EVOLUTION AND THE DESTINY OF MAN. 457 



something altogether apart from his bodily frame ? Does it maintain 

 its individuality, its elemental purity, while the body falls asunder ? 

 Does it necessai'ily endure eternally ? And is it true that, the coil of 

 earthly life once shaken off, every human soul departs into a condition 

 either of everlasting bliss or of everlasting and unspeakable torment ? 

 To all of these questions the Christian religion has answered, and 

 must still answer, " Yes." In what respect, then, it may be asked, does 

 Professor Fiske seek to modify the Christian message ; or does he sim- 

 ply state over again, on the authority of Science, what Christianity had 

 affirmed on the authority of supernatural revelation ? 



In reply to these queries it may be briefly stated that Professor 

 Fiske confines himself to asserting, in the name of Science, and particu- 

 larly of the doctrine of evolution, the separate and essentially inde- 

 pendent existence of the human soul. Whether, such being the case, 

 he can claim to have thrown any light on the destiny of man, is per- 

 haps a debatable point. It seems to me that he has rather dealt with 

 the statics of human nature than with the question of the final out- 

 come of human activity. It may be doubted whether, if the Christian 

 missionaries at the court of the Northumbrian king had contented 

 themselves with announcing that man had a soul, and that the soul 

 was imperishable, they would have made much impression on their 

 heathen listeners. Animistic interpretations of the phenomena of 

 human life have been common in all ages — so common that, from their 

 apparent universality, Mr. Spencer deduces the conclusion that all re- 

 ligion is based on primeval ghost-worship. Mr. Fiske comes forward 

 to-day to say, in effect, that animism has the warrant of Science. Well 

 and good ! It may have ; that all dej^ends upon the interpretation of 

 facts. But establish the point, and we shall at once want to know 

 what are the fortunes of the soul after it leaves the body. Does it 

 repair to happy hunting-grounds ? Does it wander in a meadow of 

 asphodel ? Does it flit about in eternal twilight ? Does it repair to the 

 court of Minos and Rhadamanthus ? Does it take on other animal 

 forms and so revolve through a ceaseless round of changes ? Or does a 

 judgment await it that will place it irrevocably on one side or the other 

 of the eternal dividing line, the everlasting gulf, which shall sepaz'atethe 

 saved from the lost ? Unless some one will answer these questions for 

 us, it seems almost vain to pretend that any light has been thrown on 

 the " destiny of man " (beyond the present life) by the mere assertion, 

 on whatever grounds, that the " soul " is something essentially distinct 

 from the body. 



It may be further affirmed that even the latter statement, when 

 taken by itself, will prove unsatisfactory, unless a clear delimitation is 

 established between what belongs to the soul and what to the body. It 

 is to be feared that there is much the same uncertainty and vagueness 

 in the use of the word "soul," which Matthew Arnold, in his "Litera- 

 ture and Dogma," has signalized in the case of the word " God." Peo- 



