THE PSYCHOLOGIC PROOF OF IMMORTALITY Every book ought to contain things which will make its reader an inhabitant of a larger universe than he was before. There are reasons-very strong recent reasons-for believing that soul and body, though closely identified during mortal life, may be so fundamentally independent of each other, that when the body stops work and enters upon dissolution, the soul may continue to exist independently, and instead of suffering by the disconnection be merely relieved of certain trammels and limitations, notably those of time and space and matter. HENRY HOLT, in Cosmic Relations. What lies beyond this Ether and these electrons, producers of the manifestations of energy interpreted as light and radiant heat and electricity and chemical action and gravitation and muscular force, and the free energy of muscle and the nervous impulse, and mechanic energy of every phase? What lies beyond? The reason of man has ever answered this eternal question of the ages with— Mind, consciously active, enduringly sentient. Professor GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN. A voice within us speaks that startling word, Man, thou shalt never die. DANA'S Poems. XV THE PSYCHOLOGIC PROOF OF IMMORTALITY HE demonstration of immortality on scien Tife grounds would seem, in this age of tific gradually vanishing Christian faith, to be vital to the integrity of our institutions and the perdurance of our civilization-the apprehension of the earth-life, not as a period of realization, but as one of promise. In his profound "Essay on Immortality" Emerson said: "One abstains from writing on the deathlessness of the soul because, when he comes to the end of his statement, the hungry eyes that run through it will close disappointed; the listeners say, That is not here which we desire." Since Emerson wrote these words, psychological science has made disclosures of such moment regarding the constitution of man that one who for fifteen years has held almost daily communication with the so-called subliminal consciousness need feel no hesitancy in challenging the statement of the great essayist. A psychological proof of post-mortem existence has been found in the fact that immortality is an apprehension of human reason. There is hardly a page in the history of serious literature that is, the expression of human thought and hope and feeling at their best-which does not bear witness to the passionate desire of men to catch some glimpse of the Great Afterward. They would fain believe the Unseen World not altogether bournless and abysmal—a lifeless, loveless, senseless Nirvana-and so they welcomed any teaching that professed to solve its mystery. The venerable Bible of the Egyptians-the Book of the Dead-an authority on morals forty centuries ago, pictures the disembodied soul in the judgment hall of Osiris, god of the lower world, where the heart of the deceased was weighed in the balance against the symmetrical feather of truth, and teaches the final admission of the owner, if not found wanting after encounters with thousands of benignant and malignant demons, to everlasting happiness. The immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body were cardinal articles of ancient Egyptian belief. Temple, sphinx, and obelisk, papyri in myriads of volumes, heralded a future life throughout "the Monumental Land" that was the fount of Greek inspiration-the day-spring of knowledge to the Chosen People; whose religion bears in many points a strange analogy to ours; whose lasting structures are emblematic of the soul's deathless nature; and whose lotus-blossoms, reopening every morning, symbolize the resurrection from the night of death. Through the thick fog of their superstitions, auguries, omens, divinations, exorcisms-the dwellers in the Land of Shinar saw the light twenty centuries before the Christian Era; and the subjects of the munificent Assyrian monarch Assur-bani-pal, beheld, "after the life of these days," the light of an eternal holy existence in the "feasts of the Silver Mountain, in the presence of the gods." A belief in the future life is expressed in the poem on the "Descent of Istar," the moon god's daughter, to Hades, "the land whence none return," where "the dead outnumber the living." And the author of the Nimrod epic, the most ancient approach to heroic poetry known to exist, describes Izdubar (identified with Nimrod) as ferried across the waters of the dead to the shores of the regions of the blessed, where he recognizes his ancestor Samas-Napistim, and exclaims: "Thy appearance is not changed. Like me art thou! Thou thyself art not changed. Like me art thou!" The Vedic Aryan, a worshiper of God in His unity, "that One alone who has upheld the spheres," looked forward to "excellent treasures |