founded on narratives of ghosts, appearances and visions of the
dead. Dr. Tafel published at Tubingen in 1853 a volume aiming to
demonstrate the immortality and personal identity of the soul by
citation of ninety cases of supernatural appearances, extending
from the history of the ghost whose address to Curtius Rufus is
recorded by Tacitus, to the wonderful story told by Renatus
Luderitz in 1837. Such efforts are worse than vain. Their data are
so explicable in many cases, and so inconclusive in all, that they
quite naturally provoke deeper disbelief and produce telling
retorts. While here and there a credulous person is convinced of a
future life by the asserted appearance of a spirit, the well
informed psychologist refers the argument to the laws of insanity
and illusions, and the skeptic adds as a finality his belief that
there is no future life, because no ghost has ever come back to
reveal and certify it. The argument on both sides is equally
futile, and removed from the true requisitions of the problem.

To the philosophical thinker a mere appearance is scarcely a
presumption in favor of a conclusion in accordance with it.
Science and experience are full of examples exposing the nullity
or the falsity of appearances. The sun seems to move around the
earth; but truth contradicts it. We seem to discern distances and
the forms of bodies by direct sight; but the truth is we see
nothing but shades and colors: all beyond is inference based on
acquired experience. The first darkness would seem to the
trembling contemplator absolutely to blot out the universe; but in
truth it only prevented him from seeing it. The first thorough
unconscious sleep would seem to be the hopeless destruction of the
soul in its perfect oblivion. Death is forever for the first time,
shrouded in the misleading obscurities of an unknown novelty.
Appearances are often deceitful, yielding obvious clews only to
mistakes and falsehoods. They are always superficial, furnishing
no reliable evidence of the reality.

"Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd
Within thy beams, O Sun! Or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood reveal'd,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why then do we shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?"

9 Spazier, Antiphadon, oder Prufung einiger Hauptbeweise fur die
Einfachheit und Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele.

When the body dies, the