XV PHILOSOPHY AND THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF A FUTURE LIFE' ARGUMENT The use of Philosophy in scientific inquiry-the general logical criticism of fundamental postulates and working methods. This most necessary and helpful in a new science, and safest in one which, like 'Psychical Research,' has not yet obtained professional endowment. Special interest of a discussion of the assumptions made in a scientific inquiry into the possibility of a future life. (1) The general scientific assumption of law, i.e. knowableness. (2) The axiom of proceeding from the known to the unknown. This life must give the clue to our interpreta- tion of an 'other' life, which could not be wholly 'other' without paralysing thought. Misconceptions on this score explain (a) the prac tical weakness of the 'belief' in a future life; (b) the prejudice against an anthropomorphic future life; and (c) against the spiritist hypothesis. Assuming, therefore, that as a working theory personal survival is con- ceivable, how can it be verified? The future life must be conceived (1) as natural; (2) as psychically continuous with the present, in spite of the difficulty of obtaining proofs of identity; (3) as only dissociated from our world by secondary processes traceable in our normal psychology. Result that a future life scientifically provable would necessarily seem humdrum and unsensational. f II. The philosophic basis of the conception of a future life. Philosophies which reject it a priori are gratuitous. For an idealistic experientialism, the conception has no difficulty. How we pass into another world. How, why, and to what extent, are dream worlds unreal'? 'Death' as ' awakening' to a more real world. Philosophers on death. Four paradoxes about death. Their explanation by idealism. The construc- tion and dissolution of the common world of waking life. The ambiguity of death. Does it leave the chances equal? Impossibility of disproving a future life wholly severed from the present. Possibility of empirical evidence that the severance is not complete. Philosophy clears away prejudices that obstruct investigation, but leaves discovery to science, THE philosopher, as the genius of Plato long ago perceived,² 1 An expanded form of a paper originally read before the Society for Psychical Research, and published in its Proceedings, Part 36, February 1900. 2 Republic, 490. 266
