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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of the illusion, indeed, are so numerous and 

 plausible that the only difficulty of explaining is 

 in the selection. When, for example, another be- 

 ing has become inwoven with our habitual experi- 

 ence ; when we have learned to interpret various 

 phenomena as signs of a living presence — the 

 process becomes so spontaneous and instinctive 

 that we cannot speedily unlearn it. We actually 

 feel (who has not felt ?) the pressure of the hand 

 that is still forever, and hear the footstep that 

 is no longer caused by the living form. It is as 

 hard to reduce the touch or sound to the bare 

 testimony of the senses as for an educated man 

 to see in a book the bare black and white sym- 

 bols without imbibing the meaning beyond. There 

 is, indeed, a contradiction to thought once or- 

 ganized by experience in supposing that the dead 

 can still speak or move. But the infantile intel- 

 lect is tolerant of contradictions ; it is not sur- 

 prised on discovering that a body which was cov- 

 ered with earth and burned with fire is again 

 appearing in its former state ; and the fact that 

 death ends life is but slowly forced upon it by 

 experience. If my dog saw something which re- 

 called me after my death, he would accept the 

 vision without the least shock of surprise; the 

 childish mind certainly, and, we may presume, 

 the savage mind, is in the same stage. As it be- 

 gins to become sensible of the empirical truth 

 that the dead do not rise, while still believing 

 that they are sometimes seen and felt, it tacitly 

 solves the contradiction by imagining another life, 

 a race of dim shadows which haunt the graves 

 of the dead and visit the dreams of survivors. 

 Recent philosophers have shown us how the ex- 

 perience of dreams and other phenomena may 

 suggest or corroborate a similar theory, until a 

 spirit-world is created more populous than the 

 world of the living, and inhabited by beings some 

 of whom gradually decay, while others are gradu- 

 ally promoted to the honors of godhood. 



But, if the framework of the belief is sug- 

 gested by misinterpreted experience, all that 

 fills it up, that gives it definite form and sub- 

 stance and color, is necessarily the work of the 

 creative imagination. This land of vague shad- 

 ows is the natural heritage of the poet. Its 

 population is in part supplied by ordinary dreams, 

 and the waking dreams naturally find in it a con- 

 genial dwelling-place, where they can acquire a 

 kind of shadowy reality. Even the most ortho- 

 dox of intelligent persons intimate that the par- 

 ticular symbols, the fire of hell and the harps of 

 the blessed, have no more than a poetic or sym- 

 bolical truth. The whole question is as to the 



extent of the share contributed by the imagina- 

 tion. A very slight comparison of the fully- 

 formed belief with the ostensible logical ground- 

 work will suggest how little is due even to a 

 mistaken system of reasoning. The Christian 

 belief is still supported by a show of scholastic 

 argument as to the existence of the soul. But 

 the argument is obviously too wide. There is 

 not even a fragment or shadow of ostensible rea- 

 son for confining immortality to man and exclud- 

 ing brutes. Still less can any argument be given 

 for a future immortality, which is not equally 

 valid in favor of the past. The doctrine of trans- 

 migration of souls is, on purely logical grounds, 

 more reasonable than the Christian, because it 

 neither involves this arbitrary limitation nor re- 

 quires us to believe in a soul existing and ener- 

 gizing in a perfectly inconceivable state of sepa- 

 ration from the body through which alone it is 

 known to us. And, again, if there is a show, 

 there is no more than a show, of proof for inde- 

 structible personality. The existence of a uni- 

 versal soul in which the individual soul is merged 

 as the drop in the ocean is, it would seem, far 

 more plausible than the view of the separate 

 " indiscerptible " unity, and falls in better with 

 the loftiest metaphysical systems. That which 

 distinguishes the Christian system from systems 

 which can reckon a much greater number of dis- 

 ciples is precisely that for which no shadow of 

 proof can be advanced ; and, moreover, it is that 

 upon which the whole value of the dogma depends 

 in the eyes of believers. 



The simple explanation is, that the whole pro- 

 cess is poetical in substance. It is the construc- 

 tion of an ideal world, which may be in some 

 sense congenial to the imagination. The con- 

 science as trained by great Christian teachers 

 creates spontaneously a system of retribution in- 

 consistent with a preexistent state, or an ultimate 

 absorption of the soul in the infinite. The 

 dream-world is framed to suit the moral theory, 

 instead of the morality being adapted to facts. 

 The illegitimate nature of the process betrays it- 

 self in the arbitrary and even repulsive conclu- 

 sions ultimately reached ; but it is the normal pro- 

 cess of the imaginative faculty. 



The world of dreams in fact, if not created, 

 is moulded by our desires. It is the embodi- 

 ment of our hopes and fears. The historical con- 

 ditions which render certain impulses prominent 

 at particular epochs, determine also the direction 

 which will be taken by our wandering fancies. 

 The plastic world of the imagination yields to 

 every passionate longing that stirs our natures. 



