. I wish to suggest first that belief in the appearance of {40} the
dead, whether to the dreamer or the ghost-seer, is an intellectual
belief as to what occurs as a matter of fact; and next that thereby it
is distinguished from the desire for immortality which manifests itself
with comparative universality amongst the lower races.

Now, that the appearance of the dead, whether to the waking or the
sleeping eye, is sufficient to start the intellectual belief will be
admitted alike by those who do and those who do not hold that it is
sufficient logically to warrant the belief. But to say that it starts
the desire to see him or her whom we have lost, would be ridiculous.
On the contrary, it would be much nearer the truth to say that it is
the longing and the desire to see, once again, the loved one, that sets
the mind a-dreaming, and first gives to the heart hope. The fact that,
were there no desire for the continuance of life after the death of the
body, the belief would never have caught on--that it either would never
have arisen or would have soon ceased to exist--is shown by the simple
consideration that only where the desire for the continuance of life
after death dies down does the belief in immortality tend to wane. If
any further evidence of that is required it may be found in the
teaching of those {41} forms of philosophy and religion which endeavour
to dispense with the belief in immortality, for they all recognise and
indeed proclaim that they are based on the denial of the desire and the
will to live. If, and only if--as, and only as--the desire to live,
here and hereafter, can be suppressed, can the belief in immortality be
eradicated. The basis of the belief is the desire for continued
existence; and that is why the attempt to trace the origin of the
belief in immortality back to the belief in dreams and apparitions is
one which is not perfectly satisfactory; it leaves out of account the
desire without which the belief would not be and is not operative.

But though it leaves out an element which is at least as important as
any element it includes, it would be an error to take no account of
what it does contribute. It would be an error of this kind if we
closed our eyes to the fact that what first arrests the attention of
man, in the lower stages of his evolution, is the survival of others
than himself. That is the belief which first manifests itself in his
heart and mind; and what first reveals it to