102 DIFFEKENCES BETWEEN MAN 



first place, it is desirable to bear in mind how differently the 

 matter of immortality is viewed at the present day by men 

 of the highest scientific culture. We are told in one ot 

 the most recent expressions l of scientific opinion regard- 

 ing human religion and especially regarding the peculiar 

 tenets of the Christian religion that some scientific men, 

 ' professing themselves unable to conceive such an existence 

 as a disembodied spirit .... are forced to conclude, like 

 Priestley, that the soul in its nature is not immortal .... 

 believing, with Priestley and others, that immortality is a 

 fresh and miraculous gift conferred upon man at the Eesur- 

 rection; another [section of scientific men] unable to 

 conceive the possibility of a miracle in the case of each 

 individual, denying a future state altogether ; while a third 

 section maintains that there is no use in discussing the 

 subject, because man after death has passed beyond the 

 sphere of human enquiry.' Nor can it be pretended that a 

 knowledge of a future existence, that anticipations of a future 

 state, that ideas of immortality, are common to all men. 

 There are, indeed, no means of either proving or disproving 

 that such hopes or beliefs exist, on the one hand, in all men, 

 or do not exist, on the other hand, in other animals or 

 certain of them. It is, at all events, absurd to assert that 

 other animals live only in and for the present. The whole 

 phenomena of foresight, hope, expectation, contradict em- 

 phatically any such averment. The statement that they 

 live in and for the present only may indeed be made much 

 more really or truly of many men, perhaps the majority. 

 This subject is also touched upon in the chapters on ( The 

 Eeligious Sentiment in Lower Man and the Higher 

 Animals.' 



3. Sense of religion, religious belief and ceremonies, ideas 

 of God, the worship of a deity. Even among men of the 

 highest scientific culture there are those who ' have main- 

 tained that we have no evidence of any such Being' 2 as the 

 God of the Christian ; while in other chapters it is shown 

 that whole races of lower man have no ideas of any 

 sort of divinity, no kind of worship, no religious feeling. 

 1 ' Unseen Universe,' pp. 34-5. 2 ' Unseen Universe,' p. 35. 



