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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



fully, that "he fancied there was a sort of a 

 something." Since those days the process of 

 disintegration and vaporization of belief has gone 

 on rapidly ; and now very religious minds, and 

 men who think themselves to be religious, are 

 ready to apply this " sort of a something " to all 

 the verities in turn. They half hope that there 

 is " a sort of a something " fluttering about, or 

 inside, their human frames, that there may turn 

 out to be a " something" somewhere after death, 

 and that there must be a sort of a somebody or 

 (as the theology of culture will have it) a sort of 

 a something controlling and comprehending hu- 

 man life. But the more thoughtful spirits, not 

 being professionally engaged in a doctrine, most- 

 ly limit themselves to a pious hope that there 

 may be something in it, and that we shall know 

 some day what it is. 



Now, theologians and religious people unat- 

 tached must know that this will never serve — 

 that this is paltering with the greatest of all 

 things. What, then, is the only solution which 

 can ultimately satisfy both the devotees of sci- 

 ence and the believers in religion ? Surely but 

 this, to make religion scientific by placing religion 

 under the methods of science. Let science come 

 to see that religion, morality, life, are within its 

 field, or, rather, are the main part of its field. 

 Let religion come to see that it can be nothing 

 but a prolongation of science, a rational and 

 homogeneous result of cosmology and biology, 

 not a matter of fantastic guessing. Then there 

 will be no true science which does not aim at, 

 and is not guided by, systematic religion. And 

 there will be no religion which pretends to any 

 other basis but positive knowledge and scientific 

 logic. But for this science must consent to add 

 spiritual phenomena to its curriculum, and reli- 

 gion must consent to give up its vapid figments. 



Positivism in dealing with the soul discards 

 the exploded errors of the materialists and spirit- 

 ualists alike. On the one hand, it not only ad- 

 mits into its studies the spiritual life of men, but 

 it raises this life to be the essential business of 

 all human knowledge. All the spiritual senti- 

 ments of man, the aspirations of the conscious 

 soul in all their purity and pathos, the vast reli- 

 gious experience and potentialities of the human 

 heart seen in the history of our spiritual life as a 

 race — this is, we say, the principal subject of 

 science and of philosophy. No philosophy, no 

 morality, no polity, can rest on stable foundations 

 if this be not its grand aim ; if it have not a sys- 

 tematic creed, a rational object of worship, and a 

 definite discipline of life. But, then, we treat 



these spiritual functions of the soul, not as mys- 

 tical enigmas, but as positive phenomena, and we 

 satisfy them by philosophic and historic answers 

 and not by naked figments. And we think that 

 the teaching of history and a true synthesis of 

 science bring us far closer to the heart of this 

 spiritual life than do any spiritualist guesses, and 

 do better equip us to read aright the higher se- 

 crets of the soul : meaning always by soul the 

 consensus of the faculties which observation dis- 

 covers in the human organism. 



On the other hand, without entering into an 

 idle dispute with the spiritualist orthodoxy, we 

 insist on regarding this organism as a perfectly 

 homogeneous unit, to be studied from one end of 

 it to the other by rational scientific methods. 

 We pretend to give no sort of cause as lying be- 

 hind the manifold powers of the organism. We 

 say the immaterial entity is something which we 

 cannot grasp, which explains nothing, for which 

 we cannot have a shadow of evidence. We are 

 determined to treat man as a human organism, 

 just as we treat a dog as a canine organism ; and 

 we know no ground for saying, and no good to 

 be got by pretending, that man is a human or- 

 ganism plus an indescribable entity. We say 

 the human organism is a marvelous thing, sub- 

 lime if you will, of subtilest faculty and sensibili- 

 ty ; but we, at any rate, can find nothing in man 

 which is not au organic part of this organism ; we 

 find the faculties of mind, feeling, and will, direct- 

 ly dependent on physical organs ; and to talk to 

 us of mind, feeling, and will, continuing their 

 functions in the absence of physical organs and 

 visible organisms, is to use language which, to us 

 at least, is pure nonsense. 



And now to turn to the great phenomenon of 

 material organisms which we call Death. The 

 human organism, like every other organism, ulti- 

 mately loses that unstable equilibrium of its cor- 

 related forces which we name Life, and ceases to 

 be an organism or system of organs, adjusting 

 its internal relations to its external conditions. 

 Thereupon the existence of the complex inde- 

 pendent entity to which we attribute conscious- 

 ness undoubtedly — i. e., for aught we know to 

 the contrary — comes to an end. But the activi- 

 ties of this organism do not come to an end, ex- 

 cept so far as these activities need fresh sensa- 

 tions and material organs. And a great part of 

 these activities, and far the noblest part, only 

 need fresh sensations and material organs in 

 other similar organisms. While there is an 

 abundance of these in due relation, the activities 

 go on ad infinitum, with increasing energy. We 



