400 IMMORTALITY 



can Identify ourselves with our past ; It Is only by 

 memory that we can hope to enjoy the fruits of 

 present efforts In the future. If every morning on 

 awaking we had forgotten all that we ever did, if 

 all the feelings, thoughts, hopes, fears and aspirations 

 of yesterday's self had perished overnight, we should 

 soon cease to regard to-morrow's self as a personage 

 in whom it was possible to take any rational Interest, 

 or for whose future it was necessary or possible to 

 provide. We take an interest in our own future, 

 because we believe that we can forecast the feelings 

 of the future self, because we believe that the future 

 self which enjoys the fruits of our labours will be 

 conscious of its past, because. In a word, its welfare 

 Is organically connected with that of our present 

 self. Thus, to all intents and purposes, self identity, 

 and with It Immortality, depend on memory. 



§ 12. But memory is a matter of degree. Here, 

 then, we have the key to a theory of immortality 

 which will admit oi graduation. If we can conceive 

 a future life, the reality of which depends on memory, 

 It will admit of less or more. And if, as seems 

 natural, the extent to which the events of life are 

 remembered depends largely on the Intensity of 

 spiritual activity they implied, It follows that the 

 higher and intenser consciousness was during life, 

 the greater the intensity of future consciousness. 

 Hence the amoeba or the embryo, with their in- 

 finitesimal consciousness, will possess only an in- 

 finitesimal memory of their past after death. And 

 this for a twofold reason : not only must the im- 

 press life produces upon so rudimentary a conscious- 

 ness generate only a very faint memory, but the 

 contents also of life will present little that is capable 

 of persisting and worthy of being retained. Thus 



