PRELIMINARY NOTICE.

THE small change in the usual spelling is here confined to the omission of e final where it is not only superfluous, but misleading. The writer hopes to exhibit and defend hereafter a larger improvement for the benefit of all learners; but to the revolutionary Pitman scheme, he is on principle irreconcilable.

INTRODUCTION.

MORE than one friend has pressed me to giv to the world my maturest thoughts concerning a Future Life. I am not so vain as to imagin that anything that I can write will bring this contested question nearer to a close. The contending schools seem to move on different planes, and never to meet the opposit argument. If from unwillingness to giv pain to friends, those who hav thought on both sides keep silence, how shall any approach to Truth be made? To state how I now view the controversy, I seem called, because in my book entitled "Theism " I hav long seen that I was one-sided. I there.wrote, less as an inquirer, than as an advocate. Accounting the physical argument to be quite notorious, I omitted to dwell on its real strength. Various counter-arguments I set forth, as probability higher or lower. I believe I never assumed the dogmatic tone, but I heartily labored to make my case good; not indeed because I felt any spiritual and emotional need of it. Only because logically it seemed an important complement to a Theistic creed, I tried to persuade myself of its truth.

Perhaps it is right to make a further personal statement. In reading Cicero and Plato in early days, I always regarded as trash Plato's arguments for immortality, as, I make no doubt, Cicero himself did. Therefor, as soon as I ceased to trust the scriptures of the New Testament as a divine revelation, my acceptance of a Future Life as a dogma at once fell away. But, knowing that so many holy souls had devoutly believed it and that ostensibly it had ennobled their devoted lives, I held

A

to it with a loose hand, feeling assured that IF the Supreme Lord judged it better for them and for me, he would bestow a second life, as freely as he had bestowed a first life, without our asking; but IF on the contrary for good reasons of his own he did not grant it, then I was sure that that was best for us. Indeed from distant years I judged, that as in a young child any anxiety as to what its father would provide for it on the morrow would be unamiable and unnatural, so in me to be anxious as to my state after death was wrongful, if I believed myself a child of God. In this spirit I wrote the closing chapter of my book called "The Soul," and on that simple basis I continue to rest. It entirely satisfies me. But I confess, when I gradually discovered my isolation and that those with whom I expected to fraternize more nearly, held as certain the tenet which to me was at most only probable, and in no sense vital, I became very uneasy; at last perhaps morbidly so. I thought I must hav been entangled in some materialistic false logic, or from some defect of spirituality failed to discern what some saw as an Axiom. I sought counsel on several sides, and set about diligently to amass and organize all the moral arguments for future life which I could approve. They ar set forth in my "Theism," in the Sections which I call one-sided. Other experiences hav since gradually swung me in the opposit direction.*

After this Introduction, I pass abruptly to the general discussion, placing first the Physical, next, the Moral side. Observe; that a soul which survives dissolution of the body must be either dis-embodied or re-embodied. There is no third possibility. The two appear alternately in the New Testament, confused with "calling out of "the graves," and "resurrection of the body."

* November, 1885.

SECTION I.

ARGUMENT OF PANETIUS.

No philosophy is needed, nor any scholastic knowledge, on the side of denial that the soul survives the body. By the word soul here is understood Yux the Vital Principle, whether of beast or man. Evidently the individual soul begins to exist simultaneously with the organization of its body. Not only is the body of the offspring derived from the body of the parent, but the characteristic mental qualities ar transmitted also. We see in each separate animal the peculiar instincts and powers of the breed; whence (in ancient phrase) we say that the soul of the offspring comes from the soul of the parent. Evidently also the soul grows up with the body. When the body becomes decrepit, the power of the mind lessens and activity of the soul normally declines; finally, when circulation of the blood ceases, soul and mind entirely disappear.

In the case of the horse, the dog, the elephant (animals displaying much mental activity), mankind in general regard it as certain that life perishes with the dissolution, as it began with the organization, of the body. That is accepted as the obvious law of Nature, and no one thinks it strange. Until some one brings strong, clear argument to the contrary, we must (provisionally at least) hold that what is true of other animals is true also of man. Man, no doubt, is mentally superior to the dog, as is also the dog to the pig; but in all the cases the soul is cognizable only as dependent on and connate with the bodily organization.

Such is the primary physical argument, substantially as given by Panatius, a celebrated Greek philosopher, of whom Cicero may perhaps be called a follower.

Some moderns throw dust into our eyes by intruding the wholely irrelevant question, "Is the soul the cause

"of the bodily organization, or, conversely its effect?" Of course every Theist holds that a Greater Cause is behind both. They ar a simultaneous Product of Nature and of God. Theists and Atheists ar agreed as to simultaneousness, also that, so far as fact is observable, each is a condition requisit for the other. Let us not run from light into darkness by allowing the sham argument, "Which is cause and which is effect?" to distract and delude us. This is visibly a sham, if applied to the elephant or the dog: we must not endure its needless obtrusion in the case of man. If the soul be with us the Cause of our organization, it is equally the Cause with the elephant and the dog; and if in the latter the topic is irrelevant to the question of survival after death, it is also irrelevant with us.

A friendly critic wonders that I now retract an argument borrowed from my admired friend, Dr. James Martineau, that "Comparison of the lowest does not "reveal the powers of the highest." I did not think that that topic made the physical argument, here adduced, worthless; but simply not so overwhelming, that no moral argument might outweigh it. I seem to myself to continue on the same basis. But the Moral Argument has now two sides for me, and (as in Section ix. will be said,) the Physical Difficulty greater, the more closely it is considered.

SECTION II.

THE GREEK AXIOM.

THE argument of Panatius is given by Cicero (Tusc. Q. I. 32) as follows: "Vult enim (quod nemo negat) "quidquid natum sit, interire: nasci autem animos;