ans justified in doing so with the essential
fact itself of a future life. The essential fact, the assertion of
immortality, may be true, even if the mythological dress be all
fictitious. It does not follow that man has no surviving soul
because the local heaven or hell, described by savage or priest as
its residence, is unreal. It surely is no correct inference that
the soul perishes with the body, because the barbarian mind
generalized its idea of the soul from the phenomena of shadows,
reflections, echoes and dreams. The critical scholar, who judges
the case fairly, will correct the fallacies of the confused
reasoning instinct, and relegate the mythology to its proper
province, but reserve his judgment on the question itself of
spiritual survival to be settled on the only appropriate evidence.
Although the habit thus formed by the critical scholar, and by
those who follow his authority, of sweeping away as wholly
untenable so many varieties of speculation, and so many groups of
images connected with the belief in a future life, has
unquestionably contributed powerfully to foster complete disbelief
in the doctrine itself, yet it is equally unquestionable that this
process of negation is illogical. Many a true doctrine has been
cradled in superstitions and absurdities. A faith supported by
many classes of independent arguments is not overthrown by the
disproof of one of those classes. It is as wrongful a procedure to
deny the immortality of the soul because barbaric instinct
grounded it on erroneous notions and enveloped it with falsehoods,
as it would be to reject the established laws of gravitation and
light and sound, for the reason that the various provisional
theories, preceding the correct ones, were ridiculous mistakes.
The problem to be solved is, Does the man who is now a soul in a
body remain a soul when the body dissolves? The inadequacy or
folly of a hundred provisional answers does not affect the final
answer. Instead of denying immortality because the childish mind
of the early world feigned impossible things about it, we should
change the question by appeal to a more competent court, and
inquire what Pythagoras, Augustine, Dante, Leibnitz, Fichte,
Schelling, Swedenborg, Goethe, thought about it. It is a question
for the consensus of the most gifted and impartial minds, the very
Areopagus of Humanity, to decide. Furthermore, on a deeper
inquiry, it seems clear that the real belief in immortality did
not