A Crumb for the " Modern Symposium" 75 



keener our analysis, the more clearly does it ap- 

 pear that the two can never be confounded. The 

 relation of concomitance between them remains 

 an ultimate and insoluble mystery. 



I believe, therefore, that modern scientific phi- 

 losophy, as represented by Spencer and Huxley, 

 not only affords no support to materialism, but 

 condemns it utterly, and drives it off the field 

 altogether. I believe it is even clearer to-day 

 than it was in the time of Descartes that no 

 possible analytic legerdemain can ever translate 

 thought into extension, or extension into thought. 

 The antithesis is of God's own making, and no 

 wit of man can undo it. 



The bearing of these arguments upon the ques- 

 tion of a future life may be very briefly stated. 

 So far as I can judge, I should say that, among 

 highly-educated people, the belief in a continu- 

 ance of conscious existence after death has visibly 

 weakened during the present century. I infer 

 this as much from the timorousness of conserva- 

 tive thinkers as from the aggressiveness of their 

 radical opponents. In so far as this weakening 

 of belief is due to an imperfect apprehension of 

 the scientific discoveries which our age has wit- 

 nessed in such bewildering rapidity, a word of 

 caution may not be out of piace. For all that 



