In his justly renowned _Analogy_, Bishop Butler begins with a chapter on a future life. He says with great truth that if there is an idea that death will be the destruction of living powers, that idea must arise either from _the reason of the thing_ or _the analogy of nature_. ‘But it does not arise (he proceeds to say) from _the reason of the thing_; for we do not know what death is. Again, we do not know on what the existence of our living powers depends; for we see them suspended in sleep, for example, or in a swoon, and still not extinguished. Neither does it arise from _the analogy of nature_; for death removes all sensible proof, and precludes us consequently from tracing out any analogy which would warrant us in inferring their destruction.’ Now, it is well known that since the days of Bishop Butler a school has arisen, the members of which assert that they have at length learned what Death is, and that in virtue of their knowledge they are in a position to tell us that life is impossible after death. It is one of the main objects of this volume to demonstrate the fallacy which underlies the argument brought forward by this school. We attempt to show that we are absolutely driven by scientific principles to acknowledge the existence of an Unseen Universe, and by scientific analogy to conclude that it is full of life and intelligence—that it is in fact a spiritual universe and not a dead one. But while we are fully justified by scientific considerations in asserting the existence of such an unseen universe, we are not justified in assuming that we have yet attained, or can easily or perhaps ever attain, to more than a very slight knowledge of its nature. Thus we do not believe that we can really ascertain what death is. To those, therefore, who assert that there is no spiritual unseen world, and that death is an end of the existence of the individual, we reply by simply denying their first statement, and in consequence of this denial, insisting that none of us know anything whatever about death. Indeed, it is at once apparent that a scientific denial of the possibility of life after death must be linked with at least something like a scientific proof of the non-existence of a spiritual unseen world. For if scientific analogy be against a spiritual Unseen, then evidently it is equally against the likelihood of life after death.