nature itself forbid us to accept any theory of existence that can only be named with a sigh, as this must be. The keynote of the universe is joy, and every theory of destiny must harmonize with it. Evolution cannot impair the fact of personality here or hereafter, simply because man transcends nature, which is the field of evolution. It is true that we are very thoroughly mixed with the nature about us, and physically may be one with it. We give our bodies over to the evolutionist to predicate what he will of them, but we draw a line that science is forced to respect, between our physical and moral nature, and claim for the latter a diverse set of laws and a diverse destiny. Man may comprise all that has gone before him in nature, but he is not summed up by it. As the grand proof of this, we adduce the fact of the moral nature with its prime characteristic of freedom. This takes man out of the category of the material world, and exempts him from its destiny. He covers, but he also transcends nature and is a supra-natural being. absurd to suppose that the order of law that reigns universal in the realm of nature should yield such a thing as free-will. Mr. Darwin himself admits that "free-will is a mystery insoluble to the naturalist." Necessity, which is the equivalent of law, never could evolve freedom. But choice, or freedom, is the constituting characteristic of man, upon which is built the whole fabric of his life and moral nature. It makes him a person; it is the basis of his history. It puts him above the order and on-going of nature. Make the chain of evolution as strong as It is you will, bind man down to nature by every muscle and nerve and bioplastic cell of his body, here is something unaccounted for, and by far the greater part of him. As a moral being, he is utterly inexplicable on any theory of evolution that attempts wholly to account for him. As moral, he is attended by a vast array of faculties, experiences, and phenomena, that evolution cannot explain, such as consciousness of identity, abstract conceptions, moral obligations, the sense of God, the consciousness of a will. If natural science refuses to accept these as legitimate phenomena, or treats them as mere enlargements of physical instincts, so much the worse for natural science; it thereby abdicates its function of explaining phenomena. The greater physicists perceive this. Professor Tyndall says that the chasm between brain-action and consciousness is impassable, that "here is a rock upon which materialism must split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of the human mind." The admission is valuable, not merely because of its origin, but for its impregnable truth. With such a chasm between the two parts of man's nature, molecular processes and perpetual flux on one side, and conscious identity, moral sense, and freedom on the other side, Iwe need not feel troubled at anything physical evolution may assert of man: it simply cannot touch him. We may now build our argument as to his destiny, unhindered by any clamor that may reach us from the other side of this chasm, a chasm that science itself recognizes in our composite nature. Thus far we have simply outlined some of the reasons why such theories as that of the continuity of force, and physical evolution throw no barrier in the way of possible immortality. The former fails to account for man, and is intolerable to the human mind. The latter does not account for the beginnings of life, for the plan of any life, for the source of the potency that works in life, or for the reason that guides its workings; it does not account for the difference between the instincts of the brutes and the mental and moral faculties of man, nor for the sense of personal identity; nor can any theory account for it that is limited by matter with its universal law of constant flux and atomic change. Personal identity is impossible under any theory whatever of materialism. A consciously enduring being cannot be got out of a perpetual flux. It can proceed only from a nonatomic, and therefore non-fluctuating substance, from something therefore wholly opposite to matter. Matter cannot uphold the consciousness of identity. When this is apprehended, we shall have little difficulty in believing that we are far outside its limits, of another substance and destiny. But other difficulties may arise, such as the thought that this sense of personal identity may be temporary, that as it slowly grew within us, so it may slowly die out; that as our life was drawn out into separateness from the great ocean of being, so, having some cycle within itself, it will sink back into it, as a star rises and sets. Age and infancy are very like, especially when each is normal; sleep and unconsciousness mark both. As there is no identity before infancy, is there any after age? The fact that, notwithstanding the extreme plausibility of this familiar analogy, the human mind has never accepted the suggestion, has great significance; it has instinctively felt that this resemblance does not indicate a reality. Descartes argued: “I think, therefore I am." Had he continued, I am, therefore I shall continue to be, he would have uttered as cogent logic. Granted the consciousness of personality, and it is impossible to conceive of non-existence. If self is a unit and not a conglomerate of atoms, how is it to be got out of existence? We cannot conceive of the annihilation of an ultimate atom. We can conceive of an organism being resolved into ultimate atoms, but not of their destruction; science and reason agree in this. But man is conscious of himself as an entity, a moral unit, - a non-fluctuating, unresolvable, and hence indestructible thing. This is the logical expression of the common belief in immortality, and is the basis of the remark of Goethe, that "it is to a thinking being quite impossible to think himself non-existent." The thought that we may sink back into the lifeflood of the universe from which we came, as a drop of water lifted by the wind falls into the ocean, is checked by the same sense of the impossibility of the loss of personal identity. Whatever may be our relations to the source of life, the I, the self, must remain. Anything else is, as Goethe says, unthinkable. Tennyson asserts the same: "That each, who seems a separate whole, "Is faith as vague as all unsweet; The eternal soul from all beside." But it may be said, if there is another life, there must be another world. Where is it? Of what composed? If it is within the limits, or under the laws of matter, it can have no endurance. The soul must have a sphere like itself,- - permanent, unfluctuating. And because it must have it, its existence may be asserted on common and well accepted grounds of reasoning. Whatever is needed to account for and explain any well attested truth or phenomenon, may be accepted as real. Thus, when the undulatory theory of light was established, it was necessary to assume the existence of the luminiferous ether, and there is still almost no other proof of its existence than that the nature of light demands it. Science has thus created by simple deduction a universe of matter. Surely if philosophy may create a universe in which to float the worlds, and convey those quiverings of burning suns that we call heat and light, it will not withhold a fit sphere for the soul when it breaks away from the bonds of matter. We base our proof, however, not on mere analogy, but on the simple ground that the nature of the soul demands a proper and answering sphere, as wings demand air, and fins water. Otherwise, creation is without order and coherence. It is nothing against the existence of |