154 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



soul, so far lost, can be recovered by the appropriate 

 means of grace. Who are the depositaries of the means 

 is a question, it is true, which divides Christian Churches 

 and sects ; but still it is a consolation held out by all 

 forms of Christianity except Calvinism, that the old 

 vessel of self, after disastrous voyage and seemingly 

 total wreck on earth, can yet be repaired and refitted for 

 another and a happier venture, if not for a final, sure, 

 and certain haven of rest ; but whether, on quitting the 

 earth and leaving this life, the soul launches on prosperous 

 or perilous seas, whether it reaches the islands of the 

 blest or is pent with " those whom lawless and uncertain 

 thoughts imagine howling," the soul, according to all 

 theologians, is immortal, and will preserve its individuality 

 and its present consciousness for ever. 



3. But Science, for her part, finds no grounds for 

 the beliefs of theology or metaphysics in a future life 

 beliefs, moreover, which she regards as little comforting 

 at the best. If her instruments and methods of research, 

 so successful in other fields of inquiry, can be relied upon 

 when applied to man himself, as adequate to measure the 

 full range and to sound the lowest depths of his nature ; 

 and if, moreover, the report handed in respecting that 

 nature is accurate and exhaustive, which assures us that 

 man is only the higher and more developed animal, whose 

 mental nature is only a function of his bodily organism ; 

 then the final conclusion seems to follow irresistibly, 

 that immortality, the eternal prolongation of the mental 

 individuality after the dissolution of the associated or- 

 ganism, is an inconceivable and an incredible thing. This 

 is, indeed, the distinct conclusion of all merely scientific 

 thought when directed to the question ; and here the argu- 

 ments advanced demand our greatest and most serious 

 attention. Let us proceed to unfold them more fully. 



