The teaching of religion on this point is admittedly either rather vague, or, if definite--as with the Augustinian theology--no longer credible. We have progressed in sensitiveness and humanity, and can no longer believe that a good God will inflict everlasting torment in a lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, even on the most wicked of His creatures. Still less can we believe in such punishment being inflicted for the "sin of unbelief", for we now know well enough that "belief", being the net outcome of our total experience and character, is not under the control of the will. Consequently, a God who punished creatures for not believing, when He knew all the time that He had so constructed most of them that they could not believe, would be either wicked or insane. This inability to believe "to order" is plainly perceived if we reflect on what our feelings would be if a Mohammedan implored us to believe in Allah and in Allah's Prophet, as the only way of salvation. We should decline, saying perhaps that we knew better; but the real reason of our disbelief would not lie in our knowledge but in our general makeup. We could not believe in Mohammedanism if we tried. We have grown up in a different climate, and have taken a different form. But, putting aside the vindictive hell-god of Augustine, Tertullian, Calvin, and the rest--for not even an earthly father would punish a child for ever--and taking Christianity at its best, we do not find any very specific eschatological teaching. And this very absence is a good feature. If a man tries to be good merely in order to avoid hell and gain heaven--in other words, because it will pay--his goodness is not much of a credit to him. It is only selfishness of a far-sighted kind. Religion, on the other hand, when at its best, seeks to influence character, not by threats and promises, but by encouraging moods and attitudes and habits of thought from which good actions will flow spontaneously, without any profit-and-loss calculations. Modern Christianity is therefore perhaps right in touching much more lightly on the future state than was customary in earlier centuries. Nevertheless, we cannot repress a little curiosity. People die and go somewhere, as my friend says. Where do they go? Modern Religion having avoided definite answer, we turn to Science. And Science, much as it would surprise such fine old gladiators as Huxley and Tyndall to hear it--has an answer, and an affirmative one. Psychical research has, in my opinion, brought together a mass of evidence strong enough to justify the following conclusions. I do not say they are "proved." You cannot "prove" that the earth is round, unless your hearer will at least study the evidence. You cannot even prove to him that 2 plus 2 makes 4, if he refuses to add. Therefore I do not say anything about proof. I say only that after many years of careful study and investigation I am of opinion that the evidence justifies the conclusions.