li 6 The Destiny of Man. 



is to rob the whole process of its meaning. 

 It goes far toward putting us to perma- 

 nent intellectual confusion, and I do not 

 see that any one has as yet alleged, or is 

 ever likely to allege, a sufficient reason 

 for our accepting so dire an alternative. 



For my own part, therefore, I believe in 

 the immortality of the soul, not in the 

 sense in which I accept the demonstrable 

 truths of science, but as a supreme act of 

 faith in the reasonableness of God's work. 

 Such a belief, relating to regions quite in- 

 accessible to experience, cannot of course 

 be clothed in terms of definite and tangible 

 meaning. For the experience which alone 

 can give us such terms we must await that 

 solemn day which is to overtake us all. 

 The belief can be most quickly defined by 

 its negation, as the refusal to believe that 

 this world is all. The materialist holds 

 that when you have described the whole 

 universe of phenomena of which we can 

 become cognizant under the conditions of 

 the present life, then the whole story is 



