286 £SSAVS IN PHILOSOPHY 



"the great orthodox philosophic tradition " treats the 

 body as "an essential condition to the soul's life 

 in this world of sense," but conceives that "after 

 death the soul is set free and becomes a purely 

 intellectual and non-appetitive being." ^ And he 

 quotes corroboratively from Kant the sentiment 

 that "the body would thus be, not the cause of 

 our thinking, but merely a condition restrictive 

 thereof, and, although essential to our sensuous 

 and animal consciousness, ... an impeder of our 

 pure spiritual life."^ Then, with great pertinence, 

 he adds: "What we all wish to keep is just these 

 individual restrictions, these self-same tendencies and 

 peculiarities that define us to ourselves and others, 

 and constitute our identity, so called. Our finite- 

 ness and limitations seem to be our personal es- 

 sence ; and when the finiting organ drops away, 

 and our several spirits revert to their original source 

 and resume their unrestricted condition, will they 

 then be anything like those sweet streams of 

 feeling which we know, and which even now our 

 brains are sifting out from the great reservoir for 

 our enjoyment here below .''" ^ 



This keen and indeed irrepressible demand for 

 individual perpetuity of consciousness he still more 

 thrillingly emphasises when he comes to attempt 



1 Human Immortality, p. 28. ^ Ibid., pp. 28, 29. 



3 Ibid., pp. 29, 30. 



