308 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



neither destroy another primary cause nor be de- 

 stroyed by any. The objector who would open 

 the eternal permanence of the soul to doubt, then, 

 must assail the proofs of « /r/^rz knowledge ; for so 

 long as these remain free from suspicion, there can 

 be no real question as to what they finally imply. 

 The concomitance of our two streams of experience, 

 the timed stream and the spaced stream, raised from 

 a merely historical into a necessary concomitance by 

 the argument that refers it to the active unity of 

 each soul as its ground, becomes the steadfast sign 

 and visible pledge of the imperishable self-resource 

 of the individual spirit. 



IV 



We sometimes hear it objected to the foregoing 

 line of proof, that it comes quite short of any im- 

 mortality which a rational being can value. It 

 can establish nothing, the objectors say, but the 

 indestructible power of staying on, merely in a 

 world of sense-perception. 



The objection is pertinent, and would be serious 

 were our a priori consciousness completely summed 

 up in furnishing the conditions sufficient for a world 

 of sense-perception only, and for self-preservative 

 action in such a world. But the objection vanishes 

 as soon as we realise that our argument, properly 



