I 



The Beginning and End of Life 411 



•e used to denote that Avhich is the highest and most certain 

 science. No branch of science can arrogate exchisively to 

 itself that which is common to all sciences, and still less 

 that to which it has itself to appeal to establish when need 



(its truth and validity. 

 The word ' science ' thus used should denote the highest 

 d most certain knowledge to which we can attain — namely 

 the knowledge of necessary truths, of the laws of thought, 

 and the fact of our continuous existence. 



If we cannot reason validly we can infer nothing with 

 certainty, and there can be no such thing as science, and the 

 same destructive result follows the negation, or non-affirma- 

 tion, of necessary truth and the continuity of our own 

 personal existence. To doubt such continuity is to render 

 every operation doubtful, and is logically fatal to any scientific 

 certainty whatever. To doubt about necessary truth is the 

 most destructive and absurd of all dubitation. To any one 

 who should object that we cannot know such a truth, and 

 that nothing can both be and not be at the same time, it 

 may be replied that ' if we know necessary truth at all we 

 know that truth,' and no one can deny that this hypothetical 

 assertion is absolutely, necessarily, and categorically true. 

 This alone, therefore, suffices to demonstrate that such truth 

 does exist and is attainable. It also suffices to demolish 

 materialism and the absurd conceptions of mechanical philo- 

 sophy. For if we affirm that we know anything material at 

 all, and any forces which are only physical, we are compelled 

 yet more strongly to assert an existence which is immaterial 

 and non-mechanical. 



For we know intimately by and in our own consciousness, 

 something continuously existing, conscious of successive 

 objects and events, and capable of holding all of them before 

 it in one conception, as parts of a series which it transcends. 

 Such a principle, aware of the kinds and directions of its 



