Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/369

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ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY

neither destroy another primary cause nor be destroyed by any. The objector who would open the eternal permanence of the soul to doubt, then, must assail the proofs of a priori knowledge; for so long as these remain free from suspicion, there can be no real question as to what they finally imply. The concomitance of our two streams of experience, the timed stream and the spaced stream, raised from a merely historical into a necessary concomitance by the argument that refers it to the active unity of each soul as its ground, becomes the steadfast sign and visible pledge of the imperishable self-resource of the individual spirit.


IV

We sometimes hear it objected to the foregoing line of proof, that it comes quite short of any immortality which a rational being can value. It can establish nothing, the objectors say, but the indestructible power of staying on, merely in a world of sense-perception.

The objection is pertinent, and would be serious were our a priori consciousness completely summed up in furnishing the conditions sufficient for a world of sense-perception only, and for self-preservative action in such a world. But the objection vanishes as soon as we realise that our argument, properly