This, then, is the philosophical argument of Plato. neither better nor worse than that of any one of his successors who assumes premises that are either not demonstrably true, or are demonstrably untrue. It lacks every essential element of a logical argument; and, were it promulgated to-day for the first time, it would receive the assent of no one acquainted with the elementary principles of correct reasoning. In its day, however, it received the instant and enthusiastic assent of a very large class of people. The doctrine that death is not affliction, but, on the contrary, a direct and sure entrance to a happier life, so influenced the minds of many that they laid violent hands upon themselves in order the sooner to attain that happier life. It is even said that Ptolemæus Philadelphus prohibited Hegisias of Cyrene from teaching it in his school, for fear of depopulating his kingdom. Cicero tells us that it was written of Cleombrotus of Ambracia that, "having paid his last compliment to the sun, he threw himself headlong from the top of a tower into hell; not that he had done anything worthy of death, but had only read Plato's Treatise on the Immortality of the Soul."

It is needless to remark that, as a promoter of suicide, the treatise has long since lost its potency.

The fourth in the series of arguments commonly employed to prove immortality is that of instinctive desire. No more beautiful summary of the argument exists in the English language than that of Addison:

"Plato, thou reason'st well,

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality ?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'T is the divinity that stirs within us;

'T is heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.' "1

1 Addison's "Cato."

"The strongest argument" in favor of immortality, says Cicero, "is that Nature herself is tacitly persuaded of the immortality of the soul; which appears from that great concern, so generally felt by all, for what shall happen after death."

Alger summarizes the argument, and at the same time hints at the answer, as follows:

"It is obvious that man is endowed at once with foreknowledge of death, and with a powerful love of life. It is not a love of being here; for he often loathes the scene around him. It is a love of self-possessed existence; a love of his own soul in its central consciousness and bounded royalty. This is the inseparable element of his very entity. Crowned with free-will, walking on the crest of the world, enfeoffed with individual faculties, served by vassal nature with tributes of various joy, he cannot bear the thought of losing himself, or of sliding into the general abyss of matter. His inferior consciousness is permeated with a self-preserving instinct, and shudders at every glimpse of danger or hint of death. The soul, pervaded with a guardian instinct of life, and seeing death's steady approach to destroy the body, necessitates the conception of an escape into another state of existence. Fancy and reason, thus set at work, speedily construct a thousand theories filled with details. Desire first fathers the thought, and then thought woos belief."

As I have before intimated, this is the strongest of all the old arguments in favor of immortality. It is a valid argument as far as it goes, for it is an observable phenomenon

an instinct. - of the human mind which points in the direction of a future life. But whilst it is a valid argument, it is not conclusive, for the reason that it lacks the one essential element of a conclusive argument. A phenomenon can only be said to be a conclusive demonstration of the truth of a proposition when there remains no other way of accounting for the phenomenon. This is true, a fortiori, when we are seeking to account for a mundane phenomenon by referring it to a supermundane cause. Thus, if man,

nature.

and man only, desired to live, and if his desire for life had reference only to an existence beyond the grave, and if that desire were clearly shown to be instinctive and universal, then it might be said to be a conclusive argument in support of the hypothesis of a future life. But this "instinctive desire," which so strongly possesses the mind of a man, for a future life, is easily accounted for by reference to that instinct of self-preservation which is proverbially “the first law of nature," is common to all physical organisms, and is no stronger in man than it is in the lowest order of animal life. Man, however, recognizes the fact that his physical organism must perish; but, in the egotism of his manhood, he rebels against the thought of dying as the brute dieth. He looks upon himself as the crowning glory of physical He counts and measures the steps of his evolution from the primordial germ, compares the brief span of his existence with the æons which have been consumed in his production, and concludes that somehow he has been cheated by dissembling Nature of his fair proportion of time and opportunity. At first he rebels against being classed as a lineal descendant of the lower organisms; but the steps of his evolution are too plainly defined in the structure of his predecessors, his pedigree is too clearly written in that of his own, to admit of rational doubt. Compelled to own his relationship to the rest of animated Nature, he finds consolation in the thought that, whilst he may be a product of evolution, he is no longer subject to its laws. He is the product of a process. He is like a machine, which is produced by means of a great variety of processes, but is emancipated from all connection with those employed in its construction the moment it is completed and sent out into the world to perform its functions. Thus, it is argued, is man emancipated from the processes of his evolution and placed upon the apex of Nature, from which point his only means of further progress is by flight

52

DEMONSTRATION OF THE FUTURE life.

into some unknown region where the object of his creation can be accomplished.1

With such assumptions does man console himself for his obvious relationship to his fellow worms, and for his lack of time in this life to work out what he fondly conceives to be his mission and destiny. He ignores, or denies, the fact that the same processes of evolution which produced him are still at work in himself and in all his environment, the same survival of the fittest, though modified by the state of his progress in civilization; the same struggle for life, though modified by the element of an enforced altruism, if such a term is admissible, which compels the inclusion of his race in the object of his struggle. He forgets, too, that the same element which he is pleased to termaltruism in himself, is common to many of the lower animals; and that his longing for a future life may be traced to that instinct of self-preservation which he possesses in common with all animated, nay, all organic Nature, and without which the world would soon be depopulated. It seems clear, therefore, that instinctive desire, whilst it is a valid argument as far as it goes, is very far from being conclusive; and must, therefore, for the present, be classed in the same category with many other phenomena of the human mind which seem to point in the direction of a supermundane existence, but logically fail because they are. explicable by reference to principles of natural law with which the world is well acquainted.

1 See Fiske's "Destiny of Man."

CHAPTER III.

SPIRITISM AND HYPNOTISM.

The Phenomena of Spiritism. - Scepticism of the Church. — The Present Attitude of Science. - Spiritistic Phenomena Genuine. The Two Hypotheses. The Spirit Medium Self-Hypnotized.— The Intelligence Manifested. Experimental Hypnotism produces the same Phenomena. - The Power of Telepathy. — The Law of Suggestion. Suggestion controls the Medium. The Manufacture of Mediums by Hypnotism. - The Hypothesis of Duality of Mind. The Objective and Subjective Minds. - The Condition of the Medium and the Hypnotized Subject Identical. They are governed by the Same Laws. - Socrates as a Roman. The Spirit of "Cantharides " Invoked. - The Medium not necessarily Dishonest. The Laws of Telepathy.

I

HAVE now briefly reviewed a few of the leading arguments upon which the Christian world has built its hopes of a future life. I have endeavored to show why it is that none of them are convincing to the minds of those who are accustomed to the methods of reasoning which are applied to the solution of the problems of the material universe. It has been shown that no one has attempted to apply the processes of induction to the solution of the great problem, and for the very good reason that, outside of Biblical records, no facts have been adduced, no phenomena have been observed, by the writers on the subject of a future life, upon which immortality for mankind can be legitimately predicated. We now approach a field of observation, however, which bristles with facts and phenomena which millions of our race believe to be demonstrative of a life