SCIENCE aND IMMORTALITY. 29 



they are true. It can strengthen the principle of faith in those who do 

 not require positive demonstration for their beliefs; it cannot even 

 cross swords with those, soon to be the majority of thinking men, to 

 whom positive demonstration has become as necessary to their minds 

 as food to their bodies. Nay, they will resent rather than welcome 

 the attempt to put a multitude of hopes and myriads of wishes in the 

 place of one solid fact, and will soon confirm themselves in their 

 opinions, by the obvious argument that these hopes and wishes are 

 peculiar to the childhood of the race, and form only one out of many 

 proofs, that man is liable to perpetual self-deception until he confronts 

 fact and law. Not indeed that they will indulge in the equally un- 

 scientific statement that there is no such thing as immortality. The 

 attitude of mind which they will assume will be that of knowing 

 nothing, and of having no reasonable hope of ever discovering any 

 thing, about man's future destiny. And while they will think it good 

 that man, or at any rate that some men, should allow themselves to 

 hope for life after death, yet they will steadily oppose any assertion 

 that these hopes ought to guide men's conduct, influence their 

 motives, or form their character. Now, if this be true, it is difficult 

 to overrate the importance of thoroughly and distinctly realizing it. 

 That the evidence for the truths of natural religion is overwhelming. 

 is one of the statements that are accepted as truisms, at the very 

 moment that science is slowly leavening the human intellect with the 

 conviction that all such evidence is scientifically worthless. Never- 

 theless the opposite idea has taken firm hold of the religious mind, 

 and forms the basis of many an eloquent refutation of the " pre- 

 sumptuous assurance " and " illogical obstinacy " of modern thought. 

 Men must have smiled to hear themselves alternately refuted and 

 rebuked by controversialists who did not understand the tone of mind 

 against which they were arguing, or who assumed as true the very 

 things which their opponents resolved to know nothing about, either 

 in the way of belief or rejection. It is very certain, however, that 

 this error will not yield to the mere statement that it is an error, and 

 therefore I will go on to examine a little more minutely the various 

 arguments by which men seek to prove the doctrine of immortality 

 These are mainly fourfold : 



1. That it is an original intuition, and arising from this, 



2. That it is a universal belief. 



3. That it follows necessarily from the existence of God. 



4. That it is essential as a motive for human morality. 



1. I take the statement of this argument from the words of one 

 than whom no man has a better right to be heard on such a subject. 

 Prof. Max Muller, in his preface to the first volume of his " Chips from 

 a German Workshop," writes as follows : " An intuition of God, a 

 sense of human weakness and dependence, a belief in a Divine govern- 

 ment of the world, a distinction between good and evil, and a hope of 



