414 Weismanns Theories — 



AVith this conception of life we might with more hope 

 enter upon the question of the essential nature of death. 

 But our present space is exhausted. We can but reiterate 

 that, thus considered, death may well be ' a consequence of 

 something which makes natural revival impossible.' What 

 that something is, physical science at least can never tell us. 

 If life consists, as we believe it does, in the presence of an 

 immaterial principle of individuation, then death must con- 

 sist in the absence of that principle. The conception of the 

 appearance and the disappearance of such principles in nature 

 is obscured by the demand of the imagination to know 

 ' where ' such entities can go to, or ' whence ' they may have 

 come — for spatial and temporal relations are necessities of 

 the imagination. We know, however, that the intellect can 

 transcend the imagination, and though we cannot reply in 

 terms which may satisfy the bond-slave of the imagination, 

 we can do so effectually for him who has gone beyond sense 

 to the freedom of thought of the intellect. As an illustration, 

 we may say that when a man is reading a book by the light 

 of a candle his eyes are fixed upon its pages, and there is so 

 far a union between those pages and his organs of vision. 

 Let the light be suddenly extinguished ; there need be no 

 movement of the eyes or of book, and yet that union which 

 before existed between them has nevertheless ceased to be, 

 and has been followed by separation. The relation which pre- 

 viously existed has not gone anywhere, though it has actually 

 ceased to be, and has lapsed into a mere potential existence. 

 Let Hght be restored, and the union which previously existed 

 may be restored also. Yet if it is so restored it does not 

 come from any place, though it none the less has definite 

 spatial relations as soon as ever it actually exists. The 

 categories 'whence' and 'where' apply only to material 

 existences, and to our own imagination as being so inti- 

 mately connected with existences of that kind. 



