288 HUMANISM xv 



exactly equal, and that we were doomed to doubt for ever. 

 Nevertheless, considerations may be adduced which must 

 add decisively to the weight of the latter alternative. 

 For it should be noted that the two alternatives are not 

 equally well situated with respect to empirical evidence. 

 No conceivable empirical evidence can suffice to establish 

 the destruction of the soul at death, because none can 

 even be relevant to the issue. For it can only concern 

 appearances in the common world of the survivors, it can 

 only prove that the rupture of connexion with it at death 

 is utter and entire. But that is not enough. Even if a 

 ghost returned to announce to us the complete extinction 

 of the soul at death, we could not credit so Hibernian an 

 assertion. A scientific proof therefore, of the annihilation 

 of the soul is rigorously impossible. On the other hand, 

 there is no such intrinsic impossibility about a scientific 

 proof of the persistence of consciousness through death; 

 there is, in fact, no particular difficulty about conceiving 

 empirical evidence sufficient to establish this doctrine 

 with as high a degree of certainty as we have for any 

 of our beliefs as to matters of fact. The whole diffi 

 culty consists in getting the evidence. If we had 

 succeeded, the theoretic readjustment of our opinions 

 would be easy ; all we should need to do would be to 

 modify our original assumption that death meant an 

 absolute rupture of relations, an utter dissolution of the 

 common world. We should have to say instead, that 

 death altered the mode of communication of spirit with 

 spirit, rendering it different and difficult, without in 

 terrupting it altogether. But, properly interpreted and 

 manipulated, the common world would persist through 

 death. What exactly would be the nature of the 

 common world, thus extended to include a life after death, 

 philosophy could not, of course, forecast ; that would 

 remain a question for positive research to determine. 



Here then we reach the limits of philosophic specula 

 tion. When the philosopher has shown that no a priori 

 impossibilities block the pathway of discovery, and no 

 authentic fact can be too anomalous for explanation, 



