76 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



physiological psychology has achieved there is no 

 more ground for doubt as to a future life to-dny 

 than there was in the time of Descartes : what 

 ever grounds of belief were really valid then are 

 equally valid now. The belief has never been 

 one which could be maintained on scientific 

 grounds. For science is but the codification of 

 experience, and it is helpless without the data 

 which experience furnishes. Now, science may 

 easily demolish materialism and show that mind 

 cannot be regarded as a product of matter, but 

 the belief in a future life requires something more 

 than this for its support. It requires evidence 

 that the phenomena we class as mental can sub 

 sist apart from the phenomena we class as mate 

 rial ; and such evidence, of course, cannot be fur 

 nished by science. It cannot be furnished until 

 we have had some actual experimental knowledge 

 of soul as dissociated from body, and under the 

 conditions of the present life no such knowledge 

 can possibly be obtained. 



But this undoubted fact has a twofold import. 

 While on the one hand it shuts us off from all 

 scientific proof of immortality, on the other hand 

 it shows that the absence of scientific proof affords 

 no valid ground for a negative conclusion. If soul 

 can exist when dissociated from body, we have no 



