invariably upon a clear and unmistaken understanding of the premise or thing from which we start. Our conception of the application of philosophy for the purpose of extending knowledge might be illustrated by the following example:

The branches of a maple tree are whipped vigorously by a gust of autumn wind. Flying off on the bosom of the breeze, there finally alights in the soft ground at our feet a little winged thing. We pick it up and examine it. It seems to be formed for the purpose of being carried by the wind. It requires the action of a disturbed atmosphere to pull it from the branch where it hung; and the same wind that tears it off carries it away. Now why should it be carried away? Why the wing? Why the wind? Science would teach us by demonstration that the seed could not live at the base of the tree, because the ground is occupied by the roots of the mother tree and shaded from the sun by her leaves. Therefore, in order to live and become a tree this maple seed must find soil where the rain and sunshine can reach it; and hence the seed develops the wing.

Philosophy would say, there is intelligence here; either in the seed or the wind. Why? Because the seed grows with a wing; it holds on to the tree until a breeze comes along that is sufficiently strong to pull it off and carry it away. The intelligence must be in the seed, because there are other breezes than

the one that pulls it off, and the seed does not let go until it is ripe. So the philosopher, reasoning from analogy, would find intelligence; he would find in the case of this little seed an expression of thought and thought quite independent of a brain. It would seem to him to be thought, because had he been the seed, he could have acted, intelligently, only as the seed acted.

Philosophy, then, asks a question that science is at present unable to answer; and through the exercise of reason suggests what the answer is, or may be. It advances from cause to effect, or from effect to cause. Having an effect in hand it judges from this what the cause should be, or having the cause it judges what the effect should be.

Cato's Soliloquy.

By Addison.

It must be so;-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?
'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us,
'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates Eternity to man.

Eternity!-thou pleasing-dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being-

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!
The wide, th' unbounded prospect lies before me;

But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.
Here will I hold:-If there's a Power above us
(And that there is all Nature cries aloud

Through all her works), He must delight in Virtue;
And that which He delights in must be happy :
But-when?—or where?-This world was made for Caesar.
I'm weary of conjectures: This must end them.

(Laying his hand upon his sword.)
Thus am I doubly armed; my death and life,
My bane and antidote are both before me.
This in a moment brings me to an end,
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secure in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years,
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amid the war of elements,

The wrack of matter, and the crush of worlds.

The Philosophers.

REV. R. HEBER NEWTON

In answer to your inquiry I would say that it seems to me there are so many and such strong arguments for a life hereafter that it is difficult to select from them. If I were to say in a word what impresses me most habitually and strongly, it is the impossibility of conceiving of the universe as a cosmos, a beautiful order, a sane and rational system, without immortality.

PROF. ED. GASC-DES FOSSES

I am very happy to send you with my greatest sincerity, the result of my own deductions on the question of the continuation of the existence of the soul after death.1

To begin with, and for the purpose of putting the question from the start in the clearest way, it does not appear to me as if the answer to be made can ever be scientific,-if by science we mean a "knowledge such as the given demonstration of which inevitably and necessarily imposes itself upon every intelligence." I am thoroughly persuaded that the solution must be a belief, a moral certainty, in which sentiment and will have a share and a large

1 Translation by J. Delmotte.

share at that. In order therefore to avoid the strict and precise meaning of the word proof, which is not in place here, I will say that there are four main reasons for believing in personal immortality, and these reasons will of course be of unequal value, varying according to the moral value of the human being to which they apply.

First: A reason to which a certain number of philosophers only accord a very limited credit, but which in my opinion is very important, is the argument furnished by moral anthropology, which may be termed an ethnographic (race) argument. Amongst all people, at all epochs of history, (even at prehistoric times) from the rudest and least civilized tribes to those of the highest intellectual development, the belief in an after existence is everywhere; often this belief is clothed in the most primitive forms, the most materialistic, if we may so express it. But after allowing for the special guidance which philosophical or religious system, whatever they may be, can give to these beliefs, I think one can say, that it is an indication of the existence of an instinct of a high order which is one of the characteristics of humanity.

This is what the old traditional philosopher called "the proof of universal consent." If the name of science is given especially to all research based on facts, it can be said that this argument in favor of the immortality of the soul has a scientific value, as