Page:What I believe - Russell (1925).pdf/16

WHAT I BELIEVE hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them. I shall not enlarge upon this question, as I have dealt with it elsewhere.

The question of personal immortality stands on a somewhat different footing. Here evidence either way is possible. Persons are part of the everyday world with which science is concerned, and the conditions which determine their existence are discoverable. A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that. it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution, we should be inclined to be sceptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal, and