ON IMMORTALITY; COUNTEETHESIS. 175 



or means of identifying you here on the earth with that 

 other foreign consciousness severed from your present by 

 none can say how much time and space. In short, if 

 there be not the connection of memory, no possible con- 

 sciousness anywhere, now or at any time, has any more 

 relation to you than to any other conscious or unconscious 

 being. That other would not be you : it would have no 

 more relation to you than to any other being who may 

 choose to claim relationship with it. It has no more 

 relation to you than to the babe unborn, very much less 

 indeed, for that possible being might conceivably enter 

 into and take possession of it, which you in no wise 

 could do. 



" But if that other consciousness be not mine, if the 

 other being be not me, it will suit all as well," obstinately 

 pursues the mystic. So be it, says the positivist scien- 

 tific thinker ; but we cannot continue the argument to 

 profit on these metaphysical lines. Your doctrine will, 

 however, serve you little, regarding the matter from a 

 different and a somewhat more intelligible point of view. 

 For the list of possibilities of existence, the number and 

 variety of conscious beings that may arise in infinite 

 worlds, being so prodigiously beyond the range of even 

 imagination, the chances would be decidedly against 

 your drawing a prize in that vast lottery if all went by 

 chance, or fate the same as chance ; while of your merit, 

 if place goes by merit, we need scarcely, in our present 

 argument, rate yours at more .than the average, which 

 should only secure an average return the highest merit, 

 moreover, being only moderate. In fact, whether fortune 

 or merit should determine your new position, the chances 

 would be decidedly against your drawing a prize in that 

 huge lottery, as it still would be, of possible existence. 

 The chances are all against your coming out even so well 



