176 THE CEEED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MOEAL. 



or so high up in the list as you have done in the present 

 life. If you are optimist, satisfied with the present 

 course of things, the chances are many to one against the 

 like good fortune again ; while if you are pessimist, the 

 odds, though not so heavy, still are that the change into 

 a new consciousness would be one from bad to worse, so 

 that, all things considered, you should thankfully accept 

 the conclusion of Science, which allows no hope of any 

 future life whatever. 



As for sharing in the general consciousness, if any 

 such thing there be, Science v professes her inability to 

 form any conception of such a state, and prefers to aban- 

 don speculations of this description to those who like 

 them the mystic, the metaphysician, the religious de- 

 votee. Her final conclusion is, in brief: You die as an 

 individual ; you shall never meet this dear self, or ego, 

 again, from which you are so loth to separate, in all the 

 realms of space or endless periods of time. And on the 

 whole, be thankful that it is so determined in the decrees 

 of the universe, remembering the possibilities and un- 

 doubted hazards that, under any rational estimate of 

 chances, you would have to encounter ; and remember- 

 ing, too, the dread and formidable fears and terrors that 

 in all dogmatic religions gather around this central doc- 

 trine of a future life. These fears now fall off and dis- 

 perse of themselves fears far more terrible than the 

 countervailing hopes were consoling ; and men are now 

 at last at liberty to turn to their proper work in the 

 world untroubled and undismayed by the thought of a 

 future which in no way concerns them ; for which great 

 emancipation they have to thank Science, together with 

 that modern criticism set in motion mainly by the con- 

 clusions of Science, and still guided by her spirit and 

 methods of proof. 



