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it might not be unfair to the authors to quote the earlier edition. I 
ventured to say just now that I thought we were indebted to Dr. Irons 
for pointing out, not merely the unsatisfactory method which these writers 
have adopted with an admirable purpose in view, but also the unsatisfactory 
conclusions to which they have led us. I was much struck, a little time 
ago, when talking about this book with a well-known very clear-headed 
scientific man ; he said that it was an hypothesis on an hypothesis ; the first 
hypothesis being, that the law of continuity observed in the existing 
universe stretched back to before the beginning of the existing universe, 
and the second being, that there must have been a previous universe in 
which that law could have prevailed ; and from these two hypotheses it 
was most reasonable to conclude that in the next change that takes place 
in this universe, the same law of continuity will reach on into the then 
succeeding universe. It seems to me, if I may venture to say so, having 
but small pretensions to scientific knowledge, that the writers of this book 
have fallen into this fundamental error, — that they have applied the 
principles of material science to a subject to which those principles are 
not really applicable, and having done so, they are not merely unsatis- 
factory in their method of proceeding, but they are also unsatisfactory in 
their conclusions. I was reminded, as I read page after page of what I may 
call an argument for material immateriality, of a somewhat grotesque 
objection, which I remember seeing some time ago — a mediaeval one, of the 
time of Queen Elizabeth— an objection to the extreme irreligiousness of 
leaden coffins. It was said : suppose a person were accidentally buried 
alive ; if he were in a wooden coffin it would not be absolutely close, but 
if the coffin were of lead there would not be the smallest aperture, so closely 
would it be soldered together, through which the soul of the buried person 
could escape. Of course the supposition was that there would be n chink 
in a wooden coffin to allow the soul to pass out. This does not seem to 
me going further in principle than the argument used in “ The Unseen 
Universe ” as to material immortality. I think, in looking carefully at this 
book, that the writers in proceeding by this mode of argument, applying 
the laws of material science to the unseen universe, land us in these two 
conclusions (it would be unjust to the authors to say they do so inten- 
tionally), one being a belief in a material pantheism, and the second a belief 
in a mechanical immortality. Now, it seems to me that, even supposing 
their course of argument had been convincing, these are not the conclusions 
to which we wish to be brought. Therefore it is very satisfactory to 
find that the mode of argument by which we arrive at these conclusions is a 
mode of argument which per se we cannot adopt. I should like to point 
out one or two defects, which primd facie occur in the earlier part of the 
book, and which are referred to in this paper. I allude to the funda- 
mental error which, as I conceive, the authors make in trying to apply 
mechanical laws to the unseen universe. Dr. Irons says in the beginning of 
his paper, “ Is there anything in science, or its admitted conclusions, which 
