ANALOGY — TRUE AND FALSE 35 



supplies him with the belief in a future lite, and in 

 a moral governor of the universe, and then he seeks 

 to confirm or to demonstrate the truth of this faith 

 by an appeal to the analogy of nature. 



Out of this whirling, seething, bubbling universe 

 of warring and clashing forces man has emerged. 

 How impossible it all seems to reason ! Experience 

 alone tells us that it is true. Upon the past history 

 of the earth and of the race of man we may pre- 

 dict astonishing changes and transformations for the 

 future of both, because the continuity of cause and 

 effect is not broken; but the perpetuity of the "me" 

 and the " you " is not implied. All that is implied 

 is the perpetuity of the sum of physical forces. But 

 as to the future of the individual, standing upon the 

 past or upon the present, what are we safe in affirm- 

 ing ? Only this — that as we bad a beginning we 

 shall have an ending ; that as yesterday we were 

 not, so to-morrow we shall not be. A man is like 

 the electric spark that glows and crackles for an in- 

 stant between two dark, silent, inscrutable eternities. 

 The fluid is not lost, but that tiny bolt has come 

 and gone. Darkness and silence before ; darkness 

 and silence after. I do not say this is the summing 

 up of the whole question of immortality. I only 

 mean to say that this is where the argument from 

 analogy lands us. 



We can argue from the known to the unknown in 

 a restricted way. We do this in life and in science 

 continually. We do not know that the fixed stars 

 have worlds revolving about them ; yet the presump- 



