V. 



A CRUMB FOB THE "MODERN SYMPOSIUM." 



No one to whom the question of man's destiny 

 is a matter of grave speculative concern can have 

 read, without serious and solemn interest, the dis- 

 cussion lately called forth in England by Mr. 

 Frederic Harrison's essay on " The Soul and Fu- 

 ture Life." l In no way, perhaps, could the dark- 

 ness of incomprehensibility which enshrouds the 

 problem be more thoroughly demonstrated than 

 by the candid presentation of so many diverse 

 views by ten writers of very different degrees of 

 philosophic profundity, but all of them able and 

 fair-minded, and all of them actuated each in 

 his own way by a spirit of religious faith. This 

 last clause will no doubt seem startling, if not 

 paradoxical, to many who have not yet come to 

 realize how true it is that there is often more real 

 faith in honest scepticism than in languid or tim- 



1 "A Modern Symposium," The Nineteenth Centura, 1877, i. 62$ 

 832; ii. 329, 497. The articles are all reproduced in America, in The 

 Popular Science Monthly Supplement, Nos. 1, 2, 6, and 7, and have 

 been published in book form at Toronto, Canada. 1878. 



