IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



n 



the pronoun " I " as implying what we cannot 

 know. Still, as a matter of faith, we must hold 

 fast to the proposition "I exist" as the only 

 standpoint for science, philosophy, or common 

 life. If we are asked for evidence of this faith, 

 we can appeal only to our consciousness of 

 effects which imply the existence of the ego, 

 which we thus have to admit or suppose before 

 we can begin to prove even its existence. 



This fact of the mystery of our own exist- 

 ence is full of material for thought. It is in 

 itself startiing — even appalling. We feel that 

 it is a solemn, a dreadful, thing to exist, and to 

 exist in that limitless space and that eternal time 

 which we can no more understand than we can 

 our own constitution, though our belief in their 

 existence is inevitable. Nor can we diveet our- 

 selves of anxious thoughts as to the source, 

 tendencies, and end of our own being. Here, 

 in short, we already reach the threshold of that 

 dread unknown future and its possibilities, the 

 realization of which by hope, fear, and imagina- 

 tion constitutes, perhaps, our first introduction 

 to the unseen world as distinguished from the 

 present world of sense. The. agnostic may 

 smile if he pleases at religion as a puerile 

 fancy, but he knows, like other men, that the 



