232 HUMANISM xm 



Royal Commission to inquire whether it be true that its 

 citizens are immortal, and cannot, if the worst comes to 

 the worst, be finally disposed of by the hangman ; no 

 Legislature has ever contained a member faddy enough to 

 hold that the decision of this question had an important 

 bearing on the greatest happiness of the greatest number, 

 and to demand from the supreme official of a State 

 Church a report on the prospective condition of the masses 

 in the future life, and suggestions aiming at its ameliora 

 tion. At no university are there any researches con 

 ducted with a view to a scientific solution of the problem; 

 at most of the seats of learning, indeed, the attempt to do 

 so would, in spite of our boasted freedom of research, be 

 extremely hazardous, while a scientist who came forward 

 with evidence tending to discredit and disprove the 

 detested doctrine would be received with impunity and 

 applause. 



But, it will be objected, are you not overlooking 

 the churches, and are they not conspicuous enough in 

 advocating the hope of immortality to the very verge 

 of nausea ? Precisely so, I would reply, the churches 

 have their own peculiar methods of handling the subject, 

 and men have their own peculiar methods of treating 

 matters of religious faith. That is why the religious 

 dogma of immortality cannot without reserve be adduced 

 as evidence of a spontaneous human interest in the alleged 

 fact What the dogma means and what it proves I 

 propose to consider later ; at present I would only urge 

 that, to be interested in immortality as a matter of religious 

 faith, is not necessarily, or usually, to be interested in it 

 as a matter of scientific fact, or to think about it as a 

 factor in ordinary life. 



If you set aside the testimony of the churches, what 

 of the Society for Psychical Research ? Is it not a 

 society, and learned, and devoted to the scientific elucida 

 tion of this very problem ? And does not its existence 

 dispose of the reproach that men do nothing to investigate 

 the supreme mysteries of their existence ? 



Now it would ill become one who has been a patient 



