xvn THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 317 



agitate its cumbrous coils. No State has ever appointed a 

 Royal Commission to inquire into the alarming allega 

 tion 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 amelioration. 

 At no university are there any researches conducted 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 may be 

 considered later ; at present it need only be urged that 

 to be interested in immortality as a matter of religious 

 faith, is not necessarily, nor 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 



