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GIFT OF 
 
NEW PROOFS 
 OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 S. S. HEBBERD 
 
 II 
 
 
 t 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
 1914 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Some will take offense at the very title of 
 this book. The existence of the soul, they will 
 say, has been discussed through thousands of 
 years from every possible point of view. It is 
 folly, then, to claim the discovery of new proofs 
 that were hidden from the great masters of 
 thought. 
 
 I answer that these new proofs are all rooted 
 in the principle demonstrated in Chapter I 
 that all thinking is a relating of cause and ef- 
 fect. And whoever reads that chapter care- 
 fully will see that this demonstration could not 
 have been made until modern science had 
 reached its present stage of development. I am 
 not posing, then, as a rival to the great masters 
 of the past. But I occupy a privileged posi- 
 tion whereby an insight can be gained, impos- 
 sible in their day. Hence these new proofs of 
 the soul's existence. 
 
 All Europe is now plunged in the greatest, 
 most murderous war that the world has ever 
 known. And in this sudden sinking of our 
 civilization into the lowest depths of barbarism, 
 
 304129 
 
PREFACE 
 
 we are simply reaping a harvest the seeds of 
 which were sown more than a century ago. A 
 skeptical mania then began which has gradually 
 undermined the belief in God and the soul. But 
 man must worship; having rejected the true 
 God, he grovels in the dust before the God of 
 War. And if man is soulless, why should he 
 not be hurried like other animals to the 
 slaughter-house ? 
 
 The issue of my book just now seems, then, 
 opportune. For it is night that reveals the 
 stars. And in this present night of horrors, 
 people will be apt to give heed to proofs that 
 God still reigns and souls exist. 
 
 S. S. H. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEE PAGE 
 
 I THE NATURE OF THOUGHT ... 1 
 
 II THE PERFECT CAUSE 28 
 
 III THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS . . 43 
 
 IV CONFLICT OF SENSE AND REASON . . 54 
 V FREEDOM 68 
 
 VI IMMORTALITY 77 
 
 VII CONCLUSION 85 
 
NEW PROOFS OF THE 
 SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 

 CHAPTER I 
 THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 
 
 The chief problems of philosophy - - and, 
 above all, the problem of the soul can be 
 solved only by starting from a clear view of the 
 nature of thought as distinguished from feel- 
 ing. Hence I begin with an attempt to prove 
 the following thesis : The essential function of 
 all thinking is to interpret the given in terms 
 of cause and effect. 
 
 It will naturally be demanded that, first of 
 all, I define the causal relation. Cause, it will 
 be said, is a word of many diverse meanings ; 
 and it will profit nothing to show that every 
 form of thinking involves some dim shade of 
 some one among these contrasted meanings. 
 But evidently, if my thesis is true, there can be 
 no formal definition of causality ; for there is no 
 wider genus under which it can be sub-sumed 
 as a species with its special differentia. 
 
 But this difficulty is not insuperable. For 
 it will be shown as we proceed that there is but 
 one perfect type of causality; and that all these 
 diverse meanings are but so many phases or de- 
 
2 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 grees of imperfection evinced as we descend 
 from that perfect type. 
 
 SECTION 1. SUBSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE 
 
 Let us, then, first take thinking in its simplest 
 form, i. e., those perceptive judgments which 
 connect things and their qualities. What now 
 is the relation between the qualities and the 
 thing qualified? We all know the old answer 
 handed down from Aristotle through the ages. 
 The qualities inhere in the thing - - stick in 
 it, as it were - - like pins in a pin-cushion. 
 Against this familiar but absurd view, I main- 
 tain that the real relation between the thing 
 and its attributes is that of cause and effect. 
 The thing is the partial cause of its attri- 
 butes. 
 
 Note, above all, the significance of the limit- 
 ing term - - the partial cause. The first maxim 
 of modern science is that no finite, sensible thing 
 is the complete cause of an effect. The true 
 cause of any effect is complex ; many different 
 things or agencies are woven together as fac- 
 tors in the causal process whence any given 
 effect or change results. But modern philoso- 
 phy has been strangely blind to this axiom of 
 modern science; and this blindness has led to a 
 virtual discarding of causation as a vague, am- 
 biguous term useless in systematic thinking. 
 " Cause," says Martineau, for instance, " ap- 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 3 
 
 pears at one time as a thing or object in space; 
 in another as a prior phenomenon ; and again, 
 as a definite force identical with neither. In 
 assigning the cause of the daily tides, for ex- 
 ample, you may name the moon or the rotation 
 of the earth or the gravitation of the related 
 masses." He does not see that each of these 
 is but a partial cause, a factor in the complex 
 process producing the tides. In like manner 
 Wundt and Sigwart dispute : the one insisting 
 that the cause of every event is some prior 
 event, the other that substances also are causes. 1 
 All such confusion and wrangling might have 
 been avoided by remembering that the substance 
 is indeed a cause, but a partial one, a factor in 
 the causal complex producing the attribute. 
 
 Note further that the thing or substance, 
 though only a partial cause, occupies a privi- 
 leged and pre-eminent position. For it is the 
 only factor that persists, that operates in one 
 and all of the many different processes by which 
 its many attributes are severally produced. 
 
 Again, it is the specific factor; the other fac- 
 tors are general conditions giving only general 
 results. For example, the earth's attraction is 
 such a condition determining the weight of 
 things in general. But it is the structure of 
 the thing itself which determines whether it 
 shall be heavy as lead or light as a leaf. So 
 
 i Sigwart: Logic, II. 564-74. 
 
4 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 with color: the ether-waves produce all manner 
 of colors, but the structure of the thing deter- 
 mines its specific color. 
 
 These considerations are enough to prove my 
 contention that the relation of substance to its 
 attributes is that of a partial cause to many 
 effects produced under varying circumstances. 
 And yet it is but one half of the proof. The 
 other and more important half consists in show- 
 ing that only this view explains certain per- 
 plexities that have long darkened the concep- 
 tion of substance and attributes into a midnight 
 of enigma and self-contradiction. 
 
 (1) First of all, consider the well-known 
 logical riddle : if from the substance we take 
 away the attributes nothing remains ; conversely, 
 if from the attributes we take away the sub- 
 stance, again we have nothing left ; thus sub- 
 stance and attribute taken apart seem to be 
 but two nothings. But the error lies in regard- 
 ing substance and attribute as two distinct 
 things. Rise above this childish view. Inter- 
 pret substance and attribute in terms of cause 
 and effect. Then you see at once that a cause 
 which has no effect is not a cause, and that an 
 effect which has no cause is not an effect. 
 
 (2) Another and still graver opposition 
 which philosophy has for centuries been vainly 
 striving to reconcile is that of identity and di- 
 versity. Hegel rightly insisted that difference 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 5 
 
 was even more essential to a true concept or 
 universal than was mere resemblance. 2 But he 
 erred fatally in supposing that this union of 
 identity and difference was self-contradictory. 
 He did not see that all thinking was a relating 
 of cause and effect. And that the very essence 
 of such a relation was that it at once differen- 
 tiated between the cause and its effect, and yet 
 united them by the firmest of bonds. 
 
 (3) Another famous opposition is that of 
 the One and the Many. Philosophers as wide 
 apart as Hegel and Herbart agree that one 
 thing with many qualities is a flagrant case of 
 self-contradiction. Bergson believes that this 
 difficulty can be overcome by rising above mere 
 intellect into the cloud-land of his sympathetic 
 intuition or " Creative elan." But there is no 
 need of these strange devices. Unity and mul- 
 tiplicity when interpreted in terms of cause and 
 effect are not contradictory, as we have seen ; 
 the one thing is the central factor in many dif- 
 ferent processes of causation, each of which im- 
 parts to that thing a different aspect or quality. 
 
 (4) Still another opposition is that of per- 
 manence and change. Hegel would reconcile 
 these by abolishing time. Bergson, by confin- 
 ing mere intellect to a knowledge of the perma- 
 nent, while " a kind of intellectual ausculta- 
 
 2 Bosanquet, Individuality, etc., devotes 50 pages to 
 this truth, pp. 31-81. 
 
6 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 tion," 3 reveals the throbbings of incessant 
 change or restless becoming. But for such fan- 
 cies I would substitute the simple fact that the 
 thought of causation necessarily involves both 
 permanence and change. The cause is rela- 
 tively permanent, the effect relatively change- 
 ful. In other words, the two reciprocally 
 qualify each other; we know the cause through 
 its effects and conversely the effects through 
 their causes. 
 
 Thus these four phantoms of self-contradic- 
 tion which have so long disquieted the philo- 
 sophic world seem to vanish in the light of the 
 view here maintained. And this is the other 
 half of my proof that the relation of substance 
 to its attributes is that of a partial cause to its 
 many effects. 
 
 SECTION 2. CONCEPTS 
 
 A threefold difficulty infests the problem of 
 concepts or universals. The first two concern 
 the double meaning of the concept, its extension 
 and intension. The third is the question, 
 handed down from the Middle Ages, whether 
 concepts really exist, or are but mere names. 
 And these three inter-tangle into a hard knot 
 which philosophy as yet has failed to untie. 
 
 Let us see, then, whether this knot can be 
 
 3 Bergson: Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 36. 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 7 
 
 untied by the aid of our principle that all think- 
 ing is a relating of cause and effect. A univer- 
 sal, I hope to show, means something more than 
 a collection of individuals or a bundle of at- 
 tributes or a mere name. Its deepest meaning 
 is a process of causation producing uniform re- 
 sults. The proof thereof can be given here 
 only in outline, but still clearly enough, I trust, 
 to be convincing. If any reader should still 
 doubt, let him refer to my Philosophy of the 
 Future (pp. 93-112) where the proof is given 
 in greater detail. 
 
 The primitive view of the concept a view 
 that stood unchallenged until a century ago - 
 was crude and superficial. It saw in the con- 
 cept naught but a collection of resembling ob- 
 jects. The extension expressed the objects, the 
 intension their resemblance. But a rude shock 
 was given to this venerable view by Hegel's in- 
 vention of " the concrete universal." To him 
 belongs the honor of being the first European 
 to see that the old view of the concept neces- 
 sarily involved universal self-contradiction. 
 To conceive anything was to place it in a col- 
 lection of like objects. But instantly the 
 counter- thought arose that these objects were, 
 in many respects, not like each other. Thus 
 every concept becomes a palpable self-contra- 
 diction. Or, as that eminent Hegelian, Mc- 
 Taggart, puts it : " But everything is, as we 
 
8 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 have seen, Unlike every other thing. And it is 
 also Like every other thing, for in any possible 
 group we can, as we have seen, find a common 
 quality. Thus under this category everything 
 has exactly the same relation to everything 
 else. For it is both Like and Unlike every- 
 thing else." 4 
 
 But though Hegel did well in unveiling the 
 contradictoriness of the concept as ordinarily 
 construed, his substitute the concrete univer- 
 sal can hardly be deemed a success. It raises 
 far more difficulties than it removes. The true 
 solution is that every relation of mere likeness 
 or difference, in order to become self-consistent 
 and intelligible, must be converted into a causal 
 relation by stating upon what the likeness or the 
 unlikeness depends. When the vague, inco- 
 herent feeling of likeness and unlikeness thus 
 evolves into the recognition of a causal relation, 
 then only does real thinking begin. In fine, a 
 concept, in its deepest meaning, signifies a 
 causal process. 
 
 And strangely enough, all the great thinkers 
 of every school seem finally driven around to 
 this view of the concept. Above all, it was 
 Plato's view. The definition of the Platonic 
 concept is, according to Xenocrates : " A 
 cause serving as the unchanging type of all 
 natural things." Hegel also says that " the 
 4 Commentary on Hegel's Logic, pp. 112, 113. 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 9 
 
 true universal is not merely some common ele- 
 ment in all of that kind ; it is their Ground, 
 their Substance." Lotze wavers ; at first he 
 declares that universals are valid but non- 
 existent : we are forced to think them real al- 
 though we know that they are not real. But 
 in the Metaphysics ( 88) he swings around to 
 the true view and says : " Color as the com- 
 mon element of various colors is not a scientific 
 idea or concept. Discovery of a process of 
 light-waves whose various rates constitute the 
 various colors of the spectrum gives the con- 
 cept." 
 
 Even such antagonists as Mill and Hamilton 
 concur in yielding to this unconscious tide of 
 all deep thinking. Hamilton declares that " in 
 considering aught as a system or whole, we 
 think the parts as held together by a certain 
 force." And Mill extols this " as one of the 
 best and profoundest passages in all Sir 
 William Hamilton's writings." 5 (1) Even 
 Hobbes, at this point, forgets his Nominalism; 
 " these causes of names," he says, " are the 
 same with the causes of our conceptions, namely, 
 some power of action or affection of the thing 
 conceived." 6 (2) Thus all the rival schools 
 seem somehow forced to concede that a concept 
 means ultimately a causal process. 
 
 s Mill: Hamilton's Philosophy, II, p. 67. 
 s Mill: Logic, Bk. 1, chap. 5. 
 
10 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 But there is an oft-urged objection which 
 threatens the very -:ence of the concept. 
 Recently it has been put with great skill by 
 Bergson : in fact, it forms the centre and almost 
 the circumference of his philosophy. Tne in- 
 herent difficulties of Metaph sic, its antinom: 
 contradictions, etc.. he tells us. " \rise from 
 our professing to reconstruct reality with per- 
 cepts whose function it is to make it stationary. 
 But there are no means of reconstructing the 
 mobility of the real with fixed concep"- 
 TV - ;w that concepts, being fixed, changele- . 
 - \tic. cannot express the changes of reality 
 Bergson expands into several -volume-. But a 
 complete answer to it can be given in a dozen 
 lines or so. The causal proce - ^hich con- 
 cepts exp: . indeed, absolutely uniform; 
 but that by no means necessitates the invaria- 
 bility of the effect On the contrary, it is this 
 
 ~y uniformity of the process ichich brings 
 about infinite variation in the results. For ex- 
 ample, it is the continuous action of gravity 
 which causes the velocity of the falling stone to 
 vary in each infinitesimal instant. So the 
 process of causation that produces color is one. 
 immutable, will persist as long as the cosmos 
 But the colors and hues produced are 
 of countless variety, interpenetrate or modify 
 each other, vanish and return are the perfect 
 ~ Bergsoo: Introduction to Mefapkyric*. pp. 67, 69. 
 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 11 
 
 type of " becoming." In fine, concepts mean 
 uniform processes, but their uniformity does 
 not result in a static, changeless, paralyzed 
 world. 
 
 Besides what has already been given there 
 are two other lines of proof that the gist of a 
 concept is to indicate a causal process. One 
 line is derived from the origin of language, the 
 other from the origin of science. 
 
 (1) It is a well established principle in 
 philology that the majority of verbal roots ex- 
 press acts performed in a primitive state of 
 society such as digging, plaiting, weaving, 
 binding, etc. Further they are generally co- 
 operative acts : for only thus would they become 
 known to all and only thus could their merely 
 accidental elements be eliminated. Still more 
 significant is Miillers statement that " the mere 
 consciousness of these acts is not enough : onlv 
 
 
 
 when the processes are such that their results 
 remain perceptible for example, in the hole 
 dug. in the tree struck down, in the reeds tied 
 together as a mat do men reach conceptual 
 thoughts in language/' 
 
 Or as another eminent philologist. Noire, has 
 said: " The conception of causality subsisting 
 bcticccn tilings. Verily this constitutes such a 
 simple, plain and convincing means of distin- 
 
 s Ltcturti> on the Scitnct of Thought; 30. 
 
THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 guishing the logos, human reason from animal 
 intelligence, it seems inconceivable that this 
 manifest and clear boundary-line should not 
 long ago have been noted and established as 
 such." 9 
 
 Philology, then, confirms my thesis. Every 
 word used in human speech has had its origin 
 in the effort of primitive man to express those 
 causal processes which he perceives in Nature 
 or which he himself executes in common with 
 his fellows. 
 
 (2) Still more conclusive is the testimony 
 presented by man's prolonged effort to classify 
 natural things. At a very early period, savage 
 man had succeeded in classifying living things 
 into their species or lowest kinds. But the 
 inorganic things went unclassified. Even at the 
 climax of ancient civilization, so great a genius 
 as Aristotle could divide them only into these 
 four absurd kinds : " the hot and dry, the hot 
 and wet, the cold and dry, the cold and wet." 
 The reason is obvious. In the organic realm, 
 the processes of production were perceptible ; 
 in the inorganic, they were hidden. 
 
 Furthermore, ancient classification, even of 
 the organic, never reached beyond species. 
 Until three centuries ago botanists knew of no 
 grand divisions in the plant-world except 
 " trees, shrubs and herbs." But light dawned 
 
 9 Origin of language, p. 42. 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 13 
 
 at last when Gessner discovered that true 
 genera could be formed by noting characteris- 
 tics drawn from the process of fructification. 
 Since then, as Darwin has said, " naturalists in 
 their long search for a true or natural system 
 of classification ' have always been uncon- 
 sciously guided, not by mere resemblances, but 
 by the principle of inheritance." But the 
 principle of inheritance is but another phrase 
 for process of production. Thus the develop- 
 ment of science adds another to our proofs that 
 a concept means something more than an imag- 
 inary collection of resembling objects. In its 
 deepest, widest meaning, the concept signifies 
 the causal process which produces both the 
 individuals and their attributes. 
 
 And under the guidance of this same princi- 
 ple, Darwin himself was led to that sublime 
 discovery which has revolutionized modern 
 thought. 
 
 (3) Finally, this view gives answer to a ques- 
 tion that has baffled the ages. Do universals 
 really exist or are they only figments of mind? 
 I answer that if they do not exist, then nothing 
 exists. True, we do not perceive the entirety 
 of any causal process. We perceive only its 
 component factors. The causal bond or force 
 that weaves these components into one invari- 
 able process is unseen, and therefore has to be 
 10 Origin of Species, ch. 14. 
 
14 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 inferred by thought. Do you object that this 
 bond may be only an idle dream, a fiction of the 
 mind? That indeed is a difficulty before which 
 all philosophy heretofore has stood perplexed 
 and powerless. But if I can prove that the 
 sole essential function of thinking in all its forms 
 is to affirm causation, then plainly to deny 
 causation is to make all thinking essentially 
 false. In fine, such a denial would logically in- 
 volve the complete collapse and extinction of 
 thought. And thus I leave the matter for the 
 present. 
 
 SECTION III. INDUCTION 
 
 Logicians have long been very much at vari- 
 ance concerning the real nature of inductive 
 thinking. To avoid their disputes, let us con- 
 fine ourselves to historical facts - - to a brief 
 glance at some of the chief discoveries or induc- 
 tions which have created modern science. It 
 will thus be shown, I think, that all these great 
 inductions have consisted essentially in the un- 
 veiling of some hidden or neglected factor in 
 the causal processes of Nature. 
 
 (1) Consider the two chief inductions that 
 gave birth to modern astronomy, (a) It had 
 long been known that the rapid motion of the 
 spectator would make stationary objects seem 
 to move. But Copernicus revolutionized as- 
 tronomy by proving that this simple fact was 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 15 
 
 the neglected factor in all previous views of the 
 celestial mechanism, (b) Newton's induction 
 was still more sublime ; for he unveiled a factor 
 that had been not merely neglected, but one so 
 deeply hidden that no one had dreamed of its 
 existence. 
 
 (2) The creation of optical science is an- 
 other proof of my thesis. Here the paramount 
 factor refraction - - had long been known as 
 a strange illusion, a freak of nature that made 
 the straight seem bent. But in the seventeenth 
 century, Snell began an inductive study of this 
 illusive phenomenon. He discovered the mathe- 
 matical law governing its seeming irregularities. 
 Very soon refraction, so long neglected, was 
 seen to be the central factor in optical proc- 
 esses. From Snell's formula Descartes ex- 
 plained, in part at least, the splendid mystery 
 of the rainbow. Then came Newton with his 
 explanation of colors as due to different degrees 
 of refrangibility : a new science had been born. 
 
 (3) In acoustics even Newton failed in his 
 induction ; his calculation of the velocity of 
 sound made it much less than it really was. So 
 acoustics was at a stand-still for almost a cen- 
 tury. But at last La Place showed that here, 
 too, there was a neglected factor. By the sud- 
 den compression of the air, heat was generated, 
 and thus the wave-motion was greatly acceler- 
 ated. Due allowance being made for this, the 
 
16 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 calculated and observed velocities corresponded, 
 and acoustics became an inductive science. 
 
 (4) The creation of chemical science is an- 
 other proof that induction is an unveiling of 
 the essential factors in a causal process. And 
 strangely enough, the neglected factor here was 
 the most potent and widely diffused of all 
 chemical agencies, to wit, the atmosphere. 
 Even in the Middle Ages many skillful experi- 
 ments came to naught and many brilliant dis- 
 coveries were nipped in the bud by the failure 
 to take account of the atmosphere or its chief 
 constituent. Even in modern times, after oxy- 
 gen had been actually discovered, very little at- 
 tention was paid to it for more than a century ; 
 its place was taken by the absurd fiction of 
 phlogiston with its " negative weight." But at 
 last Lavoisier brought into full view the long 
 neglected factor - the omnipresent oxygen ; 
 the mythical phlogiston was forgotten, and 
 chemistry became a true science. 
 
 (5) The history of biology is another crucial 
 test of my thesis. In the seventeenth century, 
 Leuwenhoek with his crude magnifying glasses 
 made animalculse visible. Thus the very units 
 of life were laid bare to human inspection. 
 And yet for almost two hundred years little at- 
 tention was paid to this new revelation. A few 
 years ago, however, Pasteur and others began 
 to seriously study these neglected factors in the 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 17 
 
 process of life. The swift result has been an 
 almost complete transformation of both biology 
 and medicine. One of the most eminent of 
 biologists tells us that only as inquiry has 
 turned from the highest organisms to study in 
 the lowest the process of life in the concrete 
 has biology in theory and practice made much 
 progress. 
 
 Such, then, is my proof that scientific induc- 
 tion is, primarily, a search for the essential 
 factors in a causal process. Note further, that 
 logicians in treating of induction have been ac- 
 customed to select arbitrarily out of the im- 
 mensity of scientific research a few special in- 
 stances that happen to suit their theories. But 
 my proof has been drawn, not from selected 
 fragments, but from the whole from the en- 
 tire course of scientific development. Each 
 science has been shown to owe its origin and 
 growth to the unveiling of some deep-hidden 
 factor or factors essential to the perfection of 
 that science. 
 
 SECTION IV. DEDUCTION 
 
 The type of deduction is geometry. A geo- 
 metric demonstration is the linking together of 
 many inductions, each so simple that its validity 
 is assured at a glance. When, e. g., a straight 
 line is drawn to a point upon another line, you 
 recognize that the sum of the two angles thus 
 
18 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 formed will be equal to two right angles, not 
 only in this particular case, but universally. 
 For you see that any imaginable change in the 
 position or direction of the two lines would 
 leave the sum of the two angles unaltered ; what 
 was taken from the one would be added to the 
 other. 
 
 It is this swift, almost unconscious transition 
 from the particular to the universal that forms 
 the essence the very soul and life of a 
 geometric demonstration. The rest is a mere 
 task of construction, an ingenious fitting to- 
 gether of many inductions until you attain the 
 desired result. But without . this incessant 
 transformation of each particular inference 
 into a universal one, your proof would be 
 valid only for the one little figure given in the 
 diagram. 
 
 Especially the final demonstrations in geome- 
 try, dependent as they are for their proof upon 
 many preceding ones, are made up of hundreds 
 of minute inductions, as an organism is made 
 up of living cells. 
 
 Concerning the syllogism little need be said. 
 The conclusion is but the abbreviated union of 
 two premises both of which are of inductive 
 origin. All the really difficult and valuable 
 work of syllogistic reasoning lies in the forma- 
 tion and verifying of the two premises ; the put- 
 ting of them together in the shape of a syllo- 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 19 
 
 gism is almost as much a mechanical task as the 
 nailing together of two boards. 
 
 But it may be objected that if geometry is 
 the type of deduction, then there is at least one 
 form of thinking that does not consist in a re- 
 lating of cause and effect. For mathematical 
 science deals only with the eternal and im- 
 mutable, and therefore can have nothing to do 
 with the changes of causality. But that, I 
 think, is a very great error. In the concep- 
 tion of a right-angled triangle, for instance, 
 there is the possibility of an infinite host of 
 changes in the length of the two sides. And 
 is it not geometry's task to tell exactly what 
 change in the length of the hypothenuse will be 
 caused by any one of these possible changes in 
 the sides? 
 
 Deduction, then, forms no exception to my 
 law that all thinking is a relating of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 SECTION V. SPACE 
 
 Another proof of my thesis is that it explains 
 the perplexities involved in the idea of space. 
 For these perplexities vanish when we think of 
 space as the nature of thought demands - - that 
 is, in terms of cause and effect. 
 
 The whole difficulty seems to have focalized 
 upon an alleged antagonism between perceptual 
 and conceptual space as contradictory of each 
 
20 THE SOIJL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 other. Kant, in his " Critique of Judgment ' 
 first suggested this opposition ; and others have 
 since laid a much greater stress upon it. But it 
 is, I think, all a delusion. What has been er- 
 roneously regarded as a distinction between 
 conceived and perceived space is really a dis- 
 tinction between space and the spatial relations 
 of things. And the two so far from being an- 
 tagonistic or contradictory to each other are 
 really related as cause and effect. 
 
 Mark that I do not say that space is the sole 
 or entire cause of the spatial relations of things 
 such as distance, direction, etc. The cause is 
 complex. Unchanging space is. one indispens- 
 able factor in the production of spatial rela- 
 tions ; perceptible things are another. 
 
 Do you object that space is inactive and 
 therefore cannot be a factor in causal processes? 
 Lotze especially insisted upon this as his main 
 reason for denying the reality of space ; the 
 essence of anything, he argued, consists in its 
 behavior, what it does ; and since space does 
 nothing, it is nothing. But a distinguished 
 disciple of Lotze provides me with an all-suffi- 
 cient answer to that. He says : " A medium 
 or instrument may be perfect just in proportion 
 as it is inert, neither increasing nor diminishing, 
 nor in any way modifying what is transmitted 
 or effected through it." 
 
 11 Ward: Naturalism and Agnosticism, II, p. 240. 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 
 
 But there is another perplexity. How do 
 we know that space is absolutely continuous, 
 indivisible into parts ? We cannot perceive 
 see with our eyes or feel with our fingers - - that 
 there are no crevices or holes in it. Nor can 
 we appeal to common sense. For common sense, 
 although more truthful than the academic con- 
 ceit of wisdom which scorns it, is yet not infalli- 
 ble. The true answer, I think, is this. Para- 
 mount among spatial relations are those of 
 distance or the separateness of things. But 
 what is meant by this separateness of things is 
 that there is space between them. If there is 
 no space between them they are not separate. 
 Therefore it is absurd to think of space itself as 
 divisible into parts. For in order that the 
 parts should be separate there would have to be 
 space between them, and consequently no sepa- 
 ration of the parts. Or, to put it more simply : 
 if space could be divided, what then would sepa- 
 rate the parts? 
 
 But on the other hand, the spatial relations 
 of things are perceptibly divisible. The reason 
 is that spatial relations are effects of space and 
 things combined ; and as thus partially produced 
 by things they derive from them their character- 
 istic of divisibility. But philosophers have 
 transferred this divisibility to space itself, to 
 which it cannot possibly belong. 
 
 Again, Kant presents it as one of the main 
 
THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 difficulties in the space question that space and 
 spatial properties of things although so closely 
 united are yet very different. How could it be 
 otherwise? For space, as we have now seen, is 
 related to these spatial properties as a partial 
 cause to its effects. And the crowning mark of 
 every causal relation is that it at once differ- 
 entiates the cause from the effect and yet unites 
 them by the firmest of all bonds. 
 
 There is no room here to discuss some minor 
 difficulties, but enough has been said, I think, to 
 show that to think clearly and consistently 
 about spatial relations, we must think of them 
 as effects conjointly caused .by space and 
 things. 
 
 SECTION VI. TIME 
 
 The time-problem furnishes another proof 
 that thinking is, fundamentally, a relating of 
 cause and effect. It will be shown that time is 
 not a mere sum of parts or so-called periods of 
 time. On the contrary, time is a partial cause, 
 the periods are its effects. And it is the failure 
 to thus distinguish between the cause and its 
 effects - - between time and temporal relations 
 - that has given rise to the enigmas and seem- 
 ing contradictions that have so perplexed 
 philosophy. 
 
 (1) Consider the chief perplexity of all, that 
 concerning past, present and future. The 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 23 
 
 present, it is said, has no duration; make it as 
 short as you can, it is still capable of being 
 divided into a before and after - - a past and a 
 future ; the present is but the plane which with- 
 out thickness separates the other two. So far 
 as duration is concerned, the present is zero ; 
 but the past has ceased to exist and the future 
 is not yet. Time, therefore, is but the sum of 
 three zeros or non-existents. 
 
 I answer that time is one and indivisible. 
 The proof thereof, like the proof of the indi- 
 visibility of space, lies in the simple question : 
 If time can be divided into parts, what is it that 
 separates the parts? Certainly the division 
 could not be either space or things. Imagine 
 two parts of time, one on one side, the other on 
 the other side of a spatial point or line ! Nor 
 could the division be another part of time ; for 
 then there would be no separation, but con- 
 tinuous, indivisible duration. 
 
 (2) But are temporal relations, then, min- 
 utes, days, years, etc., merely subjective, fic- 
 tions of the mind? By no means. Temporal 
 relations are the products of enduring things 
 conjoined with eternal, indivisible time. The 
 relations or periods are plainly given in immedi- 
 ate experience. So are the enduring things. 
 Time as one, limitless, indivisible, is indeed an 
 inference; but in thus inferring, thought adds 
 nothing merely subjective or illusory. It sim- 
 
THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 ply interprets the given in terms of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 (3) But it is impossible, you urge, that two 
 factors so different as time and material things 
 should co-operate in the same causal process. 
 Precisely the same objection might be urged 
 against my theory of space ; but for brevity's 
 sake, I have deferred noticing it until now. 
 And I now answer that this parallelistic as- 
 sumption is sheer nonsense. It is the very es- 
 sence of all causal processes that factors of the 
 utmost diversity should combine in one complex 
 interaction. And the greater the diversity, the 
 vaster the results achieved. 'Even the parallel- 
 ist admits that the factors may differ in quan- 
 tity. Why not, then, in quality? 
 
 (4) A more plausible objection may be urged 
 that my theory of time leaves it vague and unde- 
 fined, a sort of unknowable cause, after the 
 style of the Kantian " thing in itself." But 
 causes, as we have seen, can be known only 
 through their effects ; and conversely, effects 
 through their causes. Hence time is the best 
 known of all objects; for it is linked with a 
 vaster range of effects. Space is a cause only 
 within the physical realm ; time in both the 
 physical and psychic realms. Furthermore, 
 time can be proved to be indivisible and infinite. 
 Surely, then, it is very far from being un- 
 knowable. 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 25 
 
 (5) But what is the proof, it may be asked, 
 of time's infinitude? I answer, if time is finite 
 it must be limited by something. But nothing 
 can exist without time to exist in. Therefore 
 whatever puts an end to time would put an end 
 to itself, and so there would be no limit. 
 
 (6) Another objection to time's reality is its 
 unpicturability. " As has often been pointed 
 out, all our representations of time are images 
 borrowed from space, and all alike contain con- 
 tradictions of the time idea. We think of it 
 as an endless straight line, but the conception 
 fails to fit ; for the points of such a line co-exist, 
 w r hile of the time-line only the present point 
 exists." Recently, Bergson has made this an- 
 cient dilemma the corner-stone of a new philoso- 
 phy just now commanding much attention. 
 Time as conceived by the mere intellect, he 
 argues, is virtually identical with space. I 
 answer that time and space do indeed agree in 
 this, that they both are unpicturable. We can 
 picture or form a memory-image only of what 
 has been perceived. Now, neither space nor 
 time are perceived, but thought infers them 
 from the spatial and temporal relations that are 
 perceived. But, I repeat, in thus inferring, 
 thought adds nothing illusory : it simply inter- 
 prets the given in terms of cause and effect. 
 And thus it discovers, without the aid of any 
 intuition, that pure space and pure time must 
 
26 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 be essentially different. For since the effects, 
 e. g., distances and hours, are manifestly dif- 
 ferent, their causes, space and time, must be 
 essentially different. In fine, the brilliant 
 imagination of Bergson has over-reached itself. 
 No wealth of metaphors will enable him to pic- 
 ture what is manifestly unpicturable. 
 
 (7) But there still remains one possible ob- 
 jection of great importance. It may be urged 
 that throughout the chapter I have miscon- 
 strued the nature of causation, that it really 
 means nothing more than uniform sequence. 
 But against that criticism the present section 
 provides an impregnable defense. For it shows 
 that sequence, so far from being a substitute 
 for causation, is itself absolutely inexplicable 
 unless it is interpreted in terms of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 We have now examined all the grand divisions 
 of thinking perceptive judgment, concep- 
 tion, induction, deduction, affirmation of space 
 and of time. And we have found them all re- 
 ducible to one essential function, to wit, the 
 interpretation of the given in terms of cause 
 and effect. 
 
 (1) Thus Hume's famous problem which, ac- 
 cording to Hoffding, " Kant failed to solve and 
 is indeed insoluble," has finally been solved. 
 Hume asserted that causation was only a regu- 
 
THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 27 
 
 lar succession of phenomena in space and time. 
 But I have proved that each word in his defini- 
 tion is, in its essence, a declaration of causality. 
 Eliminate causation and each word would lose 
 all its meaning. Thus in the very act of deny- 
 ing causality, Hume is forced to affirm it over 
 and over again. 
 
 (2) My argument is, in fact, a reductio ad 
 absurdum in the completest form imaginable. 
 The geometer proves his theorem by showing 
 that its denial would involve the denial of some 
 universally accepted principle. My theorem is 
 proved by showing that its denial would invali- 
 date all judgments, efface all distinctions, in 
 fine, would involve the utter extinction of 
 thought. 
 
 (3) And even if you are willing to accept this 
 utter invalidity of all thinking, there is still an 
 answer for you. For if all our judgments are 
 false, then this particular judgment, to wit, 
 that all our judgments are false, must be as 
 false as all the rest. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE PERFECT CAUSE 
 
 SECTION I. THE AMBIGUITY OF CAUSATION 
 
 As promised at the beginning of Chapter I, 
 we have now to consider the ambiguities that 
 seem to infest the term " cause ' as commonly 
 used. And first of all, let us remember, w r hat is 
 so often forgotten, that no effect is the product 
 solely of a single cause, but of a complex of 
 many co-operating causes. Each one of these 
 factors, then, is but an incomplete or partial 
 cause. Even the sum of them all would not be 
 a complete cause, for their conjunction and 
 co-operation would still have to be accounted 
 for. 
 
 It is folly, then, to conceive the imperfect 
 and partial as if they were complete causes, and 
 then bemoan the ambiguity of causation. To 
 comprehend any concept aright we must con- 
 ceive it in its perfected type. If it appears 
 also in imperfect forms, we can descend to these 
 by pointing out the defects which distinguish 
 them from the perfect type. But the course 
 
 can never be reversed. The deficiencies of the 
 
 28 
 
THE PERFECT CAUSE 29 
 
 lower will give no insight into the perfection of 
 the higher. A river can rise no higher than 
 its source. There are, then, not different kinds 
 but only different degrees of perfection in 
 causality. At the summit of the scale we find 
 the perfect type, the complete, self-sufficient 
 Cause, the chief characteristics of which are 
 to be described and proved in this chapter. 
 Thence there is a continuous declension into 
 lower degrees or imperfect types. The highest 
 of these known to us is the causality of the 
 human spirit, akin to that of God, but limited 
 to action upon its own body ; its freedom ham- 
 pered by the instincts of the flesh ; its ration- 
 ality restricted by the limitations of sense. 
 Next below comes the organic world, wherein 
 causality has shrunk to a self-determination 
 which Hegel and others have confounded with 
 true human freedom, and where rationality has 
 faded away into a merely automatic association 
 of similarities. Then comes the inorganic 
 world, ruled by uniform but inscrutable forces. 
 In fine, the present philosophic bewilderment 
 is largely due to beginning the study of caus- 
 ation at the wrong end. How can we expect 
 to learn the real nature of anything, if we con- 
 fine our study of it to its imperfections, its most 
 imperfect and obscurest types? More than 
 two thousand years ago, Aristotle saw the folly 
 of such a method as that. He said : " By the 
 
30 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 concept of the straight we discover both the 
 straight and the crooked ; the rule is the test of 
 both, while the crooked is not a test either of 
 itself or the straight." That precisely out- 
 lines the method I shall follow. To know the 
 human soul we must start from some insight 
 into the nature of a Perfect Cause. Nothing 
 can be comprehended if it is conceived only in 
 its most imperfect types. The crooked is not 
 a test either of itself or the straight. 
 
 SECTION II. INFINITUDE 
 
 We have proved that thought cannot deny 
 the reality of causation without destroying it- 
 self. The question now before us is simply 
 this : What are the main characteristics of a 
 perfect or complete and self-sufficient cause? I 
 answer, first, that one essential of such a cause 
 is infinitude. For whatever is finite is limited by 
 something else, and therefore must be, to that 
 extent, an effect ; it may also be a partial cause 
 or factor in a causal process, but never a com- 
 plete, self-sufficient cause. Now this proof, 
 though given in a few words, seems clear and 
 incontrovertable. But there are objections to 
 be met. 
 
 First, Sir William Hamilton and others in- 
 sist that " The Infinite ' is a merely negative 
 and therefore an inconceivable and unknowable 
 notion. And that is true enough so far as 
 
THE PERFECT CAUSE 31 
 
 " The Infinite ' ' is concerned ; nothing could be 
 more utterly blank and void than that. But 
 substitute for this senseless abstraction the no- 
 tion of The Infinite Cause, and how great is the 
 change ! For causality is not abstract, but 
 concrete and positive the one reality which 
 all true thinking is bent upon discovering. 
 And the adjective " infinite ' added to it, in- 
 stead of negating it, expands it ; makes it more 
 glorious and sublime. 
 
 The second objection, as McTaggart puts 
 it, is : " If God is omnipotent, why could He 
 not attain his ends without the use of any inter- 
 vening means ? ' 
 
 I answer that so far as God himself was con- 
 cerned, He had no need of these intermediaries. 
 For the infinite has need of nothing. But one 
 of his ends manifestly was the creation of finite 
 beings able to think and to advance in knowl- 
 edge. But such knowledge would be impossible 
 in a universe where there were no uniform proc- 
 esses, no means of linking together the innumer- 
 able parts into a consistent whole. 
 
 SECTION III. UNITY 
 
 The second elemental feature of a complete 
 or self-sufficient cause is Unity. We perceive 
 in Nature a vast variety of causal processes 
 
 1 Some Dogmas of Religion, p. 201. 
 
THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 each containing many factors. But the greater 
 the multiplicity of these co-operating factors, 
 the greater the demand for some self-sufficient 
 cause binding the many factors into one process, 
 and all processes into one cosmic system. And 
 here we are at once confronted by that age-long 
 dispute concerning " The One and the Many," 
 which Prof. Ward avers is to be the problem of 
 the present century. But what was said, in the 
 previous section, concerning " The Infinite ' 
 applies here also. " The One and the Many ' 
 interpreted as the nature of thought demands 
 in terms of cause and effect becomes the 
 clear, consistent conception, One Cause of 
 Many Effects. Before that view the old per- 
 plexities vanish. For instance, Ward says that 
 " to the One so transcendently different from 
 all that we know, none of our concepts are ap- 
 plicable." On the contrary, the supreme con- 
 cept which, dome-like, over-arches all human 
 thinking, namely, that of the Perfect Cause, is 
 the concept which clearly and fully expresses 
 the meaning of " The One," properly under- 
 stood. 
 
 Or again, Hoffding argues that " our con- 
 cept of cause is a concept of plurality of condi- 
 tions, so that a cause cannot be an absolute 
 unity." But that annuls all causality by re- 
 ducing it to an endless series of effects which 
 
THE PERFECT CAUSE 33 
 
 have no cause. Indeed, Hoffding admits this : 
 both in his " History of Philosophy ' and his 
 " Philosophy of Religion ' he declares that 
 " we shall never be able to solve Hume's problem 
 as to the validity of the principle of causation." 
 
 And this effacement of causality is also the 
 tap-root of Hegelianism. Bradley, e. g., ar- 
 gues at great length that all phases of finite 
 being are false appearances, because they in- 
 volve the self-contradiction of unity and diver- 
 sity. But when this unity and diversity is 
 interpreted causally that is, as one cause of 
 many effects the contradiction vanishes. 
 For the essence of the causal relation is to dif- 
 ferentiate and at the same time unite by the 
 firmest of bonds. 
 
 The causal processes of Nature are complexes 
 of many factors. And each one of these fac- 
 tors is but an imperfect cause performing a task 
 that by itself is absolutely inexplicable. Even 
 Hoffding concedes that " strictly speaking, not 
 a single event has been entirely explained." 
 And this invariable co-operation of countless 
 myriads of unconscious factors can never be 
 made intelligible until we rise to the conception 
 of that One Perfect Cause that planned, es- 
 tablished and maintains it all. 
 
 Such then is the simple proof of unity : 
 (1) Without a perfect or complete cause there 
 
34 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 would be no causation at all ; but that is impos- 
 sible. () To split up this one, perfect cause 
 into many imperfect ones, is to destroy it. 
 
 From the earliest ages, all unspoiled intelli- 
 gence has had a glimpse of this great truth. 
 Thousands of years ago, the Egyptians pro- 
 claimed it in their hymn to Amon-Ra : " The 
 one, Maker of all that is ; the only One, the 
 Maker of Existence." 
 
 SECTION IV. FREEDOM AND RATIONALITY 
 
 The third characteristic of a perfect or self- 
 sufficient cause is freedom. That, of course, is 
 tautological. Still it must not be forgotten ; 
 for it will prove of great value to us when we 
 come to treat of human freedom. 
 
 The fourth characteristic is rationality. My 
 proof here consists largely in rectifying the old 
 argument from design. The fault of the old 
 argument was that it attempted too much. 
 From the order and conformity to aims ex- 
 hibited in the world, it sought to prove the 
 existence of an omnipotent God. But Kant 
 found it very easy to show that " this argument 
 is utterly insufficient for the task before us - - a 
 demonstration of the existence of an all-suffi- 
 cient being." 2 My course, however, has been 
 very different. First it was proved that causa- 
 
 2 Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 466, 467. 
 
THE PERFECT CAUSE 35 
 
 tion was real, and that this involved the reality 
 of a perfect or complete cause not an infinite 
 regress of incomplete causes. Then it was 
 shown that this perfect cause must be infinite 
 and one. And now I seek to show from the 
 order and harmony of Nature that this cause 
 must also be rational. The conclusion thus 
 narrowed down to this special point becomes 
 almost a truism: the objections which dis- 
 credited the old argument lose all their force. 
 
 But it may be said that evolutionary science 
 contradicts my view. Not a perfect cause, infi- 
 nite, one and rational, but Natural Selection 
 has built up the universe. I answer that the 
 theory of evolution, instead of contradicting 
 my view, illumines and corroborates it. For it 
 reveals the methods, the intermediate agencies 
 employed by the Infinite Cause in the develop- 
 ment of the universe. Remember that Natural 
 Selection was never considered by Darwin to 
 be the sole factor in evolution. As that high 
 authority, Yves Delage, declares : " Darwin's 
 successors exaggerated (as scientists are apt to 
 exaggerate every new theory) the role played 
 by selection." 3 This exaggeration is much to 
 be deplored. It has imparted a sinister aspect 
 to the theory of evolution. It has made it look 
 as if cruelty, pain and death were the only 
 
 3 Delage and Goldsmith : Theories of Evolution, pp. 
 60, 61. 
 
36 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 actors in the glorious drama of the world's 
 development. 
 
 Conversely, my doctrine illumines the theory 
 of evolution. Recall, for instance, Spencer's 
 splendid attempt to construct a philosophy of 
 the evolutionary process. He finds that the 
 process has three essential characteristics: (1) 
 Integration, (2) Differentiation and (3) a de- 
 termination which presupposes a definite har- 
 mony between (1) and (2). But Hoffding, 
 although in sympathy with Spencer, points out 
 that proof of this third characteristic is lack- 
 ing. " It is not a mere accident," he says, 
 " that Spencer was unable to establish this prin- 
 ciple. It is impossible to furnish any guaran- 
 tee for the harmony of Integration and Differ- 
 entiation. . . . Spencer therefore was unable 
 to furnish a proof of harmonious evolution." 
 
 But this harmony for which both Spencer 
 and Hoffding sought in vain I have certainly 
 discovered. For, as I have already shown, the 
 essence of every causal process is to, at once, 
 differentiate cause from effect and yet integrate 
 or unite them by the firmest of bonds. 
 
 SECTION V. SELF-LIMITATION 
 
 The supreme characteristic of a perfect or 
 self-sufficient cause is love or self-limitation for 
 the sake of others. 
 
THE PERFECT CAUSE 37 
 
 Whatever acts only to supply some want or 
 need of its own cannot be a perfect or self- 
 sufficient cause. For that which was lacking 
 or needed would be an alien element and the 
 ultimate cause of the action. But an infinite 
 being has need of nothing; therefore, if it acts 
 at all, causes any change or effect, it must act 
 for the sake of others. The failure to see this 
 plain, simple and yet supremely significant 
 truth was the fatal error in Spinoza's philoso- 
 phy. He denied the existence of any final 
 causes, any plan or purpose in the divine activ- 
 ity ; " for, if God acts for an end, it must needs 
 be that God desires something which he lacks, 
 and if so, de facto is imperfect." And through 
 this failure, Spinoza's God dwindled into mere 
 substance, without intelligence, will or person- 
 ality of any kind. 
 
 But leaving these old philosophies to rest 
 quietly in their sepulchres, let us go on to more 
 vital questions. And first of all: How is it 
 possible to think of God as thus limiting Him- 
 self without annulling His infinitude? My an- 
 swer is, by thinking of Him, not in terms of 
 space, but in terms of causality. Man is a lit- 
 tle creature, but he does not diminish himself 
 by deeds of self-limitation or sacrifice for th? 
 sake of others. Nor does self-sacrifice impair, 
 but rather ennobles even the infinitude of God. 
 
38 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 But these are only preliminaries. Let us 
 hasten to the fundamental question - the one 
 great perplexity that has wrought more havoc 
 in human thought and life than all others com- 
 bined - - the problem of evil. If God loves 
 mankind, why does he permit so much evil to 
 exist in the world? The drift of recent thought 
 seems to be towards solving this by assuming 
 that God is finite, limited in power. Thus Dr. 
 Rashdall, who has grown famous as an ex- 
 pounder of this theory of God's finiteness, says : 
 " That evil is a means to the greatest attain- 
 able good is a proposition which is only main- 
 tainable upon the hypothesis -that there is in 
 the ultimate nature of things - - that is to say, 
 in the ultimate nature of God - - an inherent 
 reason why greater good should not be attain- 
 able. But the dilemma forces itself upon us 
 that the explanation must be sought either in 
 such a moral limitation (a defect of goodness) 
 or in some other kind which may be best de- 
 scribed as a limitation of Power." And he 
 adopts the last hypothesis, " the union in one 
 and the same Being of absolute Goodness with 
 limited Power." 5 
 
 Now it seems to me that the true key to the 
 problem can be expressed by interpolating three 
 words between the first two in that quotation. 
 
 4 Theory of Good and Evil, II, pp. 287, 288. 
 
 5 Ibid, II, p. 341. 
 
THE PERFECT CAUSE 39 
 
 * 
 
 I would make it read that, not evil, but the 
 possibility of evil is a means to the greatest 
 attainable good. The change is verbally slight, 
 but it is of vast significance. To say that evil 
 is a means to the greatest good is to extirpate 
 morality. It makes the vilest wretch as true 
 a servant of God as the saint. But to say 
 that the possibility of evil is a means to the 
 greatest good is little more than a truism. For 
 the very essence of moral action lies in the fact 
 that it is possible and even easier to do the 
 opposite or wrongful act. Doubtless, God 
 could have made it impossible for man, as He 
 has made it impossible for animals, flowers, 
 stones, etc., to do wrong. But to have done 
 so would not show any increase of power on 
 his part. On the contrary, it would prove a 
 defect in his goodness ; in fact, it would be, so 
 far as finite beings are concerned, an abolition 
 of all goodness in the ethical sense of the term. 
 Note further that Rashdall is an eager de- 
 terminist, devoting many pages to exploiting 
 that doctrine. Now, the determinist point of 
 view relieves man of all real responsibility for 
 his wrong-doing and thrusts it back finally 
 upon his Maker ; and thus it becomes very easy 
 to show that the great flood of evil over-spread- 
 ing the earth proves God's fmiteness both in 
 goodness and in power. But this determinist's 
 view will be further considered when we come to 
 
40 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 our main theme - - the proof of the soul's exist- 
 ence. For the present it is enough to see that 
 a doctrine can hardly be true which leads to 
 two such monster paradoxes as the denial of 
 man's responsibility and God's infinitude. 
 
 My discussion of the problem of evil has nec- 
 essarily been brief ; too much so, perhaps, to 
 be altogether satisfactory. But it has been 
 made plain, I think, that the perplexity of this 
 problem is largely due to the attempt to show 
 that evil is but a means to the good. Instead 
 of that I have shown that the mere possibility 
 of evil is not itself an evil. On the contrary, 
 it is freedom - - God's noblest .gift to man, one 
 bringing us into such close kinship with him 
 that we may rightly be called his children. Do 
 you say that He might have endowed us with 
 freedom and yet prevented all wrong-doing 
 that is, made evil at once possible and impos- 
 sible? McTaggart does indeed urge that om- 
 nipotence could defy the law of contradiction. 
 But such a saying is but a series of sounds abso- 
 lutely bereft of meaning. 
 
 SECTION VI. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 
 
 In these two chapters we have finally reached 
 a full demonstration of God's existence. Note, 
 however, that this proof is in no wise the fa- 
 mous " ontological argument ' which Kant is 
 said to have demolished. Really it had been 
 
THE PERFECT CAUSE 41 
 
 demolished nearly five hundred years before 
 Kant's day, by St. Thomas Aquinas, who re- 
 jected it on the ground that it improperly 
 passed from the ideal to the real order. So 
 did the great majority of the Scholastics; and 
 we are told that the Neo-Scholastics of to-day 
 also " regard the ontological proof as worth- 
 less." But this proof, rejected by the Mid- 
 dle Ages, Descartes restored in a still more 
 irrational form. And even after Kant had de- 
 molished it again, Hegel revived it once more. 
 But Hegel's God or Absolute is merely the 
 " Totality ' of the existent, so that his on- 
 tological proof seems to reduce itself to the 
 tautology that whatever exists exists. 
 
 But my demonstration is the polar opposite 
 of all this. It does not rest upon the curious 
 assumption that because we have the idea of 
 a perfect being, therefore such a being must 
 exist. But first it was proved inductively, by 
 a study of every form of thought, that the 
 sole essential function of all thinking was to 
 affirm causation that is, to interpret the 
 given in terms of cause and effect. If causa- 
 tion, then, is not real, all thinking must be 
 false. Therefore it is impossible for thought 
 to deny the reality of causation ; for in the very 
 attempt to do so, it destroys itself. Our sec- 
 ond step was to show that there must be a 
 perfect or self-sufficient cause, for to deny that 
 
THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 was to virtually cancel causality by reducing 
 it to an endless regress of effects which have 
 no real cause. The existence of a perfect self- 
 sufficient cause having been proved, it was 
 shown that such a being must have the at- 
 tributes of infinitude, oneness, rationality and 
 love. And this being, thus proved to be ac- 
 tually existent and endowed with these at- 
 tributes, is the theistic God. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 SECTION I. THE IDEALISTIC PSEUDO-PROOF 
 
 So far we have been necessarily occupied in 
 pioneer work ; for the pathway to rational be- 
 lief in the soul is beset by many obstacles. One 
 great difficulty that has hindered many from 
 recognizing their own souls is that we are all 
 more or less slaves of our senses. We are so 
 accustomed to perceiving things in their spatial 
 relations shape, size, position, etc. that 
 we demand that souls should exhibit themselves 
 in such relations. Even the immortal Descartes 
 searched in the brain for the jjlace where the 
 soul was located. And Kant rejected the soul 
 outright, because it did not appear as a sub- 
 stance. 
 
 But we have now seen that the causal cate- 
 gory is the ultimate all-embracing one to which 
 all the minor categories must be subordinated. 
 Therefore, to comprehend the spiritual we must 
 interpret it in terms of cause and effect. The 
 moment we try to describe it in spatial terms 
 location, shape, substance, etc. we are lost 
 
 babes in the wood. 
 
 43 
 
44 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 It may be well to mention another method 
 of obscuring the soul's reality, much in vogue 
 even among the staunch, orthodox philosophers 
 of the Scottish school of common sense and 
 realism. The stream or series of conscious 
 states, they tell us, is manifest ; but the soul 
 itself is merely suggested. Thus Reid says : 
 Our sensations and thoughts do also suggest 
 the notion of a mind and the belief of its ex- 
 istence. Dugald Stewart also declares the 
 soul's existence a mere suggestion. 1 Sir Wil- 
 liam Hamilton says : " There is only possible 
 a deduced, relative and secondary knowledge of 
 self." Dr. Wayland is still more explicit : 
 " All that we are able to affirm of it (the mind) 
 is something which perceives, reflects and wills ; 
 but what that something is, we know not." 
 
 All that sounds very much like a surrender 
 to the enemy of souls. Those w r ho were re- 
 garded as staunch champions of spiritualism 
 lay down their arms and consign souls to the 
 dark lists of the Unknowable. 
 
 And the defection was entirely needless. 
 For from what we have proved to be the funda- 
 mental law of all thinking is derived the evi- 
 dent corollary, that causes cannot be known 
 apart from their effects, and conversely, effects 
 cannot be known apart from their causes. To 
 say, then, as the writers quoted do, that we 
 i Porter: Intellectual Science, pp. 69, 70. 
 
UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 45 
 
 know the soul only through its activities is not 
 an altogether false assertion. But it is only a 
 half-truth and therefore a fatally one-sided, 
 mutilated and misleading view. For it keeps 
 out of sight the complementary truth that our 
 psychic activities are also unknowable apart 
 from the unitary, abiding self that produces 
 them. And no other falsehoods are quite so 
 deceptive as those that tell one-half of the 
 truth, and forget to tell the other half. 
 
 But what has done more than all else to 
 undermine belief in God and the soul is the 
 pseudo-proof offered by idealism. It needs but 
 a glance, for it is very simple. It consists in 
 assuming that the human body, like all other 
 material things, is an illusion ; but I certainly 
 exist, therefore I am a soul. In fact, the 
 origin and the prestige of idealism, both in 
 ancient India and in modern Europe, are due 
 mainly to this very cheap and easy proof which 
 is offered for the existence of God and the 
 human soul. 
 
 But idealism has failed ignominiously to keep 
 the promise upon which its prestige rested. 
 Kant, for instance, boasted that he had " de- 
 stroyed knowledge in order to make room for 
 faith." But faith, if it is to be any more than 
 driveling superstition, must be " according to 
 knowledge " ; and so Kant, in destroying knowl- 
 
46 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 edge, destroyed true faith. And Hegel's ad- 
 mirers now-a-days will hardly dispute that his 
 " Absolute " is but a travesty upon the theistic 
 conception of God. McTaggart admits it 
 openly and joyously. Calkins says : " It must 
 be admitted he nowhere outlines the argument 
 (for the individuality of God). To the pres- 
 ent writer this neglect seems the greatest and 
 most inexplicable defect of Hegel's logic." 2 
 And concerning the human soul Hegel himself 
 says : " The truth is that there is only one 
 reason, one mind, and that the mind as finite 
 has no existence." 
 
 Let us briefly consider, then, this idealism 
 which promises so much and performs so little. 
 It is based, I think, upon two fundamental er- 
 rors. The first error is its claim that we have 
 immediate knowledge only of our sensations and 
 not of objects perceived. But that seems to me 
 the most obvious and inexcusable of all fallacies. 
 To know anything we must know some, at least, 
 of its attributes. What, then, are the at- 
 tributes by which one sensation is discriminated 
 from another? Is it not evident that they are 
 attributes not of the sensations themselves, but 
 of the objects perceived? Is the sensation of 
 a round object itself circular? Is the sensa- 
 tion of a mountain any taller than the sensa- 
 tion of an ant-hill? Is the sensation of a red 
 
 2 Persistent Problems of Philosophy, p. 380. 
 
UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 47 
 
 object, itself painted red? Plainly the sensa- 
 tions, insofar as psychical, have no discernible 
 attributes of their own by which they can be 
 known. 
 
 For more than a quarter of a century I have 
 been insisting upon this patent truth ; 3 and 
 in that time I have found but two writers of 
 note coinciding with me. Brentano says : 
 " We find no contrasts between presentations 
 except those of the objects to which presenta- 
 tions refer." And recently that well-known 
 idealist, Joachim, has written a paper in which 
 he argues at great length that no mind can 
 know its own psychical processes. " We are 
 in fact," he says, " committed to an infinite pur- 
 suit of that which, by the very terms of its 
 conception, cannot be caught or apprehended 
 and refuses to stand over against us as an 
 object of our awareness. At every step of our 
 pursuit, the ' psychical process ' the process 
 of apprehending - - eludes us and leaves us in 
 possession of an object of apprehension." 
 But curiously enough, he does not seem to see 
 that this view annihilates idealism. For the 
 gist of idealism is that the mind knows only its 
 own psychic processes and therefore that noth- 
 ing else can be known to really exist. 
 
 The second idealistic error is a false view 
 
 s Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Oct. 1886. 
 * Mind, N. S., Vol. XVIII, p. 70. 
 
48 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 of illusions. It regards them as the product 
 of certain tendencies inherent in the constitu- 
 tion of human thought. Kant found as many 
 as fourteen of these constitutional tendencies 
 all leading to false appearances. But mani- 
 festly false appearances spring, not from the 
 constitution of thought, but from the lack of 
 thought and too much trust in mere sense. An 
 
 o 
 
 illusion is simply the ascription of a given ef- 
 fect to a wrong cause. It is the mission of 
 thought not to produce but to dispell illusions. 
 Once, sunset, e.g., was deemed to be caused by 
 the sun's motions ; hard thinking revealed the 
 true cause. Kant compared himself with Co- 
 pernicus. In fact, they were antipodes in think- 
 ing. If Copernicus had explained sunrise as 
 due to one of the fourteen Kantian a-priorities 
 
 - false but valid for all - - mankind would still 
 be back in the Dark Ages. 
 
 And Hegel carried the Kantian irrationalism 
 a notch higher. For him everything was not 
 merely phenomenal, but also self-contradictory. 
 Nevertheless, one ought to look kindly upon 
 idealism. It has been, in philosophy, very much 
 like what " make-believe ' is in child-life. No 
 one scorns the little girl for watching over her 
 doll so tenderly ; she is developing her imagina- 
 tion and the holy instinct of motherhood. Just 
 so the idealists' paradoxes must not be taken 
 too seriously or judged too harshly; they be- 
 
UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 49 
 
 gan in an instinctive craving for the knowledge 
 of God and the soul. Their fault is that they 
 have not achieved their purpose. They have 
 helped to destroy what they promised to pro- 
 mote. 
 
 SECTION II. LOTZE'S ARGUMENT 
 
 Among the few recent idealists who have de- 
 fended the belief in souls, Lotze stands fore- 
 most. He presents three proofs commonly ad- 
 duced for that belief. The first, he says, " that 
 appeal to freedom which is said to characterize 
 mental life . . . has no weight." The second 
 is the entire incompatibility of all inner proc- 
 esses sensations, ideas, etc. with motion in 
 space, figure, position, etc. To that proof he 
 assigns only a very slight weight : " It would 
 be going too far to assert that the two prin- 
 ciples belong to two different sorts of sub- 
 stance." 5 The third reason .is the unity of 
 
 / 
 
 consciousness. That, he says, " is the unassail- 
 able ground on which the conviction of the 
 soul's independence can securely rest." 
 
 But it seems to me that Lotze's estimate of 
 the three proofs must be exactly reversed. The 
 first and the second proofs are far stronger 
 than the third. Nor have I ever been able to 
 find any cogency even in his argument for the 
 unity of consciousness. And near the close of 
 
 s Metaphysics, 241. 
 
50 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 the chapter he clearly discloses the real basis 
 of his belief in the soul. He there says: 
 " Lastly, in our present metaphysical discus- 
 sion we need not have entered upon these ob- 
 jections at all. . . . Everything we supposed 
 ourselves to know of matter as an obvious and 
 independent existence has long since dissolved 
 in the conviction that matter itself ... is 
 nothing but an appearance to our percep- 
 tions." In fine, his whole argument tapers 
 down into the idealistic pseudo-proof: our bod- 
 ies are illusions, therefore our souls exist. 
 
 My purpose here has been, not to disparage 
 Lotze - - a prince among thinkers but to 
 show how thin and weak has been the evidence 
 heretofore offered for the soul's existence. But 
 from our present vantage-ground I hope to 
 reach a higher level of proof. In this chap- 
 ter I shall try to recast the argument for the 
 unity of consciousness. The other two proofs, 
 the crowning and conclusive ones, will be given 
 in the two following chapters. 
 
 SECTION III. THE TRUE UNITY OF CON- 
 SCIOUSNESS 
 
 Note first of all that unity is the most am- 
 biguous of terms. There is a spatial unity, a 
 contiguity of atoms that to sense seem as one ; 
 also a unity of resemblance ; and many others. 
 6 Op. cit. 248. 
 
UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 51 
 
 But as we have seen, these unities are defective 
 and deceptive, unless they are subordinated un- 
 der the supreme category - - the unity of cause 
 and effect. And under that category the unity 
 of consciousness must be conceived. It is not 
 a spatial unity, like that of a heap of sand. 
 Nor a unity of resemblance ; for the elements 
 of consciousness are exceedingly diverse. The 
 flux of mental phenomena must be conceived 
 as myriads of evanescent effects; and yet as 
 united by a cause which is aware of them all, 
 gives them varying degrees of attention, and 
 out of them constructs an organized and last- 
 ing experience. 
 
 Through ignoring this distinction, philosophy 
 has been unable to prove the unity of conscious- 
 ness. Lotze's plea, e.g., is substantially this : 
 whatever discerns the likeness or unlikeness of 
 things must be a unit. 7 But even plants ap- 
 pear to discriminate between different soils and 
 foods. And chemical elements seem to know 
 their affinities. Why, then, should not a hu- 
 man body without a soul be able to do what 
 plants and gases can do? 
 
 Others, like Prof. Strong, concede that the 
 unity of consciousness has not yet been proved ; 
 " all the difficulty is on the score of unity." 
 He promises to overcome the difficulty in a 
 
 7 Op. dt, 241. 
 
 8 Why the Mind has a Body, last page. 
 
52 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 future book. But the vast series of psychic 
 phenomena that go flashing through a human 
 life can be unified only in the way I have de- 
 scribed. 
 
 But it will be objected that even if the unity 
 of consciousness can thus be verified and ex- 
 plained, that does not prove the existence of 
 the soul. The unifying may be the work of 
 the brain. In answer thereto I begin by quot- 
 ing from a high authority, this : " The in- 
 cessant labors of a multitude of workers have 
 revealed the fact that not only the spinal cord 
 but the whole of the brain is built up on the 
 reflex plan. There is even good reason to be- 
 lieve, though here we are on less firm ground, 
 that all the processes of the brain, even those 
 that accompany the most abtruse thought, 
 conform to the same fundamental reflex type." 
 The main we will not say the sole func- 
 tion of the brain is to promote reflex action. 
 That function is of priceless value. If all the 
 intricate activities needful for the maintenance 
 of life had to be worked out consciously by the 
 mind there would be no time or energy left for 
 the noble activities of thought or reason. Man 
 would be a mere animal ruled by blind instinct. 
 
 But mark now that this reflex action is a 
 movement opposite to that of thought - - a 
 movement towards blind instinct and the me- 
 McDougall : Body and Mind, p. 107. 
 
UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 53 
 
 chanical. It is absurd, then, to account for 
 the superiority of man over the brutes, as due 
 to his having a slightly larger brain. For the 
 larger the brain, the greater this automatism, 
 this conversion of the conscious into the un- 
 conscious the very negation of thought. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 CONFLICT OF SENSE AND REASON 
 
 The second proof, incompatibility, it will be 
 remembered, Lotze regarded as having but little 
 weight. When rightly understood, however, it 
 becomes the supreme proof, unanswerable and 
 conclusive. 
 
 Modern philosophy has been much perplexed 
 by that aspect of contradiction which seems 
 everywhere to pervade the universe. Kant as- 
 cribed it to some queer twist in all human minds 
 which prevented them from seeing things as 
 they really are. Hegel ascribed it to some 
 strange perversity in the things themselves. 
 Neither of these views seems at all satisfactory ; 
 and I therefore propound another as follows : 
 This universal aspect of contradiction is due 
 to the dual nature of man - - to the constant 
 conflict of the senses and the soul. 
 
 To prove this, let us briefly survey the chief 
 categories of human knowledge. It will not 
 take long, for these antitheses are so sharp and 
 clear as to be evident at a glance when rightly 
 presented. And it will be found in each case 
 
SENSE AND REASON 55 
 
 that the two antithetic terms are not merely 
 different from each other. They are polar 
 opposites ; they tend in contrary directions. 
 Therefore in each case the two antithetic terms 
 must be the products of different agencies. 
 No one thing can move simultaneously in op- 
 posite directions. Hence throughout all hu- 
 man experiences, two agencies must be at work ; 
 on the one hand, the animal organism producing 
 our sensations ; on the other, a soul that thinks 
 or reasons. 
 
 SECTION I. LIST OF ANTITHESES 
 
 (1) Reason. Here we have contradiction 
 in its widest and clearest type. For it is a 
 mere truism to say that Reason discloses hid- 
 den facts that are contradicted by the testi- 
 mony of the senses. 
 
 (2) Causation. Hume's famous disproof of 
 causality rests almost solely upon the fact that 
 a causal nexus is imperceptible to the senses. 
 To that no answer has ever been made either 
 by Kant or his successors. But I have shown 
 that to deny causality is to make all thinking 
 impossible. In other words, the very essence, 
 the supreme purpose of all true thinking, is 
 to reveal the unseen. Here, then, we have an- 
 other antithesis of sublime import. The ani- 
 mal senses show us the visible ; but the thinking 
 soul reveals the invisible. 
 
56 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 (3) Relations. The besetting sin of phi- 
 losophers is, notoriously, their habit of hy- 
 postasising abstractions. That plainly is an 
 outcome of the strife between sense and reason. 
 Instinctively thinkers are beguiled into putting 
 the spiritual in sensuous forms. A glaring in- 
 stance thereof is afforded by Bradley's bril- 
 liant book, " Appearance and Reality." The 
 corner-stone of that work is its denial of rela- 
 tions. " A relational way of thought," we are 
 told, " any one that moves by the machinery 
 of terms and relations, must give appearance 
 and not truth." And his proof, as others be- 
 fore me have pointed out, consists in conceiving 
 a relation as a thing - - an iron bar, as it were, 
 which seeks but everlastingly fails to get 
 hooked on to its two terms. Surely sense there 
 won a silly triumph over reason. 
 
 (4) Conception. Here again a contradic- 
 tion emerges over which a wordy warfare has 
 been waged for at least two thousand years. 
 On the one hand, our senses, like those of other 
 animals, disclose only the individual and iso- 
 lated ; on the other hand, Reason reveals, as I 
 have shown, 1 those causal processes which make 
 the reality of Natural Kinds indubitable. The 
 problem can never be adequately solved except 
 by recognizing the duality of human nature. 
 
 (5) Analysis and Synthesis. Thinking, the 
 i Chapter I, Section 2, p. 8. 
 
SENSE AND REASON 57 
 
 Hegelians say, is a combining of two contra- 
 dictory functions ; it is at once analytic and 
 synthetic ; that is, it at once divides and unites. 
 Bosanquet explains this as follows : " In me- 
 chanical operations we cannot pull to pieces and 
 put together the same thing by the same act." 
 But " the essence of thought is to show the 
 process in the result and exhibit each as neces- 
 sary for the other." 
 
 Now Bosanquet's statement concerning the 
 nature of thought is but a vague version of the 
 truth formally demonstrated in the first chap- 
 ter of this book, to wit, that all thinking is 
 essentially a relating of cause and effect. But 
 of this truth he offers no proof. With him it 
 is a mere assumption manufactured to meet a 
 difficulty. 
 
 Furthermore, there is no real contradiction 
 between the analytic and the synthetic aspect 
 of thought. They seem to be contradictory 
 because our bondage to sense leads us to con- 
 found the mental operations of analysis and 
 synthesis with the sensible operations of di- 
 viding and uniting a thing. In short, we have 
 here a signal example of the conflict between 
 sense and reason. 
 
 (6) Similarity. No concept is so often used 
 even among philosophers as that of similarity 
 or likeness. And no other is so fruitful in mis- 
 understandings and paradoxes. On its very 
 
58 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 face it bears the stamp of the self-contradictory. 
 For there are no two things that are not at 
 once like and unlike each other. 
 
 It is significant that Bergson, who has gained 
 celebrity through his attempt to disparage in- 
 tellect as inferior to instinct or feeling, bases 
 his contention upon this elusive, self-contradic- 
 tory relation of mere resemblance. He asserts 
 repeatedly that " the natural function of the 
 intellect is to bind like to unlike." He even 
 maintained that " there is a vague and in some 
 sort objective resemblance spread over the sur- 
 face of the images themselves," and that " this 
 similarity acts objectively like a force." That 
 seems the climax of nonsense. 
 
 Bergson does not see that it is sense or in- 
 stinct - - not intellect that is guided solely 
 by the likeness or unlikeness of things. 
 Thought, as the whole history of science teaches, 
 liberates from that bondage. It transmutes, as 
 I have shown (Chapter I, Section 2) the vague 
 misleading relations of similarity into causal 
 relations. 
 
 (7) Space. Here little need be added to 
 what I have already said concerning perceptual 
 and conceptual space. 2 The former, which 
 gives us the spatial relations between sensible 
 things - - distances, directions, etc. - is the 
 pure product of sensation ; animals recognise 
 
 2 Chapter I, Section 5. 
 
SENSE AND REASON 59 
 
 them as clearly as man does, often more so. 
 But man, endowed with reason, recognises also 
 conceptual space - - that is, a space which is 
 not, as spatial relations are, many, -finite, di- 
 visible, but on the contrary, absolutely one, 
 infinite and indivisible. Unmistakably we have 
 here an enormous contrast - - contradiction mul- 
 tiplied three-fold. And yet these more than po- 
 lar opposites constantly present themselves in 
 all human experience. Can their co-existence 
 be explained except as the products of two 
 diametrically different agencies, animal sense 
 and the thinking soul? 
 
 (8) Time. The same argument evidently 
 applies to the contrariety shown in our first 
 chapter between temporal relations or periods 
 
 - such as hours, days, years, etc.- - and time 
 as a whole. The temporal periods are many, 
 finite, and divisible. But time itself is one, in- 
 finite and indivisible. Here, then, is another 
 point-blank contradiction between what sense 
 perceives and reason discovers. 
 
 (9) Time and Space. But common to both 
 of these there is another contradiction which 
 has wrought more perplexity, dispute, and 
 chaotic confusion in modern philosophy than 
 all other causes combined. On the one hand, 
 both Space and Time when contemplated by 
 sense seem to be absolutely nothing: space 
 possesses no sensible mark or attribute by which 
 
60 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 it can be distinguished from pure nothing; and 
 as for time, the present is a mere boundary line 
 
 - without width - - between the non-existent 
 past and the non-existent future. It was this 
 apparent nothingness that made it so easy for 
 Kant to convince his disciples that space and 
 time were mere fictions of the mind. But on 
 the other hand, Reason teaches (as shown in 
 Chapter I) that these two nothings are real 
 causes upon which everything else in the uni- 
 verse depends for its existence. Abolish space 
 and time, and you blot out the universe. For 
 what exists nowhere and never, does not exist 
 at all. 
 
 (10) Numbers. The arithmetical unit is the 
 most difficult conception which primitive thought 
 has to grasp, because it is the most antithetic 
 to what the senses teach. For the units are 
 absolutely alike and unchangeable ; but sensi- 
 ble things are never quite alike and forever 
 changing. And it is not the untutored savage 
 alone that is embarrassed by this contrariety of 
 reason and sense. Even the Greeks - - princes 
 in philosophy, poetry and the fine arts - - seem 
 to have been unable to clearly distinguish be- 
 tween numbers and things numbered. 3 So im- 
 perfect was their system of notation that they 
 had to work all difficult problems geometrically. 4 
 
 s Wallace: Prolegomena Hegel's Logic. 
 
 * Ritchie: Plato, p. 49. 
 
SENSE AND REASON 61 
 
 Something of this conflict lingers subtly in 
 modern philosophy. Thus Mill argues that all 
 numbers must be numbers of something; ab- 
 stract numbers do not exist. 5 On the contrary, 
 James is confident that " all arithmetical propo- 
 sitions deal with abstract and ideal numbers 
 exclusively." 
 
 (11) Physical Science. We have thus exam- 
 ined the ten chief categories with which science 
 deals. But it may be well to add a quotation 
 from James concerning the sciences in general. 
 " They are all translations of sensible experi- 
 ence into other forms . . . coupled with decla- 
 rations that the experienced form is false and 
 the ideal form true. . . . And the miracle of 
 miracles, a miracle not yet exhaustively treated 
 by any philosophy, is that the given order lends 
 itself to the remodelling." There is no " mir- 
 acle," however, but simply the natural yielding 
 of the " night-view ' given by sense to " the 
 daylight view ' given by reason. 
 
 SECTION II. ART 
 
 What has just been said concerning science 
 applies also to art. Indeed, art was the soul's 
 first revolt against the bondage of sense -an 
 effort to free itself, to rise to something higher 
 than animal life and feeling. History shows 
 
 s Logic, Bk. II, Chap. II, Sec. 2. 
 6 Psychology, II, p. 655. 
 
62 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 this priority of art to anything like scientific 
 thought. The brutish dwellers in the Dor- 
 dogne caves had somehow acquired the artistic 
 gift ; their modellings of mammoths, deer, etc., 
 show a surprising excellence. It seems well au- 
 thenticated also that in the genesis of language, 
 poetry long preceded prose. 
 
 Unfortunately, I must here confine myself to 
 brief mention of two or three phases of art. 
 And first of all to that pre-eminent mark of 
 the aesthetic spirit, The Love of Nature. 
 Therein the conflict between sense and reason 
 which pervades all human experience is most 
 vividly displayed. Sense is chiefly impressed 
 by the disagreeable aspects of Nature - 
 storms, earthquakes and other perils. Even so 
 artistic a race as the Greeks seem to have been 
 devoid of any genuine love of Nature. " So 
 far as I can recollect," says Ruskin, " every 
 Homeric landscape intended to be beautiful is 
 composed of a fountain, a meadow and a shady 
 grove." The poet Schiller also declares that 
 the Greeks " took no interest or heart in the 
 details of Nature." With the Romans it was 
 still worse. Even the glories of Alpine scenery 
 suggested to them no associations but those of 
 horror and desolation. " The few attempts at 
 landscape painting among the Greeks and Ro- 
 mans," says Brunn, " never rose above a bird's- 
 
SENSE AND REASON 63 
 
 eye view or an insipid scenography." 7 But 
 later on, when Europe had been taught that 
 one Infinite and self-sacrificing Cause mani- 
 fested Himself even in the lowliest things on 
 earth, then the Love of Nature burst forth like 
 the rising of the sun. Animal- and plant-life 
 became centers of poetic interest. " The Ro- 
 mance of the Rose," for example, was trans- 
 lated into many languages and everywhere re- 
 ceived with extravagant delight. 8 And not 
 only in these grand, epical forms, but in the 
 simple, homely songs of the common people, 
 the same deep, mystical passion for Nature is 
 displayed. 
 
 Gothic Architecture is another triumph of 
 reason over sense, of the spirit over the flesh. 
 Greek architecture was limited to the outer 
 form: " the exterior is of a simple but majestic 
 beauty ; the interior is contracted and paltry." 
 But in the medieval cathedral the exterior, al- 
 though grand, is but the casket holding the 
 treasures within. The lofty aisles, the vaults 
 interwoven like a forest, the host of attenuated 
 columns, the dim vistas, the solemn shadows 
 intermingling with radiant color, the circular 
 window with its brilliant petals figuring the 
 
 Gesch. d. Griechischen Kiinstler, II, p. 308. 
 
 8 Roquefort: La Poesie Francaise, p. 170. 
 
 9 Schnaase : Gesch. d. Bild. Kunst., IV, p. 193. 
 
64 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 rose of eternity, the maze of details fashioned 
 from the flowers by the wayside - - all unite to 
 form one vast symbol of God and Nature. It 
 is the victory of the inner over the outer, of 
 spirit over sense. 
 
 Music, too, tells the same story. Sense gives 
 us but a medley of noises ; and the first efforts 
 to unify this chaos created the monotonous 
 music known to savages. Even of the Greeks 
 it is said that " it remains to be proved that 
 their vocal melody consisted of anything more 
 strictly musical than intoning." But musi- 
 cal harmony is the gift of the Middle Ages to 
 the world's art. It was first -discovered in the 
 times of Gregory the Great. But in the age 
 of the crusades " the art of descant was invented 
 and the evolution of modern music was fairly 
 under way." ll From noise and monotony to 
 modern music is surely a great triumph of soul 
 over sense. 
 
 SECTION III. MORALITY 
 
 The contrariety between the sensuous and the 
 ethical is so obvious that it needs but to be 
 mentioned. Long ago it crystallized in that 
 famous line of the poet, ; Video meliora pro- 
 boque; deteriora sequor." Moralit}^ implies a 
 
 loHullah: History of Modern Music, p. 92. 
 11 Op. cit. p. 77. 
 
SENSE AND REASON 65 
 
 conscious refusal to do what we feel a strong 
 desire to do a conscious inhibition of im- 
 pulses working steadily and mightily within 
 us. 
 
 But it may be objected that this conflict of 
 impulses does not necessarily involve a dual 
 agency. A man may have a strong desire to 
 slay another, but be deterred therefrom by fear 
 of the consequences. That is true but irrele- 
 vant. For in such a divided consciousness there 
 is no ethical element. He who refrains from 
 murder solely through fear of being hanged is 
 at heart a murderer. 
 
 The essence of morality, then, is self-denial. 
 " All have sinned." The best of men have to 
 wage perpetual war against evil desires and 
 tendencies. And this strife cannot be accounted 
 for by anything in the merely animal nature 
 of man. As a competent authority has said : 
 " The analogies between the habits of animals 
 and the customs of the most backward natives 
 of Australia prove so faint as to cast no light 
 at all on any of the special developments within 
 the moral nature of the latter." 12 
 
 And nothing but frank recognition of man's 
 dual nature will throw any real light upon the 
 dark theme of human conduct. On the one side 
 is the animal nature which, left to itself, en- 
 
 i2Marett: Personal Idealism, p. 248. 
 
66 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 genders only brutishness. On the other is the 
 human spirit able to know the right and to bat- 
 tle against the wrong. 
 
 We have made a wide survey of psychic ac- 
 tivities, and everywhere we have found a realm 
 of self-contradiction. Fortunately, too, our 
 finding seems to be supported by the general 
 drift of modern philosophy. Kant rested all 
 upon his famous antinomies. Hegel even pro- 
 claimed that " contradiction was the moving 
 spirit of the world." Quite recently an eminent 
 French philosopher has scornfully dismissed 
 the intellect as " characterized by a natural in- 
 ability to comprehend life." And Hoffding 
 ends his latest work thus : " In all our prob- 
 lems we end with an interminable conflict. . . . 
 We cannot solve definitely these problems." 
 
 But while agreeing with all these grand mas- 
 ters as to the fact of universal contradiction, 
 my interpretation of the fact is the exact re- 
 verse of theirs. First, it involves no paradoxes. 
 Unlike Kant's interpretation, it does not regard 
 the human intellect as an evil machine producing 
 only illusions and lies. Unlike Hegel's, it does 
 not regard things as perversely bent upon con- 
 tradicting each other. 
 
 Secondly, my interpretation is not mere 
 
 !3 Bergson: Creative Evolution, p. 165. 
 i* Problems of Philosophy. 
 
SENSE AND REASON 67 
 
 guess-work, but rigidly verified. In all realms 
 of human experience we have found a constant 
 tendency to simultaneous movements in exactly 
 opposite directions. Therefore, in human ex- 
 perience there must be two diverse agencies at 
 work animal sensation and a rational soul. 
 That is as certain as that the same object can- 
 not at the same instant move both up and down. 
 When that simple truth works its way into 
 the speculative mind, souls will come in fashion 
 again. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 FREEDOM 
 
 The controversy concerning " free will ' has 
 assumed such immense proportions without 
 reaching any satisfactory conclusion, that it 
 may seem absurd to attempt a settlement of the 
 question in one short chapter. Nevertheless, 
 from our present vantage-ground I venture 
 upon the task. If perchance I succeed, we shall 
 have a third and final proof of the soul's exist- 
 ence. 
 
 My attempt divides into two tasks. The 
 first will seek to negative the determinisms argu- 
 ment ; the second, to give a full, positive proof 
 of freedom. 
 
 SECTION I. THE INCONCEIVABILITY OF 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
 The stronghold of determinism is the conten- 
 tion that freedom is unthinkable. No satisfac- 
 tory answer has ever been made to that conten- 
 tion. Nay, more than that, the greatest minds 
 among libertarians have openly conceded this 
 
 inconceivability. Kant said : " Freedom is 
 
 68 
 
FREEDOM 69 
 
 only an idea of reason and therefore its objec- 
 tive reality is doubtful ... we cannot com- 
 prehend the practical unconditioned necessity 
 of the moral imperative." So Fichte said : 
 " We make this resolve not from any theoretic 
 insight, but in consequence of a practical in- 
 terest. I will be independent, hence I resolve 
 to consider myself independent." Also Sir Wil- 
 liam Hamilton : " How the will can possibly 
 be free must remain to us, under the present 
 limitation of our faculties, wholly incomprehen- 
 sible." 
 
 Not all libertarians have been thus frank. 
 But all have virtually succumbed to this de- 
 terministic attack : some by ignoring it ; some 
 by futile replies. 
 
 Let me quote here from an author who has 
 recently put forth a large volume in defense of 
 freedom. But in the middle of it he surrenders 
 thus : " Why does the free self choose one 
 line of action rather than another? The only 
 choice left us here appears to be between an 
 antinomy and an infinite regress, which is a 
 veritable Scylla and Charybdis. If the self be 
 ever so free to choose, choice without a reason 
 
 - or cause or preference for that choice is 
 unthinkable. If the reason be sufficient it is 
 determining. So we come to the antinomy of 
 a free yet determined choice which seems self- 
 contradiction. If it be suggested that self ex- 
 
70 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 ercises control over the reason which controls 
 the choice, then there must be a reason for such 
 control, and so on ad infinitum." 
 
 Thus completely at a loss, our author makes 
 the usual flimsy appeal to consciousness, and 
 finally says : " The reality of freedom lies 
 deeper than argument." Now plainly that is 
 a complete surrender : if it is true, the other 
 four hundred pages of the book are but so much 
 waste paper. The same may be said of the 
 other writers mentioned; and a host of others 
 unmentioned. Why write countless books and 
 waste time in endless argumentation in the vain 
 endeavor to prove the reality of something ab- 
 solutely incomprehensible? 
 
 But from our present point of view, it is easy 
 to see the error underlying all these surrenders 
 to determinism. A free cause, instead of being 
 unthinkable, is the only thoroughly comprehen- 
 sible cause. It is the only true or complete 
 type of causation. From that type all imper- 
 fect or partial causes are deviations due to 
 their defects and obscurities. To quote again 
 wise old Aristotle's maxim : " By the concept 
 of the straight we discover both the straight 
 and the crooked." 
 
 But the determinist exactly reverses this 
 golden rule. He would mutilate the most per- 
 fect form of finite causality - - the human - - in 
 
 iBallard: False and True Determinism, p. 240. 
 
FREEDOM 71 
 
 order to make it like the lowest, most defective 
 form, to wit, the causality of inert, irrational 
 things. Such causes seem hardly worthy of 
 the name, to be rather mere effects, each mys- 
 teriously linked to its antecedent and so on into 
 the midnight of the infinite past. 
 
 And yet this transparent fallacy, this degrad- 
 ing of causality to its emptiest form, is the tap- 
 root of determinism. Thus Hume said : " Ac- 
 cording to the doctrine of liberty or chance, 
 this (causal) connection is reduced to nothing. 
 ... As the action proceeds from nothing in 
 him that is durable and constant and leaves 
 nothing of that nature behind it ... therefore 
 a man is as pure and untainted after having 
 committed the most horrid crimes as at the first 
 moment of his birth." That is to say, a free 
 or perfect cause is unthinkable. If an act has 
 not been compelled by some previous act or 
 event, it has been done by chance that is, by 
 nothing. And this nonsense is still being re- 
 hearsed by the most eminent determinists, e.g., 
 McTaggart, Bain, Fullerton, Hobhouse, Rash- 
 dall, etc., as their chief disproof of freedom. 
 
 SECTION II. REASON AND CAUSE 
 
 The determinist is led still further astray 
 by that vagueness of popular speech which con- 
 founds reason and cause. But between these 
 two there is this deep and wide distinction 
 
72 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 reason compels belief, but not action. One may 
 have the best of reasons for doing an act and 
 yet fail to do it. Only when the will or spirit 
 issues its fiat does the action ensue. 
 
 But the determinist curiously transfers this 
 compulsion from the belief to the act. He ar- 
 gues, reason compels one to believe that he 
 ought to do a certain act, therefore it compels 
 him to do it. But that on its very face seems 
 absurd. And. yet even eminent libertarians 
 succumb to it. Thus Sir William Hamilton 
 says : " A determination by motives cannot to 
 our understanding escape from necessitation." 
 And Dr. Ballard, in the passage already quoted, 
 insists that in choosing there must be some rea- 
 son that compels on& to choose this rather than 
 that. In the same way many others virtually 
 give up the fight for freedom. 
 
 Coupled with this there is another ambiguity 
 equally disastrous. There are two kinds of 
 choice radically different from each other, the 
 one mechanical, the other ethical. The former 
 - pleasure accepted, pain avoided - - is purely 
 automatic, almost unconscious. The latter is 
 the rejection of the pleasant at the command 
 of duty ; it is self-denial, the choice of the 
 straight gate and the narrow way. This abso- 
 lute contrariety between the two choices has 
 often been noted. Thus Wundt, e.g., says: 
 Let m be a motive for and n a motive against 
 
 .. 
 
FREEDOM 73 
 
 some volition ; the result will be not m-n but 
 may be a double or treble m or n." Or as Prof. 
 Poynting states it : " A body does not yield 
 to the strongest force. It moves in the direc- 
 tion of the resultant of all the forces. But the 
 will finally takes one course and the motives 
 prompting to other courses all drop out of 
 action." 2 
 
 Determinism, then, rests upon a threefold 
 fallacy, (a) It assumes that a free or perfect 
 cause is inconceivable ; on the contrary, it is 
 the only cause which is fully and clearly con- 
 ceivable; all imperfect or partial causes depend 
 upon it for their explanation, (b) It assumes 
 that having a reason for an action makes that 
 action compulsory ; which is absurdly untrue, 
 (c) It confounds mechanical with ethical choice. 
 Extirpate these three fallacies and the whole 
 fabric of determinism instantly collapses. 
 
 SECTION III. THE POSITIVE PROOF OF 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
 But more is needed than a mere refuting of 
 the determinist argument. Positive proof is 
 demanded ; all the more because the gift of 
 freedom is unique and unparalleled in the 
 world's phenomena. 
 
 Up to the present time no such proof has 
 been proffered. Instead, there has been only 
 
 ^Hibbert Journal, 1909, p. 743. 
 
74 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 much loud assertion that we are conscious of 
 our freedom. But mere assertion proves noth- 
 ing. It is open, too, to Spinoza's sarcasm that 
 man thinks himself free because he does not 
 know the causes that compel him. 
 
 But we have now reached a point where a 
 solid proof can be obtained, resting upon veri- 
 fied facts and not upon mere assertions. For 
 in Chapter II, it was shown that the four main 
 constituents of a perfect or self-sufficient cause 
 were infinitude, unity, rationality and self-limi- 
 tation for the sake of others. Now, man is 
 manifestly possessed of the three last named 
 characteristics. (1) He is a unit, both as an 
 animal organism, and - - as was shown in Chap- 
 ter III as a thinking, conscious being. (2) 
 He is certainly rational ; although woefully 
 prone to lapse into irrationality. (S) He has 
 the power, which he exercises more or less, of 
 limiting or denying himself for the sake of 
 others. 
 
 But, of course, he is not infinite. And so 
 the crucial question is this : Does the lack of 
 infinitude debar him from being, not an abso- 
 lutely, but a relatively perfect or free cause? 
 To that question there can be but one sensible 
 answer. Man's finiteness does not necessarily 
 debar him from a finite or limited freedom. 
 And mark now that this is the only kind of 
 freedom which he possesses. On every side he 
 
FREEDOM 75 
 
 is hemmed in by laws and restrictions which he 
 can no more defy or evade than he can arrest 
 the revolution of the earth on its axis. But 
 in the limited sphere of morals, man is free. 
 He cannot be compelled to act wrongfully. 
 For an act that is compelled cannot be morally 
 wrong. Its compulsoriness obliterates its eth- 
 ical quality. 
 
 Man, then, has all but one of the four essen- 
 tial characteristics of a perfect or free cause. 
 But the lack of that one infinitude is no 
 bar to a finite freedom. Much corroborating 
 evidence might be given if space permitted. 
 But this alone is full, positive proof of human 
 freedom. 
 
 And this assurance of freedom is the final 
 guarantee of the soul's existence. For it shat- 
 ters that ancient error three thousand years 
 old in India, and revived in the Hegelian or 
 culminating phase of modern idealism which 
 denies the individuality of the soul and pictures 
 it as the flitting shadow of an infinite energy. 
 Thus Hegel affirms that " the mind as finite has 
 no existence." Or as Haldane says : " Both 
 the external world of things and the spiritual 
 world of persons have their existence, somehow 
 or other, in only one Supreme Existence." 
 
 But we have escaped from this wild Hindu 
 s Mechanism, Life and Personality, p. 74. 
 
76 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 illusionism by reversing the method of research. 
 We began by studying causality in its most per- 
 fect type - - not in its most imperfect and there- 
 fore least knowable forms. Thus we were en- 
 abled to demonstrate the existence of God. 
 Passing thence to human causality we found in 
 it a threefold proof of the soul's existence: 
 (1) as an agent unifying the flux of thought 
 and feeling; (2) as an activity in polar con- 
 trast with that of mere body; (3) as a free 
 cause, finite indeed, but still closely akin to the 
 divine. 
 
 Thus philosophy is saved from sinking back 
 into the old Hindu illusionism. And it can 
 safely leave the problem of the nature of ma- 
 terial things to be solved by experimental sci- 
 ence. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 SECTION I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 
 
 If anything exists, then souls exist. Of that 
 fact we have now gained ample evidence. But 
 it has been maintained even by devout believers 
 in the soul's reality - - Pfleiderer, for example 
 - that this proves only the bare possibility of 
 its continuance after the death of the body. 
 It gives hope, but no firm assurance. But I 
 now seek to show that we can go farther than 
 this ; that from our present vantage-ground 
 we can logically reach as firm an assurance of 
 the life beyond as we have of most things on 
 this side of the grave. 
 
 Consider first the polar contrast between body 
 and mind. Long ago Occasionalism raised a 
 problem which after three centuries of dispute 
 still remains unsolved: How can entities so 
 utterly disparate interact with each other? It 
 is a stumbling-block against which the rival 
 philosophies have fallen helpless. 
 
 But mark now this indubitable and most sig- 
 nificant fact. All this dark, inexplicable mys- 
 
 77 
 
78 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 tery in the relationship of matter and mind, or 
 body and soul, concerns only their unity and 
 not their separation. More than that, this 
 mystery of the union illumines the nature and 
 the certainty of that separation which takes 
 place when the body " returns to the dust and 
 the spirit to the God that gave it." Death is 
 the dissolution of the millions of cells aggre- 
 gated in the body ; but the soul being a perfect 
 unit and a unifying agent is indissoluble, death- 
 less. The present life, then, is the real mys- 
 tery; it is the dark wilderness through which 
 man gains the promised land of immortality. 
 
 (2) Consider also the mind's supremacy 
 over the body. It governs the body's move- 
 ments, checks its evil appetites, subdues its pas- 
 sions, guards it against dangers. There seems, 
 indeed, to be hardly any limit to this majestic 
 power of the spirit. Unlike other energies, the 
 more it does, the stronger and more triumphant 
 it becomes. It can convert even the flames of 
 martyrdom into " a bed of roses." 
 
 But the denial of immortality involves the 
 preposterous paradox that when the body is 
 aged and infirm, ready to dissolve into dust, 
 then the spirit loses its mastery. It succumbs 
 when the body is at its weakest. The victor 
 surrenders to a vanquished and retreating foe. 
 It, too, dissolves - - not merely into dust, but 
 into nothingness. Surely that is nonsense. 
 
IMMORTALITY 79 
 
 The considerations presented above seem to 
 me to have great weight. But there is another 
 line of evidence which gives a still deeper and 
 fuller assurance of immortality. It is based 
 upon the principle which it was Hegel's chief 
 merit to have emphasised, namely, that " the 
 Whole is the Truth." In other words, the 
 various branches of knowledge are not isolated 
 fragments, but are so interconnected as to form 
 one organic system. Hence there can be no 
 surer test of any supposed knowledge than that 
 it thoroughly conforms with all other spheres 
 of knowledge. 
 
 Such a proof of immortality I now seek to 
 outline. To this end let us roughly divide 
 knowledge into three spheres - - religion, moral- 
 ity and physical science. 
 
 Religion. That the belief in immortality is 
 an essential element in all religion, no one will 
 seriously deny. Even the Buddhist believes in 
 a future life ; although his atheism has made 
 that life seem so hideous that he wildly strives 
 to escape from it into " Nirvana." And a few 
 European thinkers have so far followed in 
 Buddha's footsteps as to affirm immortality 
 without accepting God's existence. But these 
 are abnormal exceptions. Normally the devel- 
 opment of the one belief goes hand in hand with 
 that of the other. As Rashdall says : l " Jew- 
 
 i Theory of Good and Evil, II, p. 218. 
 
80 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 ish theology only reached the level of pure 
 Monotheism a very little before a developed be- 
 lief in Immortality (as distinct from a mere 
 survival, which could hardly be called life, in 
 a shadowy Sheol) began to appear." Still 
 more clearly does this law hold in Christian 
 history. As the belief in God advances or re- 
 cedes, so does the conception of a future life. 
 The perfect correlation of the two beliefs, then, 
 is obvious. All history teaches it. 
 
 Morality. Some moralists protest against 
 linking ethics with the doctrine of immortality. 
 Like Spinoza, they insist that virtue is its own 
 reward, and vice its own punishment. Or like 
 Hume, they urge that the absence of compen- 
 sating justice in this world is a very poor proof 
 of its presence in another and unknown world. 2 
 But they all take too narrow a view of the 
 future life as merely a place of rewards and 
 punishments. Kant's insight was much deeper 
 and truer. He saw, as in a vision, the primary 
 and profounder meaning of the future life. It 
 was something more than a penitentiary for 
 some and a palace for others. Immortality 
 was the guarantee of a nobler development for 
 man than could be obtained under earthly con- 
 ditions. Or as he put it, " The highest good is 
 practically possible only on the presupposition 
 of the immortality of the soul." 
 
 2pfleiderer: Philosophy of Religion, IV, p. 168. 
 
IMMORTALITY 81 
 
 There is, however, one serious flaw in Kant's 
 argument. His illusionism led him to an agnos- 
 tic theory of God and the soul. Thus he un- 
 consciously tore down the foundation of his 
 argument for immortality. That foundation 
 we have now restored. The existence of God 
 and the soul have both been proved. Kant's 
 argument is thus finally perfected. The belief 
 in Morality and the belief in Immortality have 
 been shown to be so closely interrelated that 
 neither can be destroyed without destroying the 
 other. 
 
 Science. The conflict of religion and science 
 was at first inevitable. For they were opposite 
 tendencies ; the one was engrossed with the in- 
 visible, the other with the visible. But now a 
 harmony, like that of music, begins to mani- 
 fest itself between them. 
 
 (1) Consider the supreme principle of mod- 
 ern science the doctrine of evolution. At 
 first religion protested fiercely against the new 
 doctrine as atheism. To-day it generally ac- 
 cepts Fiske's saying : " The more thoroughly 
 we comprehend the process of evolution, the 
 more we are apt to feel that to deny the ever- 
 lasting persistence of the spiritual element in 
 man is to rob the whole process of its mean- 
 ing." 3 
 
 The second grand triumph of modern 
 3 Destiny of Man, p. 116. 
 
82 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 science was the discovery of the Conservation 
 of Energy. Science, at first engrossed with the 
 visible, has become a revelation of the invisible. 
 For the various forms of energy which it has 
 brought to light are not perceptible to the 
 senses. They are inferred from the effects they 
 produce. And the law of conservation is but 
 a more exact statement of what religion pro- 
 claimed long ago. " The things which are seen 
 are temporal; but the things which are not 
 seen are eternal." 
 
 (3) There is a third feature of the scientific 
 movement which tells much for my purpose. 
 Lotze concludes his Logic with a fervid hope 
 that Science would not always be content to 
 merely predict but would seek to comprehend. 
 But despite its wonderful progress since then, 
 science shows no sign of such a change. On 
 the contrary, it insists more firmly than ever 
 that its mission is to predict, not to explain. 
 And to this norm our knowledge of immortality 
 conforms. It is not a mere possibility ; it is 
 predictable with full assurance. But its de- 
 tails cannot be comprehended ; " neither have 
 entered into the heart of man the things which 
 God hath prepared for them that love him." 
 
 (4) It is too early to judge concerning the 
 efforts to prove immortality by " psychical re- 
 search." A score of centuries intervened be- 
 tween the crude glimpses of evolution gained by 
 
IMMORTALITY 83 
 
 Aristotle and St. Augustine and the final tri- 
 umph of Darwin. A host of discoveries had to 
 be made before the gap between surmise and 
 certainty could be closed. But science moves 
 far more swiftly now than then. And I believe 
 that at no very distant day it will show us 
 that the dead are still alive. 
 
 At any rate, we have now seen that science 
 and the belief in immortality are in full accord. 
 Both are built upon the same triple basis. (1) 
 The law of the conservation of energy is the 
 same as the idea of immortality ; only it is ex- 
 pressed in terms of physical science. (2) Evo- 
 lution aye ! even natural selection reveals 
 
 J 
 
 the real trend of life beyond the grave. (3) 
 Science, as predictive, but unable to fully com- 
 prehend, precisely mirrors our knowledge of 
 the world to come. 
 
 The belief in immortality, then, is in full ac- 
 cord with the three most fundamental principles 
 of modern science. With religion and morality 
 it not only accords, but is indispensable to their 
 very existence. Thus all spheres of human 
 knowledge in unison proclaim the immortality 
 of the soul. Whoever denies or doubts that 
 immortality arrays himself against the entire 
 organized system of human knowledge - - fights 
 against that Whole which is the Truth. 
 
 Nothing has so much hindered human prog- 
 ress and welfare as man's pugnacity and nar- 
 
84 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 row-mindedness. The theologian, the moralist 
 and the scientist all look askance at each other, 
 ever ready for a dispute. But there is no more 
 need of a quarrel between these three forms 
 of knowledge than between three branches of 
 one tree. They all spring from a common 
 root, the thought of causality. And they all 
 point to a common sky the many-colored 
 dome of immortality. 
 
' . ' a ' ' 
 
 '.:,,.. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Doubt is expanding. Formerly it was con- 
 fined to religion and morals. To-day it 
 spreads its black shadows over all science 
 even over geometry. For example, take that 
 monumental work, " The Foundations of Sci- 
 ence." Its author, Poincare, one of the great- 
 est mathematicians of all time, there contends 
 with wonderful skill and power that the first 
 principles of science have no logical basis, can- 
 not be verified. They are mere conventions 
 framed and accepted by scientists, because they 
 are " convenient," because " without them sci- 
 ence would be impossible' (p. 173). So far 
 no one has really answered him. 
 
 And there is no possible answer, I think, 
 except one derived from the fundamental prin- 
 ciple proved in our first chapter. Consider, 
 e. g. his chief paradox, one upon which he lav- 
 ishes a hundred pages, one that is the tap-root 
 of all the rest - - the denial of space. The gist 
 of it he gives in these italicised words : ' // 
 there were no solid bodies, there would be no 
 
 geometry " (p. 73). 
 
 85 
 
86 THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 
 
 Now our fundamental principle was that to 
 know any reality aright, we must think it in 
 terms of cause and effect. Thereby we proved 
 the reality of space. Poincare saw one-half 
 of this truth ; that space could be known only 
 through its effects - - the spatial relations of 
 solid bodies. But he did not see the other half; 
 that we could not know these spatial relations 
 if we had no knowledge of that one, infinite 
 space upon which they depend. 
 
 We conclude, then, that one and the same 
 principle - - that of causality guarantees our 
 knowledge of both the spiritual and the physical. 
 We have no more reason, then, for doubting the 
 existence of souls than for doubting the truths 
 of geometry. 
 
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