Let us now consider the rationalist or scientific solution—­or, more properly, dissolution—­of our problem.

FOOTNOTES: 

[13] Erwin Rohde, Psyche, “Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen.”  Tuebingen, 1907.  Up to the present this is the leading work dealing with the belief of the Greeks in the immortality of the soul.

[14] Gal. ii. 20.

[15] On all relating to this question see, among others, Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, ii., Teil i., Buch vii., cap. i.

[16]

    Though we are become dust,
    In thee, O Lord, our hope confides,
    That we shall live again clad
    In the flesh and skin that once covered us.

[17] Libra de la Conversion de la Magdelena, part iv., chap. ix.

[18] In his exposition of Protestant dogma in Systematische christliche Religion, Berlin, 1909, one of the series entitled Die Kultur der Gegenwart, published by P. Hinneberg.

[19] The common use of the expression musica celestial to denote “nonsense, something not worth listening to,” lends it a satirical byplay which disappears in the English rendering.—­J.E.C.F.

[20] It is not Thy promised heaven, my God, that moves me to love Thee.  (Anonymous, sixteenth or seventeenth century.  See Oxford Book of Spanish Verse, No. 106.)

[21] Essai sur l’indifference en matiere de religion, part iii., chap. i.

[22] Les Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg, x^{me} entretien.

[23] The allusion is to the traditional story of the coalheaver whom the devil sought to convince of the irrationality of belief in the Trinity.  The coalheaver took the cloak that he was wearing and folded it in three folds.  “Here are three folds,” he said, “and the cloak though threefold is yet one.”  And the devil departed baffled.—­J.E.C.F.

[24] Joseph Pohle, “Christlich Katolische Dogmatik,” in Systematische Christliche Religion, Berlin, 1909. Die Kultur der Gegenwart series.

[25] “Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered,” 1816, in The Complete Works of William Ellery Channing, D.D., London, 1884.

V

THE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION

The great master of rationalist phenomenalism, David Hume, begins his essay “On the Immortality of the Soul” with these decisive words:  “It appears difficult by the mere light of reason to prove the immortality of the soul.  The arguments in favour of it are commonly derived from metaphysical, moral, or physical considerations.  But it is really the Gospel, and only the Gospel, that has brought to light life and immortality.”  Which is equivalent to denying the rationality of the belief that the soul of each one of us is immortal.