xv PHILOSOPHY AND A FUTURE LIFE 277 



fact. Hence the answer to this notion is simply this : that 

 if the future life be really supernatural in the sense of 

 having no connexion of any sort with nature, there could 

 not possibly be any evidence of it, and it would have to 

 be for us non-existent ; while if there be evidence of it, 

 this would ipso facto include it in the widest conception 

 of nature, and render the nature of the connexion between 

 this world and the next a legitimate subject for scientific 

 research. If, therefore, the connexion be rare and 

 precarious, the reason cannot possibly be that from time 

 to time some audacious spirit has impiously achieved the 

 impossible by breaking through the natural order ; it 

 must lie in the peculiarities of the natural order itself. 

 Or, to sum up in a single phrase a discussion which 

 would long have become needless but for the persistence 

 of attempts to dispose of an inconvenient investigation 

 into facts by logical quibbles about words, if supernature 

 is to be retained, it must not be in the sense of something 

 alien and hostile to nature, but strictly as meaning a 

 higher department or aspect of nature itself. 



(2) We must suppose a certain continuity of psycho 

 logical constitution in the human spirit throughout every 

 phase of its existence. Without this we should not know 

 ourselves again after death. This does not imply that 

 death may not be a great event, involving a great gain 

 (or loss) in the intensity and extent of consciousness and 

 memory ; it asserts only that if we are to have know 

 ledge of a future life at all, we must assume that the 

 general characteristics of mental life will persist. With 

 out this, too, there could be no proof of spirit-identity 

 to others : without spirit-identity there could be no 

 proof of a future life. Unfortunately, however, this 

 assumption of ours would lead us to expect that the 

 proof of spirit identity would be difficult. For it is 

 psychologically far more probable that the moral 

 character and the feelings would traverse the shock and 

 change of death unshaken, than that little bits of 

 knowledge about terrestrial affairs would persist in equal 

 measure. Yet it is these latter that afford the best tests 



