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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



DKEAMS AND KEALITIES. 



By LESLIE STEPHEN. 



STRANGE spectacles meet us everywhere in 

 a period of speculative fermentation, when 

 men's thoughts are heaving and working they 

 know not why, and their minds, like those of 

 half-aroused sleepers, are unable to distinguish 

 between dreams and perceived realities. Our 

 conceptions of the unknown world are naturally 

 most sensitive to every change of belief. They 

 grow fantastic and unsubstantial, like shadows at 

 the close of day. From every pulpit we hear 

 passionate assertions of the transcendent impor- 

 tance and enduring vitality of some form of be- 

 lief in a future life. What the belief ought to be, 

 and upon what logical foundation it should be 

 based, becomes ever more uncertain. In all ages 

 there has of course been a vast gap between the 

 ostensible creed upon such matters, and that 

 which has really consistency and vividness enough 

 to affect men's conduct. Preachers and their ad- 

 versaries agree as to the matter of fact, that the 

 hopes and fears of future retribution exert no in- 

 fluence upon the ordinary human being at all pro- 

 portionable to their avowed magnitude. Whether 

 men's intellects are too skeptical or their imagi- 

 nations too sluggish, they are strangely indiffer- 

 ent to the most tremendous threats and the most 

 inspiring promises. 



Such a phenomenon has never been otherwise 

 than normal. The only remarkable fact about 

 modern sentiment is the degree in which the lan- 

 guage used by believers betrays the absence of 

 reasoned grounds of conviction, and the vacil- 

 lating and indefinite nature of the conception ob- 

 tained. In the curious discussion recently pub- 

 lished in the Nineteenth Century, one of the ablest 

 advocates of the orthodox position said that he 

 believed "because he was told." As he was 

 arguing against persons who told him not to be- 

 lieve, this was merely another way of saying that 

 he believed because he chose. The saying, how- 

 ever, was but an epigrammatic avowal of the 

 incouclusiveness of the ordinary argument for a 

 future life. That argument proceeds smoothly 

 so long as it is simply an assault upon material- 

 ism. But the idealist position may be victorious- 

 ly established without leading us a step further. 

 Hume was the natural development of Berkeley. 

 Idealism of a newer fashion than Berkeley's may 

 have other issues ; but, if it avoids the skeptical 



conclusion in regard to all theology, it will prob- 

 ably land us in some form of pantheism, entirely 

 irreconcilable with a belief in that indestructible 

 spiritual atom called a soul. The logical gap, 

 which inevitably occurs, has. to be filled by some 

 scholastic show of argument, by a recourse to the 

 supernatural authority, or more frequently by 

 setting the emotions in the place of reason. 



The real appeal — that which persuades al- 

 though it can scarcely be said to convince — is the 

 appeal to the emotions. It is the vehement as- 

 sertion that without this belief life would be in- 

 tolerable ; that the world would be hideous, mo- 

 rality paralytic, and religion an empty name. No 

 creed, it is urged, could have any real hold upon 

 mankind, of which the Christian dogma of per- 

 sonal immortality did not form an organic part. 

 It should follow that such a doctrine has formed 

 part of all widely-spread and enduring creeds. 

 This statement, indeed, brings us into rude con- 

 flict with the most notorious facts. The briefest 

 outline of the religious history of mankind shows 

 that creeds which can count more adherents than 

 Christianity, and have flourished through a longer 

 period, have yet omitted all that makes the Chris- 

 tian doctrine of a future state valuable in the eyes 

 of its supporters. But, even if we could get rid 

 of so stupendous a fact as, for example, the ex- 

 istence of the multitudinous creeds of the East, 

 by expedients scarcely admissible in the days 

 when religion is being studied in a scientific 

 spirit, we should find some strange puzzles within 

 the limits of the Christian Churches. 



Thus, for example, the most fervent preachers 

 of Christianity are committed to the assertion of 

 the essential continuity of their own with the 

 Jewish creed. Every one, infidel or orthodox, 

 will agree that of all creeds known to mankind 

 the Jewish has stamped itself most deeply into 

 the very fibre and ultimate constitution of the 

 believing race. And yet it is a palpable fact that 

 the creed of the early Jews virtually ignores all 

 distinct reference to a future state. If some in- 

 direct and constructive allusions can be tortured 

 out of special texts by the ingenuity of commen- 

 tators, the general silence is the more remarkable. 

 The doctrine which forms a corner-stone of Chris- 

 tianity appears as an extraneous addition append 

 ed by way of after-thought to the main struct- 



