The Metaphysics of a Naturalist 
87 
Thus early in our search we are brought face to face with the 
evasive problem of the relation between body and soul. Postponing 
this question for the present and simply admitting that our flesh 
and blood cannot inherit eternal life and must be left behind along 
with our lands and our gold, let us ask ourselves seriously for 
what do we desire perpetuity. Naturally they will be things 
which we most prize here. Sense-gratifications, appetites and 
passion we must be content to resign; and, if experience has been 
of the average sort, we may console ourselves by the thought that 
with such resignation we also escape the harrassing wear and tear, 
the pains and myriad woes incident to bodily existence. In all 
descriptions of the other world it is almost surprising to note that 
emphasis is very strong on the negative advantages — advantages 
v/hich would accrue equally in the case of annihilation. There 
will be no more tears and no more pain over there. 
But, positively, there operates the great vital law of self-pre- 
servation. We shudder at the thought of losing our identity — 
we cannot bear to think of being blotted out. True the daily 
experience of temporary annihilation has been clothed by poetry 
with all the honeyed praise of which language is capable — nature’s 
sweet restorer, balmy sleep.” A very little reflection, however, 
will show that this instinctive love of life, as a product of natural 
selection, refers to the ph^^sical existence and only by a sort of 
analogy is made to apply to the soul. 
To the young life presents itself as a career, not*as a possession; 
there are joys to experience, victories to gain, achievements to 
attain, and all by virtue of the powers springing in the life of the 
present as the seed of the life yet to be. To think of the loss or 
curtailment of this career, the birthright of all men, is inexpress- 
ibly terrible. Even the mourner over the too early dead finds 
in the abridgment of a promising career the most poignant occasion 
of grief. The idea that the apparent destiny of the human career 
is thwarted by death is a most common and potent argument 
for belief in immortality. It is inconceivable, we say, that nature 
or God should permit such preparations to be wasted or such 
promises to be disappointed. Somehow, somewhere, these prophe- 
sies are fulfilled and the sun that here has its setting will cer- 
tainly rise in undimmed glory elsewhere. 
To the man in middle life, who has witnessed the failure of so 
many individual plans and the futility of individual hopes, life 
