XVII 

 THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 1 



ARGUMENT 



Is man really distinguished above other animals by his preoccupation with 

 death ? If he is, he will show a concern about his future life of which 

 there are few traces. Naturally, because hating to think of death, we 

 avoid thinking of a future life. The practical inconvenience of the 

 thought, and its relegation to the realm of faith. Is Spiritism an 

 exception ? Yes, but that is why it fails to become popular. Other 

 religious doctrines held in a peculiar manner, and called up or dismissed 

 according to the sentiment of the moment. Why, then, has an entirely 

 contrary impression prevailed? (i) the indifference of the mass versus 

 the vocal few ; (2) the memory of bygone interest. The possibility of 

 testing the issue and discovering the facts by the questionnaire of the 

 American Branch of the Psychical Research Society. Social taboos as 

 bars to inquiry. The world not unknowable. The old fear of know 

 ledge. Magic and Science. The need of social support in discovery. 



IT is a venerable commonplace that among the melan 

 choly prerogatives which distinguish man from the other 



1 This essay appeared in the Fortnightly Review for September 1901. It 

 was intended to draw attention to the inquiry mentioned on pp. 328-330. Some 

 3000 answers were obtained, and, so far as they bear on the question which 

 directly concerns the Society for Psychical Research, viz. to what extent is there 

 a desire to know ? they have been discussed by me in a report in Part 49 of 

 the Proceedings of the S. P. R. The whole material, however, is so extensive 

 and psychologically so valuable as to need fuller treatment when some one 

 finds time to do it. 



I may here avail myself of the occasion of expressing my conviction that 

 there exist a number of questions concerning the psychological foundations of 

 ethics, aesthetics, and logic which urgently need study by statistical methods. 

 We have always to find out how men actually do feel and think before we can 

 safely generalize or systematize as to what they ought to feel and think. Now at 

 present the actual facts are very imperfectly known, even in the case which 

 has received most attention, that of the religious consciousness. As a rule 

 writers have been content to go for their facts to their own preconceptions or to 

 the analysis of their own individual consciousness. At most, they have noted, in 

 a cursory and reluctant way, the more obvious varieties of sentiment whose 

 existence was forced upon them by their notoriety. But there is no guarantee 

 that all the relevant types of sentiment are even known to science ; we have 

 certainly no data for gauging their relative frequency. A question like this, e.g. 



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