DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 47 



are almost constantly made; old ideas 

 and opinions do not, upon closer inves- 

 tigation, satisfy the more developed de- 

 mands of our thinking; doubts arise, 

 and this is a necessary condition for all 

 theoretical progress. Such a doubt, not 

 of the immaterial experience which we 

 all have, but of the way in which this 

 experience is to be explained, has been 

 expressed in the theory called material- 

 ism, which is a widely spread doctrine 

 in our time. Natural science in itself 

 is never materialistic in the sense in 

 which this word is here used, because 

 natural science does not concern itself 

 with anything immaterial. But if this 

 be the case, how is it possible that 

 science can have anything in common 

 with materialism which, strictly speak- 

 ing, is a doctrine about spiritual 

 things? We answer that life in this 

 world is joined to and revealed through 

 the material world. A more complete 

 knowledge of the nature of matter 

 ought, therefore, to bring about a de- 

 cision by and by as to whether the soul 



