Many western philosophers have claimed that there are no psychical powers, that the human being is simply an advanced form of matter, that the world has no purpose, and that the very notion that a person could survive the death of the physical body is not just false but nonsensical. H. H. Price is an important English philosopher who did not share these views.

If it should be true that we have psychical powers, and Price was convinced that we do, this has very important implications for human nature and destiny - we have souls, there is some purpose to the features of nature, and this life may be just a portion of the process of soul-building that is our destiny. H. H. Price is widely credited as being the first, modern western philosopher to develop a coherent picture of what the life beyond might look like.