A Grammar of Freethought Part 5

The bearing of this on our att.i.tude towards such a fact as death should be obvious. During the European war death from being an ever-present fact became an obtrusive one. Day after day we received news of the death of friend or relative, and those who escaped that degree of intimacy with the unpleasant visitor, met him in the columns of the daily press. And the Christian clergy would have been untrue to their traditions and to their interests--and there is no corporate body more alert in these directions--if they had not tried to exploit the situation to the utmost. There was nothing new in the tactics employed, it was the special circ.u.mstances that gave them a little more force than was usual. The following, for example, may be accepted as typical:--

The weight of our sorrow is immensely lightened if we can feel sure that one whom we have loved and lost has but ascended to spheres of further development, education, service, achievement, where, by and by, we shall rejoin him.

Quite a common statement, and one which by long usage has become almost immune from criticism. And yet it has about as much relation to fact as have the stories of death-bed conversions, or of people dying and shrieking for Jesus to save them. One may, indeed, apply a rough and ready test by an appeal to facts. How many cases has the reader of these lines come across in which religion has made people calmer and more resigned in the presence of death than others have been who were quite dest.i.tute of belief in religion? Of course, religious folk will repeat religious phrases, they will attend church, they will listen to the ministrations of their favourite clergyman, and they will say that their religion brings them comfort. But if one gets below the stereotyped phraseology and puts on one side also the sophisticated att.i.tude in relation to religion, one quite fails to detect any respect in which the Freethinking parent differs from the Christian one. Does the religious parent grieve less? Does he bear the blow with greater fort.i.tude? Is his grief of shorter duration? To anyone who will open his eyes the talk of the comfort of religion will appear to be largely cant. There are differences due to character, to temperament, to training; there is a use of traditional phrases in the one case that is absent in the other, but the incidence of a deep sorrow only serves to show how superficial are the vapourings of religion to a civilized mind, and how each one of us is thrown back upon those deeper feelings that are inseparable from a common humanity. The thought of an only son who is living with the angels brings no real solace to a parent's mind. Whatever genuine comfort is available must come from the thought of a life that has been well lived, from the sympathetic presence of friends, from the silent handclasp, which on such occasions is so often more eloquent than speech--in a word, from those healing currents that are part and parcel of the life of the race. A Freethinker can easily appreciate the readiness of a clergyman to help a mind that is suffering from a great sorrow, but it is the deliberate exploitation of human grief in the name and in the interests of religion, the manufacturing of cases of death-bed consolation and repentance, the citation of evidence to which the experience of all gives the lie, that fill one with a feeling akin to disgust.

The writer from whom I have quoted says:--

It is, indeed, possible for people who are Agnostic or unbelieving with regard to immortality to give themselves wholly to the pursuit of truth and to the service of their fellowmen, in moral earnestness and heroic endeavour; they may endure pain and sorrow with calm resignation, and toil on in patience and perseverance.

The best of the ancient Stoics did so, and many a modern Agnostic is doing so to-day.

The significance of such a statement is in no wise diminished by the accompanying qualification that Freethinkers are "missing a joy which would have been to them a well-spring of courage and strength." That is a pure a.s.sumption. They who are without religious belief are conscious of no lack of courage, and they are oppressed by no feeling of despair.

On this their own statement must be taken as final. Moreover, they are speaking as, in the main, those who are fully acquainted with the Christian position, having once occupied it. They are able to measure the relative value of the two positions. The Christian has no such experience to guide him. In the crises of life the behaviour of the Freethinker is at least as calm and as courageous as that of the Christian. And it may certainly be argued that a serene resignation in the presence of death is quite as valuable as the hectic emotionalism of cultivated religious belief.

What, after all, is there in the fact of natural death that should breed irresolution, rob us of courage, or fill us with fear? Experience proves there are many things that people dread more than death, and will even seek death rather than face, or, again, there are a hundred and one things to obtain which men and women will face death without fear. And this readiness to face or seek death does not seem to be at all determined by religious belief. The millions of men who faced death during the war were not determined in their att.i.tude by their faith in religious dogmas. If questioned they might, in the majority of cases, say that they believed in a future life, and also that they found it a source of strength, but it would need little reflection to a.s.sess the reply at its true value. And as a racial fact, the fear of death is a negative quality. The positive aspect is the will to live, and that may be seen in operation in the animal world as well as in the world of man.

But this has no reference, not even the remotest, to a belief in a future life. There are no "Intimations of Immortality" here. There is simply one of the conditions of animal survival, developed in man to the point at which its further strengthening would become a threat to the welfare of the species. The desire to live is one of the conditions that secures the struggle to live, and a species of animals in which this did not exist would soon go under before a more virile type. And it is one of the peculiarities of religious reasoning that a will to live here should be taken as clear proof of a desire to live somewhere else.

The fear of death could never be a powerful factor in life; existence would be next to impossible if it were. It would rob the organism of its daring, its tenacity, and ultimately divest life itself of value.

Against that danger we have an efficient guard in the operation of natural selection. In the animal world there is no fear of death, there is, in fact, no reason to a.s.sume that there exists even a consciousness of death. And with man, when reflection and knowledge give birth to that consciousness, there arises a strong other regarding instinct which effectively prevents it a.s.suming a too positive or a too dangerous form.

Fear of death is, in brief, part of the jargon of priestcraft. The priest has taught it the people because it was to his interest to do so.

And the jargon retains a certain currency because it is only the minority that rise above the parrot-like capacity to repeat current phrases, or who ever make an attempt to a.n.a.lyse their meaning and challenge their veracity.

The positive fear of death is largely an acquired mental att.i.tude. In its origin it is largely motived by religion. Generally speaking there is no very great fear of death among savages, and among the pagans of old Greece and Rome there was none of that abject fear of death that became so common with the establishment of Christianity. To the pagan, death was a natural fact, sad enough, but not of necessity terrible. Of the Greek sculptures representing death Professor Mahaffy says: "They are simple pictures of the grief of parting, of the recollection of pleasant days of love and friendship, of the gloom of an unknown future.

But there is no exaggeration in the picture." Throughout Roman literature also there runs the conception of death as the necessary complement of life. Pliny puts this clearly in the following: "Unto all, the state of being after the last day is the same as it was before the first day of life; neither is there any more variation of it in either body or soul after death than there was before death." Among the uneducated there does appear to have been some fear of death, and one may a.s.sume that with some of even of the educated this was not altogether absent. It may also be a.s.sumed that it was to this type of mind that Christianity made its first appeal, and upon which it rested its nightmare-like conception of death and the after-life. On this matter the modern mind can well appreciate the att.i.tude of Lucretius, who saw the great danger in front of the race and sought to guard men against it by pointing out the artificiality of the fear of death and the cleansing effect of genuine knowledge.

So shalt thou feed on Death who feeds on men, And Death once dead there's no more dying then.

The policy of Christianity was the belittling of this life and an exaggeration of the life after death, with a boundless exaggeration of the terrors that awaited the unwary and the unfaithful. The state of knowledge under Christian auspices made this task easy enough. Of the mediaeval period Mr. Lionel Cust, in his _History of Engraving during the Fifteenth Century_, says:--

The keys of knowledge, as of salvation, were entirely in the hands of the Church, and the lay public, both high and low, were, generally speaking, ignorant and illiterate. One of the secrets of the great power exercised by the Church lay in its ability to represent the life of man as environed from the outset by legions of horrible and insidious demons, who beset his path throughout life at every stage up to his very last breath, and are eminently active and often triumphant when man's fort.i.tude is undermined by sickness, suffering, and the prospect of dissolution.

F. Parkes Weber also points out that, "It was in mediaeval Europe, under the auspices of the Catholic Church, that descriptions of h.e.l.l began to take on their most horrible aspects."[21] So, again, we have Sir James Frazer pointing out that the fear of death is not common to the lower races, and "Among the causes which thus tend to make us cowards may be numbered the spread of luxury and the doctrines of a gloomy theology, which by proclaiming the eternal d.a.m.nation and excruciating torments of the vast majority of mankind has added incalculably to the dread and horror of death."[22]

[21] _Aspects of Death in Art and Epigram_, p. 28.

[22] _Golden Bough_, Vol. IV., p. 136.

No religion has emphasized the terror of death as Christianity has done, and in the truest sense, no religion has so served to make men such cowards in its presence. Upon that fear a large part of the power of the Christian Church has been built, and men having become so obsessed with the fear of death and what lay beyond, it is not surprising that they should turn to the Church for some measure of relief. The poisoner thus did a lucrative trade by selling a doubtful remedy for his own toxic preparation. More than anything else the fear of death and h.e.l.l laid the foundation of the wealth and power of the Christian Church. If it drew its authority from G.o.d, it derived its profit from the devil. The two truths that emerge from a sober and impartial study of Christian history are that the power of the Church was rooted in death and that it flourished in dishonour.

It was Christianity, and Christianity alone that made death so abiding a terror to the European mind. And society once Christianized, the uneducated could find no adequate corrective from the more educated. The baser elements which existed in the Pagan world were eagerly seized upon by the Christian writers and developed to their fullest extent. Some of the Pagan writers had speculated, in a more or less fanciful spirit, on a h.e.l.l of a thousand years. Christianity stretched it to eternity.

Pre-Christianity had reserved the miseries of the after-life for adults.

Christian writers paved the floor of h.e.l.l with infants, "scarce a span long." Plutarch and other Pagan moralists had poured discredit upon the popular notions of a future life. Christianity reaffirmed them with all the exaggerations of a diseased imagination. The Pagans held that death was as normal and as natural as life. Christianity returned to the conception current among savages and depicted death as a penal infliction. The Pagan art of living was superseded by the Christian art of dying. Human ingenuity exhausted itself in depicting the terrors of the future life, and when one remembers the powers of the Church, and the murderous manner in which it exercised them, there is small wonder that under the auspices of the Church the fear of death gained a strength it had never before attained.

Small wonder, then, that we still have with us the talk of the comfort that Christianity brings in the face of death. Where the belief in the Christian after-life really exists, the retention of a conviction of the saving power of Christianity is a condition of sanity. Where the belief does not really exist, we are fronted with nothing but a parrot-like repet.i.tion of familiar phrases. The Christian talk of comfort is thus, on either count, no more than a product of Christian education.

Christianity does not make men brave in the presence of death, that is no more than a popular superst.i.tion. What it does is to cover a natural fact with supernatural terrors, and then exploit a frame of mind that it has created. The comfort is only necessary so long as the special belief is present. Remove that belief and death takes its place as one of the inevitable facts of existence, surrounded with all the sadness of a last farewell, but rid of all the terror that has been created by religion.

Our dying soldier, asking for a copy of the _Crown of Wild Olive_ to be buried with him, and the other who calls for priestly ministrations, represent, ultimately, two different educational results. The one is a product of an educational process applied during the darkest periods of European history, and perpetuated by a training that has been mainly directed by the self-interest of a cla.s.s. The other represents an educational product which stands as the triumph of the pressure of life over artificial dogmas. The Freethinker, because he is a Freethinker, needs none of those artificial stimulants for which the Christian craves. And he pays him the compliment--in spite of his protests--of believing that without his religion the Christian would display as much manliness in the face of death as he does himself. He believes there is plenty of healthy human nature in the average Christian, and the Freethinker merely begs him to give it a chance of finding expression.

In this matter, it must be observed, the Freethinker makes no claim to superiority over the Christian; it is the Christian who forces that claim upon him. The Freethinker does not a.s.sume that the difference between himself and the Christian is nearly so great as the latter would have him believe. He believes that what is dispensable by the one, without loss, is dispensable by the other. If Freethinkers can devote themselves to "the pursuit of truth and the service of their fellow men," if they can "endure pain and sorrow with calm resignation," if they live with honour and face death without fear, I see no reason why the Christian should not be able to reach the same level of development.

It is paying the Freethinker a "violent compliment," to use an expression of John Wesley's, to place him upon a level of excellence that is apparently so far above that of the average Christian. As a Freethinker, I decline to accept it. I believe that what the Freethinker is, the Christian may well become. He, too, may learn to do his duty without the fear of h.e.l.l or the hope of heaven. All that is required is that he shall give his healthier instincts an opportunity for expression.

CHAPTER X.

THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT.

In the preceding chapter I have only discussed the fact of death in relation to a certain att.i.tude of mind. The question of the survival of the human personality after death is a distinct question and calls for separate treatment. Nor is the present work one in which that topic can be treated at adequate length. The most that can now be attempted is a bird's eye view of a large field of controversy, although it may be possible in the course of that survey to say something on the more important aspects of the subject.

And first we may notice the curious a.s.sumption that the man who argues for immortality is taking a lofty view of human nature, while he who argues against it is taking a low one. In sober truth it is the other way about. Consider the position. It is tacitly admitted that if human motive, considered with reference to this world alone, is adequate as an incentive to action, and the consequences of actions, again considered with reference to this world, are an adequate reward for endeavour, then it is agreed that the main argument for the belief in immortality breaks down. To support or to establish the argument it is necessary to show that life divorced from the conception of a future life can never reach the highest possible level. Natural human society is powerless in itself to realize its highest possibilities. It remains barren of what it might be, a thing that may frame ideals, but can never realize them.

Now that is quite an intelligible, and, therefore, an arguable proposition. But whether true or not, there should be no question that it involves a lower view of human nature than the one taken by the Freethinker. He does at least pay human nature the compliment of believing it capable, not alone of framing high ideals, but also of realizing them. He says that by itself it is capable of realizing all that may be legitimately demanded from it. He does not believe that supernatural hopes or fears are necessary to induce man to live cleanly, or die serenely, or to carry out properly his duties to his fellows. The religionist denies this, and a.s.serts that some form of supernaturalism is essential to the moral health of men and women. If the Freethinker is wrong, it is plain that his fault consists in taking a too optimistic view of human nature. His mistake consists in taking not a low view of human nature, but a lofty one. Substantially, the difference between the two positions is the difference between the man who is honest from a conviction of the value of honesty, and the one who refrains from stealing because he feels certain of detection, or because he is afraid of losing something that he might otherwise gain. Thus, we are told by one writer that:--

If human life is but a by-product of the unconscious play of physical force, like a candle flame soon to be blown out or burnt out, what a paltry thing it is!

But the questions of where human life came from, or where it will end, are quite apart from the question of the value and capabilities of human life now. That there are immense possibilities in this life none but a fool will deny. The world is full of strange and curious things, and its pleasures undoubtedly outweigh its pains in the experience of normal man or woman. But the relations between ourselves and others remain completely unaffected by the termination of existence at the grave, or its continuation beyond. It is quite a defensible proposition that life is not worth living. So is the reverse of the proposition. But it is nonsense to say that life is a "paltry thing" merely because it ends at the grave. It is unrestricted egotism manifesting itself in the form of religious conviction. One might as well argue that a sunset ceases to be beautiful because it does not continue all night.

If I cannot live for ever, then is the universe a failure! That is really all that the religious argument amounts to. And so to state it, to reduce it to plain terms, and divest it of its disguising verbiage, almost removes the need for further refutation. But it is seldom stated in so plain and so unequivocal a manner. It is accompanied with much talk of growth, of an evolutionary purpose, of ruined lives made good, thus:

Seeing that man is the goal towards which everything has tended from the beginning, seeing that the same eternal and infinite Energy has laboured through the ages at the production of man, and man is the heir of the ages, nothing conceivable seems too great or glorious to believe concerning his destiny.... If there is no limit to human growth in knowledge and wisdom, in love and constructive power, in beauty and joy, we are invested with a magnificent worth and dignity.

So fallacy and folly run on. What, for example, does anyone mean by man as the goal towards which everything has tended since the beginning?

Whatever truth there is in the statement applies to all things without exception. It is as true of the microbe as it is of man. If the "infinite and eternal Energy" laboured to produce man, it laboured also to produce the microbe which destroys him. The one is here as well as the other; and one can conceive a religious microbe thanking an almighty one for having created it, and declaring that unless it is to live for ever in some microbic heaven, with a proper supply of human beings for its nourishment, the whole scheme of creation is a failure. It is quite a question of the point of view. As a matter of fact there are no "ends"

in nature. There are only results, and each result becomes a factor in some further result. It is human folly and ignorance which makes an end of a consequence.

After all, what reason is there for anyone a.s.suming that the survival of man beyond the grave is even probably true? We do not know man as a "soul" first and a body afterwards. Neither do we know him as a detached "mind" which afterwards takes possession of a body. Our knowledge of man commences with him, as does our knowledge of any animal, as a body possessing certain definite functions of which we call one group mental.

And the two things are so indissolubly linked that we cannot even think of them as separate. If anyone doubts this let him try and picture to himself what a man is like in the absence of a body. He will find the thing simply inconceivable. In the absence of the material organism, to which the mind unquestionably stands in the relation of function to organ, what remains is a mere blank. To the informed mind, that is. To the intelligence of the savage, who is led, owing to his erroneous conception of things, to think of something inside the body which leaves it during sleep, wanders about, and then returns on awakening, and who because of this affiliates sleep to death, the case may be different.

But to a modern mind, one which is acquainted with something of what science has to say on the subject, the conception of a mind existing apart from organization is simply unthinkable. All our knowledge is against it. The development of mind side by side with the development of the brain and the nervous system is one of the commonplaces of scientific knowledge. The treatment of states of mind as functions of the brain and the nervous system is a common-place of medical practice.

And the fact that diet, temperature, health and disease, accidents and old age, all have their effects on mental manifestations is matter of everyday observation. The whole range of positive science may safely be challenged to produce a single indisputable fact in favour of the a.s.sumption that there exists anything about man independent of the material organism.

All that can be urged in favour of such a belief is that there are still many obscure facts which we are not altogether able to explain on a purely mechanistic theory. But that is a confession of ignorance, not an affirmation of knowledge. At any rate, there does not exist a single fact against the functional theory of mind. All we _know_ is decidedly in its favour, and a theory must be tested by what we know and by what it explains, not by what we do not know or by what it cannot explain.

And there is here the additional truth that the only ground upon which the theory can be opposed is upon certain metaphysical a.s.sumptions which are made in order to bolster up an already existing belief. If the belief in survival had not been already in existence these a.s.sumptions would never have been made. They are not suggested by the facts, they are invented to support an already established theory, which can no longer appeal to the circ.u.mstances which gave it birth.

And about those circ.u.mstance there is no longer the slightest reason for justifiable doubt. We can trace the belief in survival after death until we see it commencing in the savage belief in a double that takes its origin in the phenomena of dreaming and unusual mental states. It is from that starting point that the belief in survival takes its place as an invariable element in the religions of the world. And as we trace the evolution of knowledge we see every fact upon which was built the belief in a double that survived death gradually losing its hold on the human intelligence, owing to the fact that the experiences that gave it birth are interpreted in a manner which allows no room for the religious theory. The fatal fact about the belief in survival is its history. That history shows us how it began, as surely as the course of its evolution indicates the way in which it will end.

So, as with the idea of G.o.d, what we have left in modern times are not the reasons why such a belief is held, but only excuses why those who hold it should not be disturbed. That and a number of arguments which only present an air of plausibility because they succeed in jumbling together things that have no connection with each other. As an example of this we may take the favourite modern plea that a future life is required to permit the growth and development of the individual. We find this expressed in the quotation above given in the sentence "if there is no limit to human growth, etc.," the inference being that unless there is a future life there is a very sharp limit set to human growth, and one that makes this life a mockery. This plea is presented in so many forms that it is worth while a.n.a.lysing it a little, if only to bring out more clearly the distinction between the religious and the Freethought view of life.

What now is meant by there being no limit to human growth? If by it is meant individual growth, the reply is that there is actually a very sharp limit set to growth, much sharper than the average person seems to be aware of. It is quite clear that the individual is not capable of unlimited growth in this world. There are degrees of capacity in different individuals which will determine what amount of development each is capable of. Capacity is not an acquired thing, it is an endowment, and the child born with the brain capacity of a fool will remain a fool to the end, however much his folly may be disguised or lost amid the folly of others. And with each one, whether he be fool or genius, acquisitions are made more easily and more rapidly in youth, the power of mental adaptation is much greater in early than in later life, while in old age the capacities of adaptation and acquisition become negligible quant.i.ties. And provided one lives long enough, the last stage sees, not a promise of further progress if life were continued, but a process of degradation. The old saying that one can't put a quart into a pint pot is strictly applicable here. Growth a.s.sumes acquisition; acquisition is determined by capacity, and this while an indefinite quant.i.ty (indefinite here is strictly referable to our ignorance, not to the actual fact) is certainly not an unlimited one. Life, then, so far as the individual is concerned, does not point to unlimited growth. It indicates, so far as it indicates anything at all, that there is a limit to growth as to all other things.

Well, but suppose we say that man is capable of indefinite growth, what do we mean? Let us also bear in mind at this point that we are strictly concerned with the individual. For if man survives death he must do it as an individual. To merely survive as a part of the chemical and other elements of the world, or, to follow some mystical theologians, as an indistinguishable part of a "world-soul," is not what people mean when they talk of living beyond the grave. Here, again, it will be found that we have confused two quite distinct things, even though the one thing borrows its meaning from the other.

When we compare the individual, as such, with the individual of three or four thousand years ago, can we say with truth that the man of to-day is actually superior to the man of the earlier date? To test the question let us put it in this way. Does the man of to-day do anything or think anything that is beyond the capacity of an ancient Egyptian or an ancient Greek, if it were possible to suddenly revive one and to enable him to pa.s.s through the same education that each one of us pa.s.ses through? I do not think that anyone will answer that question in the affirmative. Reverse the process. Suppose that a modern man, with exactly the same capacity that he now has had lived in the days of the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Greeks, can we say that his capacity is so much greater than theirs, that he would have done better than they did? I do not think that anyone will answer that question in the affirmative either. Is the soldier of to-day a better soldier, or the sailor a better sailor than those who lived three thousand years ago?

Once more the answer will not be in the affirmative. And yet there are certain things that are obvious. It is plain that we all know more than did the people of long ago, we can do more, we understand the past better, and we can see farther into the future. A schoolboy to-day carries in his head what would have been a philosopher's outfit once upon a time. Our soldiers and sailors utilize, single-handed, forces greater than a whole army or navy wielded in the far-off days of the Ptolemies. We call ourselves greater, we think ourselves greater, and in a sense we are greater than the people of old. What, then, is the explanation of the apparent paradox?

The explanation lies in the simple fact that progress is not a phenomenon of individual life at all. It is a phenomenon of social existence. If each generation had to commence at the exact point at which its predecessors started it would get no farther than they got. It would be an eternal round, with each generation starting from and reaching the same point, and progress would be an inconceivable thing.

But that we know is not the case. Instead of each generation starting from precisely the same point, one inherits at least something of the labours and discoveries of its predecessors. A thing discovered by the individual is discovered for the race. A thought struck out by the individual is a thought for the race. By language, by tradition, and by inst.i.tutions the advances of each generation are conserved, handed on, and made part of our racial possessions. The strength, the knowledge, of the modern is thus due not to any innate superiority over the ancient, but because one is modern and the other ancient. If we could have surrounded the ancient a.s.syrians with all the inventions, and given them all the knowledge that we possess, they would have used that knowledge and those inventions as wisely, or as unwisely as we use them. Progress is thus not a fact of individual but of racial life. The individual inherits more than he creates, and it is in virtue of this racial inheritance that he is what he is.

It is a mere trick of the imagination that converts this fact of social growth into an essential characteristic of individual life. We speak of "man" without clearly distinguishing between man as a biological unit and man as a member of a social group developing in correspondence with a true social medium. But if that is so, it follows that this capacity for growth is, so to speak, a function of the social medium. It is conditioned by it, it has relevance only in relation to it. Our feelings, our sentiments, even our desires, have reference to this life, and in a far deeper sense than is usually imagined. And removed from its relation to this life human nature would be without meaning or value.