as to the
abstract probability of the soul's survival. The scepticism is aimed at
the character of the description rather than at the reality of the thing
described. It implies a tacit agreement, among cultivated people, that
the unseen world must be purely spiritual in constitution. The agreement
is not habitually expressed in definite formulas, for the reason that no
mental image of a purely spiritual world can be formed. Much stress
is commonly laid upon the recognition of friends in a future life; and
however deep a meaning may be given to the phrase "the love of God,"
one does not easily realize that a heavenly existence could be worth the
longing that is felt for it, if it were to afford no further scope for
the pure and tender household affections which give to the present life
its powerful though indefinable charm. Yet the recognition of friends
in a purely spiritual world is something of which we can frame no
conception whatever. We may look with unspeakable reverence on the
features of wife or child, less because of their physical beauty than
because of the beauty of soul to which they give expression, but to
imagine the perception of soul by soul apart from the material structure
and activities in which soul is manifested, is something utterly beyond
our power. Nay, even when we try to represent to ourselves the psychical
activity of any single soul by itself as continuing without the aid
of the physical machinery of sensation, we get into unmanageable
difficulties. A great part of the contents of our minds consists of
sensuous (chiefly visual) images, and though we may imagine reflection
to go on without further images supplied by vision or hearing, touch or
taste or smell, yet we cannot well see how fresh experiences could be
gained in such a state. The reader, if he require further illustrations,
can easily follow out this line of thought. Enough has no doubt been
said to convince him that our hypothesis of the survival of conscious
activity apart from material conditions is not only utterly unsupported
by any evidence that can be gathered from the world of which we have
experience, but is utterly and hopelessly inconceivable.

It is inconceivable BECAUSE it is entirely without foundation in
experience. Our powers of conception are closely determined by the
limits of our experience. When a proposition, or combination of ideas,
is suggested, for which there has never been any precedent in human
experience,