anny foresight. A cold-blooded, utterly
selfish individual could make his calculations accordingly and feather
his future nest at every opportunity, while the rest of us poor devils
who couldn't calculate so well would be piling up future trouble.

"Is that what is meant by soul and conscience and honor? Does the
'spiritual side of man's nature,' when stripped of its camouflage, mean
a shrewd calculation which seeks to gain a lasting reward for the
spirit, after the body is used up?"

In the face of such a question, of such a line of thought, there is
something within us which revolts. If we can find words to express the
cause and nature of this revolt, so much the better; but even if we
cannot, a vague but unshakable feeling persists within us that any views
of this sort are superficial, inadequate and uncomprehending.

Just as we found, in connection with human sympathy and affection, that
cold reason might make the mistake of trying to explain them in terms of
selfishness, so we find that when reason undertakes to penetrate into
the human soul, it is apt to emerge with a distortion which lacks the
essence of the whole thing.

In the first place, so far as reason goes, after countless generations
of man on earth, what evidence has yet been discovered to prove
conclusively that when a man dies, the spirit of him disengages itself
from the dead body and goes on to an unknown world to continue life
there?

When a dog dies, does the spirit of him do the same thing? A bird? A
spider? A germ? A flower? They all have the spirit of life within
them--a wonderful complex life--and a struggle for existence on
earth--of much the same sort as man's.

I was talking to a charming lady, the other day, who said she firmly
believes that the spirits of them all go on to a better world, along
with man's.

But whether they do, or whether they don't, what means has any intellect
been able to find in all these centuries to settle the question and
prove it scientifically, without fear of contradiction?

Even if the intellect were satisfied to take so much for granted, at a
guess, for the sake of having something to go by, there still remains
the same element of uncertainty surrounding the question: "Why am I
here? If my spirit is the only part of me that is destined to live on,
what was the need of chaining it for this short space of time to animal
instincts and a perishable body?"

All sorts of theories have been advanced, in the