ABSTRACT
https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315828060/49546f0e-ce84-4e70-9b40-7107f16ee305/content/ufig_w_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>E have seen how the tradition of what befalls man after death has its origin in a total misconception of the true shape of the world, and to many the thought must have occurred, “Is then all this labour vain? Are all the Rites the vapourings of children, false and meaningless to us to-day? Are the mighty lines of Dante just beautiful words and nothing more?” For my part I do not believe it. I suggest that, though the conception of the physical shape of the world out of which it grew is wrong, yet the tradition itself does, in a large measure, correspond with the facts of the case, and that the old tradition has been kept alive, and strengthened, because all down the ages prophets and seers have from time to time obtained glimpses of the hereafter, in which the spiritual state of man corresponded sufficiently nearly to the old tradition for them to find it possible, by using it as an allegory, to convey to less gifted mortals some dim idea of the hereafter. On this, which to human beings is one of the most important problems of life, modern science can give no clearer answer than can the primitive races of New Guinea. Indeed, it gives no answer at all, and even religion speaks with faltering and conflicting accents, very different from the precise and clear-cut answer it gave in the Middle Ages.
