The last group of objections is directly practical and ethical, and raises three points: the small space and influence occupied and exercised, apparently, by such a belief, in the spiritual life of even serious persons; the seemingly selfish, ungenerous type of religion and of moral tone fostered by definite belief in, or at least occupation with, the thought of an individual future life, as contrasted with the nobility of tone engendered by such denials or abstractions from all such beliefs as we find in Spinoza and Schleiermacher; and, finally, the plausibility of the teaching, on the part of some distinguished thinkers and poets, that a positive conviction of this our short earthly life being the sole span of our individual consciousness is directly productive of a certain deep tenderness, an heroic concentration of attention, and a virile truthfulness, which are unattainable, which indeed are weakened or rendered impossible by, the necessarily vague anticipation of an unending future life; a hope which, where operative at all, can but dwarf and deaden all earthly aspiration and endeavour. (1) As to the first point, which has perhaps never been more brilliantly affirmed than by Mr. Schiller,[203] I altogether doubt whether the numerous appearances, which admittedly seem to point that way, are rightly interpreted by such a conclusion. For it is, for one thing, most certainly possible to be deeply convinced of the reality and importance of the soul’s heightened after-life, and to have no kind of belief or interest in Psychical Research, at least in such Research as an intrinsically valuable aid to any specifically religious convictions. No aloofness from such attempts to find spiritual realities at the phenomenal level can, (unless it is clear that the majority of educated Western Europeans share the naïve assumptions of this position), indicate negation of, or indifference to, the belief in Immortality.--And next, it is equally certain that precisely the most fruitful form of the belief is that which conceives the After-life as already involved in this one, and which, therefore, dwells specially, not upon the posteriority in time, but upon the difference in kind of that spiritual life of the soul which, even _hic et nunc_, can be sought after and experienced, in ever imperfect degrees no doubt, yet really and more and more. Here we ever get an approach to Simultaneity and Eternity, instead of sheer succession and clock-time: and here the fundamental attitude of the believer would appear only if pressed to deny or exclude the deathlessness of the spirit and its life,--the usual latency and simple implication of the positive conviction, in nowise diminishing this conviction’s reality.--And, finally, it would have to be seen whether those who are indifferent or sceptical as to Immortal or Eternal Life, are appreciably fewer and largely other than those who are careless as to the other deep implications and requirements of spiritual experience.