xvu THE DESIRE FOR IMMORTALITY 333 



lie in directions socially disapproved can either not be 

 discovered at all, or when discovered remain a dead letter. 

 As a rule indeed the absence of social hostility is not 

 enough, but more or less active co-operation is necessary. 

 The notion that a lonely thinker can spontaneously set to 

 work upon some subject of inquiry which interests him, 

 make discoveries of far-reaching import, and get them 

 accepted and acclaimed by an admiring world is surely 

 an illusion which the history of science should be sufficient 

 to dispel. The lonely thinker has need of libraries, 

 laboratories, and leisure, and without the consent of 

 society he cannot get them. Single-handed and single- 

 minded against the world he can do nothing : strive and 

 labour as he may, he must sooner or later succumb to 

 the overwhelming pressure of his environment. 



And in no region of possible knowledge is the power 

 of the social atmosphere more obvious, or the need for 

 social co-operation greater, than in everything that con 

 cerns the mystery of death. And nowhere else has 

 individual curiosity been more brutally crushed out. 

 Whoever conceives a desire to know the truth about the 

 future life engages in a struggle with social forces which 

 is almost sure to end in tragedy. To begin with he is 

 deluged with assurances that what he desires to know 

 cannot be known, and stuffed with pseudo-proofs, scientific, 

 philosophic, and religious, to persuade him to drop the 

 subject. If these do not satisfy him and he persists, he 

 is next told that his desire is bad form, that he must 

 not appear odd, or make himself ridiculous by prying 

 into matters which the wisdom of the ancients has from 

 time immemorial decided to lie beyond mortal ken. 

 My boy, his parent or guardian will finally say to him, 

 if he is unusually sympathetic and candid, I can well 

 remember the time when I, too, felt about it just as you 

 do now, and would have given worlds to know. So I 

 read a number of books on the subject, and even went to 

 a seance or two. But I got very little out of it, and when 

 I found that I was thrown into the company of all sorts 

 of queer persons and things, and heard that my friends 



