The Hour Before the Dawn. 113 



fathers. We are not here discussing either the truth or 

 the reasonableness of this faith. It is enough to say that 

 the consensus of scientific knowledge precludes it and 

 robs us of such consolation. If the doctrine of evolution 

 and all that we know of life and living matter teach any- 

 thing whatever, it is that the dissolution of the brain and 

 spinal cord is the end of the conscious' and subconscious 

 life that subsisted there. Our efforts to preserve a sem- 

 blance of faith to the contrary but embarrass and delay 

 the growth of knowledge. The biologist of to-day faces 

 the fact that death is the end of personal life. It is no 

 longer the ladder to heaven, but the brink of uncon- 

 sciousness. 



Psychical research has accomplished nothing to alter or 

 relieve this fact, nor is there the slightest reason to believe 

 that it will or can do more than emphasize this " hard 

 condition of our birth." We of this generation share all 

 of primitive man's instinctive shrinking from death — the 

 natural abhorrence of death which all life exhibits — and, 

 in addition to this grief, we foresee the grand future of 

 man on earth and perceive that for us, like the Hebrew 

 lawgiver, there is nothing but this early glimpse from a 

 mountain top afar. We live too early to enter the land 

 of the great achievement. We shall not quite pass from 

 death unto life. For us death will still be an irremedi- 

 able evil. 



But death is not an evil, many thoughtful persons will 



