Flakes of the water, on the waters cease!
Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these.
Atoms to atoms--weariness to rest--
Ashes to ashes--hopes and fears to peace!

{237} Pantheism may speak delusively of "the peace of absorption in the
Infinite," or of the end of our being as submersion, "without reserve,
in the infinite ocean of God"; but regarded from the standpoint of
individuality, there is no difference between such a fate and the total
extinction of the soul--

The healing gospel of the eternal death

--preached with such haunting eloquence by the Roman poet. The truth,
as Dr. Illingworth has well expressed it, is that in practice
"Pantheism is really indistinguishable from Materialism; it is merely
Materialism grown sentimental, but no more tenable for its change of
name." [10]

But, in the next place, in tentatively committing himself to the
conclusion we are criticising, it seems to us that Sir Oliver Lodge
loses sight of the very essence of his own contention: his conclusion,
in effect, contradicts his premises. Syllogistically, and, of course,
very bluntly stated, his argument might be summed up as follows: "What
is of value is preserved; the soul is of value; therefore the soul
is--dissolved." Let us put this a little more explicitly. That which
has been gained in the course of evolution, so far as the human soul is
concerned--that which makes it worthy to endure, _viz._, its character,
conscience, idealism and so forth--belongs to the {238} soul precisely
as an individual entity, and in no other way whatsoever; neither can it
be effectively preserved save in the form of an individual entity. The
soul, in other words, is not to be compared to a mere quantum of raw
material, or to a cupful of water temporarily drawn from an infinite
deep into which it may be poured back, and nothing lost: it is, on the
contrary, a highly individualised product, so individual as to be
unique, and in simply being merged in the totality of being all that is
most valuable in it would be lost and wasted. We have no difficulty in
believing that mere _life_--the potentiality, the material out of which
higher things evolve--may go back into the all, to arise again in new
manifestations and combinations; but it is otherwise with the highly
complex resultant of the evolutionary process which we call
_personality_, endowed as it is with self-consciousness, with the sense
of right and wrong, the capacity for ideals