■/.>W'fW^':^mW'''f<^'yffyy^yy^^ 

 
 IBRARY 
 
 NIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 AN DIEGO
 
 oC.^ 
 
 XX 
 
 ^^^ /fof.
 
 Smtvsoll Icttttres on ^mmortalitj). 
 
 IMMORTALITY AND THE NEW THEODICY. By 
 George A. Gordon, D. D. i6mo, Ji.oo. 1896. 
 
 HUMAN IMMORTALITY. Two supposed Objections 
 to the Doctrine. By Professor William James. 
 i6mo, $1.00. 1897. 
 
 DIONYSOS AND IMMORTALITY : The Greek Faith 
 in Immortality as affected by tlie rise of Individualism. 
 By President Benjamin Ide Wheeler. i6mo, ^i.oo. 
 
 THE CONCEPTION OF IMMORTALITY. By Pro- 
 fessor JosiAH RoYCE. i6mo, Ji.oo. 1899. 
 
 LIFE EVERLASTING. By John Fiske, LL.D. i6mo, 
 $1.00, nei. Postage, 7 cents, igoo. 
 
 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. By William Osler, 
 M. D., LL.D. i6mo, 85 cents, «(•/. Postage 6 cents. 
 1904. 
 
 THE ENDLESS LIFE. By Samuel M. Crothers, 
 D. D. i6mo, 75 cents, «fA Postage 6 cents. 1905. 
 
 INDIVIDUALITY AND IMMORTALITY. By Professor 
 WiLHELM OsTWALD. i6mo, 75 Cents, fte/. Postage 
 6 cents. 1906. 
 
 BUDDHISM AND IMMORTALITY. By William S. 
 
 BiGELow, M. D. i6mo, 75 cents, «?/. Postage 
 
 6 cents 1908. 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? By G. Lowes 
 
 Dickinson, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. 
 
 i6mo, 75 cents, net. Postage 6 cents. 1909. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Boston and New York
 
 IS IMMORTALITY 
 DESIRABLE?
 
 .tEtif 3ngtt6oU Jifttmr, laos 
 
 IS IMMORTALITY 
 DESIRABLE ? 
 
 BY 
 
 G. LOWES DICKINSON 
 
 Author of " Letters of a Chinese Official,'''' " The Greek View 
 
 of Life,'" " The Meaning of Good,'' 'M Modern 
 
 Symposium,''^ " justice and Liberty'''' 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 (Cbe BibewiOE ^xtii Cambti&oc 
 1909
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY G, LOWES DICKINSON 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published May iqoq
 
 THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP 
 
 Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, 
 
 who died in Kecne. County of Cheshire, New 
 
 Hampshire, Jan. 26, i8gs. 
 
 First. In carrying out the wishes of my late 
 beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as 
 declared by him in his last will and testament, I 
 give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cam- 
 bridge, Mass., where my late father was graduated, 
 and which he always held in love and honor, the 
 sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for 
 the establishment of a Lectureship on a plan some- 
 what similar to that of the Dudleian lecture, that is 
 — one lecture to be delivered each year, on any con- 
 venient day between the last day of May and the 
 first day of December, on this subject, "the Im- 
 mortality of Man," said lecture not to form a part 
 of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by 
 any Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine 
 of instruction, though any such Professor or Tutor 
 may be appointed to such service. The choice of 
 said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious 
 denomination, nor to any one profession, but may 
 be that of either clergyman or layman, the appoint- 
 ment to take place at least six months before the 
 delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be 
 safely invested and three fourths of the annual in- 
 terest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for his 
 services and the remaining fourth to be expended 
 in the publishment and gratuitous distribution of 
 the lecture, a copy of which is always to be fur- 
 nished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same 
 lecture to be named and known as " the Ingersoll 
 lecture on the Immortality of Man."
 
 IS IMMORTALITY 
 DESIRABLE? 
 
 IT is with a certain sense of temer- 
 ity that I stand before you to- 
 night, a sense inspired not only 
 by the place and the audience, but by 
 the subject on which I am to speak. 
 
 I am succeeding in a famous uni- 
 versity many distinguished men; and 
 for that my only apology is the invi- 
 tation with which I was honored. But 
 also, I am to speak on the Immortality ' 
 of Man; and in defence of that audac- 
 ity what can I say ? Surely, it may be 
 thought, a man must be very bold or 
 very shameless who is prepared to dis- 
 course on such a theme. For either, it
 
 2 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 would seem, he must profess to know 
 what the wisest have admitted to be 
 beyond their ken; or he must be a 
 charlatan, ready to talk about matters 
 of which he knows nothing. These are 
 hard alternatives; but they do not, 
 I hope, exhaust the possibilities. If I 
 venture to address you on this great 
 subject, it is precisely because I do 
 not suppose that you regard me as a 
 preacher or a prophet. I am here, as 
 I conceive, to make one speech in a 
 debate which proceeds from century 
 to century, which has been perpetu- 
 ally adjourned and never concluded. 
 For the Immortality of Man is one 
 of those great open questions which to 
 my mind are of all the most worth dis- 
 cussing, even though they may never 
 be resolved.
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 3 
 
 But, in saying that, I have already, 
 no doubt, said what some of you will 
 dispute; for to some of you, in all 
 probability, the question is not open, 
 but closed. There may be those here 
 who are convinced on grounds of re- 
 vealed religion that Man is immortal. 
 To these I do not speak, for anything 
 I could say must be an irrelevance or 
 an impertinence. There may be others 
 who are equally assured, on grounds 
 of science, that man is mortal. Against 
 them I shall not argue at length to- 
 day ; but I must state briefly that I 
 do not agree with them, and why.^ 
 
 The scientific denial of immortality 
 is based upon the admitted fact of the 
 connection between mind and brain ; 
 whence it is assumed that the death of 
 the brain must involve the death of
 
 4 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 that, whatever it be, which has been 
 called the soul. This may indeed be 
 true; but it is not necessarily or obvi- 
 ously true ; it does not follow logically 
 from the fact of the connection. For, 
 as Professor James has ably set forth 
 in his lecture on "Human Immor- 
 tality," that fact may imply not the 
 production, but the transmission of 
 mind by brain. The soul, as Plato 
 thought, may be capable of existing 
 without the body, though it be im- 
 prisoned in it as in a tomb. It looks 
 out, we might suppose, through the 
 windows of the senses; and its vision 
 is obscured or distorted by every im- 
 perfection of the glass. " If a man is 
 shut up in a house," Dr. McTaggart 
 has remarked, "the transparency of 
 the windows is an essential condition
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 5 
 
 of his seeing the sky. But," he wittily 
 adds, "it would not be prudent to 
 infer that if he walked out of the house 
 he could not see the sky, because there 
 was no longer any glass through which 
 he might see it." ^ My point is, that the 
 only fact we have is the connection, in 
 our present experience, of body and 
 mind. That the soul therefore dies with 
 the brain is an inference, and quite pos- 
 sibly a mistaken one. Ifto some minds 
 it seems inevitable, that may be as 
 much due to a defect of their imagina- 
 tion as to a superiority of their judg- 
 ment. To infer wisely in such matters, 
 one must be a poet as well as a man 
 of science; and for my own part I 
 would rather trust the intuitions of 
 Goethe'' or of Browning than the ratio- 
 cination of Spencer or of Haeckel. For
 
 6 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 in making his hypotheses a man is de- 
 termined, whether he knows it or no, 
 by his habitual sense of what is pos- 
 sible; and in this curious universe so 
 many things are possible which seem 
 incredible to men who have never been 
 astonished! Does it seem to you in- 
 credible that the body should be the 
 habitation, not the creator, of the soul; 
 that this should continue to live when 
 that has died? I can only reply in the 
 words of your own poet: — 
 
 Is it wonderful that I should be immortal as every 
 one is immortal ? 
 
 I know it is wonderful — but my eyesight is equally 
 wonderful, and how I was conceived in 
 my mother's womb is equally wonderful ; 
 
 And passed from a babe, in the creeping trance 
 of a couple of summers and winters, to 
 articulate and walk. All this is equally 
 wonderful.
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 7 
 
 And that my soul embraces you this hour, and 
 we affect each other, without ever seeing 
 each other and never perhaps to see each 
 other, is every bit as wonderful. 
 
 And that I can think such thoughts as these is just 
 as wonderful. 
 
 And that I can remind you, and you can think 
 them and know them to be true, is just as 
 wonderful. 
 
 And that the moon spins round the earth, and on 
 with the earth, is equally wonderful ; 
 
 And that they balance themselves with the sun 
 and stars is equally wonderful. 
 
 I do not of course suggest that from 
 the intuition of poets anything can be 
 finally concluded about the Immortal- 
 ity of Man. But I urge that when we 
 approach the subject it should be with 
 our imagination alert ; that our hypoth- 
 eses should be framed under a com- 
 pelling sense of our own limitations
 
 8 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 and the vastness of the universe; and 
 that, if we approach the matter thus, the 
 notion that something we may call a 
 soul or self survives death will not seem 
 to be ruled out by any of the known 
 facts of our experience. 
 
 Thus much I have said merely to 
 clear the ground for the point I pro- 
 pose to discuss. Considering it to be 
 an open question whether or no immor- 
 tality is a fact, I shall devote the rest of 
 my time to the inquiry whether and in 
 what sense it is desirable. In this in- 
 quiry I hope you will consider that I 
 am addressing to you a series of ques- 
 tions; and though I shall not conceal 
 my own opinions, it is not my object to 
 impose them upon you. I have to deal 
 with a number of different and mu- 
 tually incompatible attitudes resulting
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 9 
 
 from different experiences and temper- 
 aments. These I shall pass in review, 
 distinguish, and criticise; and each of 
 you, I assume, meantime will be con- 
 sidering within yourselves what your 
 own position is towards each of them. 
 
 The attitudes in question may be 
 broadly distinguished as three. There 
 are those who do not think about im- 
 mortality, those who fear it, and those 
 who desire it. 
 
 I. The majority of people I should 
 suppose belong to the first class, ex- 
 cept perhaps in certain crises of life. 
 The normal attitude of men towards 
 death seems to be one of inattention 
 or evasion. They do not trouble about 
 it ; they do not want to trouble about 
 it; and they resent its being called to 
 their notice. And this, I believe^ is as
 
 lo IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 true of those who nominally accept 
 Christianity as of those who reject any 
 form of religion. On this point the late 
 Frederic Myers used to tell a story 
 which I have always thought very il- 
 luminating. In conversation after din- 
 ner he was pressing on his host the 
 unwelcome question, what he thought 
 would happen after death. After many 
 evasions and much recalcitrancy the re- 
 luctant admission was extorted : " Of 
 course, if you press me, I believe that 
 we shall all enter into eternal bliss; but 
 I wish you would n't talk about such 
 disagreeable subjects." This, I believe, 
 is typical of the normal mood of most 
 men. They don't want to be worried; 
 and though probably, if the question 
 were pressed, they would object to the 
 idea of extinction, they can hardly be
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? ii 
 
 said to desire immortality. Even at the 
 point of death, it would seem, this at- 
 titude is often maintained. Thus Pro- 
 fessor Osier writes: — 
 
 I have careful records of about five hun- 
 dred death-beds, studied particularly with ref- 
 erence to the modes of death and the sensa- 
 tions of the dying. The latter alone concern 
 us here. Ninety suffered bodily pain or dis- 
 tress of one sort or another, eleven showed 
 mental apprehension, two positive terror, 
 one expressed spiritual exaltation, one bitter 
 remorse. The great majority gave no signs 
 one way or the other; like their birth, their 
 death was a sleep and a forgetting.s 
 
 1. It cannot, then, I think, be said 
 that most men desire immortality ; 
 rather they are, in their normal mood, 
 and even at the point of death, indif- 
 ferent to the question. But most men
 
 12 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 perhaps in some moods, and some men 
 continually, do reflect upon the subject 
 and have conscious and definite desires 
 about it. Of these, however, not all de- 
 sire immortality ; and some are so far 
 from desiring it that they passionately 
 crave for extinction, and would receive 
 the news that they survive death not 
 with exultation, but with despair. The 
 two positions are to be distinguished. 
 On the one hand, a man may simply 
 have had enough of life without having 
 any quarrel with it, and may prefer to 
 the idea of continued existence that of 
 oblivion and repose. Such, according 
 to Metchnikoff,^ would be the normal 
 attitude of men if they were not habit- 
 ually cut off before the natural term 
 of life, a term which he puts at well 
 over a hundred years. And such seems,
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 13 
 
 In fact, to be the attitude of some men 
 even under present conditions. It is 
 beautifully and classically expressed in 
 the well - known epitaph written by 
 the poet Landor for himself: — 
 
 I strove with none, for none was worth my 
 strife ; 
 
 Nature I loved and next to nature art ; 
 I warmed both hands before the fire of life ; 
 
 It sinks and I am ready to depart. 
 
 On the other hand, there are those 
 who not merely acquiesce in but desire 
 extinction; and that, because they be- 
 lieve, on philosophic or other grounds, 
 that any possible life must be bad. 
 These are the people called pessi- 
 mists; they are more numerous than is 
 often believed ; and they are apt to be 
 regarded by the plain man with a certain 
 moral reprobation. That this should be
 
 14 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 SO is an interesting testimony to the 
 instinctive optimism of mankind. But 
 the optimism, it will perhaps be agreed, 
 is commonly less profound than the 
 pessimism. Whatever may be the prom- 
 ise of life, it is, as we know it, to those 
 who look at it fairly and straight, very 
 terrible, unjust, and cruel. And if any 
 conceivable subsequent life must be 
 of the same character as this, no freer 
 from limitation, no richer in hope, no 
 fuller in achievement, then the pessi- 
 mist has at any rate a strong prim a facie 
 case. And this brings us to the obvi- 
 ous point that the desirability of a future 
 life must depend upon its character, 
 just as does the desirability of this one. 
 So that it is relevant to ask those who 
 acquiesce in or desire extinction whether 
 or no there is some kind of life which.
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 15 
 
 if offered to them securely, they would 
 be willing to accept after death. 
 
 3. Let us turn then to our third class, 
 those who desire immortality, and ask 
 them what it is they desire and whether 
 it is really desirable. For a number of 
 very different conceptions may be cov- 
 ered by the same phrase. And first, 
 there are those who simply do not want 
 to die, and whose desire for immortality 
 is merely the expression of this feeling. 
 Old people, so far as I have observed, 
 often cling in this way to life, more 
 often, indeed, than the young. Yet if 
 they could put it fairly to themselves, 
 they would, I suppose, hardly say that 
 they would wish to go on forever in 
 this life, with all their infirmities in- 
 creasing upon them.^ Nothing surely 
 is sadder, nothing meaner, than this
 
 i6 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 desire to prolong life here at all costs. 
 The sick, the infirm, the aged, that we 
 care for them as we do may be cred- 
 itable to our humanity. But that they 
 desire to be cared for, instead of to de- 
 part, is that so creditable to theirs? I 
 will go further and say that to arrest 
 any period of life, even the best, the 
 most glorious youth, the most trium- 
 phant manhood, is what no reasonable 
 man will rightly desire. To the values 
 of life, at any rate as we know it now, 
 the change we call growing older seems 
 to be essential ; and we cannot wisely 
 wish to arrest that process anywhere 
 this side of death. I shall suppose that 
 you agree with that and pass to another 
 conception. 
 
 It may be held that life, as we know 
 it, is so desirable that though it would
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 17 
 
 not be a good thing to prolong it in- 
 definitely, it would be a good thing to 
 repeat it over and over again. That we 
 may treat this notion fairly, I will ask 
 you to suppose that in none of these 
 repetitions is there any memory of the 
 previous cycles ; for every one, I expect, 
 would agree that the repetition of a life, 
 every episode of which is remembered 
 to have occurred before, is a prospect 
 of appalling tediousness. Supposing, 
 however, that memory is extinguished 
 at each death, we have a position that 
 may be worth examining. It is, as many 
 of you will remember, the position of 
 that remarkable man of genius, Niet- 
 zsche ; and, if only for that reason, de- 
 serves a moment's consideration. Not 
 only did Nietzsche believe it on physi- 
 cal grounds to be true, — on which
 
 i8 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 point I leave him to the tender mer- 
 cies of physicists, — but — and this is 
 what interests us here — he welcomes 
 it as the great redeeming hope. He 
 christens it " eternal recurrence," and 
 hails it in this passionate refrain : — 
 
 Oh ! How could I fail to be eager for 
 eternity, and for the marriage ring of rings, 
 the ring of recurrence ? 
 
 Never yet have I found the woman by 
 whom I should like to have children, unless 
 it be this woman I love ; for I love thee, O 
 eternity ! 
 
 For I love thee, O eternity ! ^ 
 
 Thus Nietzsche; but we, do we agree 
 with him ? Do we, too, love this eter- 
 nity ? The answer seems plain. So far 
 as a man judges any life, his own or 
 another's, to be valuable, here and now, 
 in and for itself, apart from any consid-
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 19 
 
 eration of immortality, he will reason- 
 ably desire that it should be repeated 
 as often as possible, rather than occur 
 once and never again ; for the positive 
 value he finds in it will be reproduced 
 in each repetition. On the other hand, 
 so far as he finds any life in itself not 
 to be valuable, or that its value de- 
 pends upon some other kind of im- 
 mortality, the prospect held out by 
 Nietzsche will leave him cold or fill 
 him with dismay. This Nietzsche him- 
 self quite candidly recognizes. 
 
 "Alas!" he says, in another place : 
 
 Alas ! man recurreth eternally ! The small 
 man recurreth eternally ! 
 
 Once I had seen both naked, the greatest 
 man and the smallest man — all-too-like 
 unto each other — all-too-human even the 
 greatest man !
 
 20 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 All-too-small the greatest one ! That was 
 my satiety of man. And eternal recurrence 
 even of the smallest one ! That was my sa- 
 tiety of all existence. 
 
 Alas ! loathing ! loathing! loathing ! 
 
 We may say then with Nietzsche's 
 clear approval — and I am sure com- 
 mon sense agrees with him — that such 
 an immortality is valuable only for val- 
 uable lives. And Nietzsche, I fear, 
 would not admit value in the lives of 
 any of us in this room ; for the valua- 
 ble men are the men yet to come, the 
 Super-men. Still, we may, many of us, 
 differing from Nietzsche, think our 
 own lives valuable, in and for them- 
 selves, and in that case we may rea- 
 sonably desire the only immortality 
 Nietzsche can promise us. On the 
 other handj there is no reason, that I
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 21 
 
 have been able to discover, for accepting 
 Nietzsche's cosmology. Quite other 
 possibilities may, for aught we know, 
 be open to us. And we may proceed 
 to examine whether there are not con- 
 ceptions of immortality which we 
 should hold to be more desirable than 
 this. Hitherto we have been dealing 
 with the idea of prolongations or repe- 
 titions of life on earth. Let us now ex- 
 tend our imaginations to possibilities 
 farther from our experience. 
 
 And first, let us take the Christian 
 conception of immortality; and let us 
 take it in its simple uncompromising 
 form, the last judgment, and then 
 heaven or hell for all eternity. I am 
 aware, of course, that it is not in this 
 form that many or most Christians now 
 conceive the life after death. But the
 
 22 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 old and simple view is of philosophic 
 as well as historic importance ; and it 
 is well worth considering here. With- 
 out discussing, at present, the exact 
 nature of heaven and hell, and assuming 
 the orthodox descriptions to be alle- 
 gorical, let us suppose that by heaven 
 we mean all that the noblestmen would 
 desire, and by hell all that the basest 
 men would fear ; and let us ask, 
 Would an immortality involving both 
 heaven and hell be more desirable than 
 extinction ? From the humanitarian 
 point of view, which is now so preva- 
 lent, and with which I, at any rate, 
 have no intention of quarrelling, I be- 
 lieve most men would reply that ex- 
 tinction would be better. Most good 
 men who might with reason expect 
 heaven would, I suspect, prefer to re-
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 23 
 
 sign it if they can only have it on con- 
 dition that others — no matter though 
 they be the wicked — are enduring hell. 
 This, to my mind, is a notable advance 
 on the morality exhibited in the often- 
 quoted passage of Tertullian.^ But it 
 must be remembered that spirits much 
 nobler and profounder than he have 
 accepted with solemn and deliberate 
 approbation the doctrine of hell. Re- 
 member the astounding words of 
 Dante, written over the gate of his In- 
 ferno : " It was justice that moved my 
 High Maker ; Divine Power made me, 
 Wisdom Supreme, and Primal Love." 
 Was Dante, then, less humane than 
 smaller men of to-day ? I doubt it ; he 
 had a deeper spring of tenderness as 
 well as of sternness. But — and this 
 is the point I want you to consider —
 
 24 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 he believed in retribution. That I 
 think is the root of the Christian idea, 
 so far as it does not spring from mere 
 cupidity or cruelty. That the wicked 
 should be punished and the good re- 
 warded, that, it affirms, is, in itself, a 
 positive good far greater than happi- 
 ness or perfection. The view is by no 
 means extinct ; it underlies, I believe, 
 most men's attitude towards punish- 
 ment, in spite of the superficial preva- 
 lence of utilitarianism : it was passion- 
 ately preached by Carlyle ;^'' and I have 
 myself heard a philosopher (need I say 
 he was a Scotchman ?) argue that a 
 world containing crime is better than 
 a world free from it, because the pun- 
 ishment of crime is so transcendent a 
 Good. I leave it to your own reflec- 
 tions to what extent you share these
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 25 
 
 views. For my own part, in my delib- 
 erate judgment, I regard them with 
 something approaching horror. I do 
 not hold that there is any value in 
 punishment, except in so far as it im- 
 proves the criminal or deters others 
 from crime. Whether, and to what ex- 
 tent, the idea of hell has ever deterred 
 from crime I do not now inquire. I n any 
 case, it is the idea, not the fact, that 
 has deterred ; so that, from this point 
 of view, the most that could be said 
 to be desirable would be that the idea 
 should be maintained, not that there 
 should exist any corresponding fact. 
 Even that much, however, I could not 
 myself admit ; for I believe the pen- 
 alties of human law to be a surer de- 
 terrent, so far and so long as such 
 deterrents are necessary at all. I do
 
 26 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 not think, therefore, that even the idea, 
 much less the fact, of hell, has any 
 justification from that point of view. 
 And as to the improvement of the 
 criminal, that is ruled out in the Chris- 
 tian hell, for it is precisely part of his 
 punishment that he is, and knows him- 
 self to be, eternally wicked. I judge 
 then, and I expect that most of you 
 agree with me, that if we desire im- 
 mortality, it is not for the sake of 
 retribution, regarded either as a good 
 in itself or as a means to good ; and 
 that being so, the notion of hell, left 
 stripped of that support, is so dreadful 
 that we should prefer universal extinc- 
 tion to an immortality involving that. 
 If this contention be accepted, it is 
 natural next to suggest that the im- 
 mortality that is desirable would be
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 27 
 
 some kind of heaven not conditioned 
 by the existence of a hell. But in that 
 case, what are we to mean by heaven ? 
 If I am not much mistaken, there are 
 few intelhgent people — probably there 
 is no one in this audience — who look 
 forward with real satisfaction to the 
 traditional Christian heaven. It has 
 always been extraordinarily difficult to 
 picture a condition of perfect satis- 
 faction and goodness. The " Para- 
 diso" of Dante is indeed, for its 
 superhuman beauty, an achievement 
 one might have thought must be 
 impossible to human genius. Yet do 
 we feel exactly that we wish to enter 
 it? And no one is likely, I think, in 
 such a matter to surpass Dante. My 
 conclusion is that the object of our 
 desire is in fact unknown to us, and
 
 28 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 unimaginable save in the faintest and 
 most symbolical adumbrations. Does 
 it follow, then, that we have no inter- 
 est in heaven? I do not think so. But 
 rather, that by heaven we really mean 
 the ultimate term of a process in which 
 we are engaged, of the end of which 
 we can only say that it is Good. I say 
 "we"; and I say so because I think 
 that there are many people who in 
 this matter agree with me ; otherwise I 
 should hardly be speaking here. But 
 at this point it may really be more 
 modest to say "I," to tell you simply 
 how I feel, and to ask you whether you 
 feel the same. 
 
 I find then that, to me, in my pre- 
 sent experience, the thing that at bot- 
 tom matters most is the sense I have 
 of something in me making for more
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 29 
 
 life and better. All my pain is at last 
 a feeling of the frustration of this ; all 
 my happiness a feeling of its satisfac- 
 tion. I do not know what this is; I 
 am not prepared to give a coherent 
 account of it ; I ought not, very likely, 
 to call it "it," and to imply the cate- 
 gory of substance. I will abandon, if 
 necessary, under criticism, any particu- 
 lar terms in which I may try to de- 
 scribe it; I will abandon anything 
 except Itself. For It is real. It gov- 
 erns all my experience, and determines 
 all my judgments of value. If pleas- 
 ure hampers it, I do not desire pleas- 
 ure; if pain furthers it, I do desire 
 pain. And what I feel in myself, I in- 
 fer in others. If I may be allowed to 
 use that ambiguous and question-beg- 
 ging word " soul," then I agree with
 
 30 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 the poet Browning that " little else is 
 worth study save the development of 
 a soul." This is to me the bottom fact 
 of experience. And no one can go any 
 further with me in my argument who 
 does not find in my words an indica- 
 tion, however imperfect, of something 
 which he knows, in his own life, to be 
 real. 
 
 What, then, is it that this which I 
 call the " soul " seeks? It seeks what 
 is Good ; but it does not know what 
 is ultimate Good. As a seventeenth- 
 century writer has well put it : " We 
 love we know not what, and therefore 
 everything allures us. As iron at a 
 distance is drawn by the loadstone, 
 there being some invisible communi- 
 cation between them, so is there in us 
 a world of Love to somewhat, though
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 31 
 
 we know not what in the world that 
 should be. There are invisible ways 
 of conveyance by which some great 
 thing doth touch our souls, and by 
 which we tend to it. Do you not feel 
 yourself drawn by the expectation and 
 desire of some great thing?"" This 
 " great thing " it is our business to find 
 out by experience. We do find many 
 good things, but there are always other 
 and better beyond. That is why it is 
 hazardous to fix one's ideal, and say 
 finally, "This or that would be 
 heaven." For we may find, as the 
 voyagers did in Browning's " Paracel- 
 sus," that the real heaven Hes always 
 beyond; beyond each Good we may 
 attain here ; but also, which is my pre- 
 sent point, beyond death. The whole 
 strength of the case for immortality,
 
 32 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 as a thing to be desired, lies in the 
 fact that no one in this life attains his 
 ideal. The soul, even of the best 
 and the most fortunate of us, does 
 not achieve the Good of which she 
 feels herself to be capable and in 
 which alone she can rest. The poten- 
 tiality is not fully realized. I do not 
 infer from this that life has no value 
 if the Beyond is cut off. That, I think, 
 is contrary to most men's experience. 
 The Goods we have here are real 
 Goods, and we may find the Evil more 
 than compensated by them. But what 
 I do maintain is that life here would 
 have indefinitely more value if we 
 knew that beyond death we should 
 pursue, and ultimately to a successful 
 issue, the elusive ideal of which we 
 are always in quest. The conception
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 33 
 
 that death ends all does not empty 
 life of its worth, but it destroys, in 
 my judgment, its most precious ele- 
 ment, that which transfigures all the 
 rest; it obliterates the gleam on the 
 snow, the planet in the east; it shuts 
 off the great adventure, the adventure 
 beyond death. 
 
 Every one almost, I cannot help 
 thinking, who feels at all on such mat- 
 ters, must feel with me on this point, 
 if he could give his feelings full sway 
 unchecked by his denials or his doubts. 
 Every one not immediately in the grip 
 of intolerable Evil, but looking back 
 with impassioned contemplation on 
 Good and Evil alike, must desire, I 
 believe, to journey on in the quest of 
 Good, whatever Evil he may encoun- 
 ter on the route. Americans at least, I
 
 
 34 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 like to suppose, will respond to their 
 own poet when in the passion of his 
 visionary voyage from West to East, 
 from present to past and future, he 
 calls on his soul to embark for an ad- 
 venture more hazardous and more 
 alluring : — 
 
 Passage, immediate passage ! the blood burns in 
 
 my veins ! 
 Away O soul ! hoist instantly the anchor ! 
 Cut the hawsers — haul out — shake out every 
 
 sail ! 
 Have we not stood here like trees in the ground 
 
 long enough ? 
 Have we not grovel' d here long enough, eating 
 
 and drinking like mere brutes ? 
 Have we not darkened and dazed ourselves with 
 
 books long enough ? 
 Sail forth — steer for the dark waters only. 
 Reckless O soul exploring, I with thee, and thou 
 
 with me ;
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 35 
 
 For we are bound where mariner has not yet 
 
 dared to go. 
 And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. 
 O my brave soul ! 
 O farther, farther sail ! 
 O daring joy, but safe ! are they not all the seas 
 
 of God ? 
 O farther, farther, sail ! 
 
 My contention then is that immor- 
 tality is desirable, if immortality means 
 a fortunate issue of the quest of our 
 souls. But the use of the word soul 
 reminds me of a whole series of ambi- 
 guities and confusions which I must 
 not pass over in silence. The subject 
 of the Ingersoll lecture is the "Im- 
 mortality of Man," and " Man " might 
 conceivably be taken to mean Hu- 
 manity. Positivists hold that the only 
 immortality which an individual can 
 expect is the perpetuation of his in-
 
 36 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE ? 
 
 fluence and of his memory among 
 future generations. This abiding mem- 
 ory and record Comte named " sub- 
 jective immortality," and held out, as 
 the great stimulus to good conduct, 
 the prospect of admission into the 
 company of positivist saints. A simi- 
 lar view is held by many men of more 
 imagination and less system than 
 Comte. Thus Mr. George Meredith 
 is constantly exhorting us to live in 
 our offspring, physical or spiritual, and 
 to dismiss from our minds as at once 
 silly and base any desire for a continu- 
 ance of personal life.^^ That this kind 
 of immortality may really be, to some 
 minds, desirable, I do not dispute; nor 
 do I deny it a certain nobility. But it 
 is not what men commonly have in 
 mind, nor what I have had in mind, in
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 37 
 
 consideringthis question. I have meant 
 the perpetuation of one's " self" be- 
 yond death, the realization of one's 
 ideal in one's self, not in some other 
 people to be possibly produced in some 
 indefinite future. But, then, what is 
 this "self" of which I argue that it is 
 desirable it shall be perpetuated ? This 
 is a very difficult question, on which 
 I can here only touch; but it may be 
 worth while to distinguish two views. 
 First, the soul or self may be regarded 
 simply as a substance ; and in postu- 
 lating it as immortal we may mean 
 merely that the substance is not de- 
 stroyed by death. In this view no con- 
 tinuity of consciousness is assumed. It 
 is held that we shall survive death but 
 shall not be aware of it, just as there 
 may lie behind our present lives a series
 
 38 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 of other lives of which we have no 
 knowledge. The identity of the per- 
 son, in this view, consists, not in his 
 knowing himself to be the same per- 
 son, but in his being so in fact. The 
 whole series of his actions and feelings 
 in one life are determined by those of 
 a previous, and determine those of a 
 subsequent life. Every lesson learned, 
 every faculty acquired, every relation 
 formed at any stage, is carried over 
 into the next; so that, for example, 
 the musical faculty of an infant prodigy 
 might be the consequence of musical 
 training in a previous life, and love at 
 first sight the consequence of affections 
 fostered in earlier incarnations. The 
 question then for us to raise is, whether 
 that kind of immortality would be de- 
 sirable? Most people, I believe, would
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 39 
 
 be inclined, to begin with, to answer 
 in the negative. For, they might urge, 
 it is to all intents and purposes exactly 
 the same thing whether my present 
 personality is determined completely 
 by my ancestors and my environment, 
 as it is on the positivist assumptions, 
 or whether it is determined by some 
 substance which you call " me," but of 
 which I have not and never shall have 
 any memory or care, and which again, 
 in some future phase, will have no 
 memory or care for the present "me." 
 This view is plausible and natural, 
 but I think I dissent from it. I am in- 
 clined to agree with Dr. McTaggart,*^ 
 when he argues that a survival of 
 the substance of one's self would be 
 desirable, even though it carried with 
 it no consciousness of survival. It is.
 
 40 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 I think, a really consoling idea that 
 our present capacities are determined 
 by our previous actions, and that our 
 present actions again will determine 
 our future character. It seems to liber- 
 ate us from the bonds of an external fate 
 and make us the captains of our own 
 destinies. If we have formed here a 
 beautiful relation, it will not perish at 
 death but be perpetuated, albeit un- 
 consciously, in some future life. If 
 we have developed a faculty here, it 
 will not be destroyed, but will be the 
 starting-point of later developments. 
 Again, if we suffer, as most people do, 
 from imperfections and misfortunes, it 
 would be consoling to believe that 
 these were punishments of our own 
 acts in the past, not mere effects of the 
 acts of other people, or of an indiffer-
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 41 
 
 ent nature over which we have no 
 control. The world, I think, on this 
 hypothesis would at least seem juster 
 than it does on the positivist view, 
 and that in itself would be a great gain. 
 I agree, therefore, with Dr. McTaggart 
 that an immortality which should im- 
 ply the continuance of a self-substance, 
 even without a self- consciousness, 
 would be desirable. But I also hold 
 that much more desirable would be an 
 immortality which carried with it a con- 
 tinuance of consciousness. Let us now 
 take that hypothesis and consider how 
 much or how little is implied in such 
 continuance. 
 
 To begin with, then, our present ex- 
 perience tells us that complete memory 
 is not essential to continuity of con- 
 sciousness. The content of our memory
 
 42 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 is, in fact, always changing. Some 
 things drop out and others come in. 
 Parts of our past may disappear, tem- 
 porarily atleast, from our consciousness, 
 so that to be told of them is Hke being 
 told of the experience of some other 
 person. Again, every night, in sleep, 
 there is a complete break in continu- 
 ity. So that we may say that we should 
 consider ourselves the same person 
 after death if there were just enough 
 continuity for us to know and judge 
 that we, who are dead, are that same 
 person who just now was alive. True, 
 much more than this is implied in what 
 most people who take any interest in 
 the subject demand or hope from im- 
 mortality. They hope, in particular, to 
 meet again friends they have loved here ; 
 and there must be few people who, in
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 43 
 
 the face of death, have not felt this de- 
 sire. It is, of course, possible that this 
 might occur, and I am inclined to agree 
 that it would be desirable. But I think 
 that perhaps in that one may be mis- 
 taken. All that I am quite clear about 
 is that it would be desirable that this 
 same person who now is should con- 
 tinue to exist after death, and to know 
 that he is the same person ; and that 
 this continued existence should involve 
 the possibility of a development of la- 
 tent faculties for Good up to that per- 
 fection after which, without being able 
 fully to define it, we are always seek- 
 ing. As to the whole content of what 
 would be desirable, I should think it 
 wise to reserve judgment till fuller ex- 
 perience and knowledge enlighten us. 
 In particular, I hesitate to dogma-
 
 44 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 tize on one point which is raised by 
 the philosophies and religions of mys- 
 ticism. Is it conceivable that what would 
 really be good would be that our self 
 shouldsomehowbetakenupintoalarger 
 World-self? I use purposely the am- 
 biguous phrase "taken up " because I 
 wish further to distinguish. If it be 
 meant that our self should be absorbed 
 in another, so as to lose its identity 
 and consciousness, then I cannot see 
 in that anything good or desirable. But 
 if it were possible to be included in a 
 larger self without losing one's own self, 
 so that one could say " I am somehow 
 that Self" then, for aught I know, that 
 might be good and the best. But since 
 most of us in the West would, I sup- 
 pose, admit that such a condition is 
 one of which we have not even a proxi-
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 45 
 
 mate experience, this notion can only- 
 remain for us a mere idea or possibility 
 which we cannot begin to fill in with 
 the imagination. 
 
 To sum up, then, the immortality 
 which I hold to be desirable, and which 
 I suggest to you as desirable, is one in 
 which a continuity of experience anal- 
 ogous to that which we are aware of 
 here is carried on into a life after death, 
 the essence of that life being the con- 
 tinuous unfolding, no doubt through 
 stress and conflict, of those potential- 
 ities of Good of which we are aware 
 here as the most significant part of 
 ourselves. I hold that the desirability of 
 this is a matter of plain fact, and that 
 in putting it forward I am giving no 
 evidence of superstition, weakness, or 
 egotism, but on the contrary am recog-
 
 46 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 nizing the deepest element in human 
 nature. Some of you, probably, will 
 agree with this ; others will strongly disa- 
 gree ; and to those who disagree I have 
 no further arguments to address; we 
 disagree invincibly and finally. 
 
 But there is one point on which I 
 must touch in conclusion. For even 
 those who agree with me on the ques- 
 tion of desirability may still hold that 
 it is of little use to put forward as 
 desirable something which we cannot 
 know to be true, or which, as they may 
 hold, we know not to be true. It was 
 with this point that I began, and with 
 it I will finish. I must repeat, then, 
 that it is mere dogmatism to assert that 
 we do not survive death, and mere pre- 
 judice or inertia to assert that it is im- 
 possible to discover whether we do or
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 47 
 
 no. We in the West have hardly even 
 begun to inquire into the matter; and 
 scientific method and critical faculty 
 were never devoted to it, so far as I 
 am aware, previous to the foundation, 
 some quarter of a century ago, of the 
 Society for Psychical Research. There 
 are, and always have been, a number 
 of alleged facts suggesting ^n'w^ facie 
 the survival of death. But these facts 
 have always been exploited by super- 
 stition and credulity, or repudiated by 
 the prejudices of enlightenment. They 
 are now, at last, being systematically 
 and deliberately explored by men and 
 women of intelligence and good faith 
 bent on ascertaining the truth. It would 
 be premature to suggest that any truth 
 on this subject has been ascertained; 
 but it is my own opinion that the re-
 
 48 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 cent investigations conducted by the 
 Society, and published in their "Pro- 
 ceedings,"" have made it incumbent 
 upon students to take into serious ac- 
 count the hypothesis that persons sur- 
 vive death. The fact of survival, it is 
 true, would not carry with it the proof 
 of immortality in the strict sense of the 
 term ; but it would destroy the princi- 
 pal argument against it. Such inquir- 
 ies, therefore, it might be supposed, 
 and such results would excite a very 
 widespread interest. Yet such is not the 
 case ; and I believe the reason to be 
 that there is no general conviction that 
 the question is one of immense impor- 
 tance to the value oflife.*^ My conten- 
 tion is that it is ; that there is a kind 
 of immortality which, if it were a fact, 
 would be a very desirable one. To ask
 
 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 49 
 
 the question, as I have been doing, 
 whether you agree with me in this; to 
 invite you to sift your feehngs and to 
 make yourselves clear as to what they 
 really are, is therefore, in my opinion, 
 a procedure which has a direct bearing 
 upon the pursuitofpositiveknowledge. 
 For unless you think it really impor- 
 tant to know the truth, you will never 
 pursue it nor encourage those who do. 
 You will content yourselves with a lazy 
 acquiescence either in the dogmas of 
 religion or in those of science, and will 
 regard inquirers who take the question 
 seriously either as harmless cranks or 
 as disreputable charlatans. Many of 
 them are, but some of them are not, 
 and none of them need be from the 
 nature of the topic. And in asking you 
 to-night, as clearly as I can, the ques-
 
 50 IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? 
 
 tion, Do you want immortality, and 
 in what form ? I conceive myself to be 
 doing something very practical. I am 
 not merely asking you — though that 
 in itself is important — to become clear 
 with yourselves on a point of values ; 
 I am asking you further to take seri- 
 ously a branch of scientific inquiry 
 which may have results more impor- 
 tant than any other that is being pur- 
 sued in our time.
 
 NOTES
 
 NOTES 
 
 Note I, page i. I have used the word Im- 
 mortality, throughout this lecture, to cover any 
 prolongation of the life of the individual beyond 
 death. The survival of death is not, of course, 
 identical with, and does not imply, immortality, 
 in the proper sense of the term. But if it were 
 known that survival of death were a fact, the 
 principal argument against immortality would dis- 
 appear. For our only reason for supposing that 
 we do not live forever is our experience of death. 
 
 Note 2, page j. The dogmatic and, as I 
 think, unscientific attitude of some men of sci- 
 ence is illustrated by Professor Munsterberg's lit- 
 tle book The Eternal Life. He says (page 6), 
 "Necessity moves the stars in the sky, and 
 necessity moves the emotions in my mind. No 
 miracle can break these laws, can push a single 
 molecule from its path, or create a sensation in a 
 mind, when the body does not work, when the
 
 54 NOTES 
 
 brain no longer functions." I have dealt in the 
 text with the point of the connection between 
 mind and brain. But I have not there dealt with 
 the point of heredity. There is evidence that 
 mental as well as physical qualities are transmitted 
 hereditarily. And if it could be demonstrated that 
 the mental qualities of a person may be completely 
 accounted for in that way, the hypothesis of a 
 mental entity preexisting independently of the body 
 would become extremely improbable. On the other 
 hand, ( i ) such complete demonstration does not 
 exist. Heredity is a hypothesis which seems to 
 account plausibly for some of the facts, but the limits 
 of its applicability have yet to be determined. And 
 (2) to rule out preexistence would not be neces- 
 sarily to rule out post-existence, though I think it 
 would make it less probable. The point I wish 
 to make is, that in the present state of our know- 
 ledge (or ignorance) on these subjects the hypo- 
 theses which science finds it convenient to use 
 and test ought not to be set up to discredit any 
 specific and independently verified facts which 
 make /r//w/?_/^«> against those hypotheses. And I
 
 NOTES 55 
 
 regard the question of the survival of death, at 
 present, as an open one, (i) because there are 
 certain facts which seem possibly to point to sur- 
 vival, (2) because there is not, and probably 
 cannot be, a demonstration of the contrary. The 
 question of heredity in its bearing on preexistence 
 is discussed by Dr. McTaggart in Some Dogmas 
 of Religion, page 124 seq. 
 
 Note J, page j. McTaggart, Some Dogmas of 
 Religion, page 105 seq. 
 
 Note 4, page j. The principal sayings of 
 Goethe upon the subject of a life after death have 
 been collected by Dr. Wilhelm Bode in a little 
 book entitled Meine Religion — Mein politischer 
 Glaube, von J. B. v. Goethe. I translate here a 
 few of the passages : — 
 
 *♦ When a man is as old as I am, he is bound 
 sometimes to think about death. This thought 
 leaves me in perfect peace, for I have a firm con- 
 vicdon that our spirit is a being of indestructible 
 nature; it works on from eternity to eternity; it is 
 like the sun which though it seems to set to our 
 earthly eyes, does not really set but shines on per-
 
 56 NOTES 
 
 petually. Do you think a coffin can impose upon 
 me ? 
 
 "No good man allows himself to be robbed 
 of his belief in immortality. The continuance of 
 personal life does not conflict at all with the obser- 
 vations I have been making for so many years 
 past on the nature of Man and of all living crea- 
 tures. On the contrary, it derives from them fresh 
 confirmation." 
 
 " The conviction that our life continues springs 
 for me from the conception of activity; for, if I 
 work without ceasing to the end. Nature is bound 
 to assign me another form of existence, when the 
 present one no longer suffices for my spirit." 
 
 Perhaps I ought in candor, considering the sub- 
 ject and content of this lecture, to quote also the 
 following: — 
 
 " I could not bear to renounce the happiness 
 of believing in a future life; indeed, I could say, 
 with Lorenzo di Medici, that they are dead even 
 for this life who hope for no other; but such unin- 
 telligible matters lie too far away to be an object 
 of daily reflection and confusing speculation. And
 
 NOTES 57 
 
 further, if a man believes in survival, let him be 
 happy in silence ; he has no occasion to make a fuss 
 about it. I observed, in connection with Tiedge's 
 Urania, that Saints like nobles are a kind of Aris- 
 tocracy . I found silly women who gave themselves 
 airs because, with Tiedge, they believed in immor- 
 tality ; and I had to undergo a very obscure cross- 
 examination on the subject. However I annoyed 
 them by saying: •! have no objection to being 
 blessed with another life after this one is over; only 
 I do hope I shan't meet there any one who believed 
 in it here. Otherwise I shall have a most unpleas- 
 ant time. The saints will all flock round me and 
 say: ** Well, were n't we right? Did n't we tell 
 you so? Isn't it just as we said?" And so one 
 would be bored even in heaven! ' " 
 
 *' A preoccupation with ideas of immortality is 
 for the leisured classes, and for women who have 
 nothing to do, A sensible man, who wants to be 
 something decent here, and so has to struggle, fight, 
 and work, leaves the fliture life in peace and is 
 active and useful in this one. Besides, thoughts 
 about immortality are for people who have n't
 
 58 NOTES 
 
 come ofF very well in the way of happiness here; 
 and I imagine that if the good Tiedge had had 
 better fortune he would have had better thoughts." 
 
 Note J', page ii. Science and Immortality, 
 page 36. 
 
 Note 6, page 12. See his book The Nature 
 of Man. 
 
 Note 7, page 75. Cf. Tennyson' s Tit bonus : — 
 *' I ask'd thee, * Give me immortality.* 
 
 Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile. 
 
 Like wealthy men who care not how they give. 
 
 But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their 
 wills. 
 
 And beat me down and marr'd and wasted 
 me. 
 
 And tho' they could end me, left me maim'd 
 
 To dwell in presence of immortal youth. 
 
 Immortal age beside immortal youth. 
 
 And all I was in ashes." 
 
 Note 8, page 18. " Thus spake Zarathustra," 
 Eng. Trans, by A. Tille, Works, vol. viii, 
 page 341. 
 
 Note g, page 23. See Gibbon, Decline and Fall
 
 NOTES 59 
 
 of the Roman Empire ^ vol. ii, page 27 of Bury's 
 edition. The passage is as follows: — 
 
 ** How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, 
 how exult, when I behold so many proud mon- 
 archs and fancied gods groaning in the lowest 
 abyss of darkness; so many magistrates, who per- 
 secuted in the name of the Lord, liquefying in 
 fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the 
 Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in 
 red-hot flames, with their deluded scholars; so 
 many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal 
 not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians, 
 more tuneful in the expression of their own suffer- 
 ings; so many dancers — " But here Gibbon cuts 
 short the quotation, and there is no reason for me 
 to prolong it. 
 
 Note 10, page 24. See Latter-day Pamphlets. 
 No. 2. Model Prisons. 
 
 ' ' And so you take criminal caitiffs, murderers, 
 and the like, and hang them on gibbets * for an 
 example to deter others. ' Whereupon arise friends 
 of humanity, and object. With very great reason, 
 as I consider, ifyour hypothesis be correct. What
 
 6o NOTES 
 
 right have you to hang any poor creature * for an 
 example ' ? He can turn round upon you and say, 
 'Why make an "example" of me, a merely 
 ill-situated, pitiable man? Have you no more re- 
 spect for misfortune ? Misfortune, I have been told, 
 is sacred. And yet you hang me, now I am fallen 
 into your hands; choke the life out of me, for an 
 example! Again I ask. Why make an example 
 of me, for your own convenience alone? ' — All 
 * revenge ' being out of the question, it seems to me 
 the caitiff is unanswerable; and he and the philan- 
 thropic platforms have the logic all on their side. 
 " The one answer to him is: * Caitiff, we hate 
 thee; and discern for some six thousand years now, 
 that we are called upon by the whole Universe 
 to do it. Not with a diabolic, but with a divine 
 hatred. God himself, we have always understood, 
 '•hates sin," with a most authentic, celestial, 
 and eternal hatred. A hatred, a hostility inexor- 
 able, unappeasable, which blasts the scoundrel, 
 and all scoundrels ultimately, into black annihila- 
 tion and disappearance from the sum of things. 
 The path of it as the path of a flaming sword: he
 
 NOTES 6i 
 
 that has eyes may see it, walking inexorable, di- 
 vinely beautiful and divinely terrible, through the 
 chaotic gulf of Human History, and everywhere 
 burning, as with unquenchable fire, the false and 
 death-worthy from the true and life-worthy; mak- 
 ing all Human History, and the Biography of 
 every man, a God's Cosmos in place of a Devil's 
 Chaos. So is it, in the end; even so, to every 
 man who is a man, and not a mutinous beast, and 
 has eyes to see. To thee, caitiff, these things were 
 and are, quite incredible; to us they are too awfully 
 certain, — the Eternal Law of this Universe, 
 whether thou and others will believe it or disbe- 
 lieve. We, not to be partakers in thy destructive 
 adventure of defying God and all the Universe, 
 dare not allow thee to continue longer among us. 
 As a palpable deserter from the ranks where all 
 men, at their eternal peril, are bound to be: pal- 
 pable deserter, taken with the red hand fighting 
 thus against the whole Universe and its Laws, we 
 — send thee back into the whole Universe, sol- 
 emnly expel thee from our community; and will 
 in the name of God, not with joy and exultation.
 
 62 NOTES 
 
 but with sorrow stern as thy own, hang thee on 
 Wednesday next, and so end.' " 
 
 Note II, page ^i. Traherne. Centuries of 
 Meditation, page 3. 
 
 Note 12, page j6. See e. g. his poems. Earth 
 Man and A Faith on Trial. 
 
 Note I J, page jp. Some Dogmas of Religion, 
 page 127, 
 
 Note 14, page 48. See Proceedings of the So- 
 ciety for Psychical Research, Parts 53, 55, 57. 
 Maclehose & Co., Glasgow. These volumes con- 
 tain the record of a series of automatic writings 
 purporting to be inspired by certain well-known 
 men recently deceased. That they purport to be so 
 inspired is, of course, in itself, no evidence that 
 they are so. But the writings involve very curious 
 and complicated correspondences between mes- 
 sages given independently to different automatists 
 in different places. Such correspondences are 
 conceivably explicable by a great extension of the 
 hypothesis of telepathy; but there is an apparent 
 deliberate effort to render that explanation as lit- 
 tle plausible as possible. Altogether the writings
 
 NOTES 63 
 
 present a very difficult and interesting problem 
 in evidence as to which it would probably be pre- 
 mature at present to come to any final conclusion. 
 But the hypothesis that the messages do really pro- 
 ceed from the persons from whom they profess to 
 proceed must, I think, be seriously considered. 
 
 Note 75, page 48. See a paper by Dr. Schiller 
 (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 
 Part 49) discussing the answers obtained to a 
 "Questionnaire" regarding human sentiment as 
 to a fiiture life, which was undertaken a few years 
 ago by Dr. Richard Hodgson and the American 
 Branch of the S. P. R.
 
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