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THE CROSS OF OSIRIS,
OR
THE CROSS OF LIFE.
By EUSTACE HINTON JONES,
Joint Author (with Rev. Sir Geo. W. Cox, Bart., M.A.), of
* Popular Romances of the Middle Ages,’ and
‘ Tales of the Teutonic Lands.’
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCO^TT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
1878.
Price Sixpence.
S.E.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET.
�TO THE READER.
To seek a higher and nobler idea of God, the
Supreme Source of Rife, than the various religious
systems of the world present under the debased form
of Personality, is not necessarily attempting to under
mine the foundations of Religion, but only attempting
to discover and demonstrate them—as the geologist
goes down to the old red sandstone for a basis.
Religion has nothing to fear from the removal of the
mosses and many-coloured lichens with which ages
have covered the old rock.
The comparative philo
logist is never suspected of animosity against any
particular language because he endeavours to trace
all languages to a common root.
And it is no
irreligious work to strip off the framework and
trappings, and bare the base on which all the
religious
systems
foundation.
of
the
world find common
��T
THE
CROSS OF
LIFE.
-------—
This Cross, the Cross of Osiris, or the Cross of
Life, is represented on ancient Egyptian monu
ments generally in the hands of Deity, or borne by
priests ; but is always employed as the Divine symbol
of Life—of life as the result of perpetual regene
ration. As such it occurs frequently in the hiero
glyphic writing on all four sides of Cleopatra’s Needle.
And we know for certain that the symbol is intended
as that of Life; for, on the Rosetta stone, it is employed
to translate the title aiwoflios, given to Ptolemy
Epiphanius. But this figure of the pole and the
ring in combination is peculiar to no country. It is
found everywhere, alike among Egyptians, Assyrians,
Jews, Greeks, Latins, Gauls, Germans, Hindoos—
sometimes in the form of the plain stauros joined
with an oval ring, and sometimes in the form of
a ring inclosing a cross — but always the same
symbol of cross and ring.
It is the very oldest
�8
The Cross of Life.
of symbols, and has ever been regarded in every land
as the emblem of Everlasting Life, and the principle
of its perpetuation. It forms the root symbol of the
entire religious philosophy of the old world ; and in
it Hindoo, Egyptian, and Hebrew alike read the
mystery of creation, and the ultimate Secret of
Eternal Life. And it is noticeable that this emblem,
of primeval religion is unwittingly employed to this
day in the construction of our Christian churches
—the intersections of the cross on the ground
plan being determined by the ovoid lines of the
vesica piscis. Thus the cruciform structure of every
cathedral stands on the oval ring.
On examining the composition of this Cross of
Osiris it will be seen to consist of the stauros or pole,,
and the ring or ovum, in combination—the Ifng a
and Yom—or, in other words, the symbols of the two
male and female conditions necessary for the produc
tion of all known vitality. The staff and the ring have
always been held respectively as emblems of the womb
and its impregnator; and, when combined, as the symbol
of reproduction.
*
The twy-form unity of the Cross
of Osiris consequently suggests a two-fold principle
of generation whereby Life is perpetually renewed
and reproduced ; and as such was adopted as the
natural emblem of the Divine and Eternal Life-giver,
who was consequently regarded as a Twy-form
Principle. The modern idea that the divine source
is a single male regenerator and life-giver is a corrup
tion from primeval belief which does not stand alone.
*“ We recognise” (says Rev. Sir George W. Cox, Bart., M.A.,,
in Aryan Mythology, Vol. II., p. 115) “the male symbol in the
trident of Poseidon or Proteus, and in the fylfot or hammer
of Thor, which assumes the form of across pat^e in the various
legends which turn on the rings of Preya, Holda, Venus, or
Aphrodite. In each of these stories the ring is distinctly
connected with the goddess who represents the female power in.
nature.”
�The Cross of Life,
9
The self-sufficiency of the female principle alone has
even been heathenly asserted in ascribing to Venus the
cross, as well as the ring, in the astronomical sign $,
which still stands for the star of that name. But
this sign is essentially twy-form—male and female
—and has no meaning when taken to stand for
either the male or the female principle separately.
All ancient belief, however, held true to the
analogy of Nature; for it was seen that Nature
afforded no solitary example of the production of
life from a single parent. So they of old time
doubted not but that the Life-giver must be twy-form
—male and female—like all his products. And indeed
the most exhaustive investigations which science has
made up to the present time have failed to demon
strate a single instance of the spontaneous generation
of matter, or the possible production of any form of
life whatever, except as the result of the impregnation
of one distinct principle by another of opposite sex.
Matter is certainly lifeless until impregnated by some
unfathomable principle of force recognised equally
by science and religion, though variously described
—by religion as Spirit or God; by science as
an unknown quantity a?. Whatever be the true
nature of this ®, whether called force or spirit,
whose action we distinguish in such forms as heat
and electricity, we know at least it is not life—any
more than oil is flame. It is not Life, any more than
matter is Life; but an inceptive (male) principle
which, by combination with re-ceptive (feminine)
matter, produces the unending phenomena called
Life. For Life is a compound phenomenon, neither
self-creative nor self-maintenant, but as it were a
flame, the product of two mutually expending
principles, the result of the constant action of in
visible spirit (or force x) on visible matter. Matter
we know is not life ; and the correlative principle, or
force®, which impregnates it, must necessarily be, not
B
�IO
The Cross of Life.
Life, but a far higher Principle than any form of merer
life, h owever intelligent, with which we are acquain
ted. Life is not God; but is the unending product
of the mutual love of the double first cause, which is
God. Life is the Incarnate Divine, and has justly been
■worshipped as such. But God is not Life, but Love.
Hence every system of religion has retained the idea
that the Christ, the Krishna, is the Son; and that
the Son is Life, but God is Love; and love by its
nature is twy-form. Life is clearly not self-existent,
but a manifestation dependent on the continued
union of two parent principles widely differing from
and vastly superior to it. Life is spirit and matter
in combustion; the flame from the oil and the wick ;
the spark indicating the current that passes between
the yearning poles of approaching magnets; the
effervescence that arises from the mingling of the
acid with the alkali. Life is neither matter nor spirit,,
but the offspring of the pair; it ever consumes, yet
is ever renewed, because the loves of the parents are:
constant; it is eternal because they are. Life is thus-the vital incarnation of the Twy-form Principle, and
as such naturally came to be personified in the elder
systems of religion as the Son, the visible manifesta
tion of Deity, and the Third Person in the Trinity.
The earliest object of organised worship by learned
Hindoos and Egyptians was a God in two persons,
male and female, such as they found typified through
out all nature—as, for instance, in the fertilising sun
fructifying his mate, the earth—a God consisting of
two diverse Principles, whose uninterrupted union
made Life as eternal as themselves ; and so Life, under
many different names and forms, became also an
object of worship, but always as the manifestation of
Deity, as the divine Son of the loves of the Twain, not
Deity itself. All visible matter has instinctively been
regarded as a feminine and receptive principle, and
called “Mother” Nature, and “Mother” Earth ; while
�The Cross of Life.
11
the invisible Force by which it is ever fertilised and
regenerated, has just as instinctively been considered
masculine and inceptive, and invariably addressed as
our “Father.” And, indeed, the old-world thinkers
could account in no other way for the perpetually
regenerated vitality of the universe than by sup
posing the existence of an everlasting two-fold prin
ciple of generation, bi-sexual as all visible creation.
Had we no other reason for concluding the ultimate
Source of life to be both male and female, the abso
lute universality of that arrangement as a condition
of life should suffice to prove it. For life, in what
ever degree it may be found existing, is invariably
the product of two diverse parents. There is no
exception whatever to this law.
*
If we probe the
very origin of sensation, by examining the nervous
system, as minutely as Sir Charles Bell and Muller
have done, we find that the anterior root of each
spinal nerve is motor, while the posterior is sen
sitive; and that it takes a masculine and a femi
nine principle acting on each other to produce
the simplest form of sensation. Similarly, electri
city is produced by the friction of two diverse ele
ments. In fact, all nature asserts the necessity of
the union of two opposite elements, the motor and
the sensitive, male and female, as the condition of
generating and maintaining life and sensation.
* Instances are, no doubt, to be found of apparent self
reproduction without impregnation, among the annelids, the
entozoa, hydrozoa, molluscoids, and aphides. But in these cases
we have propagation without generation, as plants may be
propagated by cuttings, but are only generated from twy-sexed
impregnated seed. Hence Professor Owen’s designation of
this property of self-splitting, possessed alike by some animals
and some vegetables, as “parthenogenesis” (parthenos a virgin,
and genesis the act of production), is clearly unjustifiable.
No “genesis” is involved in the operation, and the whole
notion of the possibility of spontaneous generation has been
routed from its last strongholds.
�12
The Cross of Life.
Electricity, and all the great physical forces, includ
ing nerve-power and all the various characteristics
of the phenomena of Life, are but special modifica
tions of one common energy or force, produced by
the active and incessant communion of the same two
Almighty principles. Eternal union makes the twain
One, though they are Two ; and their unfailing pro
duct, life, introduces a Third principle. Thus, the
mystery of the Trinity naturally explains itself as
implying the Two, who by love are One, and whose
oneness is ever manifested in their eternal offspring,
life—the Third person—in the Trinity who are all One’
Now it is observable that the doctrine of a male and
female Deity is the very fundamental principle of all
the sacred books of all the elder religious systems; the
common foundation of religion and mythology alike.
We have it in Genesis, where we read, “and God
said, let US make man in our own image
So God created man in his own image, in the image
of God created he him : male and female created he
them.” Here the “Us” unmistakably asserts the
twy-formity of Deity, while the distinct statement
that “male and female ” are “ His Image” defines
the sexual nature of that twy-formity. The doctrine
of a Trinity of male persons is a modern corruption
never dreamed of in the Old Testament, and not
even inculcated in the New, which does not speak of
the Holy Ghost as a personalty, but as an influence or
spirit; just as one may refer to “a spirit of good
feeling” pervading a certain meeting, or to “a spirit
of eloquence ” having fallen on a certain speaker.
The belief in a Trinity composed of a twy-form
parent Cause and its product Life, was the instinctive
idea simultaneously fastened on by all humanity long
before religion became a profession, a system of
morals, or an engine employed in national govern
ment. And the presumption in favour of the original
instinctive idea of a race, as against all subsequent
�The Cross of Life,
13
overlaying with local systems of ethics and national
administration, is overwhelming. The old Vedic
hymns praised Aditi the Unbounded, as being at once
mother, father, and son. And the old Hellenic myth
tells of Ouranos, the heavens, brooding down on
Gaia, the earth, and of Gaia returning the love of
Ouranos by the ceaseless production of Life. It was
long before such an aberration took place from the
original belief as to permit the elimination of the
female element from the Deity, or even to suggest
the idea of male procession, as the Greeks did in
making Pallas spring full-grown from the brain of
Zeus. But the aberration has proceeded until even
our own creed actually recognises a reproductive triad
composed of three males !
In the genesis of the Trinity given by our creed,
the believer asserts in one and the same breath, that
Christ was the “Son of the Father,” and also that
he was “ conceived by the Holy Ghost.” The believer
further professes that the Holy Ghost was not only
Christ’s Father but his Son; for the Holy Ghost
“proceeded from the Father and the Son,” wherefore
the Holy Ghost was manifestly his own Son’s son.
All which difficulty arises from regarding the Holy
Ghost as “ a person ” instead of “ an infine-noe,” and
thereby hopelessly endeavouring to complete the
Trinity without the logical female element of the oldworld belief. The Romanists have eagerly preserved
the female idea in connection with Deity, but so
illogically that, in their doctrine of the immaculate
conception, they are even driven a step further.
For, if St. Anna, the mother of Mary, was conceived
by the Holy Ghost, as well as her daughter, the believer
must see that the Holy Ghost was not only the father
of his own father (Jesus), but the father of his father’s
mother (Mary), as well as of her Son. How, all
this may be Creed, but cannot be any part of Reli
gion ; because it is sheer and impossible nonsense.
�14
The Cross of Life.
The old creed of the Trinity, as embodied in the
Cross of Osiris, imposes no suoh demands on the
imagination, but plainly records an elementary belief
which science every day justifies; a belief which is
the forgotten root of every known system of religion,
viz., that Vitality, in whatsoever degree of intelli
gence it may exist, is not a Cause, but an Effect, the
product of Two Eternal Causes whose Loves are Life.
Thus, this Cross of Life declares the Trinity by dis
playing the Two great eternal Principles whose union
involves the eternal Third. And so, under the guise
of male and female, the Cross of Osiris figures Life’s
twy-form Cause as Love; asserts the world-lesson
that life can only come from love; that as human
life is produced by human love, so Everlasting Life is
produced by Everlasting Love; and, therefore, that
Love is God; or, as St. John puts it, that “ God is
Love.”
Here, then, we find the oldest creed wide enough
to embrace all modern systems of religion, on a basis
which science can approve. And it is something to
know that there exists a base broad enough for all;
and that religion, like language, is thus traceable to a
common root. At the same time a return to primi
tive uniformity in the details of religious creed would
be no more possible, perhaps no more desirable, than a
return to the primitive uniformity of spoken language.
The peculiar value of this Cross lies in its being
a crystallisation of natural teaching—a piece of
Nature’s own inspiration, first conveyed to mankind
by instinct (truer than reason), and which has since
proved the root from which all the various systems
of faith, theology, and moral philosophy, have grown
up ; systems which, artificial as they are, nevertheless
form a necessary part of the artificiality of civilisa
tion, and will be recognised as indispensable even by
the wise who seek to see through them to their com
mon root. There can be no doubt that all the
�The Cross of Life.
15
various systems of faith and worship, founded on the
common basis of early belief, have, in course of ages,
incorporated many purely natural myths of equal
beauty and truth. But the fact of these myths of
Nature’s own revelation being universally true of
Nature, only makes them the more true of human
nature; while one may strip religion of its mere
framework of an incarnation, mediation, crucifixion,
•and resurrection, only to find it reveal its grandest
beauty in naked form.
The secrets of Life, Death, and Resurrection must
be gathered from facts, not assumptions. And we
find one unassailable fact about Life, which was
fastened on by all the unprejudiced world at the first,
and which has been confirmed by all scientific inves
tigation ever since. That fact is, that Life is the pro
duct, not of one principle, but of two, a male and a
female. No such thing as spontaneous generation is
discoverable by the closest examination into Nature’s
remotest corners. Life must have a mother as well
as a father. And Life is invariably the incarnation of
the loves of two. This is why a twy-form emblem of
Life has ever been regarded as the divine symbol of a
Trinity who are One.
Taking the primary idea displayed in the Cross,
viz., that of Life as the production of Two Principles
ever in active union, it is evident that the Egyptians
at least saw very far into the Secret of Life ; the
secret, not merely of its creation and maintenance,
not merely of the extent of its duration, but of the,
nature and condition of that duration. The world’s
■experience has demonstrated the everlastingness of
the Two Principles, and the everlasting activity of
their union, and consequently that their product Life,
being co-existent with that activity, is everlasting
likewise. Yet, everlasting though Life be, it is not
.self-existent. It is a perpetual consumption, a flame
that has ever to be nourished by the twy-form parent
�16
The Cross of Life.
Deity—by the Burning Bush which burns always,
yet nevermore consumes.
The perpetual consumption of life, and its constant
renewal every moment, show in what an important
way the nature of the Life (theologically the Son),
differs from the nature of its two parent principles.
In duration, all three principles of the Trinity are
equally eternal. But while the nature of the two
male and female principles is absolutely unchanging,
insomuch that, could personality be ascribed to them,
they would ever remain the same two persons, the
nature of the product is change. Life is change ; an
eternal momently resurrection from eternal momently
death. Incessant change is the condition of Life,
but not of its twy-creative Principle. It is the Burn
ing Plame that changes and consumes, not the Flame
giving Bush. Hence, while this Cross proclaims the
everlasting life of the two constituents of humanity
—matter and spirit—it refutes the doctrine of
immortal personality. There is no individual resur
rection of the flame specs, whose life is due to the
constant death which consumes them. The eternity
of Life renders individual immortality impossible.
For Life, in its essence, is consumption ; a self-con
suming of the Divine Twy-Parent Flame, which con
quers death and achieves immortality only by that
constant change which momently sacrifices indivi
duality in order to reposit its constituent elements
in the twy-parent breasts for regeneration into
new flame. Thus, the only things in the universe
which can possibly be supposed to retain unchange
ability, are not Life, but its Two Causes: the
inspirers and producers of all that beneficent sys
tem of expending energy which we call Life. Here,
then, we get the abrupt distinction between Life and
the Divine Life-producers. The compound effect is
not, and cannot be, of the same nature as either of
its two Causes ; Life partakes of the eternity of both
�The Cross of Life.
17
its causes, but at a cost of perpetual consumption
which excludes immortal individuality. The same
analogue pervades all Nature. Steam, for instance, the
produce of fire and water, manifests the character
istics of both its parent principles, but the particles
of vapour have only momentary individuality before
hastening back for absorption by their respective
sources—the fire-nature to the fire, and the water
nature to the water—and so providing for continued
regeneration. For, be it remembered, we cannot
consume heat or consume water; in using them we
only consume the momentary individuality which
they present to us; the water and the fire which we
use are the same (except in their individuality) which
all mankind have used before us. The practice of
burning dining-room fires does not diminish the
amount of heat in the universe.
In all forms of animated matter, however intelli
gent, except Man, it is not disputed that while Life
is reproduced everlastingly, the personal individuality
of life never is. And experience affords no ground
for making an exception to this universal law in the
case of humanity—an exception which would involve
the only waste known in the whole economy of Nature,
viz., the dormancy of a large portion of the principles
of vitality locked up in a state of eternal sterility,
all for the sake of preserving to mankind the doubt
ful blessing of an individual immortality which no
one affects to believe is shared with any other form of
animate or inanimate matter. The eternal Life of
every atom, both of spirit and matter, as indicated in
the Cross of Osiris, is an absolute assertion of uni
versal resurrection—a fundamental doctrine which
all Nature daily proclaims in its wasteless renewal of
life. Nothing can die but it goes home to God, to be
given forth again in Life as a newly revivified atom.
The Jews still maintain this glorious old article of
belief, and at a death-bed they still say the prayer
�18
The Cross of Life.
■“ Yig-dol,” which they so offer that its last words,
The Eternal is One,” may coincide as nearly as
possible with the moment of departure of that portion
•of His breath which He has lent, to return into His
Essence. But the idea of personal resurrection is bot
tomless as the Bottomless Pit which has been founded
n pon it. It is an idea utterly excluded by the nature of
Life itself. All the old theological systems of metem
psychosis, so far from teaching personal resurrection,
do but symbolise the constant changes of individuality
which every atom, after brief manifestation in Life’s
flame, undergoes on its way to seek resolution in the
vivifying bosom of its Twy-parent. We have the
prophecy of these changes even during the momen
tary individuality of human life. For we know that
every particle of a man’s body is renewed once in
seven years, and that the very semblance that remains
is not the same man as it was seven years before ; but
that both body and spirit are in a state of incessant
flaming consumption and renewal, and only depend
for their personality on the time that a certain atom
of spirit will maintain its relations with a certain
atom of matter without disintegration.
Personal individuality dies even while we live ; but
Life cannot, even after we die—for the eternal exist
ence of the Two Principles mutually evolving Life
makes that of necessity everlasting. But the con
sumption of the individual is the primary condition
of the Eternity of Life. St. Paul saw this when he
•said: “ Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not
quickened except it die.” Thus the individual grain of
wheat dies. But not the life of the wheat—that goes
into the seed. New grain arises from it, and “ Grod
giveth it a body as it hath pleased him ” (the old doc
trine of reposition as the condition of regeneration),
but the new grain, though it has the same Life, is not the
same grain; only “ like unto” it, after its kind ; as the
new rain-drops which the sea evermore gives back to
�The Cross of Life.
19
the sky are “ like unto ” those that have rained them
selves down for regeneration upon its generous breast;
they are the same life, but not the same individuality.
Yet the rain-drops sparkle no less brightly, and the
wheat-grains bear themselves no less proudly for
having sacrificed individuality to the refreshing joy
of Eternal Life. The desire for personal immortality
is the mere outcome of the personal ambition, of men
—the leaping up of a flame that would fain reach the
sky, but can only picture itself thereon. Eternal Life
is infinitely nobler than an impossible personal immor
tality, which, could it even be accorded without the
abolition of Life itself, would necessarily prove the
greatest curse which could be bestowed on mankind.
Good men and bad men would alike reject it, could
they but realise it. And it is just this root idea that
makes the Scriptures of all races counsel the sinking
of self in the ideal they present of the Divine Source.
The end of all religious teaching is the sacrifice of
personal Self, and the entire identification and absorp
tion of the individual Will, the ego, with the Divine
—all which is merely an enlargement of the preach
ing of the Cross of Life.
Christ himself, the type of all Divine and human
self-sacrifice, repudiated the idea of personal resur
rection, when, in answer to the Sadducees, he replied
to the question they propounded as to whose wife a
certain woman should hereafter be who in life had
seven husbands. The Sadducees attacked two beliefs
as to Eternal Life : first, as to the fact of any resurrec
tion at all; and, next, as to the doctrine of a personal
resurrection. The Saviour’s answer was that of the
Cross of Osiris. As to the fact of resurrection, he
answered, “ God is not a God of the dead, but of the
Living.” That is to say, the eternal existence of a
constant Life-giver is absolute proof of the eternal
indestructibility of the Life which he evolves. As to
the preservation of personal individuality, the reply
�20
The Cross of Life.
was: ei Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor
the power of God ; for in the resurrection they neither
marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels
of God.
That is to say, there is no perpetuity of
sex, because each component part of the individual
returns to be reposited in its appropriate portion of
the Twy-form Deity, which evolved, and still main
tains, the Life which had been momentarily exhibited
in personal form. Now this statement of the disin
tegration of sex is undoubtedly an assertion of the
disintegration of individuality, because sex is the pri
mary condition of individuality.
Hence we find that Scripture, Reason, and Science
agree in supporting the testimony of this forgotten
old Cross, and unite in the creed that, while Life is
necessarily Everlasting, the needful factor which makes
it so is the fleeting character of all personality.
Is this cruel doctrine ? Nay ; but the gentlest gos
pel of tender Divine benevolence. How much crueller
would be the notion of personal immortality ? Once
accept it as true that our dear dead preserve their
individuality after death’s disintegration, and we are
driven perforce to the conclusion, either that they are
faithless, or else that Deity is cruel.
We all know, of bitter surety, that our dead never
answer our tears, our heart-yearnings, our prayers for
assurance in any form whatever of their continued
existence and sympathy. Yet do we believe them
faithless? We know we do not. And it is just
because we know they are not faithless that charla
tanism has ever found willing dopes, led by the most
transparent professions, to look for a reproduction of
“ A touch of the vanished hand
And the sound of the voice that is still.”
Yet those who know what human love is—and who
does not ?—know surely that there is nothing in this
world or the next—no power in heaven or hell—that
could keep two truly loving beings from commu
�The Cross of Life.
21
nicating with one another so long as conscious
personality lasted.
There have been men and
women in the world—there are still—who have
braved obstacles to which death is a trifle, in order
to convey a mere word of comfort and continued
trust to one another. In the case of death we know
that the silence does not proceed from indifference on
our side of the gulf. Our own hearts tell us that it
does not proceed from indifference on theirs. All
Nature, as symbolised by this old Cross, unites in pro
testing that the very worst form of blasphemy against
the Divine Love is to suppose that Deity shuts our
dear dead in an unseen other-world cage, against
whose eternal bars He leaves them evermore to beat
the wings of conscious personal intelligence, crying
always to make us hear, but all in vain, because He
forbids. We cannot bo blaspheme at once our dead
friends and our dear God. We know they are only
silent because their mortal personality is absorbed in
the eternal Extasy of the Divine, and it suffices to be
assured of their everlasting Life by seeing the Divine
renewal of all Life from day to day. We can also
depend that, if our own mere personal love be tender,
the Love which produces all Life (of which personal
love is but a mortal part) must be infinitely tenderer
still—far deeper and nobler than all the personality
which it momentarily illuminates.
But the notion of personality continuing after
death is practically refuted by us in all the ordinary
actions of life. For, whenever a bereaved person
takes his own life in the firm belief that he will
thereby personally rejoin one whom he has loved
and lost, the world’s verdict is justly one of tem
porary insanity. They recognise that the man was
suffering from delusion and hallucination. But,
were it really believed that he would gain his object,
the idea of delusion or hallucination could not be
entertained. It is, however, instinctively felt that
�22
The Cross of Life.
the man was deluding himself as to the first condi
tion of continuous Life. The same feeling is exempli
fied another way. Second marriages would be the
cruellest and cowardliest form of bigamy, and would
be regarded as such by all the world, were it truly
believed that a dead partner remained personally con
scious of the circumstances attending the re-marriage
of his or her mate. Indeed, all the duties and rela
tions of daily life would be unendurable did we
believe we were consciously watched by dumb dead,
whose eternal personality was cursed with the doom
of eternal inability to communicate with us.
The fact of our possessing personal consciousness is
insufficient as a ground for belief in our own personal
immortality. A man may say, “ I know I am a
conscious thinker; that is the only thing I really do
know; everything else is inference ; and I am so
satisfied of my conscious thought as to believe myself
an eternal entity, and therefore a cause and not an
effect.” But our knowledge of our own personal
consciousness is very limited. The time we have to
study it is but short. We can only assert our con
sciousness from moment to moment, and it is so little
under our own control that it is frequently inter
rupted by sleep and other causes. But all we do
know of it distinctly contradicts the idea of its im
mortality. The assertion, “ I think, and therefore I
am,” is but the assertion of momentary personality.
But we cannot say, “ I think, and therefore I always
was, and therefore I always shall be.” For, so far
as we know, a hundred years ago, “ I,” this per
sonal individuality, did not think, and therefore luas
not. And, so far as we know, a hundred years hence,
“ I,” this personal individuality, will not think, and
therefore will not be. We know that our “conscious
thought ” has grown out of un-consciousness—for
where was our boasted conscious thought at the time
of our birth, or say some hundred years before it ?
�The Cross of Life.
25
We have no consciousness whatever of this individual
personality previous to birth, and have therefore no
reason to anticipate it after death. Experience
teaches us that conscious thought is a growth as
gradual as bodily growth, and subject to similar enfeeblement and decay. Our powers of conscious
thinking not only grow and develope with years, but
fade with them, and depend for their brightness on
the precarious tenure of bodily health. Sickness
undermines them, the more so the nearer the sickness
is unto death. And if we notice this gradual extin
guishment up to the last point, why assert that no
sooner is the lamp turned out than it is fully alight ?
There is no form of animated matter which we see
around us in Nature but sacrifices personality to
renewed life ; and it is unreasonable to seek a soli
tary exception in the case of mankind. We share
conscious thought with many of the inferior animals
—possibly in a superior degree—but, possessed in
whatever degree, self-consciousness cannot constitute
a “ cause,” instead of an “ effect.” Nothing can be
cause and effect too. Man must be one or the other,
but cannot be both. God must be one or the other,
but cannot be both. All personal consciousness
teaches us that we human beings are only effects,
and very momentary effects. It further teaches us
that there can be only One Cause ; that we are con
sciously not that Cause, but yet are conscious that
there is a Cause. That Cause must needs be so far
above personality, and above comprehension by per
sonality, as to be “ past finding out; ” and we can
but dimly worship Him, through pictures and para
bles, and are as sure to make a God in our own image
as it is sure that He made us in His.
Consciousness and thought are but parts of the phe
nomena of Life in its higher manifestations ; and the
gradation all down the scale of Creation is so complete
that it is difficult to see, if we accept the immortal
�24
The Cross of Life,
individuality of man, how we can reject the immortal
individuality of the grain of wheat. The Life endures
everlastingly ; but its momentary individual charac
teristics perish. Doubtless there are forms of Life
far higher and grander than mere consciousness and
thought—forms to which the life that now animates
us may attain as it passes through the unwasting
process of eternal disintegration and renewal. And
the prospect of this is surely better than the con
ceited desire of souls to be fossilised in any form of
momentary personality. That would mean a clean
stoppage of the eternal process of Regeneration,
which in Nature stands never still like the fabled
sun upon Gibeon, or the moon in the Valley of
Ajalon.
Nor have we any right to complain, this being so,
that Nature is malignant and merciless, or say that
human life is a fraud. It cannot be so if one ade
quately feels the grandeur of the idea of the Absolute
Indestructibility of Life, its glorious renewal, and the
certainty that individual life can never lose anything
but its individuality—which is the last thing that men,
taught to thirst for higher life, would ever wish to
retain. All the truly refined parts of life needs must
last for ever, to be the perpetual germ of higher and
higher individualities. And what is there about
momentary individuality to make people, with Eternal
Life in them, so anxious to prolong that individuality
beyond its natural term ? The assurance of Life
Everlasting suffices for the happiness of all Nature,
and fills the Universe with unending praise.
If we were never to advance beyond present per
sonality, and had only to look forward to a kind of
spiritual mummification, in which individual pecu
liarities were preserved to all eternity, man would be
of all living organisms the most unfortunate. The
roses *nd the daisies would have a better life; they at
t
east, ia their ever-renewed bloom, are gifted with for
�The Cross of Life.
25
getfulness of all, save their Maker’s face. Personality is
not good enough, and should not be desirable enough,
to make one wish for its perpetuity. The best of
men that ever lived could not last out an eternal indi
viduality. But eternal life is mercifully incompatible
with eternal individuality ; for life is growth, and
growth is change ; and change involves decay and
renovation. And further, the eternity of the indi
vidual would require a fortiori the eternity of species
—whereas we know species not to be eternal.
But why should we be so conceited ? Personality
is the very lowest characteristic of created Life. The
huge wheeling planets and circling stars, that roam
the sky in rampant life, boast no personality ; and
the best proof of the fundamental truth of all sys
tems of religion lies in the fact that they all alike
teach us to despise personality, to sink self, and to
absorb the individual will in the Divine aspiration—
1‘ Thy will be done.”
We die like the flowers, and have everlasting life
on the same terms as they; for the vital principle of
flowers never fails, but is wastelessly perpetuated
throughout all generations.
Life is only the Twy-form Divine becoming conscious
of itself. This dual cause of life can have no independent
personality. Life is manifestly a result, not a cause;
the product of two ever combined Life-producing
Forces which have not life, but live in their incessant
productions. The lightning is the manifestation of
two forces, neither of which is lightning or like
lightning; an invisible positive force of electricity
meets an invisible negative force, and the result of
their embrace is that they expend the dazzling forkSo God, as we call the Almighty Twy-force, manifests
himself in the flesh; and we, and all animated life,
are his spirit in combustion. In him we live and
move, and have our being. But God himself, the Twyform, is above and beyond all our conceptions of person-
�2.6
The Cross of Life.
ality. Wherefore we need not be so eager to retain
immortal personality for ourselves, when God himself
has none. It should suffice us to know that life cannot
die, but is evermore renewed, God giving it a body as it
pleasethhim. And Nature assures us for certain that this
double and impersonal force is the embodiment of love.
All observation and experience show that the entire
creation and maintenance of life is the product of
love—the loves of the twain. Their Love is our Life.
And Life'is, not God, but the turning into conscious
ness of the two root principles of Divine Force.
Mythology has always personalised the sun ; and
religion has as invariably personalised the life-principle.
And the universal tendency to personalise things is
not objectionable, provided the root principle personal
ised be not hopelessly obscured. But mythology and
religion seldom stray quite away from their objects. The
instinctive feeling of the human race keeps all parables
approximately true to their origin. But to attribute
personality to the Divine Source, in any literal sense,
is as mistaken as for individuals to claim an eternal
personality for themselves, in spite of the unanimous
evidence of Nature to the contrary. It is impossible
to have experience of i/mpersonal forces of Nature
—like the wind, the storm, and the huge restless sea—
without feeling their superiority to personality, and
the impotence of personality to cope with them. They
are tremendously greater .Powers than any kind of
personality of which we can conceive. Yet we know
that these are far inferior to the grand Impersonal
Life-powers that wheel the planets in their awful or
bits. And even these Powers themselves must be
infinitely inferior to the Supreme Producing Force of
which they, like us, are only the manifestations. For
the Lord is not in the whirlwind, and not in the
earthquake, and not in the fire—these are but the off
casts of the great Creative Force. It is certain that
we must soar far higher than the notion of a personal
�The Cross of Life.
27
Deity to obtain an adequate idea of the Supreme
Producing Forces whose unending Love is the Life
which we and all things live for ever in constantly
changing personalities. Force, wherever we see it,
is a higher and more godlike thing than any morsel
of personal life. No person can produce Force ; all
the personality in the world has never yet generated
a single particle of Force. We can use the ready
made forces of Nature, but we cannot make any for
ourselves. It is clear, then, that personality cannot
produce Force; and it follows inevitably that the
Divine Producer of all Natural Forces cannot be a
personality, but must be an Impersonal Force as infi
nitely higher than all the huge impersonal forces of
Nature, as those impersonal forces of Nature are
infinitely higher than we and our miserably insignifi
cant “personality.”
If this conclusion as to the grand Impersonality of
Deity be as inevitable as it appears, it effectually dis
poses of the paltry argument which says a personal
resurrection is necessary in order to repair individual
rights and wrongs by a future distribution of rewards
and punishments. For, if it be accepted that Deity is a
Twy-force, not a person, it is obvious that the force is
exerted, like the subordinate forces—e.g., the wind and
the sea—beneficently for the greatest good of the
greatest number, but necessarily without consideration
for the individual. It occurs to none to complain of
the individual injustice of the wind or sea, or indeed,
of the inevitable individual injustice of all our
own-made wisest and kindest laws. Besides, any
system of rewards and punishments is a monstrously
imperfect expedient for the adjustment of good and
evil deeds. Neither punishment nor reward canwntfo
a single wrong. The golden rewards of Heaven and
the fiery pains of Hell would be alike powerless to
obliterate any one committed deed, or its unending
influence on life as a whole. Yet the root of the
�28
The Cross of Life.
Heaven and Hell parable is sound. And herein. It
is certain that life may Regenerate as well as regene
rate. We see this in species, as well as in the indi
vidual. And no man can wantonly disobey Natural
Law without suffering for it, not only in his momentary
personality, but in the injury done to the Eternal Life
through which every particle of his indestructible
matter and spirit has to pass. The individual life of
all species must either improve or degrade; but
though individuals may so injure themselves that the
eternal Life particle by which they are inspired may
even have to go back as far as its organic form for
regeneration, yet the world’s old belief that Good
will ultimately prevail over Evil is justified by the
gradual improvement of life and intelligence. To
suppose that the Twy-form Life-giver—the Infinite
Mother and Father, Aditi, to use the child-language of
the Vedic hymns—punishes, or is vindictive, or per
mits unmerited suffering, in order to be worshipped
for soothing the remembrance of injustice with the
golden largess of Heaven, is blasphemy against all
Nature, if the doctrine of Heaven and Hell is literally
understood instead of tracing it to its root. The
placid T wy-form Principle which inspires life and gene
ration is absolutely Impassionate Law andForce, and is
so manifested in universal Life. The stone falls not
to crush us ; but they that fall upon the stone must
be broken. We human creatures adjust things in a
rough kind of way by a system of punishments; and
by disregarding these artificial laws, imposed by
civilisation for mutual protection, a man suffers in
his personality.
But if he disregards the impas
sionate laws of Nature, he is self-punished in the de
terioration of his immortal life, and the necessity for
its assuming a lower form. This is the germ from
which all the personalised schemes of eternal punish
ment and immortal reward have developed them
selves.
�The Cross of Life.
29
The remarkable tendency of all known species to
sport and aberrate from the parent stock, and in due
time to form new species, is a natural law, and appears
to be a condition, of the Regeneration of Life. It is
so recognised in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
But, in the case of man, the tendency to err
from the normal standard is artificially described as
“ sin ” or crime. This is socially provided against by
the penal laws of communities. But the Divine sys
tem of adjusting what we ignorantly term Evil—which
is probably no more evil than the friction attending
all motion—is not penal, but regenerative. Evil is
at least used, like the decayed dough in the flour, to
leaven the mass. Indeed no kind of life which we
may superficially regard as spoiled or degraded, is
ever wasted. It is invariably regenerated and uti
lised to its utmost capabilities by the divine Life
generators, who ordain the survival of the fittest,
while decreeing the necessity of emulation and suffer
ing as the condition of improved life.
It is common to arrogate to man an exclusive mono
poly in the possession of what is called Free Will; and
therefrom to argue that man has an exclusive mono
poly in future punishments and rewards. Of course
man’s “ Free Will ” is not absolutely free, its exercise
being restricted by the laws and social restraints
imposed by communities for self-protection, and also
by the restraints of the ordained Law of Life, which
cannot be disobeyed with impunity. But man has no
monopoly in free will. He shares its possession with
the animals, and with all other kinds of animated
life. Every living thing has the power to sport and
aberrate, and to take its choice, subject to the inevit
able consequences of disregarding the Law of Life—
which law encourages the best forms of individual
life, but discourages deteriorating forms. A dog
has the same free will as a man. If a dog is whistled
to by his owner and called to come to him, that dog
�30
The Cross of Life.
has the same power as a man to choose one of two
courses, and decide yes or no, whether he will come
to his master with a wag of his tail and lick his
hand, or whether he will bolt off with his tail between
his legs. The dog’s decision is so far free that he
has a choice ; but it is a choice restricted by the
knowledge of consequences ; he knows he must
either obey or suffer. Man’s free will is held and
exercised on the same terms as the dog’s ; and is
just as much restricted by law, human and divine.
There are fortunately many artificial laws for the
protection of social life, which if a man offends he
suffers in his personality. But there is the Divine
law of life, which none can offend without injury to
the immortal life in him, the life which outlasts his per
sonality. All law is of course impersonal; and nobody
believes otherwise, although we personalise human
law into a blind goddess, bearing a pair of scales.
The Divine law and cause of life must be equally im
personal ; and it is only because Divine law has been
parabolised, to meet the vulgar comprehension, into
an all-powerful Personal God, who permits evil in
order to punish it vindictively, and rewards virtue
with the bribe of a golden heaven, that the grand old
root of an Impersonal Law and Cause of Life has
become obscured. All things living know that dis
obedience to the Divine Law and Cause of Life means
maiming and degeneration. But the degeneration is
not vindictive—it is vindicative. It is the vindica
tion of the squanderously beneficent Law of Life,
which decrees the survival of the fittest, and the
decay of failures into forms more elementary for
the purpose of future regeneration.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The cross of Osiris, or the cross of life
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Jones, Eustace Hinton
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: Upper Norwood, London
Collation: 30 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell.
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Thomas Scott
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1878
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CT77
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English
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Immortality
Conway Tracts
God-Attributes
Immortality
Religion
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Text
83^3
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
'7 3/0$
LIFE, DEATH,
AND
IMMORTALITY
f
i
TWO ESSAYS
AN
EXTRACT
AND
A SONNET.
BY
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
PRICE TWOPENCE.
LONDON:
B. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
1892.
�( 4 )
What is life ? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or with
out our will, and we employ words to express them. We are
born, and our birth is unremembered, and our infancy
remembered but in fragments : we live on, and in living we
lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that
words can penetrate the mystery of our being 1 Rightly used
they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves, and this
is much. For what are we ? Whence do we come ? and
whither do we go ? Is birth the commencement, is death
the conclusion of our being P What is birth and death?
The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of
life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact,
that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations
has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted
curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of
those who am unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions
of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as
it is perceived.
It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle,
and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced
that the solid universe of external things is “ such stuff as
dreams are made of.” The shocking absurdities of the
popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal conse
quences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning
the source of all things, had early conducted me to materi
alism. This materialism is a seducing system to young
and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and
dispenses them from thinking. But I was discontented with
such a view of things as it afforded; man is a being of
high aspirations, “looking both before and after,” whose
“ thoughts wander through eternity,” disclaiming alliance
with transience and decay; incapable of imagining to him
self annihilation; existing but in the future and the past;
being, not what he is, but what he has been' and shall be.
Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a
spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution.
This is the character of all life and being. Each is at once
the centre and the circumference; the point to which all
things are referred, and the line in which all things are con
tained. Such contemplations as these, materialism and the
�( 5 )
popular philosophy of mind and matter alike forbid; they
are only consistent with the intellectual system.
It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of argu
ments sufficiently familiar to those inquiring minds, whom
alone a writer on abstruse subjects can be conceived to
address. Perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement of
the intellectual system is to be found in Sir William Drum
mond’s Academical Questions. After such an exposition, it
would be idle to translate into other words what could only
lose its energy and fitness by the change. Examined point
by point, and word by word, the most discriminating intel
lects have been able to discern no train of thoughts in the
process of reasoning, which does not conduct inevitably to
the conclusion which has been stated.
What follows from the admission p It establishes no new
truth, it gives us no additional insight into our hidden nature,
neither its action nor itself. Philosophy, impatient as it may
be to build, has much work yet remaining, as pioneer for the
overgrowth of ages. It makes one step towards this object;
it destroys error, and the roots of error. It leaves, what it
is too often the duty of the reformer in political iand ethical
questions to leave, a vacancy. It reduces the mind to that
freedom in which it would have acted, but for the misuse of
words and signs, the instruments of its own creation. By
signs, I would be understood in a wide sense, including what
is properly meant by that term, and what I peculiarly mean.
In this latter sense, almost all familiar objects are signs,
standing, not for themselves, but for others in their capacity
of suggesting one thought which shall lead to a train of
thoughts. Our whole life is thus an education of error.
Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct
and intense apprehension had we of the world and of our
selves 1 Many of the circumstances of social life were then
important to us which are now no longer so. But that is not
the point of comparison on which I mean to insist. We less
habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt, from our
selves. They seemed as it were to constitute one mass.
There are some persons who, in this respect, are always chil
dren. Those who are subject to the state called reverie, feel
as if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding
�( 6 )
universe, or as if the surrounding universe were absorbed
into their being. They are conscious of no distinction. And
these are states which precede, or accompany, or follow an
unusually intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men
grow up this power commonly decays, and they become
mechanical and habitual agents. Thus feelings and then
reasonings are the combined result of a multitude of entangled
thoughts, and of a series of what are called impressions,
planted by reiteration.
The view of life presented by the most refined deductions
of the intellectual philosophy, is that of unity. Nothing
exists but as it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal
between those two classes of thought, which are vulgarly
distinguished by the names of ideas and of external objects.
Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, the existence of
distinct individual minds, similar to that which is employed
in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be a
delusion. The words I, you, they, are not signs of any actual
difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts
thus indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the
different modifications of the one mind.
Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the
monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write and
think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it. The
words I, and you, and they are grammatical devices invented
simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the intense and
exclusive sense usually attached to them. It is difficult to
find terms adequate to express so subtle a conception as that
to which the Intellectual Philosophy has conducted us. We
are on that verge where words abandon us, and what wonder
if we grow dizzy to look down the dark abyss of how little
we know.
The relations of things remain unchanged, by whatever
system. By the word things is to be understood any object
of thought, that is any thought upon which any other thought
is employed, with an apprehension of distinction. The rela
tions of these remain unchanged; and such is the material
of our knowledge.
What is the cause of life ? that is, how was it produced, or
what agencies distinct from life have acted or act upon life P
�( 7 )
All recorded generations of mankind have wearily busied
themselves in inventing answers to this question ; and the
result has been—Religion. Yet, that the basis of all things
cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges, mind, is suffi
ciently evident. Mind, as far as we have any experience of
its properties, and beyond that experience how vain is
argument! cannot create, it can only perceive. It is said
also to be the cause. But cause is only a word expressing a
certain state of the human mind with regard to the manner
in which two thoughts are apprehended to be related to each
other. If anyone desires to know how unsatisfactorily the
popular philosophy employs itself upon this great question,
they need only impartially reflect upon the manner in which
thoughts develop themselves in their minds. It is infinitely
improbable that the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is
similar to mind.
ON A FUTURE STATE.
It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human
beings in all ages and nations that we continue to live after
death—that apparent termination of all the functions of
sensitive and intellectual existence. Nor has mankind been
contented with supposing that species of existence which
some philosophers have asserted; namely, the resolution of
the component parts of the mechanism of a living being into
its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest particle of
these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have clung
to the idea that sensibility and thought, which they have
distinguished from the objects of it, under the several names
of spirit and matter, is, in its own nature, less susceptible of
division and decay, and that, when the body is resolved into
its elements, the principle which animated it will remain
�( 8 )
perpetual and unchanged. Some philosophers—and those to
whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries
in physical science, suppose, on the other hand, that intelli
gence is the mere result of certain combinations among the
particles of its objects; and those among them who believe
that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a super
natural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent
in all material combinations to dissipate and be absorbed into
other forms.
Let us trace the reasonings which in one and the other
have conducted to these two opinions, and endeavor ta
discover what we ought to think on a question of such
momentous interest. Let us analyse the ideas and feelings
which constitute the contending beliefs, and watchfully
establish a discrimination between words and thoughts. Let
us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and
ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent,
what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive
view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert,
with certainty, that we do or do not live after death.
The examination of this subject requires that it should be
stript of all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the
common opinion of men. The existence of a God, and a
future state of rewards and punishments, are totally foreign
to the subject. If it be proved that the world is ruled by a
Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from
that circumstance in favor of a future state. It has been
asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be num
bered among the attributes of the Deity, he will undoubtedly
compensate the virtuous who suffer during life, and that he
will make every sensitive being, who does not deserve
punishment, happy for ever. But this view of the subject,
which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to develop
and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we
now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, on the
other hand, that the mysterious principle which regulates
the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor
sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the
same time, that the animating power survives the body which
it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural
�( 9 )
agent as those through which it first became united with it.
Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it
will be a state of punishment or reward.
By the word death, we express that condition in which
natures resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that
which they were. We no longer hear them speak, nor see
them move. If they have sensations and appreciations, we
no longer participate in them. We know no more than that
those external organs, and all that fine texture of material
frame, without which we have no experience that life or
thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad.
The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period
there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that con
templation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow
eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer
is struck with dejection at the spectacle. He contends in
vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed
cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own
destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice
was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet
and subtle fire; whose aspect ’spread a visionary light upon
his path—these he cannot meet again. The organs of
sense are destroyed, and the intellectual operations dependent
on them have perished with their sources. How can a corpse
see or feel ? its eyes are eaten out, and its heart is black and
without motion. What intercourse can two heaps of putrid
clay and crumbling bones hold together? When you can
discover where the fresh colors of the faded flower abide, or
the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such
are the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common
observer, though the popular religion often prevents him
from confessing them even to himself.
The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations
common to all men inspired by the event of death, believes
that he sees with more certainty that it is attended with
the annihilation of sentiment and thought. He observes the
mental powers increase and fade with those of the body, and
even accommodate themselves to the most transitory changes
of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties
of the vital and intellectual principle; drunkenness and
�( 10 )
disease will either temporarily or permanently derange them.
Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish the most excellent
and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually
withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the
body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude.
Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so soon as the
organs of the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate
matter, sensation, and perception, and apprehension, are at
an end. It is probable that what we call thought is not an
actual being, but no more than the relation between certain
parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the
universe is composed, and which ceases to exist as soon as
those parts change their position with regard to each other.
Thus color, and sound, and taste, and odor exist only
relatively. But let thought be considered as some peculiar
substance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the animation
of living things. Why should that substance be assumed to
be something essentially distinct from all others, and exempt
from subjection to those laws from which no other substance
is exempt ? It differs, indeed, from all other substances, as
electricity, and light, and magnetism, and the constituent
parts of air and earth, severally differ from all others. Each
of these is subject to change and to decay and to conversion
into other forms. Yet the difference between light and earth
is scarcely greater than that which exists between life, or
thought, and fire. The difference between the two former
was never alleged as an argument for the eternal permanence
of either, in that form under which they first might offer
themselves to our notice. Why should the difference between
the two latter substances be an argument for the prolongation
of the existence of one and not the other, when the existence
of both has arrived at their apparent termination p To say
that fire exists without manifesting any of the properties of
fire, such as light, heat, etc., or that the principle of life
exists without consciousness, or memory, or desire, or motive,
is to resign, by an awkward distortion of language, the
affirmative of the dispute. To say that the principle of life
may exist in distribution among various forms, is to assert
what cannot be proved to be either true or false, but which,
were it true, annihilates all hope of existence after death, in
�(11)
any sense in which that event can belong to the hopes and
fears of men. Suppose, however, that the intellectual and
vital principle differs in the most marked and essential
manner from all other known substances; that they have all
some resemblance between themselves which it in no degree
participates. In what manner can this concession be made
an argument for its imperishability? All that we see or
know perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ
indeed from anything else. But that it survives that period,
beyond which we have no experience of its existence, such
•distinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof, and
nothing but our own desires could have led us to conjecture
or imagine.
Have we existed before birth ? It is difficult to conceive
the possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle
of each animal and plant, a power which converts the sub
stances by which it is surrounded into a substance homo
geneous with itself. That is, the relations between certain
elementary particles of matter undergo a change, and submit
to new combinations. For when we use the words principle,
power, cause, etc., we mean to express no real being, but only
to class under those terms a certain series of co-existing
phenomena; but let it be supposed that this principle is a
certain substance which escapes the observation of the
chemist and anatomist. It certainly may be; though it is
sufficiently unphilosophical to allege the possibility of an
-opinion as a proof of its truth. Does it see, hear, feel, before
its combination with those organs on which sensation
depends ? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those
ideas which sensation alone can communicate ? If we have
hot existed before birth; if, at the period when the parts of
our nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be
woven together, they are woven together; if there are no
■reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at
which our existence apparently commences, then there are
no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist
after our existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought
and life is concerned, the same will take place with regard
to us, individually considered, after death, as had place before
our birth.
�( 12 )
It is said that it is possible that we should continue to
exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at present.
This is a moEt unreasonable presumption. It casts on the
adherents of annihilation the burthen of proving the negative
of a question, the affirmative of which is not supported by a
single argument, and which, by its very nature, lies beyond
the experiences of the human understanding. It is sufficiently
easy, indeed, to form any proposition, concerning which we
are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory in
itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of whatever
enters into the wildest imagination to conceive is thus
triumphantly vindicated. But it is enough that such asser
tions should be either contradictory to the known laws of
nature, or exceed the limits of our experience, that their
fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be demon
strated. They persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be
persuaded.
This desire to be for ever as we are; the reluctance to a
violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all
the animated and inanimate combinations of the universe, is,
indeed, the secret persuasion which has given birth to the
opinions of a future state.
FUTURE REWARD AND PUNISHMENT.
The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I imagine, at this
advanced era of human intellect, be held excused from
entering into a controversy with those reasoners, if such there
are, who would claim an exemption from its decrees in favor
of any one among those diversified systems of obscure opinion
respecting morals, which, under the name of religions, have
in various ages and countries prevailed among mankind.
�( 13 )
Besides that if, as these reasoners have pretended, eternal
torture or happiness will ensue as the consequence of certain
actions, we should be no nearer the possession of a standard
to determine what actions were right and wrong, even if this
pretended revelation, which is by no means the case, had
furnished us with a complete catalogue of them. The
•character of actions as virtuous or vicious would by no means
be determined alone by the personal advantage or disad
vantage of each moral agent individually considered.
Indeed, an action is often virtuous in proportion to the
greatness of the personal calamity which the author willingly
draws upon himself by daring to perform it. It is because
an action produces an overbalance of pleasure or pain to the
greatest number of sentient beings, and not merely because
its consequences are beneficial or injurious to the author of
that action, that it is good or evil. Nay, this latter considera
tion has a tendency to pollute the purity of virtue, inasmuch
as it consists in the motive rather than in the consequences
of an action. A person who should labor for the happiness
of mankind lest he should be tormented eternally in hell,
would, with reference to that motive, possess as little claim
to the epithet of virtuous, as he who should torture, imprison,
and burn them alive, a more usual and natural consequenee
of such principles, for the sake of the enjoyments of
heaven.
My neighbor, presuming on his strength, may direct me
to perform or to refrain from a particular action; indicating
a certain arbitrary penalty in the event of disobedience
within his power to inflict. My action, if modified by his
menaces, can in no degree participate in virtue. He has
afforded me no criterion as to what is right or wrong. A
king, or an assembly of men, may publish a proclamation
affixing any penalty to any particular action, but that is not
immoral because such penalty is affixed. Nothing is more
■evident than that the epithet of virtue is inapplicable to the
refraining from that action on account of the evil arbitrarily
attached to it. If the action is in itself beneficial, virtue
would rather consist in not refraining from it, but in firmly
•defying the personal consequences attached to its per
formance.
�Some usurper of supernatural energy might subdue the
whole globe to his power; he might possess new and
unheard-of resources for enduing his punishments with the
most terrible attributes of pain. The torments of his victims
might be intense in their degree, and protracted to an
infinite duration. Still the “ will of the lawgiver ” would
afford no surer criterion as to what actions were right or
wrong. It would only increase the possible virtue of those
who refuse to become the instruments of his tyranny.
�( 15 )
SONNET.
Ye hasten to the dead ! What seek ye there,'
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes
Of the idle brain, which the world’s livery wear ?
0 thou quick Heart, which pantest to possess
All that anticipation feigneth fair 1
Thou vainly curious Mind which wouldest guess
Whence thou didst come, and whither thou mayest go,
And that which never yet was known wouldst know—
Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press
With such swift feet life’s green and pleasant path,
Seeking alike from happiness and woe
A refuge in the cavern of grey death ?
0 heart, and mind, and thoughts! What thing do you
Hope to inherit in the grave below ?
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�
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Life, death, and immortality : two essays, an extract and a sonnet
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Shelley, Percy Bysshe [1792-1822]
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Place of publication: London
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Death
Immortality
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Death
Immortality
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Text
IS
IMMORTALITY
A FACT?
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION
OF THE THEORY OF
A SOUL AND A FUTURE LIFE
BY
CHARLES WATTS
PRICE FOURPENCE
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, Ltd.,
1 STATIONERS’ HALL COURT, LONDON, E.C.
1902
��NATIONALSECULARSOCicIY
IS IMMORTALITY
A FACT?
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION
OF THE THEORY OF
A SOUL AND A FUTURE LIFE
BY
CHARLES
WATTS
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, Ltd.,
1 STATIONERS’ HALL COURT, LONDON, E.C.
��IS IMMORTALITY A FACT ?
The principal attraction of Christianity is, no doubt,
its teachings in reference to a future life; yet this is a
subject with which are associated errors of the most
glaring kind. The belief in the Christian doctrine of
immortality is based solely upon emotion, not upon
reason. Now, nothing can be more fallacious than to
take for granted that a belief is true because it affords
emotional gratification. As Haeckel observes in his
Riddle of the Universe :—
“Emotion has nothing whatever to do with the attainment of
truth. That which we prize under the name of ‘ emotional ’ is
an elaborate activity of the brain, which consists of feelings of
like and dislike, motions of assent and dissent, impulses of desire
and aversion. It may be influenced by the most diverse activities
of the organism, by the cravings of the senses and the muscles,
the stomach, the sexual organs, etc. The interests of truth are
far from promoted by these conditions and vacillations of
emotion; on the contrary, such circumstances often disturb that
reason, which alone is adapted to the pursuits of truth, and
frequently mar its perceptive power. No cosmic problem is
solved, or even advanced, by the cerebral function we call
emotion ” (p. 18).
In these words of Haeckel we have an explanation, not
only of many of the delusions which exist as to the
continuity of life “ beyond the grave,” but also of the
fallacies pertaining to what are termed the religious
aspirations.
�4
I,S' IMMORTALITY A FACT?
The reasonable course to adopt in dealing with the
question of man’s alleged immortality is, that those
who affirm its reality should give their reasons for
such an affirmation, and endeavor to answer the
objections urged against their contentions. It is also
the duty of those who are unable to believe in
immortality to state the grounds of their disbelief,
and to indicate the inconclusive nature of the argu
ments put forward by their opponents. It being a
subject upon, which absolute certainty, so far as our
knowledge is concerned, is impossible, dogmatism
should be avoided. Those who desire to arrive at a
rational conclusion upon the question should remember
that to believe a thing to be true does not make
it so. If it did, not only would Christians have to
admit that Secularism was true, but they would have
to grant that the lowest forms of theological supersti
tions were facts. This would, of course, destroy the
supposed veracity of Christian claims. It is also
necessary to understand that there is a marked dis
tinction to be observed between belief and knowledge.
We may, and do, have faith in that of which we have
no real or actual knowledge, for we are compelled to
exercise such faith in every-day life upon numerous
subjects. The point, however, to be remembered is that,
if we are judicial or rational, we shall be careful that
our belief is not opposed to knowledge ; and if we are
wise, we shall always be on our guard against taking
for granted that which is highly improbable, to say
nothing of being impossible.
- Now, the Freethinker regards immortality of con
scious beings as a subject that, by its very nature, and
by the very nature of our mentality, it is impossible to
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
5
give a definite opinion upon either pro or con. Still,
he considers that, from a reasonable and scientific
standpoint, there is no evidence to justify the dogmatic
assertion that there is “a life beyond the grave.”
Before we can accept as true the allegation that we shall
continue to live after passing through the ordeal termed
death, we must have some knowledge of the conditions
of that supposed existence, and as to whether they
are suitable to mankind. But, up to the present, we
have not met anyone who possesses the required
knowledge, and, therefore, no information is forth
coming as to the nature of a future life. If there
is presumptive evidence in favour of a future life,
the most that can be reasonably argued is that there
map be such a life. Of course, we do not contend
that a visit to the planet Mars would be necessary
before we could believe that life existed there, but we
do assert that some kind of communication with the
inhabitants would be necessary before we could posi
tively allege that human life was there. It is not
unreasonable to demand at least reliable testimony in
matters beyond our experience. It is one thing to
have a mind open to conviction, and quite another to
be convinced. When similar evidence is presented in
favour of a future existence to that which obtains for
the operation of natural law throughout the universe,
and when such evidence can be tested by the ordinary
rules of observation and experiment, the question of
a life beyond the grave will deserve serious' con
sideration.
Many centuries ago an Oriental sage is said to have
asked : “ If a man die, shall he live again ?” Although
numerous generations have passed away since the
�6
IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
supposed query was submitted, no definite or satis
factory answer has been given. It is a problem to
the solution of which the philosopher has devoted his
wisdom, the poet has dedicated his poetry, and the
scientist has directed his attention, and yet it remains
unsolved. Secularists, therefore, agree with Thomas
Carlyle when he said : “ What went before and what
will follow me I regard as two impenetrable curtains
which hang down at the two extremities of human
life, and which no man has drawn aside.” An able
American preacher and writer, Mr. Hugh 0. Pentecost,
puts the case thus :—
“ The Freethinker looks at death just as it is, so far as we know
anything about it—the end of life. He does not hope nor expect
to live after death. He admits that he may, just as there may
be a planet in which water runs up-hill. He therefore maps out
his life with absolutely no reference to alleged heavens or hells,
or to any kind of spirit-world. He goes through this world
seeking his own welfare, and knowing, from the open book of
history and his own experience, that he can promote his own
welfare only by promoting the welfare of every other man,
woman, and child in the world, knowing that he cannot be as
happy as he might while anyone else is miserable. He knows
that death is as natural as birth. He knows that, as we were
unconscious of our birth, we will be unconscious of our death.
He knows that, if death puts a final end to him as a person, as
science seems to prove, it cannot be an evil. He suffered nothing
before he was; he will suffer nothing if he ceases to be. He will
not even know that he is dead.”
This is the Secular position. With us realities are of
more importance than fanciful speculations, and truth
of greater value than wild conjectures. We are aware
that theologians assert that there are two kinds
of truth—one within the reach of reason, and the
other above it; but we cannot believe this theory, as
no sufficient reason has been given to justify us in
�IS IMMORTALITY .1 FACT?
7
accepting such an assertion. In reference to these
preposterous claims, we ask the following pertinent
question : If there is a truth above or beyond the
reason of man to comprehend, how can it become
known ? Of course our inability to understand such
a truth does not prove its non-existence, but it
disposes of our relation to it, and consequently it is
no truth to us.
The popular theory of man’s immortality involves
the belief of conscious existence after death—or, as
some put it, the continuity of consciousness. Now,
it has not yet been shown how consciousness can
continue in the absence of those conditions that we
know are necessary to its manifestations. We have
evidence that life is indispensable to consciousness,
and that organisation is necessary to life. It would
be interesting, therefore, to learn how these two effects
—life and consciousness—-could be manifested when
the causes of such manifestations are gone. Immor
tality in man implies more than continuity of life
upon the globe ; it means the continuation of life in
the same individual, a condition of which we know
nothing. Death is a state the very opposite to that
of life ; both, therefore, cannot be conceived as beingone. A living-dead man is a contradiction, for it is a
self-evident fact that, if man always lived, he would
never die. Death probably occurs every moment, but
we have no instance of the perpetual continuation of
one living individual. A body in action must be
present somewhere ; but when it has disappeared in
the grave, and gone to ashes, it is no longer an
organised body : it cannot act where it is, in the
grave, for there its functions have ceased; it cannot
�8
IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
act elsewhere, because it is not there to act. This
appears as self-evident as that the whole is greater
than the part. The allegation, therefore, that con
sciousness continues after death is purely arbitrary.
The late Professor Fiske, who was a believer in
man’s immortality, in his recently-published lecture
on “ Life Everlasting,” attempts to answer the ques
tion, “ What has science to say about the timehonored belief that the human soul survives the death
of the human body?” In doing so he frankly admits
that, from the standpoint of reason and experience,
we are no more justified in supposing that conscious
ness will exist after death than we should be in believing
that water would exist apart from oxygen and hydro
gen. He says:—
“Even if we strive to imagine our own physical activity as
continuing without the aid of the physical machinery of
sensation, we soon get into unmanageable difficulties. The
furniture of our mind consists in great part of sensuous images,
chiefly visual, and we cannot in thought follow ourselves into a
world that does not announce itself through sense impressions.
From all this it plainly appears that our notion of the survival of
conscious activity apart from material conditions is not only
unsupported by any evidence that can be gathered from the
world of which we have experience, but is utterly and hopelessly
inconceivable.”
This, no doubt, is the fact, for, as Buchner states :—
“As there is no bile without a liver... .so is there no thought
without a brain: mental activity is a function of the cerebral
substance. This truth is simple, clear, easily supported by facts,
and indisputable ” (Force and Matter, p. 139).
Dr. A. D. Waller, F.R.S., also says :—
“That the brain is the organ of intelligent sensation and
motion is proved by the facts of comparative anatomy... .and
by common experience ” (An Introduction to Human Physiology,
p. 530).
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
9
Notwithstanding these admitted facts, the most
palpable fallacies obtain as to man’s alleged immor
tality. Believers in a life beyond the grave are not
content in simply avowing their belief, but they dog
matically assert that they know such an existence to
be a fact; nay, more, they assert that they possess a
knowledge of the very conditions that will control
our mentality “ when we have shuffled off this mortal
coil.” Hence the Rev. Dr. Biggs, of Oxford, tells us
that in the “ next world ” we shall be conscious of
our existence, that w7e shall recognise each other, and,
above all, that we shall have—
“ Memory not only of our past selves, but about other people ;
memory, too, of those living on earth....Do you think that
those who have gone before us, our mothers, our fathers, those
dear-lovecl ones who, perhaps, were sponsors for us at the
font—do you think they don’t remember us, that they don’t
say prayers for us?” (The Christian ILorld Pulpit, November 13,
1891).
Now, upon what grounds the rev. gentleman makes
these reckless allegations he does not state. Such
dogmatism may pass unrebuked in orthodox circles,
but with impartial thinkers it appears to savor too
much of reckless speculation. We cannot conceive of
memory and recognition apart from the person who
recognises and remembers ; and it is purely arbitrary
to assume that, when man’s personality is destroyed,
its operations will continue. Besides, with many indi
viduals the recollection of their past lives would not
be conducive to their happiness. In fact, in some
cases a memory of the past, and a recognition of the
wrongs and miseries still being endured on earth by
those we love, would not enhance, but rather mar, our
peace and comfort in any celestial abode. Evidently
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IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
the Rev. Dr. Biggs does not believe his Bible where it
states, “ The dead know not anything. In the grave
the wicked cease from troubling and the weary will be
at rest. The very day man goeth to the grave his
thoughts perish.” If “ God’s word ” be true, there is
no continuity of consciousness, and, therefore, it
appears evident that after death those who lived will
have no memory or power of recognition.
The prominent fallacies which exist in reference to
man’s alleged continuity of consciousness after death
are these : (1) The dogmatic assertion that, in addition
to his body, man possesses an immortal soul, which
is an entity that controls his physical organisation ;
(2) that in man there is a universal belief in, and a
desire for, a future life, which is evidence of its
reality ; (3) that from matter the various phenomena
of existence could not have emanated ; (4) that the
belief in immortality furnishes the strongest basis for
morality. In the consideration of these fallacies all
dogmatic utterances should be avoided. Personally, I
have no objection to a life beyond the tomb, provided
it is one where real happiness obtains. To associate
for ever with those we love would, indeed, be pleasant,
if mutual affection, comfort, and tranquillity of mind
reigned supreme. But I desire no immortality unless
the future abode will be illumined with love, truth,
justice, and intellectual supremacy. The company to
be preferred there should comprise those who on earth
were known to be honest thinkers, earnest workers
for the general good, and whose right to the highest
state of immortality had been secured by sincere pro
fession, noble actions, and persistent activity in the
sacred cause of liberty. Such an immortality as this,
�IS IMMORTALITY A FAC'LA
11
however, is not offered by Christianity. Its heaven
is a kind of receptacle for all sorts of characters—men
who were considered too corrupt to live on earth, but
who were regarded as proper candidates for heaven.
If the New Testament be true, the brave, the noble,
and the patriotic are ofttimes excluded from the
portals of the celestial city. The passports required
for admission there are faith and submission. Many
of the world’s heroes who have resisted tyranny, who
have struggled for liberty, who have won freedom of
thought, are not deemed worthy of this heaven unless
they believe in “ Christ and him crucified.” A per
manent sojourn in a place that rejects many of the
purest and best of our race cannot be desired by any
but moral invalids and imbeciles.
The first fallacy to be considered is the alleged
existence in man of an entity termed soul. Now,
what is this “ soul,” where is it, and how are we to
identify it ? The error here is in supposing the ego
in man to be an entity, while it is simply a resultant.
As Professor Ribot states :—
“The ego is not an entity acting where it chooses or as it
pleases; controlling the organs in its own way, and limiting its
domain according to its own wish. On the contrary, it is a
resultant, even to such a degree that its domain is strictly
determined by the anatomical connections with the brain....
His [man’s] proper ego is his whole self—his entire organism,
with all his faculties ” (The Diseases of Personality, p. 45).
If it is urged that the soul is the “ thinking principle ”
in man, then it is not immortal, inasmuch as thought
depends upon physical organisation, which we know
is destroyed at death. Moreover, the lower animals
manifest the same principle. Dr. W. B. Carpenter
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IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
says that, though
‘ ‘ in man we find the highest development of the reasoning
faculties, it is quite absurd to limit them to him, as some have
done, since no impartial observer can doubt that many of the
lower animals can execute reasoning processes as complete in
their way as those of man, though much more limited in their
range” (Gen. and Com/). Physiology, p. 999).
Sir Benjamin Brodie observes :—
“The mental principle in animals is of the same essence as that
of human beings.... I am inclined to believe that the minds of
the inferior animals are essentially of the same nature with that
of the human race ” (Psychological Inquiries, pp. 164, 166).
Darwin, in his Descent of Man, deals with this subject
at considerable length, and on page 147 he wrote —
‘ ‘ Spiritual powers cannot be compared or classed by the
naturalist; but he may endeavor to show, as I have done, that
the mental faculties of man and the lower animals do not differ
in kind, although immensely in degree.”
It should be remembered that the term “ soul ” has
never really been defined; moreover, if we possess a
soul, it is not known in what part of the body it can
be found, or when it leaves the human frame. The
only “ soul ” known is the brain of man, and if that
brain does not properly exercise its functions the
manifestations of life will be proportionally impaired.
In proof of this we may refer to persons in lunatic
asylums who have diseased brains, whose judgment is
dethroned, and whose reason has deserted them. Has
the soul in their case lost its power of control ? If
so, what is its value ? When a drunkard becomes
intoxicated, and loses all control over himself, has his
soul lost its power? Again, as regards the “soul”
leaving the body : if it does so immediately at death,
does it go straight to heaven or hell, without waiting
for the judgment day ? If it does not leave the body
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
13
till some time after death, how can a decaying body
retain the soul? Further, when does this alleged
soul enter the body ? In infancy ? Then why does
the child at that stage of its life exhibit such a low
degree of intelligence ? If, however, the soul is not
allied with the body until it arrives at maturity, both
physical and intellectual development go on without
its aid. The fact is, the human mind is infantile in
the child, juvenile in the youth, mature in the adult,
feeble in the aged, deranged by disease of its material
organ the brain, and at death it disappears. The
origin of the so-called soul is just that of the body,
and no separation, as far as modern science shows, is
possible. Mental life commences with physical life,
and both are immature together. We learn to use
our intellectual powers in the same way as we acquire
the more perfect use of our muscular powers—by
experience and practice. Each must begin and end
with the somatic organs upon which they depend.
It is not at all difficult to understand how the
general belief in personal immortality originated.
Professor Graham, in his Creed of Science, remarks :—“A strange and extravagant fancy that arose one day'in the
breast of one more aspiring than the rest became soon afterwards
a wish; the wish became a fixed idea that drew around itself
vain and spurious arguments in its favor; and at length the
fancy, the wish, the idea, was erected into an established doctrine
of belief. Such, in sum, is the natural history of the famous
dogma of a future life ” (p. 160).
Haeckel, in his Riddle of the Universe, observes that
the perpetuation of the belief among certain persons
may be accounted for “ partly by their excess of
imagination and defect of critical faculty, and partly
by the powerful influence of dogmas which a religious
�14
IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
education imprinted on the brain in early youth ”
(p. 318). No doubt there is some philosophy in the
words of Pope : “ Hope springs eternal in the human
breast
and it is this hope that induces so many of
those members of the human race who exist among
the ills and inequalities of life to indulge the thought
that there is another world where peace shall reign
and the evils of our present existence shall be un
known. When, however, reason is brought to bear
upon the question, it can be seen how weak is the
foundation upon which the hope is resting, and that
the structure which imagination has built at the
bidding of hope has no substantial basis. We need
not wonder at the direction that man’s aspirations
have taken on this subject, for they are largely the
outcome of that selfishness which is so distinguishing
a characteristic of perverted human nature, which
cares for no benefits but personal ones. This, we
believe, is destined to pass away before an enlightened
altruism, which is already manifesting itself in many
ways throughout human society. Possibly the time
is not far distant when men will see that their con
ception of immortality had its origin in an erroneous
interpretation of a natural sentiment—an interpre
tation largely the result of a desire for personal
gratification.
It does not follow, as is frequently supposed, that,
because a person forms a certain conception, there
exists a corresponding reality. Take the illustration
of the general conception of the dragon. We may be
able to trace the idea to some extinct animal, but that
does not prove the truth of the belief that such an
animal ever existed. If an artist painted a picture of
�is nmoni'ALiTY a fact?
1-5
the Devil, it is perfectly certain that the “ Prince of
Darkness ” never sat for the portrait. The conception
which was formed as to the origin of the universe and
man has been shown by modern researches to be
absolutely groundless in reality. Many persons are
induced to believe in a future life because men
eminent in science and philosophy have favored the
belief. But while, of course, eminent men’s opinions
are entitled to respect, they are also open to doubt,
inasmuch as all men are fallible. Great men have
entertained the most erroneous and childish ideas.
Our estimate of great men should be based upon
what they do or what they prove. When they defend
the abominations of slavery, or when they give
their support to supposed miracles and orthodox
doctrines because they are sanctioned by the Bible,
we prefer to estimate the value of their opinions from
the evidence they produce. Great men have held
mistaken views about creation, the laws of motion,
and the possible disappearance of all existing things ;
but that is no reason why the humblest of their
fellow-men should endorse their mistakes. Professor
Wallace’s views on development may be accepted, if
the facts he submits prove his case; but, in the
opinion of many, his contentions in reference to a
future life cannot be proved by candid investigation
and sound reasoning.
Probably the strongest argument for a future life is
derived from what are called the desires of mankind.
The fallacy, however, of supposing that a thing must
be because we desire it should be apparent to the
most superficial thinker. Men desire universal
happiness, justice for all, and a fair distribution of
�16
is nmoniALiTY a fact?
wealth ; but no such conditions exist. Still, it is said
that this general desire for immortality should be
accounted for, which we think can easily be done.
No doubt there is some connection between desires
and their realisation in reference to things that are
attainable, for the very desire may be a factor in the
sum of the causes that enable us to realise our ideal.
But the mere fact of having the desire is no evidence
that its realisation will follow. It appears to me that
the instinctive love of life found in man explains, to a
large extent, the desire for immortality. But in most
cases the desire is not for another life, but rather for
the continuation of the one we have. And even in
this case the desire will depend upon our present
condition. If we are physically healthy, having a fair
share of comforts, and surrounded by those we love,
there would be few, if any, who would wish to depart
“to be no more seen.” If, on the other hand, our
bodies are diseased, and misery and starvation exclude
all sunshine from our lives, then complete extinction
would be to many “ a consummation devoutly to be
wished.” Those who argue that without an endless
future this life is not worth having must regard it as
being exceedingly defective. Why, then, should its
continuation be desired ? Moreover, is it possible to
long or desire for that of which we know nothing ? I
think not, and to do so would be to avoid facts, and to
rely upon groundless imagination.
Where is the proof that in another world there will
be a change for the better ? It is an instance that
the wish is father to the thought. It does not appear
to be taken into consideration that no guarantee can
be held that the future life, if there be one, will be
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
17
an improvement upon this. It does not avail to say
that injustice prevails in this world which will be
remedied there. In what lies the remedy ? Men
who are unjust here may be unjust elsewhere, and
the human selfishness of this world will but be
transferred to another, if the same beings pass from
one to the other. It is no assurance to say that a
God of justice will see that right is done. The same
God, it is assumed, will reign there as here, and most
certainly he does not prevent injustice being done
upon a very extensive scale in this world. Why,
then, should his plan of government be altered in the
next ? The assumption that it will be is based upon
no evidence whatever, and is even in direct opposition
to the declaration so often made that God does not,
and cannot, change. Besides, we know nothing
whatever with respect to the conditions of a future
life, and can, consequently, predicate nothing with
regard to the state of society there. Great numbers
of men who die pass away with the worst passions of
human nature exercising supreme control over the
rest of their faculties. How can these be expected to
form, or even to take part in, a pure and unselfish
society, where each man is supposed to love others
as well as himself ? Endless existence and inter
minable motion may be the laws of thought which
it is impossible to banish from our minds, although
we are unable to conceive of an infinite past which is
involved in the statement. But it is otherwise with
the/orws of existence that possess life : these can be
conceived of as coming to an end. Intense heat or
intense cold may terminate all living things in a brief
space of time. The truth is that it is only dreamers
�18
IS IMMOKTALLTY A FACT?
who contend that any part of the compound being
called man will
flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.
The alleged universality of the faith in a future life
is not true. Ample evidence could be produced, even
from the testimony of Christian missionaries, to prove
that numerous tribes have been found where not the
slightest belief in a soul or in a future life existed. For
instance, the Rev. Robert Moffat, who was for twenty
years a missionary in South Africa, speaking of the
natives, says :—
“ During years of apparently fruitless labor I have often wished
to find something by which I could lay hold of their minds—an
altar to an unknown god, the faith of their ancestors, the
immortality of the soul, or any religious association ; but nothing
of this kind ever floated in their mind ” (Missionary Labor in
Southern A frica ; eighteenth edition).
Dr. T. Cromwell, in his work upon The Soul and a
Future Life, having given a list of writers who acknow
ledged that in their travels they came in contact with
various peoples where the belief in a soul and a future
life was entirely absent, writes :—
“ So the ordinary European idea of ‘an immortal soul,’ which,
so many tell us, belongs to man as man, finds no place in a
religion professed by a multitude of nations, whose aggregate
population, at the lowest reckoning, has been estimated at three
hundred and fifty millons ” (p. 160).
But supposing the faith in a future life were uni
versal, that would not prove its truth. Belief in all
kinds of error has been general in all ages and in all
nations. Because the multitude once believed in the
moving sun, and that the earth was flat and stationary,
is no evidence to us that their belief was correct. The
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACIA
19
notion that the stars were drawn by the gods, or
guided by spirits, has had to give way before the
discoveries of attraction and gravitation; and the
creation story, as given in the Bible, is refuted by the
facts of evolution. Those who base their faith in a
future life on the common beliefs are like the man
who is said to have built his house upon the sand.
The flood of science and the potency of increased
general knowfledge will sweep all such false notions
away as surely as the morning sun disperses the
vapors of the night.
We frequently meet with the assertion that it is
unfair to condemn the theory of personal immortality
through lack of knowledge as to what is termed the
soul, because, it is said, it is re.ally not known what
matter is. Upon this point, however, there is this
important difference : that, although we do not profess
to explain what matter is in its essence, we understand
what the term connotes, and we are familiar, more or
less, with the properties, powers, and movements of
what is knowu by that term. The same cannot be
consistently urged of what is called the soul. It is
true, nothing is known of the essence of matter, for we
have no knowledge of essence, or real self, as apart
from qualities or properties ; but as a substantive
existence, by means of its qualities or properties,
matter is wherever being is, and we can recognise it.
Matter can be seen and felt; in other words, man is
conscious of its existence by reason of his perceptions
of its properties, but soul as an entity none can
perceive. Therein lies the difference : the one can
be sensibly recognised, the other cannot. Matter has
been defined as “ that which exists in space.”
�20
IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
Professor Clifton, of Oxford, says it “ is that which
occupies space, and is recognised by the senses.”
Sir William Thomson observes : “ The Naturalist may
be content to know matter as that which can be
perceived by the sense, or as that which can be acted upon
or can exert force.’'’ (Quoted by Karl Pearson in his
Grammar of Science, p. 293.)
The latest and most elaborate statement as to the
nature and potency of matter is made by Buchner, in
his recently-published work, Last Words on Material
ism. Therein he states :—
“The same scientific research that has taught us the illimitable
extent of matter has also given us quite a new and profounder
knowledge of its properties. We now know that it has chemical,
physical, and electro-magnetic qualities which were undreamed
of a few decades ago. But how arduous a task it has been to
deliver people from the obsession of the antiquated notion of
matter, as something inert and dead, in order to perceive this.
Light was held to be a stream of radiating particles ; now we
conceive it as an undulatory movement of that ether to which
they refused the name of matter. Heat was regarded as an
immaterial (imponderable) principle that could be conveyed from
body to body; we now know that it is merely a vibratory motion
of the matter that composes them. Electricity was supposed to
be a mysterious fluid, pervading matter ; we 'now know that it
also is a movement of the finest particles of matter. In a
word, the innumerable properties or modes of motion, which were
formerly excluded from the idea of matter because they seemed
incompatible with it, are now not merely included in that idea,
but are quite inseparable from it and essential to our conception.
And this applied with the same force to the organic world as to
the inorganic... .to the highest phenomena of life, those of mind
and consciousness ” (p. 3).
Buchner then gives the following reasons to account
for the misconceptions that have hitherto so largely
obtained as to what matter really is. He says :—
“ Misled by the earlier and narrow conception of matter, we
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
21
have contended long against the assumption that matter could,
in certain conditions and combinations, give rise to the phenomena
which we call consciousness and mind ; nor is the reluctance yet
extinct. Nevertheless, in proportion as our conception of matter
gains in breadth and depth, that reluctance is disappearing and
giving way to a sounder view.”
The position here taken by the eminent German
scientist is, no doubt, the correct one. Of course, as
he states—
“ No one will expect to find in a speck of dust the complexity
and constructive force of a particle of protoplasm. In like
manner, no one expects to discover mental processes in matter
which has not entered into certain combinations and assumed a
certain form....Who, in the days before music was invented,
and having only the simple notion of wood and metal which his
experience gave him, could have dreamed of the heavenly melodies
that now flood our concert-halls through the combination of these
elements?” (pp. 5, 6).
The scientific discoveries of this age have thrown
considerable light upon the relation of mind to matter.
Physiological psychology is now recognised as the
highest and most certain form of mind-study. The
old methods of investigating mental operations are
no longer looked upon as being of much value, and
every person who now desires to investigate mind
proceeds along the line of what may be termed the
somatic basis of thought—the brain and nervous
system. In fact, as George Henry Lewes has stated,
“ Without a nervous system there could be nothing
like what we know as feeling.” Samuel Laing
observes: “So far as science gives any positive
knowledge as to the relations of mind to matter, it
amounts to this : That all we call mind is indissolubly
connected with matter through the grey cells of the
brain and other nervous ganglia. This is positive ”
�22
IS IMMORTALITY A FACIA
(A Modern Zoroastricin, p. 140). Tlie position, there
fore, is this : No nerves, no feeling ; no matter, no
mind; no brain, no thought; no organisation, no
life; and without organic activity consciousness is
unknown.
The fallacies existing concerning personal immor
tality arise to a large extent through confounding
nominal with real existences. For instance, theo
logians assume that life, mind, thought, etc., are
entities. Now, these are not things per se, but con
ditions of matter which result from certain combina
tions of material parts. Life is not a thing any more
than death, and thought is no more an entity than is
digestion. The discovery of the correlation of force
has completely revolutionised our knowledge as to
the nature of thought and mental action. Light,
heat, electricity, magnetism, etc., are now known to
be forms of force, and so are life and mind. Pro
fessor Huxley has shown the fallacy of supposing life
to be an entity. Oxygen and hydrogen unite in
certain proportions, and form water—that is, the water
is the outcome of the union of these elements. So,
in certain other combinations, an organism is formed,
and the result is life. The life did not pre-exist, for
it had no existence at all until the organic body pro
duced it, and then it made the appearance simply as
a correlated force. The production of mind is caused
in a similar way. What occurs here is a correlation
of force—that is, one form of force is converted into
another, heat into light, electricity into magnetism,
and some one or more of them into life and mind.
The origin of mind, therefore, is like the origin of
heat or electricity—viz., correlation. The force itself
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
23
thus correlated was of course eternal in some one or
more of its forms, but the particular form in which it
is manifested is simply the result of correlation.
Nothing is called into actual existence but a pheno
menon, having no more permanent individual exist
ence than the flash of lightning or the peal of thunder.
We kindle a fire and heat is produced, or we light the
gas and the room becomes illuminated ; but where
was the heat or the light before the combustion upon
which it depends was brought about ? Certainly not
in existence in the form in which it is now seen.
When the fire goes out the heat ceases, and when the
gas is turned off there is no more -light. No one
thinks of asking what has become of either, and yet
people talk of life as being an entity, and they discuss
the whereabouts of mind before and after the exist
ence of organic substance, upon which the whole
thing depends.
It is said that matter cannot think ; but why not ?
If thinking be beyond the power of matter, which is
certainly something, how comes it within the powers
of immateriality, which, in plain common sense, is
not anything ? All those who say matter cannot
think assume the question to be proved. We know
that men think, we know that men are material; it
therefore involves no contradiction to say that matter
thinks, until it has been proved that not matter but
something else does. It is a recognised fact that each
organ of the body has its special function. Now,
ample evidence exists to prove that thought depends
upon the condition of the brain, and that in pro
portion to its development so is the manifestation of
intelligence. It is as reasonable to allege that the
�24
IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
brain thinks as it is to state the well-known fact that
the liver secretes the bile. Dr. David Ferrier, in his
Localisation of Cerebral Disease, says :—
“ That the brain is the order of the mind no one doubts, and
that, when mental aberrations, of whatever nature, are manifested,
the brain is diseased organically or functionally, we take as an
axiom. That the brain is also necessary to sensory perception
and voluntary motion is also universally admitted; and that the
physiological and psychological are but different aspects of the
same anatomical substrata is the conclusion to which all modern
research tends ” (p. 5).
While it is true that partial injury to the brain may
not destroy thought, it is equally true that thinking,
has never been known to go on where the brain has
been totally injured. In support of this statement
the following scientific authorities may be cited :—
“ Many instances are on record in which extensive disease has
occurred in one hemisphere (of the cerebrum) so as almost
entirely to destroy it, without any obvious injury to the mental
powers, or any interruption of the influence of the mind upon the
body. But there is no case on record of any severe lesion of both
hemispheres, in which morbid phenomena were not evident
during life” (Carpenter’s Human Physiology, p.-HT).
“ In every instance where there exists any corresponding
lesion or disease on each side of the brain, there we are sure to
find some express injury or impairment of the mental functions ”
(Sir H. Holland’s Chapters on Mental Physiology, p. 184).
“There are no cases on record in which the mental faculties
have remained undisturbed when the disorganisation has extended
to both sides of the brain ” (Solly on The Human Brain, p. 349).
Dr. Maudsley, in his Physiology of Mind, p. 126,
observes that he has come to the assured conviction
that mind does not exist in nature apart from brain.
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
25
The olcl fallacy that matter does not control mind is
now entirely dispelled. In cases of epilepsy and
paralysis mind yields to material forces. Nothing is
more certain than that too much alcohol impairs and
sometimes destroys all consciousness and intelligence
in man. Take also the use of anaesthetics. If a
patient inhale a small portion of chloroform pre
viously to undergoing an operation, he becomes
insensible to pain, and for the time being his con
sciousness is extinguished. As Professor Tyndall
says : “Divorced from matter, where is life? What
ever our faith may say, our knowledge shows them to
be indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat and every
cup we drink illustrates the mysterious control of
mind by matter.” The fact here submitted is that
mind is a part of the material organisation upon
which its manifestaions depend. In science it is the
practice to endeavor to explain things in materialistic
terms; and to adopt any other course often tends to
the confusion of ideas, and leads many minds into the
region of obscurity. I fail to see any justification for
ceasing to speak of matter as a form of thought, and
of thought as a property of matter, so long as our
object is to indicate what we think and feel. It is
necessary to emphasize these facts, because every
conception of our minds implies not only a form of
thought, but an idea of the something thought of.
When we formulate a thought, it may be said that we
at the same time define it; that is, we lay down a
boundary, for to think of a thing is to limit it.
The theological fallacy that morality is dependent
upon the belief in a future life is becoming more and
more apparent. Even professed Christians rely upon
�26
IS IMMORTALITY A •FACT?
material agencies for the cultivation of ethical conduct
rather than upon the belief in immortality. They
have more faith in well-devised and justly-adminis
tered laws as a protection against crime than in any
threat of retribution in “ another world.” In fact,
the greatest criminals have been among those who
avowed their belief in a future life. The frequent
revelations in our law courts of criminal conduct upon
the part of the clergy of all denominations afford a
crushing refutation of the boasted beneficial results
of this belief. Moreover, all our prison statistics
abundantly prove that, as a rule, the inhabitants of
the gaols are, with very few exceptions, believers in
the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. The
dominant consideration which practically influences
human conduct to-day is, What will be the effect of
one’s actions in this life? Cicero uttered a great
truth when he told his son that man’s morality was
the necessary result of reasoning built upon human
necessities. Robert Owen was equally correct in his
teaching that the ability and inclination to live good
and useful lives depend not upon belief, but upon the
circumstances that surround the formation and
development of man’s character.
If belief in Christian immortality were necessary to
morality, it is only reasonable to suppose that where
the belief was absent immorality would abound. But
the very opposite is the fact. Spencer, in his Syn
thetic Philosophy, tells us of tribes who were destitute
of all religious belief, and yet they “lead a peaceful
and tranquil life ” ; their “ disputes are settled either
by arbitration or by a council of five ” ; and they con
sider “ falsehood as one of the worst of vices.”
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
27
Again, he says the Carnatic aborigines very markedly
show “ fidelity, truth, and honesty
and that among
the Chakmas “crime is rare” and “ theft is almost
unknown.” From these references (and many more
of a similar kind could be adduced) it will be seen how
erroneous is the statement that religion is necessary
to morality. Besides, it should not be overlooked that
with the orthodox Christian the popular notion is that
the alleged moral efficacy of the belief in immortality
consists chiefly in its deterring influence upon wrong
doing. In the past the preaching of this erroneous
doctrine was the strongest feature in Christian propa
ganda. Among the superstitious, to excite fear was
found far easier than to evoke love. Popular preachers
were not slow to discover this fact; hence they pre
ferred to discourse from their pulpits upon such
subjects as “ hell fire,” “ the wrath of God,” “ eternal
damnation,” “everlasting torments,” and “the devil
and his angels.” These topics proved more attractive
than the “ love of God ” or the “ bliss of heaven.”
The error and inutility of such teachings have now,
fortunately, been discovered, and, as the result,
Christianity is rapidly declining as an active factor in
daily life. Of course, it is not here meant that the
profession of the Christian faith will entirely disappear.
It is too profitable as a business speculation; but its
errors, its creeds, and its dogmas will disappear before
man’s cultured intellect; while its truths, like other
verities, will become allied with principles which
accord with the requirements of a progressive civilisa
tion. It is recognised by the leading minds of to-day
that the incentive to virtue and the deterrent of vice
have but little, if anything, to do with speculations as
�28
IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
to what may be after death. The lesson from
experience is that the desire and determination to live
useful and upright lives spring from right training
and proper conditions. As Edwin Arnold says in
The Light of Asia :—
Pray not, the darkness will not brighten 1 Ask
Nought from the Silence, for it cannot speak !
Vex not your mournful minds with pious pains ;—
Ah, brothers, sisters ! seek
Nought from the helpless gods by gift and hymn,
Nor bribe with blood, nor feed with fruit and cakes ;
Within yourselves deliverance must be sought;
Each man his prison makes.
Goldwin Smith, in his Guesses at the Riddle of
Existence, deals with the question of Immortality
thus :—
“ Darwin’s discovery has effaced the impassable line which we
took to have been drawn by a separate creation between man and
the beasts which perish. Science, moreover, Darwinian and
general, has put an end to the traditional belief in the soul as a
being separate from the body, breathed into the body by a distinct
act of the Creator, pent up in it as in a prison-house, beating
spiritually against the bars of the flesh, and looking to be set free
by death. Soul and body, we now know, form an indivisible
whole, the nature of man being one, enfolded at first in the same
embryo, advancing in all its parts and aspects through the same
stages to maturity, and succumbing at last to the same decay.
Not that this makes our nature more material in the gross sense
of that term. Spirituality is an attribute of moral elevation and
aspiration, not of the composition of the organism. Tyndall
called himself a ‘ Materialist,’ yet no man was ever less so in
the gross sense. If we wish to see clearly in these matters, it
might be almost better to suspend for a time our use of the word
‘ soul,’ with its traditional connotation of antagonism to the
body, and to speak only of the higher life or of spiritual aim and
effort....... To fathom the mystery of the universe—that is, the
mystery of existence—we cannot hope. Of eternity and infinity
we can form no notion ; we can think of them only as time and
space extended without limit, a conception which involves a meta
physical absurdity, since of space and time we must always think
�IS IMMORTALITY A FACT?
29
as divisible into parts, while of infinity or eternity there can be no
division. The thought of eternal existence, even of a life of
eternal happiness, if we dwell upon it, turns the brain giddy; it
is a sort-of mental torture to attempt to realise the idea.. . .White
robes, harps, palm branches, a city of gold and jewels, are not
spiritual; they must be taken as material imagery ; taken literally,
they provoke the derision of the sceptic... .Is the doctrine of
resurrection to be extended to every being that has borne human
form—the Caliban just emerging from the ape, the cave-dweller,
the Carib, the idiot, as well as the infant in whom reason and
morality had barely dawned ? Where can the line be drawn ?.. ..
That a survey of nature drives us to one of two conclusions—
either to the conclusion that Benevolence is not omnipotent, or to
the conclusion that Omnipotence is not, in our acceptation of the
term, purely benevolent—has been proved with a superfluity of
logic. What may be behind the veil we cannot tell. But in that
which is manifested to us there seems to be nothing that can
warrant us in looking for immortality as the certain gift of
unlimited benevolence invested with unlimited power. What lies
beyond that which is manifested to us is the region, not of demon
stration, but of hope.”
Now, what objection can there be to the Agnostic
position in reference to the supposed soul and the
alleged future life ? That position is based upon the
fact that we know nothing beyond our present existence.
The Agnostic does not deny a future life, but, in the
words of Colonel Ingersoll, says :•—The tongueless secret locked in fate
We do not know ; we hope and wait.
Whatever our opinions are will in no way affect the
reality of the truth or otherwise of a future life. If
we are to sleep for ever, we shall so sleep despite the
belief in immortality; and if we are to live for ever,
we shall so live, despite the belief that possibly death
ends all. It must also be remembered that, if man
possess a soul, that soul will be the better through
being in a body that has been properly trained ; and if
there is to be a future life, that life will be the better if
�30
IS IMMORTALITY A FACT I
the higher duties of the present one have been fully and
honestly performed. The Agnostic is, therefore, safe so
far, inasmuch as he recognises it to be his first duty
to cultivate a healthy body, and to endeavor to make
the best, in its highest sense, of the present existence.
In reference to the supposition that we may be
punished in case we are wrong: if there be a j ust
God, before whom we are to appear to be judged,
surely he will never punish those to whom he has not
vouchsafed the faculty of seeing beyond the grave,
because they honestly avowed that their mental
vision was limited to this side of the tomb. Thus we
may feel quite safe as regards any futurity that may
be worth having. If the present be the only life,
then it will be all the more valuable if we give it our
undivided attention. If, on the other hand, there is
to be another life, then, in that case, wTe shall have
won the right to its advantages through having been
faithful to our convictions and just to our fellows.
As to the feeling of consolation which is said to be
derived from the belief in a future life, the Agnostic
is safe upon this point also. For, if there be a life
beyond the grave, we have the conviction that good
conduct on earth will entitle us to the realisation of
its fullest pleasure. Moreover, this conviction is not
marred by the belief that the majority of the human
race will be condemned to a fate “which humanity
cannot conceive without terror, nor contemplate with
out dismay.” Therefore, despite the hopes, the
expectations, and the speculations concerning im
mortality, it appears to me that when “ life’s fitful
fever” is over we may conclude that “The rest is
silence.”
�MR. WATTS’S WRITINGS
Spiritualism a Delusion : Its Fallacies Exposed -03
Education: True and False
:
-02
Evolution and Special Creation
-03
Why Do Right ? A Secularist’s Answer -03
The Secularist’s Catechism
-03
Tactics of Christian Disputants -01
Was Christ a Reformer ? 04
Secularism and Problems of the Day
-02
Theological Presumption - *
02
Agnosticism and Theism o 3
Nature and the Supernatural
-03
The Existence of God
-02
Secularism : Destructive and Constructive
-03
The Christian Sunday Superstition
-03
Bible Morality
---03
The Death of Christ 02
Origin and Character of Christianity
-04
The Teachings of Secularism
-10
Debate on Secularism. With the Editor of the Halifax
(Canada) Evening Mail -10
The Glory of Unbelief
-03
Happiness in Hell and Misery in Heaven o 3
Men After God’s Own Heart : Being Sketches of the
Lives of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David -02
The Claims of Christianity Examined
-06
Christianity and Civilisation
-03
The Existence of God : Questions for Theists -02
Saints or Sinners : Which ?
-02
The Training of Youth : Secular and Theological
02
Collected Pamphlets. Vol. I.
3 6
Collected Pamphlets. Vol. II.
2 6
The Freethought Publishing Co., Limited, 1, Stationer’s Hall
Court, London, E.C.
����
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Is immortality a fact?: a critical examination of the theory of a soul and a future life
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MTOETALITY IN HARMONY WITH MAN’S NATURE
AND EXPERIENCE—CONFESSIONS OF SCEPTICS.
Br THOMAS BEEVIOB.
“ Strangers born on mountains and living’ in lowland places, pine in an incurable homesickness. We belong to a higher place, and therefore an eternal longing consumes us.”
Jean Paul Richter.
The universal belief in a Future Life among all races of men
through all the historic ages, and even, as is now known, in
pre-historic times, is a broad fact of human experience of which
materialistic and sceptical philosophies can give no adequate
explanation. They have two favourite methods of dealing with
it. They first seek to disallow its alleged universality on the
ground of certain exceptions. We are told that there are whole
tribes of men who have no such belief, and that in almost
every community there are individuals and sometimes entire
sects who disbelieve or doubt of any life after death; and secondly,
that the belief has. its origin solely in human ignorance and fear,
in baseless hopes and poetic fancies.
We at once admit that there are exceptions to the belief in
question, though these are of so limited a range that they no
more affect the conclusion deduced from a general survey of
mankind, than the elevations and depressions of the earth’s
surface affect its spherical form. They are far less numerous
than has been supposed. Many tribes, who were once thought
destitute of this belief, have been found on more careful enquiry
and with a more intimate knowledge of their language and
customs, to share in some form in this common belief of man
kind. The few real exceptions are of a kind which fairly
considered rather confirm than invalidate the rule.
If the belief was simply due to human ignorance, we should
naturally expect to find it most inveterate where that ignorance
was most nearly absolute, and that it would pale its ineffectual
fire under the advancing sunlight of knowledge. Is this so ?
So far as its absence from any entire tribe of men is concerned,
quite the contrary. The tribes so triumphantly appealed to by the
Materialist are the very lowest in the scale of humanity. If there
is any truth in the theory of the development of man from some
lower form of animal life, it would be just among those tribes, if
anywhere, that we should expect to find “ the missing link,”
,
�2
In tribes whose intelligence and moral nature is so unde
veloped that they cannot count their fingers, and have no word
expressive of thanks or gratitude, we can scarcely expect that
a spiritual belief of any kind is possible. It would seem that
the very faculties to which such belief makes appeal were not
yet sufficiently developed to receive it, and we might as rea
sonably contend from these instances that the powers of
numeration or the sense of gratitude were not common to
mankind, as from these examples to impugn the belief in
question as a universal faith.
The doubt and denial of a Future Life in civilized com
munities, and especially the prevalence of modern unbelief, is a
grave and far more complex problem.
In the official Report on Religious Worship, 1853, we read:—
There is a sect, originated lately, called “Secularists,” their chief tenet
being that, as the fact of a Future Life is (in their view) susceptible of some
degree of doubt, while the fact and necessities of a present life are matters of
direct sensation, it is prudent to attend exclusively to the concerns of that
existence which is certain and immediate, not wasting energies in preparation
for remote and merely possible contingencies. This is the creed which,
probably with most exactness, indicates the faith which, virtually though
not professedly, is held by the masses of our working population.
And the report, speaking specially of artisans and other
workmen, adds:—
It is sadly certain that this vast, intelligent, and growingly important
section of our countrymen is thoroughly estranged from our religious institutions
in their present aspect.
The members of the .Evangelical Alliance, during their
recent session, admitted and deeply deplored the increase and
wide range of Materialism, and sought means to arrest it.
Mr. Farrar, in his Witness of History to Christ, 1871, tells us
that in the previous century the attacks on Christianity were
rare : “ It is not so now ; we are, as it were, in the very focus
of the storm. It is not that every now and then there is a burst
of thunder and a glare of lightning, but the whole air is electric
with quivering flame.”
Dean Goulbourn, of Norwich, writes :—“ The frightful
prevalence of sceptical views among all classes of the community,
and the alarming fact that even among the clergy themselves
insidious objections to the things which are most surely believed
among us are gradually winning their way, seems to make it
imperative upon all persons and societies entrusted with the
guardianship of the faith to make some definite effort to stem
the evil.” The Hon. Robert Dale Owen, in a letter to the
New York Tribune, writes :—“ A bishop, who is held in deser
vedly high estimation by the orthodox body to which he belongs^
stated to me his conviction that evidences of infidelity are daily
�3
multiplying among intelligent men ; adding that he had lately
heard a Professor of Harvard College express the opinion that
Ehree-fourths of our chief scientific men were unbelievers.”
No doubt similar testimonies might be quoted in regard to
every nation of Christendom, where a spirit of free enquiry
prevails, and free speech and writing are allowed. Many who
entertain these views are men of much information and ability,
some even of eminence, and generally, I doubt not, their doubts are
as honest as the faith of those who subscribe to the orthodox creed.
To deal adequately with, the problem thus presented would
require far more space than is at my command; but there are
some obvious considerations which I think may greatly help us
in its solution.
Very much of our Modern Scepticism is but the natural,
and on the whole wholesome, reaction against the excessive
and unenlightened credulity and superstition of former ages;
the protest of the human reason and conscience against certain
representations of the nature and conditions of that life re
volting alike to both. These crude! and cruel conceptions
of a barbarous and ferocious time, from which the human
mind has not yet fully emancipated itself, require to be
separated and distinguished from the essential belief with, which
they are associated, and which they so cruelly disfigure and
discredit. The wonder is, not that so many rejeet the doctrine
of a Future Life when so presented, but that any can accept it.
It is a striking proof of the vitality of this belief as a perma
nent element in human nature that ft is able to survive at all
under the weight of so oppressive and terrible a burden. Let
the Future Life be but presented as Spiritualism reveals it,
and it will neither shock the intellect nor the heart, but will be
found entirely consonant with both; and I am fully persuaded
that when its teachings are better understood it will be hailed
by thousands who, repelled by the crude, false and gloomy
representations of theologians, now reject it as incredible.
There are crises in individual life, especially of the sensitive
and thoughtful, when we must pass through the wilderness of
doubt to the Canaan of our rest; when the heavens above us
are as brass, and a thick palpable darkness broods all around,
when we reel and stagger under an unwonted burden; when
thought and feeling are painful from their intensity, and old
forms of faith shrivel in their glowing fires, by which however
the dross is finally purged from the pure gold of a diviner faith.
■ Again, it is to be noted that the human mind advances not •
equally and simultaneously on all sides, but as it were by
irregular leaps and movements, now in one direction, now in
another; one period is pre-eminently an age of faith, another
�4
of philosophical speculation, in a third, art is in the ascendant.
The philosophers of Greece and Rome despised the mechanical
arts as base and unworthy of philosophers. When learning
and culture were almost exclusively confined to ecclesiastics!
theology and scholastic philosophy were deemed all-important,
and any curious prying into the secrets of nature was regarded
with suspicion, and denounced as magic. During the last cen
tury physical science has made greater progress than perhaps
in any cycle of human history. Its progress has been so
rapid and startling, and it has conferred such vast benefits
on mankind, that it need excite small surprise that, dazzled
and fascinated, its votaries should occupy themselves almost
exclusively with its objects and methods, and that they should
be sceptical as to the existence of a spiritual world not to
be discovered by the telescope, or of a soul in man which
eludes all chemical analysis and physiological research. We are
naturally tempted to set a disproportionate value on our own
favourite study, and to attach comparatively slight regard to
studies of an opposite kind, jin like manner in our own day,
men preoccupied and engrossed with the study of the contents
and phenomena of the material universe, neglect and slight the
study of psychology (properly so called), and of that larger
spiritual universe, which though infinitely transcending it in
importance, yet does not admit of verification by their, instru
ments and tests, and which they therefore hold to be either
non-existent, or at best, incapable of proof. I fail to see how
this materialistic tendency of science is to be arrested save by
those sensuous and palpable demonstrations of spiritual existence
which may now be found on every hand, meeting the sceptical
scientist on his own ground, by presenting those experimental
proofs of a life beyond death which alone he is prepared to
accept as satisfactory and conclusive.
A still more potent cause of Modern Scepticism is, I think,
to be found in the position which has generally for now upwards
of a century been taken with increasing boldness and tenacity
by Protestant churches and theologians.
To make this more clear^ let us briefly enquire what has
been the origin of this universal belief in a Future Life? and
by what means has it been chiefly sustained? It did not, we
may be sure, originate in b priori reasonings on the subject.
It was not born into the world after long gestation in the brains
of subtle metaphysicians^ nor was it the idle creation of poetic
fancy. The long elaborate chain of metaphysical argument
now employed against unbelievers was the product of a later, a
more critical and sceptical age; and whatever influence it may
at any time have had over a few speculative and thoughtful
�5
•
»
r
minds, it has never had any considerable weight in determining
the general belief of mankind on this great question.
“ Man goeth down into the grave, and where is he ?” would
indeed have been a doleful enquiry had the response come
from no other oracle than this. When all that had been
visible of friend or kinsman was buried or burned to ashes,
what but the most positive evidence, the most absolute proof,
could establish the belief of his continued existence ? 11 This
opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is
diffused, could become universal only by its truth. Those that
never heard of another world would not have agreed in a tale
which nothing but experience could render credible.” The
united testimony of travellers, and the history and literature
(sacred and secular) of all peoples, show that this belief has its
root in actual knowledge; in direct experience of spirit-appear
ance, manifestation, intercourse, and revelation; and that
it is mainly by these direct proofs, responding to our in
tuitions or natural tendencies, that the faith in immortality is
kept alive and nourished, conquering the incredulity which
otherwise would probably have remained invincible.
Even John Stuart Mill, in his posthumous essay On Theism,
just published, urges that—
“ The argument from tradition, or the general belief of the
human race, if we accept it as a guide to our own belief, must
be accepted entire; if so we are bound to believe that the souls
of human beings not only survive after death, but show them
selves as ghosts to the living; for we find no people who have
had the one belief without the othe^. Indeed, it is probable
that the former belief originated in the latter, and that primitive
men would never have supposed that the soul did not die with the
body, if they had not fancied that it visited them after death.”
I do not mean by these remarks to disparage the value of
those moral facts and considerations usually appealed to in this
controversy. But however these may be appraised, they con
fessedly raise the argument no higher than probability; and
even among believers there are many’, like Dr. Johnson, who
want more evidence, and more direct and conclusive evidence
than this. In default of obtaining it, they may indeed content
themselves with the assurances of Revelation; but to un
believers in a Future Life, who do not recognise its authority,
any appeal to it would be manifestly futile.
The Christian Church was not founded on a set of Articles,
or a bundle of propositions voted by the majority of a council;
but on the recognition that as a fact one among them had risen
from the dead, and had as a spirit frequently been seen by, and
held converse with, his disciples and friends. This was the
�6
cardinal doctrine of the early Christians, the central fact the
acknowledgment of which was their common bond of union.
This was their common faith and hope; they had an un
doubting assurance that as He lived they should live also. This
inspired the joyful paean, “O death, where is thy sting!”
This inspired them with enthusiasm, and a courage to brave
torture and death. It was the apparition of Christ—the risen,
the glorified spirit, that converted Saul the persecutor into Paul
the apostle, and transformed the heresy of an obscure provincial
sect into a universal faith. And this faith was confirmed by
manifold signs and wonders: by manifestations of supernatural
power, and the outpouring of spiritual gifts—the discerning of
spirits, speaking in unknown tongues, casting out evil spirits,
healing by the laying on of hands, visions, trances, and revela
tions. The Greek and Latin churches maintain the continuance
of these gifts and their perpetuity, and especially as the accom
paniment of pre-eminent sanctity and Divine favour. The
fathers of th® Reformation—Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Knox ;
the founders of churches—Fox, Swedenborg, Zinzendorf,
Wesley, Irving; the most learned and able divines of the
sixteenth and ^seventeenth centuries—Glanville, Cudworth,
More, Baxter, maintained the continued exercise of spiritual I
powers, both good and evil, visibly intervening in the affairs of
men; and like the Spiritualists of to-day they appealed to-these
facts in confutation of Atheists and Sadducees. “ Many,” says .
Baxter, “ are convinced by these arguments from sense, who can
not yet reach, and will not be persuaded by, other demonstration.”
But as the sceptical philosophy of Hume and Middleton,
Douglas and Farmer, has penetrated the churches, and per
vaded their theology, Ithey have become powerless against
the advancing hosts of unbelief. Their admissions have been
fatal, and the truth has suffered in consequence more from its
defenders than its assailants. The province of the supernatural
m human affairs was first circumscribed within a small geograph
ical area; then its duration was limited; the age of miracles
ceased, we were told, after five centuries of Christianity, the
limit was soon reduced to three centuries, and then to the
Apostolic age; and now, as might have been expected, divines and
learned professors are finding out that even this last small reserve
must be abandoned with the rest. No wonder that unbelievers
regard their victory as Complete, and that writers like Frances
Power Cobbe now contemptuously dismiss the New Testament
narratives of Christ’s resurrection and visible appearance as
c , ,ewish Ghost-Stories”—the last lingering rag of prejudice
folded around an effete superstition.
How dim, shadowy, and uncertain are the ideas of the
�7
Future Life of its professed believers. How much unconscious
and practical infidelity concerning it prevails among them I
How little they realise the strength, the joy, the consolation it
should impart I Enter a Christian cemetery, see the mourners
draped in melancholy black; the sombre cypress and the weep
ing willow overshadowing the tombs; the broken pitcher, the
shattered column, the inverted torch, all around you I Were
it the avowed conviction that death is an eternal sleep, what more
fitting symbols could be devised? Words indeed are read over
the grave expressing a solemn hope of the resurrection and the
life, and this is often all that reminds us we are not in a burial
place of Pagans. Frances Power Cobbgiin Dawning Lights thus
depicts the general tone of thought andjfeeling on this subject.
11 We have contrived to banish our own immortality to a
twilight limbo, which we place nowalfe in the universe of space,
. anc|j conceive of as nowise affected by.the limitations of time.
We believe, indeed, that we shall exist hereafter; and that in
some unknown existence our moral sense will be satisfied by the
reward of suffering virtue and the punishment of vice unchas4:tised upon this planet. But iDeyonclfeSO
telleth a tale of
unspeaking death?’ Who ventures so much as to cast an
image from the magic-lantern of fancy upon that dread 1 cloud’
which receives all the dead out of our sight, and whereon our
fathers fearlessly threw the phantasmagoria of the Divina Commedia^ and the triumphal vision with which closes the Pilgrim!s
Progress?..........................The world®, enveloped in mist, are
fading away into comparative insignificance. We do not think
of them as we once did. We cannot measure the latitude of
our voyage over life’s ocean by orbs hidden behind the clouds.
Without denying, or even gravely doubting, we allow the
future to pass into dim distance, and the present to fill the whole
« foreground of our thoughts.”
With, on the one hand, men of science affirming that there is
nothing more supernatural than matter, in which we are to seek
all the potencies and possibilities of life and mind; and on the
other, theologians resting the belief in immortality on uncertain
reasonings, and on waning authority and ancient traditions which
on their own showing are ouwof harmony with all later and
present experience, what wonder that there is an “ eclipse of
faith,” and that men generally, even when not avowed
Materialists or Sceptics, should seek to content themselves with
the certainties of the present world, and “jump the life to
come ? ”
But this condition and temper of mind, whether due to
general causes or special experience, or their conjoint operation,
is in its nature exceptional and transitory.
�8
“ Thanks to the human heart, by which we live,” it is not
possible as a finality in which the soul can rest; nor can it find
its full satisfaction in merely secular good. Those who have
tried its capacity to the utmost, who have sounded the depths
and shallows of life, and its possibilities of enjoyment, have in
proportion to their own largeness of nature felt its insufficiency,
and confirmed the old sorrowful conclusion of the preacher, “All is
vanity !” Professor Tyndall acknowledges that science does not
satisfy his emotional nature; and in speaking of the charge of
Materialistic Atheism brought against him, he says:—“ I have
noticed during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of
clearness and vigour that this doctrine commends itself to my
mind; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought
it ever dissolves and disappears,' as offering no solution of the
mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a part.”
At the recent Church Congress at Brighton, in its discussion
on Modem Scepticism, Professor Pritchard read a paper in
which he says:—
“ Savages have brains and capacities far beyond any use to
which, in their present condition, they can apply them. And
we too possess powers and capacities immeasurably beyond
the necessities of any merely transitory life. -There stir
within us yearnings irrepressible,^ longings unutterable, a
curiosity unsatisfied and insatiable by aught we see. These
appetites, passions, and affections come to us, not as Socrates
and Plato supposed, nor as our great poet sang, from the dim
recollection of some former state of our being, still less from
the delusive inheritance of our progenitors; they were the
indications of something within us, akin to something immeasur
ably beyond us; tokens of something attainable, yet not hitherto
attained; signs of a potential fellowship.with spirits nobler and
more glorious than our own; they were the title deeds of our
presumptive heirship to some brighter world than any that had
yet been formed.”
One of the foremost intellects of the modem world, who
knew it well from large and long experience, gives us the
following as his Curriculum Vitce^ or—
SONG OF LIFE.
I’ve set my heart upon nothing you see; I set my heart first upon wealth,
Hurrah J
Hurrah!
And so the world goes well with me.
And bartered away my peace and
Ha! ha!
health,
And who has the mind to be fellow <of
But, ah!
mine,
The slippery change went about like air,
Why, let him take hold and help me And when I had clutched me a handful
drain
here
These mouldy lees of wine.
Away it went there.
�9
I set my heart upon woman next,
Hurrah!
For her sweet sake was oft perplexed,
But, ah !
The False one looked for a daintier lot,
The Constant one wearied me out and
out,
The Best was not easily got.
I set my heart upon travels grand,
Hurrah!
And spurned our plain, old Father
land ;
But, ah!
Naught seemed to be just the thing it
should,
Most comfortless bed and indifferent
food,
My tastes misunderstood 1
,.
*
I set my heart upon sounding fame;
Hurrah!
And, lo! I’m eclipsed by some upstart’s
name;
But, ah I
When m public life I loomed quite high,
The folks that passed me would look
awry;
Their very worst friend was I.
And then I set my heart upon war,
Hurrah!
We gained some battles with ficlat,
Hurrah 1
We troubled the foe with sword and
, flame,
(Andgsome of our friends fared quite
the same,)
I lost a leg for fame.
Now I’ve set my heart on nothing you
see ;
Hurrah 1
And the whole wide world belongs to
Hurrah!
The feast begins to run low no doubt,
But bat the old cask we’ll have one
goqdabout.
Come, drink the lees all out.
Such, according toM®. many-sided Goethe, is human life;
a round of sensual pleasures and? defeated aims; and the idea
of a deeper purpos^j or of a life to whihmthis is but the prelude
and preparation, is tossed off with a cup of wine and a hurrah!
The pale face of Death, j withu moggB eyes, lurks at the
bottom of every wine cup, and looks ou^ftom behind every
garland; therefore brim the purple beaker higher, and hide the
unwelcome intruder under more flowers.
Heine is perhaps the chief apostle of this gospel of the
senses, “ his pages reek with a fragrance of pleasure through
which sighs, like, a fading wail Wm the solitary string
of a deserted harp struck by a lonesome breeze, the per
petual refrain of Death! death! death! His motto seems
to be, ‘ Quick ! let me enjoy what there is, for I must die.
0, the gusty relish of life! O, tfhei speedy mystery of
death!’” But, though Riding to the enchantments of the
siren, he could not but feel deeply the degradation, and in one
of his better moods, contrasting his later experience with the
noble faith and aspirations of his. yo®M he sadly confesses,
“ It is as if a star had fallen from heaven upon a hillock of
muck, and swine were gnawing at it.” Great talents and even
noble virtues sometimewo-exist with Materialism, but they are
not its product; all its tenderfcies are of the earth, earthy.
Turning from the gross idoTators of sense and pleasure, shall
we consult the leading oracle of Western transcendentalism? His
sentences are often instinct with the life of thought; and if he
cannot create a soul under the ribs of Death, he casts over its
�10
bare bones a detent garment of fine fancies and poetic similes.
Shall we enquire of him the mystery of being—the purpose of
life, the riddle of man ? If we may accept his own account, no
one is better qualified to satisfy our doubts either as to the
present or the future. Nature in familiar tones thus addresses
him as her votary :—
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, Bible, or of speech ;
Wrote on thy mind’s transparent table
As far as the incommunicable.
Taught thee each private sign to raise,
Lit by the super-solar blaze:
Past utterance and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of Nature’s heart;
And though no mu^e can these impart,
Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
Let us then listen reverently to one whom Nature has so
highly favoured, to whom all is clear from east to west. Here
is his response:—
Alas ! the spirit that haunts us
Deceives our rash desire:
It whispers of the glorious gods,
And leaves us in the mire.
We cannot learn the cypher
That’s writ upon the wall;
Stars help us by a mystery
Which we could never spell. ’
If but the hero knew it,' |
The world would blush in flame,
The sage, tell he but the secret,
Would hang his head in shame.
But our brothers have not read it,
Not one has found the key;
And henceforth we are comforted—
We are but such as they !
Cold comfort, indeed, from one who sees so clearly, and
knows so much, to be told that we are all deceived by the spirit
that haunts us, and that we are all alike hopelessly in the dark.
Let us hope it is no u super-solar blaze” which has thus revealed
to the seer only darkness visible—that after all it may be only
a poor will-o’-the-wisp he has been following, and which thus
leaves him in the mire.
Sir Thomas Browne remarks u It is the heaviest stone that
melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the
end of his beingand the general experience of mankind
confirms the truth of his observation. There may be some men
(though such instances are rare), who, like Professor Newman,
profess that they have no wish for the perpetuation of life
�beyond the grave. Whether such exceptional indifference springs
from natural defect (as some men are indifferent to the charms
of music and of poetry), or whether, as I incline to think, it
is due to accidental causes and morbid conditions, physical and
mental—such for instance as those which tempt men to the
unnatural act of suicide, a transient mood rather than a faithful
reflection of the soul—abundant evidence might be cited from
the most confirmed and eminent Materialists and Sceptics to show
how repugnant even to them^^jt^yidea of annihilation, how
eagerly they would welcome any conclusive evidence of immor
tality; how gladly their spiritual nature, starved and shrunken
a/it is, would welcome the revelation of a future life, if it were
proved to them to be in harmc^^Mmi the divine laws of man’s
being, and stript of those barbaric conceptions which have
perverted the gracious assurance of immortal life into what
Professor Kingsley, with grim irony, has called “ the gospel of
damnation.” Byron, when his scepticism was at full tide and at
its best, checks his scornful
—
Yet, if as holiest men have deem’d, therebe
A land of souls beyond that sable shore,
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore ;
How sweet -it werd in concert to adore
With thosamM made HmfeMjfaadaE&s MBmBTO,.
To hear eaclie^oe laMMb MgaisMra? rjMK
Behold each mighty shade reveal’d to sight,
The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right.
And in another poem, written in aavei^lifferot, though not
less sceptical mood, aftcj^^^gr
wi^P<^bnW'^—
That in
years,
All nations have believed that from the dead,
A visitant at intervals appears.
He significantly adds—
And what is strangest UDonjffi^stBange head
Is, that whateven|K®ithe reasonrears I I
’Gainst such belief, therestronger still
In its behalf, leaalwe^^^^m|«Mag|^'
Shelley, in his early poem of “Queen Mab,” startled the
still air with his wild shriek of Atheism; yet even at this
time, as is evident from his pomaorp1 D (SOME felt how grim
and ghastly, in his philosophy, was the pale spectre of which
he wrote:—
This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the
all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow,
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
�12
The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.
Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death ?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come ?
Who fateteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide
w
* indin.g
eaves of the peopled tomb ?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see ?
As however his min^matured, we see increasing indications of a
more ideal—a more spiritual philosophy—which, did the limits
of this essay permit, it would be interesting to trace. In his
conclusion to j£ The Sensitive Plant,” he says :—
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one Considers it,
To own that death itself may be
Like all the rest a mockery.
*
He seems indeed to have had an intuitive belief in immortality;
and his spirit intensely yearned for proofs of kinship with
another world!, and his mind was ever filled with spiritual
imaginings. He even cherished the hope of holding communion
with the departed. At the time he was defying the learning of
Oxford to refute his “ Plea for Atheism,” he was the subject of
the wondering belief of which he speaks in the “ Hymn to In
tellectual Beauty”:—
WWle yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
And he thus concludes his “ Adonais;” an elegy on the death of
his friend the poet Keats g—
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar
Whilst burning through the inmo^^fof Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
Robert Burns, writing of the Future I Life to his esteemed
friend Mrf. Dunlop, exclaims | Would to G od I as firmly believed
it as I ardently wish it!” Thomas Cooper, when his scepticism
was at its climax, was so appalled at the thought of annihilation
that in his great epic, The Purgatory of Suicides, apostrophizing
the sun, he exclaims with passionate fervour :—
Farewell, grand Sun ! How my weak heart revolts
At that appalling thought—that my last look
At thy great light must come! Oh, I could brook
The dungeon, though eterne ! the priests’ own hell,
�13
Ay, or a thousand hells, in thought unshook,
Rather than Nothingness! And yet the knell
1 fear is near, that sounds—to consciousness, farewell!
may be said these are only the idle fancies of poets,
influenced by emotion rather than by reason. Well, I believe
there are times when—
The heart may give a useful lesson to the head.
KWjen, as many have experienced—•
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part;
And like a man in wrath, the heart
Stood up and answered,—' I have felt! ’
‘
When the natural language of emotion goei®b a truth, while
Beason—blinded by the sophistries of a false philosophy—misses
its way, and for a weary time
Finds no end in wandering mazes lost.
Like Christian
m an may
find a key in his bosom called Promise, which will unlock the
(dungeon doors of Doubting Castle ^^e will but use it. Or,
to quote a simile from dkgra Paul—IM^ep-lowiiw of the heat
relights the extinguished torch in the night of the intellect, as a
beast stunned by an electric shock in the head is restored by
an electric shock in t^i b^Basgjjgt
But let us turn to oW| witnesses! HjgeBM instance, is one
who claims to be governed solely by the severest rules of reason
and of logic,—to Comte, the founder of “ The Positive Philoso
phy,” and to whom indeed we might justly apply the remark
addressed by Friend Allen to Robert Owen, u Friend Robert,
thee ought to be very right, thee art so very positive I” Yet
when tlOpjrings of his emotional nature were touched, it was
to him a revelation which led him to see how defective was the
system of materialisms philosophy he had so laboriously con
structed; and his lateijviews on peligiom weremMsuch marked
contrast with it, that some of his followers deemed it evidence
of aberration of mind, and as such it was actually urged in a
court of law to set aside the' W.that he had made. Professor
Maurice, after quoting a sketch of his life, remarks :—“ From
this profoundly interesting narrative we learn that human love
awakened Comte to a conviction of the inadequacy of his
philosophical scheme J He must have a religion to graft upon
it. There is no help^or it; he must deny facts—facts which
he has realized—if he pretends that his notion of science is
sufficient to explain them. His followers perceived clearly—
and complained bitterly—that by taking this course he is giving
up the principles for which they had hailed him as the last
�14
great discoverer, as the man 1 who had grasped the true power
for the co-ordination of the sciences.’ ”
Voltaire in his article, “ Soul,” in the Philosophiacffl^^^
tionary, tells us that of “its origin, nature, and destiny Kill
know and can know nothing; that it is a subject on which we
must ever continue in a labyrinth of doubts and feeble con
jectures
and our questionings on the matter he says are
“ questions of blind men asking one another, ‘ What is light ”
Yet this prince of sceptics and scoffers in the article “Magic” of
the same work, writes, “ This soul, this shade, which existed,
separated from its body, might-'very well show itself upon
occasions, revisit the place which it had inhabited, its parents
and friends, • speak to them and instruct them. In all this there
is no incompatibility.”
Renan—the brilliant countryman of Comte and Voltaire—
goes even further, he dedicates his Life of Jesus, “ To the pure
soul of my sister, Henrietta, who died September 24, 1861J’
In the course of thildedication he thus invokes her:—“ Reveal
to me, O good Genius—to me, whom thou lovedst—those truths
which conquer death, deprive it of terror, and make it almost
beloved.” Mr. G. J. Holyoake, founder of “ Secularism,”
which, like “ Positivism,” denies or ignores God and a Future
Life, in a passage of great tenderness and pathos, describing the
death of his child, in his Last Trial by Jury for Atheism, avows
that even to him a pure and rational faith in immortality would
be more congenial than the cold negations and dreary platitudes
to which his life has mainly been devoted.
'
“My dada’s coming to see me,” Madeline exclaimed on the night of her
death, with that full, pure, and thrilling tone which marked her when in health.
“ I am sure he is coming to night, mama,” and then remembering that that
could not he, she said “Write to him, mama, he will come to see me}” and these
were the last words she w®fed—and all that remains now is tneunemory of
that cheerless, fireless room, and the midnight reverberation of that voice
which I would give a new world to hear again. * * * * Yes, though I
neither hope—for that wouffl be presumptuous—nor expect it, seeing no foun
dation, I shall he pleased to find a life after this. Not a life where those are
punished who were unable to believe without evidence, and unwilling to act in
spite of reason—for the prospect of annihilation is pleasanter and more profitable
to contemplate: not a fife where an easy faith is regarded as “ easy virtue” is
regarded among some men—but a life where those we have loved and lost here
are restored to us again—for there, in that Hall where those may meet who
have been sacrificed in the cg®se of duty—where no gross, or blind, or selfish,
or cruel nature mingles, where none sit but those whom human service and
endurance have purified and entitled to that high company, Madeline will be a
Hebe. Yes, a future life, bringing with it the admission to such companionship,
would be a noble joy to contemplate.
Well would it have been for him, and for the influence he
has exercised, had he in this matter fully realised the truth
expressed by himself in his essay on The Logic of Death
“ Plainly, as though written with the finger of Orion in the
�15
vault of night, does man read the future in his heart. The
impulse of fiction that leaps unbidden to his breast, which,
■rough suppressed in comparative strife, or withered by cankering cares, yet returns in the woodland walk and the midnight
musing, ever whispering of something better to be realised.”
Yes ! and the whisper is no “ fiction 5” the language of the heart
does not deceive us.
A late eminent English philosopher, whose autobiography
enables us to understand how it came to pass that, as he pro
fessed he never had
yet when his emotional
nature was stirred to its depths by the bereavement of a beloved
wife, felt so little the consolations of his own philosophy, that he
daily visited her tomb, sometimes, it is I said, remaining there
for hours together, in bitterness of spirit, at what he regarded
as an irreparable loss. O, that as he sat there, disconsolate,
he could have opened his sorrowing heart to the comforting
assurance of the angel, “ She is not here, she is risen !”
Hobbes confessed that to him death was “a leap in the
dark
and of Hume, the acutest of sceptics, and the influence
of whose philosophy has perhaps been the most penetrating and
persuasive, it has been truly
Sears, that
u Perhaps there is nmj a more significant passage in religious
literature than the supprSea passage of Mr. Hume, where he
describes the influence of his speculations. He surveys the
habitation whicu, withBnfiw^^)^M s^Wie has builded about
him, and he starts with horror ^j^gMb'of the gloomy and
vacant chambers.” The
is the passage referred to:—
I am astonished and affrighted at the forlorn solitude in which I am placed
by my philosophy. When I look about I see on every side dispute, contradiction,
and distraction. When I turn my eyes inward, I find nothing but doubt and
ignorance. Where am I, and what ? fca®® what causes do I derive existence,
and to what condition do I return ? jjl
with these questions, and
I begin to fancy myself- in the most dejgog^le
imaginable, environed
in the deepest darkness.
In Carlyle’s Life of
is a passage, remarkable for
its graphic force, which may
taken as‘ an epitome of the
sceptical philosophy^concpming a Future Life, and as such is
quoted with approval Bv M^Holy<awl|^ his Logic of Death.
It reads thus :—
What went before and what>v3]^o®Ww me, I regard as two black im
penetrable curtains, which hang down at the two extremities of human life, and
which no living man has yet drawn aside. Many hundreds of generations
have already stood before them with their -torche^gugssin g anxiously what
lies behind. On the curtain of Futurity many
own shadows, the
forms of their passions enlarged and put in motion; they shrink in terror at this
image of themselves. Poets, philosophers, and founders of states, have painted
this curtain with their dreams, more smiling or more dark, as the sky above
them was cheerful or gloomy ; and their pictures deceive the eye when viewed
from a distance. Many jugglers, too, make profit of this our universal
�16
curiosity : by their strange mummeries they have set the outstretched fan<5y'u3
amazement. A deep silence reigns behind this curtain; no one once within
will answer those he has left without; all you can hear is a hollow echo of your
question, as if you shouted into a chasm.
No doubt priests and jugglers have made profit of our
universal curiosity on a question in which we are so profoundly
interested, but that no one once within the veil will answer
those he has left without, is a statement in flat denial to known
experience in all ages, and most emphatically so to that of our
own age, in which we have the most ample and conclusive
evidence that death is no impenetrable curtain separating us
wholly from those who have gon$ before ; and it is moreover a
view as gloomy as it is false.
*
Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on j^his pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn !
How far more cheering and ennobling is the faith enunciated
by Fichte:—
The world of nature, on which but now I gazed with wonder and admiration,
sinks before me. With all its abounding life and order and bounteous increase,
it is but the curtain which hides one infinitely more perfect—the germ from
which that other shall develope itself. My faith pierces through this veil, and
broods over and animates this germ. It sees, indeed, nothing distinctly; but it
expects more than it 'pan- conceive, more than it will ever be able to conceive,
until time shall be no more.
A prominent Sceptic, conversing on Spiritualism with a
mutual friend—a believer—remarked, “ I would give every
thing, could I but held your unfaltering convictions on this
subject.
What, indeed, has Materialism to offer us in exchange for
the faith in immortality it calls upon us to surrender ? When the
heart is lacerated
l°ss of wife, or child, of friend, to be
told that all must one-day suffer alike experience; that perhaps
time may blunt the edge of sensibility, and awaken new interests;
that the material atoms of the beloved form are imperishable,
and may re-appear in tigbes and grass and flowers, is but to mock
our grief. I do not argue that we are to accept this, or any
belief, simply because it is agreeable to us. Of course, the
primary question is, not what would be pleasant, but what is
true. If it can be proved that life, thought, feeling, conscious
ness perish with the body, let us bear our fate with what
fortitude we may. My present purpose is only to show that
the faith in immortafflty is congenial to the human heart; that
when it finds free utterance the most confirmed Sceptics, the
most obdurate Materialists, confess as much, despite the confirmed
and inveterate prejudice to” the contrary. It is not death,
but life for which we pant—that more and fuller life, eternal
�17
in the heavens" At least one entire side of our nature,
and that not the least trustworthy, responds to this belief,
and is- never fully reconciled to its contrary. And although
in this matter instances abound in which the other side of our
nature falters and is recalcitrant, yet it would surely be
irrational to conclude that even here this discordance is necessary
and final. Harmony is our normal condition, the true law of
our being, and we need never despair of its attainment, though
the evidence to co-ordinate with faith may have to be sought
elsewhere than in the jiommon Ftheology offehe pulpit or the
philosophy of schools.
Some of my readerswwilL doubtless smile when I affirm my
conviction that this evidence is supplied in the facts of modern
Spiritualism. YeO^^B no hasty conclusion, but my deliberate
and matured iudgmew^MMya^ years’ investigation and
experience. And now after more than a quarter of a century’s
contemptuous denial of these facts, and unmeasured scorn and
vituperation of those who asserted them, as within the range of
their own personal knowledge, the most distinguished scientists,
after full investigation and every application of crucial tests, are
fast admitting
scientists of
the highest reputation have expressed a contrary opinion; but
there is this difference, that while the latter speak without any
proper knowledge
subject, and have been at no pains to
inform themselves concerning it, the former have made it a
matter of deep research, and Ihave^^enWitl years of careful
experimental investigation. Wherever the inwstigation has
been most thorough, raonvStat has been most complete. And
it would be difficult to name any better test fef truth than this.
As remarked by a, Roman Catholic writer in the Dublin
Review :—
The invariable .law of a plausible lie is this—let it be received at first with
open arms; intelligeil^MaSlwho have no interest in supporting it and no
prejudice in favour of
and inquire;
it gradually, and,
as it were, day by day loses its hold on the credence of men, and at length
vanishes utterly and for ever.
opposite of this has been the fortune
of the phenomena we are speaking of. Among men of keen and cultivated
minds they were at first received, not only with disbelief, but with laughter and
derision: they were rejected as untrue, not because not proven, but because
incapable of proof, because they were impossible—and, Hfeed, impossible they
are, as we shall see, to mere human power and skill. Among the characteristics
of the world in modern times a tendency to
preternatural most
certainly can not be reckoned. The phenomena of Magnetism and Spiritism at
least appear preternatural: the
BjreMlSMilrainst accepting them:
it was predicted that, before the generation that witnessed their rise had died
out, they would hav^ffi^ppeared aaMBeen forgotten. Well, years have rolled
on, and men who formerly wo»smmM without impatience read or listen to the
accounts of these phenomena (the TOSaMiEBer was one of these), had at
length been led to examine what was making such a noise in the world, and
from mature, and for a time prejudiced, examination, have been led to conviction.
�18
In this way have been brought round several of the ablest and most learned
men m Europe, Catholic theologians, physicians, and philosophers and others,
Catholic, Protestant, and free-thinking. Authority does not necessarily nor
even. generally, prove an opinion: in a matter of mere opinion the mosl
enquiring and cautious men may be greatly deceived, and have been so
deceived. But here there is question of facts and of the testimony of the
senses—of facts sensible to the sight, the hearing, the touch—of facts and
testimonies repeated over and over again, beyond the possibility of calculation
in the greater part of.Europe and America, and recorded year after year down to
the present day. It is quite impossible that about such facts such a cloud of
such witnesses should be all deceived.
The spiritual nature and future life of man are then not only
within the range of the knowable, but have become actually
known to thousands of independent and qualified investigators,
including several of the ablest and most learned men in
Europeand we may add, of its most distinguished men of
science * Materialism has demanded plain palpable facts, and
by these it has been confuted. It has challenged sensuous and
scientific demonstration, and its terms have been accepted, and
the demonstration is complete and overwhelming. As with the
hammer of Thor the strong walls and towers of Materialism
have been broken by it into fragments.
We have seen by the confessions of its chief expounders
what a dismal outlook it presents; but this can only be fully
realised by those who have dwelt in and emerged from those
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades,
Where peace and rest can never dwell,
Hope never comes.
Dr. George Sexton, for twenty years one of the leading
advocates of Secularism, and by far its most learned and scientific
representative, after long and careful investigation into Spiritu
alism, fully satisfied himself of its truth, and is now one of its
most earnest. advocates. Speaking of the state of mind to
which Scepticism leads, he says :—
No man knows.better what this state of mind is than I do, having had many
years bitter experience of the doubts and uncertainties which it involves. To
be, as the poet says,
“ Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind,”
and yet not to feel able to recognize the Divine in Nature and the spiritual in
man, is a condition which is easier felt than described. Gleams of light occa
sionally shooting through the dense darkness, serving only to make the darkness
a. erwards more intense; a few drops of rain on the parched and dried up
ground, the sight of food to the hungry, or water placed before the eyes as
c -° +F k° ?1°C7 ,e v,lsl0n
h™ wbo is dying of thirst, are similes which but
faintly shadow forth the state of mind of the Sceptic.
Q
4? th® “0SJ recent examples inEngland see “A Defence of Modern
bpintualism, by Alfred Russell Wallace, in the Fortnightly Review for
ay an June, 1874; and “ Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called
pin ua , unng the Years 1870-3,” in the Quarterly Journal of Science, for
nuary, 874, by its editor, William Crookes, F.R.S. The Report on Spiritugtism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, 1871, also gives a
m,ass of evidence on this subject.
s
(
�!T9
■ttffiRnSy manner Gerald Massey, in his admirable essay con
cerning Spiritualism, testifies:—
Spiritualism will make religion infinitely more real, and translate it from the
domain of belief to that of life. It has been to me, in common with many
others, such a lifting of the mental horizon and a letting in of the heavens—
such a transformation of faiths into facts—that I can only compare life without
it to sailing on board ship with hatches battened down, and being kept a
prisoner, cribbed, cabined, and confined, living by the light of a candle—dark to
the glory overhead, and blind to a thousand possibilities of being, and then
suddenly on some splendid starry night allowed to go on deck for the first time,
to see the stupendous mechanism of the starry heavens all aglow with the glory
of God, to feel that vast vision glittering in the eyes, bewilderingly. beautiful,
and drink in new life with every breath of this wondrous liberty, which makes
you dilate almost large enough in soul to fill the immensity that you see around.
One who has followed the Apostolic injunction—“ Add to
your faith, knowledge; ” and whose public ministrations as a
teacher of religion have, in consequencelbeen marked by an
intelligence, as well as a strength and fervour, which carry to
other hearts the conviction of his own, remarks:—
This doctrine of a God who is indeed our Father ; this glorious assurance of
everlasting life in Him ; this long line of witnesses who have caught some ray
of His divine beauty and shed it upon us—these things, which religion grafts
upon philosophy, make life rich indeed. We can fly for shelter from Infinite
Law, and take refuge and find peace in Infinite Love. . . . . And when
the fear of death comes on us, we can look through the darkness to the light
beyond, and lie down in hope, knowing in Whom we have believed, and confident
that He will keep that which, in life’s last act of renunciation, we commit to
Him. It is this tone of triumphant confidence, this enthusiasm of faith in the
truth of the Universe, this fanaticism of trust in the veracity of God, which
gives zest to life. It is this hope which brightens the eye and nerves the hand,
makes us strong and happy in the conflict of duty, and enables us to overcome
the world. It is this certainty of faith which turns belief into knowledge, and
is the everlasting Rock on which we stand secure amid the changes and
calamities of time.”*
When Dr. Tyndall in his celebrated Belfast address went
out of his way to speak of Spiritualism as “ degrading,” he
spoke not with the intelligent impartiality due to the high
position he occupied, but with the vehement prejudice of a
disciple of the Lucretian philosophy of which he appears
enamoured; but to which it seems to me the term he used might
fitly be applied. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, who has made
Spiritualism a special and careful study, and whose judgment
concerning it is therefore of far greater weight, remarks that its
phenomena combined with its higher teachings, “ constitute a
great moral agency which may yet regenerate the world.”
For the Spiritualist who, by daily experience, gets absolute knowledge of
these facts regarding the future state—who knows that, just in proportion as
he indulges in passion, or selfishness, or the exclusive pursuit of wealth, and
neglects to cultivate the affections and the varied powers of his mind, so does
he inevitably prepare for himself misery in a world in which there are no
physical wants to be provided for, no sensual enjoyments except those directly
associated with the affections and sympathies, no occupations but those having
* Scientific Men and .Religious Teachers, by P. W. Clayden.
�20
for their object social and intellectual progress—is impelled towards a pure, a
sympathetic, and an intellectual life by motives far stronger than any which
either religion or philosophy can supply. He dreads to give way to passion or
to falsehood, to selfishness or to a life of luxurious physical enjoyment, because
he knows that the natural and inevitable consequences of such habits are future
misery, necessitating a long and arduous struggle in order to develope anew the
faculties whose exercise long disuse has rendered painful to him. He will be
deterred from crime by the knowledge that its unforseen consequences may
cause him ages of remorse ; while the bad passions which it encourages will be
a perpetual torment to himself in a state of being in which mental emotions
cannot be laid aside or forgotten amid the fierce struggles and sensual pleasures
of a physical existence. It must be remembered that these beliefs (unlike those
of theology) will have a living efficacy, because they depend on facts occurring’
again and again in the family circle, constantly reiterating the same truths as
the result of personal knowledge, and thus bringing home to the mind even of
the most obtuse, the absolute reality of that future existence in which our
degree of happiness or misery will be directly dependent on the “mental fabric”
we construct by our daily though®^ and words, and actions here........................
The assertion, so often made, that Spiritualism is the survival or revival of
old superstitions, is so utterly ®u founded as to be hardly worth notice. A
science of human nature which ^^founded on observed facts, which appeals only
to facts _ and experiment,
takes no beliefs on trust, which inculcates in
vestigation and self-reliance as the first duties of intelligent beings, which
teaches that happiness in a future life can be secured by cultivating and develop
ing to the utmost the higher faculties of our intellectual and moral nature and
by no other method, is and must be the natural enemy of all superstition.
Spiritualism is an experimental science, and affords the only sure foundation for
a true philosophy and a puSEelieapn. It abolishes the terms “ supernatural”
and “ miracle” by an extenWjm of the sphere of law and the realm of nature ;
and in doing so it takes up and explains whatever is true in the superstitions
and so-called miracles of all ages.
Contrast the moral influence of thisPknowledge—not only as
Mr. Wallace has here done with that of the popular religion and
theology—but with that of the latest gospel of our high priests
of science that matter is the final cause of all things ; and that
man is but an automatic machine, the product of its atoms
evolved through the lower forms of organic life; and soonr
u like streaks of morning cloud, melting into the infinite azure
of the pastwhile religion, “ though valuable in itself, is only
man’s speculative creation,” concerning which “ ultimate fixity
of conception is here unattainable.” Look on that philosophyr
and on this ; and then let intelligent reasonable men determine
which is elevating and which degrading.
Mr. John Stuart Mill, while considering the evidence for our
hope of personal immortality to be but slender and dubious,
insists that it is a part of wisdom to let the imagination dwell
by preference on a possibility “ at once the most comforting and
the most improving.” Spiritualism enables us to read “ cer
tainty” for “ possibilityand when even the faint hope of a
nobler destiny is most comforting and most improving, what
must be the effect when we no longer walk with faltering
uncertain feet, but feel the ground firm under us ; and can look
upward to the heavens in the serene confidence of knowledge?
�
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Immortality in harmony with man's nature and experience - confessions of sceptics
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Brevior, Thomas
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Free thought
Immortality
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Conway Tracts
Future Life
Scepticism
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Text
^lloOl
AN
EXAMINATION
OF
SOME RECENT WRITINGS ABOUT IMMORTALITY.
By W. E. B.
“ Is it not unreasonable to expect to see clearly through such a veil as death ?”
“ Let me do the will of God, and be swallowed up in His work. Conscious that His
goodness is perfect, let me spend not a thought on the contingencies of my future,
which He will provide as His wisdon sees good.”—F. W. Newman.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Sixpence.
��AN
EXAMINATION
OF
SOME RECENT WRITINGS ABOUT IMMORTALITY.
----------- ♦----------- -
Modern Materialism and its Relation to Immortality. By John
Owen, Theological Review, October, 1869.
Practical Aspects of the Doctrine of Immortality. By Presbyter
Anglicanus, Theological Review, April, 1870.
Immortality and Modern Thought. By John Owen, Theological
Review, July, 1870.
The Doctrine of Immortality in its Bearing on Education. By
Presbyter Anglicanus. Scott, Ramsgate.
Is Death the End of all Things for Man ? By a Parent and
Teacher. Scott, Ramsgate.
A Reply to the Question, “ What have we Got to Rely on, if we
cannot Rely on the Bible? ” By Prof. F. W. Newman. Scott,
Ramsgate.
Another Reply to the Question, “ What have we Got to Rely on if
we cannot Rely on the Bible?” By Samuel Hinds, D.D.
Scott, Ramsgate.
A Reply to the°Qucstion, “ Apart from Supernatural Revelation,
What is Man’s Prospect of Living after Death?” By Samuel
Hinds, D.D. Scott, Ramsgate.
--------- ♦---------
Mr Owen’s first article was written in review of
Professor Huxley’s well known paper in the Fort
nightly Review for Feb., 1869, “ On the Physical Basis
of Life.” Mr Owen is very indignant with Professor
Huxley for having asserted that the “ matter of life ”
is composed of ordinary matter, “ differing from it only
in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated.”
Whether the Professor was or was not justified in
making this assertion we may fairly leave him to settle
if he can with Mr Owen. But after reading the after
part of Mr Owen’s paper, in which he elaborates an
argument in favour of immortality which he expressly
�4
An Examination of some
declares to be quite unassailable by any materialistic
objections, it is difficult to account for tbe reason of
his indignation with Mr Huxley for this statement,
and for other remarks about protoplasm. Future
scientific inquiry may throw more light upon Professor
Huxley’s protoplasmic researches, and may either con
firm or refute what his reviewer terms his ‘‘ dogma
tism ” concerning them. With no pretence to scientific
erudition, I should feel it to be presumptuous to hazard
a prediction either way, and am content with a simple
protest against Mr Owen’s assertion of the probable
finality of our knowledge in the direction referred to.
The main portion of Mr Owen’s Constructive argu
ments in favour of immortality seem to differ from
those which the most thoroughgoing materialist might
advance, chiefly, if not solely, in nomenclature. If he
would use “ force ” always, as he does generally, in
place of “ spirit,” all, or nearly all that he advances
with any pretence of logical demonstration, could be
endorsed by an advocate of materialism. Mr Owen
thus states his argument in its briefest terms :—“ The
spiritual force of the universe is eternal; man is an
unit of that spiritual force ; therefore man is immortal.”
The conclusion of this syllogism is somewhat incorrectly
stated. It should be, “ therefore man is eternal,” and
the necessity which Mr Owen evidently felt of substi
tuting one word for the other fairly illustrates what
appears to me to be the fallacy of his syllogism. Man
as man, that is as a combination of what is commonly
distinguished as matter and spirit, is not an unit of
any purely spiritual force, any more than man as man
is eternal. Mr Owen’s meaning would probably be
better represented as follows :—The spiritual force of
the universe is eternal; the spiritual force of man is
an unit of the spiritual force of the universe; therefore
the spiritual force of man is eternal. This argument
from a spiritualistic standpoint is of course unassail
able. The materialist would simply substitute material
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
5
for spiritual, and would then adopt the altered syl
logism as his own. The real dispute is whether there
exists any spiritual force in the universe (and inclusively
in man) at all. If then it be possible to demonstrate
scientifically by protoplasmic researches or otherwise
that what are now termed spiritual or mental forces are
precisely similar to material or physical forces, it seems
that, after all, Mr Owen’s claim for the security of his
argument from materialistic refutation would fall to
the ground. In fact he admits this when he says :—
“ If, indeed, it could be proved, as the materialist
assumes it can, that the force we call vital or mental is
of precisely the* same nature with what he terms
physical forces, no doubt the question might be
regarded as settled, so far at least as the human claim
to immortality is concerned (although even in that
case the mind, which finds expression through the
laws of the universe, would be left unaccounted for by
his theory, and an eternal witness against its unlimited
application).” But Mr Owen goes on to state his
belief, and li that of those who have most closely
surveyed it from either side,” that the gulf between
matter and mind “is primordial and utterly impass
able.” It is plain then at the outset that although
his arguments may help to strengthen the convictions
of those who already have faith in immortality, they
can be of no avail with people whom materialistic
probabilities or possibilities have rendered doubters,
since they rest on an assumption which begs the
question. He makes this plainer still as he proceeds ;
for not only does he assert that—“ Whoever ... re
cognises, whether in the operations of nature, or in the
course of history, or in the constitution of his own
being, a peculiar spiritual force which cannot even in
imagination be conceived as identical with such
material force as electricity or magnetism, will always
find a firm standing ground whereon to build his hope
of immortality; ” but he actually goes so far as to
�6
An Examination of some
assume “ the undeniable fact (the italics are mine) of
man possessing within him such a spiritual force, by
whatever name it is called, so distinguished from ail
other forces of which he can have any cognisance.” It
is not much to claim that an argument is impervious
to the assaults of opponents so long as it rests upon an
assumption which they at the outset deny. The
parenthesis of a previous quotation from Mr Owen to
the effect that on the materialistic basis “ the mind
which finds expression through the laws of the universe
would still be left unaccounted for,” exposing as it
does the most hopelessly weak point in the materialistic
theory, gives a. far sounder foundation to what, for
want of another name, we term spiritualism than does
the argument on assumption that Mr Owen deems
so thoroughly impregnable. This is in effect the
“ design argument.” which, in spite of a vast amount
of denial and ridicule, remains, and will remain, a
stronghold, if not the chief stronghold of anti-mate
rialistic faith.
Further on in his article, Mr Owen pleads for “ the
recognition of the essential unity of all spiritual
forces.” Why not of all forces spiritual or other
wise 1 Must not the creative or initiative force of the
universe include within itself, or contain the germs of,
the physical and organic as well as the mental and
“ spiritual ” forces which we are cognisant of 1 If this
be admitted, the syllogism of Mr Owen before quoted
must be extended, so as to include all material as well
as spiritual forces as units of the force of the universe.
In concluding his paper, Mr Owen remarks :—“ No
scientific discovery will ever suffice to prove that his
torical progress is the creature of physical forces, or
that virtue is an amiable manifestation of heat or
electricity. Hence the ground taken by Bishop Butler
in the well-known chapter of the Analogy, will always
be that which the more thoughtful of the defenders of
immortality will choose to occupy—the ground of pro-
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
7
bability supported by analogy. . . . Recognizing as
we do the scientific impossibility that the least part of
a physical force should be annihilated, we have en
deavoured to prove the analogical improbability that
any, even the smallest part, of divine energy can be
entirely and irreparably lost.” The conclusion, then,
to which Mr Owen’s clever arguments bring us is, that
all force is immortal. But does not his analogy carry
us too far—at least, if we wish to be convinced of in
dividual immortality? No particle of matter is an
nihilated although it is transformed, any more than an
unit of force is lost when it is transmuted. Then, does
not the argument from this analogy lead us to suppose
that as matter in the form of a human body certainly
does not everlastingly retain its individuality, so neither
does the force individualized in a human mind or
spirit ? In spite of some remarks by Mr Owen to the
contrary, this seems to me to be the only logical con
clusion of his argument from analogy. He indeed
admits that to him “ this qiiestion of personal, in
dividual existence in a future, world is of mere
secondary importance compared with the grand fact of
such existence,” and he quotes with approval Schleiermacher, whose arguments might comfort a Buddhist,
but would scarcely give consolation to a Christian.
Abrwana is not that for which those bereaved by
death so passionately yearn. The hope of immor
tality would lose by far its strongest and sweetest in
tensity with all but a few, at any rate amongst the
western nations, and would probably perish entirely
with the majority, if “incorporation into the divine
substance” could be proved to be the only Heaven
we may reasonably aspire to.
“ Presbyter Anglicanus,” in his paper on The Prac
tical Aspects of Immortality, is more occupied in
pointing out the effects that would result from the
acceptance of Mr Owen’s conclusions, than in con
troverting his arguments. It is always a subject for
�8
An Examination of some
regret when a controversialist introduces to the con
sideration of a question the bias which inevitably
results from taking into account the practical results of
the acceptance of such or such a conclusion, instead of
criticising it from the purely philosophical stand-point
of whether it is true or false. But in those portions
of his essay in which “ Presbyter Anglicanus” brings
his clear common sense to bear upon the mysticism of
a portion of Mr Owen’s argument, deprecates the in
troduction of scriptural teaching as of any supernatural
authority, and points out the unphilosophical nature
of the theory of immortality for the righteous and
annihilation for the wicked, he has done good service.
He has, however, in my opinion, done anything but
good service to the cause of a pure morality in those
remarks of his which point to the doctrine of a future
life as the only sound basis of moral teaching. “ That
the whole moral as well as the religious training of
Englishmen,” he states, “ rests on the belief of the
continued existence of each individual man after death,
no one will probably dispute. Whether we regret the
fact or not, the fact itself is patent; and the remark
applies equally to the instruction given by men of all
schools of thought (for it will not be pretended that
at the present time there is any systematic instruction
to the young based on the professed negation of con
tinued life).” In making this statement, “ Presbyter
Anglicanus” seems entirely to ignore the Utilitarian
school; for although the Utilitarian philosophy is not
systematically taught to the young on a large scale per
haps, it certainly has at the present time some influence
upon the moral training of Englishmen. The separation
of ethics from theology is one of the most promising
signs of the times, and I confess it is with surprise
that I find “Presbyter Anglicanus” holding to the
old mischievous combination. I altogether fail to see
that if we tell the young “ that acts tend to make
habits, that habits determine our character and affect
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
9
our spiritual condition indefinitely,—if we tell them
that right is to he done at whatever cost, and that
success here is to be to us as nothing in comparison
with our growth in all good and kindly qualities,—we
are using language every word of which implies not
only human immortality, but the continued existence
of each individual being whom we address.” It is as
well, however, to observe that the signification of the
expression (l success here ” involves a considerable
portion of the question at issue. That it is best in
the only true sense to be and do the best we can, is an
axiom of pure and enlightened ethics. If the majority
of men are not yet sufficiently enlightened to receive
it, let us try to educate them to it, and not teach down
to them a more sensual philosophy. It is a pity that
one so advanced in enlightened thought as “ Presbyter
.Anglicanus” undoubtedly is, should not know what
reply to make to one with “ a mind not yet matured,”
“ if he asks us why he should cause himself trouble
and discomfort by seeking to reach a high standard of
action, when life would be easier and pleasanter, and
probably more successful, by contenting himself with a
lower one, &c.” One who intelligently believes in the
present moral government of the world would reply
that life is not—cannot, in the order of Divine Pro
vidence, be easier, pleasanter, and more successful in
the highest and only true sense of those terms to the
man who contents himself with a low ideal, than to
him who strives to live up to a high one. For, are
not the eternal and divine laws of morality something
more than, or rather, quite different from mere arbitrary
restrictions upon the inclinations and pleasures of
human beings ? Should we not, on the contrary, be
lieve that we are only forbidden to do that which is in
the real sense injurious to us collectively as the great
family of God’s creatures, and to each of us individually
as a member of that family? Does not the highest
sense of ease, pleasure, and success consist in living, in
B
�IO
An Examination of some
accordance with our noblest instincts and tendencies ?
Is there not, for instance, a far nobler, sweeter ease in
the knowledge acquired at the cost of much labour
than in the gross indolence that rests stupidly content
in ignorance 1 Is not the pleasure derived from the
perhaps at first tiresome cultivation of music, or of
poetry, or of pure intellectuality, far superior to the
delights of the palate, or to the gratification of any of
the comparatively gross sensual faculties ? And is not
the success of a noble, beautiful life, such as is in
accord with all the most exalted attributes of our
nature, far more gratifying and satisfying than the
mere satiety of acquisitiveness, of love of fame, or of
desire for power ? To teach the converse of this—to
teach that this life is in itself a failure, and that a
supplementary life is necessary to compensate for the
bankruptcy of this is, in my opinion, one of the worst
forms of infidelity. I hold with Mr Owen, and against
“ Presbyter Anglicanus,” that whether we believe or
doubt future existence as individuals, we should live
precisely the same, that, to take the lowest view, virtue
pays in the only true and extended sense of the word,
and that consequently the belief in personal immor
tality can have no influence whatever upon a rightly
conceived and inculcated system of morality.
Mr Owen, in his reply to “ Presbyter Anglicanus,”
puts this truth concisely before his readers, when he
says :—Our most advanced and enlightened thinkers
have arrived at last at the conclusion that the morality
founded upon the assumed weal or woe of a future
world is not of the most noble or disinterested charac
ter ; and hence there have been various attempts to
place Christian ethics upon another and a sounder
foundation, adopting either the Utilitarian basis of the
welfare of humanity, or else insisting on the divine and
a priori immutability of ethical distinctions.” And
again :—“ In all our teaching (z.e., to the young) on this
subject, we should studiously avoid basing the simplest
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
11
ethical teaching upon their possible destiny in another
life. Our better aim, as well as that most in harmony
with the nature of the proof we assign to immortality,
would be to instil into them mere unselfish and
elevated rules of conduct, teaching them that, in any
case, it is better to be virtuous than the reverse, and
that the present is sacred, and has its hallowed duties
quite irrespective of what the future may happen to
be.” He well enforces this when he states :—“ Nothing
is more certain than that a child ” (and he might have
added, a man also) “ lives in the present, and is in
fluenced mainly by present and immediate considera
tions. Hence the reward that is future, or the
punishment that is distant, has but little effect on his
conduct. Present sanctions, such as honour, truth,
goodness, are therefore far better fitted to make an
impression on his character, than those which are
derived from a remote future with which he has little
or no sympathy.” A practical illustration of the truth
of this last statement is afforded by the fact that an
honourable “ man of the world,” who is but little if at
all influenced by doctrinal theology, is really, as the
popular estimate assumes him to he, more trustworthy
in all that relates to honour, truth, and magnanimity,
than is the representative “ religious ” man, as the
term is commonly applied.
Mr Owen seems to me to be a less reliable guide
when he reverts to his mysticisms—when, for instance,
in reply to the declaration of “ Presbyter Anglicanus”
that he does not understand what is meant by Schleiermacher’s definition,—“ In the midst of the finite to be
one with the Infinite, and in each passing moment to
have eternal existence, that is the immortality of re
ligion,” he says :—“ If ‘ Presbyter Anglicanus ’ could
by possibility have asked Schleiermacher himself what
was to be understood by these words, he would pro
bably receive for a reply, that they were to be inter
preted not by the intellect, but by the feeling.’
�12
An Examination of some
Nothing seems more certain than that feeling (i.e.,
sensation) alone can interpret no theory ; and the
appeal to the feelings, so common with those who are
pushed beyond the confines of logic by a sound argu
ment against vague or otherwise unsubstantiable
theological doctrines, is unworthy of a careful thinker
like Mr Owen. Equally objectionable is his further
elucidation of Schleiermacher’s formula, that “ it is a
necessary deduction from his (Schleiermacher’s) defini
tion of religion ; i.e., it consists in ‘ the consciousness
of the eternal,’ in the feeling (my italics) of per
manency, so to speak, which underlies our transitory
existence.” To this it must be objected that there is
no such intuition as “consciousness of the eternal,”
and that all belief is the result of thought, and not of
feeling, although our sentiments may welcome, and to
some extent give support to, a faith that is in conson
ance with them.
In disavowing the inference of Presbyter Anglicanus,
that if we accept Schleiermacher’s definition of immor
tality there are few who can hope for it, Mr Owen
affirms :—“ It must be borne in mind, the spiritual
energy with which we, on behalf of our race, claim
kindred, is revealed by more than one variety of
manifestation. On the one hand are its ethical ele
ments, duty, patience, love, self-denial; and on the
other, its intellectual elements, imagination, foresight,
hope, and desire.” If then he admits the intellectual
elements to kinship with the “ spiritual energy ” which
gives in his opinion a title to immortality, it is evident
that the brutes may put in their claim ; for whether or
not we allow that the lower animals possess any of the
ethical elements, we cannot deny that some of them
at least show capabilities of imagination, foresight,
hope, and desire. Indeed Mr Owen sees that his
arguments tend in this direction, and further on in
his paper, after speculating upon probable differences
in the condition of those who will enjoy a future
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
13
existence, he says :—“ And if this were once thought
reasonable and in accordance with what we now
observe of God’s operations in this world, one great
difficulty connected with a belief in a future existence
would be obviated; for we might then reasonably
extend it to imperfect types of intellectual or moral
growth, whether among our own race or among races
of animals which we, often unworthily, call c inferior.’”
Why not down to the lowest of the animals? It
would be difficult to find any creature of which it
could be absolutely declared that it possesses no
“ intellectual elements ” whatever. At least it would
be impossible for us to draw the line; and as animal
and vegetable life in certain forms are said to be indis
tinguishable, and as, further, organic force in its
simplest stage is as far as we can judge by observa
tion, identical with what is at present distinctively
termed physical force, Mr Owen’s arguments once
more lead us to a conclusion so broad that they lose
all value as supports to the belief in individual
immortality—namely, to that of the eternity of all
forces.
In some further remarks in reply to those arguments
of Presbyter Anglicanus against which I have strongly
protested, Mr Owen is most eloquent and impressive,
and it would be easy and pleasant to quote largely
from them. They are in the main an enlargement
upon the principle that “ evil is essentially antagonistic
to the divine energies which govern the world,” and
that therefore there is a firm basis for ethics altogether
apart from the doctrine of future retribution.
There is no portion of Mr Owen’s essay so weak as
that in which he exhibits a leaning towards the
illogical theory of the annihilation of the wicked.
This theory is of course strikingly incompatible with
that in which he bases the claim to immortality upon
the possession of some intellectual or moral elements
akin to the spiritual energy of the universe. But he
�T4
An Examination of some
veils the inconsistency in a cloud of mysticism. He
argues that “if there are individuals who do not
exhibit in any form or in the very least degree the
spiritual force of which we have been speaking, then
we are fully prepared to “ grant that nothing but non
existence can be predicated of such beings. But it
must be borne in mind that this is not annihilation as
commonly understood. Annihilation is generally used
of the entire extinction, the reducing to nothingness of
what once had existence. We, however, predicate of such
individuals as we have above mentioned, not their final
extinction, but their present non-existence” (my italics).
It is to be presumed that Mr Owen means their spiritual
non-existence in some mystical sense. Having spoken
of them as individuals, he cannot of course mean to
affirm their individual non-existence. Then their an
nihilation as individuals would after all be “the reducing
to nothingness of what once had existence,” the vulgar
conception of annihilation which Mr Owen disclaims.
But this is probably another of the beliefs that are “ to
be interpreted not by the intellect, but by the feeling
for it is obvious that there is nothing very rational in it.
The method of simply denying the existence of an
obstruction to the reception of a doctrine is, no doubt,
very convenient for the purposes of argument. It has,
however, in this case one drawback which, to thinkers
not mentally intoxicated by a wrapt contemplation of
German mysticism, detracts somewhat from its value,
and that is its utter unintelligibility. It is, moreover,
difficult to imagine why Mr Owen need have troubled
himself to introduce this extraordinary proposition.
It certainly was not necessary to the purpose of his
argument, since, according to his definition of the title
to immortality, the “ non-existent ” being becomes a
mere myth, the veriest madman, by the possession of
■imagination, having a claim to everlasting life.
In taking leave of Mr Owen as a contributor to
modern theories of immortality, I can only declare the
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
15
impression, which, a careful and unprejudiced considera
tion of his essays leaves upon my mind. It is this,
that however strong he may he against materialists—
and no doubt materialists as well as spiritualists assume
a great deal that they cannot sustain by proof—his
elaborate arguments give but little support to the only
doctrine of immortality which ninety-nine out of every
hundred perhaps of his readers would care to have
substantiated.
Presbyter Anglicanus, in his pamphlet on “ The
Doctrine of Immortality in its Bearing on Education,”
written mainly in further reply to Mr Owen, whilst
with some reason complaining of misrepresentation of
his views through miscomprehension, goes on to repeat
what I agree with Mr Owen in considering to be false
and mischievous theories concerning the basis of
morality. After in effect disclaiming the pessimism of
those who conceive of this world as a 11 vale of tears,”
in which the good man has much the worst of it, and
the wicked man triumphs, and from which the good
man must hopelessly turn off his eyes, and look to that
future life in which alone he can hope for compensation
for the wrongs of this—after affirming his belief that
the divine “ purpose which runs through all the ages,”
and which “ must be accomplished,” “ is the highest
good of every creature, and that this highest good lies
in the absolute harmony of the human will with the
will of God” (p. 6)—after declaring that he has
“nowhere spoken of either restraint or punishment,
or even of suffering, except in that sense in which
(he supposes) even M. Comte or Mr Congreve would
assert that the wilful disregarding or violation of our
duty brings with it, generally or always a sense of
dissatisfaction, remorse, or wretchedness” (p. 8)—after
all this it is passing strange that Presbyter Anglicanus
should still contend “ that no teaching which positively
asserts that death is the end of existence to the indi
vidual man can furnish an effectual motive, that no
ethical system can be based upon it, and that any
�An Examination of some
ethical system which is said to be consistent with it
lies really on a foundation of treacherous and shifting
sand” (p. 11).
The explanation of the apparent
inconsistency between the last quoted utterance and
the preceding extracts, lies evidently in the fact that
Presbyter Anglicanus does not believe that the divine
purpose—the highest good of every creature, is ever
completely accomplished in this life, nor even that it
is best in the only true sense, to be and do one’s best
as far as this life only is concerned. Now there is,
perhaps, no harm in teaching that this divine purpose
is not completely accomplished here, but that there is
a future life in which it culminates in a fruition of
bliss which is far beyond what any one pretends can
be enjoyed in this life ; but to teach, either directly or
by implication, that it is not best to be and do one’s
best here, even if there be no life to come, is, in my
opinion, a mischievous error, involving as it does
involve the infidel (although “orthodox”) assumption
that the spirit of evil is triumphant in this world.
Presbyter Anglicanus is further indubitably teaching
this erroneous doctrine, when he says that “ we dare
not tell ” the thoroughly vicious and degraded, “ that
they and many generations after them must, if they
care to get out of their slough of filth, toil on with
heroic energy for next, to no recompense here (the italics
are mine) and no recompense whatever hereafter”
(p. 12). I trust indeed that we dare not tell them any
such terrible falsehood.
I agree with Presbyter
Anglicanus too, that we should “ feel the inhumanity
of telling ” “ those for whom their physical life here is
one of protracted and hopeless suffering,” that “ they
have the highest consolation for their years of agony
in the thought that their patience, hope, and faith are
all to go for nothing (my italics) (p. 12). But does
Presbyter Anglicanus think that patience and hope
ever do go for nothing, even if a faith, possibly
mistaken may 1 And does he regard physical disease
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
17
(often, though not always in itself a punishment for
evil conduct) as a virtue that in justice demands a
reward ?
In making these latter remarks, however, I am far
from underrating the terrible difficulty which all
thoughtful men must feel in the contemplation of
these lives of protracted suffering (as in the contem
plation of many other apparently absolute evils of this
world), especially when traceable to no error of the
sufferers themselves. The visiting of the iniquities of
the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth
generation is, unfortunately for an easy faith, as true
as it is scriptural. Nevertheless, this does not affect
the question before us, for the difficulty remains,
whether we believe in a future life or not, since happi
ness in future life would not prove the justice of
punishing an individual here for sins that are not his.
I pass on with pleasure to those eloquent passages
in which Presbyter Anglicanus gives us the reasons
for his faith in immortality, and I gladly recognise in
some of them a far more forcible plea for individual
immortality than can be extracted from the ostensibly
more philosophical arguments of Mr Owen. I say in
some of the passages, because in others the plea is
based upon the same erroneous views of life which
have above been combatted. Presbyter Anglicanus
holds that the doctrine of immortality “ by no means
rests only on the foundation of probability supported
by analogy,” since “ the reduction of a proposition into
an absurdity is taken as a proof of its converse; and
the direct negation of immortality . . . involves a
series of absurdities which shock alike our mental and
moral sense ” (p. 18). I gladly admit the full force of
this passage :—11 It is shocking that the love which
has withstood the waves of a thousand griefs, tempta
tions, and disasters, and whose flame has burnt clearer
and purer with advancing years, should he rewarded
with extinction,” except that I must demur to the use
�18
An Examination of some
of the word rewarded. It is shocking to believe that
this love should ever be extinguished ; but surely it
brings its own reward in this life. Equally forcible is
this :—“ It is shocking that the thoughts, the aspira
tions, and yearnings of the wisest and best of men
should be a mere delusive dream—that the words
which bid us hope and strive on because we cannot
know here the fulness of blessing which God has
prepared for them that love Him, should be a mere
cheat and a cruel deception.” But with regard to the
other passages (see pp. 18 and 19 of the pamphlet) let
me ask—do the inferior forms of life have full scope
and exercise any more than man has ? How about
the worm crushed under foot, or cut through with the
spade ? Is there not a claim for “ compensation ” here
if anywhere ? And are not the faculties of animals
“ extinguished ” sometimes “just when they are rising
into vigorous activity ? ” Again, is iniquity ever truly
successful ? And do “ striving, and effort, and pur
pose, and will” ever go for nothing even in this
world ?
The writer of the pamphlet, “ Is Death the end of
all Things for Man ?” goes over much the same ground
as that traversed by Presbyter Anglicanus in the papers
already noticed, and his position on the question
exhibits in the main the same strength and the same
weakness.
Professor E. W. Newman in his Pamphlet disclaims
the authority of Scripture as an argument for immor
tality, and in reply to those who complain that the
discrediting of that authority has robbed them of a
“ delicious dream,” he eloquently observes: “ The true
heaven does not consist in aspirations quite ridiculous
in puny man, but rather in self-forgetfulness ; in that
faith which says, ‘ Let me do the will of God, and be
swallowed up in His work. Conscious that His good
ness is perfect, let me spend not a thought on the con
tingencies of my future, which He will provide as His
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
J9
wisdom sees good.’ ” This is an epitome of the sublimest piety and faith. “ But,” he proceeds, “ I am
gravely sensible that there is another view of immor
tality in which self is quite forgotten; in which the
enlargement of men’s destiny beyond the grave is
viewed as ennobling our nature and assuaging the
grief with which we see human afflictions end in dark
moral degradation. Such a doctrine of immortality is
encumbered with severe logical difficulties to a Theist,
but with fewer (I think) than with those which meet a
Biblical Christian” (p. 13). And surely it seems to
me this view of immortality is encumbered with fewer
difficulties than any other. Then follows a frank and
manly divulgence at once of the faith and the “ honest
doubt ” of an honest man. “ In my book called
1 Theism,’ I have elaborately developed all the argu
ments which commend themselves to me. When I
read them, I find them very powerful. Some of them
are even short enough, if sound, to generate vivid
electric faith. The discomfort to me is, that they do
not wholly refute, they rather outweigh, arguments on
the other side; and where you deal with a balanced
argument, you strike the balance differently, I believe,
in different frames of mind. Perhaps when I am too
much pre-engaged by sense, and too little devout, the
spiritual arguments for immortality lose force with me.
Whether that is the explanation I cannot tell; but I
frankly confess that what at one time I think to bring
full conviction, at another time seems overbalanced by
objections. I do not at all imagine that I have solved
the problem. I sometimes think that the half faith
which I sustain may be precisely the thing most whole
some to men; and, indeed, is it not unreasonable to
expect to see clearly through such a veil as death 1 ... .
Let your complainant exercise the grace of waiting for
light, and of hoping that more light may dawn on our
successors than God has yet granted to us” (pp. 13, 14).,
This is truly a noble confession of faith and of doubt
�20
An Examination of some
such as no mind but a large, brave and honest one
would ever have made. We feel as we read it that a
great soul has revealed itself to us, strengthening our
belief to a far greater extent than volumes of half sin
cere though more positive dogmatism can. Here at
any rate we have a mind which does not despair of
morality because it cannot demonstrate a future life.
And there is a faith beyond the faith of all the creeds
in the trust that the good Spirit, in whom we live, and
move, and have our being, has given to us all the light
that is necessary to guide us here, and that to Him
belongs the care of us hereafter. And this faith will
enable each one of us to say with the grand old Scotch
man in Alton Locke, “I have long left the saving of my
soul to Him who made the soul.” (Iquote from memory).
Dr. Hinds, in the first of his two interesting tracts,
reminds those who ask what we have to rely on
if we cannot rely on the Bible, that a question of like
import, and of equally vital interest to those who asked
it, has been answered in modern times to the satisfac
tion, at least, of all Protestants. That question was,
“If we cannot rely on the Church, what have we got
to rely on?” The reply was, “The Bible,” and an
infallible Bible accordingly was substituted for an
infallible church. Dr Hinds proceeds very ably to
advocate the giving up of the assumption, “ that God
must have provided an infallible teaching of religious
truth,” and to warn those who manifest a want of faith
by asserting that they recognise no foundation for
religion apart from the Bible, to be on their guard
“ against substituting a vain and presumptuous prying
into the hidden things of the Lord, for the desire to
know Him by seeking to conform to His will” (p. 13).
He thinks that “ the tree of knowledge in the garden
of Eden, the craving after which caused Adam and Eve
to be banished from the tree of life, may serve as an
emblem to us.” For, “ we too, in our eager pursuit
after forbidden knowledge, may find ourselves wander-
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
21
ing far away from the life which is destined other
wise to nourish and prepare us for heaven” (p. 14).
It is only, thus, indirectly that this pamphlet hears
upon the subject of immortality, which is directly
treated by Dr Hinds, in his “ Reply to the Question,
Apart from Supernatural Revelation, What is Man's
Prospect of Living after Death ? ” Dr Hinds limits
the scope of his reply to the question of individual
immortality, stating that to this only “ our thoughts
and aspirations are directed,” and that “to believe that
we shall revive from death in total oblivion of any
previous existence, would be as little consolatory as to
believe that the extinction of life is final.” “The
question, therefore,” he writes, “ which I am requested
to consider must be whether, excluding from the
inquiry all supernatural revelation on the subject,
there is any reason for believing that death is a
passage to a new phase of life, on which we enter with
the consciousness of personal identity with our former
selves” (p. 1). Proceeding to answer this question,
Dr Hinds says, “ Our reasonable course is to see, in the
first instance, what light is thrown on the subject by
the analogy of creation. And it must be admitted
that the result is disappointing to our hopes and
wishes. There is no annihilation of any part of the
material universe, so far as we can observe............... The
process which is going on, and has gone on, as it would
appear, through successive ages, is the continual dis
integration of the several substances of which the
world is composed, and the working of them up into
new combinations............... We do not perceive, as in the
case of the material substance, what becomes of the
principle of life ; but this principle is no less than the
component parts of the human body, or of a rock or
tree, a portion of the elements on which creative power
is exercised. Arguing then from what takes place in
the case of these elements which are seen and felt, to
that which is not an object of the senses, we should
�An Examination of some
infer that the same law of creation must be applicable
to that also, unless it can be shown that there are
different laws for the two. That the one is visible and
tangible, the other not, is a difference which does not
imply that the law of creation is not uniform” (pp. 1, 2).
I quote thus at length because it is impossible to put
into fewer words the sense thus simply and clearly
conveyed.
Dr Hinds goes on to discuss the question whether
there is anything in our human nature to lead us to
suppose that the analogy does not hold good with us,
“whatever may be the fate of the inferior creatures.”
He decides that the possession of a reasoning faculty
gives us no title to individual immortality, since it is ap
parently shared in an inferior degree by the brutes, and
only characterizes man “ as the highest in the scale of
that manifold creation, the general law of which is that of
a continual dissolution of its elements, and a recombina
tion of them.” He thinks that as far as the argu
ment from analogy goes, we must conclude that the
same law holds good with mind, even as, although less
palpably than it does with matter. But he argues,
“ there is a surer resting place for our hope, in the
desire for personal and conscious immortality which
the Creator has made part of man’s nature.” For, not
only does the possession of this desire “ distinguish us
from all the rest of earthly creation,” but we are
justified in arguing from it, “ that the Creator would
never have made it a part of our nature, if the object
to which alone the desire is directed were unattainable.”
(p. 5.) This argument is repeated with even greater force
a little further on : “ the strength of the argument lies
as I have observed, in our conception of the divine
nature as revealed to us in creation. To suppose that
the Creator has made man with a strong desire as part
of his nature, and that the object on which alone that
desire can be exercised, does not exist, is as incon
sistent with what we know of Him and His ways, as
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
23
to suppose that He might have given His creatures
eyes when there was no visible object, or ears when there
was no such thing as sound,” (p. 6.) This, then, is an
argument from analogy after all, only the analogy is
between one intellectual conception of the truth of
which we have ample evidence, and another which we
desire to substantiate, and not between a set of ob
served physical laws, and a spiritualistic theory. The
former, if it be sound, warrants us in sustaining a
firm hope of personal immortality ; the latter leads us to
quite a different conclusion. It will be observed,
however, that this argument of Dr. Hinds rests upon
an undoubted belief in an intelligent Creator and
Sustainer of the universe, and consequently that to
one who has no such belief, it possesses no cogency.
And it is well to recognize the fact that it is impossible
in the present state of knowledge to bring forward any
arguments in favour of individual immortality, that have
any force with a pure materialist. As pointed out in a
preceding portion of this paper, Mr Owen’s arguments
prove from analogy, as far as an argument from analogy
can prove anything, universal indestructibility, and
the materialist would be the first to admit this; but
they possess no validity if urged in favour of individual
immortality. The analogy to be of any use in this
direction, must be based, like that employed by Dr.
Hinds, upon a Theistic foundation. Indeed, we are
fully warranted in saying that a belief in a personal
God is indispensable to a faith in personal immortality.
For these reasons it seems to me that Mr Owen
has greatly underrated the effect which a future
development of such speculations as those of Mr.
Huxley on Protoplasm, may have upon the only faith
in immortality which is cherished by the vast majority
of religious thinkers, in what are called Christian
countries at least. For my own part, however, I have
no fear that the course of future scientific inquiry will
ever substantiate the theories of those gross materialists
�2.4
An Examination of some
who deny the immanence of a great Intelligence in
the universe. No Theistic theories seem to me so
utterly wild and unreasonable as those of the Antitheists. And so long as a reasonable belief in a
moral and intelligent Creator remains, so long will the
true analogical argument of Dr Hinds possess a force
which cannot be denied. But, forcible as it is, this
argument may, even on a Theistic basis, be disputed.
In the first place it may be questioned whether the
desire for personal immortality is so nearly universal
as to justify us in considering it to be a part of our
nature; and in the second place, it may be argued
that even admitting this, it does not follow that such
a desire will be realized in accordance with our present
conceptions. As to the first of these objections, it
must be admitted that we have ample evidence to
prove that some primitive races of mankind have no
belief in a future state of existence, and it is more than
doubtful whether the ancient Jews had. Nay, it may
even be that some who are advanced in the religious
thought of the present time, look upon the idea of a
life that will never, never end, with more of dread than
of delight. I sometimes think that if it were not for
the relatives and friends whom we lose by death,
most of us would have but little, if any, desire for a
future life. We cannot bear the thought of parting
for ever from those we love, and this makes us cherish
the hope of meeting them aJer death. This last con
sideration, however, only serves to strengthen Dr
Hind’s position.
With regard to the second objection that, admitting
the desire for immortality to be a part of our nature,
it does not follow that such a desire will be realized
in accordance with our present conceptions, there is
much that may be urged in its favour. The Indian’s
happy hunting ground is as truly an ideal of future
existence for him, as our hopes of Heaven are for us.
If his conception seems gross to us, may not ours seem
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
25
equally so to those who will live in a more enlightened
age to come ? Is it not possible that our yearning
for an extension of our poor individual lives beyond
the grave, may embody after all only a less gross
ideal of immortality than that of the Indian1? Mr
Owen at any rate seems to have some such idea as
this.
But Dr. Hinds thinks we have another indication of
personal immortality in “ the universal craving for
spiritual communion ” with God. And he goes on to
remark : “ However diverse may be the shapes which
the effort to satisfy this craving has taken, and still
takes, they all testify to the fact, that the Creator has
made the craving a part of man’s nature.” (p. 6).
This craving, he says, is not fully satisfied in this life.
However devout a man may be, and however great
the comfort which he derives from the measure of
intercourse with God that is vouchsafed to him here,
there is no true and full communion, since “ there is
no reciprocity.” Bor, although Christians believe
that God does in some way answer prayer, and may
“ substitute faith for conscious fruition of a Divine
intercourse with them when they address Him,” yet
there is not that interchange of communication which
we call communion when we speak of intercourse
between man and man, and for which Dr Hinds
thinks there is a natural craving.
The measure of force which this argument may
claim must obviously vary greatly with different minds,
and even with the same mind in different states of
feeling. I fear that the vast majority of human beings
have no conscious yearning for communication with the
Divine Being, though that is no proof that it is not
an undeveloped tendency of their nature—a tendency
perhaps stunted and all but destroyed by the influence
of gross and demoralising theological theories. As
soon as man emerges sufficiently from a state of
brutish savagery to speculate upon the origin of all
�26
An Examination of some
that he sees around him, he naturally begins in
some sense to feel after God ; hut the religious sen
timents must be considerably developed before he
will be conscious of any longing after divine com
munion. Such yearning, when it does come, is ap
parently the result of thought combined with religious
love and veneration. It can scarcely be considered as
a definite instinct of our nature, though it may be a
natural tendency, that only develops itself when our
noblest faculties have become paramount. And is it
not possible that the highest state of religious thought
and sentiment would give to us a satisfactory con
sciousness of actual reciprocity in a strong sense of
direct communication between the Divine Spirit and
our own ? May it not be that our present con
ception of communion with God is after all a low
one, and that a higher one is possible to us, which
would be capable of completely satisfying our re
ligious aspirations? That, Dr Hinds might reply,
would be heaven itself, and if it could be attained
here, no future state would be necessary to satisfy the
longing after divine communion. But then, he might
justly urge, the cessation of such a heaven in death
would be even more dreadful and incomprehensible
than the cessation of our life under existing conditions;
and, besides, how about those who had died with the
longing still unsatisfied ?
Dr Hinds further urges : “ There is this peculiarity,
too, about man, which, if there is no future state for
him, makes him an anomaly in creation. In all other
living creatures completeness characterises the Creator’s
work; in man, incompleteness. . . . The individual
is almost a different being, according as his spiritual
part has been cultivated by education and other social
influences ; progress of the inner man marks the his
tory of the human race; and still there must be an
-incompleteness in the work of his Creator, until he
reaches that further stage of existence in which the
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
desires that distinguish him from all other animate
beings on earth shall be provided with their appro
priate objects, and shall be fully developed in the
realization of those objects ” (pp. 8, 9). It would be
impossible for a theist to deny the force of this argu
ment. The atheist would reply that our desires are
now superstitiously misdirected, and therefore have no
claim to realization. This, then, like the rest of Dr
Hinds’ arguments, is calculated to strengthen the con
viction of the theist and spiritualist, but would have
little if any weight with the atheist and materialist.
For the latter, probably, Dr Hind does not write.
The plea for a future life to compensate for the
inequalities of this, I have already noticed in my
remarks in reply to Presbyter Anglicanus.
The
argument, considered by itself, has the fault of proving
too much, if it proves anything. Dr Hinds puts it
before us concisely enough, when he writes : “ There
are inequalities in the divine government of the world
which would seem to be inconsistent with the divine
nature and attributes as otherwise made known to us,
unless there is another life to complete the present, in
which their inequalities are to be redressed ” (p. 10).
But animals, and even vegetables, are subject to the
unequal conditions of existence here equally with man,
although they cannot, of course, be said to suffer
equally with man on that account. The poor donkey,
half starved and otherwise brutally treated ; the dog,
chained for the greater part of his existence to a
kennel in a back yard ; the half-killed pigeon, and
the often hunted fox,—all made wretched for the use
or sport of man, have surely, according to this argu
ment, a claim for future compensation, even if the
plant, stunted and starved on the barren rock, has not.
One more argument Dr Hinds briefly notices, namely,
that which he draws from “ the belief in the occasional
apparition of dead men.” Dr Hinds thinks that
whether this belief be a delusion or not, its existence
�28
An Examination of some
is “ one more evidence of the strong craving after that
future world of continued life, which God has made a
part of our nature ” (p. 12). The same remark applies
to the modern belief in so-called spiritualistic mani
festations. “ Spiritualists,” as the believers in these
alleged manifestations, with rather arrogant distinctive
ness, term themselves, claim for their new “ revela
tion ” that it has rescued hundreds of sceptics from
the doubt of immortality. Whether this be correct
or not, it is certain that many thoughtful men, in their
desire for certain evidence of independent spiritual
existence, were disposed to inquire with eager hope
into the nature of the manifestations, but soon became
disgusted with the imposture and buffoonery that are
so intricately mixed up with them, even if there be
anything genuine.
In concluding my imperfect review of this and the
other essays noticed, I wish to enlarge a little upon the
objection which I have taken to each and all of them,
namely, that they start from the spiritualistic thesis,
instead of endeavouring first to prove it. By this
method the real opponents of the belief in immortality
are merely passed, and are not encountered. The
primary question in dispute is not whether the soul is
immortal, or whether it dies with the body, but whether
there be a soul to live or die. The Materialists are the
real opponents of the doctrine of immortality, and they
deny the existence of the spiritual entity called the
soul. They deny that there is anything in man be
yond matter and force. The sublimest thoughts and
the devoutest aspirations are to their conception only
brain in action. It is useless to deny the strength of
their position, for they have much to urge in its favour
which it is difficult, if not impossible, entirely to re
fute, though it may be possible to overrule on the
ground of superior probability. Their arguments may
he briefly stated as follows:—We observe (they say)
that the character of a man depends upon the size and
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
29
conformation of his brain, and the nature of his tem
perament. If certain brain organs are defective in the
individual, we observe a corresponding defectiveness in
his mental and moral manifestations. Very defective
mental organs invariably co-exist with idiotcy, and
deranged ones with insanity. A brain otherwise de
fective—defective in what are termed the moral organs,
again, always indicates a low state of moral sensibility
in the possessor of it, and a derangement of these
organs manifests itself in what is called moral insanity.
The health of the body obviously influences not only
the intellectual but also the moral characteristics. A
blow on the skull benumbs all mental activity. Sleep,
drunkenness, over-eating, over-working, fasting, and
semi-poisoning distinctively influence what Spiritualists
term the “ soul.” If there be a spiritual entity in man,
it seems then that it is merely a characterless spiritual
force which can only manifest itself in accordance with
the constitution and varying conditions of the corporeal
organism. This we prefer (for want of a better name)
to call vital force, and we see nothing more spiritual
in it than we recognize in chemical, electric, muscular,
or nervous force. We fully admit the indestructibility
of all matter and force. Matter decays and forms new
combinations, and force is thereby transmuted. We
see no evidence of any different result with regard to
what we call the moral and intellectual organism, and
what you Spiritualists term the soul. Therefore we
find no ground for belief in personal immortality.
In reply to all this the Spiritualist may say:—You
Materialists assume too much when you infer from the
fact that what we call the soul can only manifest itself
by means of the material organs of the brain, that
there is nothing but these organs to be manifested—or
nothing beyond what you term vital force. In all
probability it is the character of the soul which de
termines the characteristics of the mental organism,
and not vice versa. Or, even if it be otherwise, it is
�30
” An Examination of some
obvious that if the Supreme Spirit Himself were to
became the occupant of a human frame, He could only
manifest Himself by means of the human faculties of
the particular individual so occupied. Each one of us
is able to think about his bodily frame and ailments as
something belonging to rather than constituting him
self. From this it seems reasonable to infer that there
is something within, and distinct from mere brain
matter which so speculates. The individual conscious
ness, or, in metaphysical terminology, the ego, is able
to take cognizance of and speculate about the material
brain organs through which alone it (or he, or she) can
be outwardly manifested—speculate even about their
possible future derangement. Does not this fact of
consciousness prove that there is an indwelling in
dividual spirit—not a mere vital force—"which per
meates the human organism, and acts upon and through
it, even as we believe there is a Divine Spirit per
meating, and acting upon and through the material
universe ?
Much more might be urged on either side. Self
consciousness is said by some to be distinctively
human, but this is a very questionable assertion. The
Materialist sees in it nothing more than thought turned
inward. He has, too, some questions to ask which it
is very difficult for the Spiritualist to answer. For
instance, he asks when the soul first takes up its abode
in the human frame. Is it in the foetus at the instant
of conception, and if not, at what stage in the growth
of the foetus, the child, or the man ? Inability to reply
adequately to a question, although a serious drawback
to a constructive theory, is not, of course, a proof
against it. But then the issue seems to be nothing
more than a balance of probabilities, and I fear that
this is the only available issue for us in the present
state of knowledge. For my own part, I do not feel
qualified to give full force to either side of the contro
versy, and can only state the difficulties of the situation
�Recent Writings about Immortality.
31
honestly and fairly as they present themselves to me,
leaving it to those who are more positive to teach with
more authority, or at least to blow the trumpet with
less uncertain sound.
One truth shines out clearly, and it is this, that as
our Creator has given us no absolutely certain evidence
of a future life, however strong the probabilities may
be, it is not intended that we shall base our rule of
conduct here on any future prospects that faith and
imagination may place before us. We have a life to
live in this world, at any rate, and to live that worthily
is full occupation for our energies. Those who despise
it are not taught to do so by God. If there be an
everlasting Heaven for us, we shall best prepare for it
by leaving it entirely out of consideration, as far as our
practical life is concerned. To do our duty according
to the purest light that is manifested to us, that is the
best preparation for life and death alike. The sublimest faith is that which sustains us in a perfect trust
in the divine government in this world, and which
will enable us fearlessly to resign ourselves to the care
of the living God in the hour of death, believing that
whatever may be in store for us will be best for us,
seeing that it will be what seemeth to Him fit.
POSTSCRIPT.
Since the above paper was written, a pamphlet in
reply to Presbyter Anglicanus, entitled “Does Morality
depend on Longevity?” by Edw. Vansittart Neale,
has been published by Mr Scott. It consists chiefly
of a very able and interesting historical argument
against the doctrine that morality depends upon a be
lief in immortality. Mr Neale not only shows that
the most moral of the ancient nations had no belief in
a future life, but that some of the most horrible wars
and cruel murders can be traced to the prevalence of
�32
Recent Writings about Immortality.
that belief. His motive for entering into the contro
versy seems to have been the same which has prevailed
with me, and affords that full justification for entering
publicly into so abstruse a subject which, in my own
case, I feel to be necessary. I here give, and fully
endorse his words :—“ It does appear to me . . .of no
small importance in the education of the young, that
we should rest the principles of conduct upon the
knowable and present, instead of upon a future, about
which we can only dogmatise, without knowing any
thing certain. With this view, I propose to adduce
some considerations, which seem to me to show that
there is no necessity for making this uncertain fore
cast in order to gain a solid foundation either for reli
gion or morality” (p. 5).
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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An examination of some recent writings about immortality
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 32 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. A review of eight articles which have appeared in earlier Scott pamphlets including work by John Owen, Francis William Newman and Samuel Hinds. Includes bibliography (p.[3]).
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Bear, William Edwin
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[187-?]
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Immortality
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Conway Tracts
Immortality
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
BY
SAMUEL LAING,
Author of “Modern Science and Modern ThoughtilA Modern
Zoroastrian,” “Problems of the Future,” etc.
ISSUED FOR THE
Jress OmmifteL
London :
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET St.
Price One Penny.
�OUR PROPAGANDIST PRESS COMMITTEE.
This Committee has been formed for the purpose of assisting in
the production and circulation of liberal publications.
The members of the Committee are Mr. G. J. Holyoake, Dr.
Bithell, Mr. F. J. Gould, Mr. Frederick Millar, and Mr. Charles
A. Watts.
It is thought that the most efficient means of spreading the
principles of Rationalism is that of books and pamphlets. Many
will read a pamphlet who would never dream of visiting a lecture
hall. At the quiet fireside arguments strike home which might
be dissipated by the excitement of a public debate. The lecturer
wins his thousands, the penman his tens of thousands.
The aim of the various writers will be to obtain converts by
persuasiveness rather than undue hostility towards the popular
creeds.
All who are in sympathy with the movement are earnestly re
quested to contribute towards the expenses as liberally as their
means will allow. The names of donors will not be published
without their consent.
On the ist of January of each year a report and balance-sheet
will be forwarded to subscribers. The books of the Committee are
always accessible to donors.
Contributions should be forwarded to Mr. Charles A. Watts,
17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C. Cheques should
be crossed “Central Bank of London, Blackfriars Branch.”
PUBLICATIONS ISSUED FOR THE COMMITTEE BY
MESSRS. WATTS & CO.
Agnostic Problems. Being an Examination of Some Questions
■of the Deepest Interest, as Viewed from the Agnostic Standpoint.
By R. Bithell, B.Sc., Ph.D. Cheap Popular Edition, cloth, 2s. 6d.
post free.
Agnosticism and Immortality. By S. Laing, author of “ Modern
Science and Modern Thought,” etc. id., by post ij^d. Special
terms for quantities.
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.Special terms for quantities.
LIBERTY OF BEQUESTS COMMITTEE.
'This Committee has been formed for procuring the passing of a
law legalising bequests for Secular and Free Thought purposes.
As the law now stands, all legacies left for the diffusion and main
tenance of Secular or Free Thought principles can be confiscated.
Subscriptions in furtherance of the object of this Committee may
,be sent to Mr. Charles A. Watts, 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street,
London, E.C., or to the care of the Hon. Secretary, Mr. H. L.
Braekstad, 138, Loughborough Park, London, S.W.
�AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
a To be, or not to be, that is the question ”—a question
which has been asked before and after Hamlet, in all
ages and countries where mankind has risen from blank
savagery to thought and intelligence. The love of life,
the horror of annihilation, are instincts common to men
and to the whole animal creation. In civilised man
this instinct rises beyond the vague terror of death and
fear of the unknown. He “ looks before and after
his sense of justice longs for a future life to redress the
wrongs and sufferings of the present one; his affections
crave for a sight of faces which he has loved and lost;
all the feelings of his complex nature cry out for some
assurance of a continued existence. On the other hand,
all positive knowledge and experience fail to give him
this assurance, and rather tell him that, as his individual
existence began with birth, so it will terminate with
death.
How stands this most momentous of all problems in
the light of modern science, and of that development of
it which is fast invading modern thought under the
compendious term of “ Agnosticism ” ?
To attack a problem we must begin by clearly defining
its conditions. What do we mean when we talk of a
“ future life ” and of “ immortality ” ? Clearly, for all
practical purposes, we mean a life in which we retain
our personal identity and individual consciousness. To
be absorbed in some metaphysical essence, or soul of
the universe, as some tiny rivulet is in the pathless
ocean, is tantamount to annihilation. Extremes meet,
and the Nirvana, which is the ultimate goal of the most
�2
AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
purely metaphysical religion, that of Buddhism, lands us
practically in the same conclusion as that of the Mate
rialist, to whom life and consciousness are but functions
of particular modes of cell-motions.
It is important to keep this distinction well in mind,
for it bears upon the next stage of the inquiry—viz.,
what are the historical facts of the problem ? What are
the views of it which have been entertained by different
nations and in different ages ? Do they show such a
general consensus of opinion as may establish at any
rate a frima facie case for any definite conclusion, and
show it to be a necessary product of the evolution of
the human mind ? Or are they so conflicting as to
neutralise one another, and show that no common con
clusion holds the field, which remains open for inquiries
conducted with all the latest resources of modern know
ledge ? The answer must be that the latter is undoubt
edly the true state of the case.
If we take immortality to mean the preservation of
conscious personal identity after death, the majority of
mankind have had no such belief. The countless
millions of Brahmins and Buddhists do not get nearer
to it than to assume some vague absorption into the
soul of the universe, after more or less transmigration
through other forms of life. Plato and his followers had
much the same idea, in a more refined and philoso
phical form, of an unconscious pre-existence in the
universal- spirit before birth, and return to it after death
—a speculation which we find in the creeds of almost
all our modern poets, and which is stated with much
force and precision by Wordsworth in his ode on
“Immortality.” Other nations, such as the Chinese
and Japanese, have no distinct ideas on the subject
beyond a vague veneration for departed ancestors, and
their educated classes accept either the Agnosticism,
pure and simple, of Confucius, or some vague concep
tion of Buddhistic philosophy. The lower classes, and
savage and semi-civilised races generally, have a sort of
rude faith in ghosts, which are scarcely distinguishable
from the evil spirits in which unknown or injurious
forces of Nature are personified.
The first dawn of a belief in a continued personal
�AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
3
existence after death is found in the interments of the
neolithic period, in which weapons and food were de
posited for the use of a departed chief in the happier
hunting-ground of another world, and slaves were sacri
ficed so as to give him an appropriate retinue.
From this germ arose the Egyptian creed, which was
for so many centuries by far the most powerful and
practical exemplification of a belief in a future existence
by a great civilised nation. They looked, as Herodotus
tells us, on their tombs as their permanent abodes, and
the homes in which they lived as mere temporary occu
pations. Their idea was that every existence, animate
or inanimate, consisted of two parts, the material body
and the seol, or incorporeal spirit, which could wander
about in dreams, and, after death, continue a shadowy
existence, living on shadowy food, and taking pleasure
in shadowy geese and kine and other belongings. But
this seol must have a corporeal body, or semblance of its
old material self, as a basis for its existence, and hence
the care and expense which were lavished on mummies
and on paintings on the walls of tombs.
It is remarkable that, wherever the faith in a personal
immortality of the soul has been at all strong, it has
been associated with an equally strong faith in the
resurrection of the body. The old Egyptians and the
early Christians equally shared this belief; and even in
the more shadowy mythology of the Greek and Roman
world due funeral rites to the body were considered
necessary to save the departed soul from wandering, as
a shivering, bodiless ghost, on the banks of the melan
choly Styx.
Another remarkable nation, the Jews, entirely ignored
the idea of a future existence—a most singular circum-,
stance, considering that they were so long in contact
with the Egyptians, with whom it was the pervading
fact of their daily life, and that the Jews were supposed
to be a chosen people, specially instructed by Jehovah.
And yet nothing can be clearer than that, from the time
of Moses down to that of Ecclesiastes—and even later,
as held by the Sadducees, the conservative aristocracy,
who clung most tenaciously by the old law—the pure
Jewish faith was that death was annihilation, and rewards
�4
AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
and punishments were dispensed either to the individual
in this life or to his posterity.
Nothing can be more explicit than the words of
Ecclesiastes which are put in the mouth of the great
preacher, King Solomon, as the result of his long expe
rience and deep wisdom : “ A living dog is better than
a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die,
but the dead know not anything, neither have they any
more a reward.” And again : “ There is no work, nor
device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither
thou goest.”
It is not a little surprising that a religion like Chris
tianity, in which eternal life and future rewards and
punishments are such essential elements, should have
originated from the matter-of-fact and almost Materialistic
creed of Mosaic Judaism. Orthodox theologians will,,
of course, say that it was because it pleased God to con
ceal these things from former generations, and to teach
them for the first time by a new revelation. The retort
is obvious : if Jehovah were a just and benevolent Deity,,
why should he mislead his own chosen people by allowing
Moses, Abraham, and other pious patriarchs after his
own heart, to believe and teach the direct opposite of
these essential truths ? But the retort, however obvious,
is effective only against the idolaters of the Bible; for
its sincere students it is more to the purpose to observe
that the assumption that these Christian dogmas are
taught by Divine inspiration is met at the very outset by
this staggering objection. What Jesus, St. Paul, and
the Apostles taught respecting the immortality of the
soul was this: that our personal identity after death
would be preserved by a resurrection of the body, which
was to take place in the lifetime of some of the existing
generation. This is stated over and over again in the
most distinct and positive terms, and, if the prophecy
failed, there is absolutely nothing in the New Testament
to teach us anything certain as to any future life. The
last judgment is, in like manner, inextricably mixed up
with the advent of Jesus in a cloud, with a trumpet and
angels, within the prescribed time.
Now, it is historically certain that the prophecy was a
mistake; 1800 years have elapsed, and the end of the
�AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
5
world, the bodily resurrection, and the Day of Judgment,
as described by Jesus and St. Paul, have not come. It
is equally certain that, scientifically, no resurrection of
the material body is possible. Death resolves the atoms
and energies of which it was composed into new and
simpler forms, which enter into totally different combi
nations. What becomes, then, of the superstructure
of a personal identity after death, when it is based on
two pillars which have crumbled into dust? It is.as
though it had never been made, and the fact remains
that in no religion of ancient or modern times can we
find any reliable information, or general consensus of
opinion, as to that greatest of all mysteries—what may
be “ behind the veil.” If from Theology we fall back
on Science, we have real and accurate information up to
a certain point; but the final step escapes us. We know
in the most precise and accurate manner that all we call
soul, spirit, thought, memory, will, perception, and con
sciousness are indissolubly connected with definite
motions of minute cells in the cortex or grey enveloping
matter of the brain. Given the motions of given cells,
and the corresponding effects will follow with the same
certainty as if we were nothing but an electric battery,
with nerves for conducting wires. And, conversely,
without the proper inducing motions of nerve-cells the
effects will not follow. This has been proved by such
innumerable experiments that I shall confine myself to
noticing a few which have the most direct bearing on
the question of soul or personal identity.
Memory is clearly at the bottom of this feeling of
personality. It links together past perceptions, and
makes us feel that they are not isolated phenomena, but
have an unity and connection, as having happened to
one and the same person—viz., ourselves. Now, it is
quite possible to obliterate portions of the memory by
destroying portions of the grey matter of the brain appro
priated for remembering that particular class of impres
sions. For instance, there is in the back part of the
brain a tract of grey matter, connected by a collection
of fine conducting wires, called the optic nerve, with the
retina, which enables us to see. Surrounding this is
another tract of grey matter, connected with the former,
�6
AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
which serves as a sort of register office for messages sent
from the eye to the central telegraph office—or, in other
words, which is appropriated to the memory of visual
perceptions. Destroy the first or central office, and we
can no longer see. Leave it untouched, but destroy
the second or register office, and we can see, but no
longer remember what is seen.
In like manner with the sense of hearing: there is a
central office by which we hear, and a connected register
office by which we remember what we have heard.
Destroy the latter, and all memory of all we have ever
heard passes away from us. Memory, therefore, is
clearly proved to be not merely a general function of the
brain en masse, but a special function of special portions
of the brain, told off for the purpose of converting
mechanical impressions received from the outer world,
through the senses, into registered messages, which form
the raw material of what we call memory, which is
itself the substratum of consciousness.
The will is another faculty which is commonly attri
buted to personal identity, and yet it also is indissolubly
associated with brain motion. Nothing can well be
more mechanical than straining the eye to look at a
black wafer stuck on a white wall. And yet, by this
purely mechanical process, a state called hypnotism can
be frequently induced, in which the will is apparently
lost, and the will of another personality—that of the
operator—is substituted for it. Thus, in the well-known
experiment of Dr. Braid, a puritanical old lady, to whom
dancing was an invention of Satan, was sent capering
about the room to a reel tune, when told to do so by
the Doctor. Nay, further, it is shown, by the careful
experiments scientifically conducted at the Salpetriere
by eminent French physicians, that a suggestion to an
hypnotised patient may affect his or her brain move
ments in such a way as to give rise to the corresponding
actions of nerves and muscles weeks after the suggestion
was made and the hypnotic state had passed away.
Thus a moral person may be irresistibly impelled to
commit an atrocious crime on a specified person at a
specified date, which would have been utterly repugnant
to the patient’s normal nature.
�AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
7
In like manner, visible things may be rendered invis
ible, and invisible things visible, by this hypnotic sug
gestion. And, what is even more extraordinary and
more directly materialistic, these suggested emotions and
perceptions may be transferred into one another by the
action of a magnet. A case is recorded in Binet and
Fere’s volume on the Salpetriere experiments in which a
patient told to hate one of the doctors endeavoured to
strike him; but, on a magnet being held near the back
of her head, hate was changed into love, and she tried
to embrace him. Another case is interesting as bearing
on the question of personal identity. A female patient,
-On being told that she was one of the doctors, imme
diately assumed his gait and manner, and stroked an
imaginary moustache; and, being asked if she knew her
real self, replied : “ Oh, yes, there is an hysterical patient
of that name who is not over-wise.”
The same phenomenon of a dual personality is fre-quently found in persons who have received some injury
to the brain, and are subject to trances. They have two
personalities—one of a real, the other of a trance life,
which are quite distinct and each unconscious of the
•other; so that Smith may be alternately Jones or Smith,
.as he falls into or awakes from a succession of trances.
In other words, the brain is like a barrel organ, which
plays one tune in its normal state and a different one
when the stops have been altered by some abnormal
influence.
In short, the last word of physiological
science is that all which we call soul, mind, conscious
ness, or personality, are functions of matter and motion.
Observe, however, that, when we ticket the facts with
the word function, we explain nothing, but simply sum
up the results by affirming that, as far as human experi
ence goes, the two phenomena go necessarily and inevit
ably together.
There is another class of experiments recorded by the
eminent French physician, M. Binet, in the columns
of the Open Court, which bears very directly on this
.question of a conscious personality. It is not uncommon
with hysterical patients to find portions of the body or
particular limbs which are subject to what is called
.ansesthesia. That is, they are insensible to pain, as in
�8
AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
the case of chloroform, and cut off from all connection
with the conscious self, as completely as if they were
external pieces of matter. But, if certain motions are
suggested to the paralysed limb, the same results will
follow as if they had been dictated by will and accom
panied by consciousness. Thus, if a pen be put in the
ansesthetic hand between the thumb and the index
finger, without the subject seeing or being in any way
conscious of it, he will seize it, and his other fingers and
arm assume the attitude necessary for writing. Suppose,
next, we make the pen write a familiar word, such as the
subject’s name ; after a short interval, the unconscious
and paralysed hand will write the word over again, some
times five or six times. And, what is still more extra
ordinary, if we purposely write the word with a wrong or
superfluous letter, when the subject repeats the word
the anaesthetic hand will hesitate when it comes to the
mistake, and, after several attempts, frequently end by
correcting it.
Now, in this experiment we have clearly proved, as
Binet says, an unconscious perception, an unconscious
reasoning and memory, and an unconscious volition. It
is clear, therefore, that, in such a case, the essential
elements, not merely of unconscious reflex movements
of nerve and muscle, but of all that we are accustomed
to consider as mind or spirit, have been reduced to un
conscious or mechanical conditions. As Huxley puts
it, you may suppress consciousness, and yet all physiolo
gical phenomena will continue to be performed auto
matically just as before; objects will continue to be
perceived, unconscious reasonings will develop, followed
by acts of adaptation. This is not “ Agnosticism,” but
science and hard fact, with which the orthodox believers
in soul or spirit have to reckon, just as much as those
who fail to discover in the problem anything that can be
solved by human faculty. In fact, no one can state this
more explicitly than one of the ablest of modern theo
logians, Principal Caird, in his sermon preached before
the British Medical Association in 1888, in which he
says : “ Of the thoughts, emotions, volitions, which in
endless multiplicity and variety constitute our conscious
life, there is not one which is not correlated to some
�AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
9
physical change or motion in the brain-matter of the
thinker; and, as far as we know, the growth, develop
ment, decline, the healthy or morbid action of the human
mind, is invariably connected with corresponding changes
of nervous or brain tissue.” But Dr. Caird, who is not
a mere commonplace theologian, but candid, sincere,
and. thoroughly acquainted with the latest discoveries of
science, falls back on two arguments to refute the con
clusions of Materialism—the first scientific, the second
metaphysical. The first invokes the principle of the
“ Conservation of Energy.” Dr. Caird argues that the
soul, as distinct from the body, is an energy, and, there
fore, indestructible. In the first place, if it were true,
it would point rather to the Brahminical and Buddhistic
doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and ultimate
merger in the one universal and eternal energy. But
the premise involves the fallacy so common in all theo
logical arguments, that known to theologians as the
petitio principn. It assumes a soul which is at one and
the same time immaterial and material. That is, imma
terial as being subject to none of the ordinary laws of
matter, such as gravity, form, and extension; material
as being subject to the law of indestructibility, which is
known to us only as another attribute of ordinary matter
and energy. If there be a soul or spirit, how do we
know that this law applies to it; or, if it did, that it is not
transformed into some sort of dead or potential energy
after the active energy comes to an end with the disso
lution of the material frame, in association with which
we alone have any knowledge of it ? For there is no
fact more certain than that we have absolutely no know
ledge of any soul apart from this association. No man
of sane mind will assert that he has any recollection of
anything that occurred before he was born, or that he
has received any authentic message from any world of
spirits inhabited by the dead. The last word of science
is—“ Behind the veil.”
The second or metaphysical argument is that the very
existence of matter implies thought. We know nothing
of matter and motion in themselves, but only as they
appear to us, which is after they have been transfigured,
by something antecedent to and independent of them,
�IO
AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
which we call thought or consciousness. It is argued,
therefore, that all phenomena require us to assume the
existence of an universal mind in which they are con
ceived, and that, to constitute the reality of the outward
world, the presence and the comparing, discriminating
and unifying activity of thought is pre-supposed. There
fore, there is an universal, eternal thought or soul of the
universe, which, expressed in anthropomorphic language,
is called God, of whom we may say, with St. Paul: “ Of
Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things.”
This seems a stupendous superstructure of assertion
to raise on the slender foundation that, as a matter of
fact, according to the experience of the inhabitants of
our tiny planet, thought or consciousness, and brain or
nerve motion, do commonly, though, as we have seen,
not invariably, go together. It is not by any means
clear, even in man’s limited sphere of knowledge, which
of the two is the post hoc and which the propter hoc;
and no real assurance can result from the double guess
- first, that our own mind is the propter hoc, or originat
ing fact of our own existence; and, secondly, that, if
so, the same is true of all existence in the universe.
The fact is that these metaphysical solutions of the
mysteries of the universe never give any certain assur
ance even to the acutest philosopher, and to the great
mass of mankind they are not even intelligible. More
over, it is to be remarked that, even if philosophers
could establish the truth of their proposition as to mind
and thought, it would not take us one step further towards
proving what is the real object of our hopes and fears
—the continuance of our personal identity after death.
On the contrary, Dr. Caird’s whole argument tends to
the conclusion of Brahmins, Buddhists, and Platonists
that individual existences come from, and return to,
the great universal soul or energy of the universe, like
the waves which rise and fall, rippling for an instant the
surface of the pathless ocean. To carry this one step
further and arrive at a personal God, with intelligence
and feelings like those of a magnified man, even such
an acute reasoner as Dr. Caird has to fall back on wishes
rather than reasons. He finds that “ a God outside of
knowledge, the dark, impenetrable background of the
�AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
II
phenomenal world,” is not 11 the boon he wants,” and he
accordingly postulates something nearer to him and more
in accordance with his personal aspirations and feelings.
But wishes are not proofs, and there are many things
which, although we desire them ever so ardently, do not
come to pass. What can be more intense or more legi
timate than the longing of a mother to receive some
message from a lost child ?—and yet it has never been
gratified. How many lovers have been parted, how many
minds extinguished, in the full maturity of powers which
might have benefitted mankind, and where are their
hopes and fears, their ardent affections, their far-reaching
plans ? Buried in the grave, where there is “ no work,
nor device, nor knowledge ” beyond that “ undiscovered
bourne from which no traveller returns.”
And it is to be noticed that, even if we were to admit as
proved the arguments for a personal God and an inspired
revelation, we should not be one step advanced towards
any certain assurance of a personal immortality. For
what this personal God is assumed to teach us by His
inspired record in the Bible is this : Firstly, by the Old
Testament, that there is no future life; secondly, by the
New Testament, that there is a future life, but coupled
with the condition of a resurrection of the body within
the lifetime of a generation who have all been dead for
1800 years. Clearly there is nothing in this which
approaches within a hundred miles of anything like
certain and definite knowledge.
What, then, is the attitude of Agnosticism towards
this great question of personal immortality ? All gnostic
forms of religions and philosophies—that is, all systems
which teach that the question is knowable, and within
the range of human faculties, either with or without the
aid of revelation—break down under critical and candid
investigation. If I were placed in the position of a
conscientious juryman, who was told that the court is
competent and the case closed, and that I was bound to
deliver a verdict “Aye” or “No” upon the evidence as
it stands, I should feel constrained, however reluctantly,
to say “ No.” But this would not be my true deliver
ance. I should much prefer to return a verdict of “Not
proven,” or rather I should say the court has no jurisdic-
�12
AGNOSTICISM AND IMMORTALITY.
tion, and should walk out without giving any verdict at
all. This an Agnostic may do with perfect good faith.
He believes that our little knowable world is encircled
by a great Unknowable, in which all things are possible.
He stands, like the Ulysses of the poet, on the margin
of that great ocean beyond the setting sun, on which so
many millions of millions have embarked, and not one
has returned. He, too, like the rest, must soon follow,
and turn his prow westwards. What fate is in store for
him ? Shall the gulfs wash him down and merge forever
his frail bark of hopes in the fathomless depths of a
sleep where there are no dreams; or shall he perchance
arrive at some fortunate islands of the West where' he
may survive in some newer and better life,
“ See the great Achilles whom we knew,”
and, dearer than the great Achilles, once more behold
the faces of those whom he has loved and lost ? He
knows not: no voice on earth, no message from thq
dead, ever reaches him, and one thing only remains—
to possess his soul with patience, and to oppose “ one
equal temper of heroic hearts ” to the decrees of destiny
and of the irrevocable future. But in the meantime he
may dream his dreams and indulge in his visions without
fear of contradiction, and without vitiating his manhood
by pretending to believe as certain where there is no
certainty. Surely this is better than to pin his faith on
assurances of certainty which break down under the
first touch of the Ithuriel spear of candid and critical
investigation, and leave him either shivering in the cold
creed of “ dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return,”
or wrapped in an unhealthy mantle of prejudices and
prepossessions, impervious to the invigorating breezes of
truth, of candour, and of sincerity.
�WATTS & CO.’S LIST.
A Lay Sermon. By S.
Laing (Author of “ Modern Science and Modern Thought
and “A Modern Zoroastrian ”). This booklet is an impartial
and vigorous statement of the attitude of Agnosticism towards
Christianity, and sets forth the moral advantages likely to accrue
from the acceptance of Agnosticism. Single copies 6d, by post
7d; 13, 5s post free ; 50, 18s carriage paid.
Agnosticism and Christianity.
Thoughtful, lucid, practical, liberal in sentiment, and high in moral tone.
It is a delightful little book, which does the spirit and the temper good to read,
for it is large in charity, never offensive, and most welcome in counsel.........
full of thought most lucidly expressed.—Secular Review.
Agnostic Morality. By R. Bithell, B.Sc., Ph.D. Single copies
6d, by post 7d ; 13, 5s post free ; 50s, 18s carriage paid.
“ Agnostic Morality ” is excellent....... Dr. Bithell has a fair grasp of the subject, and much perspicacity.—Progress.
By B. Russell. A Concise
and Popular Exposition, in Language Understanded of the
People. 4d, by post 5d.
The Case for Agnosticism.
The Popular Faith Exposed. By Julian. This is a critical
and scholarly examination of Orthodox Christianity, and is
strongly recommended. Single copies 6d, by post 7^5 13, 5s
post free ; 50, 18s carriage paid.
Bible Words: Human, not Divine. By Julian. This is
a pamphlet setting forth, in common-sense language, and free
from exaggeration and vituperation, the most glaring absurdities
and contradictions of the Bible. Price 3d, by post 3%d ; 13,
2s 6d post free ; 50, 9s carriage paid.
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Religious Beliefs. By M. S. Gilliland, Single copies 4d, by
post 4%d; 13, 3s 6d post free ; 50, 12s carriage paid.
The Confession of Agnosticism. By G. M. McC. Chapter
I. Introductory. Chapter II. Misconceptions. Chapter III.
Fundamentals. Chapter IV. The Perfect Life. Chapter V.
The Other Side of Agnosticism. Chapter VI. Faith and
Manners. Single copies 6d, by post 7d ; 13, 5s post free ; 50,
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Theism. By G. C. Griffith-Jones (Lara). Single copies 6d,
by post 7d ; 13, 5s post free 5'50, 18s carriage paid.
A Friendly Correspondence with Mr. Gladstone about
Creeds. By S. Laing. This pamphlet contains the Articles
of the Agnostic Creed drawn up at the request of Mr. Gladstone.
6d, by post 7d.
London : Watts & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�Demy 8vo, handsomely bound in cloth, price 2s. 6d. post free,
CHEAP POPULAR EDITION
OF
AGNOSTIC PROBLEMS.
BEING AN EXAMINATION OF SOME QUESTIONS OF
THE:
DEEPEST INTEREST, AS VIEWED FROM THE AGNOSTIC
STANDPOINT.
By RICHARD BITHELL, B.Sc., Ph.D.
The volume is fascinatingly interesting, remarkably complete, and sothoroughly explains the Agnostic position that the merest tyro in metaphysics
may grasp its contents....... “Agnostic Problems” has filled a gap that had
remained too long open ; and, without any desire to flatter Dr. Bithell, it may
be truthfully said that it has filled it with such solid material that it will re
quire more than all the united strength of the opponents of Agnosticism to
shatter one single stone of the substantial edifice thus put together. The work
is one that ought to be read by every thinking man, be he Christian, Jew,
Agnostic, or Atheist.—Secular Review.
Handsomely bound in cloth, price is. 6d., by post is. 8d.,
Stepping-Stones to Agnosticism.
By F. J. GOULD.
With Introduction by G. J. Holyoake.
Contents.—I. Ecce Deus; or, A New God. II. Miracles
Weighed in the Balances. III. Our Brother Christ. IV. The
Immortal Bible. V. The Noble Path. VI. Agnosticism Writ
Plain.
Bound in cloth, price 2s., by post 2s. 3d.,
AGNOSTIC FIRST PRINCIPLES.
Being a Critical Exposition of the Spencerian System of Thought.
By ALBERT SIMMONS (Ignotus).
With Preface
by
Richard Bithell, B.Sc., Ph.D.
London : Watts & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�
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Agnosticism and immortality
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Laing, Samuel [1812-1897]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 12 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Issued for the Propagandist Press Committee. Publisher's list inside and on back cover. Date of publication from Cooke, Bill. The blasphemy depot (RPA, 2003), Appx. 1.
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[1890]
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N428
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Agnosticism
Immortality
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Agnosticism
Immortality
NSS