26 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. 



Br Eev. T. W. FOWLE. 



HE who pretends to have any thing new to say upon so old a sub- 

 ject as the immortality of the soul, must expect to arouse cer- 

 tainly opposition, and probably contempt. Nevertheless, this at least 

 is certain, that the tendency of science, which has powerfully affected 

 every domain of thought in new and unexpected ways, cannot but place 

 the old doctrine of immortality under new and, it may be, unexj)ected 

 lights, abolishing old arguments, and suggesting new ones that have 

 not yet obtained the consideration they deserve. My object in this 

 paper is to endeavor, by the aid of all-victorious analysis, to throw 

 some little light upon the relations of the belief in immortality with 

 scientific thought ; and, at the outset, I wish distinctly and positively 

 to affirm that it is not my intention to construct any argument for the 

 belief against science, but merely to explain the conditions under which, 

 as it seems to me, the question must be debated. Those conditions, 

 though in themselves plain and simple, are, I believe, very imperfectly 

 understood, and much bewildering nonsense is talked upon both sides 

 of the question by men who have not clearly realized the nature of 

 evidence, the amount of proof required, or the sources from which that 

 proof must be derived. I think it possible to lay down a series of 

 propositions with which, in principle at any rate, most reasonable minds 

 would agree, and which would have the effect of defining the area of 

 debate and the true point of conflict. This may sound presumptuous ; 

 whether it be really so or not, the event alone can prove. 



Now, the first demand of science is for an accurate definition of the 

 object of discussion, that is, that both religious and scientific thinkers 

 should be quite sure that they are discussing the same thing. Im- 

 mortality is bound up in the minds of religious people with a vast 

 amount of beautiful and endearing associations, which form no part of 

 the hard, dry fact itself. The definition of immortality, viewed scien- 

 tifically, is, I take it, something of this sort : the existence of a think- 

 ing, self-conscious personality after death, that is, after the bodily func- 

 tions have ceased to operate. This personality may or may not exist 

 forever ; it may or may not be responsible for the past ; it may or may 

 not be capable of rest, joy, and love ; it may or may not be joined to 

 its old body or to a new body. These, and a hundred similar beliefs 

 with which religion has clothed the mere fact of existence after death, 

 form no essential part, I must again affirm, of the fact itself. And 

 throughout the argument, this, and no other than this, will be the sense 

 in which I use the word immortality ; because it is the only one that I 

 have a right to expect that the scientific mind will accept. 



It may be well, also, before going further, to make it clear to our- 



