, if tritely, true. In
the oft-quoted lines of George Eliot, it has found
noble expression:

6 THE FUTURE LIFE

*'0h may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence : live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues."

But the very efforts of poet and philosopher
to array in alluring colours the hope of post-
humous influence in the life of posterity as a
substitute for personal continuance after death,
are themselves proofs of the deep-seated long-
ing which is denied. And the more we examine
the proposed exchange the more we see that it
is a case of giving us a stone when we ask for
bread. For the assumption is that the history
of the race is one of continuous and unmodified
progress. But as Professor Royce has pointed
out, temporal progress is only one aspect of the
temporal order. ^^For in Nature, too, nothing
recurs. The broken china will not mend. The
withered flowers bloom no more. The sun parts
forever with its heat. Tidal friction irrevocably
retards the revolution of the earth.'* And
again : ^ ^ Remember we have lost, beyond earthly
recall, the Greeks, and the constructive genius

WHAT IS IMMORTALITY? 7

of a Shakespeare or of a Goethe ; and these are,
indeed, for us mortals, simply irreparable loss.''
Thus progress and decay, evolution and disinte-
gration, are alike laws that govern the history
of the individual and the race. Not only so, but
if any dictum of science is to be relied on, it is
that which prophesies that ^^our racial destiny
is to strive and to starve to death in ever-
deepening gloom." In other w^ords, we are
asked to devote our moral energies wnth whole-
souled ardour to the w^ork of helping a race
which is as evanescent as a colony of ants,
and of confining all our interests to a w^orld
which will one day roll on in its orbit as
though men and ants had never been. Such
a theory of immortality makes the sacrifice of
the individual irrational and unjustifiable. The
heroic millions w^ho in the Great War have
laid down their lives for freedom — what of
them? Do you say that they have contributed
their share to the progress of the world, that
the good cause will triumph because of their
sacrifice and that this is their reward? What
matters it that they lapse into nothingness, if
only the ultimate victory of right be achieved?
The answer is, that our moral consciousness
protests against such a decree. We ask and
cannot but ask that somewhere and some time

8 THE FUTURE LIFE

these brave spirits shall witness and share in
the triumph of that righteousness of which
they were the organs and instruments. And
here we return to the ever-present question
of the worth of personality. Man, says Kant,
is an end in himself and cannot be used as a
means to an end. But on the theory we are
controverting, man is of no intrinsic account.
All life, the living individuals of today, and of
the farthest bounds of time, must appear, in this
view, utterly contemptible. Why should I sacri-
fice myself for others, if the others are, like
myself, the children of a fleeting day, doomed
to the same pitiful fate? It is no reproach to
human nature to say that few will be found to
rejoice in such a quixotic enterprise. The '^im-
mortal dead" were once indeed unique centres
of experience, but they are now annihilated and
while some of their thoughts may persist, they
do not ''live again," no more than the stone
lives again (to borrow Huxley's illustration) in
the wavelets which it makes when flung into the
sea.

More recently, poetic thought has sought to
find a substitute for personal continuance after
death in a mystic absorption in the totality of
being, or God. William Watson conceives the
great divine event awaiting humanity to be uni-

WHAT IS IMMORTALITY? 9

versal euthanasia — a reabsorption in the Uni-
versal Spirit.

''When from this threshold of being, these steps of

the Present, this precinct,
Into the matrix of life, darkly, divinely resumed,
Man and his littleness perish, erased like an error

and cancelled,
Man and his greatness, lost in the greatness of

God."^

Now, wherein consists man's real greatness?
Is it not in the fact that he is the creator of
character, a unique self-conscious centre of feel-
ing and will? This is the inner core of man's
essence. It is this that differentiates him from
the brute creation and constitutes him a person.
For man so conceived to disappear or be lost
*'in the greatness of God" would mean a trag-
edy, obscuring in gloom the divine character
and the spiritual worth of man. What kind
of a God must we suppose Him to be Who hav-
ing called into being a creature such as man,
endowed with individuality and all the unreal-
ized possibilities of a divine nobleness, should
waste all this spiritual treasure, the grandest
product of creative energy, by quenching the
light of conscious reason and affection in ''the

* Hymn to the Sea.

10 THE FUTURE LIFE

vast darkness of the Godhead"? Francis
Thompson's intuition pierces the sophism with
unerring insight :

''Ah ! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed
Suffering no flowers, except its own to mount V

Certainly the interests of ethics and religion
are bound up with the denial of any renuncia-
tion of man's true selfhood. His annihilation
means a loss to the moral order, for the good
realized in character ceases to be; it means also
a loss to God, for a being whom He has sum-
moned into friendship with Himself is no more.
In some real and true sense God needs man,
even as man needs God. Every soul has to God
the value of a realized purpose, an increase of
goodness in the universe. But this conviction
is fatal to the thought that a physical episode,
such as death, can put a term to the love and
self-giving whicli constitute the true greatness
and glory of the Divine.

There is another substitute for personal con-
tinuance after death which some modern the-
ologians offer us and which in much of present-
day preaching obscures tlie real issue. Per-
sonal immortality is left shadowed with doubt,
but in order to make good this deficiency, strong

WHAT IS IMMORTALITY? 11

emphasis is laid on ''eternal life/^ Many an
unsuspecting hearer imagines that when "eter-
nal life'' is held up before him as the true goal
of all his strivings, he is being exhorted to live a
life not limited by death but as permanent as the
life of God Himself. AYliat is meant, however,
is quite irrelevant to the notion of personal per-
sistence in a life beyond the grave. The phrase
is intended to mark a quality of soul attainable
here and now — a sense of dominion over the
world, an experience of victory over the troubles
and vexations of our earthly existence. It is
a present ethical and religious experience and
one may have it without thereby entertaining
any hope for a life after death. Bailey in his
*'Festus" has brought out the thought:

*'We live in deeds not years, in thoughts not breaths,
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. ' '

In its highest sense ''eternal life'' means fellow-
ship with God evidenced in a life of brotherly
love and service. As a New Testament writer
puts it: "This is eternal life, that they know
Thee, the only real God, and He AYhom Thou
hast sent." ^ "We know we have crossed from
death to life, because we love the brotherhood;
and he who has no love [for his brother]

* John xvii, 3.

12 THE FUTURE LIFE

remains in death."' So far, however, is this
profound truth from being incompatible with
the idea of personal immortality that it rather
points beyond itself and suggests the ultimate
victory of the soul over death, the swallowing
up of all that threatens man's destiny, in an
abounding and ever-growing life. We may well
argue that if ^'eternal life'' means the present
consciousness of God, an episode in the history
of the physical organism will not avail to quench
this consciousness in darkness.

* I. John iii, 14 (Moffatt's translation).

CHAPTER II

IMMORTALITY AND THE MODERN MAN

There is, perhaps, no more significant revela-
tion of the spiritual trend of our age than the
revived interest in the riddle of human destiny.
Even before the war, in many circles where it
was supposed the question was settled for all
intelligent persons in the negative, old question-
ings began to stir afresh, and the discovery was
made that the matter was not settled, that the
human spirit was girding itself for a fresh
attack on the ancient problem: If a man die
shall he live again? But, undoubtedly, the war
with its cruel losses has stirred in millions of
hearts with unwonted poignancy the old crav-
ings to know whether ^' those we call the dead
are breathers of an ampler day,'' and whether
there are grounds for believing that spirit will
yet flash to spirit some signal of mutual recog-
nition. Today as never before men and women
are searching their minds to discover where
they really stand in regard to this most vital
and momentous question. Amid the crash of
falling kingdoms, the passing away of those

13

14 THE FUTURE LIFE

near to us and most dear, the darkening
shadows of social revolution, in short, the utter
insecurity of all finite interests, we ask for some
enduring reality, some abiding rock on w^hich
we can build the fabric of our spiritual life.
The experience of many soldiers at the front is
that also of many of their friends who remained
at home. Face to face with death, either per-
sonally or vicariously, these persons have dis-
covered that their religious faith or view of life
was a mere tradition which broke down under
the pressure of a terrible experience. They
have awakened as from a pleasant dream, to
discover — what ? A world full of doubt, denial,
uncertainty, at best of vague and elusive hopes.
There are many persons who would describe
their mental state as *^an aspiration sometimes
approaching almost to a faith, occasionally and
for a few moments rising into a trust, but never
able to settle into the consistency of a definite
and enduring creed."

But whatever may be the situation in the
world at large, surely inside our Christian
Churches this faith is kept fresh and living,
and here, if nowhere else, death can be faced in
calmness and peace in the assured confidence
that it marks only a transition to a fuller and
a richer life. Alas ! this is far from being the

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN MAN 15

case, as any one with knowledge of the facts
can testify. Too often blank uncertainty ending
in bitter despair unhinges the mind and throws
the inner world into confusion. There are, of
course, many exceptions, but these will be found
almost wholly confined to the few who can ac-
cept the Christian revelation in childlike faith
or whose spiritual intuitions are undimmed by
the shadows of the abstractive intellect. The
refusal to accept any truth on authority, the rise
and dominance of the higher criticism, the un-
certain note of the educated teacher of religion,
and the crude phantasies of the uneducated
evangelist — all these and other influences in a
lesser degree are responsible for the present
failure of faith in immortality in the Christian
world. Indeed it must be confessed with pain
that the most unwavering assurances of the
immortal hope do not as a rule come from the
professed champions of Church and Creed but
from men whose main interests lie elsewhere.
Take, for example, the following statement of a
well-known man of science : ' ' We shall certainly
continue to exist, we shall certainly survive.
Why do I say that! I say it on definite scien-
tific grounds. I know that certain friends of
mine still exist, because I have talked with them
... I have conversed with them as I could.

16 THE FUTURE LIFE

converse through a telephone with any one in
this audience now. Being men of cultivated
mind they have given proofs that it is really
they, not some impersonation, not something
emanating from myself. They have given defi-
nite proofs. Some of these proofs have been
published. Many more will have to be withheld
for a time, but will ultimately be published. I
tell you with all the strength of conviction that I
can muster that the fact is so, that we do persist,
that people still take an interest in what is going
on, that they still help us, that they know far
more about things than we do, that they are able
from time to time to communicate. ' ' ^ Now what
strikes the reader in this confession is not the
reference to the spiritistic theory of communi-
cation so much as the ringing tone of clear and
assured conviction. However this certainty is
gained, it is simply invaluable. It means a new
world for the man who has won it. It can-
not but bring to life an ethical stimulus, con-
solation amid discouragement and defeat, a
coherence and an intelligibility otherwise im-
possible. Yet were one to stand up in a Chris-
tian pulpit and proclaim a future life with a
like assurance, he would be listened to with
polite incredulity on the part of very many and

* Sir Oliver Lodge: Science and Religion, p. 25.

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN MAN 17

would find himself regarded as St. Paul was
by the Athenians — something of an enthusiast.
Ruskin in his preface to ^*The Crown of Wild
Olive ^' makes the strikingly true observation
that '4f you address any average modern Eng-
lish company as believing in an Eternal life, and
endeavour to draw any conclusions, from this
assumed belief, as to their present business,
they will forthwith tell you that what you say is
very beautiful, but it is not practical. If, on
the contrary, you frankly address them as un-
believers in Eternal life, and try to draw any
consequences from that unbelief, — they immedi-
ately hold you for an accursed person, and shake
off the dust from their feet at you.*' How is
this to be explained? Why is it that the average
church-goer resents the unqualified affirmation
of a life beyond the grave? Doubtless to some
extent he is influenced consciously or uncon-
sciously by the prevailing habits of thought
already referred to ; but there is another reason.
Strange as it may appear, the average pro-
fessor of religion prefers that the future life
should not be discussed except in a form which
convention should dictate, and convention pre-
scribes that this form be no more than a pious
aspiration. Listen to the startling assertion of
a distinguished American divine: ^*A degree of

18 THE FUTURE LIFE

agnosticism touching the future life is tolerable
to religious men today, which would have been
quite intolerable in other days. It is not an acci-
dent that in modern sermonic literature the sub-
jects of heaven and hell bulk far less largely
than they once did. In the absence of experi-
mental proof few present-day thinkers are able
to count immortality as other than a more or
less well-grounded hope." ^ The situation is a
curious one. It is difficult to avoid the conclu-
sion that many good church-going people are
afraid that the belief may turn out to be true,
We have an exact parallel in the widespread
repugnance to the preaching of that funda-
mental change of moral and spiritual outlook
which goes by the popular name '^conversion."
This doctrine, it is held, is suitable for the de-
graded or vicious classes, for men and women
of an emotional tj^e, perhaps, who have been
flagrant sinners or transgressors of social law,
but quite inapplicable to law-abiding, respect-
able citizens, to the educated and the conven-
tionally ''good." But now it w^as precisely to
these latter classes that Christ preached the doc-
trine, and it was their aversion to it that drew
from Him His denunciation of Pharisee and

* A. C. McGiffert: The Rise -of Modem Religious Ideas, p.
163.

IMMOETALITY AND MODERN MAN 19

Sadducee. Here, then, are two great religious
ideas which provoke annoyance and resentment
on the part of many apparently religious per-
sons, and the question is : Why? The more one
turns the matter over in one's mind, the more
the conviction grows that the same psychologi-
cal cause is at work in both cases. Many turn
away from certainty of a future life and from
the demand which brooks no denial for a pro-
found transformation of their minds, for the
same reason; acceptance of either idea would
inevitably lead to a far-reaching disturbance of
their nonnal, every-day lives, to a complete re-
construction of their moral and social world.
But as the years pass, the dull weight of custom,
the inert, mechanical, and automatic force of
convention, makes such a reversion of their
normal existence a task to be evaded with all
the stratagems at their command. Hence they
make a compromise. They will not deny that
within limits the Christian theory of repentance
has its rights, but it must not interfere unduly
with the claims of use and wont. So, too, with
the idea of a future life. That also must not be
denied, yet it must not be asserted, as if it
were a fact like the law of gravitation, or like
any of the data of experience, because if it were
so asserted and accepted, they would be com-

20 THE FUTUEE LIFE

pelled to regard themselves and those about
them in an altogether different light. They
would awake to the claim of unsuspected duties
and tasks. They would see their every act to
be fraught with a significance unimaginably
great. To escape such a revolution the idea of
immortality must be lessened of its dynamic
meaning, and its revolutionary power must be
kept in check.

But this method of dealing with a great prin-
ciple brings its o^vn Nemesis. When, through
some painful bereavement, the soul is awakened
to the need for certainty, for some satisfying
conception of the world into which the loved one
has passed, nothing offers that can stand the
scrutiny of the anxious heart, beset, as it is,
with a host of questions that now clamour for
an answer. How intently the mind strains into
the darkness and vacancy to catch a gleam of
living light! Where are the dead? How can
they exist without a body? What is the mean-
ing of resurrection? When will it be and how?
Do the departed pass to the judgment of God
immediately after death, or do they wait in a
disembodied state for a public and formal assize
at the last day? Do they inhabit other worlds?
If so, as these worlds are constantly perishing,
must not discarnate spirits migrate from world

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN MAN 21

to world? How are we to conceive of the em-
ployments of those who have passed over? Are
they near at hand or remote from ns? Shall
there be a meeting between loved ones again
and mutual recognition or will not those who
have passed over first have advanced to higher
planes where the weakness or immaturity of
those who come later may not reach? What
kind of a sphere is it into which has gone that
tender and loving spirit so dear to us on earth?
Will there be friendly faces to offer a welcome
to the newcomer ? Or is it an infinite void where
in utter loneliness the spirit lives out its life
shut up with the memories of its past? And
when the intellect fails to create new perplexi-
ties, the imagination conjures up a myriad
phantoms to terrify and to confuse.

The lesson such experiences should teach us
is to get face to face with this problem and to
come to terms with it. Sooner or later the hour
when we shall be forced to face it will befall us,
and then we may be in no condition to summon
our souls to order and certainly we shall have
lost the spiritual benefits of self-discipline and
preparation. What a pathetic and even tragic
circumstance is the fact that around us are
thousands of men and women who all their life-
time are subject to bondage through fear of

22 THE FUTURE LIFE

death either for themselves or for others ! And
yet no true or worthy life can be lived till fear
is trampled underfoot. We can do our work in
peace and dignity only when we can say with
Victor Hugo : '^ Death is not the dreary finish to
life; it is its prolongation; my work is only
begun," or with Emerson : '* All that I have seen
leads me to trust God for what I have not
seen.''

Outside religious circles, there are great
varieties of attitude toward our problem. To
begin with, there are the indifferent who hardly
ever think of the matter and who spend no little
energy in keeping it at arm's length. Why
worry, they say, about death till death comes?
One world at a time. We shall know all about
it time enough; just now business and home,
art and science, politics and social life can fill
every moment. This appears to be a state of
mind as unscientific as it is unnatural and
impermanent. It is unnatural, for man is in
essence a moral being, that is, he acts with
a view to an end, to the accomplishment or
enjoyment of something in the future. If man
is not this, he is no better than the non-rational
animal. The future to *'a being of large dis-
course, able to look before and after," has a
significance for the present, whether that fu-

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN MAN 23

ture is only ten minutes ahead or ten years
or a possible eternity. Indeed the present has
no meaning except with a view to the future.
Says Pascal: ''The immortality of the soul is
a thing which concerns us so mightily, which
touches us so deeply, that it is necessary to
have lost all feeling in order to be indifferent
about it. All our actions and thoughts must
take different paths according as there will be
or will not be eternal goods to be hoped for, so
that it is impossible to do anything with intelli-
gence and judgment if it is not regulated by the
view of that point which ought to be our final
object.'' ^ Poets and moralists have often com-
pared human life to a journey. Is it a sign of
sound judgment or of prudence to entertain no
curiosity about how the journey will end,
whether in a black gulf of oblivion or in shining
fields, and happy company and a sense of free-
dom and refreshment! But normal or ab-
normal, such a condition of mind is not fixed.
It is at the mercy of a thousand accidents. At
any moment the indifferent soul may be smitten
by mortal loss, and awake to the agony of a
parting that seems eternal. We may be be-
lievers or sceptics, but indifferentists we cannot
permanently be.

* Penates.

24 THE FUTURE LIFE

There are others who while not indifferent to
the life beyond the grave are content to say: **I
do not know. ' ' Huxley, who invented the word
*^ agnostic'' to describe this mental attitude,
maintained that as a scientific man he was
unable either to affirm or to deny immortality.
If any one says that the mind persists after the
dissolution of the brain, the pure scientist must
ask, How do you know? On the other hand, if
any one denies such persistence, again the ques-
tion must be, How do you know? Theoretically,
such a position is tenable, practically it is not.
Huxley himself could not carry his doctrine
through amid the sad realities of experience.
In reply to a letter of Charles Kingsley, who
wrote him words of comfort on the loss of a
dear child, the man of science flung over his
agnostic doctrine and took refuge in a wondrous
faith. ' ' The ledger of the Almighty, ' ' he wrote,
^4s strictly kept, and every one of us has the
balance of his operations paid over to him at the
end of every minute of his existence.'' Of
course, he leaves himself open to his own query :
How do you know? Are the pessimists all
wrong? Are there no monstrous wrongs in-
flicted on the innocent ? In a world such as this,
given over to intolerable miseries, to bitter suf-
ferings that often fall on the noblest and the

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN MAN 25

most self-sacrificing of their kind, what scien-
tific justification is there for the doctrine that
the Almighty pays to every man at the end of
every minute of his existence exactly what he
deserves? Yet at bottom Huxley is right. God
is just and in the end His justice will be mani-
fested to every moral intelligence in the uni-
verse. But this is not the language of science.
It is the prophetic insight of faith. Huxley
solved the problem practically for himself by
taking Aristotle's advice. He lived as if he
were immortal. His ethics was the ethics of an
eternal being. In other words, he was an ag-
nostic in name only, though his contemporaries
in the heat of conflict often misunderstood
him.

The truth is, we must live, and we must live
by some kind of belief or disbelief. Now either
the soul persists after death or it does not.
These are the alternatives, there is no other.
You may ignore the whole question, and even
pour contempt on those who expend thought
upon it, but you do not thereby get rid of either
horn of the dilemma, the great Either — Or on
which hang interests unspeakably momentous.
Immortality is either a fact or it is a falsehood.
Do you say: Granted, but I am in no position
to prove it to be one or other, therefore I can

26 THE FUTURE LIFE

make no affirmation either by way of belief or
disbelief. Very well, but you are living as if one
or other were true. Logically you may be en-
titled to the name ** agnostic,'' but in actual
practice you are a believer or a disbeliever.
Thus in the very centre of your life there is a
profound contradiction; thought and conduct,
logic and practice go different roads, and you
are content to be and to do what you are unable
to justify at the bar of reason. Is it in this lame
and impotent conclusion that a doctrine of
agnosticism must land us? It is impossible to
see that it can do otherwise. Only the elect few,
however, are likely to live as if they were im-
mortal, if all the time they suspect themselves
to be only mortal. The majority will more
probably decline upon a matter-of-fact point of
view and will regard the immediate present as
their true and only concern. In other words,
they will act on the belief that the soul is not
immortal. Renouncing vain dreams of the
future, they will be prone to renounce as quix-
otic and inappropriate to such poor and insig-
nificant beings as men are, all those ideals of
self-sacritice, of devotion unto death to some
great cause which have till now been **the foun-
tain-light of all our day, the master-light of all
our seeing.'' In a word, agnosticism is simply

IMMOETALITY AND MODEEN MAN 27

a refuge from the inconveniences of open and
frank discussion and as such is a sign of intel-
lectual pusillanimity. Hence bolder spirits de-
cline the shelter from the storm of critical de-
bate, and come out in the open as the cham-
pions of dogmatic materialism. Among these
may be named Professor Haeckel, Professor
Metchnikoff, and Mr. Edward Clodd.

Professor Haeckel lays dowm three proposi-
tions with all the dogmatic assurance and abso-
lute finality of an ancient Church Council: 1,
there is no living, personal God; 2, the will is
not free; 3, the soul is not immortal. These
assertions deny the three fundamental truths of
religion which from his point of view are the
** three buttresses of superstition.'' All the
proofs of arguments for life after death are
overturned by the conclusions of modern
science, and these in turn may be sununed up
in the now accepted commonplace of physiology
that our mental life is a function of the grey
matter of the brain, from which it follows that
the function vanishes with the dissipation of
its organ. To suppose that thought can sur-
vive the brain would be equivalent to supposing
that the steam in a tea-kettle could survive the
destruction of the tea-kettle. Man is simply a
creature of the natural order. His brain is a

28 THE FUTUEE LIFE

highly organized composite of certain chemical
elements over which gleams a temporary phos-
phorescence, a by-product of molecular activity,
and this by-product we call consciousness. To
Professor Haeckel it seems as absurd to say
that digestion can continue after the stomach
has been destroyed as to say that mind can
persist after the brain has perished. He does
not hesitate to affirm that ^^the belief in the
immortality of the soul is a dogma which is in
hopeless contradiction with the most solid con-
firmed truths of modern science.''^ And Mr.
Joseph McCabe, his English disciple, holds that
when we know more about the brain's structure
and chemistry we may find that they are per-
fectly competent to account for all mental proc-
esses. Metchnikoff in his Nature of Man with
equal hardihood maintains that ^'a future life
has no single argument to support it, and the
non-existence of life after death is in consonance
with the whole range of human knowledge.''

Mr. Edward Clodd, a well-kno\vn contributor
to English ** rationalist" literature, was asked
in 1915 by the editor of the International Psy-
chic Gazette to send a message of comfort to
those bereaved by the war. He replied : ' ' As the
evidence that we possess seems to me conclusive

* Riddle of the Universe, p. 210.

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN MAN 29

against survival after death, I can say nothing
on the lines which you suggest." ^

Now all these pronouncements are specimens
of sheer dogmatism. Where is the evidence that
disproves the persistence of personality after
death? All that is offered us is another dogma
about the existence of *^ substance" which is
named ^' ether": mind and matter are simply
forms or aspects of the one eternal substance.
Throughout the entire universe, in matter and
in mind, there rules the great abstract law of
mechanical causality. ' ^ The monism of the uni-
verse based on the law^ of substance proclaims
the absolute dominion of the great eternal iron
laws." These abstract notions are in no sense
evidence for or against anything. We can sum
them up by saying that the soul's continuance
after death is impossible because it is opposed
to the monistic assumptions of Haeckel's phi-
losophy. The dogmatic materialist not only can
bring forward no evidence against immortality,
he refuses to consider the evidence for it which
is being slowly accumulated by men of the first
distinction in science and philosophy. Nothing
so betrays the narrowness of a certain type
of specialized mind as the determination to ig-
nore the evidence of psychic research on the

* Quoted by J. A. Hill in Man Is a Spirit, p. 13.

30 THE FUTURE LIFE

ground that such evidence avails nothing
against the fundamental principle: conscious-
ness is a function of brain. "When the advocate
of the soul allows that for many minds trained
in laboratory methods the only satisfactory
answer is to isolate the phenomena, to show
proofs of the activity of mind after the material
organism has perished, the dogmatic materialist
declines to follow his cliosoii method of observa-
tion and experiment, on the ground that the
evidence so obtained can be referred either to
fraud, or to the tricks of the subconscious factor
in mind. When such men as Henry Sidgwick,
Arthur J. Balfour, William James, F. W. H.
Myers, Sir Oliver Lodge, Camille Flammarion,
Charles Eichet, James H. Hyslop, William
Crookes — to name only a few — have asserted
after many years' investigation and study that
at least there is a great psychological problem
on the solution of which may depend the most
vital interests of mankind, one may suppose
that a policy of ridicule or of sullen silence
on the part of the dogmatic materialist will
not avail and that sooner or later he will be
forced to face the evidence and to offer some
coherent, intelligible, and acceptable interpre-
tation of it. When that day comes his dogma-
tism will vanish, and he will discover that the

IMMOETALITY AND MODERN MAN 31

universe being mucli more mysterious than lie
had imagined, his categories of thought must
needs be enlarged so as to include the new
phenomena. As James remarks, the universe
will be shown to be a more many-sided affair
than any sect, even the scientific sect, allows for.
In spite, however, of the various influences
making against belief in a life beyond, there are
cheering signs of a turn in the spiritual tide.
The sufferings and bereavements of the war
have recalled the minds of men to the underly-
ing realities of existence. The old yet ever-new
questions demand an answer: Is there a God?
And if so what kind of a Grod is He? Has He
spoken to man? Is there a soul? If so, what
is it? For what purpose are we on this planet?
What is the meaning and end of life? And no
question is more poignant, more laden with the
souPs hopes and fears than this : After death —
what? Hence a new and living interest in the
presuppositions, the conditions, the possibility,
the nature of the future life, has been created.
Ancient solutions, time-worn arguments no
longer tell. The metaphysical theories and ec-
clesiastical doctrines that satisfied our grand-
fathers are as broken reeds today. Yet if an
age is to be judged by the books which it writes
and reads, never were men more anxious to gain

32 THE FUTUKE LIFE

some certain footing amid the uncertainties of
thought about the other side of death than they
are at the present time. It is becoming increas-
ingly difficult to force belief by coercive author-
ity on minds touched by the modern spirit;
nevertheless, the failure of civilization, the in-
stability attaching to what seemed the solid
realities of experience, have driven thought and
hope beyond the earthly horizon in search of an
abiding foundation. The yoke of tradition is
broken, but the free wind of inspiration is
blowing on the highways of the world, and new
hopes are stirring within the human heart.

The rise of the Psychical Research movement
marked by the founding of the English Society
in 1882 under the presidentship of Professor
Henry Sidgwick, probably the most judicial
mind in the England of his day, called attention
to a vast mass of facts ignored by academic
science which point to the existence of super-
normal powers of certain peculiarly endowed
persons called ^'psychics'' or ^^ sensitives.'' It
was believed that science was failing in its
duty to the world as long as these obscure
phenomena were allowed to remain in the
hands of ignorance, fraud, or charlatanry.
Such men as Mr. W. E. Gladstone, Sir O.
Lodge, F. W. H. Myers, John Ruskin, Pro-

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN MAN 33

fessor Barrett, Professor James, Sir W.
Crookes, Mr. Gerald W. Balfour, Mr. Andrew
Lang, Bishop Boyd Carpenter took a great in-
terest in the work, and some of them have made
distinct contributions to psychological science.
Owing mainly to the credulity and superstition
of ordinary spiritualism, and to the fraudulent
devices of many so-called ^'mediums," the
movement in America lags far behind the Eng-
lish movement both in popular support and in
the type of mind enlisted in its advocacy. As an
illustration of the conventional spirit that
reigns in academic circles in America, it may
be mentioned that when some years ago a sum
of money was bequeathed to a certain univer-
sity for the investigation of psychic phenomena,
according to the most approved scientific
methods, the legacy was not accepted until
other seats of learning had been sounded as to
whether the use of money for such a purpose
was seemly and appropriate! The aversion of
the great body of scientific men to psychical
research arises partly from a priori prejudice
against any doctrine which if proved true would
shatter the framework of their views as ^'to
the principles that govern the universe," and
partly, as Professor Barrett says, ^^from a
disregard of the essential difference between

34 THE FUTURE LIFE

physical and psychical science. The only gate-
ways of knowledge according to the former are
the familiar organs of sense, whereas the latter
indicates that these gateways can be occasion-
ally transcended. The main object of physical
science is to measure and forecast, and from its
phenomena life and free will must be eliminated.
Psychical phenomena can neither be measured
nor forecast, as in their case the influence of
life and volition can neither be eliminated nor
foreseen."^ Psychic phenomena may be di-
vided into (1) physical, (2) mental. Some of
the physical type are so astounding as to be
incredible, though attested by men of the
highest scientific standing and of blameless in-
tegrity. Among these may be mentioned: (a)
the tipping of tables with but slight contact of
the hands of a certain number of sitters, (h)
the moving of tables without any contact what-
ever, (c) the increase of weight in a table so
that the muscular strength of a strong man
could not raise it from the ground, (d) the
floating of the table in mid-air during which the
psychic increases in weight by an amount prac-
tically equal to the weight of the table, (e)
rappings in or on a table or on the walls of a
room by which intelligible messages have been

* Psychical Research, p. 34.

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN MAN 35

spelled out.' These rappings vary in loudness
from the slightest taps to blows which shake
the room as though a sledge-hammer were being
wielded by an invisible operator.

But however impressive to the average mind
the physical manifestations may be, the mental
phenomena are likely to be those that will yield
the best results. At all events, these latter
appeal strongly to those interested first and
foremost in survival. They consist of communi-
cations purporting to come from deceased per-
sons through an intermediary spirit called * ' the
control'' who has possession of the psychic's
organism for the time being. The method may
be either oral or written while the psychic is
either in a condition of trance or fully conscious.
Hardly a week passes that a volume does not
appear containing discussions, discourses, and
even highly complicated and artistic stories
which have come by automatic speech or writ-
ing, or through the agency of some mechanical
device, such as the planchette or the ouija board.
An attempt w^ill be made to appraise the value
of this evidence in another part of this book.
Here it suffices to say that as the experiments

' Those interested in the physical phenomena of spiritism
may be referred to C. Flammarion, Les Forces natiirelles in-
connues; Dr. Crawford's Reality of Psychic Phenomena; Von
Schrencic-Notzing, Material isations-phdnomene.

36 THE FUTUEE LIFE

go on and the experimenters grow in skill, mes-
sages have been received so convincing in their
proof of identity to the persons receiving them,
that some of the most critical and cautious ob-
servers have abandoned their doubts and have
proclaimed themselves believers in a life after
death.

With the new interest in the possibility of a
post-mortem existence and under the strain of
intolerable grief created by the war, many un-
happy hearts have tried to find comfort in the
supposed messages from loved ones purporting
to come through mediums who make money out
of their alleged or genuine gift and who are,
therefore, tempted to give something in return
for payment. It may be taken as a safe rule —
suspect the motives of any *' medium'' who
accepts money and at the same time refuses to
put himself or herself under rigid scientific con-
trol. To those in grief and anxious to get into
touch with their loved friends who have passed
over, I would earnestly say: Avoid all pro-
fessional mediums, clairvoyants, and crystal-
gazers, and communicate with the American
Psychical Eesearch Society, the officials of
which will be happy to give wise and trust-
worthy counsel.

Lastly, the expansion and, as it were, de-

IMMORTALITY AND MODERN MAN 37

materialization of the physical universe indi-
rectly makes for belief in the spirituality and
abiding work of personality. Modern science
builds the mighty fabric of organized knowledge
in what turns out to be supersensible realities.
Matter which the popular mind conceives to be
solid and substantial is not what it seems; on
the contrary, it contradicts all that is usually
asserted about it. It resolves itself into centres
of electrical energy. All matter, however dif-
ferent in form, has a common basis. The ulti-
mate atoms, we are now told, consist of units
of negative electricity, and of an equal number
of units of positive electricity; nothing further
has been as yet discovered as to their nature.
This solid unyielding framework of things fades
away into realities that can be apprehended
only by the speculative intellect. There are
depths below depths. Ether, a highly specu-
lative reality, believed to be present in all space,
and to penetrate the densest forms of ordinary
matter, makes possible the propagation of heat,
light, and electrical action. Now the more
mysterious and unsearchable the ways of nature
become, the less incredible is the suspicion that
there is in man a force indestructible like all
other forces and that over him death has not
dominion. Mark the changed attitude toward

38 THE FUTURE LIFE

''miracle'' and the *' supernatural." These
question-begging terms no longer affright us.
We know today that miracles do happen, if by
miracle is meant, as Augustine says, not an
event contrary to nature but only to nature as
we know it. We feel sure that, however ex-
traordinary the event, with wider knowledge it
would be found to fall under the operation of
laws of wider scope than any we are as yet
familiar with. As the universe grows upon us
in depth, in subtle refinement, in approximation
to what we call spirit, the negations of material-
ism lose their weight, and the great idea is tak-
ing possession of many thoughtful persons that
not matter but mind is the ultimate reality; that,
therefore, not death but life is the last word and
everlasting fact.

CHAPTER III

THE DESIKE FOR IMMORTALITY

There is a very popular belief, fostered by
much of our hjTiinoIogy and preaching, that
everybody is intensely desirous of living on
after death; and that even the few who have
abandoned hope of doing so, cannot wholly sup-
press the wish that it were otherwise. Hence, —
so the argument runs, — a desire so universal
cannot but imply the existence of a correspond-
ing reality. **The heart has reasons which the
Eeason cannot understand. The philosopher in
rummaging through the treasure-house of the
soul finds the idea of immortality and also the
desire for it. He cannot help asking if this de-
sire for immortality may not be evidence of
man's capacity for it. If there is an appetite for
life everlasting, the chances are that the appetite
will not go unsatisfied. If the heart's aspira-
tions keep leaping toward eternity, it is not
unlikely that eternity has some blessed thing in'
store.'' ^

* C. E. Jeflferson; Why We May Believe m Life After Death,
pp. 137, 138,

89

40 THE FUTURE LIFE

This argument unquestionably makes a
powerful appeal to the emotions ; but the emo-
tions are not given us in order to guide us to
truth. They have their place in strict subordi-
nation to reason. They can stimulate the ra-
tional powers and lend dynamic force to the
will, but by themselves they are no criterion of
truth. It is not their function to form a path-
way to reality. We shall see a little later what
element of truth lies in the contention. It is
so obscure indeed that it is liable to create illu-
sion and foster unwarranted expectations.

But it may be well to say first a few words
about the primary assertion that the desire for
immortality is universal. All men, we are told,
long for personal continuance after death.

Do they? It is true that the majority of
religions have held up the hope of immortality
before the eyes of men, yet the Hebrew faith, as
the prophets proclaimed it, and the religion of
Buddha in its purest form renounced the
thought, the one teaching that man's real des-
tiny was limited by the grave, the other prom-
ising as the prize to be won, Nirvana, in w^hich
consciousness shall be ''as a blown-out lamp.''
The pessimism of the East, which looks forward
to sheer annihilation, has invaded the West, and
philosophers like Schopenhauer and poets like

THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 41

Thomson and Swinburne have glorified death as
the last and highest word of the universe to its
creature, man.

Leconte de Lisle, the popular French poet,
apostrophizes death as man^s truest friend:
*'Thou, 0 Divine Death, into which everything
returns and is blotted out of being, receive thy
children into thy serene bosom; enfranchize us
from time, number and states, and give back to
us the repose which life has troubled."

Mr. H. G. Wells, who has exchanged agnosti-
cism for an ardent and even belligerent theism,
regards with supreme indifference personal con-
tinuance after death. ^^Many people," he says,
^*seem to find the prospect of a final personal
death unendurable. This impresses me as
egotism. I have no such appetite for a separate
immortality."^ Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, how-
ever much he differs from Mr. Wells on other
matters, agrees with him here. **I have a
strong feeling," he remarks, ^'that I shall be
glad w^hen I am dead and done for — scrapped
at last to make room for somebody better,
cleverer, more perfect than myself."^

Professor J. H. Leuba informs us that of the
highly educated men of scientific temper to

* Ood the Invisible King, preface, p. xix.

' Quoted by J. H. Holmes Is Dearth the Endf, p. 314.

42 THE FUTURE LIFE

whom he put the question whether they desired
immortality, 27 per cent, did not desire it at
all, 39 per cent, desired it moderately, and only
34 per cent, admitted that they desired it
intensely.

Moreover, when appeal is made to the passion
for life we must not forget that sad phenomenon
of our time, the passion for death. Sociological
experts tell us that before the war suicide was
alarmingly on the increase. It is obvious that
only the man who has convinced himself that
death ends all can risk the chance in which so
many of his fellow-men believe, that it does not
end all, and rather than bear the troubles that
he has, prefers those that he knows not of.
When some overwhelming calamity, a bitter
sorrow or an intolerable shame, overtakes the
modern man, he broods on death as a door of
escape.

'*To die — to sleep —
To sleep ! perchance to dream, ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.''

It is the ^'dreams'' that daunt at times the
suicide's purpose. If only he could be sure!
It is the fear lest, after all, the burden he would
lay down may await him behind the veil, that

THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 43

puzzles his will, and gives pause to his resolve.
For one who succeeds in silencing the voice of
nature, there are probably many who draw
back, unable to face the unknown, because by no
means certain that it spells extinction. But
must not facts like these modify the notion of
a universal desire for a future life?

Yet there is something to be said on the other
side. Much of the suppression or renunciation
of a wish for personal immortality springs from
a false or contracted view of the life beyond.
Buddhism was a Gospel of hope to the people
of India. It freed them from the intolerable
incubus of a non-moral universe, of endless
Heavens and Hells, arbitrary in character,
which threatened to crush out the spiritual life.
Better a thousand times the passionless non-
existence of Nirvana than an infinite series of
rewards and punishments which had no organic
connection with the moral states of the saved
or the lost. The same reaction may be found
in the history of Christian thought. Schleier-
macher, whose influence on modern religious
thought has been so far-reaching, is often
quoted as an illustration of how a great Chris-
tian thinker can get along without any convic-
tion as to a life hereafter. But the motive of
his doubt is more significant than the doubt

44 THE FUTURE LIFE

itself. *'The secret selfishness, the hidden
earthly sentiment, the manner in which the
majority of men picture immortality to them-
selves, and their longing after that, seem to me
irreligious ; nay, their wish to be immortal has
no foundation but their aversion to the real
goal of religion. They have no wish to escape
from the familiar limitations and at best long
for wider eyes and better limbs. But God
speaks to them in the words of Scripture: ^He
who loses his life for My sake shall find it.'
They might at least try to begin their life for
the love of God, to sink their own personality
even here and to live in the One and the
Whole.''

In these noble words we read a rejection of
immortality in the interests of religion itself!
But may we not conclude that the wish for per-
sonal survival would re-emerge, if only this
wish could be so formulated as to be worthy
alike of man and of God? Not by the destruc-
tion of the desire, but by its purification from
every taint of meanness and self-seeking, can
man rise to his true dignity as an ethical and
aspiring personality.

The same principle comes to light in the
feeling of Mr. Shaw. He wishes when death
comes to make way for somebody better and

THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 45

abler than himself. Such a thought could
only come to one who conceives of the future
world as purely static, from which the bound-
less possibilities of intellectual and spiritual
growth are excluded. Mr. Shaw has visions of
social betterment, glimpses ideals in art and
literature not yet realized, and knows that
ethically the goal for which he strives is a flying
one. Would he turn away in weariness of soul
from a future life where these prophecies might
receive progressive fulfilment? It is clear that
he is unconsciously carrying over into the world
beyond some undissolved residuum of thought
belonging to the very orthodoxy which he had
imagined himself to have outgrown.

Besides, on this matter there is variety of
experience, and names of weight may be quoted
on the other side. Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson,
whose attitude toward historical Christianity is
as critical and at times as hostile as that of
Mr. Wells or Mr. Shaw, has written words
which show that he stands the poles apart from
the current literary conception. ^^ Western op-
timism in my opinion,'' he says, *4s doomed
unless we can believe that there is more sig-
nificance in individual lives than appears upon
the surface ; that there is a destiny reserved for
them more august than any to which they can

46 THE FUTURE LIFE

attain in their life of threescore years and ten.
On this point I can, of course, speak my own
conviction, — the conviction that at the bottom
of every human soul, even of those that deny it,
there lurks the insatiable hunger for eternity;
that we desire, in Browning's phrase, something
that will

*Make time break
And let us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due;'

and that nothing short of this will ever appear,
in the long run, once men have begun to think
and feel, to be a sufficient justification and
apology for the life into which we are born." ^

Mr. Dickinson's conviction is in line with that
of the greatest master of poetic art in the nine-
teenth century. ^'I can hardly understand,"
says Tennyson, *^how any great imaginative
man, who has deeply lived, suffered, thought
and wrought, can doubt of the soul's continuous
progress in the after-life."^ James Knowles,
the friend of Tennyson, says of him: ^^His be-
lief in personal immortality was passionate — I
think almost the strongest passion he had." ^

* Religion a/nd Immortality, p 43.

•Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son, Vol. I, p.
321.

' Nvneteenth Century, January, 1893.

THE DESIKE FOR IMMORTALITY 47

Or take the testimony of Dr. Felix Adler, the
honored head of the Ethical Culture Movement,
who certainly is not biased by any theological
motive: *'As for myself I admit that I do not
so much desire immortality as that I do not see
how I can escape it. If I as an individual am
actually under obligation to achieve perfection,
if the command, *Be ye therefore perfect,' is
addressed, not only to the human race in gen-
eral, but to every single member of it (and it
is thus that I must interpret the moral im-
perative), then on moral grounds I do not
see how my being can stop short of the attain-
ment marked out for it, of the goal set up
for it.''^

Even in the case of those unhappy souls for
whom life has lost its savour and who turn
from it in disgust, it may well be questioned
whether in every instance the passion for death
is the hope of or belief in extinction. Many a
suicide has left behind him a pathetic prayer for
forgiveness, not from man only, but still more
from God, because of the motive of the deed,
perhaps unbearable mental or physical pain;
perhaps overstrained remorse for some shame-
ful memory, some '^rooted sorrow,'' which no
healing hand could '* pluck from the brain."

* Life and Destiny, pp. 38-39.

48 THE FUTURE LIFE

These prayers, we may well believe, will not go
unheard of the Eternal Compassion, but how
could they ever have been offered by any one
believing that death for him meant eternal un-
consciousness? On the contrary, they imply
that the suppliant believes that there is a world
beyond where he may have to answer for his
act, but he feels that he cannot be worse off
there than here, and that if misery should be-
fall, at least it will not be the misery that now
drowns his being in darkness. And thus it
happens that the suicide called to testify
against our belief turns out not infrequently
to be a witness for it.

On the whole, then, we seem justified in con-
cluding that though the longing for a future
life does not characterize all men, nor is always
at full tide in the experience of any particular
man, yet it does appear, consciously or sub-
consciously, in the great majority of the race,
in one form or another. The desire may thin
out into a vague and uncertain inclination to-
ward a vision but dimly apprehended, or it may
rise into a burning intensity, as in the experi-
ence of the great mystics, in which all finite
interests are consumed; but the desire in some
degree cannot be denied to be an all but uni-
versal possession of humanity. Nor can it be

THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 49

doubted that many, — and they not among the
least critical and reflective of their kind, — find
in this belief and hope the only alternative to
pessimism, the only rational clue to the riddle
of life. It is in the religious history of man
that the hope is seen especially to be a normal
part of man's spiritual experience. From the
animism of the savage up to the most refined
belief of civilized man, the idea of immortality
has been at work, though at certain epochs and
among certain peoples it has fallen under an
eclipse. Not only so, but wherever the creative
energy of mind has functioned at its loftiest
levels of inspiration, as in the prophetic insight
of a Plato, a Goethe, or an Emerson, it has been
unable to brook the thought that at last its
sovereign strength should be laid low in the dust
of a non-spiritual nature.

When we have said all this, it still remains to
ask what bearing it has upon our problem? I
am unable to see that the desire for immortality
has any direct or vital bearing on the fact of
immortality. It seems as though both the de-
fenders and the opponents of the doctrine have
exaggerated the importance of man's desire for
a life in the Beyond, though, of course, for very
different reasons. How can our wishes, what-
ever pragmatic value they may have in our

50 THE FUTURE LIFE

limited experience, be any true index to the ulti-
mate quality of the universe? How do we know
that the order of things is friendly to our long-
ing? The existence of the most insistent long-
ing does not guarantee the reality of the object
longed for.

I may desire to write another ** Hamlet" or
^' Faust" or amass a monstrous fortune or
achieve a thousand and one wonders that would
be eminently serviceable for the w^orld ; but what
warrant do these yearnings offer that they will
find fulfilment? So, too, I may desire to over-
leap the barriers of the grave, yet w^hat avails
it, if the natural order says '^no"? Besides
if I desire a thing, it can only be because I set
a value on it, and this I cannot do unless I
know or suspect something as to its nature. If
I w^ish for a continuance of my personal con-
sciousness after death it must be because I con-
ceive that in some way such continuance will
minister to my well-being. How do I know this?
Who has explored the undiscovered country and
has returned to report upon its nature and char-
acteristics? In short, turn the matter as we
may in our minds, we cannot avoid the conclu-
sion that our desire to live after death is simply
an enlargement of primitive racial instincts,
born of our ancestral reactions to the pressure

THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 51

of natural forces. We want to live on because
on the whole we feel life is good.

What now about the desire, not for life but
for death as a final fact! Do you say: I have
feasted well at the banquet of life ; why should
I not make way for another guest! I am sur-
feited with all that life had to give, aesthetic and
sensuous enjoj^nent, the pleasures of the intel-
lect, the happiness of loving and of being loved.
I am more than satisfied, and now, farewell !

*' Asking no heaven, we fear no fabled hell.
Life is a feast and we have banqueted —
Shall not the worms as well ?

'*The after-silence when the feast is o'er,

And void the places where the minstrels stood,
Differs in nought from what has been before,
And is nor ill, nor good. ' ' ^

To use Mr. Wells's phrase: ^'This impresses
me as egotism.'' What right have you to
imagine that the universe is so constructed as
to gratify your wishes, created by disgust or
indifference for existence? Why should the
world- whole be supposed to be governed by your
sense of sensuous and intellectual repletion?
What about the myriads who have suffered per-

» William Watson: The Great Misgiving.

52 THE FUTURE LIFE

haps the most tragic fate that can befall the
soul, the crushing out, that is to say, of intel-
lectual energies by the brute force of circum-
stance, the sacrifice of all that is divine in life
by the slow corrosion of sordid cares and mean
necessities! Has the universe nothing to say to
these victims of evil fortune except to award
them the crowning sadness of a contemptuous
dismissal to the black night of nothingness ? If
we could convince ourselves of this, we must
resign all hope of understanding the meaning of
life, and the world, ethically considered, is no
longer, in Carlylian phrase, a God's cosmos,
but a Devil's chaos.

If it be said that the desire to survive death
is low and selfish, a vulgar clinging to our own
poor, petty, and constricted interests, the
answer must be that at its best our revolt
against the extinction of the rational spirit is
motived by the agonizing reflection that others
whom we have known and loved, and whose his-
tory has been a benediction to the world, should,
in the plenitude of their moral and rational
powers, be doomed to annihilation. It is
against this unintelligible decree that our
noblest instincts rise up in passionate protest.
Assure me that these other lives, so noble and
so fair, so rich in the beauteous things of the

THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 53

spirit, shall not be quenched in the dust of
death, and if need be, I shall renounce my wish
for my own continuance, and be content to have
it so. *'When a man passionately refuses to
believe that the Svages of virtue' can be dust,
it is often less from any private reckoning about
his ovm wages than from a disinterested aver-
sion to a universe so fundamentally irrational
that 'good for the individual' is not ultimately
identified with universal good. ' ' ^

We conclude, then, that the desire for the
after-life, when purified of its baser alloy, is
more consonant with man's moral and spiritual
integrity than indifference or aversion, yet of
itself cannot constitute a ground of belief. It
is a suggestion, but for the basis of our con-
viction we must look elsewhere.

On the other hand, our desires have their
place in the selection of the ends for which we
live. One man has as much a right to wish for
a future life, in which any virtue acquired here
may go on to perfection, as another man has to
desire wealth and social place in this world. In
both cases, the ideals set before the mind are
constituted by hopes and fears. Were there no
wish for an after-existence, the problem of
human destiny would soon cease to engage our

* Henry Sidgwick: The Methods of Ethics, p. 504.

54 THE FUTURE LIFE

interest; it would die from sheer inanition. A
worthy ambition to live on after death is not
the sign of a moral weakling or of a nature east
in a negative mould. It would be in harmony
with an optimistic view of the world to say that
such a desire ought not to be baulked of its
realization, but whether this is so or not must
be determined by the findings of ethical reflec-
tion, of spiritual intuition, and of such discov-
eries as deeper knowledge of the psychic depths
of personality may reveal.

CHAPTER IV

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF IN IMMORTAIilTY

Death has been called ^Hhe great common-
place, ^ ' but it is a commonplace that never fails
to awaken our astonishment. And perhaps
never so poignantly as today has this challenge
stirred the hearts of men. The premature cut-
ting off of millions that formed the flower of the
race has, as might be expected, created the most
painful reactions in the general mind, and men
are asking as they have never asked before;
What is Death! Is there anything beyond the
veil? If there is something, what is it? Bitter
and painful experiences are driving multitudes
to put these questions, and even in profess-
edly religious circles, the tragic fact is that the
oracles are dumb, and that no articulate answer
is forthcoming. All unconsciously to them-
selves, their traditional faith in a future life
has been slowly undermined and when the day
of adversity has come, they find themselves
without a refuge, staring into the black pit of
despair. Doubtless in all ages belief in immor-
tality has been shadowed with difficulty and mis-

55

56 THE FUTURE LIFE

giving. The obvious phenomena of death, the
inability of the mind to visuaUze the transition
from an incarnate to a discarnate state, or to
picture the form which life assumes in the world
beyond — these have always been sinister argu-
ments even among the uncultivated. Moreover,
immortality has from time to time shared the
fate of other great beliefs, such as God and
Freedom, in accordance with the ruling forces
of any given age. In the period of the Enlight-
enment, for example, which taught man's native
ability to obey the moral law, the autonomy of
his will, and in a word his moral independence,
it is clear that a doctrine of immortality formu-
lated in terms of rewards and punishments
could have no standing. What need of such
extraneous supports, if man has the power to
become virtuous of himself, and has an inborn
tendency to realize the good! No wonder that
the century which had identified immortality
with a scheme of "prize-morality'' should find
the first incredible when it found the second
superfluous.

Now if we look back on the past fifty or sixty
years, we shall find, in addition to those funda-
mental handicaps to belief arising from the
domination exercised over us by the senses and
the failure of imagination to conceive or picture

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 57

the immaterial, certain specific causes at work
which account for the present widespread doubt
and denial. These causes, I believe, will be
found to be three : 1. The breakdown of religious
authority as embodied in codes and laws and
institutions, and more specifically, the dissolu-
tion of the traditional forms in which faith in
immortality has been expressed, under the com-
bined influence of advancing ethical insight and
deeper knowledge of the New Testament. 2.
The rise of modern materialism, which, in the
popular mind, is bound up with the triumphs of
natural science; and more particularly, that
form of materialism which finds in conscious-
ness simply a function of the brain, and there-
fore sharing the fate of the brain. 3. The rise
and spread of Socialism among the wage-
earning classes, and more especially the doc-
trine of Karl Marx and his followers, with its
materialistic conception of history and its re-
sultant denial of spirit in man.

I. THE BREAKDOWN OF THE TRADITIONAL FORM OF
THE IMMORTAL HOPE

Whatever we may hold as to the origin of the
belief in a future life — and it is probable that
this origin is to be found in the ghosts which

58 THE FUTURE LIFE

visited the dreams of savage men — it is not to
be denied that the belief itself has sunk its roots
deep in the soil of religion and has drawn
thence its tenacity and power. Hence it has be-
come a religious phenomenon, and the hope
which it offers to the human heart is shaped by
the specific religion in which it appears ; nor is
it at all certain that these ancient beliefs did
not rest, in many instances, on good and genu-
ine experiences, and we may say: as is the re-
ligion so is the faith in immortality; the higher
the religion the more spiritual is its doctrine of
the future.

Now when we turn to the Christian religion
we are at once struck by the contrast between
the teaching of its Founder and that of His
disciples. The characteristic features of
Christ's treatment of the question are unwaver-
ing and sublime assurance of the fact of im-
mortality with great reserve as to its nature
and precise conditions. Only a few of His say-
ings, and two or three .of His parables enshrine
His convictions about human destiny. Yet He
has so transfigured the beliefs and conceptions
of all who had gone before Him that Chris-
tianity has been justly called the religion of
immortality. The paradox is resolved when we
remember that it was not His teaching only but

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 59

far more his post-mortem appearances to His
followers that created the dynamic of His reli-
gion. Over against the apparent meagreness of
Christ's words stands the rich luxuriance of
visions and doctrines and hopes as seen re-
flected in the writings of Evangelist and
Apostle. Around the simple belief in continued
communion with God beyond death, thus gath-
ered in the course of time a complicated series
of beliefs, taken over for the most part from
Jewish tradition and environment, and handed
down to the modern world as moral and re-
ligious truth. It is the presence of this Jewish
Apocalyptic element in the teaching of the
churches that explains why so many turn away
from all thought about the future life as futile
and hopeless. Moreover, it is to be noted that
the idea of Heaven in the Book of Revelation
reflects the socio-political life of the time.
Heaven is pictured as a palace with spacious
gardens and golden gates, God as a Potentate
clothed with might and majesty, and man as a
being prostrate before Him in reverent sub-
jection. There are, indeed, other elements
created by the new spirit of the Gospel, but
they are incidental and subordinate. ** People
do not believe in a future life,'' writes a well-
known Anglican scholar, ** because the forms

60 THE FUTURE LIFE

in which the belief has been presented to their
minds, seem, on the one hand, to be intel-
lectually untenable, and on the other, to be
unattractive or even repellent. Traditional
pictures of Hell seem morally revolting; while
the Heaven of Sunday School teaching or
popular hymnology is a place which the plain
man does not believe to exist, and which he
would not want to go to, if it did. ' ^ ^ Doubt-
less the symbols of the Book of Revelation,
with its pearly gates and golden streets, its
strange and monstrous animal figures, its em-
phasis on ecstatic worship as the sole occu-
pation of the heavenly world, in brief, its non-
human quality of life, has had much to do with
the present revolt against ecclesiastical teaching
about a state of future existence. A singular
confirmation of this judgment is supplied in
the private letter of an American soldier who
was a member of the Foreign Legion and who
laid down his life in the war. He writes as
follows :

*' Living as we do, with death as a constant com-
panion, has but deepened my conviction of something
after this life. But it has destroyed my belief (what
belief I may have had) in the conventional heaven
and hell of theology. With all reverence, I can think

* B. H. Streeter in Essays on Immortality, p. 135.

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 61

of nothing more deadly than an eternity devoted to
singing, playing, and adoration. A man's soul must
include his capacity for action, work, his creative
faculties, I think; to me our power to imagine and
create is one of the evidences of God in us. That, and
the numbers of young men just on the threshold of
their creative life — musicians, writers, painters — men
who could look at a river and vision and build power
plants and factories; yes, soldiers who could look at
a map and vision armies in place and manoeuvring —
these men, killed, utterly destroyed in a second by a
few ounces of explosives, have made impossible the
belief that all that their minds held is definitely lost
to humanity. I believe that death is followed by life
as sunset is followed by sunrise, but by a life much
more closely related to this one than theological dogma
would have us believe. ..."

But other and deeper causes have been at
work.

To begin with, thoughtful persons have come
to see that death has been overestimated. Its
significance for man's spiritual history has oc-
cupied too great a place in thought and feeling.
How many earnest spirits like Dr. Johnson
have all their lifetime lived under a dark cloud
through the fear that death settled their moral
status in the universe for all eternity ! Popular
thought conceives of death as ushering in the
soul to the presence of the Judge of all, there

62 THE FUTURE LIFE

to undergo trial and receive fit sentence. Thus
death which is an episode in the physical order,
a biological event, is transformed into a spirit-
ual process, with resultant illusions and con-
fusions both in thought and life. Yet a little
reflection would show the unreality of this way
of picturing the meaning of death. If here and
now on ^'this bank and shoal of time" I am not
in the presence of God, then nowhere through-
out the entire cosmos can I ever find Him, or
feel His eye upon me. Five minutes after death
where am I? From the standpoint of spiritual
reality, precisely where I was five minutes be-
fore death. Doubtless death as a physical
process, like all other physical processes, affects
the life of the spirit, for it implies that the
physical organism has been dropped, and that
life is lived under new conditions. But it is one
thing to say this and another and a very dif-
ferent thing to say that a bodily event has
power to work as by magic a profound trans-
formation in all man's spiritual relationships,
in the very texture of the soul-life. This is to
assert what cannot stand the scrutiny of ethics
or of science. The main significance of death
lies in its power to change our environment.
And when traditional theology passes beyond
death and tries to forecast the history of the

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 63

soul in the after-world, it forms a scheme or
framework within which for ages the hopes
and fears of men have moved, but from which
the majority of educated people today turn
away in utter disbelief. They cannot say
with Dante that the pillars of an enduring
Hell have been built upon the love and jus-
tice of God. They do not believe in eternal
torture, that is, in pain that has no meaning and
no end, nor do they find credible, the resurrec-
tion of the physical body, a final Day of Judg-
ment on which human history will be finally
wound up, to be followed by a static Heaven and
Hell, or a Purgatory that is at once artificial
and unethical. If the after-life is to be worthy
of man's reverent trust and hope, it can only be
by our applying- to it those moral categories
which have been found to work in our experi-
ence here and now. One of these great forma-
tive principles is that of growth. Man's person-
ality is never a finished article ; it is a growing
organism. Now to suppose that the world be-
yond the grave is the scene of irrevocable woe
or bliss in which a man enters at death is to
suppose something that offends the moral sense,
because it contradicts all that which our experi-
ence in this world certifies. As Dr. James Ward
remarks : ^'That a man should pass at once from

64 THE FUTURE LIFE

earth to heaven or hell seems irrational and
inequitable ; and the lapse of ages of suspended
consciousness, if this were conceivable, would
not diminish this discontinuity."^ Nor is the
official doctrine of Purgatory in any better
case. For this doctrine is not the rational and
acceptable view of Plato which reappears in
the teaching of such men as Clement of Alex-
andria and Origen that the suffering in Purga-
tory is disciplinary and is profitable for the
correction of morally imperfect habits and for
the purification from the stains contracted
through the defilements of this life; it is the
irrational and unacceptable theory that at death
souls destined for Heaven are in the very in-
stant of death morally transformed, wholly
turned away from all evil and wholly given to
all good, but pass into Purgatory for a space
to expiate in pain the debt which they owe to
justice of God for the sins committed in their
fleshly life. These theories of popular religious
thought, whether Roman or Protestant, are no
longer possible to cultivated men, because they
deny that the history of the soul is an organic
development in which there is a continuity be-
tween the higher and the lower stages of being,
and in which spiritual progress is inconceivable

' The Realm of Ends, p. 406.

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 65

apart from decisions and choices of the moral
will. The most clamant need at the present time
in the sphere of religion is a bold and vigorous
effort at reconstructing the current conceptions
of the future life, by sweeping as rubbish to the
void the pictures and fallacies of Judaic imag-
ination stimulated by Pagan thought, and by
building a fresh and still more compelling and
realistic view of man's destiny upon the teach-
ing of Christ and of those who stood nearest
Him in spirit, and upon the nature of man's
higher life as disclosed by modern reflection.
And those who reject belief in survival because
they no longer expect to hear the trumpet blast
heralding the Last Day, or to see a great white
throne with its apparitors of doom, or to emerge
from the grave clad in a body which they had
laid aside not without some measure of relief,
may be reminded that faith in immortality was
in possession ages before these thoughts entered
the human mind, and therefore can exist when
they have passed into the limbo of oblivion.

II. THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF SCIENTIFIC
MATERIALISM

Materialism or the doctrine that all phe-
nomena, whether physical or psychical, are

66 THE FUTURE LIFE

phenomena of matter in motion, has behind it
a long history, going back to the speculations
of the ancient Greek philosophers, Empedocles
and Democritus, and finding its poet in the
Roman Lucretius, whose motive in writing his
On the Nature of Things was to free men
from the fear of Orcus with its eternal gloom
and suffering, by showing that the soul, made
of attenuated matter, vanished when its constit-
uent particles were dissolved. In the nineteenth
century Tyndall startled his contemporaries by
his assertion that in matter was to be discerned
**the promise and potency of every form and
quality of life/' The history of the universe
has been the history of atoms in motion, and
within these atoms lie all the forces that create
light, heat, electricity, and so forth, each being
convertible into the rest. Everything that has
come to be, mental or physical, lay germinally in
the primeval atom. The modern phase of the
doctrine substitutes units of electricity for the
hard atoms of the older thinkers. But this does
not alter the essence of the argument. These
ultimate entities constitute the stuff of which
the universe is made. The concentration of so
many brilliant minds on the physical sciences,
and the resultant emphasis on the mechanical

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 67

aspect of nature, combined with the revolution-
ary doctrine of Darwin which seemed to com-
plete the materialistic argument by the proof
that man has been developed by an endless
number of minute variations in virtue of the
law of natural selection from his pre-human
ancestry, threatened to sweep the last genera-
tion off its feet and to make materialism trium-
phant among all educated people. But idealism
in a variety of forms during the past quarter
of a century has, it is claimed, turned the tide,
and on all sides w^e are assured that materialism
is dead or dying, at most dragging out a pre-
carious existence in quarters innocent of philo-
sophical speculation, and ignorant of the real
situation in the higher thought of our time. A
lecturer in connection mth the Ethical Culture
Movement has recently told us that ' * no longer
is it left to theology to decry materialism.
Science herself has sounded its death-knell.
Today it is difficult to find a genuinely scien-
tific champion of its thesis as it was fifty years
ago to find an opponent." ^ An Anglican the-
ologian in a book just published assures us that
* * materialism is a ^ creed outworn. ' Fifty years
ago, when physical science was making such

* Faith in a Future Life, by A. Martin, p. 44.

68 THE FUTURE LIFE

rapid advances, it was fashionable. Today it
has ceased to be fashionable and is thoroughly
discredited.''^

The writer of the article on *^ Materialism" in
Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psy-
chology avers that ^^materialism as a dogmatic
system hardly survives in philosophical circles,
although in alliance with Secularism it is no
doubt influential among certain sections of the
working classes and often forms the creed of
the half-educated specialist. " " * ' In dogmatic
form," writes Dr. F. R. Tennant, ^'materialism
is to be found today, perhaps, only in the litera-
ture of secularist 'free' thought. Even the
monism of E. Haeckel which is materialism in
all but name, awakes no enthusiasm among
scientific students in Britain, and is rightly re-
garded as involving an obsolete standpoint."
There can be no doubt that these writers are
serious thinkers who not only believe what they
say, but have grounds for their belief. Yet it
is no less certain that materialism was never
more rampant in scientific circles than it is
today. It was an ancient saying that when
three physicians met, two were always found

' Christianity and Immortality, by V. Storr, p. 23.
' Hastings' Encyclopadia of Religion and Ethics. Art.
Materialism,.

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 69

to be atheists; substitute the word "material-
ists" for "atheists" and you will not be far
from the truth. Owing to the ill odour now
attaching to materialism as though it involved
a certain moral approbrium, scientific men do
not care to label themselves with the name, but
that they are firmly persuaded of the doctrine
and teach it to the youth who attend our
medical schools may be reckoned as certain.
"Almost any of our young psychologists will
tell you," says James, "that only a few be-
lated scholastics or possibly some crack-brained
theosophist or psychical researcher can be
found holding back, and still talking as if mental
phenomena might exist as independent vari-
ables in the world." ^ But the matter has been
recently put to the test in a genuinely scien-
tific style. Professor J. H. Leuba sent out a
questionnaire to groups selected from pub-
lished lists of American scientists and psy-
chologists, and philosophers, with a view to
discover how far the belief in God and immor-
tality still prevailed among the educated classes,
more particularly in college and university
circles. Of those who answered the questions
it was found that 49.4 per cent., among the
physical and biological scientists taken to-

* Human Immortality^ pp. 9, 10.

70 THE FUTURE LIFE

gether, declared themselves either disbelievers
or doubters in regard to belief in immortality.
Of the more eminent as distinguished from men
of lesser reputation, only 36.9 proclaimed them-
selves believers. The biologists produced a
smaller number of believers than the physi-
cists, 50 per cent, being credited to the former,
57 per cent, to the latter. Of the men of
greater standing among the biologists only
25 per cent, avowed their belief in a future
life. Another interesting and significant fact
emerged. Whereas among the physicists and
biologists the number of believers in immor-
tality was substantially larger than that of the
believers in God, among the psychologists the
number of believers in immortality w^as clearly
less than that of the believers in God, 24 per
cent, asserting their belief in God, and 19.8 per
cent, their belief in immortality. Among the
greater psychologists the number of believers
in immortality sinks to 8.8 per cent. Professor
Leuba concludes that ^4n the present phase of
psychological science, the greater one's know^l-
edge of psychic life the more difficult it is to
retain the traditional belief in the continuation
of personality after death.'' To put the results
of the investigation briefly, more than half of
all those who replied to the questions addressed

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 71

to them and over two-thirds of the more eminent
of these rejected belief in immortality/ These
ascertained facts prove that the reassuring ut-
terances of men of philosophical distinction as
to the passing of materialism require critical
discrimination. Inquiry and statistical study
prove the prevalence of denial of survival in
scientific circles as the result of psycho-physio-
logical knowledge implying materialism, and yet
sincere and thoughtful men assure us that this
doctrine is thoroughly discredited except among
the half-educated and scientific amateurs.

How is this apparent contradiction to be ex-
plained? The answer is that the term '^ma-
terialism" is ambiguous and covers ideas that
have no intrinsic connection. Materialism as a
theory of knowledge has been vanquished by
idealism and may be said to be dead, but
materialism as a psycho-physiological solution
of the problem of mind and brain was never
more alive in scientific circles than it is today.
The old doctrine that nothing is in mind except
what enters through the senses w^as shown to
be false by proving that mind had powers which
the senses were not adequate to explain. The

* The Belief in God and Immortality, by James H. Leuba,
pp. 173-281. Dr. Leuba was unable to get any reliable results
from his inquiries in philosophical quarters, as he was unable
to formulate his questions in such a way as to get from the
philosophers clear answers.

72 THE FUTURE LIFE

intellect can rise above the individual percep-
tions and can grasp them as an intelligible
whole. Such an act may well be called ^'crea-
tive"— an act quite impossible to the senses.
Sensationalism, then, has vanished from the
realm of debate, and in that sense materialism
has had its day and has ceased to be. But the
scientific materialist does not wince at this
philosophic victory. For he is not concerned
about the nature of knowledge ; such a problem
he hands over to the metaphysician. What con-
cerns him is to frame an hypothesis, in harmony
with scientific method, which will render intel-
ligible the relation of mind to the bodily organ-
ism. And this hypothesis can be expressed in
a sentence — consciousness is a function of the
brain. It cannot be denied that the normal facts
are on the materialistic side. Universal experi-
ence testifies that consciousness is always asso-
ciated with a physical organism, w^eakens when
the organism weakens, is impaired when the
organism is impaired, and finally disappears
when the organism perishes under the stroke of
death. It is true that the materialist cannot
prove that consciousness is destroyed by
death, but why, he asks, should consciousness
persist when the other functions, the various
chemistries of the body, are stilled forever?

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 73

Now that the full strength of the negative
argument may appear, it may be well to hear
what some of its champions have to say
in its defence. ^'If an individual feeling al-
ways goes with an individual nerve-message,
if a combination or stream of feelings
always goes with a stream of nerve-messages,
does it not follow that when the stream of
nerve-messages is broken up, this stream of
feelings will be broken up also, and will no
longer form consciousness!''^ Haeckel points
to the discovery that in the grey matter of
the brain are located not only the seats of the
central sense-organs, the spheres of touch,
smell, sense, and hearing, but between these the
great organs of mental life, the highest instru-
ments of psychic activity that produce thought
and consciousness,^ and throughout his discus-
sion he assumes as not open to dispute that
when this complex mechanism ceases to func-
tion, all mental activity perishes. That the
organization of mind advances with even pace
along with the organization of brain, is the
merest commonplace. The fortunes of mind
and brain are so interwoven at every moment
that to the scientific observer it is incredible to

' CliflFord, Essays and Lectures, Vol. T, pp. 247-249.
' Riddle of the Universe, p. 65.

74 THE FUTURE LIFE

suppose the escape of consciousness from the
shattered elements of the physical organ. The
general thesis of the mind's dependence on the
body is buttressed in detail by the researches of
the physiologist and the psychologist. ^'The
phenomena of consciousness correspond, ele-
ment for element, to the operations of special
parts of the brain. . . . The destruction of any
piece of the apparatus involves the loss of some
one or other of the vital operations; and the
consequence is that as far as life extends, we
have before us only an organic function, with a
Ding-an-sicli, or an expression of that imagi-
nary entity, the soul. The fundamental propo-
sition . . . carries with it the denial of the
immortality of the soul."^

Now the point to be emphasized is that the
brain is a highly complex structure in which a
vast number of molecules are worked up into
cells with all their marvellous ramifications,
that with the break-up of this composite struc-
ture mind no longer exists. Consciousness ap-
pears with a physical complex called brain and
is never kno^^^l to function apart from it. Must
not consciousness disappear when this complex
is dissolved? As John Fiske writes : ^* We have

* G. E. Diihring, quoted by W. James, Human Immortality,
p. 50.

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 75

no more warrant in experience for supposing
consciousness to exist witliout a nervous system
than we have for supposing tlie properties of
w^ater to exist in a world destitute of hydrogen
and oxygen. ' ' ^

It must be confessed tliat the answers made
to this contention are far from satisfactory.
The familiar argument of idealism, that mat-
ter is not an independent something prior
to thought, but is real only in so far as
it appears to mind, so that, if you abstract
mind from matter, matter ceases to be —
this argument appears to the scientific ma-
terialist to be a mere metaphysical puzzle or
quibble, and he takes his stand on the principle
that for practical purposes reality is directly
perceived. The idealist's reasoning seems an
airy nothing when confronted with the world of
objective facts. Hence, to meet the new situa-
tion the materialist is pointed to the elements of
mental and moral experience. No physical
facts, it is maintained, can explain moral values
and ideals. The higher the stage in human
evolution the more clearly appear in experience
principles which imply that man has other and
more vital interests than the maintenance of his
physical existence. As a rational, self-conscious

* Everlasting Life, p. 55.

76 THE FUTURE LIFE

being, the shaper of his destiny, and the focus,
so to say, of values that cannot be measured by
any material standard, man stands outside the
realm of mechanical necessity, and is not ex-
plicable in terms of brain molecules and nerve
elements. This argument has been set forth
with impressive eloquence and powerful dia-
lectic in the writings of Professor Ward and
Professor Pringle-Pattison. But much as it
appeals to the student of ethics and philosophy,
it fails to persuade the scientific materialist.
For the demand of the student of physiology is
for facts, observed phenomena which may com-
pel him to modify his thesis of the mind's func-
tional dependence on the body. In the absence
of these facts, his hypothesis holds the ground,
and no assertion of man's moral and spiritual
dignity will avail. But the curious and startling
feature of the present situation is that the
idealist acts as if he suspected that he had
achieved only a dubious victory over his an-
tagonist. For, of course, materialism denies
immortality, and if idealism had really inflicted
ruinous defeat on its antagonist, would not the
idealist joyously proclaim to the world the fact
of survival, and bid all men rejoice with him in
the sure and certain hope that death is not the
end? As a matter of fact, the idealist draws no

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 77

such inference in the great majority of cases.
On the contrary, he warns us that undue em-
phasis on a future life augurs an unhealthy
spiritual temperament; that, at best, the belief
is secondary and inferential, and might even
disappear, leaving all ethical and religious in-
terests unaffected! The scientific materialist
may well smile as he sees the impasse in which
the philosopher finds himself, and he goes on his
way, more than ever convinced that philosophy
is a will-o^-the-wisp, and that for him the path
of wisdom is that of observed fact, and induc-
tive method.

Out of this deadlock there is only one way.
It is to refute the materialist by giving him
what he professes to crave, that is to say, facts
open to observation and experiment, just like
the other facts which have created his negation.
These facts are phenomena which go to prove
that consciousness can function apart from the
brain. For men of unscientific temper or of
sternly ethical and religious instincts, such a
proof may not be necessary, though, perhaps,
desirable, but for the man who devotes his life
to the study of brain states and corresponding
mental states, in health and disease, facts alone
have coercive power. Doubts created by science
can be solved only by science. Hence to this

78 THE FUTURE LIFE

extent the problem of immortality is now a
scientific one, and psychical research appears to
be the only serious effort to face the situation.
Only by the slow and tedious accumulation of
facts tending to show that mind works inde-
pendently of the physical organism, can the
scientific materialist be met on his own ground,
and be compelled to surrender. It is highly
significant that the latest defender ^ of the ma-
terialistic denial of immortality admits the
reality of the phenomena of psychic research,
but refers them to telepathic communication be-
tween living persons, apparently forgetting that
this is to explain the obscure by the more ob-
scure. Nevertheless the admission is interest-
ing ; it is likely to prove the first rift in the rock-
ribbed dogmatism of modern materialism.

III. THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN SOCIALISM

Perhaps no movement of the nineteenth cen-
tury has been more potent in the life of vast
masses of men than the rise and spread of
socialism. Its most logical form is that of
scientific socialism as expounded by Karl Marx.
To the strict Marxian, socialism is not merely
an economic doctrine; it is a philosophy of life
and all its relationships. Speaking at the grave

* E. S. P. Haynes in Belief in Immortality.

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 79

of Marx, his friend and co-worker, Engels, ex-
plained the Marxian '^materialistic conception
of history '' to mean that the given ''stage of
economic evolution of a nation or epoch forms
the foundation from which the civil institutions
of the people in question, their ideas of law, of
art, of religion even, have been developed and
according to which they are to be explained —
and not the reverse, as has been done hitherto."
Strict Marxians, therefore, reject belief in im-
mortality on the ground that it is merely a
reflection of the economic situation of the people
among whom it appears. With the establish-
ment of the socialistic Utopia, the idea will
wholly vanish. To be sure, all socialists are
not out-and-out Marxians. Indeed the average
socialist, strange to say, is an unmitigated in-
dividualist in religion, holding apparently that
while all other human motives and institutions
are capable of being socialized, the deepest
motive of all has no sociological function what-
ever ! Unquestionably, the general trend of the
movement has been to conceive of man too much
as an economic, money-grabbing, food-getting
animal. The wage-earner is engaged in the
struggle for an existence. To him the things of
pressing moment are food, clothing, shelter,
houses, land. Socialism has shown him that

80 THE FUTURE LIFE

these things depend on far-reaching interna-
tional and financial conditions. In opposition to
the teaching of many religious bodies that the
supreme concern is the salvation of the soul,
which is quite independent of material condi-
tions, socialism tends to the other extreme and
so emphasizes the improvement of external con-
ditions as to obscure the inner meaning of man's
being, his power to transcend circumstance, ^^to
live a life beyond, to have a hope to die with
dim-descried.'' The life beyond the grave can
offer no economic return; therefore, it must be
denied or relegated to the realm of the negli-
gible. ^ ' When we have attained the good things
of this world," as Goethe observed, ^'it is so
easy to regard those of the next as a delusion
and a snare." Moreover, the struggle for a
redistribution of earthly goods and for a larger
opportunity to get out of the present world w^hat
is in it, is so absorbing and exciting that any
interest in the supersensuous realm distracts
the attention from the real things, the solid and
substantial realities of economics. In other
words, as has been well said, ^'man is to be no
longer, even in his holiday dreamings, an am-
phibious creature, longing somehow for the
boundless ocean, but he is to be simply and
exclusively a land-animal, a creature of earth

HINDRANCES TO BELIEF 81

alone.'' The economic interests of the pro-
letariat loom so large as to eclipse the vision
of another world. Moreover, socialism offers
itself as a substitute for the religion with which
so many of the wage-earning class have broken
in our time. It holds up the ideal of a social-
istic state as an object Avorthy of reverence,
commanding the utter devotion of our lives and
the suppression of all other desires and ambi-
tions. Now, as belief in immortality has become
an essential element in religion as Western
peoples know it, it is obvious that the growth
of the socialistic idea has been hostile to its hold
on large classes of the industrial populations of
the world.

The remedy lies in a twofold direction. The
believer in immortality must show that his faith
is not only compatible with but essential to a
genuine reverence for whatever bears on man's
best life. And he must prove his faith by prov-
ing his interest in the material well-being, the
readjustment of social conditions, the provision
of a larger economic and educational oppor-
tunity for the unprivileged masses. Any pre-
occupation with the other world which curtails
our interest in establishing the Kingdom of God
wherein each shall work according to his ability,
and to each shall be given according to his

82 THE FUTURE LIFE

needs, will in the long run react harmfully on
our conviction that not here but beyond must
the destiny of man find its consummation.

And, on the other hand, the socialist must be
led to see that the implications of his creed are
deeper than he suspects. No programme of
economic reform, no acceleration of material-
istic dreams, can satisfy the spiritual ambitions
of the human spirit that has once realized the
import of libert}^, equality, brotherhood, and
caught a glimpse of the new world wherein
dwelleth righteousness. Such a belief is really
mystical in character. For man is now seen to
belong to a grander order than that of earth ; he
is the focus of eternal values; he escapes our
economic categories and stands forth in his true
being as the citizen of a transcendent world
who here and now is passing through a prepara-
tory discipline and after each task is done, is
haunted by a divine unrest that urges him on to
find his goal beyond the limitations of his ter-
restrial lot. It is paradoxical but true that the
more super-earthly man appears to be, the more
sacred become all his temporal interests and
strivings.

CHAPTER V

THE MORAL. ARGUMENT

The argument which we are now about to dis-
cuss has, perhaps, more than any other, made
widespread and permanent appeal. When all
other reasonings have proved but broken reeds,
the argument based on the nature of man as a
moral being has afforded a rational foundation
from which faith might make its venture. It
has also the singular merit of being the one
argument on which such a speculative genius as
Immanuel Kant was willing to stake the eternal
hopes of humanity. The form, indeed, in which
he propounded it is no longer acceptable; it
shares in the doctrinaire and abstract quality of
eighteenth century thought. *'From the moral
law implied in the practical reason, '^ says Kant,
*^ comes a demand for an ultimate harmony be-
tween happiness and virtue ; but this harmony
is unattainable in this life, owing to man's
fleshly weakness, therefore there must be a life
after death where man may find an opportunity
for the achievement of his endless task."

83

84 THE FUTURE LIFE

Translate this into modern language and it
means that nature imposes on every man the
duty of realizing the ideal of his life, but this
ideal is really infinite in scope. The more it is
pursued, the further it seems to fly before us.
It is an everlasting task to which man by the
very constitution of his being is committed.
Now a universe in which the moral ideal sets
up such a claim must give sufficient space for
man to fulfil it in a world perfectly harmonious
with it. Such an opportunity is denied the
servant of the ideal if death ends all. It is,
therefore, an ethical necessity that death, so far
from ending all, should prove a pathway into
a more abundant, completer, and richer life.
When certain dubious elements which have
been associated with the argument have been
cleared away, it can be stated in a form which
still carries a large measure of conviction to
those possessed of healthy ethical instincts.
Too often an undue emphasis has been placed
on future rewards and punishments, as though
virtue were a sort of prudential insurance
against the possibilities of woe in a future
world. Nowadays, we have come to see that
a good life is intrinsically good and an evil life
is intrinsically evil apart from any consequences
whatever ; and we are called to realize goodness

THE MORAL ARGUMENT 85

in thought and conduct without an eye to any
ulterior benefits. Of two men, one who avoids
evil from fear of consequences or hope of re-
ward is, we feel, inferior morally to him who
says, ^'I will do what is right because my con-
science and reason tell me it is right, and I will
do it without regard to any external reward
whatever because the very doing of it satisfies
my nature/' Five centuries before Christ, a
great Oriental teacher proclaimed the necessity
of renouncing the idea of performing right
deeds from the motive of winning heaven and
avoiding hell, if one were to be really virtuous.
It is to be feared that there are multitudes that
have not as yet learned the lesson of the ancient
sage.

Moreover, the theory which would divide the
moral life into two sections, the first of which
is the performance of moral actions in the pres-
ent world, and the second the obtaining of
rewards in the world to come in return for
these actions, must give way to the deeper view
that the present life and the future life are one.
The results of our actions here and now are
realized. The sinner in the very act of violating
his own nature automatically inflicts grievous
loss upon himself; a good man in the very act
of obeying conscience and reason is gaining

86 THE FUTURE LIFE

enlargement of being, a stronger and richer
personality.

And yet at the root of the popular idea is a
truth with which we cannot dispense. It is this
— if goodness is to claim our wholehearted devo-
tion, even to the length of our being willing in
its interest to sacrifice the physical life, the de-
mand of the soul is that goodness must be
worth while. What rational ground for a truly
moral action could there be, if its fruition in
an enhanced personality with all its further
possibilities were at the mercy of an external
and alien power such as death? Motives of
prudence or utilitarian considerations would
still be possible, but the prudential and the truly
moral are poles asunder. Tennyson has gone
to the heart of the matter when he says of
virtue :

'*She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of
the just,
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer

sky:
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.*'

The true motives which enter into and
spiritualize a longing for a future life are, as
has been well said, ^Hhat personal affection may

THE MORAL ARGUMENT 87

continue and that moral goodness may grow/'
However many be the links that bind man to
the lower creation, there is one quality which
lifts him out of the animal world and puts him
in a category by himself. It is his power to
form and cherish ideals. These ideals, though
ever changing, are also permanent ; they are the
shaping and determining forces of life. But if
the limits set by man's earthly fate arrest his
progress, death falls as a blight on all the
promise of his nature. For the full unfolding
of his powers he needs a world of larger scope
than this. What kind of a universe would it be
if such an opportunity were denied? Would it
be possible to acquit it of cruelty and injustice?
Hence, before we ask, Is man immortal? it is
necessary to ask, What is man? Is he a merely
natural phenomenon to be identified with the
sum-total of his natural impulses? If so, the
verdict against survival is already given. If
man is inextricably implicated in the life of
nature, he shares the destiny of nature. But the
analysis of the human spirit discloses the pres-
ence of powers and capacities which have no
meaning for man conceived simply as a member
of a biological series; the roots of his being
strike deep into a spiritual and transcendental
world. If man is only a terrestrial being

88 THE FUTURE LIFE

whose Mstory is confined to threescore years
and ten, why all those gifts and aptitudes,
those ideal-forming powers by which he tran-
scends these limits, in virtue of which he can
resurrect the buried past or lay the founda-
tions upon which to build the fabric of the
future? There is no relation between his short
earthly history and the magnificence of his
mental and moral endownnents. The ideal set
before him is the perfection of all his powers,
the realization of his true selfhood, and this
ideal demands fulfilment. As he progresses
in experience and the good for which he strives
ceases to be material, it takes the form more
and more of a spiritual self. This idealism is
not an accident ; it belongs to the inmost essence
of his being. From this point of view we can
see that man does not need to wait for death,
in order to be ushered into the immortal life.
He is already a citizen of an eternal world and
his every act is the act of a person to whom
death is an irrelevance.

Now here is the strange paradox; this *' finite-
infinite" being is set in a world which hedges
him in on every side, mocks at his enthusiasm,
and pours contempt on all the flights of his
idealizing imagination. Hence the tragic pathos
of human existence. Man is beset behind and

THE MOEAL ARGUMENT 89

before by forces that deny the possibility of
realization of his ideals. Consider the fact that
about one-sixth of all who are born die before
reason begins to unfold itself. Think of it, that
myriads start life already handicapped in body
or in mind, or in both; that even the few who
have every gift that nature and heredity and
circumstance can bestow are yet at the mercy of
a thousand adverse influences and know well
that they have scarcely learned the first neces-
sary lessons before their time is up and they
pass, leaving behind them only hints of what
they might have done. ''Man goes to his
grave,'' says Bossuet, ''dragging the chain of
his broken hopes." Has not our own time
brought home to us this thought as never be-
fore? Think of the millions of youths cut off
in the springtime of their lives, having scarcely
had time to do more than reveal the presence of
capacity, the promise of what might have been.
The fragmentariness of life, its tragic inade-
quacy to meet the most clamant needs of the
soul, the fact that our most precious possessions
are at the mercy of the accidental and the un-
preventable — all this has no meaning except in
the light of man's persistent conviction that he
belongs by nature to another world; that this
other world is his true home and destiny.

90 THE FUTURE LIFE

From another point of view, we are led to the
same conclusion. The only ideal worthy of man
as a rational being is the ideal of moral perfec-
tion. He is committed by the necessities of his
nature to a struggle — a struggle in very truth
for his soul. But his striving is never finished;
it is an endless process. As a given duty is
performed, as an inspiration born of insight is
realized in practice, new obligations are laid
upon the will, nay, the more we advance in
spiritual experience the more clearly we see the
chasm between the ideal and the fulfilment. A
St. Paul can ciy out, ^^0 wretched man that I
am! who shall deliver meV^ And again, ^*Not
as though I had already attained, either were
already perfect, but I follow on.''

In every man there are two selves — a better
and a worse. The Vv^orse self is created out of
instinct and sense, the better self out of intellect
and moral will. It is the duty of every man to
make the former subservient to the latter, to
find in intellectual and moral activity the true
sphere of his desires and aspirations, but this
task is infinite. How is he to achieve it, if the
limits of his earthly lot mark all the time at his
disposal? And if he does not achieve it, is there
a sadder tragedy imaginable? Ever^^vherc else
in the organic realm, there is a proportion be-

THE MORAL ARGUMENT 91

tween a creature's capacities and the scope of
its life. Why is man doomed to incompleteness ?
It has been said, indeed, that if one took a fair
and dispassionate view of one's moral short-
comings, the thought of another life wherein
these would reappear might seem far from a
thing to be desired. In order to disenchant
man of the hopes of a future after death,
writers have painted him in colours drawn from
the weaker and baser side of his history and yet
man feels that there is a residual capacity, a
reserve of moral force, if only it could be set
free, strong to regenerate, to build anew the city
of his dreams. Who has not heard the pathetic
cry of many a sorrowful spirit, '^If I had my
life to live over again, what a different man I
would be?" Wliat if it should turn out that
beyond death there awaits us a new opportunity
in another environment to make good the fail-
ures which here we deplore?

When we turn to the affectional side of
human nature, we find in harmony with the
greater poets of all time a principle which is
ultimate and for the satisfaction of which only
a boundless future seems adequate. It is the
principle of love. This feeling alone gives value
to life's experiences. But the very essence of
love lies in personal relationships. Now death

92 THE FUTURE LIFE

puts an end to these relationships. What then
becomes of love and what of the worth of life
dependent on love! It may be said that if death
takes one friend, life can give us another. But
where love has been truly spiritual, implying the
deepest and most vital communion, nothing can
take its place. Love is not transferable ; it finds
in the being loved a uniqueness, an individual-
ity, a something that cannot be transcended by
any other object or being. ^'The whole conduct
of men," writes Professor Coe, ^' shows that
the personal-social relationships that they most
value they do desire to continue. One does not
mllingly lose friend A, even if one is convinced
that an equally good friend B is ready to take
A's place. Love individualizes the object to
which it attaches itself, so that something of the
value is lost if the individual perishes.''^ If
death brings final destruction of personal rela-
tionships, then love, using the word in its
highest sense, makes demands and by its very
nature sets up claims which are incompatible
with the necessities of our earthly lot.

And here it may be worth while to point out
that if men value mainly the other life because
of the possibility it offers for the renewal of
those social relationships which death dissolves,

* The Psychology of Religion, p. 295.

THE MORAL ARGUMENT 93

we must reverse the popular judgment as to the
relative superiority of the pursuit of knowledge
over the activity of the affections. To know the
world Avithout and the world within is a noble
ambition, but to love our brothers is still nobler.
We are justified in asserting that the full possi-
bilities of man's nature can be realized only in
proportion as he enters into the joys and re-
sponsibilities of an associated life. The history
of the past, the long story of the development
of civilization confirms the judgment expressed
by man in his desire, because of social reasons,
for immortality, and both assert that the highest
act of man is to love and serve his fellows. It
is needless to add that this idea is revolution-
ary in character. Once it is realized all our
social problems are solved. Classism and
pseudo-nationalism and war vanish from the
earth and a pure democracy is at last set up
among men.

It will be found that as a rule men of strong
ethical instincts cherish the conviction that
somehow beyond death an opportunity will be
given them to go on with the work of soul-
making, of realizing possibilities which here on
earth have only begun to reveal themselves.
This unconquerable intuition or feeling seizes
those who have surrendered to the spell of the

94 THE FUTUKE LIFE

ideal, who strive after spiritual perfection. But
this ideal can never be satisfied. As the years
pass, it grows wider and wider and death steps
in to arrest the souPs upward progress and ap-
parently to put to confusion all its endeavour.
If the universe is more than a soulless machine
grinding out life and death with grim indif-
ference, if it is at heart moral, we must believe
that its highest creature and revealer — man —
will have the chance to pursue his spiritual task,
to work out his destiny, to achieve the end for
which nature designed him. Every one who has
entered on the higher life knows that all the
moral phenomena which he has as yet produced
have failed to exhaust his capacities or to
express fully his personality. There are depths
within depths, dormant energies which even in
this life, under fit stimulus, at times awake
and with revolutionary violence transform
thought, affection, desire. ^^ Within every
man's thought," says Emerson, *4s a higher
thought ; \vithin the character he exhibits today,
a higher character." And if man's nature is
thus a constant process of evolution, shall death
stay the onward march of the spirit and pro-
claim the mastery of matter over all moral
values? If so, we must believe that we are
living in a universe governed by unreason.

THE MORAL AEGUMENT 95

There can be no doubt that the argument out-
lined above has considerable weight and must
command the sympathy of all who reflect upon
the meaning and purpose of life. Our deepest
experience is our moral experience. In it we
must believe there is a revelation of ultimate
truth and this experience demands a future life
as its necessary presupposition. Yet it must be
confessed that the argument labours under some
weaknesses which impair its value as a demon-
stration. Clearly it rests on a philosophical
faith — the faith that at bottom the universe is
a rational whole based throughout on ethical
principles which we can read for ourselves.
Else there is no guarantee that the moral de-
mand of man's nature will be satisfied. But
this faith in essential morality of the universe
seems to rest upon another faith — faith in God,
the Eternal Ground of all existence, Whose
moral perfections are to be discerned in nature
and humanity. Then comes the doubt whether
the world as we know it presents a scene where
only benevolence, love, goodness, and the vari-
ous attributes that we call divine may be seen,
and thus the foundation of our argument seems
infected with a misgiving. It may be true that
**He who has seen the sea and the blue of
heaven and the moon and the stars, who has

96 THE FUTURE LIFE

climbed a mountain, who has heard a bird in
the woods, who has known a mother — he will
bow his knee and thank his God and call life
good, even though his lot in the end be nothing-
ness;'' ^ yet we cannot forbear asking: what of
the multitudes who have never known these
aesthetic and social joys, who have never tasted
of happiness but who have drunk to the dregs
the cup of misery all through the weary years?
Will you tell these to bow the knee and offer a
prayer of thanks to the Power that has placed
them here, if this be the full portion assigned
them? It may well be that in order to vindicate
the universe as rational, or, in religious terms,
to justify God at the bar of human intelligence
as perfectly good, we must first of all prove im-
mortality. A new world must be called in to
redress the balance of the old.

But there is another and a still more serious
drawback; our reasoning here is based on the
belief that the universe will preserve what is
valuable, all else being cast on the dust heap.
This argument is strong as applied to the case
of all who have entered upon the higher life and
who have begun to taste some of its experiences.

* J. n. Stirling, quoted by A. S. Pringle-Pattison in The
Idea of God, p. 45.

THE MORAL ARGUMENT 97

These may well claim the right of continuance
as elements of value in the moral world. But
what of those who have never risen one step
above the animal life? What of the depraved,
flung into a world that owns them not, the chil-
dren of a base heredity reared in filthy sur-
roundings, breathing from birth an atmosphere
poisoned with the fumes of sin and shame?
What of the victims of alcohol, morphine, co-
caine, who cry for freedom from a slavery that
too often circumstance and hereditary weakness
have made inevitable f Can the universe refuse
to hear their cry and will it coldly decline to
give them another chance, even though they are
realized worth less than nothing? In shuf-
fling off this mortal coil must they not shuffle
off existence itself as valueless to God and man!
So it would seem and yet a protest arises up
within us that cannot be silenced. What if even
in these misguided souls there are possibilities
thwarted here which may well blossom into
virtue and honour hereafter? It is hard — nay,
we must hold it is impossible — to kill the divine
life, to quench the spark increate in the human
soul. Prince Kropotkin tells a story in Mutual
Aid as a Factor in Evolution of a French con-
vict who escaped from prison. He lay concealed

98 THE FUTURE LIFE

all night in a ditch close by a small village,
probably intending to steal something to help
him on his way. As he was lying in the ditch a
fire broke out in the village. He saw a woman
run out of one of the burning houses, and heard
her piercing cries for help to save a child in the
upper story. The escaped prisoner dashed out
of his retreat, made his way through the fire, and
w^ith scalded face and burning clothes, brought
the child safely out and restored him to his
mother. The village officials had him arrested
and returned to prison. Kropotkin speaks of
the act as the result of an impulse of the natural
man, and not to be attributed to any inspiration
of ^'divine grace.'' But the ''natural man" is
an abstraction. He has never been seen any-
where except in the pages of theologians and
philosophers, and he could not appear even
there were it not that all that is divine in the
real man is left out of account. If self-sacrifice
at the risk of the natural, physical life is not
divine, then there is nothing divine any^vhere in
the realm of human experience. But hope for
the lost is only possible, if we can ascribe to the
universe, or rather to the Power that rules
within it, everlasting compassion, never-failing
goodness. But here again to justify this belief
must it not be that we must prove that this

THE MORAL ARGUMENT 99

world is only the vestibule of another and a
greater world where saving and redeeming
forces may be brought into play for the good of
those whom nature and man have treated so
harshly?

916137

CHAPTER VI

JESUS CHRIST AND THE FUTURE LIFE

The apparent silence of the Founder of Chris-
tianity concerning another life has often been
commented on as strange and enigmatic. Some
have gone so far as to say that, like Buddha, He
was an agnostic on all matters that lay beyond
the earthly horizon, and had no word of wisdom
to offer mankind in answer to its eternal ques-
tion. ^'It is strange,'' says Emerson, ^^that
Jesus is esteemed by mankind the Bringer of
the doctrine of immortality. He is never weak
or sentimental; He is very abstemious of ex-
planation. He never preaches the personal im-
mortality."* Yet it is this Man who has so
quickened the thought of immortality, so
brought it home to the human heart that for
all time His religion is bound up with the asser-
tion that the soul has within it the power of an
endless life. Here is indeed a puzzling paradox.
Only a parable or two, and a few scattered say-
ings on the great theme are all that have come

* Works, vol. viii, p. 330.

100

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTURE LIFE 101

do\vii to us, and yet immortality becomes one of
the great regulative or pivotal ideas of Chris-
tian thought from the apostolic age to modern
times! How is this? Has Christendom mis-
placed the centre of gravity in Christ's teach-
ing? It would be hard to avoid this conclusion
if the contention were right that ethical teach-
ing apart from any doctrine of a future life
formed the sum and substance of Christ's mes-
sage. It would be more true to the facts to say
that His thought and outlook were deter-
mined by belief in the immortal life, that His
religion and His ethics alike would be meaning-
less mthout this basic truth. ^'The Sermon on
the Mount," says Dr. J. H. Hyslop, *'is far
more representative of the primitive Christian
teaching (that is, Christ's own teaching) than
the doctrine of immortality."^ But this con-
trast is unreal and artificial. For the ethical
teaching rests on immortality as its essential
presupposition. It is true that the Christian
belief in life immortal goes back to the resur-
rection of Christ and finds there its strength
and momentum, but the appearances after the
Crucifixion would not have been credible had it
not been for His message and the overwhelming
moral impression which His personality exerted

^ Life After Death, p. 93.

102 THE FUTURE LIFE

on His followers. We fail to recognize this be-
cause the forms in which were cast Christ's
ideas as to the future seem to us foreign and
at times fantastic, though they were the familiar
religious speech of the age to which He be-
longed. The burden of His message is a su-
preme reality w^hich is called *Hhe Kingdom of
God/' or '^the Kingdom of Heaven.'' The
phrase is borrowed from the apocalyptic visions
of contemporary piety, which in turn w^ent back
to the teaching of the prophets, but what con-
cerns us is its meaning for Jesus. Modern
social reformers insist the Kingdom of God
must be set up on earth, and they are right;
but in so far as they forget that no temporal
realization of the ideal can satisfy the demand
of Jesus, they are wrong. To His vision the
Kingdom was the divine order within which true
life was to be realized, a life to which death was
a sheer irrelevance. In the Sermon on the
Mount — in all probability, a collection of
thoughts and sayings originally delivered at
different times — the utterance which stands first
strikes the keynote of the whole: '^ Blessed are
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of
Heaven,"^ or, as in the more original form,
''Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the King-

* Matthew v, 3.

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTURE LIFE 103

dom of God. ^ ' ^ The persons to whom He speaks
were the socially despised, poor peasants and
fisher folk, shut out from the good things of this
world. He opens to them the gates of a new
life of unbounded possibilities. He preaches the
strange wonderful message that poverty was no
barrier to the Kingdom, nay rather, it was at
least a negative preparation for entrance to it.
The failures in this world can be the successes
in the world to come. This message was new,
yet old. Here, as elsewhere, it was not the
function of Jesus to bring unheralded truths to
His hearers. Belief in immortality had been
for two centuries and more a widely accepted
belief among the Jewish people. Only the
worldly and sceptical Sadducee rejected it.
Hence Jesus was not constantly asserting it, but
He sought to purify it from the crudities of popu-
lar thinking, to moralize it, and to show men
how to live so as to prove themselves worthy of
such high destiny. Still more. He not only
taught immortality. He practised it. To Him
the invisible world was more real than physical
objects around Him. Messages, voices, mysteri-
ous signs, supernormal ''guidings^' flashed
from the unseen into the seen, so thin was the
veil that divided the temporal from the tran-

» Luke vi, 20.

104 THE FUTURE LIFE

scendental order. Death was to Him simply an
episode in the onward march of life. He was
not interested as we are in bare survival. His
eye was fixed on life as a spiritual state, as a
condition of moral activity. He told His con-
temporaries that unless their goodness was of
a higher order than that of the professed re-
ligious classes, they would in no wise enter the
Kingdom of Heaven,^ and this Kingdom He
elsewhere identifies with ''eternal life.''^ In
short, as the preacher of a practical religion He
was concerned with immortality mainly as a
motive and safeguard of the spiritual life.

His argument with the Sadducees,^ who de-
nied immortality, was not a logical and reasoned
plea. Rather was it a deep intuition, a far-
reaching glance into the nature of God and of
man. They put to Him a supposed case of a
woman who had married, in accordance with the
Mosaic law, seven brothers in succession, and
the question which seemed to reduce the future
to an absurdity was — whose wife shall she be
in the resurrection! The reply of Jesus at once
rejects the materialistic assumption underlying
the Sadducean contention, and at the same time
asserts a real personal continuance beyond the

^ Matthew v, 20.
' Luke xviii, 18, 24.
• Mark xii. 18-27.

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTUEE LIFE 105

grave. Sex-relations, He intimates, are abol-
ished in the other world, which is the realm of
discarnate spirits. Men and women are as the
angels, that is, the order to which they belong
transcends the present order, and marriage,
birth, and death pass away with all that is
merely physical. The divine resources are not
exhausted in the arrangements of the world
that now is ; they are able to call into existence
new arrangements in another and higher realm.
Thus does He lay down the basis of a spiritual
theory of immortality. Yet He also takes care
to assert the persistence of personality in all the
fulness of its powers. His questioners accepted
the books traditionally ascribed to Moses, and
with something of an argumentum ad hominem
He asks them to reflect on the meaning of a
passage whose authority they did not doubt : "I
am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob ' ' ; His own interpretation
comes like a flash of light: '^God is not the
God of the dead, but of the living.'' Univer-
salize these terms in the light of Christ's teach-
ing as a whole, and He seems to say to the Sad-
ducees, modern as well as ancient: ^'The per-
sonality on which God sets a value cannot be
extinguished in death. The very fact that God
has once sustained and guided the soul is itself

106 THE FUTURE LIFE

the guarantee that He will not fail it in death
and through death.'' Given a God such as
Christ conceived Him to be and immortality
follows as an inevitable inference. God is per-
sonal and holy love ; man is His child. Can we
imagine the Eternal Love permitting the being
loved to lapse into non-existence? Such a
thought introduces a schism into the Divine
nature and casts a blot on the Divine purpose.
If it be said that this reasoning is valid so far
as good men are concerned — but what of the evil
and the base? Immortality may indeed be
predicated of lives that are of spiritual worth
to God, but surely we are not warranted in
extending it to the vicious, the criminal, the
worldly, those who in no sense can be called the
friends of God. Now it is here that we must
recall Christ's attitude toward human nature in
general. He was no sentimentalist. He did not
put on the same level as of equal worth in the
eyes of Heaven the self-sacrificing and the
selfish, the penitent saint and the impenitent
sinner. His ethical sanity was shown on the one
hand in the distinction which He drew between
those who did and those who did not the will
of His Father, and on the other hand, in the
emphasis He placed on the potentialities of the
soul, however degraded and lost to all virtue.

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTURE LIFE 107

It was not the soul at any given moment in its
career which filled His vision, but the glorious
possibilities that lay hidden from the world and
even from the soul itself. Death could not mean
the extinction of the Divine spark, the destruc-
tion of the sleeping potencies of even the most
sinful. On the contrary, it might well mean, and
in a universe governed by the Eternal Good-
ness it ought to mean, the entrance on a ca-
reer of reform and self-discipline whereby
all that was lost might be slowly but surely
regained.

Some five hundred years before Christ Plato
formulated his argument for immortality in the
Phaedo, and as Jowett has pointed out ^ there
is an analogy between the logic of that work and
the argument in the Gospels. Said Plato: **If
the ideas of men are eternal their souls are
eternal, and if not the ideas, not the souls.**
Said Christ: ''If God exists, then the soul exists
after death ; and if there is no God, there is no
existence of the soul after death. * ' It is prob-
able that Plato believed in personal immortal-
ity, at all events in the period immediately suc-
ceeding the death of Socrates. His doctrine of
transmigration, however, with its exclusion of
personal memory, by implication is a denial of

» The Dialogues of Plato, Vol. I, p. 377.

108 THE FUTURE LIFE

personal survival. But most scholars would
say that he failed to prove it. All he succeeded
in establishing was the persistence of the uni-
versal soul, the substance out of which indi-
vidual souls are made. As his latest editor has
said: ''There is nothing to prove that particu-
lar souls in their departure from the body are
not reabsorbed in the universal spirit, merging
their proper consciousness in that common force
of nature which is ever manifesting itself anew
in the power of individual life.'' ^

The truth is that as one reads the Phaedo
one is conscious that Plato is greater than his
arguments. His outlook was limited by the in-
tellectualism which characterized his time and
country. What he strove to vindicate was the
survival of man's rational consciousness,
whereas the belief of Christ conceived of the
future life as the sphere of man's moral activity
and abiding fellowship with God in faith and
service. The really impressive fact is that He
who by general confession stands first in the
order of holiness, preaches the same truth that
lay so close to the deepest interests of the
philosopher who stands first in the order of in-
tellect. No authority indeed, however high, can
compel belief, yet the insights of the incom-

^ E. D. Archer-Hind: Phaedo of Plato, 2d Ed., preface, p. 28.

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTURE LIFE 109

parably great are surely more likely to be
true to reality than the vaticinations of lesser
spirits.

It is obvious that Christ could not communi-
cate precise details as to the exact conditions
of the life beyond, and we may add, He would
not even if He could. He lived in an age and
in a land steeped in superstitious ideas of the
world beyond. It was not His role to vie with
the dreamers and visionaries who revelled in
the bizarre and vainglorious pictures of the
future, and who professed to unveil to the living
world the secrets of the dead. Moreover, even
if to His clairvoyant vision there had been re-
vealed the invisible world of the discarnate, so
that He knew precisely how they lived and what
they did, how could He share His knowledge
with those about Him? Only tlirough sensory
symbols, the means of our present experience,
could these things be told, and scepticism would
have always its plausible arguments wherewith
to explain away the presumed revelations. It
is His glory to have lifted the great fact of
immortality out of dark and superstitious imag-
inings into the clear light of moral truth, and
of the ever-living and necessary laws that gov-
ern the spiritual universe. Hence, while He is
silent as to matters which could only satisfy

110 THE FUTURE LIFE

curiosity, He is not heedless of the imperious
needs of the soul, or of the hopes that give unity
and dignity to life.

But there is another reason for His reserve
as to the place, mode, and conditions of the here-
after. With Him the thought of a life after
death is contained in a thought more august
still, the closeness of the coming Age, the eter-
nal Kingdom of God. To His prophetic spirit
the time was foreshortened. An old world was
djdng, a new one was about to be born. Hence
He regarded all things in the light of this stu-
pendous event. The sceptical reasonings of the
philosopher, the curious questionings of the
common people, seemed to Him the merest
trifling in view of the supreme reality that was
about to burst with the crash of doom on the
world of appearance, and to usher in a new
heaven and a new earth wherein alone
righteousness should dwell. Christ was not a
theosophist preaching to men an occult science,
nor was He concerned with the special difficul-
ties which beset a materialistic age like our own.
On the contrary. He was the Herald of the end,
the Preacher of repentance with a view to en-
trance into a kingdom whose morning was about
to da^vn ; and His whole being was flung into a
delirium of effort to awaken men to a realization

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTURE LIFE 111

of the cosmic event, sublime and glorious be-
yond their utmost power to imagine. What
had He to do with the How and the Why, the
This or the That of the future? He sends out
His disciples to proclaim in tones of trumpet
clearness His w^ord of warning. The time is all
too short, only long enough for repentance. All
questions of an interesting kind about how the
dead fare in their hidden world were swallowed
up in the awe-inspiring expectation that very
soon the gathered generations, past and present,
would enter on a new life of transcendent
blessedness.

In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus,^
the plutocrat who was ^'clothed in fine linen and
fared sumptuously every day" and the poor
man, 'Maid at his gate, full of sores, and desir-
ing to be fed with the crumbs which fell from
the rich man's table,'' we have an imaginative
picture of the law of moral continuity. The
curtain falls upon the life-history of these two
men, and when it lifts again, we find the rich
man in torment and the poor man in blessed-
ness. What is the meaning of the story? Is it
that wealth here means poverty in the world
beyond, and poverty here means wealth there?
So thinks Dr. G. Stanley Hall, who, in his work

* Luke xvi, 19-31.

112 THE FUTURE LIFE

Jesus Christ in the Light of Psychology, re-
marks that ^' there is no intimation that Dives
had any guilt save that of being rich, or that
Lazarus had any merit save poverty, unless
Dives ought to have known and relieved the suf-
fering of Lazarus ; but the next world is simply
one of complemental reversal. Wealth here is
repaid with Hell there and pauperism with
Heaven." ^

One of Martineau's incisive criticisms might
be appropriately applied to this statement: **It
contains the maximum of error in the minimum
of space." A careful reading of the story with
allowance for Christ's method of leaving some-
thing to the imagination of His hearers will
prove that He does not make the incidence of
penalty or suffering in the other world a
mechanical affair, a thing dependent on the
chance of death. He represents the poor man
as laid at the gates of the rich man, desiring to
be fed. Is this not a hint that the sin of the
rich man lay not in his riches, but in his lack
of sympathy with the beggar staring him in the
face day by day? But still more important is
the emphasis on repentance. Why does the rich
man implore Abraham to send Lazarus to his
five brothers on earth that they may repent?

^ Vol II, p. 586.

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTURE LIFE 113

Repent of whatf Of being rich or of failing to
use their riches aright? To ask that question
is to answer it. The rich man is condemned,
then, not because he was rich, but because he
was heartless. He suffers the result of selfish
living. This is the lesson of the parable, and
the idea of immortality is simply called in to
reinforce the moral, not as a truth of indepen-
dent significance to be taught for its own sake.
Christ has thus moralized, as none else has ever
done, the realms of heaven and hell. They are
not static conditions. There is an upward and
a downward movement. The law of moral con-
tinuity holds good there as well as here.
'* Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also
reap." Yet there is impressed on man's spirit-
ual constitution a law of renewal whereby the
very abhorrence for his sin, awakened within
him by the discipline of pain, marks the first
stage of his recovery. And may we not see a
trace of the working of this law in the soul of
the tormented as he begs for some message
from the dead to carry an admonition to his
brethren lest they also should tempt the same
fate? Nor must we suppose that in Christ's
thought all punishment in the future life is on
the same non-moral level. Responsibility goes
hand in hand with privilege. The servant that

114 THE FUTURE LIFE

knew his master's will and did it not shall be
beaten with many stripes, whereas he that knew
it not and did things worthy of stripes shall be
beaten with few stripes.*

It is the weakness of the modern pulpit that
in a natural reaction against the over-emphasis
of an earlier age on the punishments of the
other world and against the exaggerations in
which an unbridled imagination revelled, it
should fall into the opposite error of obscuring
the life after death by vague generalities
wherein the dread effects of selfish living on the
post-mortem future of the soul tend to vanish
from all vital conviction. The extreme and un-
warranted pronouncements of popular evan-
gelism that outrage alike the spirit of a rational
religion and the teaching of sound psychology,
are no valid excuse for the failure of the pulpit
to proclaim, in harmony w^th Christ's thought,
that our desires and deeds have a permanent
effect on character, that every act leaves its
marks, for weal or woe, on the soul and that not
Omnipotence itself can annul the law which
binds suffering to sin. In our fear of introduc-
ing selfish motives into the life of virtue, we
have forgotten that after all we are moral and
intelligent beings, and that the consequences of

^ Luke xii, 47, 48.

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTURE LIFE 115

our acts are in part, at all events, a motive to
action.

Doubtless there is noble truth in the story of
that mysterious woman who was seen once on
the streets of Damascus, bearing in the one
hand a pan of fire and in the other a pitcher of
water. On being asked what she purposed to
do with them, she answered: *^ Burn up Para-
dise and put out the fires of Hell so that men
may do good for the love of God alone.'' Yet
we need not hesitate to affirm that the vast
majority of men have not reached as yet that
peak of perfection, and that therefore we can-
not dispense with such ethical stimulants to
self-improvement as may be afforded by the
contemplation of the indestructible effects on
our spiritual future of what we think and do
here and now.

But perhaps what needs emphasis at the
present time, when ecclesiastical tradition has
so dehumcmized our Lord's thought that the
life beyond has lost its savour for even many
Christians, is that the other world is a world of
truly human relations and activities. Under
the symbols which He uses we discern that the
after-world is a social order. He figures the
relations in which spirits shall stand to each
other as those natural to frank and joyous inter-

116 THE FUTURE LIFE

course. Very significant is the fact that He
selects the homely illustration of a common meal
in order to portray the happiness of the good.
^^They will come from the east and the west,
from the north and the south, and sit down at
table in the Kingdom of God. ' ' ^ Jesus Himself
looked forward to a joyful rendezvous with the
great prophetic spirits of the past, whom He
expected to recognize. He speaks of ^^ Abra-
ham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets in
the Kingdom of God,'' with whom He hoped to
hold converse. His unwavering assurance on
this point as compared with the doubt of
Socrates whether he would meet after death
with the wise and great of the past is due to
that firm hold on the reality of God which the
philosopher could not attain.

Clearly Jesus conceives of the world beyond
the grave as an organized community. He
speaks of eating, drinking, judging, serving, of
scenes of joy and happiness in the presence of
angels — all sjnnbols, no doubt, but sjrmbols
which point to an organized life. Here we have
no neo-platonic flight of the alone to the Alone,
no survival simply of the intellect as philoso-
phers have imagined, but the continuance and

* Luke xiii, 29. Compare the Parable of the Wedding Feast,
Matthew xxii, 1-14.

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTURE LIFE 117

enjo^inent of all truly human powers and facul-
ties. Whatever else the future life may be, at
least it will not be thinner or poorer than the life
we now know.

Within the community there is room for work.
Unselfish service to God and man will char-
acterize the good ; and the greatest will be the
most eminent in serving others. '^My Father
w^orketh up till now, ' ' says Jesus, ' ^ and I work. ' *
And if God and Christ are eternally working,
it follows that those who would resemble them
in spirit will participate in their activities.
Everlasting unemployment would to the human
spirit become an intolerable burden; and too
often the heavenly world has been presented
as a scene of idleness. Yet the law of contin-
uity would suggest that we shall in the world
beyond engage in those pursuits analogous to
those for which w^e have taste and aptitude in
this w^orld. Just as in this life our highest
happiness lies in the exercise of our moral
energies, so in the new world, these energies,
set free from the hampering influences of the
body and inherited or acquired weakness, shall
w^in greater heights of achievement than were
possible to us here. And when we reflect that,
as Christ teaches, there are lesser and greater
in the Kingdom, it is not overstraining the

118 THE FUTURE LIFE

thought to say that no small part of the work
of good men and women in the world to come
will be in the exercise of their philanthropic and
redeeming powers. The weak, the ignorant, the
sinful, the penitent, shall all need help there as
they need it here. Will it not be the joy of the
learned, the strong, the spiritually advanced to
share their good things with the spiritually in-
ferior ?

And what about our relation to those in this
spirit-world? Are they beyond the reach of
our thought and desire? Let us remind our-
selves that the dead live in God even as they
lived in Him when they were in the flesh; and
if we could pray for them and they could pray
for us on this material plane what power has
death to destroy our spiritual fellowship with
them that they are no longer within our physi-
cal ken? Death in itself, be it repeated, is a
physical process and works no metamorphosis
on the human spirit ; not one of our moral and
spiritual relations is altered. To cease to
pray for one who has passed through the ex-
perience of death must mean either that death
is the end or that the world into which it ushers
the soul is static in character, admitting of no
spiritual progress — which latter doctrine robs
the life hereafter of all interest and value to

JESUS CHRIST AND FUTURE LIFE 119

any rational intelligence. Surely it is more in
harmony with right reason and with the genius
of the Christian religion to believe that the
spiritual laws which obtain in the present order
of existence are valid as far as human experi-
ence extends. With our prayers we may follow
our dead into their new life, and we may well
believe that our desires can help them amid
their new duties, experiences, and responsibili-
ties. And may we not add that as long as they
retain memory and consciousness they will not
fail to think of us and to breathe a prayer that
unto us also all may be w^ell?

Thus does the other world open up be-
fore us a sphere, truly human yet freed from
our terrestrial limitations, with endless oppor-
tunity for the divine enterprises of pity,
patience, self-sacrifice, for the unimpeded play
of all our moral energies devoted to the good
of our fellows. Such a world cannot but ap-
peal to our noblest instincts and cannot but
substitute for a languid belief the glowing
ardour of high desires. With this vision of a
future lighted with the radiant hues of hope,
we can gird ourselves for the tasks of the pres-
ent life in assured confidence that no true work
accomplished here shall fail of its spiritual
fruition hereafter.

CHAPTER VII

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD?

**One thing is certain," says Harnack, *^from
this [Christ's] grave has sprung the inde-
structible faith in the overthrow of death and
in an eternal life. . . . Wherever today against
all the impressions of nature there exists a
strong faith in the infinite worth of the soul,
wherever death has lost its terrors, wherever
the sufferings of this world are measured
against a future glory, there is bound up wdth
these vital feelings the conviction that Jesus
Christ has forced His way through death; that
God has awakened Him and raised Him to life
and glory.'' ^ In Christendom, at all events,
wherever faith in a future life is still a vital con-
viction, it is to be traced back to the belief that
Jesus Christ survived bodily death and reap-
peared to certain of His followers. No one dis-
putes the fact that had it not been for faith in
the Resurrection the cause of Jesus would have
perished with Him in His grave. Further, no

* Das Wesen des Christenthums, p. 102.
120

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? 121

one disputes the fact that apart from this faith
it would be impossible to account for the exist-
ence of one of the greatest institutions in his-
tory, the Church, using the term in no narrow
or sectarian sense. And lastly, no one disputes
the fact that between the paralysis of faith, the
utter despair born of the tragedy of the
Master's end, and the beginnings of the vic-
torious campaign which His followers conducted
against the combined forces of ecclesiasticism,
imperialism, and popular superstition, some-
thing happened, and this something they al-
leged to be the Resurrection. Hence the biog-
raphy of Jesus does not end with His death ; it
must include His appearances after death. For
His influence in history took its rise in and is
sustained by the conviction that He manifested
Himself on the material plane after His cruci-
fixion. These facts are beyond all reasonable
doubt, account for them as we may.

But doubts and difficulties begin to emerge as
soon as we seek to understand what precisely
w^e mean by the Resurrection and what value we
are to attach to the historical testimonies
brought forward in its behalf. Very often the
devout Christian confounds his present experi-
ence of Christ as a spiritual force energizing in
his life with the historical fact that Christ rose

122 THE FUTURE LIFE

from the dead in Palestine about 1900 years ago.
We can experience the living mystical Christ
through His influence over our characters. For,
as the unknown author of Theologia Germanica
writes: ^'In so far as a man's life is according
to Christ, Christ Himself dwelleth in him, and
if he hath not the one, neither hath he the other.
For where there is the life of Christ, there is
Christ Himself. ' ' ^ But this mystical experience
has nothing to do with facts of history. These
must be proved by historical witnesses. That
Christ energizes in the moral universe today we
can experience for ourselves; that on the first
Easter morning He rose from the dead is an
historical happening to be established by his-
torical research and study of all available
sources of information. Now^, when we turn to
the New Testament within which all the acces-
sible testimony is to be found, w^e discern two
main traditions, one handed down in the
Gospels, confused, discrepant, and clearly con-
sisting of divergent reports originating in dif-
ferent quarters of the Christian community, but
bearing witness in essence to one sublime cer-
tainty: ^^He is risen. It is He Himself and not
some visual shade that we have seen. The same
Jesus that we knew and loved w^hen He lived

* Chapter xlvi.

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? 123

amongst us, manifested Himself to us by in-
fallible proofs." It would be easy to draw up
a rather formidable list of discrepancies be-
tween the narratives of the four Gospels, and
a vast amount of ingenuity has been spent in
disentangling the various strands of tradition
that have been so greatly confused. But hap-
pily we are not dependent on these stories which
are the source of our most perplexing difficulties
today. We have another, a simpler and an
absolutely authentic account by St. Paul, who
wrote his First Epistle to the Corinthians some
twenty-five years after the Crucifixion. This
testimony is the solid rock on which the waves
of destructive criticism have dashed in vain.
The present writer believes that any open and
candid mind, propossessed with no dogmatic
assumptions against the survival of the soul
after death, can convince itself that Christ
emerged from the realm of the dead, and mani-
fested Himself on the material plane to certain
witnesses, by concentrating attention on what
Paul has to say in the light of modern reflection,
using the Gospel records as subsidiary and cor-
roborative. All his authentic letters rest on and
imply his own direct and immediate experience
of the actuality of the Resurrection. The most
famous and the most cogent passage is, as has

124 THE FUTURE LIFE

been indicated, the fifteenth chapter of the First
Epistle to the Corinthians, verses 3-8, 11. Here
are his words in Dr. Moffatt's well-known trans-
lation: ^' First and foremost, I passed on to you
w^hat I had myself received, namely, that Christ
died for our sins as the scriptures had said, that
he was buried, that he rose on the third day, as
the scriptures had said, and that he was seen by
Cephas, then by the twelve; after that, he was
seen by over five hundred brothers all at once,
the majority of whom survive to this day,
though some have died; after that he was seen
by James, then by all the apostles, and finally,
he w^as seen by myself, by this so-called 'abor-
tion' of an apostle. . . . Such is what we
preach, such is what you believed. ' '

Let us consider this calm and measured state-
ment with a mind free from all dogmatic pre-
possessions and anxious only to learn the
facts.

To begin with, the Apostle is not proclaiming
a new idea which he wishes to commend to
doubting or sceptical minds. On the contrary,
he is setting forth the common faith of the
Christian Society, the faith which he had him-
self received, and which the Christians at
Corinth had believed through the agency of his
preaching. His experience w^as not a private

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD! 125

matter. It was one which he shared with Peter
and James and the rest. If it be asked what
opportunity he had for learning what they had
witnessed, it suffices to point to Paul's own
statement that he spent a fortnight at Peter's
house in Jerusalem a few years after the Cruci-
fixion.^

It is to be further noted that the Apostle does
not describe the Resurrection. ^^He rose on
the third day." Rose from where I And how
did He rise? Paul is silent. All w^e know is
that He rose from among the dead, or departed
spirits, into light and glory. And as this event
took place in the invisible world, it is obvious
that no description of its mode or conditions is
possible. In a later part of the chapter he
argues for the resurrection of the body, but not
the body laid in the grave (that is flesh and
blood which cannot inherit the heavenly world),
but another and a different body. We infer,
then, that Paul would have us know that Jesus
rose out of the world of spirits in a new and
spiritual embodiment.

But what Paul emphasizes is not Christ's act
of rising from the dead. It is His appearances
that he stresses. And the appearances which
he records are six in number. This does not

^ Galatians i, 18, 19.

126 THE FUTURE LIFE

mean that there were not others, it only means
that these are cited as known to the Apostle
and as constituting^ a solid defence of the central
truth of the Christian religion. He ' ' appeared ' *
to Peter, to the Twelve, to more than five hun-
dred members of the Christian community at
one time, to James, to all the Apostles, and
finally, to Paul himself. The appearances to
Peter and to the Twelve are corroborated by the
tradition preserved in the Gospel of Luke.^ If
St. Paul had not been sure of what he w^as say-
ing, how could he, while Peter and a majority
of the more than five hundred referred to were
alive, proclaim the fact of the appearances as
witnessed by them?

When we consider the psychological situation
created by Christ's tragic end, implying as it
did the refutation of His claim to be the ap-
pointed Messenger of Heaven, and the utter
shipwreck of His followers' hopes, to be suc-
ceeded shortly afterwards by a recreated faith
in His divine mission, and by a boundless
courage and an unconquerable moral energy,
the principle of causality demands that a suf-
ficient reason be forthcoming for such a mo-
mentous transformation. Now Paul supplies
the necessary cause. It was the certain and per-

* Chapter xxiv, 34, 36.

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? 127

manent conviction of these witnesses that they
had been in contact with Jesus Himself in all
the fulness of His personal life, and for this
conviction they were prepared, if need be, to
lay down their lives. It was their unshaken
assurance that their risen Master had mani-
fested Himself to one or more of their physical
senses. Modern sceptical writers do not ques-
tion that the disciples believed they saw Jesus
after His death, but they hold that the belief
was a mistaken interpretation of a purely self-
created and subjective phenomenon. What the
disciples really saw was not Jesus nor any other
objective reality whatever, but a reaction of
their own minds under the rebound from de-
spair, a reaction which took the form of, or, as it
w^ere, projected itself as a visual impression.
What they experienced was the creation of a
powerful autosuggestion and is to be explained
by purely psychical processes. It is very sig-
nificant that in the most recent attempt to con-
trovert the reality of Christ's Resurrection,
the writer refuses to face the Pauline
witness. He confines himself to the easy task
of refuting the notion of a physical resur-
rection.^

Now both belief and scepticism are agreed on

* A. W. Martin: Faith in the Future Life.

128 THE FUTURE LIFE

one point : these witnesses had visions of Jesus
after His death. But while the sceptic holds
that the visions were like the dagger which the
heat-oppressed brain of Macbeth conjured up,
''a false creation/' the witnesses themselves
were convinced that what they saw was ^' veri-
dical,'^ that is, truth-telling, and was produced
by the actual presence of the real and veritable
Jesus whom they had seen and heard in the
days of His flesh. Surely the burden of proof
lies with the sceptic. What evidence does he
bring forward to refute the claim of those who
assert that they beheld the form of One who had
died? None. All he can do is to fall back upon
the assumption: ^'dead men do not rise.''
Rather than believe in the possibility of such
an event, it is preferable, he would hold, to
strain psychological possibilities to the break-
ing-point or to throw up the whole problem as
insoluble. But how do we know that dead men
do not rise f We do not know it and the asser-
tion is a mere assumption, and an assumption
which is being called in question more and more
as time passes. If our view of the universe
makes this world a self-contained whole, com-
pletely shut off from the world of the discar-
nate so that we cannot even say with Fechner,
*^ sometimes a little chink does open, suddenly

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? 129

and quickly closes again, in the gate generally
shut up between this world and the next," then
the matter is foredetermined, and discussion is
superfluous. On the other hand, if we have
found reasons to believe that the veil which
hides the other world from us has grown so
thin that to some finer sense than those which
make us aware of physical things has been
revealed a glimpse of a transcendental realm
close to us and crowded with other intelligences,
we can accept the simple and natural view of
Christ ^s friends that He was actually present
and convinced them of His reality. It is a
striking fact that some men of distinction, like
the late Mr. F. W. H. Myers, who had lost faith
in the Resurrection, because of its incompati-
bility with their view of the natural order, have
recovered their faith because of experiences
which compelled them to change their concep-
tion of this order. In his work, Survival of
Human Personality After Bodily Death, this
writer speaking of these experiences says that
*'as a matter of fact our research has led us to
results that have not been negative only but
largely positive. We have shown that amid
much deception and self-deception, fraud and
illusion veritable manifestations do reach us
from beyond the grave. The central claim of

130 THE FUTURE LIFE

Christianity is thus confirmed as never be-
fore/''

Granted, it may be said, that Jesus Christ in
the first century of our era stepped forth from
the invisible into the phenomenal world, what
bearing has that fact today on faith in the life
after death? Now we are in a different situa-
tion from that in which the first Christians
found themselves. They were visited by a
wonderful and soul-transforming experience, a
vision of the Son of Man risen from the dead;
we in this far distant age, with minds prepos-
sessed with a philosophical or scientific world-
view, must grope our way back to the great
event amid manifold historical, critical, and
psychological difficulties. The men of the first
century argued : immortality is a fact, a glori-
ous and palpable reality, filling earth and sky
with its splendour, for we have beheld with our
eyes the face and form of Him who had been
crucified and who had died and had been buried.
We argue : believing as we do in the Fatherhood
of God, in the ethical value of personality, in the
ultimate righteousness of the world-order, we
are constrained to believe in immortality, and
in virtue of this belief we are unable to with-
hold our acceptance of the Pauline testimony

^ Vol. II, p. 288 (italics are mine).

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? 131

that by means of a truth-telling, objectively
valid vision, Jesus Christ manifested Himself
on this earth to hundreds of witnesses. Thus
by our different relations in time to the histori-
cal fact, our spiritual relations cannot but be
affected, so that while the early Christian in-
ferred immortality from the Resurrection, we,
on the contrary, can believe in the Resurrection
because we already believe in immortality.
While this is true, is it not also true that his-
torically belief in Christ's victory over death
has had a powerful influence in putting at the
very heart of the Christian message the mighty
hope of an endless life? For many centuries,
the belief in some kind of existence beyond the
grave was practically universal. Homer, Plato,
Virgil, the Old Testament prophets and his-
torians testify to the popular belief in a world
of shades, pale phantoms, flitting about in
Stygian gloom and sadness. Such a life — if life
it could be called — was no object of desire to
any rational being. It was man's fate, the doom
decreed for him by the inscrutable will of
Heaven. He looked forward to it with fear and
repulsion. It was literally true to say that all
his lifetime he was subject to bondage through
fear of death. But suddenly the dread gave way
to desire. Wherever the Christian message was

132 THE FUTURE LIFE

accepted, the entire psychological climate of
the soul was reversed, and the life beyond be-
came an object of love and longing and aspira-
tion. This is the indubitable fact of history.
And the explanation is at hand. The person-
ality and career of Jesus Christ had brought
home to the human heart the love of God as a
reality which created a new heaven and a new
earth, which energized as a mighty power of
redemption in the lives of men. The tragedy of
the Crucifixion seemed to eclipse this wondrous
sun that had for a space illumined their uni-
verse. But with the reappearance of their de-
parted Master, the love which had shone forth
in His earthly life now rises in new majesty,
reveals its invincible greatness and indestruc-
tible force in that death had to give way before
it. Wherever Christ is, love is. Whatever
world He inhabits, it is filled with the sunshine
of goodness, self-sacrifice, and glory unspeak-
able. Hence there came into the conception of
the life to come a definiteness, a certainty, and
a desirableness which had been hitherto un-
known. And even yet simple and devout souls
throughout Christendom rest on this tradition
in childlike faith, and have an assurance and
inward freedom which more critical natures
often envy. To the average man there is a

DID JESUS KISE FROM THE DEAD! 133

weakness in all our arguments. Elaborate
reasonings, conclusions extracted painfully
from premises which are open to debate, ap-
pear bloodless and remote from reality. Over
against them stands the dark and chilling fact
of the apparently unbroken silence of the ages.
*' Thousands of generations," says Carlyle, ^'all
as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of
time, and there remains no wreck of them any
more, and Pleiades and Arcturus and Orion and
Sirius are still shining in their courses as when
the shepherd first noted them on the plains of
Shinar."

It cannot be denied that one authentic in-
stance of a traveller returned from the land
of spirits would outweigh a thousand specula-
tiv^e arguments which seem weak as gossamer
threads to the soul face to face with death and
the dark unknown. The believer in the Chris-
tian story holds that in one signal case the ever-
lasting silence has been broken, and his faith in
immortality wins thereby an intensity and a
clearness which otherwise would be impossible.
But what about non-Christians, devout Jews,
Buddhists? This argument cannot find them.
What it gains in intension, it loses in ex-
tension. Indeed the argument from Resurrec-
tion to immortality as developed by Paul is

134 THE FUTURE LIFE

concerned only with those who have identified
themselves in thought and life with Jesus
Christ. It does not touch the case of men in
general. His reasoning is not: ^' Jesus ross
from the dead and reappeared on earth, there-
fore all men are immortal/' but it is this:
*' Jesus, as the Head of a new humanity mys-
tically united to Him by faith and a common
spiritual life, rose again, and therein is the
pledge and guarantee that His members shall
also rise again." But this mystical doctrine is
too high even for the great majority of Chris-
tians and to those who have been bred on a
different tradition and within a different fellow-
ship, it is quite unintelligible. But immortality
belongs to man as man, though its spiritual
quality, its blessedness or the reverse, will be
determined by the presence or absence of
Christlike virtues and graces, themselves the
proof that God has not left Himself without a
witness in any human spirit.

What, then, is the real significance of Christ's
Resurrection for belief in an immortal life?
What is its message to men in general? It
offers not only proof of survival but more par-
ticularly it makes survival worth while, an end
to be desired. All the higher religions imply a
doctrine of immortality, a belief that the soul

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD! 135

lives on after the physical organism has per-
ished, or as in the Judaism of Christ's day, that
it lives in the old body, with all its defects and
weaknesses, reanimated and supernaturally re-
stored from the dust of the grave. But what the
Resurrection of Christ oifers to him who can
accept it is the possibihty that every righteous
man, every one who cleaves to what he per-
ceives to be best, will not only live on in the
other world but will win a new embodiment, a
fit medium for nobler and more unimpeded ac-
tivities, and for the enjoyment of those per-
sonal relationships which constitute a truly
human life. It is a revelation not merely of
the fact of survival but of its nature as no
ghostly or abstract continuance after death, as
rather a truly concrete, rich, and manifold
human life. Apart from this revelation we may
conceive of the future life in the manner of the
ultra-idealist as an abstract stream of con-
sciousness functioning in the absolute or as an
idea persisting in the Divine mind or as a series
of mental images connected with an atom which
cannot be destroyed. But ordinary healthy
human nature has no interest in such a future.
These bloodless categories may, perhaps, seem
a very Paradise to the philosopher; it is to be
feared that to the great mass of non-philosophi-

136 THE FUTURE LIFE

cal humanity, they would offer an exceedingly
uninteresting prospect, so much so, indeed, that
men generally would be inclined to say : Rather
no future at all, rather blank non-existence than
a future such as these theories imply. It is in-
deed a curious situation in w^hich modern
thought in regard to the problem of the after-
life finds itself. As in ancient times popular
beliefs robbed the future world of all interest
and value, so is it today with much of our most
respected philosophy. It, too, makes the future
after death abstract, dreary, and far from ap-
petizing. The world beyond the grave was
peopled according to ancient imagination with
vague, weak, ineffectual shades ; the same world,
according to some of our most venerated pro-
fessors of philosophy, is the theatre of an ''un-
earthly ballet" of the thinnest abstractions ever
spun by human brains. In both cases, the future
life, ceasing to interest, ceases to stir hope or
provide stimulus or affect life at any point.
The Christian message where accepted restores
the interest, for it interprets the life to come as
not less but more than the present life, as a
state of being analogous to our present exist-
ence but richer, fuller, intenser, involving a
very plenitude of emotional and intellectual
activity, and of an ever-ascending range of

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? 137

social relationships. Christ came back from the
undiscovered country to this living world as a
friend would visit friends, to reassure them, to
say that all was well, nay more, that their hopes
were far below the sublime reality. Henceforth
that other world meant for them far more than
it had ever done before. They carried over into
it all the wonder and the glory, all the beauty
and the gladness, all the satisfaction to heart
and mind which His ministry among them had
wrought. Is it any wonder that they found the
true home of the soul where lived their heart's
love and admiration? The world of the dead no
longer struck a chill to their souls w^hen they
thought of it. On the contrary, it flung upon
them a great fascination, and inspired them
with an ardent longing. It may be that here
is the open door through which Christianity may
enter and repeat its ancient triumphs. Make
the future life the realization of a man's ideal
strivings, the embodiment of all his highest
aspirations, and it will become an object of
desire, something for which he will surrender
all lesser lures. And among these aspirations
can there be any more worthy of the soul than
the desire for intimate communion with these
higher and more spiritual intelligences that
have blessed the world with their presence and

138 THE FUTURE LIFE

work in it? Such is the thought of one of the
greatest minds of the nineteenth century. ''We
shall, '^ says Fechner, ''enter into close fellow-
ship with the great spirits of those who lived,
in their second stage of life, long before us, but
whose great example and wisdom served to
form our own minds. Thus he w^ho lived here
entirely in Christ will be entirely in Christ here-
after; nor is his individuality to be extinguished
within a higher individuality; nay, he will be
established, and receive new strength, and at
the same time be able to strengthen others."^
To sum up: the signal contribution which
Jesus Christ has made to the teaching about
immortality w^as wrought, partly, by the revela-
tion during His earthly career of what consti-
tuted the immortal life in the highest sense of
the term, the sharing in qualities w^hich are by
their nature deathless, faith, hope, love, peace,
and their allied graces; and partly, by His
triumph over death and self-manifestation in
glorified form to the eyes and hearts of those
who had loved Him and had mourned His tragic
end. His return from the realms of the dead
was not necessary to persuade them of survival ;
like all pious people of the time, they believed
in a post-mortem existence. But it was neces-

» On Life After Deaths p. 67.

DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? 139

sary to dissipate the vagueness and uncertainty
of their ideas, to reassure them, to make clear
that the life to come is a higher stage in the
development of the human spirit for all who
here aspire and strive. Because of this revela-
tion it seemed to them that Christ was the
bringer of real immortality, and strong in this
mighty hope they despised death, even though it
came to them in forms the very thought of which
makes the blood run cold in our veins today, and
they revolutionized the civilization of the em-
pire and set in motion forces which have exer-
cised incalculable influence on the moral life of
humanity. Throughout all the Christian cen-
turies myriads of men and women have found in
death no longer an enemy but a friend, the
opener of the gate through which the soul
passes to the fulfilment of its dearest hopes,
the fruition of its strivings and strugglings
here below.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ARGUMENT FROM PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

A LITTLE while ago it was possible to write
about immortality without deeming it neces-
sary to acknowledge, except, perhaps, by a
perfunctory allusion, the existence of the
Psychical Research movement inaugurated for
the investigation of certain obscure and ab-
normal phenomena which have been generally
relegated to the sphere of superstition and
hysteria. But, as some of the finest and most
acute minds of this generation have concluded
that when a critical sifting has done its w^ork,
there is left a solid block of evidence not
capable of any *^ naturalistic'* explanation, we
can no longer ignore the facts or smile away
the interpretation which competent students
have put upon them. Yet if it were possible
one might be well content to pass the subject
by, for among all the bewildering and perplex-
ing problems that have ever taxed human ^vits,
unquestionably this problem takes a pre-
eminent place. Indeed, it seems presumptuous

140

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 141

for any one who has not spent many years on
personal investigation to offer any judgment
as to its meaning and worth. Psychical re-
search may be, as many think, absurd, but the
way in which its arguments are often answered
is still more absurd. Sneers, ridicule, a priori
dogmatism, such mouth-filling phrases as ^*a
recrudescence of mediaeval superstitution,''
*^a scandal and a disgrace" to the fair name
of science — such things are the fruit of igno-
rance and prejudice. Could anything be more
preposterous than the dictum of the late Pro-
fessor Mtinsterberg that the evidential facts
alleged by psychical research not only do not
exist but can never exist! And what are we to
say of the curt dismissal of the whole question
by Professor A. E. Taylor, member of the
British Academy, as one of fraud or thought-
transference, or if these theories break down,
of possible demoniacal possession."^ Pro-
fessor Taylor does not stay to ask what he
means by thought-transference, whether and to
what extent such a theory has been proved, how
the proving of fraud in one psychic can dis-
prove honesty and high character in another,
nor finally does he reflect whether the activity
of evil spirits may not make credible the

» See The Faith and the War, p. 136.

142 THE FUTURE LIFE

counter-activity of good spirits. The truth is
the philosopher and the man of science enter-
tain a certain general view of the world with
which these alleged facts are incompatible;
therefore, there is a tendency to argue that the
facts themselves are unworthy of notice and
ought to be set aside without more ado.

Mr. Edward Clodd, in his book If a Mayi Die
Shall He Live Again?, gives a list of mediums
detected in fraud and infers that all the
phenomena of spiritualism are the work of
trickery and deception. He fails to notice, how-
ev' er, that while some mediums have been proved
guilty of deliberate and wilful deception, others
in the light of fuller knowledge can be charged
only with unconscious simulation of fraudulent
behaviour. But what is more important, Mr.
Clodd, with all his claims to scientific method,
omits to supply a list of '^sensitives'^ whose
honesty has been placed beyond all dispute
by critical guardianship extended over many
years. The fact appears to be that this
writer approaches the subject with a mind
already prejudiced against the spiritistic doc-
trine.

So, too, with the theologian. As a rule he
approaches the question with certain theories
as to the future life in the back of his mind

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 143

and as the methods and results of psychical
research appear to conflict with these precon-
ceived ideas he holds himself excused from
even examining what may be said in their
favour. This, of course, is not true of all the
representatives of religion. The greatest liv-
ing philosophical divine in the Church of Eng-
land protests against rejecting the support
which may be given alike to the Resurrection
of Christ and to the resurrection of all men by
^* sifted and well-attested evidence of more or
less analogous appearances of the dead or the
dying to their friends.''^ The great majority
of scientists and theologians have built up out
of their favourite conceptions distinct systems
of thought by which they picture to themselves
the universe. The question, of course, is : Are
these systems final or must they not be so modi-
fied as to include the new phenomena, if these
phenomena can be proved to be genuine? The
modern spirit has small patience w^ith dog-
matism and finalities of any kind. Its watch-
word rather is, nothing is impossible, except
the self-contradictory. The advocates of re-
ligious faith should take warning from his-
tory. There are two questions about which
man's curiosity can not be stilled. These are:

* Hastings Rashdall, Doctrine and Development, p. 180.

144 THE FUTUKE LIFE

Whence has he come? and Whither is he going!
When Darwin published his Origin of Species
in 1859, the theological world was shaken to
its foundations. No lover of truth can look
back on that controversy without a sense of
shame and humiliation. Today all men find in
Evolution a master-key of knowledge, and be-
cause of it we understand religion itself better
than we have ever understood it before. It is
a painful reflection that the very arguments
launched against the teaching of Darwin a gen-
eration ago are being refurbished to do duty
against the teaching of Sir Oliver Lodge and
Professor Barrett. Only the other day there
was published the report of an address by a
popular preacher, in which he lifted a warning
voice against the work of the Psychical Re-
search Society on the ground that it is under-
mining the foundations of the Christian re-
ligion and making the Creeds of none effect.
He does not stay to ask — What is the Christian
religion? Nor does he inquire whether the tra-
ditional interpretation of the Creeds is a per-
manently adequate and final presentation of
spiritual truth. It is the old appeal to author-
ity against the claims of a Divine and progress-
ive revolution. There is a saying of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge which that great writer com-

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 145

mends as worthy to be framed and hung up in
the library of every student of religion: *^He
who begins by loving Christianity better than
Truth will proceed by loving his own Sect or
Church better than Christianity, and end in
lo\ing himself better than all."^ Unhappily,
the scientific movement has in the popular mind
been confused with the unscientific cult of
spiritualism. This is one of the main reasons
why, as compared with Great Britain, America
lags so far behind in the investigation of these
abnormal incidents. The average spiritualist
is an exceedingly credulous person, too much
governed by the emotional interests in the life
beyond and prone to construct out of doubtful
material a very portentous edifice. The cre-
dulity, the intellectual incoherence and lack of
proportion, and the deception and self-decep-
tion with which the history of spiritualism has
been disgraced have created a general preju-
dice against the whole subject. It is most un-
fortunate that the term ^' spiritualism '' should
not have been confined to the cult that bears
that name and that the term ''spiritism" should
not have been reserved for the scientific move-
ment. One of the favourite devices of the
critic is to lump together ''spiritualism" as a

* Aids to Reflection, Aphorism LXIII.

146 THE FUTURE LIFE

religion and '^spiritism'' as a scientific theory-
advanced in explanation of certain psychic
phenomena. Psychical researchers are all
branded as ^^ gullible'' and ^'credulous,'' they
insist, and the fruit of their toil is declared to
be '* nauseating dribble'' and ^' banal inanity."
Of course, the answer is at hand. Among the
men of whom these things are said are A. J.
Balfour, Sir W. F. Barrett, William James,
and Henri Bergson.

One of the most impressive facts in the his-
tory of psychic research is this power to con-
vert hard-headed and sceptical and even mate-
rialistically-minded men to views which the
popular mind denounces as '^soft," ^'supersti-
tious," ''absurd." The most recent example
of this transforming power is seen in the well-
known novelist, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who,
in his book, The New Revelation, tells his
experiences :

"When I had finished my medical education
in 1882, I found myself, like many young
medical men, a convinced materialist as re-
gards our personal destiny. I had never ceased
to be an earnest theist, because it seemed to
me that Napoleon's question to the atheistic
professors on the starry night as he voyaged
to Egypt: 'Who was it, gentlemen, who made

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 147

these stars f ' has never been answered. To say-
that the Universe was made by immutable laws
only put the question one degree further back
as to who made the laws. I did not, of course,
believe in an anthropomorphic God, but I be-
lieved then, as I believe now, in an intelligent
Force behind all the operations of Nature — a
force so infinitely complex and great that my
finite brain could get no further than its
existence. Right and wrong I saw also as
great obvious facts which needed no divine
revelation. But when it came to a question of
our little personalities surviving death, it
seemed to me that the whole analogy of Nature
was against it. When the candle burns out the
light disappears. When the electric cell is
shattered the current stops. When the body
dissolves there is an end of the matter. Each
man in his egotism may feel that he ought to
survive, but let him look, we will say, at the
average loafer — of high or low degree — would
any one contend that there was any obvious
reason why that personality should carry on?
It seemed to be a delusion, and I was con-
vinced that death did indeed end all, though I
saw no reason why that should affect our duty
towards humanity during our transitory
existence.

148 THE FUTURE LIFE

^^This was my frame of mind when Spiritual
phenomena first came before my notice.'' ^

Or take the experience of the late F. W. H.
Myers. He began life as an earnest believer
in traditional Christianity, only, however, to
find that later reflection dissolved away the
structure of his faith. The point at which he
especially felt the weakness of his position, was
the question of immortality. He became an
agnostic as to a life after death, but deter-
mined, however, to leave no stone unturned
in his quest for assurance. He turned to
psychical research. Years of self-sacrifice
and laborious effort were at last rewarded:
*'It is only after thirty years of such study
as I have been able to give that I say to myself
at last, Hahes totd quod mente petisti — ^Thou
hast what thy whole heart desired'; — that I
recognize that for me this fresh evidence, —
while raising that great historic incident of the
Resurrection into new credibility, — has also
filled me with a sense of insight and of thank-
fulness such as even my first ardent Chris-
tianity did not bestow." -

Dr. James H. Hyslop, the devoted secretary
of the American Society for Psychical Re-

* The New Fevelation, bv Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, pp. 14-16.
- Proceedings of the English 8.P.R., part XXXVII, p. 114.

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 149

search, has placed on record the story of his
failure to find satisfaction in the traditional
faith of his home and his resolute search for an
abiding foundation on which to build his life :

''But scarcely had those feelings shaped
themselves into resolution when the chilling
breath of scepticism came to cool the ardour
of my hopes. The first step in this direction
was the discovered need for me of revised
biblical interpretation enforced by a little sec-
tarian controversy about amending the Con-
stitution of the United States in favour of
certain religious acknowledgments. The fatal
chapter, however, fixing doubt beyond recovery
was that on the Incarnation and the Resurrec-
tion in Barnes's Evidences of Christianity,
Faith might have had its way had it not sub-
mitted its claims to proof. The very gibes of
religious fanatics and cartoonists against the
doctrine of Darwin strengthened it in my sight,
and every discovery of geology, of physiology,
and of psychology pointed to only one conclu-
sion, that of materialism. I accepted it, not
because it was a desirable philosophy, but be-
cause the evidence of fact was on its side, and
neither the illusions of idealism nor the inter-
ests of religious hope were sufficient to tempt
me into a career of hypocrisy and cowardice. I

150 THE FUTURE LIFE

bad to temporize with many a situation until I
could assure my own mind where it stood. In
the pursuit of some final truth on which to base
a life work I passed through all the labyrinths
of philosophy, losing nothing and gaining noth-
ing in its meshes. After Plato and Aristotle
it seemed to lose its moorings in facts and lived
on tradition and authority. New discoveries
and reconstruction it despised as it would the
occupation of neophytes and children. At last
I was directed to the idealism of Kant for light
and found there a system as helpless as it was
mystifying, though it had been born in the
atmosphere of Swedenborg's distinction be-
tween the transcendental and the phenomenal
and of which it soon became ashamed. In it
the bankruptcy of philosophy was the oppor-
tunity of science, and in a favourable, though
accidental moment my attention was attracted
by psychic research in which the first prospect
of crucial facts presented itself.

^^ However satisfactory philosophy had been
in showing that the meaning of the cosmos was
to be found in the supersensible, whether by
idealism or atomic materialism, the more exact-
ing method of science, which had strengthened
the claims of physical law and causes and
which became the standard of truth, made it

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 151

necessary to regard the residual phenomena
of human experience, if only to corroborate the
inferences which idealism had drawn from the
normal. In fact, whatever the validity of
the older views as possible constructions of
the world, their probability was lost in the face
of the certitudes of science which had multi-
plied evidence for the extension of physical
explanations, and religion had to turn to the
residual phenomena of life, as it had once done,
to vindicate its aspirations and interpretation
of the cosmos. It does not yet clearly see the
direction from which its light is to come. But
in the accumulation of facts within the field of
supernormal phenomena I found the dawn of
another day for an idealism that will last as
long as scientific method can claim respect.''^
The problem of immortality as formulated
by psychical research ought to be carefully
noted. Failure to keep this formulation in
view has led both the average man and the
critical student into much misdirected antago-
nism. The psychical researcher takes up the
question as it has been shaped by modern ma-
terialism, which simply asserts that normally
we know consciousness only in connection with

* Psychical Research and the Resurrection, by James H.
Hyslop, pp. 406-408.

152 THE FUTURE LIFE

a physical organism, and we cease to find any
trace of consciousness as soon as the organism
perishes. As death marks the cessation of all
other functions of the body, why should con-
sciousness be an exception? We do not, indeed,
know what consciousness is, but neither do w^e
know what matter is; and materialism main-
tains that science is concerned primarily not
with the ultimate constitution of either but
with the relation in wiiich the one stands to the
other. Wherever w^e have mind we have a
physical organism; with the dissolution of the
organism, mind ceases to manifest itself, and
the natural inference is that it ceases to exist.
To the convinced materialist, therefore, a fu-
ture life is an absurdity.

Now it is at this stage that the psychical
researcher comes upon the scene. He says to
the materialist: "I accept your argument and I
propose to give you such evidence as will con-
vince all rational persons that individual con-
sciousness does persist after death. This I
shall do by opening np a channel of communi-
cation whereby we may get into touch with a
particular consciousness which may prove its
identity by recalling its earthly memories, and
may satisfy us that we are not listening to the
echoes of our own thoughts but to the veritable

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 153

experiences of a personality which was once
alive on earth and now survives in another
state of being." This is what psychical re-
search claims to do. Whether it has justified
its claim is open to dispute; but, at all events,
we must not blame it for failing to do what it
has never pretended to do. It does not profess
to make clear the nature of the other world,
nor its mode of existence. It throws no light
on the occupations of surviving personalities,
nor does it offer to solve a multitude of ques-
tions which religion and philosophy propound.
In brief, it sets aside all speculation for the
time, and concentrates on the task of obtaining
from deceased persons such information as will
identify them with personalities known to have
lived amongst us. This information must be
of such a character as not to be explicable by
any normal channel of communication and it
must consist of such incidents or facts as are
verifiable and thus capable of proving the
identity of discarnate intelligences, if such
there be.

It is here that so much disappointment is
experienced. We plough our way through a
disheartening mass of trivial and incoherent
details which seem to argue that persons of
known ability and acumen while on earth have

154 THE FUTURE LIFE

undergone a sad deterioration since they
crossed the boundaries of the other world. If
indeed these individuals who claim to speak to
us from the other world are what they profess
to be, why do they convey to us no authentic
tidings of their new environment, why do they
not throw light on the vital problems of our
present existence, on such a question, for
example, as the real relation of mind and body?
If the life in the other world is to be judged
from the Proceedings of the Society, it must
be pronounced flat, stale, and unprofitable. So
it would seem, and yet on further thought we
may have to set aside these questionings as
irrelevant. Why should we suppose that the
transition to the realm beyond death marks an
access of insight into the problems of our
earthly life? Furtlier, if the experts of the
Society are looking not for revelations of
supernal truth but for trivial details of earthly
experience so as to establish the identity of the
presumed communicator, the very insignifi-
cance of the messages may turn out to be a
point in their favour. And as to information
about the nature of the other life, we may
doubt whether it could be given us on this
material plane, except in a misleading form;
and if it were given, how is it to be verified?

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 155

For example, '^George Pelham,'' the most con-
vincing of all the communicators, told Dr.
Richard Hodgson, through Mrs. Piper, that
the organism with which the departing spirit
is supplied is made of luminiferous ether — an
intensely interesting and valuable bit of infor-
mation, if true! But how do w^e know that it
is true? Had Mrs. Piper never heard of the
Epicurean notion of an ^'ethereal" body? Is
it not an easy supposition that her subcon-
sciousness reproduced this doctrine, accrediting
it to George Pelham? In any case, w^e have no
means of proving or disproving the statement.
And the same remark may be applied to the
inspirational utterances with which spiritual-
istic literature abounds. In so far as they are
in harmony with received ideas, they may be
taken as a reflection of the psychic's own
thought, in so far as they are not verifiable,
they are useless as evidence, though, for aught
we can tell, they may be true. What is wanted
is not revelations of the future state for which
we have no test of reality, but memories of
earthly experiences open to inquiry and verifi-
cation. There is one very important fact about
the other world — if it be a fact — concerning
which there is practical unanimity among the
best accredited psychics. Souls leave this

156 THE FUTURE LIFE

world in all stages of moral and intellectual
growth. In the world beyond, there is, we are
told, a vast amount of missionary activity
going on, the more developed helping and
encouraging those of lesser attainments, and
all spirits finding scope and room for the ever-
lasting play of self-sacrifice. Now it is a
curious fact that about fifty years ago a dis-
tinguished Scottish divine, Dr. Eobert Service,
published an essay on A Spiritual Theory of
Another Life^ in which on purely Biblical
and philosophical grounds he defended this
selfsame thesis. Dr. Service would have re-
jected with scorn any testimony from the Mrs.
Pipers of his day, if such had been kno^^^l to
him, yet his contention is a commonplace of
psychical research. Even so, we must ask:
How do we know that it is true? In asserting
it to be true, we are really begging the ques-
tion, for we are assuming that the fact of sur-
vival has been proved, and that we have some
test by which we can verify presumed descrip-
tions of the spiritual activities of surviving
personalities.

When we seek to judge the value of the evi-
dence for communication with the dead, we
are confronted with certain drawbacks under

* Contempora/ry Review, April, 1871.

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 157

which it labours. For one thing, it is generally
agreed that the most convincing items are too
intimate to print. To quote a remark of Mr.
Henry Holt, the well-known New York pub-
lisher, in a private letter to the writer, ^'Nature
seems to have strengthened the partition be-
tween this plane and the next by making the
strongest evidences that death is only a parti-
tion, so intimate that those experiencing them
cannot tell of them." Again the material that
is published loses much of its conviction-
creating power from the fact that the reader
has it at second-hand. There is an elusive
quality about first-hand, direct experiment
which cannot be communicated by any amount
of reading and reflection. Says Dr. Hodgson
in reference to his experience with George Pel-
ham, *^the continual manifestation of this per-
sonality, with its own reservoir of memories,
with its swift appreciation of any reference to
friends of G. P., with its ^give and take' in lit-
tle incidental conversations with myself, has
helped largely in producing a conviction of the
actual presence of the G. P. personality which
it would be quite impossible to impart by any
mere enumeration of verifiable statements. It
will hardly, however, be regarded as surprising
that the most impressive manifestations are at

158 THE FUTURE LIFE

the same time the most subtle and the least
communicable." ^

Still further, not all that claims to be super-
normal is supernormal, nor is all the genuinely-
supernormal to be regarded as evidence for the
existence of discarnate intelligences. Shrewd
guessing, hints unconsciously supplied by the
sitter, fraud, conscious or unconscious, on the
part of the psychic, the vagaries of secondary
personality, chance coincidence, — these and
other influences must be set aside as inadmis-
sible before we can be sure that we are in the
presence of the supernormal. Then, only those
incidents or facts supernormally communicated
that bear upon the personal identity of dead
individuals can be accepted as relevant evi-
dence. In a word, whether we agree or not
with the view which some investigators believe
to be the inevitable result of their inquiries,
we must admit that psychical research is a
genuinely scientific movement. It makes pains-
taking efforts to get at the facts, and as a rule,
allows theory to wait on experiment. Indeed,
the critic who would most effectively deal a
blow at the '^spiritistic" hypothesis, wdll find
the best weapon for that purpose in a careful
perusal of Psychical Eesearch journals and

* Proceedings, Vol. XIII,

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 159

proceedings. For masterpieces of dialectical
skill I know not where one could better go than
to these volumes which for the most part
gather dust on forgotten shelves.

In the next chapter will be given some speci-
mens of the sort of evidence which the
psychical researcher offers in support of his
contention. The reader must have in mind
that to do justice even to these narratives, it
is necessary to study them as they are fully set
forth in the original sources of information, and
further, that the evidence now accumulated is
so bulky that few men can afford the requisite
time to study it. Various books giving selec-
tions from this literature have been published,
the earliest and greatest of which is F. W. H.
Myers's Survival of Human Personality After
Bodily Death. The evidence is not all in by
any means, but enough is open to the study of
those w^ho are interested in the problems in-
volved to force the issue of causation. It
would appear that there are at present only
two possible hypotheses: either we must accept
a far-reaching doctrine of telepatliy, or, we
must hold that under certain conditions, an oc-
casional message, at least, gets through to our
world from the realms beyond. There does not
appear to be any escape from the choice thus

160 THE FUTURE LIFE

thrust upon us, yet, whether we accept one or
other, doubts and difficulties beset us. In the
view of the present writer it is a case of bal-
ancing probabilities.

1. The telepathic hypothesis.

By *' telepathy" is meant the transmission of
thought or feeling from mind to mind independ-
ently of the recognized channels of sense. It
will be noted that there is nothing explanatory
in this definition or description. The word
^* telepathy" is a convenient symbol to cover
coincidences between living minds not due to
chance ; but we have not even an inkling of the
process by which these coincidences come
about. In calling in telepathy as an explana-
tion, we appear to be appealing from the
obscure to the still more obscure. Speaking
generally, ^'official" science rejects as pure
fancy the alleged facts connoted by the term.
For example. Professor Armstrong, w^ho writes
a postscript to Mr. Clodd's If a Man Die
Shall He Live Again?, brackets together
*^ telepathy" and *^ spiritualism" and de-
nounces both as popular superstitions. There
is no such thing (he holds) as action of mind
upon mind apart from the recognized chan-
nels of sense, except such as are explicable by
shrewd guessing. We have, as a result, the

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 161

amusing spectacle of distinguished men of
science appealing to telepathy in order to
render the spiritistic theory superfluous, and of
equally distinguished men of science rejecting
telepathy as unproved and (as some think)
unprovable. To make confusion worse con-
founded such a competent investigator as Mrs.
Henry Sidgwick believes not only in telepathy
as generally understood but extends the process
to the world beyond the grave and maintains
that the only satisfactory interpretation of the
facts implies that the living can receive
telepathic impressions from the dead. In other
words, telepathy instead of being a rival to
spiritism may turn out to be its ally in the
sense that it points to a mental phenomenon
explicable only through the agency of discar-
nate intelligences. Even if we admit with such
a high authority as Professor W. MacDougall
that the '^reality of telepathy is of such a
nature as to compel the assent of any com-
petent person who studies it impartially,'' ^ we
still must ask. How is it possible? What must
we assume in order to explain it?

The present situation of the telepathic hy-
pothesis may be described thus: (1) It is
accepted by the great majority of those who

* Body and Mind, p. 349.

162 THE FUTURE LIFE

have made prolonged investigation, as a con-
venient way of stating that active conditions of
two living minds may be transmitted from one
to the other by some supernormal path as yet
unkno\^ii. (2) It is rejected by academic
science as unnecessary, since the alleged facts
are illusory. (3) It is accepted by many as a
rival to the spiritistic hypothesis, as competent
to explain all the undoubted facts of psychical
research so far as these seem to point to a
transcendental cause. (4) Finally, it is ac-
cepted by some experimenters as a process not
only of incarnate minds but of minds dis-
carnate, and as hinting at a law governing all
spiritual intelligences throughout the entire
universe. The fatal weakness of telepathy as
an adequate explanation is that it is necessary
to ascribe to it a selective power which no ex-
periments or spontaneous phenomena reveal.
So far as experimentation has gone there is
not a shred of evidence to lead us to suppose
that one mind can penetrate the subconscious
depths of another mind, and pick out of a
myriad elements those that are relevant to the
establishment of personal identity.

2. The spiritistic hypothesis.

This view has the advantages of simplicity,
ability to explain, and agreement w ith what we

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 163

know of the powers of consciousness. On the
other hand, there are obstacles to its unre-
served acceptance. To begin with, the silence
or apparent silence of all the ages as to any
authentic message from the world beyond
raises a powerful presumption that the spirit-
messages of today are to be explained by some
mysterious forces of the receiver's psychic
organism. To this it is replied that such
silence is a mere assumption, that on the con-
trary the experience of the race testifies to the
reality of communication with the other world,
but that prejudice, preconceptions, and a mate-
rialistic bias have dulled the minds of the
majority, and prevented them from impartially
weighing the facts.

Then, again, in many of the phenomena there
is a curious mixture of truth and error. It
was this perplexing fact that led William
James now to a favourable and now to an un-
favourable judgment. In his Report on Mrs.
Piper's Hodgson-control, he says: ''/ myself
feel as if an external will to communicate ivere
probably there, that is, I find myself doubting,
in consequence of my whole acquaintance with
that sphere of phenomena, that Mrs. Piper's
dream-life, even equipped with ^telepathic'
powers, accounts for all the results found. But

164 THE FUTURE LIFE

if asked, whether the will to communicate be
Hodgson's, or be some mere spirit-counterfeit
of Hodgson, I remain uncertain and await more
facts.' '^ Just at the point when the correct
answer to a test-question is of vital impor-
tance, the supposed communicator is silent or
finds it convenient to plead an engagement
elsewhere, or in some instances makes a reply
which turns out to be incorrect. In order to
blunt the force of this objection, our attention
is called to the fact that what primarily de-
mands explanation is not the chaff but the
precious grain, and to the further fact that in
any hypothesis, any message from the tran-
scendental realm must be coloured by the sub-
conscious activities of the psychic.

Perhaps the objection which weighs most
heavily with the average man is the assumed
triviality of the messages. Even admitting, he
says, the reality of the communications, of what
use are they? What do they tell us which we
do not know? Is it not passing strange that
these intelligences have nothing to tell us of
the conditions of the sphere which they in-
habit? The psychical researcher replies: All
the messages are not trivial, and even the
trivial have their value as marks of identifica-

* Proceedings of American 8.P.R., Vol. Ill, pp. 588, 589.

THE ARGUMENT FROM RESEARCH 165

tion. But the non-trivial messages such as
those recorded, for example, in Miss Cameron's
Seven Purposes, are not open to verifica-
tion, and may by the critic be explained as sub-
conscious fabrications. It is hard to see how
this difficulty can be overcome. Finally, the
popular mind is deeply influenced by the
failure of such men as the late Dr. Richard
Hodgson and Mr. F. W. H. Myers to fulfil
their promise to communicate the contents of
sealed letters which they left under stringent
guardianship. One may doubt, however,
whether such a proceeding constitutes a real
test. Suppose Mr. Myers had revealed the
contents of his sealed letter, would any hard-
ened sceptic have felt shaken in his unbelief?
In all probability, he would have sought help
from the long arm of coincidence or have taken
refuge in clairvoyance, that is, the transcen-
dental perception of hidden objects.

On the whole, the layman cannot but feel
that up to the present time the more probable
of the two hypotheses is the spiritistic. The
very least we must acknowledge is that the
psychical researcher has made out a good case
for himself, and has established the probability
that ultimately his thesis will be proved to the
satisfaction of all competent judges.

CHAPTER IX

SPECIMENS OF THE EVIDENCE SUPPLIED BY
PSYCHICAL. RESEARCH

In order that the reader may be enabled to
judge for himself the sort of evidence which
the Psychical Research Society is slowly ac-
cumulating, a few typical illustrations, selected
for the most part from the society's literature,
are here set forth. It must be borne in mind
that a great many more incidents and cases of
equal evidential value could be extracted from
the voluminous reports of the society, but con-
siderations of space forbid. Perhaps the most
convincing book in the entire literature of the
Movement is the thirteenth volume of the Pro-
ceedings, which contains the famous Hodgson
Report of his own and others' sittings with Mrs.
Piper. The study of this volume will compel
thoughtful persons to admit one of tw^o hy-
potheses to be true : either this New England
woman of average education develops under
certain conditions a pov/er of dramatization
comparable with that of Shakespeare or of

166

EVIDENCE OF RESEAECH 167

Balzac, or, we are in the presence of phenom-
ena that point to some such doctrine as the
spiritistic theorists contend for. But Mrs.
Piper has fellow-dramatists of equal power —
if this be the horn of the dilemma we prefer
— and it is from one of these that our first
testimony shall be taken.

This piece of evidence, reported by the Right
Hon. Gerald W. Balfour, has attracted con-
siderable attention, particularly among persons
of literary and classical education. It is not
weightier than many others of more direct and
simple character, but, if from discarnate
sources, it illustrates the variety of ways by
which the living beyond the veil are endeavour-
ing to demonstrate to the living on this side.
And it must be admitted that this kind of proof
attempted is of the precise sort which would
have been congenial to the eminent Greek
scholar of the University of Cambridge, Pro-
fessor A. E. Verrall, and his friend S. H.
Butcher, professor of Greek in the University
of Edinburgh, who are the purported com-
municators.

* Proceedings of the English Society for Psychical Research,
Vol. XXIX, pp. 197-243, 260-286.

168 THE FUTURE LIFE

Mrs. Willett, with whom the English Society
has had many experiments, was the automatist,
the messages coming mainly in writing, partly
by voice, and mostly while in a state of trance.
One mysterious phrase, ^^Dionysius Ear the
lobe," came in 1910, and nothing more which
seemed related until January 10, 1914, when a
number of fragmentary quotations and scat-
tered classical allusions, seemingly having little
relation to each other, w^ere written. All the
after members of the series were written when
Mrs. Willett was in trance and were not shown
to her until the series, comprising three long
groups of sentences, separated by considerable
intervals, and one brief congratulatory finale,
was completed.

Prominent among the topics to which various
allusions were made was the ^'Ear of Diony-
sius," the designation for a certain grotto at
Syracuse, opening on a stone quarry, w^here
Athenian prisoners were kept, and where after-
wards Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse, was said
to have been able, on account of the peculiar
acoustic qualities of the place, to listen to what
his captives said. But there were also multi-
form references to the story of Polyphemus and
Ulysses, and the story of Acis and Galatea, to
Jealousy, to something to be found in Aris-

EVIDENCE OF RESEAECH 169

totle's Poetics, etc., etc., the allusions pursuing
the several topics through classical authors
especially and also to an extent through modern
poets. But almost to the end there appeared
to be little connection between these various
themes, or reason why they should reiteratedly
be grouped together. Yet it was early intimated
that there was unity yet to appear, and it w^as
expressly declared that a deliberate purpose
was back of the scripts. * ' There are two people
in that literary thing, chiefly concerned in it.
They're very close friends, they've thought it
out together." And it was unmistakably inti-
mated that the two were the Greek scholars.
Professors Verrall and Butcher.

Suddenly, though delayed as if to give those
in whose hands the script was a chance to work
out the problem for themselves, and with an air
of surprise natural to the specialist who dis-
covers that he has talked ^'over the heads" of
his auditors, the key was given which unlocked
the mystery, and unity was achieved. The key
w^as the fragmentary word "Philox." The
classical dictionaries show that there was a
Syracusan poet Philoxenus, w^hose name very
few but the most learned pundits of Greek
literature w^ould recognize. Even Mrs. Ver-
rall, an accomplished classical scholar, did not

170 THE FUTURE LIFE

remember him. Very few lines of his sur-
vive.

But the classical dictionaries, as a rule, do not
give the details which bind together the most
important topics and allusions of the script. At
last a share of them were found in Lempriere's
Classical Dictionary , and a greater number in a
rare and recondite book by Dr. H. W. Smith, on
the Greek Melic Poets. These two paragraphs
found respectively in the named books suf-
ficiently demonstrate the unity as found in the
experiences and works of Philoxenus, but even
here not all the pertinent classical allusions of
the script are to be found. So that, if Mrs.
Willett had consulted either or both of these
books she could not have found all the facts
which came out.

Mrs. Willett is not a classical scholar. She
is very well known to the investigators, who
are satisfied that the range of classical knowl-
edge displayed in the script is enormously be-
yond what she is capable of having absorbed in-
cidentally to general reading and equally well
satisfied that she never consulted the authorities
mentioned, which would have been insufficient
even if she had.

But certain alUisions in the script were such
as would have been congenial to the studies of

EVIDENCE OF KESEARCH 171

Professor Butcher, others to Professor Verrall.
Besides, and it seems a significant coincidence,
it was found that Smith's Greek Melic Poets
was in Professor VerralPs library and was used
by him in his college lectures.

Professor Verrall was interested in his life-
time in the experiments for cross-correspond-
ence, which dealt largely with classical ma-
terials. It seems probable that, his interest
continuing after his death, his own communi-
cations would take some such form as we
actually find. But to learn the real strength
of the argument that back of these scripts lay
a *'will to communicate'' on the part of classi-
cal scholars who have passed beyond, the reader
must go to the full report. One feature of this
is what looks like cross-correspondences be-
tween the Willett script and that of another
automatist, dealing with the same group of
references.

The English Society of late years has con-
ducted many experiments in '^cross-correspond-
ences" in w^hich the communicating spirits are
supposed to get the same test word, phrase, or
thought into the script of different automatists

172 THE FUTURE LIFE

at a distance from each other, none of them
allowed to see the script of the others, all of it
being sent to the headquarters of the society as
received. Mrs. Piper in Edgbaston, England;
Mrs. Verrall, widow of Professor A. E. Verrall
of Cambridge University, and herself a scholar
of distinction, in Cambridge, England; Miss
Verrall alone in Cambridge; and Mrs. Holland
in India ; these were the chief psychics involved.
Mrs. Holland did not know even that any such
experiments were being conducted.

It is almost impossible to cite any of the
results in brief space, in a way that will be
intelligible, and quite hopeless to do so with-
out diminishing the evidential force.

The St. Paul Cross-Correspondence.^ On
November 15, 1906, Sir Oliver Lodge proposed
to the purported Dr. Hodgson, who was com-
municating through the hand of the entranced
Mrs. Piper in Edgbaston, that a test of the kind
should be made, and Hodgson, assenting, said
that he would go to Mrs. Holland and try to
make ''St. PauP' come out in her writing.

On December 31st, Mrs. Holland's hand
wrote in India without break the following, ex-

* See Journal of British Society for Psychical Research, July,
1917- January, 1918, or Journal of American Society, Septem-
ber, 1917.

EVIDENCE OF RESEAECH 173

cept the parenthetic figures, which we prefix:
for ease of reference.

(1) II Peter 1,15.

(2) This witness is true.

(3) It is time that the shadow should be lifted
from your spirit.

(4) Let patience have her perfect work.

(5) This is a faithful saying.

These sentences, with their references to
*^this witness,'' ''time that the shadow should
be lifted,'' ''patience," and "faithful saying,"
have a significant sound, as though attention
were being called to something. But to what,
Mrs. Holland did not know.

Paragraph 2 was written by St. Paul (Titus
1, 13), paragraph 3 is reminiscent of a passage
by St. Paul and of none other in the Bible
(Romans 13, 11), and paragraph 4 is a sen-
tence which St. Paul was fond of using (I
Timothy 1, 15; I Timothy 4, 9; II Timothy 2,
11; Titus 3, 8); paragraph 4 (James 1, 4)
would have pertinence as a hint. Paragraph 1
seems to be irrelevant. The name of St. Paul
appears to be lacking.

But later, January 12, 1907, in Cambridge,
Miss Verrall's hand wrote :

174 THE FUTURE LIFE

"The name is not right robbing Peter to pay —
Paul? Sanctus nomine quod efficit nil continens
petatur surveniet." [Let a saint be sought contain-
ing in his name that which effects nothing, he will
come to aid.]

And on February 26th Miss Verrall got:

''You have not understood about Paul, ask Lodge.
Quibus eruditis advocatis rem explicabis non nisi
ad unam normam refers hoc satis alia vana." [By
calling to your aid what learned men will you explain
the matter unless you carry it to one norm? This
is sufficient, all else is useless.]

Here are two references to St. Paul by name,
and the suggestion '^ask Lodge.'' Does it not
look as though failing to get the name agreed
on with Lodge, the communicator had turned to
another automatist? ''Let a saint be sought
containing in his name that which effects noth-
ing.'' Can we refuse on such hints to examine
the name "Paul" and find in it the root pauo
meaning to cease, come to an end — a procedure
the opposite of "patience" and which is pretty
sure to effect nothing? "The name is not
right," "let a saint be sought" — where? Does
not "robbing Peter to pay — Paul" furnish a
hint that the passage from Peter in Mrs.

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 175

Holland's script, otherwise full of Paul, is
meant f

Turning in that direction we find that there is
one passage in the Epistles of Peter which
names Paul, which is likemse the one passage
in all the New Testament Epistles which names
him, which is likewise the one passage in the
entire New Testament which best describes
him, and that is II Peter 3, 15, *'And account
that the long-suffering of the Lord is salvation ;
even as our beloved brother Paul according to
the wisdom given unto him hath written unto
you." And we discover that II Peter 3, 15
differs from the citation as written II Peter
1, 15 by but one figure. Considering the many
indications that an auditory process is often
involved in the transmission of words through
a psychic, it is important to note that of all the
other ordinals 'Hhird" is most likely to be mis-
taken for ''firsf in speech. Can all this be the
result of accident? Many will conclude, after
they consider all the interlacing hints in the
Verrall script — more than we have mentioned
— that II Peter 3, 15 was meant to be given Mrs.
Holland, and that this is the *'norm" which,
once discovered, would ^'explain the matter"
which concerned Lodge.

But if that conclusion is correct, it completely

176 THE FUTURE LIFE

excludes the telepathic theory, since not a per-
son concerned in the tests ever suspected where
the implied error lay, or that there was an error.
Not a living person knew it, and the ^'norm''
was not observed and brought into place for
years after the incident was first reported. But
some one knew what the **norm'^ w^as, and that
it had not been traced, and the some one who
dictated Aliss VerralPs script gave clue upon
clue which, had '^patience had its perfect
work,'' w^ould have earlier linked together the
passages.

The Hope, Star, and Browning Cross-Corre-
spondence.^ Mrs. Verrall, automatically writ-
ing when alone, wrote, on January 23rd, 1907 :

Justice holds the scales

That gives the words but an anagram would be
better.

Tell him that — rats star tars and so on. Try this

It has been tried before RTATS rearrange these
[evidently an error] five letters or again tears
stare ...

And on January 28th her script began:

ASTER [Greek for star]

TERAS [anagram on aster; meaning wonder or a

sign].

' Proopedings of British Society for Psychical Research,
Vol. XXII, 59-77.

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 177

And in the short passage which followed were
several broken extracts from Browning's
poetry, the word ''hope" being emphasized by
being substituted for the original word ^* pas-
sion'^ in the poem.

On February 11th Mr. Piddington sitting
with Mrs. Piper was pointedly informed by
'* Myers'' that a cross-correspondence had
been attempted through Mrs. Verrall and, asked
what it was, after a little confusion answered,

I referred to Hope and Browning.

(Yes.)

I also said Star.

. • • • • • '•

Look out for Hope Star and Browning.

Not until after this was search made in Mrs.
Verrall 's script received by the Society, with
the result already given.

But again a third automatist, who had been
told nothing, had a part. Miss Verrall on Feb-
ruary 3rd was impelled to draw automatically a
crescent and a star and to write with no in-
telligible context ''the crescent moon and the
star." Later too she was told that a five letter
anagram had been part of a success on January
28, — nothing more. On February 17th she got
a drawing of a star (without the crescent) and

178 THE FUTURE LIFE

the appended sentence, ^'that was the sign she
will understand when she sees it." Of several
following brief phrases these were three :

*'No arts prevail

and a star above it all

rats every where in Hamelin town

Now do you understand"

Miss VerralPs script did not, then, take the
hint of ^'five letters" (aster), but gave the four
letter English version of the same w^ord. Be-
sides she wTote anagrams on star, namely,
^^arts" and ^^rats," as Mrs. VerralPs script had
done on January 28th in her ''rats, star, tars
and so on." And be it remembered that the
"rats everywhere in Hamelin towTi" is a refer-
ence to a Browning poem, this time by Miss
Verrall.

It would seem as though we had a good triple
cross-correspondence. But it was really a quad-
ruple one. Hodgson w^as supposed to be helping
in the communications. It was actually dis-
covered that among the papers left by Dr.
Hodgson in his desk at the time of his death
were scraps of paper whereon he had jotted
do^vn the series "STAR, TARS, RATS, ARTS,
TRAS," of which portions had come out in the

EVIDENCE OP RESEARCH 179

script of both Mrs. Verrall and Miss Verrall,
also the series, ^' RATES, STARE, TEARS,
TARES,'* partly given in the script of Mrs.
Verrall.

The full text of this cross-correspondence is
richer in suggestiveness than the condensation
indicates. But even here, does it not look as
though a mind or minds conceived and presided
over the concurrent phenomena?

THE AMAZING STORY OF DORIS FISHER

What is now known as the *' Doris Case'' has
two parts. The first part is the history of the
young woman as perhaps the most remarkable
of the yet observed cases of ''multiple per-
sonality," and the record of her cure,<i) * the
second part is the record of a series of experi-
ments begun after her cure was accomplished,
with Doris as the sitter and Mrs. Chenoweth,
who may perhaps be called the successor of Mrs.
Piper, as the writing psychic. ('-> In order to
appreciate in some degree the evidential value
of the excerpts which we are to make from the
latter record, it will be necessary to glance at
the earlier phase of the case.

''Dissociation," which is a phenomenon of

•Numbers like this refer to notes on pp. 208-10.

180 THE FUTURE LIFE

very rare occurrence, but recognized by all
modern psychologists, consists (employing the
psychologically orthodox explanation) in a fis-
suring of the mind, much as the main branches
of a tree part from the trunk, into two sub-
sistences, in which case they are called ^'dual
personalities,'^ or into more than two, which are
accordingly known as ^'multiple personalities/'
The latter phenomenon is the rarer, and pre-
sents the appearance of the person changing,
mentally and in some respects physically, into
now one and now another of several other per-
sons. The simile of the branches of a tree fails
in that these ^'persons" are not on a par, for
one, known as the primary personality, is
what is left of the original total mentality, with
what might be called rights of restoration;
while the others, denominated secondary per-
sonalities, are in a sense parasitical interlopers,
brought by some shock or strain to a predis-
posed individual. Let it be distinctly under-
stood that these are not moods, or fancies, but
real mental entities, which science no longer
questions. Nor is the meaning that the afflicted
party at one time feels like one person, and at
another time feels like another person. There
are really several distinct consciousnesses which
irregularly take turns in being in e^ddence. To

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 181

the uninitiated spectator there indeed appear
to be strange and extreme changes of mood and
behaviour, accompanied by a *^ play-acting''
ability to alter the voice, facial expression, etc.,
to suit, and a disregard for truth evidenced by
contradicting stories and claims. But it is a
fact that each personality has a different con-
sciousness, will, memory, range of ideas and
tastes, and a different set of bodily reactions in
the form of individual facial and vocal expres-
sion and individual peculiarities of sensation,
hearing, vision, etc.

At the time that Doris was discovered by
Mrs. Prince and taken in hand by Dr. Walter F.
Prince, she had five personalities including the
primary one. But previous to the death of her
mother in 1906, there were three (if ^'Sleeping
Margaret" was a personality and not, as she
has since claimed, a spirit), of which two were
of such nature as to then manifest themselves to
beholders. These were the primary personality
afterwards known as the Real Doris, and the
secondary personality, who came to be called
** Margaret.'' By turns during the day these
came **out" and conducted affairs. But ^'Mar-
garet" had the advantage that when she was
subliminal or *4n" she was co-conscious, so that
when she came ''out" with a snap of the neck.

182 THE FUTURE LIFE

she knew just what to do or say in order to
carry things along smoothly, while poor **Real
Doris'' was unconscious when ^4n'' and if sud-
denly summoned into consciousness by the dis-
appearance of ** Margaret'' often had to *^fish,"
to *^mark time," and to employ devices to orient
herself, making blunders at that and incurring
blame for her supposed wilfulness or falsity.
^* Margaret" never developed beyond the men-
tality of a very sagacious child of ten. So that
in the last year of the mother's life, she was
used to seeing her daughter at times behaving
after the fashion of a young lady of seventeen
and at other times like a romping child given
to dolls and sports, always fond yet at times
obedient and at other times roguishly heedless,
now showing a comprehension suitable to her
age, but again betraying an almost infantile be-
lief in fairies and in the advent of babies in a
doctor's satchel.

The case, complicated by a fourth personal-
ity at the shock of the mother's death, and by a
fifth a year later, was taken in hand in 1911 and
by stages in a treatment of three and a half
years, during which Dr. W. F. Prince never was
absent twenty-four consecutive hours, was re-
stored to normality. One thing more. Not only
was a daily diary of the progress of the case

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 183

kept during the three and a half years, but a
large number of facts and incidents, gathered
from the conversations of the several person-
alities, were set down. So that there was a
written record of many facts utterly unknown
to the reconstructed Doris, since none of the
memories of ** Margaret,'' who consumed what
would amount to several years of her life, ever
have emerged in her consciousness. Doris was
adopted by Dr. and Mrs. Prince and still has
her home with them.

Conditions of the Experiments with Mrs,
Chenoweth

Five months after her cure, in October, 1914,
Doris crossed the continent alone, to be the
sitter in a series of experiments with Mrs.
Chenoweth of Boston. This was done pursuant
to the request of Dr. Hyslop, and the experi-
ments were conducted under his management.

There were some peculiar advantages in
selecting her as a subject, and also absolute
safeguards.

1. Doris was utterly unknown to the public.
Not a line had then been printed about her.

2. She was born and had spent the most of
her life in Pittsburgh, some five hundred miles

184 THE FUTURE LIFE

from Boston, and had been living in California,
three thousand miles away.

3. Of course Dr. Hyslop never mentioned the
girl to Mrs. Chenoweth, who had never heard
of her.

4. Dr. Hyslop had never seen her but once,
and knew almost nothing of her earlier history.
There had been only one or two brief meetings
between him and Dr. Prince.

5. According to methods regularly employed,
Doris was not admitted into the room where
Mrs. Chenoweth was until the latter was in a
trance, seated with an arm on the writing-board.
Moreover the sitter was invariably seated be-
hind the psychic and not allowed to utter a
word. Later she did once forget and utter a
few words, -which, had it occurred earlier, would
have betrayed her sex, but she had already been
identified as the daughter of a purported com-
municator.

6. The condition out of which Doris had
lately emerged, also, marked her as an interest-
ing subject for such experiments. Could the
communicators or any of them, professing to
have known her, correctly describe that condi-
tion, 80 peculiar and rare ?

Certain critics have drawn upon their imag-
ination so far as to suggest that during sucli

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 185

experiments Dr. Hyslop probably gives involun-
tary hints to the psychic by vocal intonations,
starts, exclamations, and other eloquent mani-
festations of emotion. This is laughable to one
who has watched his demeanour at such times,
which is as uniform and monotonous as the
movements of a machine, as devoid of indica-
tions as the face of the stone Sphinx. Every
word uttered in the room is set down and forms
a part of the published report, except the exact
repetition aloud by Dr. Hyslop of each word as
it is written.

Did Dorises Mother Prove Her Identity?

It is impossible to convey, in this abridged
account, an adequate conception of the richness
of the matter contained in the purported com-
munications from the sitter's mother. The
reader must go to the full report for that. But
at least the excerpts and condensations shall be
fair, and not minimize such errors and inco-
herences as at least superficially appear to
exist. The same spirit of fairness, however,
compels us to admit that in estimating seeming
errors, a certain though small allowance should
be made for failure of memory on the part of
the living, and will compel us to acknowledge

186 THE FUTURE LIFE

that certain of the incoherences and confusions
are themselves evidential.

The first words written after Doris silently-
entered (November 9) and seated herself in the
background were ' * John E. ' * It afterwards ap-
peared that her maternal grandfather was the
communicator, (4) but the name set down was
that of the father of Doris. In an instant, how-
ever, another communicator interposed with
*^May I comeT' and declaring that her father
was present (note that both she and her father
were in fact deceased, though the youth of the
sitter, even had she been seen by the psychic,
would have made both facts doubtful) soon
added, *^ Mother is glad to come here to
you.''

Then appeared the claim *'I have been at
home with you dear. ... I mean with you
personally and directly, first-hand I mean.
This is different but I take the time to make
some clearer statements if I can than I have
made before.'' It is true that there had been
superficial evidence of the presence of the
mother in the home of the daughter and of
direct touch with her. Doris twice saw an
apparition of her mother, <^) on one of which
occasions she was caused to look up by seeing
the sJiadoiv before she perceived the figure it-

EVIDENCE OF KESEARCH 187

self. There had also been a few experiments
with the planchette in which writing purporting
to be from the mother was received. Both ap-
paritions and planchette writing are different
from pencil scrip through an unconscious psy-
chic. Some difficulty now ensued in the Cheno-
weth script, what appeared to be *'h'' **W W
W ' ' and " M ' ' being written, but then absolutely
spontaneously came ''She is my child/ ^ thus
correctly indicating the sex of the sitter. It was
after this, when the words ''My being so coW
were read aloud by Dr. Hyslop, that Doris for-
got and said "She died of pneumonia." But
the exclamation came too late to do appreciable
harm. Presently the hand wrote "Violets I
still love.'' They were in fact Mrs. Fisher's
favourite flower. "I remember them at the
funeral." Dr. Hyslop here looked at Doris and
she silently nodded. The writing went on with-
out break "with the white roses." Soon after
the control broke down. There were other
partly-evidential allusions in the sitting for
which we have no space here. Nothing profess-
ing to come from this communicator had been
irrelevant and nothing intelligible expressed
had been provably incorrect or unlikely. But
Doris was strongly of the opinion that there
were no white roses at her mother's funeral,

188 THE FUTURE LIFE

and so stated to Dr. Hyslop after the sitting.
Not she, but the ''Margaret" personality, none
of whose memories survived in her, had been
present at the funeral, but she thought she
remembered hearing of white lilies, but not of
roses. It was afterwards proved, however, that
the communicator was right and the sitter
wrong. The faded remnant of the very roses,
which were held in the dead hands, have been
traced, still with the florist's wire about the
stems.

The second and short communication from
Mrs. Fisher (November 10) must be almost
passed over, but not because it presents diffi-
culties. It is all relevant and a number of
small evidential details appear. Among these
are the statement, ''I have been able to show
myself on two or three occasions,'* and the
expression, **I want to say a word about baby,
my baby.'' We have already remarked that
Doris saw an apparition of her mother twice.
And ''baby," a curious term to apply to a young
lady of 22, happens to be what Mrs. Fisher often
called this her youngest child. But more re-
markable is the fact that the communicator used
the word "guard" to designate the office of
certain spirits supposed to be placed for the
protection and aid of the girl. Now, this rather

EVIDENCE OP RESEAKCH 189

than the more familiar term ^* guide'' is just
the word which had invariably appeared in
the planchette script through the sitter her-
self in California. It was the first time that
Mrs. Chenoweth's hand had been known to
write the word ''guard'' in that sense.

In the first two sittings the communicator
made references to the ** nervous make-up" and
sensitiveness of her daughter, and to her need
of care and protection at the time of her own
death. Another such reference in the third sit-
ting (November 11) warranted Dr. Hyslop in
asking what was the matter with the girl. The
reply was very pertinent.

' 'I do not know what you refer to. If you mean the
physical condition, I should say not that so much as a
childlike dependence mentally which needed all my
care and foresight to keep her as she ought to be and
there was no one else who understood her. ' '

Any one who reads the full account will see
how strikingly correct this is. The trouble as it
had been kno\\Ti to the mother was not physical
but mental, "the childlike dependence" result-
ing from the personality ''Margaret." The
mother had not understood the case technically,
but she understood how to deal with it as no
one else had, and there was nothing about the

190 THE FUTURE LIFE

girPs present condition, even had Mrs. Cheno-
weth been able to observe it, which hinted at
the past state.

''The play with other children was never as chil-
dren usually play, but was left as a part of my care
for her. We were companions, my little one, in a
strange way and her mind was always so quick to
see my meaning when to others she could not or would
not respond, and there was a delicate feeblenesG, as
some might call it, a slow development. ' '

This is an extraordinary passage fitting an
extraordinary case. The child could not play
with other children unless she ('^Margaret")
was allowed to be autocrat. Hence she usually
played alone or with her mother, who fully
entered into the spirit of the peculiar sport,
and thus was a companion **in a strange way.'*
By endless patience and forbearance she was
able to get along with both manifestations,
which by their odd alterations and blendings
must have made her wonder if her daughter
would ever grow up. Even ^^Real Doris'' was
shy and backward with strangers.

Pressed to give details, the communicator not
unnaturally demurred, saying that those things
should remain between her and her daughter,
but aptly added, *'It was some things she said

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 191

as well as things she did/' But she yielded and
wrote :

I want to refer to the running away to other places.

(Yes, tell of some of the places.)

It was a matter of worry to have her do that. It
was not only that she went but she would not come
back, and there were things said at the time to try
and make her understand it. I do not know now why.

(Can you say or tell some particular place where
she would go and worry you?)

Yes, I am aware of the things that happened then
and of my fears and constant watching for the return
and of the real danger that might have come to her if
she had got into the place, she would have been
drowned.

All this is peculiarly true. The mother must
have been disturbed by '^things she said," as
w^hen the personalities contradicted each other.
And often as '^ Margaret" she would go on some
long tramp, perhaps returning late at night.
Often the '^ Margaret" personality would dash
into the river, clothes and all, and would swim
underneath a dry-dock, etc. This last was a
specially dangerous place. Observe that the
mother does ''not know now why" she could
not make her daughter take understanding heed.
Throughout, this communication showed knowl-

192 THE FUTURE LIFE

edge of the past behaviour of her daughter but
not of the nature and cause of it.

*'She was so much a child without the least sense
of danger and I thought no one else would take the
care of her that I did. Why I used to play with her
and walk about doing my work and talking with her,
and she would answer until suddenly I would get no
answer and she was out of sight and then I had my
worry. ' *

All exactly true as set forth with many illus-
trations in the Eeport.

A passage in which there is evident confusion
seems to say that the girPs father was dead,
which was not correct, but it is not certain what
was meant. Then a reference came to an * ^ Aunt
J,'* said to have felt some concern about Doris,
which was true of her Aunt Jennie. Immedi-
ately followed reference to ^^ Charles'' and
** Helen," the latter said to be alive and to
have '4iad some association" with the sitter.
Charles was the name of a deceased brother and
Helen that of a friend who was not living but
had died less than three weeks before. Are we
bound to suppose that a spirit, every time an
acquaintance dies any\vhere, knows it at once?

In the next communication (November 16)
came a reference to ''Marv, Mamie." Doris

EVIDENCE OF RESEAKCH 193

has a sister called Mary but never called Mamie.
And then a reference to an aunt, later stated to
be the communicator's own sister, to **our'*
mother (meaning the mother of the sisters) on
the other side and to a **J'* and the remark
that the aunt would know who ^ ' J ' ' is. The fact
is that the aunt referred to (Marie) did feel
some perplexity about the adoption of Doris
into the Prince family, suspecting she was to
be made a drudge. And she formerly had a
little nephew James, of whom she had been very
fond, but who died. The grandmother of the
sitter was also in fact dead.

After the mention of her own mother the com-
municator proceeded :

*'I have something to say also about some things
that were left in the care of one who is in the old
home. I mean the home where I used to live. Some
things that have been kept for her and are still kept.
I refer to a trinket that was not of such value, but
was mine and being mine was kept. There are two
women interested in what I shall write here, and I
think each will know about the ring of which I write. ' '

The fact is that the mother of Doris made a
romantic, runaway marriage, and so incurred
the lasting ill-will of her father, which accounts

194 THE FUTURE LIFE

for the fact that her ''trinkets" were not sent
to her. The old home was not standing at the
time of the sitting. Prior to its being torn
down an uncle was living in it, and when it was
demolished the Aunt Marie and her daughter
found a ring and a watch which had belonged
to Mrs. Fisher and restored them. She gave the
ring to Doris and later the watch also came to
the latter.

Immediately afterwards was written :

** Lilies were there

(Just where?)

At the old home where grandmother lives, Auntie
will remember. I wish I could write about a little
curl that was cut from baby's head and kept by me,
not yet destroyed, very like flax, so light, and do you
know what the Methodists are.

(Yes)

They are not so clear about the life here as they will
be when they come but they mean all right. I had
faith too, but the knowledge is better. I had in mind
a prayer that I used to want her to say long ago, for
I felt it important to pray and teach her to say the
little prayer. (Can you give that prayer?) Now?
(Yes) I lay me — prayer that most children say.
(All right) And at the end, God bless papa, God
bless mamma, God bless Her and make her a good
girl."

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 195

Doris often heard her mother describe the
border of lilies-of-the-valley around her child-
hood home. The mother did cut a curl (the hair
was very curly and soft and light as flax) from
the brow of baby Doris, and it was found in a
drawer after she died. Her family w^ere all
Methodists, but she became somewhat alienated
from Methodism because of the unforgiving
spirit of her father.

All the children w^ere taught to say '^Now I
lay me" and to add petitions for parents,
brothers, and sisters in turn. But Doris (as
*' Margaret") was too impatient to go through
the long list, and finally a compromise was
struck word for word as the communicator says,
if we substituted "me" for ''her."

The communicator said that she had seen
Edith, who is unrecognized. Then came

"I shall give my little girl's name before I leave
here. I do not know whether today or tomorrow, but
I think I ought to do it, so you may know I remember,
but I had so many other names for her that I some-
times called her one and sometimes another. Some-
times my little Dolly, sometimes runaway, little run-
away. You know what that means, dear? (Sitter
nodded) (Yes she does)

For those little feet could not be trusted to stay
where they were told to stay, and many talkings and

196 THE FUTUEE LIFE

some punishments had to be invented to keep my
mind at rest as to where she might be, but that waj3
the desire to get a larger scope I suppose. Do you
remember the hill, down the hill to the stream.

(Give the name of the stream)

Yes and C. A, yes A.

Doris says, *^ Mother used to call me all sorts
of names, Eunaway, Sweetheart, Curlyhead,
Spitfire, and others I cannot think of now, be-
sides Dolly, because my hair curled close to my
head when it rained or was hot and made me
look like a doll I suppose.'^

What followed is also emphatically correct.
Peculiar punishments had to be invented that
would work with the ^'Margaret" phase. One
was purposely to look grieved. As to ^'talk-
ings'* Doris says, ''She would tell me that
somebody would steal me, that I would get lost,
that I would go too far and couldn't get back
and would die on the road. ' '

The family lived near the Allegheny Eiver
and a high embankment went down to it. The
end of an old unused canal jutted into the river.
The children called it the Canal and often
went there to swim as well as to the river, so
that Canal and Allegheny were conjoined terms
to the anxious mother. The initials may refer
to these.

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 197

On November 17th the same communicator,
after some relevant but not specially evidential
remarks, delivered an amazing series of inci-
dents.

' ' It is not always what I remember that I wish to
write but also to have something which my little girl
may remember as well as I.

'*I have been thinking about a swing out of doors
and a step where I used to sit, I mean a doorstep
where I sat and worked, and the swing was in sight
of that.

(Yes, that is recognized) [Sitter had nodded]
''And in the swing my little girl played and had
some pleasure, and there was also a game we played
together, out of doors I mean and I wonder if she
recalls a game with balls we played out of doors.
(Yes, what was it?) [Sitter had nodded]
* ' Croquet, and I wonder if she recalls how a game
won by her always meant shouts and jumps and a
great crowing on her part regardless of how mamma
might feel, and I can hear that laugh and would give
much to play again in the old way."

Note the announced purpose to select inci-
dents which her daughter would remember.
And the incidents which followed were such as
concerned that one of her children exclusively.
The swing was one of their secrets used only
when they were alone together, put up before

198 THE FUTURE LIFE

every performance and afterwards taken down
and hidden away. ^^Real Doris" and ^'Mar-
garet" only used the swing and only when the
mother sat on the back steps and sewed or pre-
pared vegetables or sometimes talked and sang.
Doris played croquet only with her mother and
the mother only with her.

As to the behaviour after a game, Dr. Prince
remarks : '^ A most realistic and lifelike descrip-
tion of 'Margaret's' manner, when exultant, as
I so often saw her in later days. (It should be
remembered that the 'Margaret' personality
after developing to the physical age of about
ten years never advanced farther.) 'Shouts,'
'jumps,' 'a great crowding,' 'regardless of how
mamma might feel,' 'I can hear that laugh,'
these graphic bits of delineation could hardly
be improved upon. The 'regardless, etc.,' re-
minds me vividly of the times when 'Margaret'
was delighted at some incident regardless of
how her new papa might feel."

The writing went on without a break :

"Then I want to recall a walk we sometimes took
down the road. I wonder if she recalls a pink bonnet,
not quite a bonnet, but a little sun hat which was
washable and which she often wore when we took our
walk to see some one down the street. ' '

EVIDENCE OF EESEAECH 199

True, Doris and her mother would ''walk
down the street" to call on an old lady, the
very person who gave her the pink washable
sun hat which the child often wore on these
visits.

Then reference was made to an uncle who
lived near the Fishers, was ''not young" and
was called "uncle" by every one. These par-
ticulars exactly fitted an uncle of Doris when
she was a child. A toy piano was mentioned
which the sitter did not recall. (6)

* ' I will not speak of the numerous dolls. They were
always in evidence and usually one in the window.
That was a little manner that belonged to her
peculiarly to have a doll in the window looking out."

A little later the communicator said that these
were paper dolls. Then the sitter who had
shaken her head at the first reference, suppos-
ing it to be purchased dolls, which she had never
possessed, understood. The child and her
mother had cut out many paper dolls and ' ' Mar-
garet" nearly always had one in the window
turned towards the street as if looking out.

"Daisy, daisy flowers. You know what I refer to.
We used to love to get them, and do you remember
a pet that used to follow us and we were afraid it
would get lost."

200 THE FUTURE LIFE

(Yes, tell what the pet was.) [Sitter had nodded.
"Cat, kitty, always following everywhere."

As in other incidents it is not so much the
truth of the separate statements as their truth
in combination that is striking.

Doris and her mother used to go to some old
estates about five squares away in order to pick
daisies, and on these very expeditions a pet cat
would follow part way and then turn back and
*' Margaret'' would worry lest it would get lost
and threaten in that case to beat her head
against a post. Its name was **Kittybell," and
perhaps *^ Kitty" following cat in the communi-
cation was an abortive attempt to give the name.

Other evidential items of this sitting, with one
unremembered name, that of a little boy
Eugene, ''not a relative just a little boy we
knew, I thought she would remember him," (7)
must be omitted.

The next communication from Mrs. Fisher
(December 1) mostly came intermediately
through a purported Indian child calling her-
self ''Laughing Water." Spontaneous allu-
sions having been made to some trouble from
which Doris had suffered, Dr. Hyslop asked
what had caused it. The communicator said she
would ask the mother.

EVIDENCE OF RESEAECH 201

*' Accident is what she says. All right before the
accident, all wrong after it. And some shock which
seemed to make her afraid afterwards.

(Yes can you tell exactly what the accident was?)

**Fall into the river ['river' spontaneously erased
as soon as read]. Fall is right and concussion. You
know the rest.

(Was any person connected with or responsible for
the fall?)

''Yes, Mother shakes her head and cries, but I do
not know whether it was a man or woman, but some
one was to blame. Carrying her to 'd' [distress and
groans preceding the letter 'd' which was possibly the
last letter of the word 'bed'] I do not know what
she is trying to say but it sounds like school.

(Who was carrying her?)

' ' Man near her in relation.

(How near?)

' ' As near as father. ' '

(All right.)

"The mother squaw is excited now and I think it
is a shame to make her live it all over."

The facts were unknown even to Doris until
this communication but were already on record
in California, having been related to Dr. Prince
by the personalities ''Sleeping Margaret'' and
'' Margaret." The mother was carrying the
child, then three years old, to bed, and the
father in a drunken frenzy seized and dashed

202 THE FUTUEE LIFE

it violently upon the floor. From that time she
was subject to changes of personalities and to
deadly fear of her father. Note not only the
truth of the statements but their psychological
colouring, how they were extorted by '^Laugh-
ing Water'' piecemeal from the mother with all
appearances of reluctance and emotion natural
to one living over a tragic event in the life of
her child.

Again we must pass over much that is evi-
dential and very little that is not identifiable
and relevant. Other communicators now took
most of the time. But on December 21st the
mother gave a number of details which cannot
be omitted.

*'I am some nervous as I recite some scenes, but I
try to keep calm. I want to say something about
Skippy, Skippy, a name of a, pet name. [Struggle]

(Stick to it.)

"Little pet of long ago. Skippy dog, and a kind of
candy I want to speak of which we used to get at a
store not very far off.

(Yes what kind of candy?)

''Long sticks that were broken in pieces, like brittle
is sometimes. I do not mean the chocolates. They
were rarer, but the kind that lasted so long in the
mouth. She knows.

(Yes she does) [Sitter had nodded]

EVIDENCE OF EESEARCH 203

^*And there were other things we bought there
sometimes, papers and pen for things we did at home.
I also want to speak of a little cup that we kept
something in metal cup, tin, small tin, that we kept
pennies in, and we used to turn them out after we
saved them and count them to see if we had enough
for something which we wanted. We were great
planners my little girl and I. And we had to save
some for Sunday. She knows what for.

(Can you tell)

** Contribution, collection. Part of it for that not
all.'^

Every sentence is correct, every word, except
that Skippy was a cat. It was lame and hence
was given this name. The mother and child
were accustomed to buy candy, the store was
near the home, the candy was usually what had
been peppermint sticks, but could be obtained
cheaper because they had been broken.

They bought chocolates also, but more rarely,
because of the higher cost. These were the only
kinds purchased. They did buy papers and
pencils, and at the same store. The paper was
to make the dolls with, and the pencils were in
order to write little stories and tack them up
for each other to find, an instance of the com-
radeship of this mother and her unusual child.

Note the instance of the gradual building up
of the right conception in its passage through

204 THE FUTUEE LIFE

the sleeping consciousness of the psychic. The
vessel used to keep ^^ something'' in, ^'pennies"
(now we have it), was a ^4ittle cup,'' a metal
^^cup," a ^'tin, small tin," and the communi-
cator goes on as though satisfied. As a matter
of fact it was a small tin can. The ^'some-
thing" kept in the can was, in fact, pennies.
Saving was a slow process because of poverty,
and the pair would turn the pennies out to see
if they had enough for small presents. And
Doris constantly attended Sunday School and
always took a penny out for the *' collection. "
The mother and child were certainly great
*^ planners," holding frequent consultation with
great gravity and circumstance.

On two occasions the name of the communi-
cator was given by her, Emma. Though there
was confusion of a sort which would hardly
consist with the telepathic theory, her fixed pur-
pose to give that name as her own is evident.

Such, cut and injured, were the messages pur-
porting to come from the spirit of Doris's
mother. In full it is the most evidential group
ever published. Some one remarked that the
facts were mostly ordinary and common, and
might happen to any girl and her mother. True,
individually they might, but not in combination.
Even naming the girl's mother, Emma, cor-

EVIDENCE OF KESEAKCH 205

rectly had about twenty-seven chances to one
of being incorrect if it were a guess. It is con-
servative to say that not one family in twenty
ever possessed a cat or dog named ^'Skippy."
One chance in 5601 Never having observed a
paper doll put in a window looking out, I do
not believe one girl in thirty has the habit of
making and so placing them. Now we have
one chance out of 16,800 of just these three par-
ticulars combined being right.

All the particulars stated about the girl in
the communications claiming to be from her
mother with liberal allowances for errors or
unprovable statements would not be likely of
duplication on this planet were its population
a hundred fold what it is.

Throughout the series of messages from the
mother, no knowledge of the underlying causes
of her daughter 's former strange condition was
manifested but only that which would be ger-
mane to a domestic observer who was intelligent
but unread in abnormal psychology. That is,
they deal with puzzling conduct and the
anxieties consequent thereto. On the theory of
telepathic extraction from the minds of the per-
sons present some inkling of what caused the
conduct should have come through, since Dr.
Hyslop of course knew perfectly the technical

206 THE FUTUEE LIFE

definitions assigned to the phenomena of *^ dis-
sociation," and even Doris at this time was
fully informed about herself.

ADDENDA

But one communicator showed recognition of
the technical nature of Doris's case, and he was
the one known in lifetime to have had knowl-
edge of this sort and dealings with a similar
one.

This was Dr. Richard Hodgson, who had
experimented with the well-kno^vn '^ Beau-
champ" instance of dissociation and had often
conversed about it ^ith Dr. Morton Prince, in
whose charge it was. Early in the sitting of
November 19th a communication from Dr.
Hodgson was written, from which only the most
significant scraps can be taken.

**I am much interested in the way this case is going
on and do not think I can add much to the work.
(Can you compare it with any you knew?)
**Yes, and have several times thought that I would
interpolate a message that you might see that I recog-
nized the similarity of the case with one in particular
that caused me some concern at times and some
hopes in others, but this is better organized than that
was (8). I mean that there seems to be a definite

EVIDENCE OF EESEAECH 207

purpose and a continuity of knowledge that the other
case only displayed spasmodically. You will I think
know what I mean by that.

(Yes, can you tell me the case? [2])

*' Yes, I think so. . . . [Nothing said by Dr.
Hyslop in the interval but ''all right "]

*'I will do what I can on this side to help on this
case for I believe it as important as any M. P. ever
had

(What does M. P. mean?)

''Morton Prince

(Good)

' ' You see what I am after.

(Exactly what I wanted)

"The Beauchamp Case and I am trying to make
some clear headway out of this one more than I did
out of that.''

And later came a pointed reference to **the
secondary self with all the multiple personal
equations.''

Another communicator attempted to give the
real first name of the. sitter which was a very odd
one, Brittia. As near as ^'Bretia" was reached,
and then the psychic, while coming out of the
trance, several times pronounced what phoneti-
cally spelled would be ^'Britta." And in fact
this is the way the name was always pro-
nounced, the ^ 4 ' ' in the spelling being silent.

208 THE FUTURE LIFE

Also California was named as her home, and
the home of her foster father "Dr. Walter
Franklin Prince ' ' given in full, being gradually-
spelled out. Curiously, when the last name had
partly come through it for a moment took the
form of **P r a y.'' This was meaningless to
Dr. Hyslop, who did not know that "Pray''
was the maiden name of Dr. Prince's mother.
After Doris returned to her western home, the
sittings of which she was the central figure con-
tinued, and one of the factors of the material
became attempts to state actual events happen-
ing to her three thousand miles away. These
statements proved correct in remarkable meas-
ure, as the Report shows along with a multitude
of details of evidential or psychological interest.

NOTES

1. TTie Boris Case of Multiple Personality, by
Walter Franklin Prince, Ph.D., being vols, ix-x of the
Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical
Research. 1419 pages.

2. The Doris Case of Multiple Personality, by
James H. Hyslop, Ph.D., being vol. xi of Proceed-
ings of the American Society for Psychical Research.
1024 pages.

3. To some readers what has been said about the
multiple personality will seem more incredible than

EVIDENCE OF RESEAKCH 209

spirit communication, yet, we repeat, these are facts
scientifically established and unquestioned. Besides
the voluminous report, an abstract of the case was
printed in the American Journal of Abnormal Psy-
chology for June-July, 1916, and the case has been
reviewed without dissent by some of the leading
experts.

4. As it is awkward to keep repeating * * purported' *
or "alleged'* the reader will understand that by
"communicator" we mean the same thing as though
we said "purported communicator."

5. See Proceedings, X, 1042-3.

6. Yet it is very possible that such existed. There
were articles kept by "Margaret" in her drawer,
which "Real Doris" was not permitted to see and did
not know existed, or it may have been simply for-
gotten.

7. There were children that Doris does not remem-
ber because "Margaret," who has vanished and whose
memories were not transferred, always "came out" to
play with them.

8. Correct, in that this case was in the main
organized into five concrete and coherent selves, not
arising by hypnosis or undergoing various compound-
ings in or from that state,

9. Dr. Hyslop well knew when he asked the initial
questions that they would be far more likely to sug-
gest, on the guessing theory, one of the numerous
cases dissimilar to that of Doris with which Dr.
Hodgson's fame is mainly identified, than Miss

210 THE FUTUEE LIFE

*'Beauchamp/' whose contact with him has been made
known only by one or two obscure references in Dr.
Morton Prince's book. Nor w^as there anything which
could have been inferred from the appearance of the
now normal young woman sitting silently back of the
psychic, even had the latter been awake and gazing
at her.

A NARRATIVE OF SPIRIT RETURN

The clergyman who had the following experi-
ences is one of the leaders in his orthodox and
numerous religious denomination in the city of
New York. As a young man he was noted for
a vigorous intellect, big heart, and athletic mas-
culinity. His later honours and influence are
but the fulfilment of the promise of his youth.

Some years ago the wife of this clergyman — a
splendid character — passed away. On her
deathbed her husband, whom we will call Dr.
v., asked her if she would try to come back to
him. She replied, *'I will, if the Good Father
will let me. ' '

^'Eleven months had passed away, and not
even a dream about the one whom I loved better
than my soul. She had left me with several
children, and at no time during that period was
there a hint to me that she was interested in
us at all. I had fussed over the thing, I had

EVIDENCE OF EESEAECH 211

prayed over it, and I had wondered why noth-
ing had come to me.

** During our life we had a very extraordinary
relation. We were exceedingly sensitive to each
other ^s condition, and when she was in diffi-
culty or ill and away from me I almost always
knew it. I call it telepathy myself.

* * She died in May. The following April I was
in the city of Philadelphia, in the Bingham
House. I went to my room about twelve o 'clock.
There was a large chandelier with four or five
lights in it in the center of the room and a push-
button right at the head of the bed. I was lying
with my eyes closed, not asleep, — as truly awake
as ever in my life. I was thinking of her. It
didn't seem to come suddenly, it seemed to come
naturally, the room was filled with her presence.
I could see, though my eyes were closed, her
form, shadowy, with something that looked like
the mist of the morning about it, and I said,
* Darling, why have you not come before?'

*'She answered, 'The Good Father would not
permit me.'

^'I said, 'I have been so lonesome and so
heartbroken that I have hungered for you.
Where did you come from?'

*' 'I have been up to see the children. (They
were up near Lake .) They are lovely.'

212 THE FUTURE LIFE

She seemed to be sitting on the edge of the bed.
The vision was so real that I reached up and
touched the button and made an attempt to put
my arms about her. As the room was flooded
with light I saw nothing and felt nothing. 1
could have cried, *What have I done! What
have I done I 0 Father, forgive me, let her
come back. ' That was my prayer.

**I do not know how long I waited, praying
earnestly and thinking intensely, when she was
in the room again. I could see the smile on her
face. My eyes were still closed. I never moved
a hand or opened my eyes. I just let my soul
do the talking. I was afraid to move and de-
stroy it. I could see her. I have never lost the
vision at all. I can recall it this second. She
came in with a gentle laugh, and said, * Why did
you do that? Don't you know you can't see
me r I don 't know how long we talked. I know
I never slept a wink that night, and we talked
of our life, of our children, of her father and
brother that had passed on and whom she said
she was instructing on the other side. God
knows they needed it. She said that she was
instructing them. That has destroyed my belief
in hellfire. I have never preached hell since.
And I have never feared death since. Death
to me is only a little change, that is all.

EVIDENCE OF KESEAKCH 213

**That was our conversation, there wasn't a
silly thing, there wasn't a trivial thing, —
nothing but what was of interest to her and
me.

**Now, here is the climax. She said, *I have
come to you that you may stop your grieving,
for it is making it impossible for you to do your
work. That must be done.' I went back home,
took the first train to my children, gathered
them about me, and told them that I had seen
and talked with their mother and that she was
watching over us. That's had a powerful effect
upon my children.

' ^ Once again she came to me, but that seemed
more like a half-waking, half-sleeping dream,
just as satisfactory to me as the other. But not
so vivid or evidential.

^^My little girl of twelve did not appear to me
for a year after her passing, but she came then
in much the same fashion as her mother on the
second occasion.

'* During the first occasion I could hear the
rumble of the noises on the street, but in addi-
tion I could hear this voice in my soul, — it was
real, like a sounding board. I could hear her
little laugh and her voice. She was there to me
so vividly that I felt that I could touch that
button and grab for her. There was nothing

214 THE FUTURE LIFE

different about my emotional state or my need
for her at that time."

Dr. V. was asked what he had read or heard,
previous to the vision, about developed spirits
doing missionary work for less developed ones.
His answer was quick and decided. ^* Never
heard anything of the kind." He was asked if
he believed that such things are done on the
other side (this was before he had dictated the
above narrative ) . * * I believe it because my wife
said so," was the energetic response. Let it be
noted that not only did the vision not come in
the first paroxysm of grief but eleven months
after the death, but that the fact announced as
to the spirit's occupation was contrary to Dr.
V.'s previous belief, and caused a permanent
doctrinal alteration dating from that moment.
If the vision was the work of the ** subliminal, "
that was functioning in an odd fashion !

People sometimes ask, ^'What is the good of
spirit communication, even if it is a fact!"
It appears to have done good in this instance.
By what he felt to be as absolute a demonstra-
tion as any of the apostles received this reli-
gious leader was able to more than recover his
former vigour in the business of life, a powerful
influence for good was exerted upon his chil-
dren, and henceforth a new and tremendous

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 215

assurance pervaded his sermons relating to the
life which is Beyond.

The Experience of Dying

The following experience is related by Mr.
John Huntley in a communication to Mr. J.
Arthur Hill, who publishes it in his book, Man
Is a Spirit ^•

^' About five years ago I woke from sleep to
find ^myself clean out of the body, as the kernel
of a nut comes out of its shell. I was conscious
in two places — in a feeble degree, in the body
which was lying in bed on its left side; and to
a far greater degree, away from the body (far
away, it seemed), surrounded by white opaque
light, and in a state of absolute happiness and
security (a curious expression, but one which
best conveys the feeling).

''The whole of my personality lay 'out
there,' even to the replica of the body — which,
like the body, lay also on its left side. I was
not cohscious of leaving the body, but woke
up out of it. It was not a dream, for the con-
sciousness was an enhanced one, as superior
to the ordinary waking state as that is to the
dream state. Indeed, I thought to myself,

^Pp. 71-74.

216 THE FUTURE LIFE

*This cannot be a dream/ so I willed 'out
there' (there was no volition in the body), and
as my spirit self moved so the body moved in
bed.

**I did not continue this movement. I was
far too happy to risk shortening the experi-
ence. After lying in this healing and blessed
light I became conscious of what, for want of
a better term, I must call music; gentle and
sweet it was as the tinkling of dropping water
in a rocky pool, and it seemed to be all about
me. I saw no figure, nor wished to; the con-
tentment was supreme. The effect of these
sounds was unutterably sweet, and I said to
myself, 'This must be the Voice of God.' I
could not endure the happiness, but lost con-
sciousness there, and returned unconscious to
the body, and woke next morning as though
nothing had happened.

'' I had been passing through a period of
mental and spiritual stress at the time, but had
not been indulging in psychism, had never at-
tended a seance or similar phenomenon, had
not, as I remember, been reading anything to
act by way of suggestion. I am in no doubt
whatever — so vivid was the happening — that
had the feeble thread between soul and body
been severed 'I' should have remained intact,

EVIDENCE OF RESEARCH 217

the grosser body being sloughed off for a finer
and one fitted for a lighter and happier con-
sciousness, for 'life more abundant/ in fact.

*'I feel, however, I would like to make it
known in such times as these; and, apart from
its scientific aspect, if it conveys any personal
comfort the trouble is repaid indeed."

In a later communication, Mr. Huntley states
his general religious standpoint thus :

*'I may add that I am not a 'Spiritualist,' or
Theosophist, or Occultist forcer of these con-
ditions, but a member of the Society of Friends,
and one of liberal views in matters of religious
beUef."

CHAPTER X

THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY

Gibbon, in his famous fifteenth chapter, marks
as one of the five causes of the growth of Chris-
tianity, ' ' the doctrine of a future life, improved
by every additional circumstance which could
give weight and efficacy to that important
truth;'' and in the true spirit of the eighteenth
century, he goes on to remark that ''it is no
wonder that so advantageous an offer (eternal
happiness) should have been accepted by great
numbers of every religion, of every rank, and
of every province in the Eoman Empire." The
historian is right when he thus sees in Chris-
tianity the religion of immortality, though he
fails to throw light on the curious phenomenon
that a truth which, on his own admission had
been for centuries in possession of the greater
portion of civilized men, had proved of small
account, yet in the new religion swept over the
Graeco-Roman world and eventually trans-
formed it. Modern study of the origins of our
faith has supplied this lack. We now know
that the driving force behind the Christian

218

VALUE OF BELIEF 219

movement of the early centuries was the belief
that the Founder of the movement reappeared
after death to various witnesses, some of whom
put their experience on record; and this belief
being based, not on speculation but on an appeal
to facts, had power to dissolve the prevailing
materialism and scepticism of the age. There
can be no question that the most potent factor
in the reconstruction of the old world was the
living conviction of immortality generated by
the post-mortem appearances of One who had
shown Himself Lord of life and fate. And it
may be said that the waning of belief in im-
mortality which synchronizes wdth the revival
of science, may be traced in great measure to the
failure of belief in the Eesurrection. Immor-
tality which had been so vitally linked to the
reality of the Eesurrection-appearances must
Buffer a severe blow when they are explained
away as illusions of one or two hallucinated per-
sons whose wild fancies spread as by contagion
through a vast multitude. But what I wish to
emphasize is that whether by illusion or reality,
the belief in the immortality of the soul became
a great dynamic in the moral realm and created
Christian civilization.

Let us suppose that a like absolute conviction
of a future life should seize the minds of this

220 THE FUTURE LIFE

generation with the overwhelming force which
marked the early Christian civilization, what
moral and spiritual consequences might be ex-
pected to ensue ? We know what took place in
the first century. This belief, brought home to
the mind by proofs deemed infallible, acted as a
mighty spiritual dynamic and turned common-
place traders and slaves into heroes and
martyrs. It is true that many, hypnotized, as
it were, by the resplendent glory of the life be-
yond, forgot the duties and interests of the
world at hand ; but this scorn of earth and time
arose not so much from belief in immortality as
from the deep-rooted conviction that the end of
the world was at hand, that at any moment *Hhe
hammer on the clock of time might rise to strike
the last hour." Why trouble about a world
w^hich at any moment might take end? Why
concern oneself about the conditions of industry
or the responsibilities of the home when they
exist on such a precarious tenure? But this
*'otherworldliness" has rarely except, perhaps,
in the monastic period, been the creation of
faith in a future life. The evangelicals and the
puritans, against whom the charge has been
specially levelled, were among the most success-
ful of merchants and financiers, and took no
small part in reforming the social abuses of

VALUE OF BELIEF 221

their time. But in the light of our modern
knowledge and of our present ethical advance,
what practical effect might a profound convic-
tion, based not merely on faith but on the sort
of evidence which convinced the first Christians,
be reasonably expected to have on the thoughts
and lives of men? This question is not of
merely academic interest, because today an
alleged principle or truth can find entrance only
after passing the pragmatic test. Granted that
death does not end all — what of it^ "Why not
take one world at a time? Why be solicitous
about a state of being which is still outside the
range of our experience ? The present life with
its infinitude of interests, its pressing needs, is
enough just now. When we cross the threshold
of the unseen, we shall meet the conditions that
await us there and relate ourselves to them as
best we can. So it is argued. But life is not
a series of disconnected incidents, it is an
organic unity, and its spiritual temperature can-
not but be affected by its future as well as its
past. Did an assured conviction possess the
mind of its existence in the realm beyond death,
such a conviction would cast back on the present
order a strange and wonderful illumination,
reversing our most cherished opinions, and ef-
fecting an astonishing transvaluation of values.

222 THE FUTURE LIFE

To begin with: such an indisputable assur-
ance would justify the preference which man
has entertained for ideals, religious, moral,
aesthetic, as compared with the life lived on a
level with the beasts that perish. If death
marks the limit of man's moral history, then say
what we will, matter which is indestructible
proves its superiority to personality, which is
evanescent. On the other hand, if the spirit
lives on through death, then it follows that
nature or matter is subordinate to the interests
of the soul, and our moral horizon widens ac-
cordingly. Our ideals triumph over death, and
can now be pursued with enthusiasm, and to
them our most devoted and loving service can
be rationally given. It is true that we ought
to live in the good, the true, and the beautiful,
whether we are immortal or no. This ^* ought"
expresses an ineradicable instinct, and he who
yields to it puts on beauty and nobleness. *'If
there be no God and no future state,'' says F.
"W. Eobertson, ''yet even then it is better to be
generous than selfish, better to be chaste than
licentious, better to be true than false, better
to be brave than to be a coward. Thrice-
blessed is he who — when all is drear and cheer-
less— has obstinately clung to moral good."

And many a heroic spirit has sacrificed his

VALUE OF BELIEF 223

physical being, in these last years, at the call of
duty though unable to find solace or strength in
faith in God and immortality. Yet the vast
majority will argue that since the cosmic order
has no room for moral ideals, only a quixotic
temper will persist in cultivating them at the
sacrifice, it may be, of life itself. At all events,
it will be admitted that a struggle in which we
are foreordained to defeat is hardly one in
which any thrilling enthusiasm can be evoked.
Yet without this enthusiasm the highest fruits
of the ethical life cannot be forthcoming. In a
moral universe a theory of annihilation stands
condemned, for it does not tend to an increase
of goodness.

But an equally important question is raised
when the sociological effect of this theory is
contemplated. Convince men generally that
consciousness ends in the grave, deprive them
of that optimism that lies hidden in the heart,
however it may be derided by the tongue, and
what right have you to expect enterprise, ad-
venture, the courage of the pioneer, the forward
movement of the forces that make for progress
and civilization? It was Kenan who said that
it would be a fatal day for any nation when it
gave up belief in immortality. His shrewd eye
saw that behind disbelief in a life beyond lay

224 THE FUTURE LIFE

disbelief in the value of personality. Look at
Germany, where, among the educated classes,
faith in immortality has been scorned as one of
the main buttresses of superstition, and where
dogmatic materialism in the person of Pro-
fessor Haeckel still plants its banner. Is it too
much to say that the diminishing sense of the
worth of the individual has led to the glorifi-
cation of the State which, in tuim, casting aside
the trammels of morality and lifted into a
sphere w^here good and evil cease to have any
meaning, provokes the stern antagonism of the
world, and calls dow^n irremediable disaster?

From another point of view our theme has
importance for the social worker and the social
theorist. Even w^hen we have made allowance
for all the regenerating influences at work, no
thoughtful mind can contemplate the multitudes
foredestined to pauperism and crime, victims of
the fatal pressure of circumstance and heredity,
without a feeling, that cannot be denied, that
they have a claim on the universe for another
chance, a fresh opportunity to win the secret of
life. If the worker among these children of an
evil fate were convinced that our gaols and peni-
tentiaries w^ere the only environment many of
them should ever know, such knowledge would
paralyse his energies and he must throw up his

VALUE OF BELIEF 225

enterprise as too small a remedy to cope with so
tragic a wrong. Our social order, as we are
now beginning to learn, is largely responsible
for crime and poverty. The morally and so-
cially unfit are our failures ; are they also con-
sidered as unfit by the cosmic order?

The trial of the w^ar has provoked in many a
heart anxious questions about the fate of dear
ones who have been snatched away in spiritual
immaturity, or, it may be, with many sins to
deplore, or

* * about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't."

Yet these have sealed their loyalty to a noble
cause with their blood. Now the safe guide in
forming a sound ethical judgment where our
own personal inclinations are involved, is to
bring the problem into the clear light of eternal
truth. *' Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends.'*
The soldier, however unworthy in other re-
spects, who gives his life for a cause beyond
himself, for an ideal end, however dimly de-
scried, is, so far, in harmony with the deepest
laws of the moral universe. In dying for an
unselfish purpose, he has made a momentous
beginning in the upward calling of the spirit,

226 THE FUTURE LIFE

and there are boundless possibilities of moral
progress, if there is a world beyond. That may-
be taken as one of the most certain of facts ; and
the only alternative is annihilation for all alike ;
saint and sinner go down to the same night of
nothingness.

On the other hand, if, as Emerson says, the
main enterprise of the world is the upbuilding
of personality, and if the world guarantees the
permanence of its work, it follows that men will
have the strongest reason and the highest mo-
tive to take up and make their own the purposes
thus written in the very nature of things. If
the universe is on the side of the good, in spite
of all our weaknesses and failures we can still
press onwards with undaunted spirit. Death
ceases to paralyse us. It becomes a mere epi-
sode in the development of the spirit, and be-
yond it we can achieve things impossible here,
because we shall have transcended the barriers
of sense, and shall have entered on a purely
mental state of being. All things are possible
to us once the sting of death, the fear that in
dying we shall lapse into nothingness, is drawn,
and the ''great misgiving" is supplanted by an
assured confidence in the order of the world.
Such a vital conviction of an after-life would
act as a powerful ethical stimulus, urging men

VALUE OF BELIEF 227

on to finer issues, arming the will to beat down
the enemies of the higher life, whether in the
individual or in society. If the true and the
good are ultimately one, immortality when seen
as a real inspiration to action would seem to
bear the stamp of a basic fact. From another
angle, the reflex bearing of the life hereafter
on the life that now is may be felt with a weight
almost too great to be borne. '^Whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap." All
moralists, however much they differ on other
matters, are agreed that sooner or later retribu-
tion overtakes sin, that a good act tends to
create more good, and the thought of Karma
which has sunk so deep into the Oriental mind
appears to shadow forth an undeniable truth
that '^ character is permanent and indestructible
and passes not from us, however the fashion of
our outward life may change. ' ^ Now, if there is
an after-life, the same eternal laws must operate
there which we find at work here, else all reason-
ing becomes an absurdity, and our moral his-
tory a riddle without any meaning. Let men
generally be convinced that death ushers them
into another world in which they shall know
themselves as continuing a life lived here, and
with a memory whereby to claim past thoughts
and deeds as their own, and will not reason, con-

228 THE FUTURE LIFE

science, prudence, conspire to force upon them
the seriousness of life and its issues, and to
stimulate all their psychic energies towards the
upbuilding of a character, the making of a soul
set free from the detaining bondage of mean
thoughts and base desires? The individual
would stand forth as the architect of a life and
destiny greater than any this world at its
highest can bestows ^^I never lose heart,"
w^rites a great philosophical idealist in the New
Testament; ^^ though my outw^ard man decays,
my inner man is renewed day by day. For the
seen is transient, the unseen eternal.'*^ It is
here, probably, that we are to find the secret
of so many spiritual tragedies. Many enter on
the higher life of self-culture and self -disci-
pline ; but as the lure of material things makes
its appeal, and the realm of finite interests
seem so real as contrasted with the world of
ideals — what a falling off is there, what a de-
cline from beauty and grace to the sordidness
of an egotistic morality ! With the fading away
of an immortal perspective, life seems so brief,
so precarious, that to sacrifice pleasure, ease,
comfort, the joy of living at the bidding of the
ideal, appears the veriest quixotism. And so
the soul's high adventure ends in defeat.

* II Corinthians iv, 17 18 (Moflfatt's translation).

VALUE OF BELIEF 229

Why are we here? Why have we been
flung on this planet, to battle, to struggle, and
to die? Is it not to develop our moral mus-
cle, to make the best of our powers, to show
what stuff we are made of? Our earthly ex-
istence, taken at its highest, is in itself
a fragment, a torso, a poor, and petty thing.
As Stevenson says, *' Whatever else we were
made for, it was not for success. '* Yet, deep-
rooted and ineradicable in the heart of every
man is, however obscured at times, a crav-
ing for the fulfilment of his life, for its mean-
ing to be made clear. Death seems to be
the sheer denial of this human demand. It
stands inexorably on the path of moral prog-
ress: such is its outward guise. We need the
inspiration of a great idea that we may over-
come this abiding discouragement, and play well
our part in the cosmic conflict between right and
ill. *'Give me a great thought," said the dying
Herder, * ^ wherewith I may quicken myself. ' ' It
is the '* great thought'' of immortality that has
power to uplift, unify, and strengthen the moral
energies amid the most poignant stresses to
which flesh and blood can be exposed. Take an
illustration from a private letter written by a
young officer who had been wounded in one of
the bloodiest battles of the war. ' ' The regiment

230 THE FUTURE LIFE

had a terrible night, was only about one-third
the strength it went in. Two of our officers
went off their heads and about two-thirds were
killed or wounded. There is only one thing that
can possibly make one rise above these sur-
roundings : faith that the spirit goes to a higher
life, and though I'm afraid my religion has been
and still is patchy, this thought kept me per-
fectly calm and steady. Before the thing
started you certainly could have knocked me
down with a feather. I'm afraid I shall be
frightened, too, when it has to be done again;
but if only I can get into the same frame of
mind as before, I shall be quite contented.'*

In the broader battlefield of the world, where
we are all called to be soldiers, the same thought
has power to revivify the fainting spirit, and
when it infects the modern consciousness with
its triumphant energy, it will lift our personal
lives to fresh levels of efficiency, strength, and
freedom.

Here, then, is one of the great tasks to which
the New Age summons our finest and most con-
secrated minds. It is the reenthronement of a
passionate faith in immortality, in the hearts
and lives of men. What this faith did for the
old Graeco-Roman civilization it can do for ours.
It overthrew the very foundations, moral, social,

VALUE OF BELIEF 231

and political, of that ^'hard Roman world/' de-
stroyed its materialism, transformed its most
highly prized values, and crowned the individual
with a glory which has issued in the democratic
ideals of today. Our civilization has been
largely pagan in character, built on sensuous
and materialistic ends and aims. The cry of
the hour is for reconstruction and renewal, but
as Lord Morley remarks in another connection,
no real or permanent betterment in the social
order is possible apart from a transformation
of spiritual thought. The reconstruction of so-
ciety, the reform or abolition of time-honoured
institutions are vain dreams, if the individual
remains a materialist at heart, conceiving this
world as a "planetary cage" to be enjoyed as
one may, but with no outlook upon a grander
universe, no glimpse of a transcendental realm
where may be found the fruition of all his
highest hopes and strivings. Reinvest per-
sonality with its native rights, place it in a
category by itself as an end to which all else
is a means, that for which all institutions and
forms exist and apart from which they have no
reality, conceive it to be "a something that
pertains not to this wild death-element of Time,
that triumphs over Time, and ?5, and will be,
>vhen Time shall be no more;" and you have

232 THE FUTURE LIFE

introduced a revolutionary factor of potency, in
Biblical phrase, to remove mountains — moun-
tains of sloth, inertia, prejudice, and the dulness
of use and wont.

From another but no less important point
of view belief in immortality has a social
value which, perhaps, will make it more toler-
able to the mind of the diplomatist and politi-
cal leader. Today great tracts of the world
are in darkest chaos and anarchy. As was
predicted long ago by thoughtful observers,
the proletariat have taken up arms and are
threatening the very existence of the civilization
for the salvation of which the great war has
been waged. Men of the depressed classes find-
ing themselves and their fellows the victims of
age-long inequality, suffering, and injustice, not
infrequently under the aegis of law and religion,
are determined to make a clean sweep of the
system in which such things are possible.
They boldly announced that after the war of
nations, there must be another and a still more
terrible war — the war of classes. Deep-seated
in their hearts are love and hate, love of human-
ity in the abstract, hate of human beings or
certain classes of human beings in the concrete.
Just because of their love of humanity, the Bol-
shevik! and others at one with them, though

VALUE OF BELIEF 233

bearing a different name, are guilty of murder,
robbery, and many another crime, and have let
loose the most violent and brutal of man's
primitive passions. Why this frightful contra-
diction? At bottom the answer will be found to
be that great masses of the toilers have aban-
doned belief in any other world than this ; they
ask for no Heaven and they fear no Hell. What
they demand and what they must have is a
share of the good things of the only life they
know or care about or in which they believe.
Hence their cries, *'Down with the State, with
the comfortable and well-to-do classes, with the
intellectuals, and up with the unprivileged and
the have-nots ! Time is passing, death will soon
end all. Let us destroy, then, with fire and
sword the existing order in the hope that at
once the poor and the suffering may enjoy the
good things of the world. ' ' Such thoughts could
only be bred in an atmosphere saturated with
materialism. Are we, then, to proclaim a tame
acquiescence in the wrongs and injustices which
organized greed inflicts on the workers, and as
a substitute for good-will and social righteous-
ness set up the hopes of a good time coming in
the world beyond? On the contrary, belief in
the infinite worth of the human soul, especially
when reinforced by the doctrines of the father-

234 THE FUTURE LIFE

hood of God and the brotherhood of man,
powerful as they are to dissolve and to build
up again the whole social structure, creates the
spiritual passion that can brook no wrong done
to the humblest creature that wears a human
face. But this passion is patient. It knows that
self-sacrifice and self-control are essential to a
being whose future is not limited bv the grave,
but whose destiny is made or marred by the
thoughts or exertions of his earthly life. It
knows that there is another and a better world,
and that there the only thing that counts is
character, love, and goodness, a spirit that can
say: ^'Better far to suffer wrong than to in-
flict w^rong on any man." The most urgent
need at the present time in the interests of the
spiritual reconstruction of the world is to re-
entrench this dynamic faith in the hearts and
lives of men. "Workers in this mighty trans-
formation are called from different quarters.
The philosopher whose proud boast it once was
that though he could bake no bread he could
give us God, freedom, and immortality, may
again bring his interest into relation to ordinary
human need by showing the place of a future
life in any rational concept of the universe ; the
psychic researcher with his love of truth, his re-
morselessly scientific attitude, will do well to con-

VALUE OF BELIEF 235

centrate his energies on establishing the fact of
survival; the Biblical scholar should make plain
the solid historical foundations of the Easter-
message on which organized Christianity was
founded; the ethical teacher can show that
moral experience stultifies itself unless the pos-
tulate of immortality be granted ; the preacher
can vindicate and intensify the deep mystical
craving, manifest in all the higher religions, of
union with the Divine, of emancipation from the
weakness and decay of nature into the life and
gladness of the sons of God. "With such con-
certed and unified effort there shall dawn upon
our distracted world a new day wherein at last
the idealism of Christ shall have free course to
work its beneficent will, to realize the dream of
seer and prophet, the spiritualizing of all human
relations in the veritable establishment of
God's Kingdom on earth.

INDEX

Adler, Felix, 47

Agnosticism and immutabil-
ity, 26

American Psychical Research
Society, 36

American soldier, testimony
of an, 61

Annihilation, moral conse-
quences of theory of, 223
sociological effect of, 224

Appearances of Christ, post-
mortem, 125, 219

Aristotle, 25, 168

Armstrong, Professor, 166

Augustine, St., 38

B

Bailey, " Festus " of, 11

Balfour, A. J., 30, 146

Balfour, G. W., 33, 167

Barnes' " Evidences of Chris-
tianity," 149

Barrett, Sir W. F., 33, 144,
146

" Beauchamp," the, case of,
206, 209, 210

Bergson, H., 146

Bolsheviki, unbelief of the,
232, 233

Bossuet, 89

Boyd-Carpenter, Bishop, 33

Browning, R., 46

Buddha, 40

Buddhism, 43

Butcher, H. S., Prof., 167

287

Carlyle, Thomas, 133
Cameron, Miss, 175
Character, significance of, 9, 10
"Chenoweth," Mrs., 181, 183
Clement of Alexandria, 64
Clergyman's experience, a,

210-215
Clodd, Edward, 27, 28, 142,

160
Coe, Professor, 92
Coleridge, S. T., 144
Conversion, 18
Crawford, Professor, 35
Crookes, William, 30, 32
Cross-correspondence, 172, 173,

176, 177, 178

D

Dante, 63

Darwin, Charles, 67, 144, 149

Dead, the, employments of,

156, 214
Death, fear of, 21, 22

meaning of, 62

sting of, 226
Democritus, 66
Dickinson, G. Lowes, 45
" Dionysius, Ear of," 167
Doyle, Sir A. C, 146
Dual personality, 180
Dying, experience of, 215-217

E
Eliot, George, 5, 6
JEmerson, R. W., 22, 49, 94,
99, 226

238

INDEX

Emotions ani immortality, 40 Hyslop, James H, 30
Kmpedocles, 66 on the Sermon on

Eternal life, 11 Mount, 101

Ether, 37 confession of, 14S

and the Doris case, 183

the

Fechner, Gustav, 129, 138
Fisher, Doris, strange case of,

179-210
Fiske, John, 75
Fiammarion, Camille, 30, 35
Future life, influence of, on

the present, 221

Gibbon, 218
Gladstone, W. E., 32
Goethe, 7, 49, 80

Haeckol, Professor, 27, 28, 73,
224

dogmatism of, 29

monism of, 68
Hall, G Stanley, 111, 112
Harnack, Professor, 102
Haynes, E. S. P., 78
Heaven, 59
Herder, 229
Hill, J. A., quotation from,

215-217
Hodgson, Richard, 155, 163,

164, 206, 207
Holland, Mrs., 172
Holt, Henry, 157
Homer, 131
Hugo, Victor, 22
Huntley, John, experience of,

215-217
Huxley, T. H., 8, 24, 25

Ideals, moral, 83, 222
Immortality, meaning of the
term, 1, 2
racial, 5, 6, 7
and the Churches, 14
conventional ideas of, 17
belief in and spiritual re-
newal, 19, 20
difficulties of belief in, 20
desire for. Chap, III {pas-
sim )
beliL'f in and suicide, 42
and religion, 58
and morality, 86
and the affections, 91
and philosophy, 136, 234
as a spiritual dynamic,

220
and the war, 225
and civilization, 231, 234

James, William, 30, 31, 33,

69, 74, 146, 163
JeflFerson, C. E., 39
Jesus Christ:

teaching of, Chap. VI

( passim )
the Resurrection of, mean-
ing of, 122
influence of, 132, 133 ^
contribution of, to belief in
immortality, 138
John, St, 11, 12
Johnson, Samuel, 61
Jowett, Benjamin, 107

INDEX

239

Kant, Immanuel, 8, 83, 150

Karma, 227

Kingdom of God, Christ's idea

of, 102, 103
Kingsley, Charles, 24
Kropotkin, Prince, 97

Lang, Andrew, 33

Leuba, Prof. J. H., 41, 69, 70,

71
Lisle, Leconte de, 41
Lodge, Sir Oliver J., 144
on the nature of the soul, 4
personal confession of, 16
advocate of psychic re-
search, 30, 32
cross-correspondence test
of, 172
Love, not transferable, 92
Lucretius, 66

M

MacDougall, W., 161

Man, the greatness of, 82
ideal-forming power of, 87
higher than nature, 88
citizen of an eternal world,
88

Materialism, 66

ambiguity of the term, 71
argument of, 151

Martin, A. W., 67, 127

Martineau, James, 112

Marx, Karl, 79

McCabe, Joseph, 28

McGiffert, A. C , 18

Mediums, 33, 36, 142

Metchnikoff, E., 27, 28

Miracle, meaning of, 38

Morley, Viscount, 231

Multiple personality, 180

Milnsterberg, Hugo, 141
Myers, F. W. H., 30, 32, 129,
148, 159, 164

N

Narrative of spirit return,

210-213
Notes on the Doris Case, 208,

209

O

Officer, letter of, quoted, 229.

230
Origen, 64

Pascal, 23

Paul, St., 17, 90, 128, 133, 173,
174, 228

"Pelham, George," 155, 157

Personality, 63, 226, 231

Pessimism, 40

Peter, St., 112

Phenomena, physical, of spir-
itism, 34

Philoxenus, 169

Piper, Mrs., 155, 163, 166, 172

Plato, 49, 64, 107, 131

Prince, Morton, 206, 210

Prince, W. F., 181, 182

Pringle-Pattison, Professor,
76, 96

Pulpit, the modern, weakness
of, 114

Psychical Research Society,
32, 140

Purgatory, 64

Rashdall, Hastings, 143
Reconstruction, spiritual, 234
Resurrection of Christ, Chap.
VII (passim)

240

INDEX

Rich Man and Lazarus, Para-
ble of the, 111
Richet, Charles, 30
Robertson, F. W., 222
Royee, Josiah, 6, 7
Ruskin, John, 17, 32

Sadducees, the, Christ and,

104
Schleiermacher, 43, 44
Schrenck-Notzing, von, 35
Sensationalism, 72
Service, Rev. R., 156
Shakespeare, 42
Shaw, G. Bernard, 41, 44, 45
Sidgwick, Henry, 30, 53
Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry, 161
Socialism, influence of, 78
Soul, definitions of, 2, 3, 4
Spiritistic hypothesis, advan-
tages of, 162, 163
weakness of, 163, 164
Stevenson, R. L., 229
Stirling, J. H., 96
Streeter, B. H., 60
Swedenborg, 150

Taylor, Prof. A. E., 141

Telepathy, 159, 160, 161, 162
Tennant, F. R., 68
Tennyson, Lord, 46, 86
Theologia Oermanica, 122
Theology and psychic re-
search, 142, 143
Thompson, Francis, 10
Triviality of alleged messages
from the dead, 153, 154,
164, 165
Tyndall, John, 66

" V," Dr., 210
Values, moral, 75
Verrall, Miss, 172, 173
Verrall, Mrs. A. E., 172
Verrall, Prof. A. E., 167
Virgil, 131

W

War, the Great, and immor-
tality, 7, 13, 14, 89, 225
Ward, James, 64, 76
Watson, William, 9, 51
Wells, H. G., 41, 45, 51
Willett, Mrs., 168
Woman, a mysterious, the
mystical saying of, 115

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