IMMORTALITY 151 



to reach the domain that has to be brought into 

 reconciliation with external nature. The biologist 

 dealing with life from the scientific standpoint has 

 the more central position. The ultimate problems 

 of matter and energy, on the one hand, and con- 

 sciousness and spirit, on the other, lie equally out- 

 side his true domain, and are apt to appear, perhaps, 

 equally inaccessible and mysterious. The physicist 

 from his more extreme standpoint, completely out- 

 side of the realm of life, may not be able to see 

 very far, but what he can see is seen with all the 

 certainty and definiteness that distinguish and 

 characterise 'the explanation of the phenomena with 

 which he deals. Do not draw the hasty conclusion 

 that, because the clarity and unanimity reached in 

 the study of inanimate nature have not been 

 approached in the study of life, they have there- 

 fore no application whatever to the higher aspects 

 of life. On the contrary, I hope to show that, 

 as regards what it is impossible to believe at least, 

 they effect a not inconsiderable simplification, and 

 so pave the way at least for a more definite and 

 truer human philosophy to replace the old. 



IMMORTALITY OR THE CONSERVATION OF 

 PERSONALITY. 



Life, so far as our direct experience is concerned, 

 is lived in an intimate relation with the external 

 physical universe, and the breaking of that connec- 

 tion is death. Almost before men could count or 

 reason correctly about the simplest phenomena, 

 they have contended that life transcends the break- 

 ing of the bond between it and the external world 

 and persists after it has departed from this world. 

 The attitude of mind is very familiar in science, 

 as in other fields. Amid a world of appearance and 



