The fact of one's being born in an earlier generation from the man who propounds the new idea, is a large factor in the rejection of it. Another unconscious reason for the repudiation of the new idea is that it would cause us pain if it were true. We would also feel that we had been dupes all our lives. We had been smugly following a pleasant delusion that brought us some happiness and suddenly we see our bubble pricked. We had been following a course of thinking and conduct, that is now impeached by the new discovery. If a man has written several books on miracles, original sin, and other dogmas, in which he believes, and has spent all his life studying the subjects, he could not accept a book which rejects his ideas; it would mean that he had wasted his life. His aversion to concur with the conclusions of that new book is nature's means of preventing him from suffering great pain; it is a defence action. If a preacher has advised thousands of couples who were unhappy not to divorce and not to remarry some one with whom they might have been happy, he would be the last man to see the greatness of a work that shows divorce may be a humane and beneficial act in some cases, for it would mean that he would have to admit he has ruined the lives of many people. The real objection by man to the Copernican theory was that it reflected on his religion and his vanity; it was annoying to hear that the earth was not the centre of the universe. The Darwinian theory was a still more painful discovery because it placed man among the descendants of animals and taught that he was a by-product like them. The facts, however, in both cases, were so overwhelming that many managed to accept them and still keep their religious beliefs intact, for these still give consolation. In spite of Copernicus and Darwin, we still live as if the world were the centre of the universe and man its most divine product. The most personal and human argument in favour of a belief in personal immortality of the soul, of communion with the dead or a Providential Personal God, is that life would be sad if these theories were not true; they must hence be true. Tennyson, in his _In Memoriam_, has the popular attitude. If life didn't live for ever more, then "earth is darkness at the core and dust and ashes all that is." But our wishes must recede before logic and facts. A great idea, then, is not accepted if its conclusions are painful to us when a more pleasant idea has prevailed; every idea is rejected when its possible truth would mean that we have been living in error and wasting our lives. New ideas are nearly always made to fit in with the old views. The theory of evolution became acceptable only when it was demonstrated to the satisfaction of the religionists what at first did not seem apparent to them, that it interfered neither with a belief in a personal God, Christianity nor the immortality of the soul.