XIX 



PHILOSOPHY AND THE SCIENTIFIC 

 INVESTIGATION OF A FUTURE LIFE 1 



ARGUMENT 



The use of Philosophy in scientific inquiry the general logical criticism of 

 fundamental postulates and working methods. This is most necessary 

 and helpful in a new science, and safest in one which, like Psychical 

 Research, has not yet obtained professional endowment. Special 

 interest of a discussion of the assumptions made in a scientific inquiry 

 into the possibility of a future life, (i) The general scientific assumption 

 of law, i.e. knowableness. (2) The axiom of proceeding from the 

 known to the unknown. This life must give the clue to our interpreta 

 tion of an other life, which could not be wholly other without 

 paralysing thought. Misconceptions on this score explain (a) the prac 

 tical weakness of the belief in a future life ; (t&amp;gt;) the prejudice against 

 an anthropomorphic future life ; and (c) against the spiritist hypothesis. 

 Assuming, therefore, that as a working theory personal survival is con 

 ceivable, how can it be verified? The future life must be conceived (i) 

 as natural ; (2) as psychically continuous with the present, in spite of the 

 difficulty of obtaining proofs of identity ; (3) as only dissociated from our 

 world by secondary processes traceable in our normal psychology. Result 

 that a future life scientifically provable would necessarily seem humdrum 

 and unsensational. 



II. The philosophic basis of the conception of a future life. Philosophies which 

 reject it a priori are gratuitous. For an idealistic experientialism the 

 conception has no difficulty. How we pass into another world. How, 

 why, and to what extent, are dream worlds unreal ? Death as 

 awakening to a more real world. Philosophers on death. Four 

 paradoxes about death. Their explanation by idealism. The construc 

 tion and dissolution of the common world of waking life. The ambiguity 

 of death. Does it leave the chances equal ? Impossibility of disproving 

 a future life wholly severed from the present. Possibility of empirical 

 evidence that the severance is not complete. Philosophy clears away 

 prejudices that obstruct investigation, but leaves discovery to science. 



THE philosopher, as the genius of Plato long ago perceived, 2 

 is a very strange being. He is in the world, but not of 



1 An expanded form of a paper originally read before the Society for Psychical 

 Research, and published in its Proceedings, Part 36, February 1900. 



2 Republic, 490. 



351 



