Is it necessary to protest once more that this assurance of progress towards the good is not to be confounded with optimism? For it is clear that "good" is a question-begging word. The only possible definition of "good" is "that which makes for life"--for life, not only measured by quantity, but by quality and intensity--"that ye may have life more abundantly." Why is egoism evil? Because a world in which it reigned supreme would very soon come to an end, or at any rate could not support anything like the abundance of life which is rendered possible by mutual aid and co-operation. Why are order, justice, courage, humanity good? Because they enable more people to lead fuller lives than would be possible in the absence of such guiding principles. But in all this we assume the validity of the standard--"life"--which is precisely what pessimism denies. And pessimism may quite conceivably be in the right on't. It is quite conceivable that, having made the best that can possibly be made of life, a world-weary race might decide that the best was not good enough, and deliberately turn away from it. But that is a contingency, a speculation, which no sane man would allow to affect his action here and now, or to impair his loyalty to his comrades in the great terrestrial adventure. And is not this question of the ultimate value of life precisely one of the uncertainties which lend--if the flippancy may be excused--a "sporting interest" to our position? I have said that we have two elements of consolation: the things which are sure and the things which are unsure: in other words, the axioms and the mysteries. Reason is all very well so far as it goes, and we do right to trust to it; but it may prove, after all, that the things that are behind and beyond and above reason are the things that really matter. Does this seem a concession to obscurantism? Not at all--for the things obscurantism glories in are things beneath reason, which is quite another affair. At the same time, we are too apt to think that reason has drawn a complete outline-map of its "sphere of influence," in which there are many details to be filled in, but no boundaries to be shifted, no regions wholly unexplored. It is, for instance, very unreasonable to hold that we can draw a hard and fast line between the materially possible and impossible. There is certainly a curious ragged edge to our purely scientific knowledge, and it may well be that in following up the frayed-out threads we may come upon things very surprising and important. For example, the question whether consciousness can exist detached from organized matter, or attached to some form of matter of which we have no knowledge, I regard as purely a question of evidence; and I not only admit but assert that the evidence pointing in that direction is worthy of careful examination. The interpretation which sees in it a proof of personal immortality may be wrong, but that does not prove that the right interpretation is