xv PHILOSOPHY AND A FUTURE LIFE 273 



I may begin by passing over with a merely formal 

 mention the assumptions which are required for every 

 scientific investigation. As a matter of course we must 

 assume that the phenomena under investigation are 

 knowable and rational in the sense of being amenable 

 to determinable laws. The need for this assumption is so 

 plain that a priori attacks on Psychical Research on the 

 score of undermining the fundamental principle of all 

 scientific research can hardly be put down to anything 

 but voluntary or involuntary ignorance of the grossest 

 kind. 



Next we must enunciate a methodological axiom 

 with which at first sight few will be disposed to quarrel, 

 viz., that we must proceed to the unknown from what 

 is known to us. The remark is Aristotle s, 1 and I may 

 be suspected of quoting it merely because Oxonians can 

 but rarely resist a temptation of quoting Aristotle. But 

 in reality it is not such a truism as it appears, at least in 

 the meaning I propose to put upon it. It means in this 

 connexion that, both psychologically and logically, we 

 must interpret any supposed future life by the knowledge 

 we have acquired of our present life. It is a methodo 

 logical necessity, in other words, that we must project this 

 world into the next, if ever we purpose scientifically to 

 know it. Our assumption may be wrong in the sense 

 that it may be wrecked on barrier reefs of impenetrable 

 fact possibly it will be but, right or wrong, we can 

 work with no other at the outset. As we go on we shall 

 no doubt detect the initial crudities of our assumptions, 

 and correct them as our knowledge grows. But what 

 ever differences we may discover between the two worlds 

 must rest upon the postulate of a fundamental identity, 

 in default of which our reason would be merely paralysed. 

 From a complete otherness of the other world nothing 

 would follow ; a future life in which everything was 

 utterly different would mean nothing to us, and in 

 proportion as the difference grows the practical efficacy 

 and theoretical knowableness of the conception diminish. 



1 Eth. Nick. i. 3, 5. 



T 



