THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. 



243 



ence, with or without the theological hypothesis. 

 The most extreme form of materialism does not 

 dispute that moral and mental science is for logi- 

 cal purposes something more than physical sci- 

 ence. So the most extreme form of spiritualism 

 gets its mental and moral science by observation 

 and argument from phenomena; it does not, or 

 it does not any longer, build such science by ab- 

 stract deduction from any proposition as to an 

 immaterial entity. There have been, in ages past, 

 attempts to do this. Plato, for instance, at- 

 tempted to found, not only his mental and moral 

 philosophy, but his general philosophy of the 

 universe, by deduction from a mere hypothesis. 

 He imagined immaterial entities, the ideas, of 

 things inorganic, as much as organic. But then 

 Plato was consistent and had the courage of his 

 opinions. If he imagined an idea, or soul, of a 

 man, he imagined one also for a dog, for a tree, 

 for a statue, for a chair. He thought that a 

 statue and a chair were what they are, by virtue 

 of an immaterial entity which gave them form. 

 The hypothesis did not add much to the art of 

 statuary, or to that of the carpenter; nor, to do 

 him justice, did Plato look for much practical 

 result in these spheres. One form of the doctrine 

 alone survives — that man is what he is by virtue 

 of an immaterial entity temporarily indwelling in 

 his body. But, though the hypothesis survives, 

 it is in no sense any longer the basis of the science 

 of human nature with any school. No school is 

 now content to sit in its study and evplve its 

 knowledge of the moral qualities of man out of 

 abstract deductions from the conception of an 

 immaterial entity. All, without exception, pro- 

 fess to get their knowledge of the moral qualities 

 by observing the qualities which men actually do 

 exhibit, or have exhibited. And those who are 

 persuaded that man has, over and above his man's 

 nature, an immaterial entity, find themselves dis- 

 cussing the laws of thought and of character on 

 a common ground with those who regard man as 

 man — i. e., who regard man's nature as capable 

 of being referred to an homogeneous system of 

 law. Spiritualists and materialists, however 

 much they may differ in their explanations of 

 moral phenomena, describe their relations in the 

 same language, the language of law, not of illu- 

 minism. 



Those, therefore, who dispense with a tran- 

 scendental explanation are just as free as those 

 who maintain it, to handle the spiritual and 

 religious phenomena of human nature, treating 

 them simply as phenomena. No one has ever 

 suggested that the former philosophy is not quite 



as well entitled to analyze the intellectual facul- 

 ties of man as the stoutest believer in the imma- 

 terial entity. It would raise a smile nowadays 

 to hear it said that such a one must be incom- 

 petent to treat of the canons of inductive reason- 

 ing, because he was unorthodox as to the immor- 

 tality of the soul. And if, notwithstanding this 

 unorthodoxy, he is thought competent to inves- 

 tigate the laws of thought, why not the moral 

 laws, the sentiments, and the emotions ? As a 

 fact, every moral faculty of man is recognized by 

 him just as much as by any transcendentalist. 

 He does not limit himself, any more than the 

 theologian does, to mere morality. He is fully 

 alive to the spiritual emotions in all their depth, 

 purity, and beauty. He recognizes in man the 

 yearning for a power outside his individual self 

 which he may venerate, a love for the author of 

 his chief good, the need for sympathy with some- 

 thing greater than himself. All these are posi- 

 tive facts which rest on observation, quite apart 

 from any explanation of the hypothetical cause 

 of these tendencies in man. There, at any rate, 

 the scientific observer finds them ; and he is at 

 liberty to give them quite as high a place in his 

 scheme of human nature as the most complete 

 theologian. He may possibly give them a far 

 higher place, and bind them far more truly into 

 the entire tissue of his whole view of life, because 

 they are built up for him on precisely the same 

 ground of experience as all the rest of his knowl- 

 edge, and have no element at all heterogeneous 

 from the rest of life. With the language of 

 spiritual emotion he is perfectly in unison. The 

 spirit of devotion, of spiritual communion with 

 an ever-present power, of sympathy and fellow- 

 ship with the living world, of awe and submission 

 toward the material world, the sense of adoration, 

 love, resignation, mystery, are at least as potent 

 with the one system as with the other. He can 

 share the religious emotion of every age, and can 

 enter into the language of every truly religious 

 heart. For myself, I believe that this is only 

 done on a complete as well as a real basis in the 

 religion of humanity, but we need not confine the 

 present argument to that ground. I venture to 

 believe that this spirit is truly shared by all, 

 whatever their hypothesis about the human soul, 

 who treat these highest emotions of man's nature 

 as facts of primary value, and who have any in- 

 telligible theory whereby these emotions can be 

 aroused. 



All positive methods of treating man of a 

 comprehensive kind adopt to the full all that has 

 ever been said about the dignity of man's moral 



