r
displacements which go on in our brains. And as there is a continual
transfer of energy from the visible world to the ether, the extinction
of vital energy which we call death must coincide in some way with
the awakening of vital energy in the correlative world; so that the
darkening of consciousness here is coincident with its dawning there.
In this way death is for the individual but a transfer from one physical
state of existence to another; and so, on the largest scale, the
death or final loss of energy by the whole visible universe has its
counterpart in the acquirement of a maximum of life by the correlative
unseen world.

There seems to be a certain sort of rigorous logical consistency in this
daring speculation; but really the propositions of which it consists are
so far from answering to anything within the domain of human experience
that we are unable to tell whether any one of them logically follows
from its predecessor or not. It is evident that we are quite out of the
region of scientific tests, and to whatever view our authors may urge we
can only languidly assent that it is out of our power to disprove it.

[7] See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. II. pp. 142-148.

The essential weakness of such a theory as this lies in the fact that it
is thoroughly materialistic in character. It is currently assumed that
the doctrine of a life after death cannot be defended on materialistic
grounds, but this is altogether too hasty an assumption. Our authors,
indeed, are not philosophical materialists, like Dr. Priestley,--who
nevertheless believed in a future life,--but one of the primary
doctrines of materialism lies at the bottom of their argument.
Materialism holds for one thing that consciousness is a product of
a peculiar organization of matter, and for another thing that
consciousness cannot survive the disorganization of the material body
with which it is associated. As held by philosophical materialists, like
Buchner and Moleschott, these two opinions are strictly consistent with
each other; nay, the latter seems to be the inevitable inference from
the former, though Priestley did not so regard it. Now our authors very
properly refuse to commit themselves to the opinion that mind is the
product of matter, but their argument nevertheless implies that some
sort of material vehicle is necessary for the continuance of mind in a
future state of existence. This material vehicle they seek to supply in
th