isputable evidence that in the past history
of the visible universe psychical phenomena have only begun to be
manifested in connection with certain complex aggregates of material
phenomena. As these material aggregates have age by age become more
complex in structure, more complex psychical phenomena have been
exhibited. The development of Mind has from the outset been associated
with the development of Matter. And to-day, though none of us has any
knowledge of the end of psychical phenomena in his own case, yet
from all the marks by which we recognize such phenomena in our
fellow-creatures, whether brute or human, we are taught that when
certain material processes have been gradually or suddenly brought to an
end, psychical phenomena are no longer manifested. From first to last,
therefore, our appeal to experience gets but one response. We have not
the faintest shadow of evidence wherewith to make it seem probable that
Mind can exist except in connection with a material body. Viewed from
this standpoint of terrestrial experience, there is no more reason for
supposing that consciousness survives the dissolution of the brain
than for supposing that the pungent flavour of table-salt survives its
decomposition into metallic sodium and gaseous chlorine.

Our answer from this side is thus unequivocal enough. Indeed, so uniform
has been the teaching of experience in this respect that even in their
attempts to depict a life after death, men have always found themselves
obliged to have recourse to materialistic symbols. To the mind of a
savage the future world is a mere reproduction of the present, with its
everlasting huntings and fightings. The early Christians looked forward
to a renovation of the earth and the bodily resurrection from Sheol of
the righteous. The pictures of hell and purgatory, and even of paradise,
in Dante's great poem, are so intensely materialistic as to seem
grotesque in this more spiritual age. But even to-day the popular
conceptions of heaven are by no means freed from the notion of matter;
and persons of high culture, who realize the inadequacy of these popular
conceptions, are wont to avoid the difficulty by refraining from putting
their hopes and beliefs into any definite or describable form. Not
unfrequently one sees a smile raised at the assumption of knowledge or
insight by preachers who describe in eloquent terms the joys of a future
state; yet the smile does not necessarily imply any scepticism