kewise; others, again, we can well afford to leave behind. But this
cannot cease. This correspondence--or this set of correspondences, for
it is very complex--is it not that to which men with one consent would
attach Eternal Life? Is there anything else to which they would attach
it? Is anything better conceivable, anything worthier, fuller, nobler,
anything which would represent a higher form of Evolution or offer a
more perfect ideal for an Eternal Life?

[1] _Vide_ Sir John Lubbock's "Ants, Bees, and Wasps," pp. 1, 181.

But these are questions of quality; and the moment we pass from quantity
to quality we leave Science behind. In the vocabulary of Science,
Eternity is only the fraction of a word. It means mere everlastingness.
To Religion, on the other hand, Eternity has little to do with time. To
correspond with the God of Science, the Eternal Unknowable, would be
everlasting existence; to correspond with "the true God and Jesus
Christ," is Eternal Life. The quality of the Eternal Life alone makes
the heaven; mere everlastingness might be no boon. Even the brief span
of the temporal life is too long for those who spend its years in
sorrow. Time itself, let alone Eternity, is all but excruciating to
Doubt. And many besides Schopenhauer have secretly regarded
consciousness as the hideous mistake and malady of Nature. Therefore we
must not only have quantity of years, to speak in the language of the
present, but quality of correspondence. When we leave Science behind,
this correspondence also receives a higher name. It becomes communion.
Other names there are for it, religious and theological. It may be
included in a general expression, Faith; or we may call it by a personal
and specific term, Love. For the knowing of a Whole so great involves
the co-operation of many parts.

Communion with God--can it be demonstrated in terms of Science that this
is a correspondence which will never break? We do not appeal to Science
for such a testimony. We have asked for its conception of an Eternal
Life; and we have received for answer that Eternal Life would consist in
a correspondence which should never cease, with an Environment which
should never pass away. And yet what would Science demand of a perfect
correspondence that is not met by this, _the knowing of God?_ There is
no other correspondence which could satisfy one at least of the
conditions. Not one could be named which would not bear on the face of
it the mark and ple