v.] " MODERN SYMPOSIUM." 75 



to-day than there was in the time of Descartes : what- 

 ever grounds of belief were really valid then are 

 equally valid now. The belief has never been one 

 which could be maintained on scientific grounds. For 

 science is but the codification of experience, and it is 

 helpless without the data which experience furnishes. 

 Now, science may easily demolish materialism and 

 show that mind cannot be regarded as a product of 

 matter, but the belief in a future life requires some- 

 thing more than this for its support. It requires 

 evidence that the phenomena we class as mental 

 can subsist apart from the phenomena we class as 

 material ; and such evidence, of course, cannot be 

 furnished by science. It cannot be furnished until 

 we have had some actual experimental knowledge 

 of soul as dissociated from body, and under the con- 

 ditions of the present life no such knowledge can 

 possibly be obtained. 



But this undoubted fact has a twofold import. 

 While on the one hand it shuts us off from all scien- 

 tific proof of immortality, on the other hand it shows 

 that the absence of scientific proof affords no valid 

 ground for a negative conclusion. If soul can exist 

 when dissociated from body, we have no means of 

 apprehending the fact ; and therefore our inability to 

 apprehend it does not entitle us to deny that soul 



