196 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



ence remaining being whether the present "I" could 

 ever partake in such further existence, and in what sense 

 it could be said to be me, and how such existence now 

 concerns me, metaphysical questions, the difficulty of 

 satisfactorily answering which is, indeed, too evident; 

 but as very similar difficulties can also be raised about 

 our present existence, we recommend them to be either 

 avoided or briefly resolved, by simply affirming that an 

 inexplicable thing which has once happened may happen 

 again, without our being called upon to explain it further. 

 What happens daily, what is for ever happening around 

 us the awakening into conscious life, the slow evolution 

 from unconsciousness into conscious being may happen 

 again ; nay, what happens to myself every morning when 

 I awake out of deep sleep death's counterfeit may 

 happen to me after death. I know not how ; I am not 

 bound to explain; nor can, in the one case more than 

 the other. 



What the men of science physicists, physiologists, 

 naturalists seem really to imply and to intend to say, 

 is that we cannot have a future life after death, because 

 our mind and memory depend on the body, and are 

 necessarily dissolved with it, while to have and to feel a 

 future existence, we should at least carry our memory 

 with us, to make possible the knowledge and identifica- 

 tion of ourselves by ourselves. Now, for my part, I am 

 disposed to accept the premise that our present memory 

 ceases with the body, but for reasons already stated, by 

 no means do I regard the whole argument as valid, or 

 accept the conclusion drawn from it, that therefore we 

 cannot have another life. This is the only difference 

 between me and the men of science, which may, however,, 

 as already hinted, be really less than it seems. 



