Now we are prepared to ask, How much does this famous argument amount to, as against the belief that the soul survives the body? The answer is, Nothing! absolutely nothing. It not only fails to disprove the validity of the belief, but it does not raise even the slightest _prima facie_ presumption against it. This will at once become apparent if we remember that human experience is very far indeed from being infinite, and that there are in all probability immense regions of existence in every way as real as the region which we know, yet concerning which we cannot form the faintest rudiment of a conception. Within the past century the study of light and other radiant forces has furnished us with a suggestive object-lesson. The luminiferous ether combines properties which are inconceivable in connection. How curious to think that we live and move in an ocean of ether in which the particles of all material things are floating like islands! But how amazing to learn that this ocean of ether is also an adamantine firmament! Is not this sheer nonsense? an ocean firmament of ether-adamant! Yet such seems to be the fact, and our philosophy must make the best of it. Now suppose that all this world were crowded with disembodied souls, an infinite throng most aptly called "the majority," a thousand or more on every spot in space as broad as the point of a cambric needle, in what way could we become aware of their existence? Clearly in no way, since we have no organ or faculty for the perception of soul apart from the material structure and activities in which it has been manifested throughout the whole course of our experience. There we will suppose are the countless millions, the existence of any one of whom, could we detect it, would suffice to demonstrate the doctrine of a future life, and yet, for lack of the requisite means of communication, all this evidence is inaccessible. Such an illustration shows that "the entire absence of testimony does not even raise a negative presumption except in cases where testimony is accessible." The reason is obvious. Until we can go wherever the testimony may be, we are not entitled to affirm that there is an absence of testimony. So long as our knowledge is restricted by the conditions of this terrestrial life, we are not in a position to make negative assertions as to regions of existence outside of these conditions. We may feel quite free, therefore, to give due weight to any considerations which make it probable that consciousness survives the wreck of the material body.