death as a universal factor in the physical world, progress would be impossible. And this applies to man as forcibly as it does to the lower animals. If at any moment death should be abolished as to mankind, progress would come to a practical standstill, and the earth would soon be overpopulated. This is one of the facts demonstrative that physical life is not the final goal of man or of his evolution; and since it is demonstrable that there can be no higher species developed than man, if he has any future, it must be in another form of existence. To recur to the first question, Why does not God exhibit some tangible moral attribute toward his creatures?—it is answered that he does exhibit a positive, tangible quality of pure benevolence towards all animate Nature in a phenomenon that is of such common experience that the world appears to have overlooked it entirely. That phenomenon consists in the absolute immunity from physical or mental suffering in the hour of inevitable death.1 This immunity is universal in all animate Nature. Moreover, there is every evidence to show that death is a pleasurable process to all who experience it, from the lowest to the highest organism in Nature. Moreover, there is indubitable evidence demonstrative that God is ever kind to the victim of the inevitable. This is true whether the inevitable event assumes the form of death or of a surgical operation; for in the subjective state which spontaneously ensues upon the approach of either event, there is provided a universal anesthetic, which deprives death of its sting and its terrors; and if the surgeon knows the laws pertaining to the subject, it eases the patient of all pain and suffering.

Could further or more tangible evidence be required to

1 For a full discussion of this subject, see "The Law of Psychic Phenomena."

2 See "Hypnotism, a Universal Anæsthetic in Surgery," N. Y. Medical Journal for Dec. 22, 1894.

demonstrate the quality of mercy and benevolence in God towards his creatures?

It must be remembered that this immunity from suffering during the process of dissolution cannot be tortured into the domain of attributes resulting from the laws of heredity, or of natural selection, or of the survival of the fittest. It is obvious that when this phenomenon is exhibited, the subject is far beyond the reach of those laws. Nor is there any law or fact in the domain of evolution that can be invoked to explain it. It is a broad, ultimate fact, standing apart, tangible, monumental, demonstrative of the intelligence, the love, the mercy, the benevolence of the Great First Cause.

Is there no evidence of intelligent design in the phenomena of Nature? Let the facts-the observable, tangible, demonstrable facts- answer the question.

Thus is man rehabilitated and re-enthroned as the grand central figure of creation, the ultimate object of creative energy. The Copernican system of astronomy shocked the Christian world, and moved it to deeds of violence by removing the habitation of man from the centre of the universe, and sending it whirling through space, a unit in the Titanic procession around the central sun, the source of light and warmth and energy. Another shock was sent through Christendom when it was first shown that the facts of evolution proved that God created man, not by miracle, but through the operations of natural law. But Christendom has survived both shocks, and has lived to recognize the fact that science robs not God of his glory nor man of his dignity. On the contrary, Copernican astronomy removed man from the centre of the physical universe only to show him that the central sun, with all its stores of physical energy, is but his domestic servant, charged with the duty of rendering his home habitable and beautiful. Evolutionary science removed his origin from the domain

258 DEMONSTRATION OF THe future life.

of superstition, and revealed him to himself as the central figure in the physical universe. Psychic science proclaims his divine pedigree, confirms his kinship to Christ, and verifies his title-deeds to a "home not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

CHAPTER XVII.

THE DISTINCTIVE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL.

- Faculties of The

Every Faculty of the Mind has its Use or Function. the Soul which perform no Normal Function in this Life. Man and the Brute psychically Differentiated — Ego-Altruism. The Instinct of Self-Sacrifice. - Conditions precedent to the Attainment of Immortality.

HAVING now logically and scientifically demonstrated

the existence in man of a dual mind, it remains to inquire what are the legitimate logical and scientific conclusions to be derived from that fact. In doing so, the first matter to be considered is the question as to what can be taken for granted. As I have pointed out in the earlier chapters of this book, there is, in every process of reasoning, one factor in the series of steps or propositions leading to a logical conclusion, that is always taken for granted. Thus, in reasoning by induction, we collate our facts and from them we reason up to general principles. That is to say, after the observance of a series of phenomena, when we find a constant recurrence of the series in orderly and unvarying sequence, we are enabled to say with certainty. that the same phenomena will continue to recur in the same orderly sequence. In other words we have discovered the law which governs the subject-matter, the principle which underlies it. But in formulating the law we invariably assume, without formally stating it, the most important proposition in the series which gives it validity. That proposition is that Nature is ever constant. It is obvious that

if a law of Nature operated in one way at one time, and in the opposite way at another, man would be put to permanent intellectual confusion. He could never be certain that he knew anything. In logical reasoning, therefore, our very silence regarding the constancy of Nature evinces, in terms more eloquent than words, our calm, unfaltering trust in the wisdom and benevolence of the Eternal Lawgiver. So universal is this confidence among civilized peoples, that the proposition that Nature's laws are immutable is not only never questioned, but is, by common consent, regarded as one of those self-evident propositions which to argue is a work of supererogation.

In the domain of psychological research there is also a proposition equally important, and unqualifiedly self-evident, which is assumed without question by all who apply the principles of logical reasoning to the solution of psychological problems. That proposition is that There is no faculty, emotion, or organism of the human mind that has not its function, use, or object.

In the physical world it has long since passed into a proverb that "Nothing was ever made in vain." This may be true, and it probably is true; but it is far from being self-evident. For instance, it is difficult to discover the use of mosquitoes, or of venomous reptiles, or of those insects which sometimes destroy the vegetation of whole provinces and bring desolation and famine to the doors of the helpless people. Such things not only cause the unreflecting to doubt the wisdom of God, but they forcibly remind us all of the essential truth of the saying of the pious Jacobi, that "Nature conceals God; man reveals him." No truth is more frequently brought home to the scientific student of Nature and of man than this; for the more we study physical Nature the farther God is removed from us, the more we study man the nearer God approaches to us. Thus, the savage finds God in the most