Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/340

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HUMAN IMMORTALITY: ITS POSITIVE ARGUMENT


WITH REFERENCE TO THE INGERSOLL LECTURE OF PROFESSOR JAMES


In offering you to-night some words on the great question of human immortality, I enjoy the advantage of the interest awakened by the essay of my brilliant friend from Harvard, read a few months ago in this room.[1] The memory of that noble evening lives with you, I doubt not, still undimmed, and long will live, as it lives and long will live with me. The thoughts then stirred within you, I can count upon as having waked many another of those questions which haunt us concerning the mystery of life; and I may feel assured of your sympathy when I now attempt to renew their current.

I may assume, I judge, that some of you not only felt regarding immortality the difficulties which our guest addressed himself to obviating, but were also

  1. The essay was read before the Berkeley Club of Oakland, California, in April, 1899. Professor James had read his Ingersoll Lecture to the same company in September, 1898.