Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/261



The aim of the book is a rather complete discussion of the origin and the validity of the idea of immortality, together with the ethical implications of a negative conclusion. The author regards the notion of a future life as having developed pari passu with that of the soul as a separate, immaterial entity, and as resting logically on the supposed dual nature of man. The conceptions of the most civilized, as well as those of many savage and barbarous, peoples are exhibited in their growth and psychologically explained, while it is maintained that belief in personal immortality was never widespread and has rarely been held with intellectual seriousness by the great thinkers of the race. The arguments for survival after death are divided into those grounded on the alleged simplicity and incorporeity of the soul, and those drawn from the supposed necessity of moral sanctions. The basis of the first class, held to be insufficient even if granted, is criticised from the point of view of Monism, while the ethical arguments are shown to involve an unwarrantable presupposition, and to demand in the name of the moral ideal what is self-contradictory as well as contrary to experience. Viewed as a corollary of certain theistic and religious beliefs, the notion of immortality is classed among the sophistries which use an hypothesis, invoked to account for experience as it is, to overturn the known laws of nature and of human life. A future existence must be conceived, either as like this one, in which case it neither solves problems nor satisfies desires, or as so different in its conditions as to put to confusion both the reason and the moral sense. In a chapter called the Law of Mortality, the writer sums up the positive proofs for the passage of all finite existence into other forms, and then concludes with an exposition of the moral worth of the ideals which remain in growing force when the mind has yielded to the reasonableness and the desirability of personal extinction.

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A theory of education includes the questions of end, of the educative process, of the materials of instruction, and of method. It must rest upon Rh