88. It remains now, before concluding this chapter, to sketch briefly the application of the principle of Continuity to the problem we have in hand. There are three conceivable suppositions with reference to individual existence after death. It may be regarded as the result of a transference from one grade of being to another in the present visible universe; or secondly, of a transference from the visible universe to some other order of things intimately connected with it; or lastly, we may conceive it to represent the result of a transference from the present visible universe to an order of things entirely unconnected with it. 89. This last hypothesis may however be very speedily disposed of if we are to maintain the principle of Continuity. We have seen that one of the requisites for conscious individual existence is an organ connecting the individual with the past. Now, were we to suppose a transference of living beings from the present visible universe to an order of things otherwise entirely unconnected with it, this would be a manifest breach of the law of Continuity. Imagine the utter confusion into which this present universe would be plunged, if a set of inhabitants were transferred into it having organs connecting them with a past existence in an entirely different universe. A confusion precisely similar would be occasioned by carrying out a transfer according to the hypothesis in question; so that we are able at once to reduce our suppositions to two: the first involving a transference from one grade to another of the visible universe, and the second a transference from the visible universe to some other order of things intimately connected with it. 90. In what precedes, we have argued by anticipation that the present visible universe will become effete; but in the following chapters it will be necessary to maintain this assertion by a minute examination of those laws which represent the course of things observed in the present universe. In other words, we must settle the fitness or unfitness of the present visible universe before we proceed to discuss our second hypothesis. 91. But whether the transfer be supposed to take place in the visible universe, or from it to another intimately connected with it, the subject in either case is certainly one on which we may legitimately employ our reasoning faculties. So far indeed is the subject from being one which it will be utterly and for ever useless to discuss, that it has become our duty as well as our privilege to make the attempt, in the perfect trust that time will inevitably bring truth with it. We think that this fact has been too much overlooked by those whom we may term the moderate school of scientific thinkers. Not denying the possibility of a future state, they have yet shrunk from all attempts to investigate its conditions. We are in hopes that a perusal of this volume will lead these writers to see that the subject is one which may be profitably discussed.