[Sidenote: Possibility of discovering inhabitants in other spheres.]

It is to-day admitted that every thought corresponds to a certain kind

of motion. Suppose that an analysis more delicate even than that of

the spectrum should enable us to record and to distinguish, not only

vibrations of light but the invisible vibrations of thought in distant

worlds. We should, perhaps, be surprised to see that in proportion as

the light and heat of the incandescent stars decrease, there by degrees

arises consciousness, and that the smallest and most obscure stars are

the first to produce it, whereas the most brilliant and enormous, like

Sirius and Aldebaran, are the last to feel these subtler vibrations,

but feel them ultimately with greater power, and develop a humanity

with faculties and powers proportionate to their enormity.

[Sidenote: Slowness of spread of civilization from star to star.]

The total amount of space which is known to us, from our earth to

the farthest nebulæ that the telescope renders visible, and to the

dark depths beyond, is no more than a mere point as compared with the

totality of the universe—supposing always that there is a totality.

Eternity may, therefore, be necessary for progress to traverse the

immensity of space, if one conceives progress (if such a thing exists

at all) as starting from some one point of departure, from a sort

of holy-land and elect people, and spreading from them out in all

directions into the infinite. Modern science, of course, scarcely

permits one to believe in so privileged a land. Illimitable nature

scarcely possesses, after the fashion of God, exclusive election.

If the ideal has been achieved in one place, it must also, in all

probability, have been achieved in a number of others, although the

wave of progress has not yet spread to us. Intellectual light travels

less rapidly than solar and stellar light, and yet how long it takes a

ray to come to us from Capricornus!

[Sidenote: Possibility of mind-acting on mind at a distance.]

In our inferior organisms, consciousness does not seem to pass from

one living molecule to another unless they are contiguous in space;

still, according to the most recent discoveries in regard to the

nervous system, and to the propagation of thought by mental suggestion

from a distance,[163] it is not contrary to the facts to conceive the

possibility of a sort of radiation of consciousness through space by

means of undulations of a degree of subtlety as yet unknown to us. It

is not utterly unpermissible to conceive a society of consciousnesses

not hemmed into some small corner of the universe, each in a narrow

organism which is a prison, but communicating freely with each other

throughout the whole expanse of space; it is not utterly unpermissible

to conceive the ultimate realization of the ideal of universal

sociality which constitutes the basis of the religious instinct. Just

as out of a more intimate communication with individual consciousnesses

there may arise upon our earth a sort of collective consciousness, so

it is not ridiculous to suppose that there may arise, in an infinity of

ages, a sort of intercosmic consciousness.

[163] See the _Revue philosophique_, 1886.

[Sidenote: Patience.]

God is patient because he is eternal, theologians are fond of saying.

In an all-powerful being patience of evil would be a crime; patience,

which can scarcely be ascribed with any propriety to God, belongs

however most fitly to a being who is aware of his fundamental unity

with the totality of things, and is conscious of his eternity as a

member of the human species, as a member of the brotherhood of living

beings of which the human species is simply an accident, as a part of

the evolution of this globe in which conscious life itself at first

appears as no more than an accident, and of the evolution of the vast

astronomical systems in which our globe is no more than a point. Man

may be patient because, as an inseparable part of nature, he is eternal.

_IV. The destiny of the human race and the hypothesis of immortality

from the point of view of monism._

[Sidenote: Theory of evolution and death.]

Next to the fate of the universe, what interests us most vitally

is the question of our own destiny. Religion consists for the most

part in a meditation on death. If death were not an incident of life

mankind would nevertheless be superstitious, but superstition would

probably never have been systematized into religions. The mass of

society possesses so slight an interest in metaphysics! A problem must

bruise and wound them to attract their attention; and death prevents

such problems. Will the gates of the valley of Jehoshaphat, through

which the dead must pass, open on the heavens like a rainbow made of

light and hope, like a joyous triumphal arch, or will it be low as the

door of the tomb, and open upon infinite darkness? Such is the great

question to which all religions have endeavoured to furnish a response.

“The last enemy that shall be vanquished is death,” says St. Paul;

perhaps that also represents the last secret that shall be penetrated

by human thought. The ideas which tend to become dominant in modern

philosophy seem, however, to exclude the notion of the perpetuity

of the self. The conception of evolution principally is based on a

theory of mobility, and appears to result in the dissolution of the

individual, with even a greater certainty than in that of the species

or the world. The individual form, and the species form, are equally

unstable. On the walls of the catacombs may often be seen, roughly

designed, the dove, bringing back to the ark the green bough, the

symbol of the soul which has passed beyond the ocean and discovered the

eternal harbour; at the present day the harbour recoils _ad infinitum_,

before human thought; limitless open sea stretches away before it:

where in the abyss of bottomless and limitless nature shall be found

the branch of hope. Death is a wider void than life.

[Sidenote: The problem of life after death at the present day.]

When Plato approached the problem of destiny, he did not hesitate

to launch out into philosophical hypotheses, and even into poetical

myths. It is our present purpose to examine what are to-day the

suppositions, or, if you choose, the dreams that may still be

entertained as to the future by a sincere believer in the dominant

philosophy of the present day, the philosophy of evolution. Given the

present conception of nature, would Plato have found himself cut off

from those beautiful expectations to the charm of which he said we

ought to submit ourselves? In Germany, and in especial in England,

it is not uncommon to endeavour to discover how much of the antique

religious beliefs still subsists, and is, in however problematic and

uncertain a form, involved in the scientific and philosophic hypotheses

of the day. It is our purpose to undertake here an analogous inquiry

in regard to immortality, recognizing how conjectural any attempt to

solve the mystery of fate must be. Is it necessary to say that we

make no pretensions to “demonstrating” either the existence or even

the _scientific_ probability of a life after death? Our design is more

modest; it is enough to show that the impossibility of such a life is

not yet proven; even in the presence of modern science immortality is

still a problem; if this problem has not received a positive solution,

no more has it received a negative solution.

It is our intention further to consider what bold, and even adventurous

hypotheses may be necessary to enable one to translate into philosophic

language the sacred symbols of religion, or the destiny of the soul.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Death and idealism.]

I. There are two possible conceptions as to life after death; that

of eternal existence and that of immortality, properly so called, or

continuation and evolution of life under a superior form. The first

conception corresponds more particularly to the idealistic theories of

the world, which we have analyzed above, which, regarding the basis

of things as an eternal thought, a thought of thought, believe that

by identifying itself with it mankind might pass out of time into

eternity. Thought, which seems at first no more than a reverberation

and image of things, idealists believe, turns out in the last analysis

to be the very reality of which all the rest of the world is but a

reflection; but this conception of an eternal existence is not in the

least incompatible with the philosophy of evolution, for evolution

in time does not exclude a transcendent mode of existence out of

time. Such an existence, however, remains essentially problematic; it

corresponds to Kant’s Noumenon and Spencer’s Unknowable; according

to this hypothesis, corporal death is simply a stage in physical

evolution, and the final term to be attained by all beings is their

fixation in the consciousness of eternity. This point of fixation,

accessible to every thinking being, is to be attained only by the

highest, most disinterested, impersonal, and universal thought possible.

[Sidenote: An eternal element in man.]

Such is the hope which lies at the bottom of the great religions,

and the great idealistic systems of metaphysics. According to Plato

there is nothing durable in us but what relates to the eternal, and

to the universal, and is therefore of the same nature as they are.

All the rest is eliminated by Becoming, by perpetual Generation, that

is, by evolution. A flower is, in our eyes, a friend; it owes its

colour and charm, however simple, to a ray of the sun; but this ray,

to which our affection is due, is wholly impersonal; it creates the

beauty of the flower, and passes on its way; and it is the sun that

we should love, both for the ray and the flower. Too exclusive and

limited affection is always based on some mistake, and is on that

account perishable. It insists on our stopping at such and such a

link in the infinite chain of causes and effects. It is the principle

of the universe, it is the universal being that we must love, if our

heart is big enough, and it is that love alone, according to Plato,

which is eternal. Is not eternity the very form of existence in the

intelligible world, in which Goodness is the sun and the Ideas are the

stars? Christian neo-Platonists, over and above Time and its incessant

mobility, have dreamed of an intemporal and immutable somewhat, that

they call the life eternal: _Quæ enim videntur, temporalia sunt; quæ

autem non videntur, æterna_. Spinoza has dealt with the same conception

of an existence under the form of eternity, which does not exclude

the perpetual development of changing modes. Kant also, by his word

_Noumenon_, designated an intelligible, intemporal, transcendent

somewhat, that lay beyond the scope of physical evolution. “The eternal

evolution of the soul,” Schelling has said in his turn, “is not eternal

in the sense that it possesses neither a beginning nor an end, but in

that it bears no relation to Time.” And Schopenhauer, finally, believes

in an intemporal, eternal will, which is distinguished from the will

to live that belongs to time and to the evolution of temporal forms.

“We willingly recognize,” says Schopenhauer, “that what remains after

the complete abolition of the will is absolutely nothing to those who

are still full of the desire of life, but for those in whom desire is

annihilated what does our evil world, with its sun and its Milky Way,

amount to? Nothing.” It is with these words that Schopenhauer closes

his book. He brings us once more into the presence of _Nirvâna_,

conceived not only as a refuge from life, but also as a refuge from

death; as an existence that shall be placeless and timeless, and, so to

speak, _utopian_ (in its primary intention) and _achronistic_.

[Sidenote: Is such immortality personal or not?]

But is this eternal life, the fact of which is, as we have seen,

problematic, altogether impersonal or not? No certain reply can be

given since we are as ignorant of the essence of individual being as

of the essence of universal being, and consequently of the degree to

which it is possible for individuality to subsist in universality.

Schopenhauer, however, in his endeavour to ascribe to the individual

a greater amount of reality than Plato allowed, opposed the principle

of individuation to the natural individualities in which it manifests

itself, and it may, indeed, be asked, whether genuine consciousness,

genuine thought, and genuine volition do not at once pass beyond the

individual, and preserve what is most essential in the individual.

Individuality is always more or less physical, but it is possible that

what makes individuality limited is not of the essence of personality,

of consciousness; perhaps what is best in thought and will may become

universal, without ceasing in the best sense to be personal like the

Νοῦς of Anaxagoras.[164]

[164] At the very centre of one’s being, universality and

personality increase side by side; that is to say, the greater

the share of existence a being possesses, the greater the

amount of existence that it is capable of sharing with other

beings. Incommunicability or impenetrability represents the

lowest degree of existence; natural existence, the existence

of forces as yet blind and fatal, maintains by their mutual

antagonism an equilibrium in a state of inertia and torpor

... The greater one’s self-appropriation by intelligence, the

greater one’s power of taking possession of other beings by

thought; the being that best knows itself best knows other

beings ... the spirit, in so far as it is intelligent, should

be open, penetrable, participable, and participant. Two minds,

in so far as they are perfect, may interpenetrate each other by

means of thought (A. Fouillée, _Philosophie de Platon_).

“We must distinguish,” M. Janet also says, “between

personality and individuality. Individuality consists in all

the external circumstances which distinguish one man from

another—circumstances of time, place, organization, etc....

The root of personality lies in individuality, but it tends

incessantly to withdraw from it. The individual is centred in

himself; personality aspires to rise above itself. The ideal

of individuality is egoism, the focussing of the whole in

self; the ideal of personality is devotion, the identification

of self with the whole. Personality, properly so called, is

consciousness of the impersonal” (_Moral_, 573).

[Sidenote: No positive knowledge to oppose to hypothesis of

immortality.]

Speculate as we may upon individual and universal being, we are all

but brought face to face in the end with the same transcendental _x_.

Such speculations, however, are not without a certain utility, that

of impressing us afresh with the limits of our knowledge. A belief

in a transcendent immortality, as Fiske says, can be defined only

negatively, as a refusal to believe that this world is everything.

The materialist maintains, Fiske says, that when we have described

the entire universe of phenomena, of which we are capable of taking

cognizance under the conditions of this life, the whole of the story

has been told. Fiske himself believes, on the contrary, that the whole

has not then been told.[165] We may at least say that it is _possible_

that the whole story has not then been told. But to pass from the

possible to the probable, no conclusion of the kind can be considered

satisfactory that is not based upon more positive reason, psychological

or moral; unsupported metaphysical speculations leave the mind simply

in the presence of a problem.

[165] Fiske, _The Destiny of Man_, p. 113.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The hypothesis of a conditional eternity.]

Theories in regard to an eternal life such as we above mentioned have

always proved in history more or less aristocratic and inclined to

limit the number of the elect. In Buddhism the sage alone is capable

of achieving eternal existence, whereas all the rest of mankind are

condemned to life in time and illusion. Spinoza recognizes eternity

only in what he calls cognition of the third order, intellectual

intuition and love. Such cognition belongs properly to the true

philosopher only. The intelligence of the vulgar is passive and

perishable. “The instant the vulgar cease ... to suffer,” says Spinoza,

“they cease to exist.” And Goethe, too, was inclined to regard the

eternal life as reserved for an aristocracy.

[Sidenote: Criticised.]

This theory of inequality is maintainable only in so far as it is based

upon an actual ascertainment of the difference in progress displayed

by different minds, and of the small number of those who achieve the

heights of wisdom. The case is otherwise when such an observed fact

of natural or moral inequality is converted into a divine right, and

God is conceived as creating and desiring precisely such a state of

things. The latter, however, is the alternative that modern Christian

theologians have adopted in their effort to offer a re-reading of

the sacred texts. In their judgment the good alone are immortal, or,

rather, are immortalized by God; the others are damned, in the sense

that they are totally annihilated—an interpretation of the dogma of

eternal punishment that seems to them wholly to exculpate the Deity.

Any such notion is based upon a metaphysical illusion. The hypothesis

of traditional eternity is inconsistent with that of the existence of a

creator, since it is forever impossible on that hypothesis, to escape

the contradiction involved in the notion of a being’s creating only to

destroy—of a being’s choosing among his creatures a certain number

for condemnation to death. Annihilation is simply damnation palliated;

it is the substitution of a celestial guillotine for the long miseries

that have preceded. This theological hypothesis affords us no way out

of the difficulties involved in the doctrine of divine sanction that

lies at the heart of all religions; it is the sacrifice of Isaac, or of

Jesus, in another form simply. Will it be said that, on the hypothesis

of conditional immortality, the immoral being is alone responsible

for his own death? Yielding to passion, or even to vice, cannot be

assimilated to suicide, for in suicide one knows what one is doing and

is responsible for it; one kills one’s self because one wishes to die;

but one does not wish to die when one abandons one’s self to a passion;

and, if the result therefore of so doing is annihilation, death comes

upon one unforeseen and undesired, takes one by surprise, by a sort of

divine ruse, and the responsibility for such annihilation lies and must

lie with God. Moreover, how can there exist between two individuals

of the same nature a sufficiently great natural or moral difference

to justify the one’s being wholly annihilated, and the other’s being

permitted to live _in æternum_? It may be said, with Plato in the

“Republic,” that, if vice were a disease that is really mortal to the

soul, it would kill it in this life. Its destructive influence would

be felt long before the occurrence of death, which, so far as vice is

concerned, is an accidental circumstance simply.

[Sidenote: Is incompatible with human fellowship.]

As the notion of conditional immortality is incompatible with the

notion of an omnipotent, omniscient, sovereignly loving creator, so

also is it with that of a society of souls, of a spiritual kingdom,

from which a certain number of mankind would be excluded forever. An

absolutely wicked and hateful soul, unpossessed of any element of

humanity, not to say of divinity, and consequently unfit to live, is a

pure figment of hate and amounts to transporting the caste of pariah

into the celestial city. It is a contradiction in terms to enjoin us

to universal charity toward all men without exception, and at the same

time to wish us to consent to the absolute annihilation and damnation

of some of them. We are naturally and morally too intimately related

for certain of us to be condemned definitively to death without the

rest of us being impeded on our upward course; we are bound to each

other by our love of humanity like Alpine climbers by the cord that

passes from waist to waist, and one of us cannot slip but that the

rest of us feel it, nor fall without all of us falling. _Nihil humani

alienum_; one heart beats in the bosom of humanity, and if it stops

forever in a single human breast, it will stop forever in the breasts

of those also who are supposed to be immortal. The best of us, those

who would be fit to receive baptism into immortality, would do as the

barbarous and pagan chief, who, after having washed away his sins in

the holy water of the font, with salvation in his hand and Paradise

before his eyes, demanded suddenly what would be the fate of his former

companions who had died unconverted, and whether he should find them

in heaven. “No,” replied the priest, “they will be among the miserable

and the damned, and thou amongst the blessed.” “I will go, then, among

the damned, for I wish to go where I shall find my companions in arms.

Adieu!” And he turned his back upon the font.

[Sidenote: Summary.]

The hypothesis of conditional immortality can, therefore, be maintained

only by eliminating from it the doctrine of a creator of absolute

merit, of virtue, and of universal and infinite charity; thus

diminished, it becomes a belief in a sort of natural or metaphysical

necessity to which beings are subject according to their degree of

perfection simply. This hypothesis is essentially anti-providential,

and in harmony only with systems more or less analogous to that of

Spinoza.

In general the notion of eternal life is altogether transcendent and a

fit subject for mystical dreams only. Let us, therefore, abandon this

high ground and descend to nature and experience. Instead of talking

of eternity, let us speak of life after death and of an immortality

not conditional, but conditioned by the laws of matter and of mind and

attainable by everyone.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Does personality contain a permanent element?]

II. Let us take our stand in the beginning on positive experience, and

consider what sort of immortality the philosophy of evolution permits

us to hope for. There exists in the sphere of consciousness, so to

speak, a series of concentric circles which lie closer and closer about

an unfathomable centre, personality. Let us pass in review the diverse

manifestations of personality and see if they contain any imperishable

element.

[Sidenote: One’s works immortal.]

The most external, and, in some sort, the most observable aspect of

mankind, consists in their works and actions. Where material works

alone are concerned, such as a house that one has built, a picture that

one has painted, a statue that one has modelled, it may be felt that

the distance between the worker and the work is too great, and that

immortality in one’s work is too much like a sort of optical illusion.

But when intellectual and moral works are concerned, the effect and the

cause are more nearly one; therein lies the element of truth contained

in the highly impersonal and disinterested doctrine that one lives

in one’s works. Intellectual and moral labours are more than their

mere material effect. The good man’s highest wish is to live and live

again in his good actions; the thinker’s highest wish is to live and

live again in the thought that he has contributed to the inheritance

of humanity. This doctrine may be found in almost all great religions

and is capable of subsistence in the domain of pure science. According

to the modern Buddhists of India a man’s actions are his soul, and it

is this soul that survives his death, and transmigration of souls

is simply the constant transformation of good into better, and evil

into worse; the immortality of one’s soul is the immortality of one’s

actions, which continue to operate forever in the world according to

their original force and direction.

[Sidenote: Continuity of human effort.]

Generation after generation labours at the task, and passes the token

of hope from hand to hand. _Heri meum, tuum hodie_, yesterday was mine

and I spent it in doing good, but not enough good; to-day is thine:

employ the whole of it, do not lose an hour of it; if an hour dies

sterile, it is a chance lost of realizing the ideal. Thou art master of

to-day; do what in thee lies to make to-morrow what thou wouldst have

it, let to-morrow be always in advance of to-day, and the horizon that

men see each fresh morning be brighter and higher than the one they saw

before.

[Sidenote: Nothing lost.]

The action must be followed into its effects, or into the effect

of those effects, and so on infinitely. Our conduct stretches away

_ad infinitum_, beyond the reach of our knowledge. Even from the

purely physical and physiological point of view, neither intended

nor attempted goodness is ineffective, since both thought and desire

develop the mind. The very notion of what is to-day chimerical

corresponds to a real movement in our brains; it is a mental force

which contains its element of verity and influence. We inherit not only

what our fathers did, but what they could not do, what they attempted

and did not achieve. We are still alive with the devotion and sacrifice

of our ancestors, with the courage that perhaps they spent in vain, as

we feel in the spring the breath of distant antedeluvian springs and

the loves of the tertiary period.

[Sidenote: Failure in the past the guarantee of success in the future.]

The ability of the present generation has been made possible by the

stumbling and mistakes of generations in the past; and this embryonic

and successless past constitutes the guarantee of our future. In the

moral, as in the physiological world, there are instances of fertility

that are not yet explicable. Sometimes long after the death of the

man who first loved her the woman brings forth a child that resembles

him; and humanity may bring forth a civilization on the model of some

ideal cherished in the past, even when the past seems to be buried

forever, if the ideal contains some obscure element of truth and,

by consequence, of imperishable force. What has once really lived

shall live again, and what seems to be dead is only making ready to

revive. The scientific law of atavism is a guarantee of resurrection.

To conceive and desire the best is to attempt the ideal, is to

predetermine the path that all succeeding generations shall tread. Our

highest aspirations, which seem precisely the most vain, are, as it

were, waves which, having had the power to reach us, have the power to

pass beyond us, and may, by a process of summation with other waves,

ultimately shake the world. I am satisfied that what is best in me

will survive, perhaps not one of my dreams shall be lost; other men

will take them up, will dream them over again in their turn until they

are realized. It is by force of spent waves that the sea fashions the

immense bed in which it lies.

[Sidenote: Death not inevitable.]

In effect, in the philosophy of evolution life and death are recognized

as relative and correlative conceptions; life is in one sense death,

and death is the triumph of life over one of its particular forms.

Proteus in the fable could be prevented from changing his shape only

by being caught in sleep, which is the image of death; thus it is

in nature; fixed form is sleep, is death, is a pause in the eternal

fluctuation of life. Becoming and life are alike formless. Form,

individuality, species, mark a transitory stoppage in the channel of

life; we can neither seize nor hold nature, except when it is laid

asleep, and what we call death—my death or yours—is itself a latent

pulse of universal life, like one of the secret vibrations that pass

through the germ during the months of apparent inertia during which it

is making ready for the later stages of its development. The law of

nature is eternal germination. A man of science was one day holding

a handful of wheat, that had been found in the tomb of an Egyptian

mummy. “Five thousand years without sight of the sun! Unhappy grains

of wheat, as sterile as death, of which they have so long been the

companions, never shall their tall stalks bow beneath the wind on the

banks of the Nile. Never? What do I know of life, of death?” As an

experiment simply, without much hope of success, the man of science

sowed the grains of wheat that he had recovered from the tomb, and the

wheat of the Pharaohs received the caress of the sun, of the air, and

came up green through the soil of Egypt, and bowed beneath the wind on

the banks of the sacred and inexhaustible flood of the Nile. And shall

human thought, and the higher life which stirs in us like the germ in

the seed, and love that seems to sleep forever in the tomb, not have

this reawakening in some unforeseen springtime, and not be brought

face to face with eternity, which seems at present to be buried, once

and for all, in darkness? What is death, after all, in the universe,

but a lesser degree of vital heat, a more or less transitory lowness

of temperature? Death cannot be powerful enough to hold life and its

perpetual youth in check, and to prevent the infinite activity of

thought and of desire.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Is a more personal immortality possible?]

III. Yes, I and my works shall survive; but is immortality in this

sense sufficient to satisfy the religious sentiment? As an individual,

what do science and the philosophy of evolution promise me or permit me

to hope? A somewhat external and impersonal immortality is, as we have

seen, possible; is anything in the nature of an internal or personal

immortality likewise possible?

[Sidenote: Science answers in the negative.]

Assuredly, it is not of science that the individual can demand proofs

of his permanence. The fact of generation is, in the eyes of the man

of science, in and of itself a negative of individual immortality; the

social instinct which opens our hearts to thousands of other beings

emphasizes the negation, and the scientific and metaphysical instincts

themselves, which cause us to take an interest in the sensitive world,

in its laws and destinies, diminish, so to speak, our importance as

limited individuals. Thought breaks the limits of the self in which it

is confined, and our breast is too narrow to contain our heart. Oh,

how rapidly one learns in science and in art to make small account of

one’s self, and this diminution of self-esteem neither lessens one’s

enthusiasm nor one’s ardour, but adds to them only an element of manly

sadness such as a soldier might feel who says: “I count for but one in

the battle, nay, for less than that, for but a hundred millionth, and

if I should disappear the result of the contest would no doubt not be

changed, and yet I shall stay and fight.”

[Sidenote: Counsels resignation.]

Scientifically considered, individuality is a sort of provisional

native land, and one’s native land is a sort of magnified individual

with a consciousness composed of ideas and sentiments, and one’s love

for one’s country may be greater than one’s love for such and such an

individual. Such a love does not prevent us from understanding that

our country will not be immortal as a nation, that it will have its

periods of growth and of decay, that the obstacles which keep peoples

apart are caducous, and that nations incessantly disappear and lose

old elements and take on new. Why, merely from the fact that we love

our own individuality, should we not consent to the same reasoning in

regard to it; why should we wish to imprison it forever within the

limits of the same individuality? If a nation dies, why should not a

man? If it sometimes amounts to divination to cry out as one falls on

the battlefield, “_Finis patriæ!_” does it any the less surely amount

to divination to cry out in the presence of death, “_Finis individuæ_”?

Could Kosciusko feel that he himself had a right to live when Poland

and the ideas and beliefs to which he had devoted his life were no more?

[Sidenote: Dignity of resignation.]

A young girl, a relative of mine, on the point of death and unable

to articulate, signified her wish for a piece of paper. When it was

given to her, she began to write, “I do not want——” Death suddenly

intervened and interrupted her volition before it could find expression

in words; the thinking being and the expression of her thought seemed

to be annihilated by the same blow. The child’s protest, like her life,

was interrupted in the middle. Volition is powerless against death,

and it is useless to stiffen one’s will against the final blow. On

the contrary, man’s sole superiority in death consists in acceptance.

Pascal’s conscious reed might not only be constrained to bend like

any other reed, it might bend consentingly and respect the law that

requires its death. Next to consciousness of his own power, the highest

of man’s privileges is consciousness of the limits of his power, at

least as an individual. Out of the very disproportion between the

infinity that kills us, and the nothing that constitutes us, arises

the sense of a certain greatness in us; we prefer to be stricken

by a mountain rather than by a pebble; we should rather fall in a

struggle against a thousand than in a struggle against one; so that

intelligence, by measuring the greatness of our adversary, deprives us

of regret at our defeat.

[Sidenote: Desire to survive egoistic.]

To desire to make the individual, who is more or less physical even in

his moral nature, eternal, is, in the eyes of the man of science, a

remnant of egoism. In his judgment, the human mind should accept the

death of the individual by a species of intellectual devotion analogous

to that with which we accept the death of our native country. Modern

men of science may be defined as those who have no hope, ὁι μὴ

ἔχοντες ἐλπίδα, as St. Paul said; we are _individually_ of too small

account in the eyes of science to live always _individually_.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: But only when it relates to one’s self.]

Ought we, therefore, to consent cheerfully to the sacrifice of self,

and to die willingly for the benefit of the universal life? So far

as one’s self is concerned, one can make the sacrifice lightly, but

the annihilation of those one loves cannot be accepted by a conscious

and affectionate being. It is in vain for scientific and philosophic

stoicism to urge with Epictetus that it is natural for a vase, which is

fragile, to break, and for a man, who is mortal, to die. The question

still remains, whether what is natural and scientific ought, as the

Stoics alleged, to satisfy my reason and my love. As a matter of fact,

when one really loves another person, what one endeavours to love is

not the element of fragility, the vase of clay, but the intelligence

and the heart, which Epictetus declines to consider separately from

their perishable accompaniments. One attaches one’s self to them as

to something permanent; one corrects and transfigures nature itself,

and passes in thought beyond the brutality of its laws, and therein

lies, perhaps, the very essence of the love of another. If the laws

of nature, after seeming for a moment to be suspended and vanquished

by the force of one’s disinterested love, subsequently break the bond

that holds them in check, is it surprising that one’s love should

still hold out against them? It is not only pain that I experience

at being baffled by the laws of nature; it is indignation, it is the

sense of injustice. The Stoics regarded pain as a passive affection of

the sensibility simply, but moral pain implies a struggle of the will

against nature, and an effort, as they themselves admit, to correct it.

It is on this ground that pain is not an evil; its rôle is incessantly

to impose our moral and social ideal on our physical nature, to force

it to perfect itself; pain is the principle of development in life,

and if there exists a means of vanquishing death, it is perhaps by

virtue of pain that we shall arrive at it. We are right, therefore, in

rebelling against nature’s powers of life and death, in so far as she

exercises them for the purpose of annihilating what is morally best in

us and in others.

[Sidenote: Love under the form of eternity.]

True love should never be expressed in the language of time. We say: “I

loved my father during his lifetime; I was deeply attached to my mother

or my sister.” Why locate it in the past? Why not say always: “I love

my father or my mother?” Does not, and should not, love lay claim to an

eternal present?

[Sidenote: Uniqueness of the individual.]

How could one say to a mother that there is nothing truly and

definitively alive, personal, unique, in the at once smiling and

meditative eyes of the child she holds upon her knees; that the little

being that she dreams of mature, and good, and great, is a simple

incident in the life of the species? No; her child is not like any

other that has ever lived or that ever will live; none other could

possess that look. Nowhere among the generations of men can there

exist a fac-simile of the beloved face before one. All nature does not

possess the equivalent of the individual, which it can destroy, but

not replace. It is not, therefore, without reason that love refuses

to consent to the substitution of one individual for another, which

constitutes the very movement of life; it cannot reconcile itself to

the eternal whirl in the dust of being; it is bent on fixing life, on

arresting the world in mid-progress. But the world does not stop at

its bidding. The future calls to generation after generation, and this

powerful force of attraction is also a force of dissolution. Nature

gives birth by means of death, and the joy of new loves is composed of

the fragments of the old.

[Sidenote: The protest of love against death not limited to humanity.]

This protest of love against death, against the dissolution of the

individual, attaches also to the lower animals. A dog, it seems, has

only a market value, and yet can I ever buy again one that shall be the

equivalent of this one that has died before my eyes? He loved me with

all the power of his unhappy being, and endeavoured to hold fast to me

while he was slipping away, and I endeavoured to hold him fast. Does

not every being that loves acquire a right to immortality? Yes; the

ideal of affection would be to immortalize all conscious beings; nay,

more, the poet who is delicately sensitive to the individuality of a

flower, or a ray of coloured light, of the drop of dew that refracts

it, would wish to immortalize all nature, would wish to view under the

form of eternity the rainbow that quivers in a soap bubble; for can

any two bubbles ever be the same? And yet, while the poet aims thus

at holding everything fast, at preserving everything, at fixing his

dreams, at enchaining the ocean of life, the man of science replies

that the eternal flood must be allowed to pulsate, to engulf our tears

and our blood, and that the world must be left free. For the man of

science, the flux and reflux and progress of life are more sacred than

the love of the individual.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Antagonism between love and science.]

Thus, in the question of individual immortality, two great forces drag

human thought in opposite directions. Science is inclined everywhere

to sacrifice the individual in the name of natural evolution; love

is inclined, in the name of a higher moral and social evolution, to

preserve the individual. The antinomy is one of the most disquieting

that the philosophic mind has to deal with.

[Sidenote: The best in one may survive.]

Should science be admitted to be wholly in the right, or must we

believe that an element of truth exists in the social instinct

which lies at the basis of affection, as there is a presentiment

and anticipation of the truth in all great natural instincts? The

social instinct possesses a greater value at the present day, because

philosophers are beginning to consider even the individual as a

society, and to recognize association as a universal law of nature.

Love, which is the power of cohesion at its highest degree, is

perhaps right in its desire for an element in the association between

individuals. Its sole error is that of exaggerating its pretensions

and of misplacing its hopes. After all, one must not be too exacting

nor ask too much of nature. A true philosopher, even for those that he

loves, should not shrink from proof by fire, and death is the flame

that purifies while it consumes. If anything survives the ordeal that

alone is much, and if what survives is precisely what is best in us,

what more can be asked? One may break the vase, of which Epictetus

speaks, but the perfume remains, and floats out into the air, and

becomes, no doubt, ultimately indistinguishable, but still subsists.

[Sidenote: Sociology and the problem of immortality.]

The science which seems to offer the strongest opposition to the

preservation of the individual is mathematics, which recognizes the

existence of nothing in the world but variable and equivalent figures

and abstractions. On the contrary, perhaps the most concrete of the

sciences, sociology, recognizes everywhere groups of realities;

sociology therefore cannot hold relations that arise out of

association, nor the terms between which they exist, so cheap. Let us

consider whether, from the point of view of a more complete and more

concrete science, consciousness, which is the principle of personality,

properly so called, necessarily and forever excludes the possibility of

indefinite duration that all great sciences attribute to the spirit.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The basis of existence not substance but activity.]

III. Antique metaphysics gave too much attention to questions of

substance, to considering whether the soul is simple or complex.

The question amounts to whether the soul is made of indivisible

or divisible material; it assumes as the basis of the phenomena of

mind, an imaginary and in some sort extended substance. It was upon

this doctrine of the simple substance that the demonstration of the

immortality of the soul was founded. Evolutionist philosophy tends

to fix our attention nowadays, not on the substance, but on the

way the substance behaves, that is to say, in physical terms, on

movements.[166] Consciousness is a certain action accompanied by a

certain collective unity of movements. If it exists in a substance

it is not the duration of this substance that interests us, but that

of its activity, since it is that activity which constitutes our

consciousness.

[166] “Whoever says that he cannot conceive an action without

a substratum confesses by his very words that the alleged

substratum which he conceives is a product of his imagination;

it is his own thought that he is obliged to place as a support

behind the reality of things. By a pure illusion of the

imagination, after one has stripped off from an object the only

qualities that it possesses, one affirms that something of it,

one knows not what, still subsists.” (Schelling, _System of

Transcendental Idealism_.)

“To be,” said Berkeley, “is to be this or that. Simply to be,

without explanatory addition, is to be nothing; it is a simple

conception, if not a word void of sense.”

“Berkeley’s object was to overthrow the hypothesis of a

substance lying beyond the range of spirit, as an imperceptible

support of the qualities of which our senses take cognizance.”

(Félix Revaisson, _La Philosophie en France_, 9.)

See also M. Lachelier, _De l’Induction_.

[Sidenote: Continuity of existence means continuity of function.]

Wundt is one of the contemporary philosophers, who, after Aristotle,

Hume, Berkeley, and Kant, has best shown the illusiveness of

endeavouring to discover a simple substance underlying consciousness.

It is only internal experience, he says, only consciousness itself,

that comes to us guaranteed by immediate certainty. And this implies,

he adds, “that all these substances which spiritualism regards as the

basis of subjective or objective experience are of the highest degree

of uncertainty, for in no experience whatsoever are they given. They

are deliberate fictions, by the aid of which it has been attempted

to explain the unity of experience.” The true explanation of this

unity should be sought for elsewhere in continuity of function, and

not in simplicity of substance. “The consecutive effects of anterior

states combine with those which arise later; in this way there is

caused a subjective continuity of states which corresponds to the

objective continuity of movement, which is the condition of unity of

consciousness.” The binding together of successive mental states is

lacking in bodies, although they must possess the germ of action and

of sensation. For this reason Leibnitz was right in saying that bodies

are “momentary spirits,” which forget everything immediately, and know

only a present, uncomplicated by a past or a future. Conscious life,

on the contrary, by the very means of changing elements, realizes

a continuity of mental functions, a memory of the past, a certain

durability. This continuity is not a result of simplicity, but, on the

contrary, of the higher complexity that belongs to mental functions.

“On the physical side, as on the psychical side,” says Wundt, “the

living body is a unity; this unity is not founded in simplicity but

in compositeness of a high degree of complexity. Consciousness, with

its multitude of combined states, is a unity analogous to that of the

bodily organism. The absolute correlation between the physical and the

psychical suggests the following hypothesis:[167] that what we call the

soul is the internal aspect of what, in its external aspect, we call

the body that contains the soul. This way of conceiving the problem

of correlation inevitably leads us to the belief that the essence of

reality is intellectual, and that the fundamental attribute of being is

development or evolution. Human consciousness is the highest point of

such evolution; it constitutes the nodal point in the course of nature

where the world recollects itself. It is not as a simple being but as a

product evolved out of innumerable elements that the human soul is, as

Leibnitz says, ‘a mirror of the world.’”[168]

[167] This hypothesis is identical with that of monism.

[168] Wundt, _Psychologie_, vol. ii.

[Sidenote: The problem of immortality at the present day.]

From this modern point of view, which is a development of that of

Aristotle,[169] the question of immortality amounts to asking how

far the continuity of mental functions may be supposed to extend the

continuity of one’s intellectual being, which is the subjective unity

of a complex multiplicity aware of itself as such?

[169] See M. Ravaisson, _La Métaphysique d’Aristote_, vol. ii.,

and _Rapport sur la Philosophie en France_.

[Sidenote: Indissoluble material compounds.]

Note, first, that even in the external world we are not without

examples of indissoluble compounds; certain simple atoms are compounds

of this sort. The atom of hydrogen is a vortex of little worlds. Well,

is there nothing indissoluble in the universe except so-called atoms,

so-called physical “individuals,” and is it unpermissible to conceive,

on the subjective side, individuals more worthy of the name, whose

duration is guaranteed by the very fact of their complexity?

[Sidenote: Restatement of the problem.]

According to the reigning doctrines in physiology and experimental

psychology, individual consciousness is, as we have said, a compound of

the consciousnesses of all the cells that are united in the physical

organism.[170] The individual, consisting thus of a society, the

problem of death amounts to the question, whether there can exist an

association, at once solid enough to endure forever, and flexible

enough to adapt itself to the ever-shifting conditions of universal

evolution.

[170] Association or grouping is the general law of organic

and inorganic existence. Society, properly so called, is only

a particular case, is only the most complex instance, of this

universal law.... A consciousness is rather a _We_ than an

_I_. It is capable of union with other consciousnesses and

of forming, in conjunction with them, a more comprehensive

and more durable consciousness, from which it receives and

to which it communicates thought, as a star both borrows

and communicates motion in the system to which it belongs.

(Espinas, _Des Sociétés animales_, 128. See also M. Fouillée,

_La Science sociale contemporaine_, l. iii.)

[Sidenote: The ideal type of association.]

This problem, be it observed in the first place, is precisely that

which human societies are endeavouring to solve. At the lowest stage

of social evolution solidity and flexibility are rarely united. Egypt,

for example, was solid but not very progressive. A stage higher in the

scale of evolution, in proportion as science advances and personal

liberty comes to be recognized, civilization becomes both more solid

and indefinitely flexible, and at some period in the future, when

scientific civilization shall have once mastered the globe, it will

possess a power that the most compact, and, in appearance, the solidest

masses cannot equal; it will be firmer than the very pyramids, and

will at the same time prove increasingly flexible, progressive,

capable of adaptation to every variation in the environment. The

synthesis of complexity and stability will then have been achieved.

The very character of thought is increasing adaptivity, and the

more intellectual a being is, the greater its power of displaying

the qualities which are most advantageous under any given set of

circumstances. The eye, which is more intellectual than the sense of

touch, furnishes a power of adaptation to a wider and more diversified

environment. Thought, which is more intellectual than sight, enables

one to adapt one’s self to the universe itself, to the immensity of

the stars, as well as to the infinite pettiness of the atoms in a drop

of water. If memory is a masterpiece of intellectual record-taking,

reasoning is a masterpiece of flexibility, of mobility, and of

progress. So that, whether individuals or nations are in question, the

most intellectual are those which possess at once the greatest amount

of stability and of adaptability. The problem of society is to unite

these two things, the problem of immortality is at bottom the same;

the individual consciousness being, as we have seen, itself a society.

From this point of view, it seems probable that the more perfect

one’s personal consciousness is, the more absolutely it possesses

both durability and a power of indefinite metamorphosis. So that,

even admitting what the Pythagoreans insist upon, that consciousness

is a number, a harmony, a musical chord, we may still ask whether

certain harmonies may not become sufficiently perfect to endure forever

without, on that account, ceasing to enter as elements into richer and

more complex harmonies. A lyre might vibrate _ad infinitum_ without

its several strings losing their respective tonalities amid the

multitude of their variations. There ought to exist an evolution in the

organization of consciousness as in the organization of molecules and

living cells, and the most vital and durable and flexible combinations

should possess the advantage in the struggle for existence.

[Sidenote: The last stage in the struggle for existence.]

Consciousness is a collection of associations of ideas, and,

consequently, of habits, grouped about a centre; and we know that

habits possess an indefinite duration; contemporary philosophy

regards the properties of elementary material substances as habits,

as instances of indissoluble association. A vegetable or animal

species is a habit, a type of grouping and organic form which subsists

century after century. It is not proved that mental habits may not in

the course of evolution achieve a fixity and a durability of which

we possess to-day no example. It is not proved that instability is

the definitive and eternal characteristic of the highest functions

of consciousness. A philosophic hopefulness in regard to immortality

is founded on the belief that, in the last stages of evolution,

the struggle for existence will become a struggle for immortality.

Nature will then come to realize, not by virtue of simplicity, but of

judicious complexity, a sort of progressive immortality, the final

product of natural selection; and, if so, religious symbols will have

been simply an anticipation of this final period. We shall have wings

to support us in our flight through life, Rückert says, wings to

support us in our flight past death; but the bird does not learn to

fly immediately nor at once; the hereditary habit of flight must have

been acquired and developed by the species because of the advantage it

brings with it in the struggle for existence. Survival, therefore, must

not be conceived as completed at a bound, but as slowly perfected by a

gradual and continuous lengthening of the average span of life. It must

be shown, however, that such a survival would constitute a superiority,

not only for the individual, but for the species.

[Sidenote: Psychology and the communion of souls.]

And now let us consider consciousnesses in their relations to each

other. Contemporary psychology tends to the doctrine that different

consciousnesses, or if you prefer, different aggregates of states

of consciousness, may combine, and even interpenetrate, somewhat

analogously to what theologians mean by communion of souls. And

if so, it is permissible to ask whether, if consciousnesses can

interpenetrate, they may not some day come to possess a continuity of

existence; may not be able to hand on their existence to each other,

and to communicate to each other a new sort of durability instead of

remaining, as Leibnitz says, more or less momentary; supposing always

that such durability would be advantageous to the species.

[Sidenote: Possible frequency of the phenomenon.]

Mystical intuitions sometimes contain a certain presentiment of the

truth. St. Paul tells us that the heavens and the earth shall pass

away, that prophecies and languages shall pass away, but that one thing

shall not pass, and that is charity, or love. If this doctrine is to be

interpreted philosophically, the bond of continual love, which is of

all bonds the least primitive and the most complex, must be conceived

as capable of ultimately becoming the most durable of bonds, and as

tending progressively to embrace a larger and larger proportion of the

whole number of the inhabitants of the celestial city. It is by what is

best, what is most disinterested, most impersonal, and most loving in

one, that one achieves communion with the consciousness of another, and

such disinterestedness must coincide ultimately with disinterestedness

in others, with others’ love for one’s self; and there will arise thus

a possible fusion of souls, a communion so intense that as one suffers

in the bosom of another, so, too, one may come to live in the heart of

another. To be sure, we have passed here into the limits of dreamland,

but it is to be remarked that such dreams are extra-scientific, and not

anti-scientific.

[Sidenote: Vision of the ideal society.]

Let us conceive ourselves as existing in this problematical, though

not impossible, epoch when individual consciousnesses shall have

achieved a higher degree of complexity and of subjective unity, and

along with them a power of more intimate communion than they possess

to-day, without the fact of that communion altogether breaking down

the bounds of personality. They will communicate thus with each other,

as the living cells in the same body sympathize with each other, and

contribute each to form the collective consciousness; they will be all

in all, and all in every part. And indeed one may readily conceive

means of communication and of sympathy, much more subtle and direct

than those which exist to-day among different individuals. The science

of the nervous system is in its earliest stages; we are acquainted as

yet with exaltation as a state of disease only, and with suggestion at

a distance as an incident merely of hypnotism; but we already begin

to be dimly aware of a whole world of phenomena that go to show the

possibility of a direct communication between different, and even

under certain circumstances of a sort of reciprocal absorption of two

personalities. Some such complete fusion of two consciousnesses, that

however still preserve their individuality, is to-day the dream of love

which, as one of the greatest of social forces, ought not to labour

in vain. Supposing the power of communion with other consciousnesses

gradually to develop, the death of the individual will manifestly

encounter a greater and greater resistance on the part of the several

minds with which such an individual is in communication. And, in any

event, the minds with which an individual is in communication will

tend to retain an increasingly vivid, and, so to speak, living memory

of him. Memory at the present day is simply an absolutely distinct

representation of a certain being—an image, as it were, vibrating

in the ether after the original has disappeared. The reason is that

there does not as yet exist an intimate solidarity and continuous

communication between one individual and another. But it is possible

to conceive an image which would be scarcely distinguishable from the

object represented; would be the sum of what such and such an object

means to me; would be, as it were, the prolongation of the effect

of another consciousness on my consciousness. Such an image might

be regarded as a point of contact between the two consciousnesses

involved. Just as in generation the two factors combine in a certain

third, which represents them both, so such an animated and beloved

image, instead of being passive, would constitute a component part of

the collective energy and purpose of one’s being; would count for one

in the complex whole that one calls a mind or a consciousness.

[Sidenote: Personal immortality.]

According to this hypothesis, the problem would be, to be at once

loving enough and beloved enough to live and survive in the minds

of others. The individual, in so far as his external accidents are

concerned, would disappear; but what is best in him would survive in

the souls of those he loves who love him. A ray of sunlight may for

a time record upon a bit of dead paper the lines of a face that no

longer exists among the living; nay, human art may go farther, and

impart to canvas or to stone the minutest resemblances to human life;

but art has not yet succeeded in imparting a soul to Galatea. Love must

be added to art to achieve that miracle—men must love each other so

completely that they become identified in the universal consciousness.

When that consummation has been reached, each of us will live

completely, and without loss, in the love of our fellows. The power of

love is not limited, like that of light, to giving permanence to the

outward appearances of life; it is capable of lending stability to life

itself.

[Sidenote: Elimination of death.]

Separation on such an hypothesis would be as impossible as in the case

of those atomic vortices of which we spoke above, which consisted each

in a single individual, in the sense that no force could break them

up into their elements; their unity lay not in their simplicity, but

in their inseparability. Just so in the sphere of consciousness, a

manifold of conscious states may conceivably form a luminous ring that

can neither be broken nor extinguished. The atom, it has been said, is

inviolable, and consciousness may come to be inviolable _de facto_.

[Sidenote: Triumph of love.]

Nay, one’s secondary and reflected life in the minds of other people

might even come to be more important than the original of which it is

a copy, insomuch that a gradual process of substitution might take

place, a substitution of which death would simply mark the definitive

and tranquil accomplishment. We might feel ourselves, even in this

life, entering into possession of an immortality in the hearts of

those who love us. Such an immortality would be a species of new

creation. Morality, and religion even, are in our judgment simply the

outcome of moral productivity; such an immortality would be simply an

ultimate manifestation of the same thing. And if it were once achieved,

the opposition that the man of science to-day perceives between the

continuation of the species and the immortality of the individual would

have disappeared in a final synthesis. Death closes one’s eyes, but

love stands by to open them again.

[Sidenote: Complete survival of the individual.]

The point of contact might thus be found between life and immortality.

At the beginning of evolution, death was the end of the individual and

the light of consciousness ended in obscurity. By virtue of moral and

social progress, one’s friends tend to remember one after death with

increasing intensity and for longer and longer periods; the image that

survives the original fades only by degrees, and more and more slowly,

as the course of evolution advances. And it may be that, at some time

in the future, the memory of beloved beings will so mingle with the

life and the blood of each new generation, and will be so passed on

from one to the other, that it will become a permanent element in

the current of conscious existence. Such a persistent memory of the

individual would be a gain in power for the species, for they who

remember love more dearly than they who forget, and to love dearly

is advantageous to the species. It is not, therefore, unpermissible

to conceive a gradual increase in the faculty of memory by natural

selection. The day may come when the individual will survive in as

detailed and complete a fac-simile of what he was in his lifetime as

can well be imagined, and death may become less significant than a

period of absence; love will endow the beloved object with the mystery

of eternal presence.

[Sidenote: Exemplified to-day in isolated cases.]

Even at the present day individuals here and there are sometimes so

deeply loved that it is doubtful whether or no what is best in them

does not survive their death, and their minds, unhappily subject to

the weaknesses of humanity and unable as yet to break through the

limitations of the physical organism, do not really succeed, by virtue

of the love that surrounds them, in achieving an almost complete

immortality even before their death. It is in the hearts of those

who love them that they really live, and in all the world the corner

that it really concerns them to be able to call their own lies in the

affections of two or three people.

[Sidenote: Destined to become common.]

This phenomenon of mental palingenesis, which is at present isolated,

may gradually come to be extended to the whole of the human species.

Immortality may be an ultimate possession acquired by the species,

as a whole, for the benefit of all of its members. Every individual

consciousness may come to survive as a constituent part in a more

comprehensive consciousness. Fraternity may, at some time in the

future, be universal, render soul transparent to soul, and the ideal of

morals and of religion be realized. Every soul will be reflected and

mirrored in every other; although it will not suffice for that purpose

simply to look into each other’s eyes unless one’s heart positively

shines through them. One must project one’s own image into the mirror

of the sea, if one is to find it there.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Possibility of a still more literal immortality.]

It must, of course, be admitted that, if such speculations do not

positively stretch away beyond the limits of possibility, they

certainly do stretch away beyond the limits of actual science and

experience, but precisely what renders all such hypotheses uncertain

renders them also forever possible: namely, our irremediable ignorance

of the basis of consciousness. Whatever discovery science may make in

regard to consciousness and its conditions, it will never ascertain its

essence, nor, consequently, the limits of its possible subsistence.

Psychologically and metaphysically considered, what are conscious

action and volition? Nay, what is unconscious activity, what is force,

what is efficient causality? We do not know, we are obliged to define

subjective activity and power in terms of objective motion, that is

to say, in terms of their effect, and it will always be permissible

for a philosopher to deny that motion, as a simple change of relations

in space, constitutes the whole of an action, and that there are no

uncaused movements, no relations between non-existent terms. And, if

so, how are we to know precisely to what extent activity is essentially

enduring as the emanation of a subjective power of which motion is, as

it were, the visible sign, and of which consciousness is the immediate

and intimate “apprehension.” Neither word nor act expresses all of us,

something always remains unsaid, and will, perhaps, remain unsaid to

the end of our lives—and beyond. It is possible that the foundation of

personal consciousness is a power as incapable of being exhausted by

any amount of activity as of being confined to any variety of forms.

[Sidenote: Can never be disproved.]

In any event the matter is, and always will be, a mystery, which arises

from the fact that consciousness is _sui generis_, is absolutely

inexplicable, and at bottom forever inaccessible to scientific formulæ

and a fit subject, therefore, of metaphysical hypotheses. Just as being

is the supreme genus, _genus generalissimum_, in the objective world,

so consciousness is the supreme genus in the subjective world; so that

no reply can ever be given to these two questions: What is being, and

what is consciousness? Nor, therefore, to this third question, which

depends upon the two preceding: Will consciousness continue to exist?

On an old dial, in a town in the south of France, may be read the

legend: _Sol non occidat!_ May the light not fail! Such is, indeed, the

proper epilogue to _fiat lux_. Of all things in this world light is the

one upon which we are most dependent; it, of all things, should have

been created once for all, εἰς ἀεί; should pour down from the heavens

through all eternity. And the light of the mind, which is more powerful

than the light of the sun, may ultimately succeed in eluding the law of

destruction which everywhere in the book of nature immediately follows

the law of creation, and then only will the command, _fiat lux_, have

been accomplished. _Lux non occidat in æternum!_

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Stoicism the last resort.]

IV. But, it will be asked, what consolation and encouragement is

there in all this for those who do not feel the charm of these remote

hypotheses concerning the outer limits of existence, for those who see

death in all its brutality, and lean, as you yourself probably do, in

the present state of the theory of evolution, somewhat toward purely

negative conclusions? What can be said to them when they stand, as they

believe they do, on the brink of annihilation? Nothing better could

be said than the simple and somewhat unfeeling words of the ancient

Stoics, who, be it remarked also, were themselves disbelievers in

the immortality of the individual: “Be not a coward!” Deeply in the

wrong as Stoicism was in the presence of death, in its insensibility

to the pain of love which was the condition of its power and of its

progress among mankind, when it interdicted attachment and commanded

impassibility, it was right when it recommended insensibility to one’s

own death. A man needs no other consolation than to feel that he has

lived a complete life, that he has done his work, and that mankind

is not the worse, nay, is perhaps the better for his having existed;

and that whatever he has loved will survive, that the best of his

dreams will somewhere be realized, that the impersonal element in his

consciousness, the portion of the immortal patrimony of the human race,

which has been intrusted to him and constitutes what is best in him,

will endure and increase, and be passed on, without loss, to succeeding

generations; that his own death is of no more importance, no more

breaks the eternal continuity of things, than the shivering of a bit of

a hand-glass does. To gain a complete consciousness of the continuity

of life is to estimate death at its proper value, which is perhaps

that of the disappearance of a kind of living illusion. Once more, in

the name of reason, which is capable of understanding death, and of

accepting it as it accepts whatsoever else is intelligible—be not a

coward!

[Sidenote: Dignity of resignation.]

More than that, despair is grotesque because it is useless; cries and

groans, at least such as are not purely reflex, originally served their

purpose in the life of the species of arousing attention or pity, or

of summoning aid; it is to the fact that it was once useful that the

existence and propagation of the language of pain are due; but as there

is no help against the inexorable, and no pity to be asked for in a

matter that is in harmony with the interests of the totality of things

and conformable to the dictates of our own thought, resignation alone

is the proper attitude of mind, or rather a certain inner assent, or

still better, a smile of detachment and intelligence and comprehension,

and interest even in our own extinction. What is beautiful in the

natural order of things cannot definitively excite despair.

[Sidenote: Of considering one’s own case impersonally.]

If anyone who has experienced the pangs of death should make light of

the sort of consolation here referred to, we reply that we are not

ourselves speaking in absolute ignorance of the visage of the supreme

moment. We have ourselves had occasion more than once to look death in

the face, less often no doubt than a soldier in active service; but we

have had more time to consider it at our ease, and we have never found

reason to desire that it should be veiled by an irrational belief.

It is better to see and to know the truth; it is better not to tread

the brink of the precipice with bandaged eyes. To disguise death is

to pay it too great a compliment. We have had more than one example

of it under our eyes. We have seen our grandfather, who, by the way,

was himself not a believer, stricken down by successive attacks of

apoplexy, and he said to us, smiling in the intervals of his pain,

that he felt but one regret, and that was that so many superstitions

should be in existence, and that Catholicism in particular (it was at

that time when France was aiding the Papacy) should still be in power.

Note also that the progress of science—in especial, of physiological

and medical sciences—tends to increase the number of instances in

which death is foreseen and is waited for almost with serenity.

The least stoical of mankind sometimes feel the inclination toward

an act of heroism, which, though in a measure forced upon them, is

nevertheless not without its dignity. In the course of certain cases

of protracted disease, such as consumption or cancer, the patient, if

he possesses the necessary scientific qualifications, can calculate

the probabilities of his life and determine within a few days at what

time he will die. Bergot, whom I knew, was such a patient; Trousseau

was another, and there have been many more. Knowing one’s self to be

condemned, feeling one’s self to count for but one in the infinity of

the universe, one can consider one’s self and one’s progress toward the

unknown in a sense impersonally.

[Sidenote: Sudden death a blessing.]

If such a death is not without its bitterness, it is nevertheless the

one which, of all others perhaps, is likely to prove attractive to a

philosopher, to a mind with a passion for clearness, for foresight, for

comprehension. For the rest, in the majority of cases, death takes its

victims in the height of their vigour, in the midst of the struggle

for existence; it is a matter of a few hours, like birth; its very

suddenness renders it less redoubtable to the majority of mankind, who

find it comparatively easy to be brave in the presence of a danger that

is brief, and they hold out against the supreme enemy with the same

obstinate courage that they would display against any other. On the

contrary, when death approaches slowly, and deprives us of our strength

by degrees, and each day leaves us in possession of something less than

the day before, another source of consolation is open to us.

[Sidenote: Decline in interest in life with decline in vitality.]

It is a law of nature that diminution of vitality brings with it a

proportionate diminution of desire; a man cares less keenly for what

he feels himself less capable of attaining. Illness and old age always

make us set less value upon the joys of which they deprive us which

they first render bitter and then impossible; and the last joy of all,

that of bare existence, is as subject to the law as its predecessors.

Consciousness of one’s inability to live brings with it inability to

desire to live; it becomes a burden to draw one’s breath. One feels

one’s self dispersing, falling into dust, and no longer possessing

the strength to check the process of decay. Moreover, egoism declines

with declining strength; as we approach the grave we gain a power of

estimating ourselves more nearly at our just value, of understanding

that a faded flower has no right to live; that, as Marcus Aurelius

said, “a ripe olive _ought_ to fall from the tree.” One sentiment alone

survives, a sense of weariness, of extreme weariness. We long for rest,

long to relax the tension of life, to lie at ease, to have done with

it once for all. Oh! to be no longer on one’s feet. The dying well

know the supreme joy of looking forward to their last resting place!

They no longer envy the interminable file of the living whom they

perceive, as it were in a dream, vainly marching and countermarching

upon the surface of the earth where they sleep. They are resigned

to the solitude and abandonment of death. They are like travellers

in the desert—worn with fever, and fatigue, and unwilling to make

another step in advance; they are no longer borne up by the hope of

revisiting familiar skies; they are unable to surmount the remaining

difficulties of the way and request their companions to leave them, to

march on without them, and, stretched upon the sand, watch without a

tear, without a desire, the departing caravan creeping away toward the

horizon.

[Sidenote: Persistence of curiosity.]

Naturally, some of us will always shrink before death, and wring our

hands, and lose our self-possession. Some temperaments are subject to

vertigo, to a horror of abysses, and in especial to a horror of the

great abyss toward which all paths converge. Montaigne counsels such

people to throw themselves blindly over the verge; others counsel them

to fix their eyes till the end on some small mountain flower in the

crevice of the rock. The manliest of mankind will give their attention

to the depths of space and to the heavens, will fill their hearts with

the immensity of the universe, will magnify their souls to the limits

of the abyss, will subdue the rebellious individuality in themselves

before it is forcibly subdued for them, and will scarcely be aware of

the precipice till they have fairly passed beyond its brink. And for

the philosopher, who is essentially a worshipper of the unknown, death

possesses the attraction of novelty; birth only excepted, it is the

most mysterious incident in life. Death has its secret, its enigma, and

we are haunted by a vague hope that, as the final touch of irony, it

may be revealed to us at the last moment; that the dying, according to

the ancient belief, divine it and close their eyes only to shield them

from an intolerable brightness. Man’s last agony and his last pulse of

curiosity are one.

INDEX.

A

Absoluteness of primitive faith, 139

Adler, Felix, 367

All-embracing unity, modernity of concept of, 39

Alviella, M. Goblet d’, 254, 277, 352

Amiel, 378, 466

Analysis, effect of, on emotions, 461;

destroys irrational joys only, 466

Ancestor worship, 47

Animal’s prayer, 74;

religion in lower, 76

Animate and inanimate, obviousness of distinction between, 49

Animism, priority of, 52;

dualistic, 82

Anomy, religious, 374

Antagonism between wealth and population, 315

Arnold, Matthew, 23, 92, 143, 156, 174, 189, 247, 259

Art, and religion, 414;

necessary reforms in, 418

Asceticism, 211, 473

Asia, danger from, 321

Association, ideal type of, 392

Augustine, Saint, 147

Aurelius, Marcus, 360

B

Baudelaire’s criminal, 406

Baudrillart, 324, 332

Beneficent error, 14

Bentham, 403

Bertillon, M., 324, 337

Bost, Pastor, 184

Buddhism, 362

Byron, 407

C

Caro, M., 387

Catholicism, 203, 244, 247

Cause, conception of God as first, 88

Celibacy, 306;

tax on, 336

Charity, intolerance a perverted, 147, 400

Christianity, 359, 362;

main strength of, 180;

the error of, 196;

and communism, 240

Civilization, menace to modern, 318

Clergy, impropriety of suppressing the, 274

Colenso, Bishop, 357

Commune, The, 244

Communism and Christianity, 240

Compensation, notion of, 75

Comte, A., 109

Confessional, the, 248

Conservatism, feminine, 7

Constant, Benjamin, 146

Conway, Moncure, 167

Cosmism, 365

Creation hypothesis, 102, 433

Credulity, feminine, 29

Crimes of French Revolution and Commune not due to non-religion, 244

Criminal, Baudelaire’s, 406

Criminology and religion, 241

D

Darwin, 295

Dead, cult for the, 410

Defect of French mind, 20

Definition, by Schleiermacher and Feuerbach, of religion, 3

Delirium, 82

Dependence of religion upon morality, 192

Determinism, concept of, 72;

reconciliation between indeterminism and, 484

Diderot, 222

Dissolution, possibility of arresting, 497

Divine and human love, conflict between, 201

Divine Providence, notion of a, 85;

futility of doctrine of, 440

Divinization, 69

Doctrine of Divine Providence, futility of, 440

Dogma, unfitness as material for education of religions, 272

Dogmatism and intelligence, 150

Doubt, Morality of, 382

Dreams, 67, 82

Dualistic animism, 82

Duty of civilized races to multiply, 319

E

Ecstasy, religious, 222

Education, unfitness of religious dogma as material for, 272;

by the priesthood, 273, 282;

moral, 280;

husband responsible for wife’s, 310

Egoism and mysticism, conflict between, 204

Eighteenth century view of miracles, 91

Espinas, 526

Essence of religion, 1, 10

Ethical Culture Society, 367

Evil of belief in a Divine Providence, 97

Evil, problem of, 433

Experiment in miracles, 158

F

Fainting, 82

Faith, absoluteness of primitive, 139;

complete intellectual rest, incident to, 142;

willfully blind, 143;

transformation of inevitable, 234

Fall of man, doctrine of the, 439

Family, religion of the, 322

Fanaticism, possible scientific, 395

Father’s duty in regard to religious instruction, 286

Feminine credulity, 297;

conservatism, 297;

timidity, 298

Féré, M. Ch., 462

Fetichism, 44, 48, 65

Fetichistic monism, primitive metaphysics a, 81

Feuerbach’s definition of religion, 3

First cause, concept of God as, 88

Fiske, Mr. John, 452, 455, 512

Force, use of justifiable, 146

Fouillée, M. Alfred, 7, 37, 435, 484, 485, 493, 526

France, proposal to Protestantize, 249;

gradual improvement of, 322

French, mind, its defect, 20;

Revolution, 250;

gaiety, 268

G

Gaiety, French, 268

Ghosts, 83

Gift, notion of, 75

God, conceived as first cause, 88, 431;

as ordered, 104;

as creator, 432;

responsible for evil, 433;

His omnipotence, 442;

hypothesis of, a non-omnipotent, 443;

disanthropomorphization of concept of, 452;

possible evolution of by natural selection, 496

God, love of, 131;

belief in, falls with belief in devil, 165;

love of, on the wane, 205

Goethe, 377, 400

Grace, doctrine of, 200

H

Hartmann, Von, 39, 108, 109, 464

Hasheesh, use of, defended, 223

Havet, M., 355

Hellenism, 261

Henneguy, Felix, 290

Henotheism, 27, 39, 108

Hindu tolerance, 32

History and religion, 158

Human and divine love, conflict between, 261

Humanity, religion of, 365

Humanization, 68

Husband responsible for wife’s education, 310

Huxley, 480

Hysteria, 83

I

Ideal type of association, 392

Idealism, 479

Incuriosity of primitive man, 51

Indeterminism, reconciliation between determinism and, 484

Individualism, religious, 12

Infinite, concept of the, 34

Inheritance, injustice of present law of, 338

Initiative, sentiment of personal, 98

Instinct, religious, 40, 229;

of self-preservation and sociality, 44

Instruction, father’s duty in regard to, 286

Insurance and religion, 161

Intolerance, incident to faith, 144;

a perverted charity, 147

Invisible, suffering from the, a modern malady, 35

Immanence of conscious life in nature, 66

Immortality, importance of concept of, 119

J

Javal, M., 337, 341

Jerome, Saint, 355

Jesus, 134, 187, 356

Junqua, Dr., 183

K

Kant, 195, 380, 433, 447

L

Lange, 415, 490

Laveleye, M. de, 249, 252, 284

Lenormant, M., 285

Leopardi, 468

Lethargy, 82

Liberal Protestantism, 182

Littré, 277, 288

Livingstone, 302

Love, conflict between divine and human, 201;

a cerebral stimulant, 307;

makes for sanity, 308;

of mankind, future of, 399

Love of God, 131;

on the wane, 205

Lower animals, religion in, 76

Luther, 193

M

Mainlaender, Phillipp, 458

Malthusianism, 317;

fallacy of, 317;

in France, 325

Marvellous, primitive man’s faith in the, 137

Materialism, 488

Maternity, girls should be trained for, 333

Medical knowledge, progress of, and religion, 162

Ménard, M. Louis, 249, 289

Metaphysics, primitive, a fetichistic monism, 81;

scope of, 383;

instability of, 389;

present direction of, 424

Michelet, 249, 320

Mill, John Stuart, 173, 442, 461

Mind stuff, 490

Misoneism, 125

Miracles, conception of, 87;

not frauds, 90;

eighteenth century view of, 91;

but illusions, 92;

experiment in, 128;

in modern times, 353

Modesty, nature or, 301

Mohammedanism, 257, 361

Molinari, M. de, 409

Monism, 493

Montesquieu, 329

Moral sentiment defined, 7

Moralism, 426

Morality and religion, 114, 241, 362;

dependence of religion upon, 192;

essence of, 197;

apart from religion not hard to teach, 402

Mormonism, 358

Müller, Max, 24, 49, 233

Mystery, fear of thunder due to sense of, 62

Mysticism a perversion, 132;

conflicts with egoism, 204;

and asceticism, 211;

and women, 299

N

Natural phenomena non-existent for primitive man, 64

Natural selection, evolution of gods by, 496

Nature a society, 55;

seeming menace of conscious life in, 66;

love of, 421;

inexhaustible resources of, 500

Neo-Christianity, 184

Neutrality, propriety in religious affairs of state, 277

Newman, Cardinal, 247

Newman, Mr. Francis, 351

Nirvâna, 473

Nonotte, Abbé, 327

Non-religion defined, 8;

the goal of religion, 167;

not responsible for the crimes of the French Revolution and the

Commune, 244

Novelty, persistent in the world, 470

O

Omnipotence, God’s, 442

P

Pantheism, 452

Panthelism, 55

Paraphysics, religion primarily a, 79

Parents, not protected against ingratitude, 334;

should be taxed inversely to number of children, 337

Parvé, M. Steyn, 283

Pascal, 202, 440

Pattison, Mark, 365

Paul, Saint, 356

Paul, Vincent de, 399

Personal initiative, sentiment of, 98

Pessimism, 457;

an optical illusion, 468

Pillon, M., 249

Polydemonism, 85

Population, antagonism between wealth and, 315;

importance of, 316;

inability of priest to cope with question of, 327;

decrease of, encouraged by the church, 328

Positivism, 24, 109, 365

Possession, 83

Prayer, the animal’s, 74;

kinds of, distinguished, 217;

durable element in, 217;

highest form of, 225

Priest and prophet, antagonism between, 128

Priesthood, origin of, 126;

education by the, 273, 282

Primary instruction and religion, 159

Primitive man, incurious, 51;

unaware of natural phenomena as such, 64;

and novelty, 125;

and the marvelous, 137

Primitive metaphysics, a fetichistic monism, 81

Problem of evil, 433

Prophet and priest, antagonism between, 128

Protestantism, 152, 167, 252;

liberal, 182

Providence, notion of a Divine, 85;

evil of belief in, 97;

futility of doctrine of, 440

R

Realism, 482

Reconciliation between determinism and indeterminism, 484

Relics, belief in, 86

Religion, essence of, 1, 10;

and science, difference between, 3;

Feuerbach’s definition of, 3;

Schleiermacher’s definition of, 3, 487;

of natural origin, 22;

and superstition, 78;

primarily a paraphysics, 79;

morally retrograde, 114;

and physiology, psychology, and history, 158;

and primary instruction, 159;

and development of commerce, 160;

and insurance, 161;

and progress of medical knowledge, 162;

tends toward non-religion, 167;

dependent upon morality, 192;

and crime, 241;

not essential to morality, 241;

deserted by genius, 355;

of humanity, 365;

and art, 414

Religious individualism, 12;

instinct, 40, 229;

ecstasy, 222;

instruction, father’s duty in regard to, 286

Renan, 17, 23, 40, 119, 126, 158, 172, 227, 232, 236, 306, 321, 373

Renouvier, 249

Revelation, essence of faith in, 140

Réville, M., 49, 114, 128, 417

Revolution, French, 244, 250

Richet, M., 337

Romanes, George, 62

S

Sanction, superfluity of religious, 405

Scepticism, feebleness of, 376

Schelling, 524

Schleiermacher’s definition of religion, 3, 487

Schoolmaster, importance of the, 277

Schultz, Professor Hermann, 184

Science and religion, difference between, 3

Secrétan, M., 437

Secularism, 365

Self-preservation, and sociality, instincts of, 44

Sentiment, definition of moral, 7

Sermon, transformation of the, 416

Shadows, 82

Sin, morbid preoccupation with, 213

Socialism, 369

Sociality, and self-preservation, instincts of, 44

Society for Ethical Culture, 367

Sociomorphism, religion a, 2

Somnambulism, 83

Special Providence, 440;

mankind to be its own, 450

Spencer, Herbert, 44, 384, 427, 451, 490

Spinozism, 454

Spirit, genesis of concept of, 82

Stoicism, 520

Strauss, 23, 417, 431

Suffering from the invisible, a modern malady, 35

Suicide, as a resource, 472

Superstition and religion, 78

Symbolism, 9

T

Taine, 227, 479, 490, 493

Tax on celibacy, 306

Theism, 429

Theresa, Saint, 134

Thunder, sense of mystery responsible for fear of, 63

Timidity, feminine, 298

Tolerance, 149;

Hindu, 32

Totality, concept of, 39

Transformation of the sermon, 416

Trent, Council of, 141

U

Unity, modernity of concept of an all-embracing, 39

Universal Providence, 441

V

Vernes, M. Maurice, 281, 283

Verrier, Dr., 344

W

Wealth, antagonism between population and, 315

Wife, husband responsible for education of, 310

Women and mysticism, 299;

importance of early education of, 309

Worship of ancestors, 47;

public, 126;

subjective, 130

Z

Zoölatry, 47

THE END.

Transcriber’s note

Words in italics have been surrounded with _underscores_ and small

capitals have been replaced with all capitals. The footnotes have been

renumbered and placed directly after the paragraph they belong to.

Minor errors in spacing, capitalization etc. have been corrected

without note. Missing accents in the sidenotes have been added to be

consistent with the main text. Also the following changes have been

made, on page

5 “as” added (just as he might offend a fellow-man)

18 “adverversaries” changed to “adversaries” (the mistake of

despising their adversaries)

45 “puisant” changed to “puissant” (what is puissant and powerful)

48 footnote anchor added (the phenomena of the external world.[19])

64 “unaquainted” changed to “unacquainted” (they are unacquainted

with the external world)

157 “terrestial” changed to “terrestrial” (the celestial or

terrestrial phenomena which)

163 “neigbours” changed to “neighbours” (their more innocent

neighbours)

167 “Protestanism” changed to “Protestantism” (Inconsequence of

liberal Protestantism)

191 “abhorence” changed to “abhorrence” (theory of nature’s

abhorrence)

207 “considerble” changed to “considerable” (a considerable hold on

human life)

215 “mimimize” changed to “minimize” (in order to minimize the

necessity)

241 “Watt” changed to “Wat” (Pastoureaux and Jacques in France and

Wat Tyler in England)

298 “sentitiment” changed to “sentiment” (dominated not by reason

but by sentiment)

304 “cherubin” changed to “chérubin” (l’interrogation anxieuse de

chérubin)

304 “Songs” changed to “Song” (reading the Song of Songs)

335 “étre” changed to “être” (être à la charge de ses enfants)

337 “corveé” changed to “corvée” (the last vestige of the _corvée_)

337 “celibat” changed to “célibat” (sur le célibat en France)

347 “anxiom” changed to “axiom” (If there is one axiom that fathers

ought to)

389 “esthetique” changed to “esthétique” (Problèmes de l’esthétique

contemporaine)

399 “Budhism” changed to “Buddhism” (Buddhism and Christianity have

headed)

453 “asscribes” changed to “ascribes” (unity that it ascribes to

the world)

477 “Hydrogene” changed to “Hydrogen” (hypothesis—Hydrogen—Necessity

of), also in the table of contents

533 “Pyschologically” changed to “Psychologically” (Psychologically

and metaphysically considered)

542 “Reconcilation” changed to “Reconciliation” (Reconciliation

between determinism and indeterminism)

542 “Socialty” changed to “Sociality” (Sociality, and

self-preservation)

462 “Fréré” changed to “Féré” (One may say, with M. Féré, that

people in good)

539 “Comtes” changed to “Comte” (Comte, A., 109)

539 “Feurbach” changed to “Feuerbach” (by Schleiermacher and

Feuerbach)

541 “Lavelaye” changed to “Laveleye” (Lavelaye, M. de, 249, 252,

284)

541 “ascetism” changed to “asceticism” (and asceticism, 211)

541 “Panthelism, 55-453” changed to “Pantheism, 452” and

“Panthelism, 55”

541 “Parve” changed to “Parvé” (Parvé, M. Steyn, 283)

and in footnote number

36 “Epicure” changed to “Épicure” (See the author’s _Morale

d’Épicure_)

40 “Societe” changed to “Société” (Actes de la Société helvét. des

sc. nat.)

44 “a’une” changed to “d’une” (Esquisse d’une morale)

78 “embarassment” changed to “embarrassment” (remarks in the former

a progressive financial embarrassment)

85 “sécondaire” changed to “secondaire” (l’instruction primaire,

secondaire et supérieure)

87 “Lenornant” changed to “Lenormant” (M. Lenormant undertook to

publish a translation)

139 “Fréré” changed to “Féré” (M. Ch. Féré, _Revue philosophique_,

July, 1886.).

Otherwise the original was preserved, including inconsistencies

in spelling, hyphenation and capitalisation, also possible errors

in foreign languages. No italics were used in the sidenotes, this

has not been changed. The index has not been checked for errors in

alphabetization or pagenumbers. Additional: M. Janet, mentioned in

footnote 164 is probably Paul Janet, “La Morale”.