34 POSITION OF SCIENCE [CHAP. scope. His conscious demand for himself and his fellows is more time; fewer physical disabilities and mental limitations; a wider sphere; a fuller experience, a larger life. And making ample allowance for the truth which Weismann has so prominently brought forward, that as things are, the short duration of life among the higher animals is racially good because the function of reproduction is thus reserved to those fittest to exercise it, and a more vigorous vitality passed on to the succeeding generations, we cannot but recognise that in the case of man this benefit is conferred at the cost of an individual loss, large out of all proportion to that incurred at any lower stage in the organic world. The possibilities of no human individual are exhausted at death, and the more highly trained, cultured, and intellectually or practically active his life has been, the more do we perceive that his capacity has been greater than his attainment. This fact is certainly no proof that his individual life does not terminate at death; but assuming (as in a future chapter the writer hopes to show we have a right to assume,) a scale of values in Nature, and II.] IF IMMORTALITY PROVED 35 recognising that if such a scale exists, a premium is placed upon individuality, a presumption which we may justly call scientific is afforded that the individual man does not cease at death. If this be so, the result, so far as Science is concerned, upon the question of Immortality, would be the same as that in other cases of a scientific presumption. The suggestion would be accepted as a working hypothesis which a further accumulation and study of facts would either disprove or raise to the rank of an accepted theory. Let us assume for the sake of argument merely that the latter alternative has occurred.1 What would then be the position of Science with regard to the persistence of individual life after death? She would accept the fact as she accepts the fact of life after birth. She would note and classify the phenomena upon which her conviction is based. She would incidentally urge that conduct should be such as to sub 1 In the opinion of some it has occurred already; but scientific men as a body have certainly not yet reached so far as the working hypothesis stage, and in the opinion of the present writer never will, while they retain the presumption against the possibility of individual survival after death. 36 NO BETTER ABLE [CHAP. serve the interests (so far as from her point of view she is able to infer them,) of life beyond as well as of life before death. She would encourage research into that as into any other unknown, or partially known, region of investigation. She would endeavour to ascertain, if possible to produce experimentally, the conditions of such life, and in case of success we should doubtless have a body of scientific men devoted to this special study and with continually improving methods of pursuing it. How far this might be an advantage to mankind at large it is difficult to determine, but one thing is certain, the inner significance of individual human life would be as far from the ken of Science as ever. She would, indeed, be able to assert with even more confidence than she now too often denies its persistence after death, and this might produce a sobering and awe-inspiring effect on the thoughtful, but her material would still be the body, not the soul, of experience, and in presenting this new class of facts she would be as unable to give a complete and satisfying interpretation of them, as she is of the facts pertaining to II.] TO INTERPRET LIFE 37 the life of man as she at present recognises it. These remarks are made in no carping or fault-finding spirit, but to correct what seems to the writer a double misconception, viz., (1) that Science is justified in a presumption against the persistence of individual human life after death; and (2) that were the contrary proved, she would be in a position to give an entirely different interpretation of that life as a whole. The considerations which have occupied us in the present essay, show, on the contrary, that the true scientific presumption is rather for than against the persistence of individual life after death, and that in any case it is not within the province of Science to attempt a complete interpretation of the life of man, whether or not it persists after death in individual form. In this second statement we are only asserting that in the region of knowledge, as in that of practical life, there is a division of labour, that though Science can do much, she cannot do all, and that her efforts need to be supplemented by work of another kind, to which her own is indispensable but which it cannot supply. 38 NATURAL ORDER UNIQUE [CHAP. The presence-we might say the omnipresence, of individuality, not only in the organic world but in the known universe, might be illustrated in many ways. Man is only an extreme instance of that which is foreshadowed with ever-increasing clearness as his own status in the Natural Order is approached. That Order itself in its entirety bears the impress of individuality. It is not one of a class, it is unique. It is this -and not that. Each event occurs because the universe is what it is and not something else, and so complete is its individuality (technically called the Uniformity of Nature,) that even its possibilities-the things which may be or may not be are limited to the kind of things which are in consonance with its characteristics as a whole. One fundamental characteristic is the persistence of the same thing through manifold changes of form. What is known in physics as the Conservation of Energy is an illustration of this on a large scale. The technical definition of energy is capacity for work, and by its conservation is meant that in the transmutations which this capacity undergoes, being now potential, now kinetic, |