Charles Josselyn THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL BY SIR OLIVER LODGE BOSTON THE BALL PUBLISHING CO. d Copyright, igo8 BY THE BALL PUBLISHING Co. PREFACE Sir Oliver Lodge, the author of the essay here published, is deservedly honored as a leader in the scientific world. As a physicist he is recognized as an authority by the materialistic school while his services as an active member of the English Society for Psychical Research entitle him to equal honor as a psychologist. Any opinion, therefore, which he may proffer on The Immortality of the Soul must be of interest to all. We believe that the author has never found anything in scientific research that he considered inconsistent with Christian belief, but his present argument is founded 61577'c PREFACE on scientific grounds and not on that of Christian dogma. The substance of this book was first given to the -public on October 2jth y fpo?, as a Drew Lecture in connection with Hackney College. This college was founded in 1803 for the education of Ministers of the Congregational Churches and is now a constituent part of London University. It was first published in The Hibbert Journal for January and April of 1908. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT "If a man is shut up in a house, the trans- parency of the windows is an essential condi- tion of his seeing the sky. But it would not be prudent to infer that, if he walked out of the house, he could not see the sky because there was no longer any glass through which he might see it." DR. MTAGGART, in his book called Some Dogmas of Religion, from which I have taken the excellent apo- logue prefixed as a sort of motto to this article, says some things with which I am not able wholly to agree. I should like to deal with these at THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL greater length in some other connex- ion, but meanwhile I will quote one of them. In his chapter on Human Immortality he says that an affirma- tive answer to the question, "Has man an immortal soul?" would be absurd. He wishes to maintain that man is a soul rather than that he has one; because the possessive case would indicate, he says, that the man himself was his body, or was some- thing that died with the body, and that he owned something, not him- self, which at death was set free. But if we make the correlative NOTE: The apologue on the preceding page must not be understood as sustaining what Mr. Haldane derisively calls the "win- dow" theory of the senses, as if they were apertures through which an inner man looked out at an alien universe: a parable must not be pressed unduly. 2 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL statement, and say that "man has a body," surely we are stating an(ttn- deniable truth. And as to what the man himself is I appreheprl f-K^t fc is^ a union of spul and body; and that without the one or the other he is in- complete jis a man, and becomes something else a corpse perhaps, a ^srmj^jpprhaps ? or it may be both. "But whereas the two were necessa- rily united during the man's life, death separates them; and the final product, whateverTt is, can be de- scribed as "man" no longer. Hence the form of the question preferred by Dr. M'Taggart, "Are men im- mortal?" does not seem to me so ap- propriate as the more popular and antique form. "Is the soul immor- tal?" For surely without hesitation everybody must give to his question, about man, the answer: "Not whol- 3 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ly," or "Not every part of him." Part of what constitutes human na- ture is certainly mortal. On one side man undoubtedly belongs to the ani- ma * kingdom, an d flourishes on this planet, the Earth, by the aid of par- tides of terrestrial matter which he utilises for that purpose. By the soul, then, we must mean that part of man which is dissociated from the body at death: that part which is characteristic of a living man as distinct from a corpse. It may be said that it is really more an inter-relation than a part, and that this inter-relation is what is meant by vitality; so that it can be roundly as- serted that the apparently disap- peared "vitality" is a nonentity or figment of the imagination, and that to speak of it as still existing is like speaking of the "horologity" of a 4 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL clock which someone has smashed with a hammer. Very well, admitting that vitality is a mere relation between the body and something else, it is just the na- ture of this "something else" that we are discussing; and it is no help to start by assuming that this dissoci- ated and perhaps imaginary portion is the man himself, any more than it is helpful to start with the equally gratuitous assumption that the visible and tangible body is the man him- self. The vanished constituent with its attributes may turn out to be more intimately characteristic of, and es- sential to, the man's real nature and existence, than is the material instru- ment or organ which has been dis- carded without having disappeared : they may turn out to have a more 5 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL permanent and therefore a more real existence than the temporary vehicle which served to manifest those attri- butes and properties during their short tenure of earth life ; they may be more especially the seat of his personality and individuality; but those are just the things which are subject-matter for debate, and they must not be postulated a priori. As a matter of nomenclature, I want to discriminate between the $erm "vitality" and the term "life" ; to use the former as signifying a union or relation between the body and something else, and the latter to enote the unknown entity which by iteraction with material particles is responsible for their vitality. True, ^of^Jife, thus defined, is a portion or par- ^C>****" V " al a jyjtf w ^ at * s ^ ten spoken of as "soul^but the term life can be 6 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL used by many to whom some of the associations of the more comprehen- sive term are objectionable. The first simple and important truth that must be insisted on, is the commonplace but often ignored and even denied fact, that there is noth- ing immortal or persistent about the material instrument of our present senses, except the atoms of which it is composed. Any notion that these same atoms will be at some future date re-col- lected and united with the dissoci- ated and immaterial portion, so as to constitute once more the complete man as he appeared here on earth, who is thereafter to last for ever, any notion of that sort, though most unfortunately believed, or at least taught, by one great branch of the iri^jHir Christian Church, is a/Superstition^* ~ THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL not by any means yet really and thor- oughly extinct or without influence on sentiment, even in quarters where it may be denied in words. It is too much to expect that it should be so extinct Nevertheless, the teaching of nat- ural science is in accordance with the teaching of common sense in this matter. The present body(is)wholly composed of terrestrial particles; it consists of atoms of matter collected from food and air, and arranged in a certain complicated and character- istic form. The elemental atoms are first combined into the complex ag- gregate called protoplasm, which is an unstable compound whose chem- ical constitution is at present un- known, but whose property it is to be always in a state of flux: it is not rigid or stagnant or fixed, but is con- 8 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL stantly breaking down into simpler constituents, on one side, and con- stantly being renewed or built up, on the other, so that it has a kind of life- history, for a certain period. This period of activity, in any given case, lasts as long as the balance between association and dissociation contin- ues. While the balance is tilting in favour of assimilation, we have the period of youth and growth; when the balance begins to tilt in favour of disintegration, we have the com-S. mencement of old age and decay; un- ^j* til at a certain, or rather an uncer tain stage, the disintegrating forces gain a final victory, and assimilation wholly and sometimes suddenly ceases. Then presently and by slow degrees the residue of protoplasm left in the body unless it is speedily incorporated into some other animal 9 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL or plant is resolved into simpler and simpler compounds, and ulti- mately into inorganic constituents; and so is restored to mother Earth, whence it sprang. What, then, can be legitimately meant by the phrase Resurrection of the body? Well, it is highly desir- able to disentangle the element of truth which underlies ancient beliefs and is the condition of their durabil- ity; and, whatever may be the case with other forms of religion, it is clear that Christianity both by its doctrines and its ceremonies rightly emphasises the material aspect of ex- istence. For it is founded upon the idea of Incarnation ; and its belief in some sort of bodily resurrection is based on the idea that every real per- sonal existence must have a double aspect not spiritual alone nor phys- io THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ical alone, but in some way both. Such an opinion, in a refined form, is common to many systems of phi- losophy, and is by no means out of harmony with science. Christianity, therefore, reasonably supplements the mere survival of a discarnate spirit, a homeless wander- er or melancholy ghost, with the warm and comfortable clothing of something that may legitimately be spoken of as a "body" ; that is to say, it postulates a supersensually appre- ciable vehicle or mode of manifesta- tion, fitted to subserve the needs of future existence as our bodies sub- serve the needs of terrestrial life: an ethereal or other entity constituting the persistent "other aspect," and ful- filling some of the functions which the atoms of terrestrial matter are constrained to fulfil now. And we ii THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL may assume, as consonant with or even as part of Christianity, the doc- trine of the dignity and sacramental character of some physical or quasi- material counterpart of every spirit- ual essence. But though some such connexion is essential, any actual instance of it may be accidental and temporary. Take our present incarnation as an example. We display ourselves to mankind in the garb of certain clothes, artificially constructed of an- imal and vegetable materials, and in the form of a certain material organ- ism, put together by processes of digestion and assimilation, and like- ^XAcXvdse composed of terrestrial mate- pT* m rials. The source of these chemical compounds is evidently not impor- l tant ; nor * s their special character i^Vo maintained. Whether they formed THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL part of sheep or birds or fish or plants, they are assimilated and be- come part of us; being arranged by our subconscious activities and vital processes into appropriate form, just as truly as other materials are con- sciously woven into garments, no matter what their origin. More- over, just as our clothes wear out and require aarnmgjiid^a]nmg l jo_oui^^ bodies wear outiTthe particles are in continual flux, each giving place to others and being constantly discarded and renewed. The identity of the actual or instantaneous body is there- fore an affair of no importance: the body which finally dies is no more fully representative of the individual than any of the other bodies which have gradually been discarded en route: there is no reason why it should persist any more than they: 13 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL the individuality, if there is one, must lie deeper than any particular body, and must belong to whatever it is which put the particles together in this shape and not another. There is nothing at all similar to this automatic decay and replace- ment, this preservation of form amid diversity of particles, in the mechan- : ism of a clock. All that its horo- logity could mean would be the special assemblage or grouping of parts which enables it to fulfil cer- tain functions, till it wears out, or so long as its worn parts are periodic- ally replaced by the clockmaker. The "vitality" of an organism means this and more, for it can replace its own worn parts. A clock has noth- ing of personal identity, it is not a good illustration of a living organ- ism. The identity of a river is a THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL much closer analogy; and many are the associations which have accord- ingly gathered round the names "Ti- ber," "Ganges," "Nile." Rivers have always had attributed to them a kind of poetic personality, though no one can have really supposed them to possess genuine life. I wish here to make a short digres- sion in order to say that the old and true statement that "everything flows and nothing is stagnant," thus con- spicuously exemplified by the mate- rial basis of life, need not in the least signify, as it is sometimes taken to signify, that everything is evanescent and nothing is permanent; still less that everything is fanciful and noth- ing is real. The ancient aphorism of the inspired Heraclitus makes a statement about existence which is vitally and comprehensively true; 15 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL and it is a truth which constitutes the keynote of evolution. To return. The more frankly and clearly the truth about the body is realised, viz. that the body is a flow- ing and constantly changing episode in material history, having no more identity than has a river, no identity whatever in its material constitution, but only in its form, identity only in the personal expression or mani- festion which is achieved through the agency of a fresh and constantly dif- fering sequence of material particles, the more frankly all this is rea- lised, the better for our understand- ing of most of the problems of life and being. The body is the instrument or oj;- i# of the soul: and in its special form and aggregation is certainly ^Xft^ ^f^. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL temporary, exceedingly temporary, for in the most durable cases it lasts only about a thousand months a mere instant in the life-history of a planet. But if the body is thus trivial and temporary, though while it lasts most beautiful and useful and wonderful, what is it that puts it together and keeps it active and retains it fairly constant through all the vicissitudes of climate and condition, and through all the fluctuations of mate- v rial constitution? For remember that we are now not dealing with the human body alone. All animals have bodies, and so have plants. All that has been said, of the temporary character of the mate- rial aggregate animated by life, ap- plies to a vast variety of organisms, 17 i THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL many of which can be encountered on the earth: not to speak of the myriads of other worlds. What causes the very same par- ticles to be incorporated first into the form of a blade of grass, then into the form of a sheep, then into the form of a man; then into.the form of ^ _ ^ L THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ficiently represent my present mean- ing: The soul is that controlling and guiding principle which is re- sponsible for our personal expression and for the construction of the body, under the restrictions of physical ^ton'dition and ancestry. In its high- er development it includes also feel- ing and intelligence and will, and is the^sjorehouse of metal experience, e body is its instrument or organ, enabling it to receive and to convey physical impressions, and to affect and be affected by matter and en- ergy. When the body is 'destroyed, there- fore, the soul disappears from phys- ical ken; when the body is impaired, its function is interfered with, and the soul's physical reaction becomes feeble and unsatisfactory. Thus has arisen the popular misconception 20 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL that the soul of a slain person or of a cripple or paralytic has been de- stroyed or damaged; whereas only its instrument of manifestation need have been affected. The kind of evils which really assault and hurt the soul belong to a different cate- gory. It may be said that, in so far as soul is responsible for bodily shape, soul seems identical with the prin- ciple of life, and that all living things must possess some rudiment of soul. Well, for myself, I do not see how to draw a hard and fast distinction between one form of life and an- other. All are animated by some- thing which does not belong to the realm of physics and chemistry, but lies outside their province, though it interacts with the material entities 21 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL of their realm. Life is not matter, nor is it energy, it is a guiding and directing principle; and when con- sidered as incorporated in a certain organism, it, and all that appertains to it, may well be called the soul or constructive and controlling element in that organism. The soul in this sense is related to the organism in somewhat the same way as the "Logos" is related to the universe ; it is that without which it does not exist, that which vivifies and constructs, or composes and in- forms, the whole. Moreover, in the higher organ- isms, the soul conspicuously has lofty potentialities; it not only includes what is connoted by the term "mind," but it begins to acquire some of the character of "spirit"; by which means it becomes related to 22 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL the Divine Being. Soul appears to be the link between "spirit" and "matter"; and, according to its grade, it may be chiefly associated with one or with the other of these two great aspects of the universe. Now let us consider what is meant by Immortality. Is there anything that is not subject to death and an- nihilation? Can we predicate im- mortality about anything? Every- thing is subject to change, but are all things subject to death? With- out change there could be no activ- ity, and the universe would be stag- nant; but without death it is not so clear that its progress would be ob- structed; unless death be only a sort of change. But is it not a sort of change? Consider some examples : When a 23 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL piece of coal is burnt an'd brought to an apparent end, the particles of long-fossilised wood are not de- stroyed; they enter into the atmos- phere as gaseous constituents, and the long-locked-up solar energy is re- leased from its potential form and appears once more as light and heat. The burning of the coal is a kind of resurrection; and yet it is a kind of death too, and to the superficial eye nothing is left but ashes. Take next the destruction of a pic- ture or a statue, let it be torn to pieces or smashed to powder: there is nothing to suggest resurrection about that, and the beautiful form embodied in the material has disap- peared. Such a dissolution is a more se- rious matter, and mayJXethP 1 result of a really malicious act. It is per- 24 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL haps the nearest approach to gen- uine destruction that is possible to man, and in some cases represents the material concomitant of a hid- eous crime. True, nothing mate ria is destroyed, the particles weigh just^ $ as much as before; yet the expres- sion is gone, the beauty is defaced, an idea perhaps is lost. But, after all, the idea was never really in the marble or in the pig- ments ; it was embodied or incarnate or displayed by them, in a sense, but it was not really there. It was in the mind of the artist who con- structed the work, and it entered the mind of the spectators who beheld it, at least of those who had the requisite perceptive faculty; but it was never in the stone at all. The inert material, from the impress of mind it had received, was able to 25 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL call out and liberate in a kindred mind some of the original feelings and thoughts which had gone to fashion it. Without a perceptive faculty, without a sympathetic mind, the material was powerless. Set up in, or sent to, a world inhabited only by lower animals, it would convey no message whatever, it would be wholly meaningless; just as a piece of manuscript would be, in such a world, though it contained the di- vinest poem ever written. Nevertheless, by the supposed act of vandalism a certain incarnation of beauty has been lost to the world. Though even so it is not destroyed out of the universe: it remains the possession of the artist and of those privileged to feel along with him. Consider next the destruction of a tree or of an animal. Here again 26 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL the particles remain as many as be- fore, it is only their arrangement that is altered; the matter is con- served but has lost its shape; the energy is constant in quantity but has changed its form. What has disap- peared? The thing that has disap- peared is the life the >^f^which_ a]> peared to be in the tree or the animal, the life which had composed or con- structed it by aid of sunshine and at- mosphere, and was manifested by it. Its incarnate form has now gone no more will that life be displayed amidst its old surroundings, it has disappeared from our ken; appar- ently it has disappeared from the planet. Has it gone out of existence altogether? If it were really generated de novo, created out of nothing, at the birth of the animal or of the tree, 27 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL we should be entitled to assume that at death it may have returned to the nonentity whence it came. But why nonentity? What do we know of nonentity? Is it a reasonable or conceivable idea? ft Things when the 1 J,dden r -^ And so ,-readily intelligible that some (^exist- ence, some bodily presentation, cai b^ evoked out of a hidden or impei ceptible or latent or potential exist 1 ence, and be made actual and per- ceptible and what we call real. In- stances of that sort are constantly occurring. It occurs when a com- oser produces a piece of music, it ccurs when an artisan constructs a ce of furniture, it occurs when a spider spins a web, and when the at- mosphere deposits dew. But what example can we think of where ex- 28 ^ THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL istence is created out of nonentity, where nothing turns into something? We can think of plenty of examples of change of organisation, of some- thing apparently complex and high- ly developed arising out of a germ apparently simple ; but there must al- ways be at least a seed, or nothing will arise; nothing can come out of nothing: something must always have its origin in something. A radium atom is an element pos- sessing in itself the seeds of its own destruction. Every now and then it explodes and fires off a portion of itself. This can occur several times in succession, and finally it seems to become inert and to cease to be ra- dium or anything like it; it is thought by some to have become lead, while the particles thrown off have become helium, or occasionally 29 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL neon, or sometimes argon. Let us suppose that. We cannot stop there, we are bound to go on to ask what was the origin of the radium itself. If it explode itself to pieces in the course of a few thousand years, why does any radium still exist? How is it being born? Does it spring into existence out of noth- ing, or has it some parent? And if it has a parent, what was the origin of that parent? Never in physical science do we surmise for a moment that something suddenly springs into being from previous non-existence. All that we perceive can be accounted for by changes of aggregation, by assem- blage and dispersion. Of material aggregates we can trace the history, as we can trace the history of con- tinents and islands, of suns and 30 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL planets and stars ; we can say, or try to say, whence they arose and what they will become; but never do we state that they will vanish into noth- ingness, nor do we ever conjecture that they arose from nothing. It is true that in religion we seek to trace things farther back still, and ultimately say that everything arose from God; and there, perforce, our chain of existence, our links of ante- cedence and sequence must cease. But to allow such a statement to act as an intellectual refuge can only be a concession to human infirmity. Everything truly arose from God; but there is nothing specially il- luminating in such a statement as that, for everything is in God now; and everything will continue to be animated and sustained by God to all eternity. It is not legitimate ex- Si THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL plicitly to introduce the idea of God to explain the past alone; the term applies equally to the present and to the future. So the assertion just made, though true enough, is only a mode of say- ing that what was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. This is a religious mode of expressing our conviction of the uniformity of the Eternal Char- acter, but it is not a statement which adds to our scientific information. We may not be able to understand Nature, we are certainly unable to comprehend God. If we say that Nature is an aspect of the Divine Being, we must be speaking truly; but that only strengthens our present argument as to its durability and permanence, for we shall certainly not thus be led to attribute to any- 32 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL thing so qualified any power of either jumping into or jumping out of existence. To make the statement that Nature is an aspect of the God- head is explicitly to postulate eternity for every really existing thing, and to say that we call death is not an- nihilation but only change. Birth is change. Death is change. A happy change, perhaps; a melan- choly change, perhaps. That all de- pends upon circumstances and spe- cial cases, and on the point of view from which things are regarded; but, anyhow, an inevitable change. I want to make the distinct asser- tion that no really existing thing perishes, but only changes its form. Physical science teaches us this, clearly enough, concerning matter and energy: the two great entities with which it has to do. And there 33 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL is no likelihood of any great modifi- cation in this teaching. It may, per- haps, be induced in the long run to modify the form of statement and to assert conservation and real exist- ence of ether and motion (or, per- haps only, of ether in motion) rather than of matter and energy. That is quite possible, but the apparent va- riation of statement is only a variant in form; its essence and meaning are the same, except that it is now more general and would allow even the atoms of matter themselves to have their day and cease to be; being re- solved, perhaps, into electricity, and that into some hitherto unimagined mode of motion of the ether. But all this is far from being accepted at present, and need not here be con- sidered. The distinction between what is 34 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL transitory and what is permanent is quite clear. Evanescence is to be stated concerning every kind of "sys- tem" and aggregation and grouping. A crowd assembles, and then it dis- perses: it is a crowd no more. A cloud forms in the sky, and soon once more the sky is blue again; the cloud has died. Dew forms on a leaf: a little while, and it has gone again gone apparently into noth- ingness, like the cloud. But we know better, both for cloud and dew. In an imperceptible form it was, and soon into an imperceptible form it will again have passed; but mean- while there is the dewdrop glisten- ing in the sun, reflecting all the movements of the neighbouring world, and contributing its little share to the beauty and the service- ableness of creation. 35 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL Its perceptible or incarnate exist- ence is temporary. As a drop it was born, and as a drop it dies; but as aqueous vapour it persists: an in- trinsically imperishable substance, with all the properties persisting which enabled it do condense into drop or cloud. Even it, therefore, has the attribute of immortality. So, then, what about life? Can that be a nonentity which has built up particles of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen into the form of an oak or an eagle or a man? Is it some- thing which is really nothing; and soon shall it be manifestly the noth- ing that an ignorant and purblind creature may suppose it to be? Not so; nor is it so with intellect and consciousness and will, nor with memory andMov^ and adoration, nor all the manifold activities which at 36 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL present strangely interact with mat- ter and appeal to our bodily senses and terrestrial knowledge; they are not nothing, nor shall they ever van- ish into nothingness or cease to b e - They did not arise with us: they never did spring into being; they are as eternal as the Godhead itself, and in the eternal Being they shall endure for ever. "Though earth and man were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee." So sang Emily Bronte on her deathbed, in a poem which Mr. Hal- dane quotes in full, in his Gifford Lectures, as containing true philoso- phy. And, surely in this respect there is a unity running through the universe, and a kinship between the 37 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL human and the Divine: witness the eloquent ejaculation of Carlyle: "What, then, is man ! What, then, is man ! "He endures but for an hour, and is crushed before the moth. Yet in the being and in the working of a faithful man is there already (as all faith, from the begin- ning, gives assurance) a something that per- tains not to this wild death-element of Time; that triumphs over Time, and is, and will be, when Time shall be no more." II THE PERMANENCE OF PERSON- ALITY "After death the soul possesses self-con- sciousness, otherwise it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been dis- proved. With this self-consciousness neces- sarily remains personality and the conscious- ness of personal identity." KANT, quoted by HEINZE. IN the part treating of "The Tran- sitory and the Permanent," perma- nence was claimed for the essence, the intrinsic reality, the soul of any- thing; and transitoriness for its bod- ily presentment that is, for all such things as special groupings, arrange- ments, systems, which are liable to break up into their constituent ele- 39 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ments, and cease to cohere into a united and organized aggregate. The only real destruction known to us, in fact, in this disintegration or breaking up of an assemblage : things themselves never spring into or out of existence. All we can cause or can observe is variety of motion never creation or annihilation. And even ^ e m ti n * s transferred from one body to another, and transformed * n t ' le P rocess > i* * s not generated from nothing, nor can it be de- stroyed. Special groupings and ap- pearances are transitory; it is their intrinsic and constructive essence which is permanent. But then, what about personality, individuality, our own character and self? Are these akin to the tempo- rary groupings which shall be dis- solved, or are they among the sub- 40 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL stantial realities that shall endure? Let us see how to define the idea of personality or personal and in- dividual character: A memory, a consciousness, and a will, in so far as they form a consistent harmonious whole, constitute a personality; which thus has relations with the past, the present, and the future. And we shall argue that personality or individuality itself dominates and transcends all temporal modes of ex- pression, and so is essentially eternal wherever it exists. The life of an insect or a tree may in some sort must, one would think, in some sort persist, but surely not its personal character! Why not? Because, presumably, it has none. We can hardly imagine that such a thing has any individuality or per- sonality: it appears to us to be merely 41 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL one of a group, a mere unit in a world of being, without personality of its own. That is what I assume, though I do not dogmatise ; nor do I consider it certain, for some of the higher animals. Anyhow we may at once admit that, for all those things which only share in a general life, the temporarily separated por- tion of that general life will return, undifferentiated and unidentified, to its central store: just as happens in the better-understood categories of matter and energy. That is simple enough. But sup- pose that some individual character, some personality, does exist. Sup- pose that not only life, but intellect and emotion and consciousness and will are all associated with a certain physical organism; and suppose that these things have a real and undeni- 42 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL able existence an existence strength- ened and compacted by experience and suffering and joy, till it is no longer only a function of the mate- rial aggregate in which for a time it is embodied, but belongs to a uni- verse of spirit closely related to im- manent and transcendent Deity; what then? If all that really exists, in the highest sense, is immortal, we have only to ask whether our per- sonality, our character, our self, is sufficiently individual, sufficiently characteristic, sufficiently developed, in a word, sufficiently real; for if it is, there can then be no doubt of its continuance. It may return, in- deed, in some sense, to the central store, but not without identity; its individual character will be pre- served. 43 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL Conservation of Value. Professor Hoffding of Copenha- gen goes further than this. In his book on the Philosophy of Religion he teaches that what he calls the ax- iom of "the conservation of value" is the fundamental ingredient in all religions the foundation without which none of them could stand. In his view, as a philosopher, agree- ing therein with Browning and other poets, no real Value or Good is ever lost. The whole progress and course of evolution is to increase and in- tensify the Valuable that which "avails" or is serviceable for high- est purposes, and it does so by bringing out that which was poten- tial or latent, so as to make it actual and real. Real it was, no doubt, all the time in some sense, as an oak is THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL implicit in an acorn or a flower in a bud, but in process of time it un- folds and adds to the realized Value of the universe. To carry out this idea we might define immortality thus : Immortality is the persistence of the essential and the real: it applies to things which the universe has gained things which, once acquired, cannot be let go. It is an example of the conservation of Value. The tendency of evolution is to increase the actuality of Value, converting it from a potential into an available form. Value may, however, be something more than merely constant in quan- tity, according to Professor Hoff- ding. Experience of evolution sug- gests that it must increase. Cer- tainly it passes from latent to more 45 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL patent forms; and though it some- times swings back, yet, on the whole, progress seems upward. Is it not legitimate to conjecture that while Matter and Energy neither increase nor decrease, but only change in form ; and while life too perhaps is constant in quantity, though alter- nating into and out of incarnation according as material organisms are put together or worn out; yet that some of the higher attributes of exist- ence, love, shall we say, joy per- haps, what may be generalised as Good generally, or as availability or Value, may actually increase: their apparent alternations being really the curves of an upward-tending spiral? It is an optimistic faith, but it is the faith of the poets and seers. Whatever evil days may fall upon an individual or a nation, or even some- 46 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL times on a whole planet, yet the ma- terial is subordinate to the spiritual; and if the spiritual persists, it cannot be stationary; it must surely rise in the scale of existence. For evil is that which retards or frustrates de- velopment, in any part of the uni- verse subject to its sway, and, accord- ingly, its kingdom cannot stand : evil contains an essentially suicidal ele- ment, so that on the whole the realm of the good must tend to increase, the realm of the bad to diminish. "No existing universe can tend on the whole towards contraction and decay; because that would foster an- nihilation, and so any incipient at- tempt would not have survived; con- sequently an actually existing and flowing universe must on the whole cherish development, expansion, growth ; and so tends towards infinity 47 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL rather than toward zero. The prob- lem is therefore only a variant of the general problem of existence. Given existence, of a non-stagnant kind, and ultimate development must be its law. Good and evil can be defined in terms of development and decay respectively. This may be regarded as part of a revelation of the nature of God" (The Substance of Faith). From this point of view the law of evolution is that Good shall on the whole increase in the universe with the process of the suns: that immor- tality itself is a special case of a more general Law, namely, that in the whole universe nothing really finally perishes that is worth keeping, that a thing once attained is not thrown away. The general mutability and mor- tality in the world need not perturb 48 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL us. The things we see perishing and dying are not of the same kind as those which we hope to endure. Death and decay, as we know them, are interesting physical processes, which may be studied and under- stood ; they have seized the imagina- tion of man, and govern his emo- tions, perhaps unduly, but there is nothing in them to suggest ultimate destruction, or the final triumph of ill; they are necessary correlatives to conception and birth into a mate- rial world; they do not really contra- dict an optimistic view of existence. So far as we can tell, there need be no real waste, no real loss, no an- nihilation ; but everything sufficiently valuable, be it beauty, artistic achievement, knowledge, unselfish affection, may be thought of as en- during henceforth and for ever, if 49 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL not with an individual and personal existence, yet as part of the eternal Being of God. Permanent Element in Man. And this carries with it the per- sistence of personality in all crea- tures who have risen to the attain- ment of God-like faculties, such as self-determination and other attri- butes which suggest kinship with Deity and make their possessor a member of the Divine family. For whether or not this incipient theory of the conservation of value stand the test of criticism, it is undeniable that, as in the quotation from Car- lyle at the end of my last article, seers do not hesitate to attribute per- manence and timeless existence to the essential element in man himself. They realise that he is one with the 50 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL universe, that he may come to be in tune with the infinite, and that his spasmodic efforts towards a state wherein the average will rise to a level now attained by only the few, are part of the evolutionary travail- jig of the whole creation. "All omens," says Myers "All omens point towards the steady con- tinuance of just such labour as has already taught us all we know. Perhaps, indeed, in this complex of interpenetrating spirits our own effort is no individual, no transitory, thing. That which lies at the root of each of us lies at the root of the Cosmos too. Our struggle is the struggle of the Universe itself; and the very Godhead finds fulfilment through our upward-striving souls" (Myers, Human Personality, ii., p. 277). To return to the problem of in- dividual existence and to a more pro- saic atmosphere. What we are 51 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL claiming is no less than this that, whereas it is certain that the present body cannot long exist without the soul, it is quite possible and indeed necessary for the soul to exist with- out the present body. We base this claim on the soul's manifest tran- scendence, on its genuine reality, and on the general law of /the of all real Recognition of the permanent ele- ment in man and of the probability of his individual survival, that is to say, of the persistence of intelli- gence and memory after the destruc- tion of the brain if such recogni- tion is to be of the greatest use to mankind, should be based on general considerations open and familiar to all, and be independent of special study with results verified by only a few. But if general arguments are 52 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL insufficient, and if the reader has pa- tience with a more specific line of in- vestigation, then I submit that the question can also be studied by the aid of observation and experiment, and that a conviction of persistence of personality can be strengthened by the record and discovery of spe- cific facts. Expression of Thought in Terms of Motion. The brain is definitely the link between the psychical and the phys- ical, which in themselves belong to different orders of being. In the psychical region "thought" is the dominant reality; in the physical, "motion." The bodily organism mysteriously enables one to be trans- lated in terms of the other. Without some connecting mechanism, such 53 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL as that afforded by brain, nerve, and muscle, the things we call intelli- gence and will, however real, would be incapable of moving the small- est particle of matter. Now, since it is solely by moving matter that we can operate at all in the material world, or can make ourselves known to our fellows, for in the last resort speech and writing and every action reduce themselves to muscular move- ment, and since death inhibits this power, by breaking the link between soul and body, death naturally stops all manifestation, interrupts all in- tercourse, and so has been superfi- cially thought to be the annihilation of the soul. But such a conclusion is quite un- warranted. Existence need not make itself conspicuous: things are always difficult to discover when 54 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL they make no impression on the senses : the human race is hardly yet aware, for instance, of the Ether of space; and there may belfmuititude of other things towards which it is in the same predicament. Superficially, nothing is easier than to claim that just as when the brain is damaged the memory fails, so when the brain is destroyed the memory ceases. The reasoning is so plausible and obvious, so within reach of the meanest capacity, that those who use it against adversaries of any but the lowest intelligence might surely assume that it had al- ready occurred to them and exhibited its weak point. The weak point in the argument is its tacit assumption that what is non-manifest is nonex- istent; that smoothing out the traces of guilt is equivalent to annihilating 55 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL a crime ; and that by destroying the mechanism of interaction between the spiritual and the material aspects of existence you must necessarily be destroying one or other of those as- pects themselves. The brain is our present organ of thought. Granted; but it does not follow that brain controls and domi- nates thought, that inspiration is a physiological process, or that every thinking creature in the universe must possess a brain. Really we know too little about the way the brain thinks, if it can properly be said to think at all, to be able to make any such assertion as that. We terrestrial animals are all as it were one family, and our hereditary links with the psychical universe consist of the physiological mechanism called brain and nerve. But these 56 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL most interesting material structures are our servants, not our masters : we have to train them to serve our purposes ; and if one side of the brain is injured, the other side may be trained to act instead. Destroy cer- tain parts of the brain completely, however, and connexion between the psychic and the material regions is for us severed. True; but cutting off or damaging communication is not the same as destroying or dam- aging the communicator: nor is smashing an organ equivalent to kill- ing the organist. When the Atlan- tic cable broke, in 1858, intimate communication between England and America was destroyed ; but that fact did not involve the destruction of either America or England. It appears to be necessary to empha- sise this elementary matter, because 57 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL the contrary contention is supposed to cut straight at the root of every kind of general argument for survi- val hitherto adduced. But after all, it may be said, the above contention proves nothing either way; granted that breach of communication does not mean de- struction of terminal stations, it leaves the question as to their per- sistence an open one. Yes, it does; it leaves persistence to be sustained by general arguments, such as those of Part I., which were directed to establishing the priority in essence of the spiritual to the material, of idea to bodily presentation; and to be supported by any kind of additional and special experience. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL Argument from Telepathy. First of all, then, we must ask, are we quite sure that the breach of intercourse is as clear and definite and complete as had been supposed? We have no glimmering conception of the process by which mental ac- tivity operates on the matter of the brain; so we cannot be sure that its influence is limited entirely to the brain material belonging to its own special organism. It may conceiv- ably be able to affect other brains too, either directly, or indirectly through an immediate influence on the mind associated with them. In- telligent communication is normally carried on by means of conventional mechanical movements, calculated to set up special aerial or ethereal tremors; which have to be appre- 59 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL bended through sense organs and brain, and interpreted back again into thought. But we are constrained to contemplate the possibility of a more direct method, and to ask, is there ever any direct psychical con- nexion between mind and mind, ir- respective of intermediate physical processes? It is a definite though difficult question, to be answered by experience. And an affirmative an- swer would suggest, among other things, that though individuality is dependent upon brain for physical manifestation, it may not be depend- ent on brain for physical existence. Such independence is difficult to prove directly, in a way convincing to those who approach the subject without previous study, or with prejudices against it; because in the proof, or to produce any recordable 60 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL impression, a bodily organ such as brain or muscle must be used. We are not, and cannot be, com- pletely independent of the body, in this earth life: but we can bring for- ward facts which seem to indicate an activity specially and peculiarly psychical, and only slightly physical. Of physical modes of communica- tion between mind and mind there are many varieties: none of which do we really understand, beyond a knowledge of their physical details, though we are well accustomed to them all ; but we know of one which appears not to be physical, save at its terminals, and which has the ap- pearance of being, in its mode of transmission, exclusively psychical. That is to say, it occurs as if one mind operated directly either on an- other brain or on another mind 61 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL across a distance (if distance has any meaning in such a case) ; or as if one mind exerted its influence on another through the conscious intervention of a third mind acting as messenger; or as if mental intercourse were ef- fected unconsciously, through a gen- eral nexus of communication a uni- versal world-mind. All these hy- potheses have been suggested at dif- ferent times by the phenomenon of telepathy; and which of them is nearest the truth it is difficult to say. There are some who think that all are true, and that different means are employed at different times. What we can assert is this, that the facts of "telepathy," and in a less de- gree of what is called "clairvoy- ance," must be regarded as practi- cally established, in the minds of those who have studied them. 62 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL There may be, indeed there is, still much doubt about the explanation to be attached to those facts; there is uncertainty as to their real mean- ing, and as to whether the idea half- suggested by the word "telepathy" is completely correct; but the facts themselves are too numerous and well authenticated to be doubted, even if we except from our survey the directly experimental cases de- signed to test and bring to book this strange human faculty. Thus telepathy opens a new chap- ter in science, and is of an importance that cannot be exaggerated. Even alone, it tends mightily to strengthen the argument for transcendence of mind over body, so that we may rea- sonably expect the one to be capable of existing independently and of sur- viving the other; though by itself, or 63 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL in a discarnate condition, it is pre- sumably unable to achieve anything directly on the physical plane. But telepathy is not all. Telepathy is indeed only the first link in a chain: there are further links, further stages on the road to scientific proof. Arguments from Prtzternormal Psy- chology. Have we no facts to go upon, only speculation, concerning the actual persistence of individual memory and consciousness, of much that characterises a personality apart from a bodily vehicle? Facts we have; but they are not generally known, nor are they universally ac- cepted: they have still, many of them, to run the gauntlet of scien- tific criticism even among the few 6 4 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL students who take the trouble to study them. Their theory has been worked at pertinaciously, but it is still in a rudimentary stage, and by the mass of scientific men the whole subject is at present ignored, because it seems an elusive and disappoint- ing inquiry, and because there are other fields which are easier of culti- vation and promise more immediate fertility. The chief facts to which we can appeal belong to one of three marked regions : First, experiences connected with genius, vision, and dream, extend- ing up to premonition and clairvoy- ance, the specially psychological region. Second, the singular modification of bodily faculty sometimes expe- 65 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL rienced, ranging from unusual ex- tension of sensory and muscular powers, such as hyperaesthesia and what is technically known as au- tomatism, up to various grades of what has been described as mate- rialisation; all which great group of asserted and controverted phe- nomena may be said to belong to the physiological region. Third, the at first sight discon- certing facts connected with appar- ent changes, dislocations and dis- integrations, of personality what we may call the pathological re- gion. Concerning all this mass of infor- mation, not only is the theory far from distinct, but many of the facts themselves are only sparsely known : they belong to a special branch of study, which, conducted under many 66 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL difficulties, cannot be properly ap- prehended at second hand. Suffice it therefore to say, that whereas it is quite clear that man- ifestation of memory and conscious- ness, in a form capable of being ap- preciated by or demonstrated to us, is evidently not possible without a material organism or body of some kind, yet in the judgment of many students of the subject a surviving memory or personality, even though discarnate, need not be utterly and completely prevented from still oc- casionally operating in our sphere. For as it was possible for what in Part I., we defined as "soul" to com- pose and employ an organ suited to itself, out of various kinds of nutri- ment, so also it appears to be possi- ble, though not without difficulty and extraordinary trouble, for a dis- 67 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL carnate entity or psychical unit oc- casionally to utilise a body con- structed by some other similar "soul," and to make an attempt at communication and manifestation through that. It has even been con- jectured that by special exertion of psychical power a temporary organ of materialisation can be constructed, presumably of organic particles, sufficient to enable some interaction between spirit and matter, and even to display some personal characteris- tics, through the utilisation of a form partially separate from, though also closely connected with, and as some think even borrowed from, the bod- ily organism of the auxiliary person known technically as the "medium" of communication, whose presence is certainly necessary. In favour of such an occurrence there is much evi- 68 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL dence, some of it of a weak kind, some of it quite valueless ; but again some of it is strong, evidenced by weighing, and vouched for by expe- rienced naturalists and observers such as Dr. A. R. Wallace and Sir W. Crookes, as well as by the emi- nent physiologist Professor Richet, and by Professors Schiaparelli, Lom- broso, and other foreign men of sci- ence. The idea here suggested is admit- tedly bizarre and at first sight ab- surd; nevertheless something of the kind has the appearance of being true, in spite of its having been dis- credited by much professional fraud exercised upon too willing dupes. The phenonenon on which it is based is at any rate a puzzling one, calling for further investigation : which must ultimately pursue it into a region 69 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL quite apart from and beyond the ob- vious possibilities of fraud ; that is to say, must not only establish it as a fact, if it be a fact, but must ascer- tain the laws which govern it. Argument from Automatism. More frequently, however, a sim- pler method, akin to telepathy and to what is commonly known as in- spiration or "possession," is em- ployed ; whereby some portion of the brain of "the automatist" appears to be operated upon directly, so as to produce intelligible statements, in speech or writing, often of considera- ble length and occasionally in un- known languages ; these messages being, at least in the cases where they are not merely subjective and of lit- tle interest, apparently irrespective of the ordinary consciousness, and 70 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL only slightly sophisticated by the nor- mal mental activity, of the person by whom this organ is usually wielded, and to whom it nominally "be- longs." The body, in fact, or some part of the body, though usually controlled and directed by the particular psychical agent which has composed and grown accustomed to it, can sometimes be found capable of re- sponding to a foreign intelligence, acting either telepathically through the mind or telergically by a more direct process straight on the brain. Sometimes the controlling intelli- gence belongs to a living person, as in cases of hypnotism ; more usually it is an influence emanating from what we must consider some portion of the automatisms own larger or sub- liminal self. Occasionally a person THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL appears able to respond to thoughts or stimuli embedded, as it were, among psycho-physical surroundings in a manner at present ill under- stood and almost incredible; as if strong emotions could be uncon- ciously recorded in matter, so that the deposit shall thereafter affect a sufficiently sensitive organism, and cause similar emotions to reproduce themselves in its subconsciousness, in a manner analogous to the custo- mary conscious interpretation of photographic or phonographic rec- ords, and indeed of pictures or music and artistic embodiment generally. And lastly, there are people who seem able to respond to a psychical agency apparently related to the sur- viving portion of intelligences now discarnate, in such a way as to sug- gest that the said intelligences are 72 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL picking up the thread of their old thoughts, and entering into some- thing like their old surroundings and their old feelings though often only in a more or less dreamy and semi-entranced condition for the purpose of conveying hallu- cinatory or other impressions to those who are still in the com- pletely embodied state. It would be a great mistake to as- sume, without proof, that any given automatic message really emanates from the person to whom it is attrib- uted; and such a generalisation ap- plied to all so-called messages would be grotesquely untrue. But then neither should we be safe in main- taining that none of them have an authentic character, and that they are never in any degree what they purport to be. The elimination of 73 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL the normal personality of the au- tomatist, and the proof of the sup- posed communicator's identity, are singularly difficult; but in a few cases the evidence for identity is re- markably strong. The substance of the message and the kind of memory displayed in these cases belong not at all to the brain of the automa- tist, but clearly to the intelligence of the asserted control: of whose identity and special knowledge they are sometimes strongly character- istic. As to the elimination of nor- mal personality, however, it must be admitted that, in all cases, the man- ner and accidents or accessories of the message are liable to be modified by the material instrument or organ through which the thought or idea is for our information reproduced. The reproduction of a thought in 74 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL our world appears to demand dis- tinct effort on the part of a transcen- dental thinker, and it seems to be al- most a matter of indifference, or so to speak of accident not determined by the thinker, whether it make its appearance here in the form of speech or of writing, or whether it take the form of a work of art, or of unusual spiritual illumination. This is surely true of orthodox inspiration, as well as of what we are now con- jecturing may perhaps be an attempt at some additional method of arous- ing ideas in us. Moreover, in both cases, lucidity is only to be expected, and is only obtained, in flashes. The best of us only get flashes of genius now and then, and the experience is seldom unduly prolonged. Why should we expect it to be otherwise? There is another aspect of the mat- 75 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ter that may be mentioned too. For most of the difficulty of inter-com- munication we ourselves must be held responsible.! Our normal im- mersion in mundane affairs may be very sensible and practical, and is probably essential to earthly progress until our civilisation is rather more consolidated and developed, but it can hardly facilitate communion with another order of existence.) Nor is it likely that we should be able to appreciate the intimate con- cerns of that other order, even if it were feasible to convey a detailed account of them. It is true that messages are often vague and disappointing even when apparently genuine ; untrue that they are invariably futile and useless and inappropriate, such an assertion could only be made by people im- 76 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL perfectly acquainted with the facts. In certain cases it is quite clear that a bodily organism has been con- trolled by something other than its usual and normal intelligence, and in a few cases the identity of the con- trol has been almost crucially estab- lished : though that is a matter to be dealt with more technically else- where. Subliminal Faculty. The extension of faculty exhib- ited during some trance states has suggested that a similar enlargement of memory and consciousness may follow or accompany our departure from this life, and is partly responsi- ble for the notion of the existence of a subliminal or normally uncon- scious portion of our total personal- ity. On this subject I can conven- 77 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL iently refer to the summary con- tained in Myers's chapters on "Dis- integration of Personality" and on "Genius," in vol. i. of his Human Personality. This doctrine the the- ory of a larger and permanent per- sonality of which the conscious self is only a fraction in process of indi- vidualisation, the fraction being greater or less according to the mag- nitude of the individual, this doc- trine as a working hypothesis, illu- minates many obscure facts, and serves as a thread through an other- wise bewildering labyrinth. It re- moves a number of elementary stumbling-blocks which otherwise obstruct an attempt to realise vividly the incipient stages of personal ex- istence; it accounts for the extraor- dinary rapidity with which the de- velopment of an individual proceeds ; 78 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL and it eases the theory of ordinary birth and death. It achieves all this as well as the office for which it was originally designed, viz. the elucida- tion of unusual experiences, such as those associated with dreams, pre- monitions, and prodigies of genius. Many great and universally recog- nised thinkers, Plato, Virgil, Kant,' I think, 1 and Wordsworth, all had room for an idea more or less of this kind; which indeed, in some form, is almost necessitated by a considera- tion of our habitually unconscious performance of organic function. 1 In justification of the inclusion of this name, the following may suffice as an exam- ple: "For if we should see things and our- selves as they are, we would see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures with which our entire real relation neither began at birth nor ended with the body's death." KANT, quoted by HEINZE. 79 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL Whatever it is that controls our physiological mechanism, it is cer- tainly not our own consciousness; nor is it any part of our recognised and obvious personality. "We feel that we are greater than we know." Our present state may be likened to that of the hulls of ships sub- merged in a dim ocean among many strange beasts, propelled in a blind manner through space; proud per- haps of accumulating many bar- nacles as decoration; only recognis- ing our destination by bumping against the dock wall. With no cognisance of the deck and the cab- ins, the spars and the sails; no thought of the sextant and the com- pass and the captain; no perception of the lookout on the mast, of the distant horizon; no vision of objects 80 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL far ahead, dangers to be avoided, destinations to be reached, other ships to be spoken with by other means than bodily contact; a re- gion of sunshine and cloud, of space, of perception, and of intelligence, utterly inaccessible to the parts be- low the water-line. To suppose that we know and un- derstand the universe, to suppose that we have grasped its main out- lines, that we realise pretty com- pletely not only what is in it, but the still more stupendous problem of what is not and cannot be in it as do some of our gnostic (self- styled "agnostic") friends is a pre- sumptuous exercise of limited intelli- gence, only possible to a certain very practical and useful order of brain, which has good solid work of a com- monplace kind to do in the world, 81 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL and has been restricted in its outlook, let us say by Providence, in order that it may do that one thing and do it well. And just as we fail to grasp the universe, so do we fail as yet to know ourselves : the part of which we have become aware, the part which man- ifestly governs our planetary life, is probably far from being the whole. 1 The assumption that the true self is complex, and that a large range of 1 Such an admission is quite consistent with recognition of the momentous character of this present stage of existence, not only while it lasts, but as influencing, and contributing in every sense to, the future; the doctrine of the sublimal self throws no sort of contempt or discouragement on the things which really ought to interest us here and now. There is "danger of losing sight of the ideal in our immediate life, and thinking that is to be found only in the past or in the future," says 82 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL memory may ultimately be attained, is justified by the researches of alien- ists, and mental physicians gener- ally, into those curious pathological cases of "strata of memory" or dis- locations of personality, on which many medical books and papers are available for the student. In cases of multiple personality, the patients, when in the ordinary or normally conscious state, are usually ignorant of what has happened in the inter- vening periods when they were not in that state, and are not aware of what they have done when in one of the deeper states ; but as soon as the Professor Caird; whereas our little struggle is part of the great conflict of good and evil in the universe, and we should be encouraged were we to "realise that our life is not an aimless or meaningless vicissitude of events, but an essential step in the great process." THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL personality has entered an ultra- normal condition, it is often found to be aware, not only of its previous actions when in that condition, but also of what was felt and known while at the ordinary grade of intel- ligence. The analogy pointed to is that whereas we living men and women, while associated with this mortal organism, are ignorant of whatever experience our larger selves may have gone through in the past yet when we wake out of this present materialised condition, and enter the region of larger consciousness, we may gradually realise in what a curious though legitimate condition of ignorance we now are; and may become aware of our fuller posses- sion, with all that has happened here and now fully remembered and in- 8 4 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL corporated as an additional expe- rience into the wide range of knowl- edge which that larger entity must have accumulated since its intelli- gence and memory began. The transition called death may thus be an awaking rather than a sleeping; it may be that we, still involved in mortal coil, are in the more dream- like and unreal condition: "Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep He hath awakened from the dream of life 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife." (Shelley's Adonais.) The ideas thus briefly indicated have been suggested by a mass of un- familiar experience, upon which it is legitimate to speculate, though quite illegitimate to dogmatise; but 85 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL in case they seem too fanciful to serve as any part of a basis for human im- mortality, it may be well to show how clearly the possibility of a larger and fuller existence than the present is indicated by facts with which we are all familiar. Argument from Genius. It must be apparent how few of our faculties can really be accounted for by the need of sustenance and by the struggle for existence; and how those necessary faculties and powers naturally assume an overweening importance here and now, from the fact that they are so specially fitted to our present surroundings. So that the less immediately practical mental and spiritual characteristics can be spoken of by anthropologists as if they were of the nature of sports 86 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL and by-products, not in the direct line of evolutional advance. But, says Myers: "The faculties which befit the material en- vironment have absolutely no primacy, unless it be of the merely chronological kind, over those faculties which science has often called by-products, because they have no manifest tendency to aid their possessor in the strug- gle for existence in a material world. The higher gifts of genius poetry, the plastic arts, music, philosophy, pure mathematics all of these are precisely as much in the central stream of evolution are perceptions of new truth and powers of new action just as de- cisively predestined for the race of man as the aboriginal Australian's faculty for throw- ing a boomerang or for swarming up a tree for grubs. There is, then, about those loftier interests nothing exotic, nothing accidental; they are an intrinsic part of that ever-evolv- ing response to our surroundings which forms not only the planetary but the cosmic history of all our race." THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL We can regard these higher facul- ties, these inspirations of genius and the like, not only as contributing to our best moments now, but as fore- casts or indications of something still more specially appropriate to our surroundings in the future antici- pations of worlds not realised rudiments of what will develop more fully hereafter; so that their appar- ent incongruousness and occasional inconvenience, under present mun- dane conditions, are quite natural. Ultimately they may be found to be nearer to the heart of things than the attributes which are successful in the stage to which this world has at present attained; though they can only exhibit their full meaning and attain their full development in a higher condition of existence, whether that be found by the race 88 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL on this planet or by the individual in a life to come. "An often-quoted analogy has here a closer application than is commonly apprehended. The grub comes from the egg laid by a winged insect, and a winged insect it must itself become; but meantime it must for the sake of its own nurture and preservation ac- quire certain larval characters characters sometimes so complex that the observer may be excused for mistaking that larva for a per- fect insect destined for no further change save death. Such larval characters, acquired to meet the risks of a temporary environment, I seem to see in man's earthly strength and glory. In these I see the human analogues of the poisonous tufts which choke the captor the attitudes of mimicry which suggest an ab- sent sting the 'death's head' coloration which disconcerts a stronger foe." For the triumphs of natural selec- tion, then, we must look not to the spiritual faculties and endowments 89 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL of the race, but to the business-like masterfulness which makes one man a conqueror and another man a mil- lionaire. These we can regard as larval characters, of special service in the present stage of existence, but destined to be discarded, or modi- fied almost out of recognition, in proportion as a higher state is at- tained. This I take to be the deep meaning of the Gospel sentence be- ginning "How hardly!" But to continue Myers's biolog- ical parable: "Meantime the adaptation to aerial life is going on; something of the imago or perfect insect is performed within the grub; and in some species, even before they sink into their transitorial slumber, the rudiments of wings still helpless protrude awkwardly beneath the larval skin. Those who call Shelley, for in- stance, 'a beautiful but ineffectual angel beat- ing his wings in the void,' may adopt if they 90 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL choose, this homelier but exacter parallel. Shelley's special gifts were no more by-pro- ducts of Shelley's digestive system than the wings are by-products of the grub" (Myers, i., p. 97)- The meaning, you see, is that they are in the direct line of evolution, when the whole of existence is taken into account; and that similarly in the evolution of genius we are watch- ing the emergence of unguessed po- tentialities from the primal germ, the first revealings "Of faculties, displayed in vain, but born To prosper in some better sphere." ( Browning's Paracelsus. ) Moreover, what is true for the in- dividual must be true also in some measure for the race. Embryology teaches us that each organism rap- idly recapitulates or epitomises, amid how different conditions, its ances- 91 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL tral past history. It is legitimate to extend the same idea to the future, and to regard the progress of the in- dividual and the progress of the race as in some degree concurrent; since their potentialities are similar, though their surroundings will be different. This argument, so far as I know, is novel, but not undeserving of attention. Argument from Mental Pathology. And as to the disintegrations of personality, the painful defects of will, the lapses of memory, the losses of sensation such as are manifested by the hysteric patients of the Sal- petriere and other hospitals, the lesson to be learnt from those patho- logical cases is not one of despair at the weakness and ghastly imperfec- tions possible to humanity; rather, 92 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL on this view, it is one of hope and inspiration. For they point to the possibility that our present condition may be as much below an attainable standard as the condition of these poor patients is below what by a nat- ural convention we have agreed to regard as the "normal" state. We might indeed feel bound to regard it not only as normal but as ultimate, were it not that some specimens of our race have already transcended it, have shown that genius, almost superhuman, is possible to man, and have thereby foreshadowed the ex- istence of a larger personality for us all. Nay, they have done more, for in thus realising in the flesh some of the less accessible of human at- tributes, they have become the first- fruits of a brotherhood higher than the human; we may hail them as 93 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL the forerunners of a nobler race. Such a race, I venture to predict, will yet come into existence, not only in the vista of what may seem to some of us an unattractive and un- substantial future, but here in the sunshine on this planet Earth. "Prognostics told Man's near approach ; so in man's self arise August anticipations, symbols, types Of a dim splendour ever on before." For as the hysteric stands in com- parison with us ordinary men, so perhaps do we ordinary men stand in comparison with a not impossible ideal of faculty and of self-control. "Might not," says Myers, "Might not all the historic tale be told, mutato nomine^ of the whole race of mortal men? What assurance have we that from some point of higher vision we men are not as these shrunken and shadowed souls? Sup- 94 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL pose that we had all been a community of hysterics, all of us together subject to these shifting losses of sensation, these inexplicable gaps of memory, these sudden defects and pa- ralyses of movement and of will. Assuredly we should soon have argued that our actual powers were all with which the human organ- ism was or could be endowed. . . . Nay, if we had been a populace of hysterics we should have acquiesced in our hysteria. We should have pushed aside as a fantastic en- thusiast the fellow-sufferer who strove to tell us that this was not all that we were meant to be. As we now stand, each one of us totus, teres, atque rotundus in his own esteem, we see at least how cowardly would have been that contentment, how vast the ignored possibilities, the forgotten hope. Yet who as- sures us that even here and now we have developed into the full height and scope of our being? A moment comes when the most beclouded of these hysterics has a glimpse of the truth. A moment comes when, after a profound slumber, she wakes into an instant dair a flash of full perception, which shows her as solid, vivid realities all that she has 95 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL in her bewilderment been apprehending phan- tasmally as a dream. ... Is there for us also any possibility of a like resurrection into reality and day? Is there for us any sleep so deep that waking from it after the likeness of perfect man we shall be satisfied; and shall see face to face; and shall know even as also we are known?" Whatever may be the answer to this question, it is undoubtedly true now and that it is true is largely owing to him and his co-workers that "these disturbances of person- ality are no longer for us as they were even for the last generation mere empty marvels, which the old- fashioned sceptic would often plume himself on refusing to believe. On the contrary, they are beginning to be recognised as psycho-pathological problems of the utmost interest; no one of them exactly like another, and no one of them without some Q6 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL possible aperqu into the intimate structure of man." Religious Objections. Whatever objections to the above argument may be adduced from the side of science and there are sure to be many, for free criticism is its natural atmosphere, there is one from the side of religion more often felt than expressed perhaps which I must in conclusion briefly notice : Objection is sometimes taken against any attempt being made gradually to arrive at what in proc- ess of time may come to be regarded as a scientific proof of such a thing as immortality; on the ground that it isTan encroachment on the region of faith, a presumptuous interfer- ence with what ought to be treated as the territory of religion alone. 97 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL To meet these objectors on their own ground, they might be reminded of such texts as 2 Pet. i. 5, Prov. xxv. 2, as well as of the still more author- itative encouragement to investiga- tion contained in Luke xi. 9 and in i John i. 5; the latter, or indeed both, being an expression of the basal postulate of the man of sci- ence, namely, the ultimate intelligi- bility of the Universe. But, after all, an objection of this kind can only be felt, first by those who think that knowledge is the en- emy of belief, instead of its strength- ener and supporter, and second by those who unconsciously fear that the domain of religion is finite, and who therefore resent encroachments as diminishing its already too re- stricted area. It cannot be felt by people who realise that the domin- 98 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ion of religion is unlimited, and that there is infinite scope for faith, how- ever far knowledge real and accu- rate scientific knowledge extends its boundaries. The enlargement of those boundaries is all gain ; for thus the one area is increased while the other is not diminished. Infinity cannot be diminished by subtraction. No such objection to the spread of knowledge was felt by that inspired writer who hoped for the time when "the earth shall be full of the knowl- edge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Whatever science can establish, that it has a right to establish : more than a right, it has a duty. What- ever science can examine into, that it has a right to examine into. If there be things which we are not in- tended to know, be assured that we 99 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL shall never know them : we shall not know enough about them even to ask a question or start an inquiry. /'The intention of the universe is not going to be frustrated by the insig- nificant efforts of its own creatures. If we refrain from examination and inquiry, for no better reason than the fanciful notion that perhaps we may be trespassing on forbidden ground, such hesitation argues a pitiful lack of faith in the good-will and friend- liness and power of the forces that make for righteousness. Let us study all the facts that are open to us, with a trusting and an open mind; with care and candour testing all our provisional hypothe- ses, and with slow and cautious ver- ification making good our steps as we proceed. Thus may we hope to reach out further and ever further 100 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL into the unknown; sure that as we grope in the darkness we shall en- counter no clammy horror, but shall receive an assistance and sympathy which it is legitimate to symbolise as a clasp from the hand of Christ him- self. 101 ""'' " " OVERDUE. 615778 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY