may be, and may ever remain, a mystery to human sense. There may be yet in the making a new order or plane of evolution by which the process will be quickened and perfected. Soul of man may be in the making, though it may be very far removed from that aspect of individualism with which the anthropomorphic tendencies of theology have burdened it. But—whether life thus rises by unknown law to further ends, or whether it passes out, like the life of leaves, into the general decay with which autumn each year fertilises the bed of mother earth—of one thing I would ask you to be confident—that the bandying of words and theories, and the discussion, tending this way or that, of man's destiny after death, are not in any way likely to alter or to undo those forward-driving forces and communal desires with which, from an inheritance of so many millions of years, the life of humanity has become endowed. The will to live will still lift up the race and carry it forward to new ends, whether man thinks he sees in death the end of his personal existence, or only a new and a better beginning. And whether he claims or resigns that prospect of reward he will never be able to rid himself of the sense which revives after all failures and crimes, that man is his brother-man—or be able to refrain at his best from laying down his life, without calculation of personal benefit to himself, so that others may live.
The highest manifestations of human genius,
