o not involve
their identity. And not a few authorities accordingly have consistently
hesitated to draw any conclusion at all. Even Buechner's statement turns
out, on close examination, to be tentative in the extreme. In prefacing
his chapter on Personal Continuance, after a single sentence on the
dependence of the soul and its manifestations upon a material
substratum, he remarks, "Though we are unable to form a definite idea as
to the _how_ of this connection, we are still by these facts justified
in asserting, that the mode of this connection renders it _apparently_
impossible that they should continue to exist separately."[74] There is,
therefore, a flaw at this point in the argument for materialism. It may
not help the spiritualist in the least degree positively. He may be as
far as ever from a theory of how consciousness could continue without
the material tissue. But his contention secures for him the right of
speculation. The path beyond may lie in hopeless gloom; but it is not
barred. He may bring forward his theory if he will. And this is
something. For a permission to go on is often the most that Science can
grant to Religion.

Men have taken advantage of this loophole in various ways. And though
it cannot be said that these speculations offer us more than a
probability, this is still enough to combine with the deep-seated
expectation in the bosom of mankind and give fresh luster to the hope of
a future life. Whether we find relief in the theory of a simple dualism;
whether with Ulrici we further define the soul as an invisible
enswathement of the body, material yet non-atomic; whether, with the
"Unseen Universe," we are helped by the spectacle of known forms of
matter shading off into an ever-growing subtilty, mobility, and
immateriality; or whether, with Wundt, we regard the soul as "the
ordered unity of many elements," it is certain that shapes can be given
to the conception of a correspondence which shall bridge the grave such
as to satisfy minds too much accustomed to weigh evidence to put
themselves off with fancies.

But whether the possibilities of physiology or the theories of
philosophy do or do not substantially assist us in realizing
Immortality, is to Religion, to Religion at least regarded from the
present point of view, of inferior moment. The fact of Immortality rests
for us on a different basis. Probably, indeed, after all the Christian
philosopher never engaged himself in a more superfluou