otions, man
must habitually attach himself to objects outside the narrow sphere of
his own personal experience. The difference is that whereas one set of
thinkers would tell us to fix our affections on a state entirely
disparate from that in which we are actually placed, the other would
concentrate them upon objects which form part of the series of events
amongst which we are moving. Which is the more likely to stimulate our
best feelings? We must reply by asking whether the vastness or the
distinctness of a prospect has the greater effect upon the imagination.
Does a man take the greater interest in a future which he can definitely
interpret to himself, or upon one which is admittedly so inconceivable
that it is wrong to dwell upon it, but which allows of indefinite
expansion? Putting aside our own personal interest, do we care more for
the fate of our grandchildren whom we shall never see, or for the
condition of spiritual beings the conditions of whose existence are
utterly unintelligible to us? If sacrifice of our lower pleasures be
demanded, should we be more willing to make them in order that a coming
generation may be emancipated from war and pauperism, or in order that
some indefinite and indefinable change may be worked in a world utterly
inscrutable to our imaginations? The man who has learned to transfer his
aspirations from the next world to this, to look forward to the
diminution of disease and vice here, rather than to the annihilation of
all physical conditions, has, it is hardly rash to assert, gained more
in the distinctness of his aims than he has lost (if, indeed, he has
lost any thing) in their elevation.

Were it necessary to hunt out every possible combination of opinion, I
should have to inquire whether the doctrine of another world might not
be understood in such a sense as to involve no distortion of our views.
The future world may be so arranged that the effect of the two sets of
motives upon our minds may be always coincident. Our interest in our
descendants might be strengthened without being distracted by a belief
in our own future existence. Of such a theory I have now only space to
say that it is not that which really occurs in practice: and that the
instincts which make us cling to a vivid belief in the future always
spring from a vehement revolt against the present. Meanwhile, however,
the answers generally given to sceptics are apparently contradictory. To
limit our hopes to this world,