d
themselves with it and sought to find an answer to the riddle. Some of
their solutions of the problem, though dressed out in all the beauty of
exquisite language and poetic imagery, singularly resemble the rude
guesses of savages. So little, it would seem, do the natural powers even
of the greatest minds avail to pierce the thick veil that hides the end
of life.

[Sidenote: The problem of death is one of universal interest.]

In saying that the problem is thrust home upon us all, I do not mean to
imply that all men are constantly or even often engaged in meditating on
the nature and origin of death. Far from it. Few people trouble
themselves about that or any other purely abstract question: the common
man would probably not give a straw for an answer to it. What he wants
to know, what we all want to know, is whether death is the end of all
things for the individual, whether our conscious personality perishes
with the body or survives it for a time or for eternity. That is the
enigma propounded to every human being who has been born into the world:
that is the door at which so many enquirers have knocked in vain. Stated
in this limited form the problem has indeed been of universal interest:
there is no race of men known to us which has not pondered the mystery
and arrived at some conclusions to which it more or less confidently
adheres. Not that all races have paid an equal attention to it. On some
it has weighed much more heavily than on others. While some races, like
some individuals, take death almost lightly, and are too busy with the
certainties of the present world to pay much heed to the uncertainties
of a world to come, the minds of others have dwelt on the prospect of a
life beyond the grave till the thought of it has risen with them to a
passion, almost to an obsession, and has begotten a contempt for the
fleeting joys of this ephemeral existence by comparison with the
hoped-for bliss of an eternal existence hereafter. To the sceptic,
examining the evidence for immortality by the cold light of reason, such
peoples and such individuals may seem to sacrifice the substance for the
shadow: to adopt a homely comparison, they are like the dog in the fable
who dropped the real leg of mutton, from his mouth in order to snap at
its reflection in the water. Be that as it may, where such beliefs and
hopes are entertained in full force, the whole activity of the mind and
the whole energy of the body are apt to be devote