e unbelief in immortality, are added the positive coarseness
and guilt of a thick insensibility and a wicked life, aggressive
disbelief is quite likely to arise, the essay of an uneasy
conscience to slay what it feels would be a foe, and strangle the
worm that never dies. The denial springing from such sources is
refuted when it is explained. Its motive should never by any man
be yielded to, much less be willingly nourished. It should be
resisted by a devout culture courting the smiles of God, by rising
into the loftier airs of meditation and duty, by imaginative
sentiment and practical philanthropy, until the eternal instinct,
long smothered under sluggish loads of sense and sin, reached by a
soliciting warmth from heaven, stirs with demonstrating vitality.

The last and largest assemblage of dissenters from the prevailing
opinion on this subject comprises those who utter their disbelief
in a future existence out of simple loyalty to seeming truth, as a
protest against what they think a false doctrine, and against the
sophistical and defective arguments by which it has been propped.
It may be granted that the five previously named classes are
equally sincere in their convictions, honest assailants of error
and adherents of truth; but they are actuated by animating motives
of a various moral character. In the present case, the ruling
motive is purely a determination, as Buchner says, to stand by the
facts and to establish the correct doctrine. The directest and
clearest way of giving a descriptive account of the active
philosophical history of this class of disbelievers will be to
follow on the lines of their tracks with statements and criticisms
of their procedures.9 Disbelief in the doctrine of a future life
for man has planted itself upon bold affirmation, and fortified
itself with arguments which may most conveniently be considered
under five distinct heads.

First is the sensational Argument from Appearance. In death the
visible functions cease, the organism dissolves, the mind
disappears; there is apparently a total scattering and end of the
individual. That these phenomena should suggest the thought of
annihilation is inevitable; to suppose that they prove the fact is
absurd. It is an arrant begging of the question; for the very
problem is, Does not an invisible spiritual entity survive the
visible material disintegration? Among the unsound and
superstitious attempts to prove the fact of a future life is that