127 
death/’ yet even that would imply that present existence is felt 
to be a good. But the Professor overlooks the fact, that there 
is in us a desire for the Future itself which would gladly reach 
beyond the present, even ignoring the present. This we pass at 
present, for we are free to acknowledge, and have already shown, 
that the immortality longed for by man is not that which is the 
outcome of physical speculations as to the “ Unseen Universe.” 
No one ever longed for that Hereafter which the book before 
us delineates. The survival of our Self in a quasi-perfect 
fluid (hitherto not met with) amidst vortex-rings, by means of 
a spiritual body (which we always have without knowing it), — 
an “ alter Ego” of the present natural body, — is a breach of the 
law of physical continuity at once, in favour (as we understand 
it) of the Swedenborgian law of “ correspondences.” 
The authors of this work are open much more painfully to 
a charge brought against them, that they “ make Hisviewsof 
their chief deity impersonal.” Certainly, with them, theology un- 
God seems only personal so far as He is “ condi- 1Idormed - 
tioned,” which the Eternal Father is not. Professor Clifford 
rather welcomes this position ; and, indeed, we can hardly 
wonder at it, since he identifies the Christian Theology with 
the “ awful wickedness which the popular legend (seea«i!e,p. 38 , 
ascribes to its deity,” described by the Professor in § 
terms too uneducated and revolting to be worth quoting. 
57. But now as to the “science.” For the sake of reference, 
we will here keep as nearly as possible to Professor Clifford’s 
order of criticism in his article. 
Everything would seem to depend on the particular theory 
as to the “ loss of energy in the luminiferous ether ” 
adopted by the writers criticised. (Sir W. E. Grove, the yar1oSs inf? 
we remember disbelieves altogether both the “ fl uid ” and ins ? cure 
and “ ether. ) Even the “ fact ’ itself, though to the “ Loss 
“proved” by Struve, has been subsequently dis- of Energy- 
proved” by Argelander. Even if we accept the “probable” 
account of the “ fact ” of ethereal friction preferred by our 
authors, there are two other accounts deemed by Professor 
Clifford “ equally probable,” which would interfere with the 
inferences so doubtfully drawn (p. 776, first paragraph, and 
p. 778, third paragraph). 
58. Our authors do not quite adopt Thomson’s theory of the 
vortex-rings in a perfect fluid ; they find that they cannot proceed 
without an imperfect fluid, how slight soever the imperfection 
may be. And for this reason, viz., the supposed perfect fluid is, 
of course, absolutely incapable of friction; and our authors’ theory 
