nd when, of the remaining minority, the weight of
respectable opinion goes so far as suspense of judgment, how does the
argument look? Isn't it at least one of those cases of new phenomena where
it is well to be on guard against old mental habits, not to say
prejudices?

Is it not now vastly more _reasonable_ to believe in a future life than it
was a century ago, or half a century, or quarter of a century? Is it not
already more reasonable to believe in it than not to believe in it? Is it
not already appreciably harder _not_ to believe in it than it was a
generation ago?

* * * * *

So far as I can see, the dream life, from mine up to Mrs. Piper's, vague
as it is, is an argument for immortality _based on evidence_.

The sensitives are not among the world's leading thinkers or
moralists--are not more aristocratic founders for a new faith than were a
certain carpenter's son and certain fishermen; and only by implication do
the sensitives suggest any moral truths, but they do offer more facts to
the modern demand for facts.

Spiritism has a bad name, and it has been in company where it richly
deserved one; but it has been coming into court lately with some very
important-looking testimony from very distinguished witnesses; and some
rather comprehensive minds consider its issues supreme--the principal
issues now upon the horizon, between the gross, luxurious, unthinking,
unaspiring, uncreating life of today, and everything that has, in happier
ages, given us the heritage of the soul--the issues between increasing
comforts and withering ideals--between water-power and Niagara.

The doubt of immortality is not over the innate reasonableness of it: the
universe is immeasurably more reasonable with it than without it; but over
its practicability after the body is gone. We, in our immeasurable wisdom,
don't see how it can work--we don't see how a universe that we don't begin
to know, which already has given us genius and beauty and love, and which
seems to like to give us all it can--birds, flowers, sunsets, stars,
Vermont, the Himalayas, and the Grand Canyon; which, most of all, has
given us the insatiable soul, can manage to give us immortality. Well!
Perhaps we ought not to be grasping--ought to call all we know and have,
enough, and be thankful--thankful above all, perhaps, that as far as we
can see, the hope of immortality cannot be disappointed--that the worst
answer to it must be obliv