Another possible source of serious aberration, we venture to think, will be found in the misapplication of the doctrine of _survivals_. Some lingering remains of its rudimentary state in the shape of primaeval superstitions or fancies continue to adhere to a developed, and matured belief; and hence it is inferred, or at least the inference is suggested, that the belief itself is nothing but a "survival," and destined in the final triumph of reason to pass away. The belief in the immortality of the soul, for example, is found still connected in the lower and less advanced minds with primaeval superstitions and fancies about ghosts and other physical manifestations of the spirit world, as well as with funeral rites and modes of burial indicating irrational notions as to the relations of the body to the spirit. But neither these nor any special ideas as to the nature of future rewards and punishments or the mode of transition from the present to the future state, are really essential parts of the belief. They are the rudimentary imaginations and illusions of which the rational belief is gradually working itself clear. The basis of the rational belief in the immortality of the soul, or, to speak more correctly, in the continuance of our spiritual existence after death is the conviction, common, so far as we know, to all the higher portions of humanity, and apparently ineradicable, that our moral responsibility extends beyond the grave; that we do not by death terminate the consequences of our actions, or our relations to those to whom we have done good or evil; and that to die the death of the righteous is better than to have lived a life of pleasure even with the approbation of an undiscerning world. So far from growing weaker, this conviction appears to grow practically stronger among the most highly educated and intelligent of mankind, though they may have cast off the last remnant of primitive or medieval superstition, and though they may have ceased to profess belief in any special form of the doctrine. The Comtists certainly have not got rid of it, since they have devised a subjective immortality with a retributive distinction between the virtuous and the wicked; to say nothing of their singular proposal that the dead should be formally judged by the survivors, and buried, according to the judgment passed upon them, in graves of honour or disgrace.