The same general laws which we see in operation and which have brought the universe and the beings in it to the stage of development in which they now are may, without contradiction, be conceived as operating in further developments after the change we call bodily death. There is no incongruity in conceiving the self-same personality continuing in a second and different organism. Renouvier cites the case of the grub and the butterfly and other metamorphoses. In man himself he points to organic crises, which give the organism a very different character and effect a radical change in its constitution. For example, there is the critical exit from the mother’s womb, involving the change from a being living in an enclosure to that of an independent creature. When once the crisis of the first breath be passed the organism starts upon another life. There are other crises, as, for instance, the radical changes which operate in both sexes at the stage of puberty. Just as the personality persists in its identity through all these changes, may it not pass through that of bodily death? The Stoics believed in a cosmic resurrection. Substituting the idea of progress for their view of a new beginning, Renouvier claims that we may attain the hypothesis that all human history is but a fragment in a development incomparably greater and grander. Again, we may conceive of life in two worlds co-existing, indeed interpenetrating, so that the dead are not gone far from us into some remote heaven. But, whatever form we give to our hypothesis regarding progress into another existence beyond this present one, Renouvier does not easily allow us to forget that it must be based upon the significance of freedom, progress and personality supported by moral considerations. Even this progress is not guaranteed, and even if it should be the achievement of some spirits there is no proof that it is universal. Our destiny, he finally reminds us, lies in our own hands, for progress here means an increased capacity for progress later, while spiritual and moral indifference will result finally, and indeed, necessarily, in annihilation. Here, as so often in his work, Renouvier puts moral arguments and appeals in the forefront of his thought. Progress in relation to humanity’s life on earth drew from him an appeal for the establishment of justice: progress in a further world implies equally a moral appeal. Our duty is to keep the ideal of progress socially and individually ever before us, and to be worthy of immortality if it be a fact, rather than to lose ourselves in the mistaken piety of “other- worldliness.” About neither progress can we be dogmatic; it is not assured, Renouvier has shown, and we must work for it by the right use of our freedom, our intelligence and our will. III