18 THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH 



see some sort of notion of immortality incorporated in 

 an integral part of almost all folk philosophies of which 

 any record exists. 



Now, perhaps unfortunately, perhaps fortunately, it 

 has up to the present time proved impossible absolutely 

 to demonstrate, for reasons which will presently appear, 

 by any scientifically valid method of experimentation or 

 reasoning, that any real portion of that totality of being 

 which is an individual living man persists after he dies. 

 Equally, for the same reasons, science cannot absolutely 

 demonstrate that such persistence does not occur. The 

 latter fact has had two important consequences. In the first 

 place, it has permitted many millions of people to derive 

 a real comfort of soul in sorrow, and a fairly abiding tran- 

 quility of mind in general from the belief that immortality 

 is a reality. Even the most cynical of scoffers can find lit- 

 tle fault with such a result, the world and human nature 

 being constituted as they are. The other consequence of 

 science's present inability to lay bare, in final and irre- 

 fragable terms, the truth about the course, if any, of 

 events subsequent to death is more serious. It opens the 

 way for recurring mental epidemics of that intimate mix- 

 ture of hyper-credulity, hyper-knavery, and mysticism, 

 which used to be called spiritualism, but now usually pre- 

 fers more seductive titles. We are at the moment in the 

 midst of perhaps the most violent and destructive epi- 

 demic of this sort which has ever occurred. Its evil lies in 

 the fact that in exact proportion to its virulence it des- 

 troys the confidence of the collective mind of humanity 

 in the enduring efficacy of the only thing which the history 

 of mankind has demonstrated to contribute to the real 

 advancement of his intellectual, physical, spiritual and 

 moral well being, namely that orderly progression of 

 ascertained knowledge which we now call science. 



