THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 



349 



If we can not find them, we do not know that they exist. 

 If we do not know that they exist, shall we believe that 

 they do ? Is it not better, as Emerson suggests, that 

 men should not " pretend to know and believe what they 

 do not really know and believe " ? 



It may be that the present existence of life in a 

 world once lifeless renders spontaneous generation a 

 " logical necessity." But the " logical necessity " ex- 

 ists in our minds, not in Nature. Science knows no 

 " logical necessity," for the simple reason that we are 

 never able to compass all the possibilities in any given 

 case. 



If we are to apply philosophic tests to the theories 

 of reincarnation, we may find them equally eligible as 



articles of belief. They are plausible, to 



Reincarnation. . ... 



some minds at least; they have logical 



continuity. They are satisfying to the human heart ; 

 at least this is claimed by their advocates. Their chief 

 fault is that science knows nothing of them, and her 

 inductions yield them no support. In other words, 

 their only reality is that of the visions of dreamland. 

 From the objective side their postulates and arguments 

 have no existence. The whole thing is meaningless. If 

 plausibility and acceptability serve as sufficient founda- 

 tions for belief, then belief itself is a frail and transient 

 thing, no more worthy of respect than prejudice, from 

 which, indeed, it can not be distinguished. 



Haeckel recognises this difference clearly enough by 

 using the term belief for "hypotheses or conjectures of 



more or less probability " by which " the 

 Haeckel's defini- empirical investigation must leave 



tion of belief. l . ,-,,,,, r . 



in science are filled up. " These, he 



says, " we can not indeed for a time establish on a secure 

 basis, and yet we may make use of them in the way of 

 explaining phenomena, in so far as they are not incon- 



