The Destiny of the Soul Part 69

"Death gives to life all its relish, as hunger is the true sauce of food. Death first makes us precious and dear to ourselves.

Since it lies in the nature of change that no condition is endless, but morning ever follows night, death cannot be endless.

Be unconcerned; thy being shall as little be lost as the grain of dust at thy foot! Because in death thou dost not know that thou art, therefore fearest thou that thou shalt be no more? O pusillanimous! the great events of nature are too vast for thy weak heart. A whole eternity thou hast not been conscious that thou art, and yet thou hast become conscious of it. Every night thou losest thy consciousness, yet art thou conscious again, and shalt be. The loss of consciousness is not necessarily the loss of self. The knowledge of my being is not my being itself, but a peculiar force thereof, which, entering into reciprocal action with other forces, is subject to change. It is its essence to act, and thus to change, yet without surrendering its essence. Goethe's words may be applied to the soul: 'It is; therefore eternally it is.'

Not in cold motionlessness consists eternal life, but in eternal movement, in eternal alteration, in incessant change. These are warranties that no state endures forever, not even the unconscious, death." 39

In this unfolding of the theory there are many arbitrary and fanciful conceptions which may easily be dispensed with. The interspersion of the bright life of the human monads with blank epochs of oblivious darkness, and the confinement of their destiny to an endless repet.i.tion of their life course on this globe, are not necessary. In the will of G.o.d the free range of the boundless universe may lie open to them and an incessant career in forever novel circ.u.mstances await them. It is also conceivable that human souls, leading still recurrent lives on earth with total forgetfulness, may at last acquire sufficient power, in some happy concurrence or sublime exigency, to summon back and retain all their foregone states. But, leaving aside all such incidental speculations, the chief interest of the dynamic atomistic or monad theory, as affording a solid basis for immortality, is in relation to the arrogance of a shallow and conceited materialism. Says the materialist, "Show me a spirit, and I will believe in your heaven." Replies the idealist, "Show me your matter, however small a piece, and I will yield to your argument." Spirit is no phenomenon to be shown, and matter is an inference from thought: thus the counter statements of physical science and ideal philosophy fairly offset each other, and throw their respective advocates back upon the natural ground of unsophisticated faith and observation. Standing there unperverted, man has an invincible reliance on the veracity of his faculties and the normal reports of nature. Through immediate apprehension of his own conscious will and the posited experience of his senses, he has knowledge both of causal forms of being, or free productive force, and of resultant processes and phenomena. And surely sound logic teaches that the latter may alter or disappear without implying the annihilation of the former. If all material substance, so called, were destroyed, not only would s.p.a.ce remain as an infinite indivisible unity, but the equivalents

39 Drossbach, Die individuelle Unsterblichkeit vom monadistisch metaphysischen Standpunkte betrachtet.

of what had been destroyed must remain in some form or other. Who shall say that these equivalents would not be intelligent points of power, capable of organizing aggregate bodies and of reconst.i.tuting the universe in the will of G.o.d, or of forming from period to period, in endless succession, new kinds of universes, each abounding in hitherto unimagined modes of life and degrees of bliss? To our present faculties, with only our present opportunities and data, the final problem of being is insoluble.

We resolve the properties of matter into methods of activity, manifestations of force. But there, covered with alluring awe, a wall of impenetrable mystery confronts us with its baffling "Thus far, and no farther, shall thine explicating gaze read the secrets of destiny." We cannot tell what force is. We can conceive neither its genesis nor its extinction. Over that obscure environment, into the immense empire of possibilities, we must bravely fling the treasures of our love and the colors of our hope, and with a divine impulse in the moment of death leap after, trusting not to sink as nothing into the abyss of nowhere, but, landing safe in some elysium better than we know, to find ourselves still in G.o.d.

In dealing with moral problems in the realm of the higher reason, intuitions, mysterious hints, prophetic feelings, instinctive apprehensions of fitness and harmony, may be of more convincing validity than all the formal arguments logic can build.40 "Sentiment," Ancillon says, as quoted by Lewes, "goes further than knowledge: beyond demonstrative proofs there is natural evidence; beyond a.n.a.lysis, inspiration; beyond words, ideas; beyond ideas, emotions; and the sense of the infinite is a primitive fact of the soul." In transcendental mathematics, problems otherwise unapproachable are solved by operating with emblems of the relations of purely imaginary quant.i.ties to the facts of the problems. The process is sound and the result valid, notwithstanding the hypothetical and imaginary character of the aids in reaching it.

When for mastering the dim momentous problems of our destiny the given quant.i.ties and relations of science are inadequate, the helpful supposit.i.tious conditions furnished by faith may equally lead over their airy ways to conclusions of eternal truth.

The disbelievers of a future life have in their investigations applied methods not justly applicable to the subject, and demanded a species of proof impossible for the subject to yield: as if one should use his ear to listen to the symmetries of beauty, and his eye to gaze upon the undulations of music.

It is therefore that the terribly logical onslaughts of Feuerbach are harmless upon most persons. The glittering scimetar of this Saracenic metaphysician flashes swift and sharp, but he fights the air with weapons of air. No blood flows from the severed emptiness of s.p.a.ce; no clash of the blows is heard any more than bell strokes would be heard in an exhausted receiver.

One may justifiably accept propositions which strict science cannot establish and believe in the existence of a thing which science cannot reveal, as Jacobi has abundantly shown41 and as Wagner has with less ability tried to ill.u.s.trate.42 The utmost possible achievement of a negative criticism is to show the invalidity of the physiological,

40 Abel, Disquisitio omnium tam pro immortalitate quam pro mortalitate argumentandi generum.

41 Von den goutlichen Dingen and ibrer Offenbarung. Wissen und Glauben mit besonderer Beziehung zur Zukunft der Seelen: Fortsetzung der Betrachtungen uber Menschenschopfung und Seelensubstanz.

a.n.a.logical, and metaphysical arguments to furnish positive proof of a future life for us. But this negation fully admitted is no evidence of our total mortality. Science is impotent to give any proof reaching to such a conclusion. However badly the archery of the sharp eyed and strong armed critics of disbelief has riddled the outer works of ordinary argument, it has not slain the garrison. Scientific criticism therefore leaves us at this point: there may be an immortal soul in us. Then the question whether there actually is an immortal soul in us, rests entirely on moral facts and considerations. Allowing their native force to these moral facts and considerations, the healthy ethical thinker, recognising in himself an innermost self conscious ego which knows itself persistent and identical amidst the multiplex vicissitude of transient conditions, lies down to die expecting immediately to continue his being's journey elsewhere, in some other guise.

Leaving out of view these moral facts and considerations, the materialistic naturalist thinker, recognising his consciousness as only a phantom procession of states across the cerebral stage hung in ashy livery and afloat on blood, lies down to expire expecting immediately to be turned into n.o.body forever. Misinterpreting and undervaluing these moral facts and considerations, the anchorless speculative thinker, recognising his organism as an eye through which the World Spirit beholds itself, or a momentary pulse in which the All feels itself, his consciousness as a part of the infinite Thought, lies down on his death couch expecting immediately to be turned into everybody, eternity, instead of greeting him with an individual kiss, wrapping him in a monistic embrace. The broad drift of human conviction leads to the first conclusion, a persistent personality. The greatest philosophers, from Plato to Pascal, deny the second view, a blotting extinction of the soul, declaring it false in science and incredible in presentation. The third theory a pantheistic absorption the irresistible common sense of mankind repudiates as a morbid dream.

Man naturally believes himself immortal but not infinite. Monism is a doctrine utterly foreign to undiseased thinking. Although it be a Fichte, a Sch.e.l.ling, or a Hegel, who says that the soul is a circ.u.mscribed yet omnipotent ego, which first radiates the universe, and afterwards beholds it in the mirror of itself, and at length breaks into dead universality, the conception is, to the average apprehension of humanity, as overweening a piece of wild fancy as ever rose in a madman's reveries.43

The ordinary contemplator of the phenomena of the world and the sequel of human life from the materialistic point of view feels disgust and terror at the prospect. The scene seems to him degrading and the fate fearful. The loathing and dismay vulgarly experienced thus, it is true, arise from an exaggerated misapprehension of the basis and meaning of the facts: rightly appreciated, all is rulingly alive, aspirant, beautiful, and benignant. The ceaseless transformations filling the heights and depths of the creation are pervaded with joy and

42 A full discussion of the pantheistic doctrine of immortality will be found in the following works. Richmann, Gemsinfa.s.sl.

Darstellung und Wurdigung aller gehaltreichen Beweisarten fur Gott und fur Unsterblichkeit der Seele. Unius, Unsterblichkeit.

Blanche, Philosophische Unsterblichkeitlehre.

43 Weisse, Die philosophische Geheimlehre von der Unsterblichkeit des menschlichen Individuums. Goschel, Von den Beweisen fur die Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele im Lichte der speculativen Philosophie. Morell, Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the 19th Century, part ii. ch.

v. sect. 2: The German School of the 19th Century. Buchanan, Modern Atheism.

clothed with a n.o.ble poetry. There is no real death: what seems so is but a "return or falling home of the fundamental phenomenon to the phenomenal foundation, a dissolution through which nature seeks her ground and strives to renew herself in her principles."

Still, in spite of this more profound and genial interpretation of the shifting metamorphoses of nature, the fear of there being no conscious future life for man produces, when first entertained, a horrid constriction around the heart, felt like the ice cold coils of a serpent. The thought of tumbling hopelessly into "The blind cave of eternal night" naturally oppresses the heart of man with sadness and with alarm. To escape the unhappiness thus inflicted, recourse has been had to expedients. Four artificial subst.i.tutes for immortality have been devised. Fondly fixing attention upon these, men have tried to find comfort and to absorb their thoughts from the dreaded spectre and the long oblivion. The first is the sentimental phantasm of posthumous fame. The Latin bard, ancient Ennius, sings,

"Nemo me lacrymis decoret, nec funera fletu Faxit. Cur? volito vivu' per ora virum." 44

Shakspeare likewise often expresses the same thought:

"When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen) Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men."

And again in similar strain:

"My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes."

Napoleon is reported to have said, "My soul will pa.s.s into history and the deathless memories of mankind; and thus in glory shall I be immortal." This characteristically French notion forms the essence of Comte's "positivist" doctrine of a future life. Those deemed worthy after their death to be incorporated, by vote of the people, in the Supreme Being, the Grand Etre, a fict.i.tious product of a poetic personification, through the perpetual fame and influence thus secured have an immortal life in the thoughts and feelings of a grateful posterity. Comte says, "Positivism greatly improves immortality and places it on a firmer foundation, by changing it from objective to subjective." Great and eternal Humanity is G.o.d. The dead who are meritorious are alone remembered, and, thus incorporated into the Divinity, they have a "subjective immortality in the brains of the living." 45 It is a poor shadow of the sublime truth which the soul craves. Leopardi, in his Bruto Minore, expresses this "poor hope of being in the future's breath:"

44 Cicero, Tusc. Quast., lib. i. cap. xv.

45 Catechism of Positive Religion, Conversation III.

"dell' atra morte ultima raggio Conscia future eta." That proud and gifted natures should have seriously stooped to such a toy, to solace themselves with it, is a fact strange and pathetic. With reverential tenderness of sympathy must we yearn towards those whose loving natures, baffled of any solid resource, turn appealingly, ere they fade away, to clasp this substanceless image of an image.

Another scheme is what may be called the "lampada tradunt" 46 theory of a future life. Generations succeed each other, and the course is always full. Eternal life takes up new subjects as fast as its exhausted receptacles perish. Men are the mortal cells of immortal humanity. The individual must comfort himself with the sympathetic reflection that his extinction destroys nothing, since all the elements of his being will be manipulated into the forms of his successors.

Life is a constant renovation, and its sum is forever full and equal on the globe. The only genuine resurrection unto eternal life is an unending re creation of organisms from the same materials to repeat the same physiological and psychological processes.47 There is a gleam of cheer and of n.o.bleness in this representation; but, upon the whole, it is perhaps as ineffectual as the former. It is a vapid consolation, in view of our own annihilation, to think that others will then live and also be annihilated in their turn. It is pleasant to believe that the earth will forever be peopled with throngs of men; but though such a belief might help to reconcile us to our fate, it could not alter the intrinsic sadness of that fate.

A third subst.i.tute for the common view of immortality is a scientific perception of the fact that the peculiar force which each man is, the sum of his character and life, is a cause indestructibly mixed with the course of subsequent history, an objective personal immortality, though not a conscious one. What he was, remains and acts forever in the world.

The fourth subst.i.tute is an identification of self with the integral scheme of things. I am an inseparable portion of the totality of being, to move eternally in its eternal motion.

"If death seem hanging o'er thy separate soul, Discern thyself a part of life's great whole."

Lose the thought of thy particular evanescence in the thought of the universal permanence. The inverted torch denotes death to a mere inhabitant of the earth: to a citizen of the universe, downward and upward are the same. Perhaps one who rejects the ordinary doctrine of a future life can be solaced and edified by these subst.i.tutes in proportion to his fineness, greatness, and n.o.bleness. But to most persons no subst.i.tute can atone for the withdrawn truth of immortality itself.

In regard to the eternal preservation of personal consciousness, it were bigoted blindness to deny that there is room for doubts and fears. While the monad soul so to call it lies here beneath the weak glimmer of suns so far off that they are forceless to develop it to a

46 Lucretius, De Nat. Rerum, lib. ii. 1. 78.

47 Schultz Schultzenstein, Die Bildung des menschlichen Geistes durch Kultur der Verjungung seines Lebens, ss. 834-847: Die Unsterblichkeitsbegriffe.

victorious a.s.surance, we cannot but sometimes feel misgivings and be depressed by skeptical surmises. Accordingly, while belief has generally prevailed, disbelief has in every age had its representatives. The ancients had their Dicaarchus, Protagoras, Panatius, Lucan, Epicurus, Casar, Horace, and a long list besides.

The moderns have had their Ga.s.sendi, Diderot, Condillac, Hobbes, Hume, Paine, Leopardi, Sh.e.l.ley, and now have their Feuerbach, Vogt, Moleschott, and scores of others needless to be named. And although in any argument from authority the company of the great believers would incomparably outshine and a thousand times outweigh the array of deniers, this does not alter the obvious fact that there are certain phenomena which are natural provocatives of doubt and whose troubling influence scarcely any one can always escape. Homer, in giving expression to Hector's confidence of victory over the Greeks, makes him wish that he were but as sure of entering the state of the immortal G.o.ds.48 When some one asked Dr. Johnson, "Have we not proof enough of the immortality of the soul?" he replied, "I want more." Davenant of whom Southey says, "I know no other author who has so often expressed his doubts respecting a future state and how burdensome he felt them" writes, "But ask not bodies doom'd to die, To what abode they go: Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know."

Charles Lamb writes, "If men would honestly confess their misgivings, (which few men will,) there are times when the strongest Christian of us has reeled under questionings of such staggering obscurity." Many a man, seeing nature hang her veil of shifting glories above the silent tombs of vanished generations, voiceless now forever, entertaining innumerable contradictory queries amidst feelings of decay and sights of corruption, before the darkness of unknown futurity might piteously exclaim, without deserving blame,

"I run the gauntlet of a file of doubts, Each one of which down hurls me to the ground."

Who that has reached maturity of reflection cannot appreciate and sympathize somewhat with these lines of Byron, when he stands before a lifeless form of humanity?

"I gazed, as oft I have gazed the same, To try if I could wrench aught out of death Which should confirm, or shake, or make, a faith; But it was all a mystery. Here we are, And there we go: but where? Five bits of lead, Or three, or two, or one, send very far!

And is this blood, then, form'd but to be shed? Can every element our elements mar? Can air, earth, water, fire, live and we dead?

We, whose minds comprehend all things? No more."

48 Iliad, lib, viii. Il. 538-540.

Doubt is not sin, but rather a misfortune; for it is to adopt a suggestion from Schaller a cleft in the soul through which thought steals away what the heart desires. The guilt or innocence of doubting depends on the spirit in which it is done. There are two att.i.tudes of mind and moods of feeling before propositions and evidence. One is, "I will not believe unless I see the prints of the nails and lay my finger in the marks of the wounds." The other is, "Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief." In abstract logic or rigid science the former may be appropriate and right. The latter alone can be justifiable in moral and religious things. If a man sorrowfully and humbly doubts, because he cannot help it, he shall not be condemned. When he is proud of his doubts, complacently swells with fancied superiority, plays the fanfaron with his pretentious arguments, and sets up as a propagandist of disbelief, being all the while in reality "Most ignorant of what he is most a.s.sured, His gla.s.sy essence," his conduct is offensive to every good man, and his spirit must receive the condemnation of G.o.d. A missionary of atheism and death, horridly eager to destroy those lofty thoughts which so much help to make us men, is a shocking spectacle. Yet a few such there are, who seem delighted as by their dismal theory they bury mankind in an iron tomb of materialism and inscribe on the irrevocable door the solitary words, Fate and Silence.