Expressed in these emotional terms, the argument seems as conclusive as it is appealing. But, stripped of this picturesque presentation, the lurking fallacy at once comes to light. Clearly enough, the instinctive desire for food does not guarantee that for all eternity we shall be provided with all we can eat. Neither does the instinctive desire for life carry with it the certainty of its indefinite prolongation. Quite apart, however, from so unwarrantable a basis for the belief in immortality is the fact that the desire for it is by no means universally acknowledged either as an instinctive or as an acquired desire. Thousands there are within and without Christendom, who confess to no consciousness of any such "instinct" in their psychical constitution. Other thousands have been so burdened and exasperated by the bitter, intolerable conditions of their earthly lot that, for them, annihilation is the ultimate desire. Still others there are, epicureans, sybarites, bon-vivants, people who have lived for the lower satisfactions of life, in whom no instinctive desire for survival of death is present but, on the contrary, only a readiness to give place to others, now that their own "good time" has come to an end. Not only is the desire for personal immortality non-universal, but human imagination has not always succeeded in making a future state sufficiently attractive to kindle desire for it. The primitive barbarian, for example, far from rejoicing in the prospect of a life to come shuddered as he thought of his approaching earthly end, reluctant as he was to exchange the familiar joys of the warm and sunny earth for the unknown climate and companionship of another world. If Professor Max Müller's conception of Nirvana be correct, then whole races of Buddhists anticipate ultimate annihilation as the goal of life and welcome it as the culmination of that long series of rebirths to which they believe they are destined. And without the pale of Buddhism are thousands who, for one reason or another, have no desire for immortality, preferring annihilation to any resumption of life after death, Achilles, as we have seen, contemplating post-mortem conditions, declared that he would prefer the most menial earthly occupation to kingship over the dead. General Grant, reflecting upon the Christian picture of Heaven, drawn from the New Testament Apocalypse, expressed his abhorrence of the prospect of perpetual psalm singing and harp playing, a prospect to him as dreary and distressing as that of the ancient Greek anticipating Hades. To base belief in a future life on an alleged instinctive desire for it is thus as unwarrantable as to found it on the alleged universality of the belief. 3. Intuition, the transcendental foundation. Turn we now to the third in the group of minor foundations, one which has been peculiarly identified with the so-called transcendentalists, represented in England notably by Addison, Coleridge, Max Müller; in the United States by Theodore Parker, Alcott, Emerson and not without its representatives to-day. Man, they say, cannot live by intellect alone, intuition must be recognized. Man's spirit is a greater thing than his intellect. Prove, if you will, that his intuition has no just title to be consulted; e pur si muove, witness the vogue of Bergson, Eucken and Maeterlinck. According to the intuitionists, or transcendentalists, man is in possession of a "primary faculty" transcending reason and experience, making him immediately cognizant of spiritual realities; hence their name. God, immortality, duty, according to transcendentalism, are "facts of consciousness," part - and parcel of the human mind, truths wrought into the very structure of the human soul and wholly independent of experience, testimony or demonstration. Knowledge of God's existence and of immortality is "an intuition of reason, depending primarily on no argument whatever; not on reasoning, but on Reason. It comes spontaneously. The belief always precedes the proof, intuition giving the thing to be reasoned about."1 Corresponding to this view of Parker we have the statement of Max Müller: "There is a faculty in man coördinate with sense and reason, the faculty of perceiving the infinite; Vernunft as contrasted with Verstand (reason) and Sinne (sense). It is the faculty of faith, restricted to those objects which cannot be supplied by the evidence of the senses or by the evidence of reason, a power independent of sense and reason, while alone able to overcome both reason and sense. With the aid of this "third faculty" transcendentalism rescued the cardinal doctrines of religion, God, and immortality, from death. The philosophy of sensation, heralded by Locke, with this motto, 1 Parker: "Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion," pp. 21, 22. 2 Müller: "Science of Religion," pp. 13-15. "Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu,” furnished no warrant for the belief in the soul's survival of death, because immortality is not demonstrable to the senses. But by taking the doctrine out from the field of sense-experience and making it an integral element in the constitution of the mind itself, transcendentalism rescued it from its dangerous position and placed it where it seemed permanently safe. Arguments to prove the reality of immortality were now no more in order than were arguments to prove the reality of beauty or the worth of love. With Addison, intuitionists have . . . felt their immortality o'ersweep And peal like the eternal thunders of the deep Man thou shalt never die. search in vain for Redolent as are the writings of Emerson with faith in a future life, we argument in support of it. Not a single paper in the whole series of his "Dial" was devoted to debate of the subject. It was too deep, too elemental to be discussed. It was assumed, it was "known"-beyond cavil or question. And whereas the objections of materialism did not in the least disturb the transcendentalists, |