THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

,^. /A . f CO/WvA c^

IMMORTALITY

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

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TORONTO

IMMORTALITY

AN ESSAY IN DISCOVERY

CO-ORDINATING

SCIENTIFIC, PSYCHICAL, AND BIBLICAL

RESEARCH

BURNETT H. STREETER

A. CLUTTON-BROCK C.W.EMMET J. A. HADFIELD

THE AUTHOR OF 'PRO CHRISTO ET ECCLESIA'

And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond-
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1917

133

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. PRESUPPOSITIONS AND PRE-

JUDGMENTS

PAGE

By A. Clutton-Brock, Author of ' Thoughts on the
War; ' The Ultimate Belle/;' ' JFilliam Morris :
his Work and Influence'' (Home University Library) i

II. THE MIND AND THE BRAIN

(a DISCUSSION OF IMMORTALITY FROM THE STANDPOINT
OF science)

By J. A. Hadfield, M.A., M.B., Surgeon^ Royal Navy 17

III. THE RESURRECTION OF THE
DEAD

By the Rev. B. H. Streeter, M.A., Canon Residentiary
of Hereford^ Fellow and Lecturer of ^leens College^
Oxford. Editor of ^ Foundations^ and ^Concerning
Prayer; Author of ^ Restatement and Reunion^ . 75

IV. THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO
COME

By B. H. Streeter . . . . .131

i'..-'^..>^jLH-*0

vi IMMORTALITY,

V. THE BIBLE AND HELL

PACK

By the Rev. C. W. Emmet, B.D., Vkar of West
Hendrcd^ Berh^ Author of ^ The Eschatologkal Ques-
tion in the Gospels^ * The Epistle to the Galatians '
(Readers^ Commentary)^ ' The Third Book of Macca-
bees ' ^Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old
Testament^ ed. by Charles)^ * The Fourth Book of
Maccabees'' [S.P.C.K. translations of early documents),
etc. ...... 167

VL A DREAM OF HEAVEN

By A. Clutton-Brock . . . .219

VIL THE GOOD AND EVIL IN
SPIRITUALISM

By the Author of ' Pro Christo et Ecclesia ' (Lily
Dougall), Author of ' Christus Futurus^ ' Absente
Keo^ * Voluntas Dei^ * The Practice of Christianity^
' The Christian Doctrine of Health ' ; also of *■ Beggars
All; ' The Zeitgeist; ' The Mormon Prophet^ ' Paths
of the Righteous; etc. .... 241

VIII. REINCARNATION, KARMA AND
THEOSOPHY

By the Author of ' Pro Christo et Ecclesia ' . 293

IX. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

By the Author of ' Pro Christo et Ecclesia ' . 343

Index of Subjects ..... 375
Index of Names . . . . . 379

INTRODUCTION

Man's life is like a Sparrow, mighty King !
That — while at banquet with your chiefs you sit
Housed near a blazing fire — is seen to fiit
Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering,
Here did it enter ; there, on hasty wing,
Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold ;
But whence it came we know not, nor behold
Whither it goes. Even such, that Transient Thing
The Human Soul. . . .

This mystery if the Stranger can reveal,
His be a welcome cordially bestowed !

Because they believed the Roman Stranger could reveal
the mystery of the After-life our Saxon fathers accepted
Christianity. May we believe that any teacher, Christian
or other, can reveal that mystery to us to-day ? . . .
That is a question which tens of thousands are asking now.

That there is a life beyond the grave, many, perhaps,
the majority, still believe ; but it is a belief resting
mainly upon instinct or upon a tradition the trust-
worthiness of which they are increasingly aware is
being questioned from many sides.

The growth alike of knowledge and of moral
insight has gradually made more and more untenable
the conventional pictures of Heaven and Hell which
seem to have satisfied, or at least to have been
accepted by, most men well on into the nineteenth

viii IMMORTALITY

century. Popular confidence in the authority of
Scripture has been sapped by scientific discovery and
vague rumours of the Higher Criticism. Above all,
by demonstrating how intimate is the union of the
mind with a brain which is obviously perishable, Science
seems to not a few to have given the final coup de
grAce to any belief in personal Immortality at all.

To such a situation different individuals react in
different ways. To the ignoble is open the simple
course, " Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die."
The nobler sort are moved in divers ways. Some by
an act of will turn their backs upon the whole of the
achievement of the human intellect and cling, with the
desperation of drowning men, to an infallible Bible
or an infallible Church. Others seek new light in
Spiritualistic seance or in Theosophical revelation. The
majority, thinking like the old Rabbi that " God hath
given man the present, the future He has kept in His
own hand," give themselves over to the task of living
cleanly and doing good work in this world, deliberately
refusing to let their thoughts dwell over much on a
possible Beyond.

Of these last perhaps the greater number still
" faintly trust the larger hope " ; others with a Stoic
renunciation reject it as an out-worn superstition and
an enervating dream ; others again have lost all interest
in any life beyond the present — and are content. But
such contentment, whether the disciplined contentment
of the Stoic or the easy acquiescence of the indiflferent,
has a way of breaking down.

INTRODUCTION ix

And ah, to know not, while with friends I sit,
And while the purple joy is pass'd about.

Whether 'tis ampler day divinelier lit
Or homeless night without ;

And whether, stepping forth, my soul shall see
New prospects, or fall sheer — a blinded thing !

There is, O grave, thy hourly victory.
And there, O death, thy sting.

And, to-day, most of those who care little on their
own account are thinking of brave men about whose
present case they would fain know more — if only they
believed that possible.

But is it really necessary to rest content in such
a state of doubt and darkness ? Has Science really
proved that Mind is only a pale reflection of material
changes in the Brain ? A few years ago it did indeed
look as if at no distant date such a conclusion might
be reached. It is otherwise to-day.

Again, must the Christian outlook on the Future
Life be for ever confined within what we now know to
be pre-Christian forms of thought which were already,
when St. Paul wrote, obsolescent ? Must a grown man
always lisp in baby speech .'' Is Theology the one de-
partment of human enterprise in which there can never
be advance ^ And, while the range of human know-
ledge is expanding yearly on every side, is the destiny
of man the one and only subject on which we can never
hope to learn something new ?

Macaulay, in a well-known passage, contrasts the
gigantic strides of human science in every other direction
with the absolute stagnation in our knowledge of all

X IMMORTALHY

that lies behind the world of sight and touch. " There
are branches of knowledge with respect to which the law
of the human mind is progress. . . . But with theology
the case is very different. ... A Christian of the fifth
century with a Bible is neither better nor worse situated
than a Christian of the nineteenth with a Bible, candour
and natural acuteness being, of course, supposed equal."

But things have changed since Macaulay wrote.
Science is every day making new discoveries which bear
on the relation of the body and the soul. Psychical
Research, if it has added little to our knowledge of
another life, has at least thrown startling light on the
nature of that mind whose survival is in question ; and
Philosophy has not been idle. The application to
Theology of the doctrine of Evolution and of the
results of Psychology and of the Science of Comparative
Religions has given a new meaning to the word Revela-
tion ; while, in the light of lately discovered documents
and new methods of study, the New Testament speaks
with another voice. It is not the lack of new knowledge
but the difficulty of co-ordinating it which holds us back;
for no one person can have really first-hand knowledge
of all the various departments of thought concerned.

Discovery comes whenever trains of thought or
pieces of information originally separate are seen to
illuminate and explain each other. But, when the
things requiring to be brought together exist in
different minds, this fusion is made harder or easier
in exact proportion to the degree of sympathy and the
range of contact between those minds Hence, though

INTRODUCTION xi

much may be accomplished by the reading of books or
articles by workers in different departments, conditions
become more favourable if this can be supplemented by
the living contact of mind with mind. The maximum
possibilities of such fusion of different strains is reached
where there is personal as well as intellectual under-
standing, and where there is an overmastering passion
for Truth which makes each willing to put all he has
into the common stock, to hold back no half-formed
thought as foolish or immature, to secrete no bright
idea as private property, and to defend no position once
taken up merely from respect to interest or conservatism
or from personal amour-propre. Intellectual co-operation
only achieves its greatest possibilities where its basis is
enthusiasm for a common cause and personal friendship ;
and experience shows that the intellectual activity and
receptivity of each is raised to the highest pitch when
that fellowship is not in work alone and in discussion,
but in jest and prayer as well — for humour and common
devotion, when both are quite spontaneous, are, though
in very different ways, the greatest solvents of egotism
and a well-spring of fellowship and mutual understanding.
Such fellowship and co-operation is not always an easy
thing to compass, but when it exists persons of quite
modest gifts and moderate experience can do, relatively
to their capacity, great things.

The last ten years have seen a widespread recognition
of the value of this group method of attacking current
problems, practical as well as intellectual. The volumes
Foundations and Concerning Prayer were an attempt to

xii IMMORTALITY

apply it to some urgent questions of Religion ; and,
whatever may be thought of these works, such merits
as they have are mainly due to this method of approach.
The experience gained in the preparation of these books,
particularly the latter, suggested the hope that, by the
application of the same method, light might be gained
on the burning question of the Future Life.

Several whose names do not appear on the title-page
of this book took part in one or more of the preliminary
conferences held at Cumnor, and contributed memoranda
on special points. And though none of them are in
any way responsible for the opinions expressed in any
of the Essays, the authors feel bound to acknowledge
the value of their participation in the conferences by the
mention of their names : Dr. E. W. Barnes, Master
of the Temple ; the Rev. W. S. Bradley, Tutor of
Mansfield College ; the Rev. C. H. S. Matthews,
Vicar of St. Peter's, Thanet ; Captain W. H. Moberly,
D.S.O., Fellow of Lincoln College ; and lastly, Miss
M. S. Earp, who, besides being present at all the con-
ferences, has given invaluable help in connection with
the MSS. and proofs. An acknowledgment is also due
to Miss M. E. Campbell for the compilation of the Index.

In addition to the discussions, both in this larger
group and among themselves, individual contributors
have had the advantage of being able to consult other
friends who had special knowledge on particular points.
By this method it has been possible to focus upon the
subjects treated a range of thought, experience, and
expert knowledge which no one person could have

INTRODUCTION xiii

commanded alone. As a result of thorough discussion
a degree of unity and unanimity has been arrived at
which, in view of the very various tastes, training, and
experience of the authors, is remarkable, and which
encourages them to believe that the conclusions reached
are really sound. Sometimes, of course, an Essay treats
of subjects of which its author has himself made a
special study, but about which some or all of the other
contributors feel that they are not competent to speak
with authority ; and things are sometimes said by one
writer which would have been put with a different
kind of emphasis by another. Subject, however, to
these reservations, the book is put forward on the
corporate responsibility of all the contributors ; it
presents a connected train of thought and a definite
and coherent point of view, and, though each Essay
is complete in itself, it will gain by being read in the
order and context in which it stands.

In the first two Essays and the first section of the
third the attempt is made to set out in a logical
sequence the main arguments for the belief in personal
Immortality. The rest of Essay III. and Essays IV. to
VI. deal with the nature of the after-life, and discuss
the meaning and value for modern thought of concep-
tions like Resurrection, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.
Essays VII. and VIII. endeavour to estimate judicially
the elements of truth and error in Spiritualism and in the
doctrineof Reincarnation, more especially in relation to the
claims made on its behalf by modern Theosophy. Essay
IX. forms, as it were, an Epilogue to the whole collection.

xiv IMMORTALITY

The effect of the very considerable amount of
thought and labour given to the preparation of this
book on the minds of its authors has been to convince
them of three things :

First, they have come to see that the belief in
personal Immortality rests on a wider and surer basis
in reason than they had originally supposed.

Secondly, they feel that though a veil must always
hang between this world and the next, it is not entirely
impenetrable. If he will only seek it in the right way
some real and definite knowledge of the life Beyond
can be attained by man.

Thirdly, if they believe, as they do, that they have
something of value to contribute, it is not from any
conceit of their own ability, but because of the method
they have used. This has been, in effect, an endeavour
to get right away from the old bickerings between
Science and Religion, Reason and Revelation ; and to
bring together the ascertained results of different branches
of Scientific, Philosophical, Critical, and Historical study
in such a way as to interpenetrate and illuminate one
another in the light of the values derivable from Religion,
Ethics, and Art. But what they have done is only to
make a beginning, and they are confident that others,
improving on their method and commanding wider and
deeper ranges of knowledge and experience, will be able
to go further forward, and that such light as men can
now see is only the twilight which precedes the dawn.

-, p ^ B. H. S.

CuTTS End, Cumnor,
October i, 1917.

PRESUPPOSITIONS & PREJUDGMENTS

ARTHUR CLUTTON-BROCK

AUTHOR or "thoughts on the war," "the ultimate belief,"

'WILLIAM morris: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE" (hOME UNIVERSITY LIURARy)

SYNOPSIS

Agnosticism, i.e. complete suspense of judgment about a future life
is really impossible ......

One main cause of disbelief in it is the passion for disinterestedness.
In this case the disbelief is not so complete as it supposes. It
is moral rather than intellectual ....

Another cause is the reaction against current presentations of the
belief. If our beliefs fail to express our values, we reject them.
Our effort is to conceive reality in terms of our values. The
conflict between beliefs and values is most acute in the matter
of a future life .......

There is a disinterested desire to believe in a future life in so far as
we wish to prove the justice of the universe. But the conse-
quent effort to attain certainty leads us into an unjust concep-
tion. So we lose certainty .....

The belief in Hell and its revenge on those who hold it. The
natural reaction and the despair of all belief The suspicion
of any belief in a future life as tainted with egotism. So
agnosticism seems safer and more moral

But there is always a counter -reaction. The revolt against
mechanical conceptions of life inevitable. The belief in a
future life not obsolete but always growing. Only the expres-
sion of it becomes obsolete. Men believe more and more in
a future state. But they have to earn their belief, and it is
always being destroyed by unearned certainties. It can be
earned only by the practice of the principles of Christianity

PRESUPPOSITIONS AND PREJUDGMENTS

In this paper I propose to discuss, not the reasons
men give for their beUef or disbelief in a future life,
but deeper, unconscious causes, which are peculiarly
powerful in this case because there is so little to argue
about. The unseen world, if there is one, is unseen ;
and we know no facts about it as we know facts about
this world. Therefore there are many who say they
are agnostics about it ; but it is impossible to be
really an agnostic about the question of a future life. ^
If this life is a preparation for another, it cannot
be the same for us as if it ended with death ; hence
we cannot escape from a working hypothesis that it ■
does or does not end with death, which must, one
would suppose, affect our conduct. It may be, of
course, that all our working hypotheses, all our
thoughts, are merely part of a mechanism and have
nothing to do with our conduct, which is another
part of the mechanism of life. But we must and
do always dismiss that possibility when we think ; for
it makes all thinking and all theories futile, including
itself

It is, however, a strange fact that unbelievers
in a future life do not greatly differ in conduct or
in values from believers. They do not say, " Let
us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." They
beHeve just as firmly in absolute values, in truth,
in righteousness, and in beauty, as the man who

Wrt.

4 IMMORTALITY i

could draw you a map of heaven ; indeed they often
seem to believe more firmly in them, for it is possible
to believe in a future life and to have no absolute values
at all, to see every good action merely as an investment.
But the man who refuses to believe in a future life,
if he acts rightly, must do so for the sake of doing
so ; righteousness must have an absolute value for him
indeed. And here, perhaps, we may find the cause
of much avowed disbelief. It is really faith, a faith in
absolute values which refuses the support and comfort
of any dogma. It maintains that man has his values
and that it is his duty to obey them without hope of
reward, without even seeking for a proof that they
belong to the order of the universe, that they are
shared by anything except man ; that man must be
good without postulating a God to approve of his
goodness, or a universe in which that goodness has
any significance or lasting effect. This refusal to
believe in a future life is the supreme example of
man's passion for disinterestedness. It is the most
resolute and defiant of all possible answers to the
question — Doth Job fear God for nought ? The
answer is — Yes, even though there be no God, and
though he who fears is but a quintessence of dust,
for a moment become conscious of itself. That is the
last asceticism of which man in his passion for absolute
values is capable. He proclaims them in the face
of a universe which he asserts to be utterly indifferent
to them.

But this asceticism is never, I think, the complete
disbelief it supposes itself to be. Rather it is a
kind of self- denial, a discipline which the mind
imposes on itself so that it may be sure that its
values are absolute. All the beliefs of man have
been tainted with his egotism ; they have supplied
him with reasons for righteousness other than the
right reasons, and have therefore perverted his very
conception of righteousness. Tantum religio potuit

I PRESUPPOSITIONS & PREJUDGMENTS 5

suadere malorum ; and we are better without it in the
form of dogma, for we cannot trust ourselves not to
frame dogmas that will pervert our absolute values.
As Nietzsche said, there is the will to power in all
religion ; and it continually deceives us by pretending
to express our absolute values, while it really expresses
our desire for rewards for ourselves and punishments
for others.

All this is not consciously stated ; but it is deep
in the minds of many upright men and produces in
them a habit of defiant incredulity, which is not so
much rational as moral.

But there is also another, narrower reason why
many excellent men deny a future life. What they
really deny is not a future life generally, but the
particular kind of future life which they have been
taught to believe in, or the particular arguments
advanced for it. It is a natural infirmity of the human
mind thus to deny the general in the particular. There
are, for instance, many people who suppose that the
whole question of a future life is bound up with the
notion that Heaven is a place above the sky and with
the dogma of the physical Resurrection of Christ. It has
never occurred to them to consider the two questions
separately. Because they do not believe in a local
Heaven, or in the physical Resurrection, they assume
that they cannot believe in a future life. But it is
possible not to be a Christian at all, to believe that
Christ never existed, or never to have heard of the
name Heaven, and yet to believe in a future life
with Plato. Yet another irrelevant cause of disbelief
in a future life is the strange assertion, commonly
associated with the Christian faith, that animals have no
souls. This did not matter so long as men saw no
likeness between themselves and animals ; but, now
that a thousand discovered facts prove the likeness,
the contention is obvious that, since animals have no
souls, men can have none either, and must die like

6 IMMORTALITY i

dogs. But how if dogs die like men ? How if animals
are like men rather than men like animals ? Perhaps
the last piece of Christian humility we have to learn,
with St. Francis, is that the black beetle is our brother.
Perhaps it is the generic snobbery of man, more than
anything else, that has deprived him of his highest
hopes, just as all our snobberies deprive us of hope
by emptying life of absolute values for us. I cannot
believe in any real and universal fellowship unless I
am ready to strip myself of all status ; 1 cannot
believe in a real future life so long as I think of it
as a privilege of my own species. In the long run
exclusiveness always shuts out those who exclude ; for
there is a terrible unconscious sincerity in the human
mind by which all lies told for comfort or pride
revenge themselves on the liar.

If in our beliefs we express our own sense of status,
our own hatred, or our own selfish desires, those
beliefs gradually empty the universe of values, and
so become intolerable to us. Then, whatever truth
there may be in them, is also rejected ; hence much
of our modern defiant refusal to believe in a future
state, in a God, in a universe, which can be valued,
is the result of a reaction from beliefs in a future
state, a God, a universe, which men find that they
cannot value. In his beliefs about these things man
is always trying to express his absolute values ;
but his beliefs are incessantly tainted with his
egotism and so mis-express his values. The values
are permanent ; they are the most certain and un-
changing fact in the mind of man ; they are always
seeking expression and always failing of it because they
are so deep and unconscious. There is in man always
a desire to love something for its own sake, and not
as it helps him to live, either in this life or in another.
That passion, that appetite of the soul, persists always
through all his changing bodily appetites, and because
of it he can never be content with the pleasure he

I PRESUPPOSITIONS & PREJUDGMENTS 7

gets from them. It is the most permanent fact of
his mind, and to him the most permanent fact of
the universe. Therefore he makes an incessant effort
to conceive of the universe in terms of it. Since
he has this incessant desire to love something for
its own sake and values such a love, whether he
attains to it or no, above all other experiences of
his mind or body, he has also an unceasing desire
to find in the very nature of the universe that
which is worthy of his love. This desire, because of
its very nature, cannot be satisfied by any merely
comforting belief. It is indeed the reason why men
are suspicious of all comforting beliefs ; for, if I
love God, or any one or anything, so that I may be
comforted by my love, my love itself is spurious.
I might as well try to fall in love with a woman
because she is rich. But what man desires above all
things is a love which is not spurious ; and yet,
because he desires that love so much, his egotism is
always tempting him into spurious loves, into spurious
certainties. And for a time perhaps he is certain,
convinced by miracles or documentary proofs that
he has found the true God whom he can love, the
creator and ruler of a righteous universe. But
gradually, through that terrible unconscious sincerity
of his, the very proofs which have given him certainty
cause him discomfort. He finds that the God who
has been revealed to him so precisely does not satisfy
his own values. Will he then give up the God or
the values .? The conflict between the God and the
values rages through all religious history ; for man
clings tenaciously to both and is torn by the logic
which would force him to reject the one or the other.

But nowhere is this conflict fiercer than in the
matter of beliefs about a future life. For man has
a disinterested desire to believe in a future life. It
is not merely that the individual man wishes to
survive, that his egotism cannot endure the thought

8 IMMORTALITY i

of a universe in which he himself will not be ; it
is that he wishes to find justice, not merely in the
mind of man, but also in the order of the universe,
and that, without a future life, there seems to
him to be no justice, no significance in pain and
grief. There are of course those who tell us that
our pain and grief will profit posterity. That is
not certain ; and, even if it were, there would be no
justice in it ; for it is not justice that one man should
profit by another's misfortunes ; justice is a matter of
the treatment of individuals, not of the race. There
it is like love. If I do not love individuals, if I
am not just to them, I do not love, I am not just,
at all. So, if I believe in the love and the justice
of God at all, I believe in His love and justice to
individuals. What we really value is persons, not
processes ; and we cannot value a mere process of
salvation for some abstraction called the race, if persons
are utterly sacrificed to it. We cannot value a universe
in which this sacrifice occurs, whatever brave efforts
we may make to do so.

Since, then, there is in man this quite disinterested
desire to believe in a future life, since it is an essential
part of his desire to believe in a universe which he
can value, man is continually tempted to find sure
proofs that there is a future life. He is " hot for
certainties " ; and these very certainties, when he has
attained to them, cause him discomfort. For, since
they are spurious certainties, they are always tainted
with his own egotism ; and there is some lack of
the very justice he desires in the future state of which
he is certain. This lack of justice, though it may
at first seem to work in his own favour, will afterwards
take a terrible revenge upon him ; for it is the
injustice of an omnipotent God, in whose hands he is
helpless. There is, for instance, the taint of egotism in
all our traditional beliefs about rewards and punishments
in a future state ; men have always used those beliefs to

1 PRESUPPOSITIONS & PREJUDGMENTS 9

discourage certain kinds of conduct and to encourage
others. Churches in particular have used them to
suit their own purposes. They conceive of a God
who gives to their enemies the kind of future life that
they deserve. But if this God of ours is capable of
punishing our enemies as we wish, He is capable also
of punishing us as He wishes. If He will take vengeance
for us He may take vengeance on us. Vengeance is
mine, saith the Lord ; and vengeance is a terrible
weapon in the hands of an omnipotent being into
whose nature you have read your own vindictiveness.
Hence the belief in Hell, a Hell in which our enemies
will suffer ; but we do not know that we ourselves
shall not meet them there.

Men have been utterly certain about this Hell, and
they have not been able to escape from the logic of
their own certainty. It is a danger to them as well
as to their enemies ; if they use it as a terror to others
they cannot escape from the terror of it themselves.
They can escape only by denying it altogether ; and
this denial comes to them at last, when they see that
they cannot value the God whom they have made the
instrument of their own vengeance. Hence the fierce
reactions against our egotistical conceptions of a future
life, of God, of the universe, reactions of man's values
against his spurious certainties. In them man tries to
destroy all that he has achieved ; he despairs of belief
altogether and finds his safety only in denial.

In this mood he is peculiarly suspicious of all beliefs
in a future state ; for they, more than all other beliefs,
have been tainted with egotism and discredited by the
frightful revenge they have taken upon it. Certainly
belief in a future state has been the cause of more
fantastic misery than any other kind of belief, the cause
of more fantastic cruelty inflicted by man on man. The
struggle for life is a human and kindly thing compared
with the struggle for salvation. Egotism in time can
be reasoned with and limited ; but egotism projected

10 IMMORTALITY i

into eternity goes mad with its own terrors of eternity.
Indeed there is an incongruity between egotism and
eternity which produces madness in the egotist ; for
eternity itself is a conception of the unegotistic, the
universal, mind ; and when man projects his egotism
into it, fighting for life as in time and space, the result
is a nightmare.

So the mind of man is at the present day suffering from
a nervous shock caused by his past failures to conceive
of a future state. A burnt child dreads the fire ; and
the mind of man has been burnt by the fires of his own
imagined Hell. So he flinches from the peril of any
more conceiving. Rather he will keep his values and
refuse the attempt to express them in any kind of faith,
lest he should lose them in a failure of expression. For
there is nothing so demoralising to the nature of man
as these failures. They alone have power utterly to
pervert his values, to make evil seem to him good.
There is no cruelty like religious cruelty ; for nothing
but religious fanaticism can utterly remove the natural,
kindly inhibitions of man's nature. Therefore men are
shy of all faith lest it should lead to fanaticism. There
is to them something sane and wholesome in the avowal
that they are merely animals, for then at least they can
be clean, decent animals and not morbid devils.

And yet, as I said to begin with, we cannot thus
artificially and wilfully turn away from the question of
a future state. For it does, whether we wish it or no,
involve our whole view of the nature of the universe.
Is the ultimate reality person or process ; is matter the
master of that which we call spirit, or spirit the master
of that which we call matter ? Is there such a thing as
spirit, or merely a complicated mechanical process which
becomes conscious of itself through some extra intensity
in its working .? There is no getting away from these
two alternatives. Either spirit is the supreme fact,
supreme over all changes of process and lasting through
them all ; or life is to be defined as a mechanical process

I PRESUPPOSITIONS & PREJUDGMENTS 1 1

suffering from the illusion that it is not mechanical.
In which case nothing distinguishes it from not- life _
except the illusion. If that be so, all.our values are part
of that superfluous illusion which is the essence of life.
But however much we may seem to be comfortably im-
prisoned within the illusion of life, yet the fact that we
can call it an illusion proves that we are not perfectly
imprisoned. The cold draughts of reality do find their
way into our warm prison-house. That consciousness of
ours, which we are told is in its very nature a misunder-
standing of the reality of ourselves, has by some means
begun to be an understanding. The mechanical process is
capajble of knowing that it is one ; a remarkable triumph
no doubt, but one which necessarily must tempt it to the
doubt whether it is a mechanical process after all. Indeed
the mechanical explanation of the universe would be
quite satisfying, if only it were not we poor machines
that had hit upon it. But the mere fact that we are
capable of hitting upon it at once arouses a doubt of it
in our minds. For, if we can thus triumphantly rid
ourselves of our illusions and see that we are only
machines, what is that property of the machine which is
thus able to triumph over its own nature ? This question
the machine cannot but ask itself; and, as soon as it
asks it, it ceases to be a machine to itself. Thus there
must always be a reaction against all mechanical theories
of life just as inevitable as the reaction against all spurious
certainties of supernatural belief. The fact that we are
capable of conceiving these theories will always in the
long run make it impossible for us to believe them.
We do finally exist for ourselves because we think ;
and that which thinks has for us a reality superior to
that which it thinks about, including our own flesh, a
reality persisting through all changes of flesh, even the
change which we call death.

Therefore men will continue to believe in a future
life, will indeed believe in it more and more with every
increase of consciousness. Such increases of conscious-

12 IMMORTALITY i

ness produce doubts of everything, especially doubts
of all past beliefs ; for the doubts are themselves part
of the increase of consciousness, a necessary part of its
conquest of its own subject matter. But consciousness,
with every new conquest, becomes more and more sure
of its own existence, of its own paramount reality.
With all his dethronements of himself, with all his
efforts to explain himself, even as a machine, man does
become more and more aware of himself as a person.
And it is this growing sense of his own reality which
makes him cast about so wildly for explanations of him-
self. The more this person, which is himself, becomes
to him an ultimate reality, the more he tries to explain
it in terms of something else, of that which he observes
rather than of that which he is. He cannot explain
himself in terms of himself ; nor, if he is an ultimate
reality, can he learn the nature of that reality from
that which is less real ; yet he incessantly tries to do so
in the mere process of increasing consciousness. There
is this paradox in the whole process of our minds, that
we become more aware of ourselves only through our
increasing knowledge and experience of that which is
not ourselves. And this paradox tempts us continually
to believe that what we observe is true also of the
observer.

We observe certain processes everywhere ; they are
truths to us about the external world ; and we believe
that they are also true of ourselves. We see the process
we call death and we do not see beyond it ; so we
think that we are utterly subject to it, that it ends us,
because we observe it to end certain formal arrange-
ments of matter.

But though we may think this, the whole of ourselves
is never utterly absorbed into that thought ; for that
which thinks remains behind the thought and is capable
of a vast unconscious reserve from its own thoughts.
Through these very thoughts man achieves the cer-
tainty of his own pre-eminent reality ; and it persists

I PRESUPPOSITIONS & PREJUDGMENTS 13

through all his doubts and disputations. At certain
stages of history it expresses itself in a more and more
triumphant faith in a future life, and in other things.
But this faith, unfortunately, is apt to be too triumphant ;
it goes to man's head and makes him believe that he
knows more precisely than he can know. The artist in
him, the passionate expresser of faith, is confused with
the man of science, and he rushes from passion to logic,
as in the Athanasian Creed. He expresses his certainty
in dogmas which, because of their very precision, become
obsolete, for the precision is temporal though the faith
be eternal. He parodies his own certainties in a wrong
medium and then falls out of conceit with the parody.
It is not enough for him to be sure of his own para-
mount reality. He must turn his hymns about it into
guide-books of the New Jerusalem ; he must take the
Apocalypse for history looking forwards. And the
result is that sooner or later he ridicules his own presump-
tion and tells himself that these certainties of his are out-
worn superstitions because their expression is obsolete.

So we are always being told that the belief in a future
state is an outworn superstition. But, if by super-
stition we mean a mere survival, nothing could be more
untrue. For, as a matter of fact, men have attained
to a belief in a future state very slowly, and are still in
process of attaining to it, a process much hindered by
their disgust of past failures to conceive it rationally.
Primitive beliefs about it are nearly always beliefs in
Ghosts, in appearances of the dead. For to the savage
the dead exist only in the shadowy forms in which (as
he supposes) they are from time to time seen by the
living ; they are not spirits in our sense at all but some
kind of material vapour, all that is left of the flesh after
the process of death, like the smoke that rises from a
funeral pyre. And from this belief in a material phantom
there comes a belief in a phantasmic survival of life in
beings that —
Move among shadows a shadow and wail by impassable streams.

14 IMMORTALITY i

This survival is as inferior in reality to the life of a
living man as the phantom is inferior to the living body.
The whole notion arises from the belief that such
ghosts are seen, and from the dreams and visions which
are the support of that belief. They do not spring
from any sense of the superior reality of person to process,
of spirit to matter. This sense grows much later ; and
the belief in a future life which is based on it can be
sharply distinguished from the belief in ghosts. There
is all the difference in the world between the faith of
St. Paul and Homer's legends of the underworld.

And yet, even now, the faith is constantly confused
with the superstition, and while some use the super-
stition to explain away the faith, by others it is employed
to confirm it. Traditional Christian teaching has in-
herited from pre-Christian Judaism notions of a physical
resurrection and a local Heaven above the sky, which,
though a great advance on early ideas of ghost survival,
seem crude and childlike to the modern mind.

Hence the very natural tendency to think the faith
itself a mere superstition. In all things our faith is
constantly weakened by our efforts to attain to a cer-
tainty we have not earned. We would have scientific
proof where we cannot have it ; and we rely on scientific
proof for that faith which can come to us, if at all, only
through our whole way of life and thought. Hence
the incessant excesses of our belief, and the incessant
reactions against them. Hence also the strange fact
that men's conscious beliefs are often utterly different
from their unconscious. The conscious belief may be
merely a reaction against some inadequate expression of
belief; the unconscious, all the while, being the slow
deposit of faith produced by all that is disinterested in
the man's life. This deposit is very slow, slower still
for the race than for the individual ; and it is hindered
by all perversities both of theory and of conduct.
Whenever, for instance, any large body of men, whether
a class, or a nation, or a whole civilisation, are filled

I PRESUPPOSITIONS & PREJUDGMENTS 1 5

with the idea of their own peculiar status, whenever it
seems to them that they are born better than other men,
then there is a necessary decHne in their sense of the
justice of the universe, in their values, in their faith.
Life loses significance for them because they have found
a peculiar significance in themselves. It is no accident
that the exultation of Christian faith in a future life was
combined with the assertion that all men were equal in
the sight of God. The Christian faith went with the
renunciation of all status. That renunciation, not in
words only, but in deeds and in the innermost recesses
of the mind, was a necessary antecedent to the Christian
happiness. And that happiness was the result of a
collective effort made by a whole society, which would
no longer believe the proud nonsense of the ancient
world. But our modern world is full of a like proud
nonsense. Let us get rid of that ; let us once again
assert the equality of all men before God, assert it, not
only in word, but in thought and in the innermost
recesses of the mind ; and then we may leave our faith
to grow of itself through our works.

THE MIND AND THE BRAIN

(A Discussion of Immortality from the
Standpoint of Science)

JAMES ARTHUR HADFIELD, M.A., M.B.

SURGEON, ROYAL NAVY

PAGE

SYNOPSIS

The main problem of Psychology is the relation of Body and Mind.
The mind is always found associated with a brain : but shows
an increasing tendency to become independent 20

The main thesis of this paper : that the tendency of the mind
towards independence and autonomy suggests the possibility
of its becoming entirely liberated from the body, and con-
tinuing to exist in a disembodied state.

I. The main Theories of the Relation of Body and Mind . . 22

The Materialistic : that mind is dependent upon the activity
of brain cells.

The Idealistic : that the brain is merely an instrument of the
mind.

The Psychological : that mind and body interact and each
has the power of initiation. Psycho-
physical interaction.

II. Study of the Mind in its present stage of evolution establishing

its dominating Influence over the Body. . . 25

(i) Influence of Body on Mind.

Mental disturbance from physical causes.
Localisation of mental functions in the Brain.
(2) Influence of Mind on Brain and Nervous System.

Examples of Psychic blindness : deafness : and analgesia.
The Nature of Hypnotism and of " Suggestion." A
phenomenon of relatively heightened attention. Auto-
suggestion and trance.
The Power of the Mind to heal bodily disease by mental
suggestion.
Neurasthenia :

Its cause and cure.

Rival views of Neurologist and Psychologist.
Two illustrations of the cure of Neurasthenia.
" Shell Shock " :

Illustrations of its cure by mental suggestion.
The Psychology of " shell shock."
Christian Science :

Its claims and its limitations.
Telepathy :

Communication with spirits of the departed not proved.
But the phenomena of "wraiths" too frequent to be
neglected ; and other evidence proves existence of mind-
transference.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 19

PAGE

III. Study of the Biological development of the Mind, proving its

Tendency to Autonomy . . . .56

{a) In the individual.

Development of Vision : and of the Emotions.
{b) In the race.

Low forms of life.

The advent of Consciousness — a Psychic fact unexplained

by physical terms.
The development of Will.

Conclusion : ....... 70

Foregoing evidence not a proof that mind will survive, but leads

us to expect it. A reasonable hypothesis.
Speculation on the purpose of our earthly life.

THE MIND AND THE BRAIN

(A Discussion of Immortality from the
Standpoint of Science)

I propose in this Essay to approach the subject from
the scientific and empirical rather than from the philo-
sophical and speculative point of view. Psychology
presents us with no more difficult and certainly no more
fundamental problem than that of the relation of the
mind to the brain. Is the mind merely an activity of
the brain cells, a product of nerve stimulation ? Or, on
the other hand, does the mind dominate the brain and
use it as its instrument of expression ? On our answer
to this question depends our view as to the possibility of
the survival of the mind after the destruction of the brain.

Let it be frankly admitted at the outset that we have
no scientific proof of the existence of a disembodied
mind, a mind entirely free from the limitations of the
brain. All the philosophies in the world's history were
cradled and nourished in a brain. In its highest flights
of fancy or in its wrestling with the problems of life
and destiny, the mind yet finds it necessary, like Antaeus,
to keep in touch with mother earth from whose breast
it draws its sustenance and strength.

Science, I repeat, gives us no evidence of the exist-
ence of a mind disembodied, naked and stripped of its
covering of flesh — but always shows us mind and body
associated with one another. Nevertheless, I propose

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 21

to bring forward evidence which will encourage us in
the belief that in the course of evolution the mind shows
an ever-increasing tendency to free itself from physical
control and, breaking loose from its bonds, to assert its
independence and live a life undetermined except by
the laws of its own nature. The main argument of
this essay is that the tendency of the mind towards
independence and autonomy suggests the possibility
of its becoming entirely liberated from the body, and
continuing to live disembodied and free.

If we can demonstrate from the point of view of
science the relative autonomy of the mind, we may,
without doing violence to the facts of science, but
rather by interpreting the processes which underlie
them, deduce sufficient proof to justify the conclusion
that, though the mind is in this life always associated
with the brain, it can under suitable conditions survive
the destruction of the brain : so that when the body
crumbles into dust the mind may " spring triumphant
on exulting wing."

Modern researches, particularly in the domain of
Psychology, normal and abnormal, have opened our
eyes to the vast possibilities, as yet unexplored, which
lie latent in the mind. In our discussion we shall
touch upon some of these discoveries in the sphere of
Hypnotism, Telepathy, and Psychotherapy or mental
healing, as well as in the more "legitimate" sphere of
normal mental biology ; and these studies will supply
us with sufficient evidence to establish the claim of the
mind to a progressively increasing independence, and
to point to the complete liberation of the mind from
the body as the probable goal and destiny of natural
evolution.

It will be convenient to divide our investigation into
three main sections : —

I. The main theories as to the relation of body and
mind.

II, Evidence from the study of the mind in its

22 IMMORTALITY

present stage of evolution, pointing to its independence
of the body,

III. Evidence from the biological evolution of mind
in the individual and in the race to show how it
originated as a product of physical stimulation, but
developed into a psychical force.

I. The Main Theories as to the Relation
OF Body and Mind

A. The Materialistic. — The first and most material-
istic view regards the mind as a direct product of the
brain. Huxley championed this theory under the name
of " Epiphenomenalism." The mind, according to this
theory, is " foam " thrown up as a result of the activity
of the brain : a " mist " that rises from the surface
of the deep, formed of fine particles of its waters. The
mind accompanies the brain as a shadow does its sub-
stance, and though, like the shadow, it may appear to
be more vivacious, it is in reality completely dependent
upon the functioning of the brain. Every thought is
the result of chemical or mechanical changes in the
brain : an " idea " is but an explosion or discharge of a
nerve cell : an emotion is an activity of the brain burst-
ing into flame : every feeling of love, aspiration, or fear
can be explained as due to purely physical changes
which produce the vapour of thought or the aroma of
virtue. A fuller knowledge of the physiology of the
brain would enable us to demonstrate how certain
mechanical forces in the mind of Shakespeare produced
the character of Hamlet : and how the " Dead March "
in ^aul was the result of chemical combustion. Let it
be understood that this is at present nothing more than
a theory, for these chemical changes have never been
demonstrated, and there is at present practically no
direct evidence in favour of it. The effect of physical
functions on the mind is no doubt important and
far-reaching. It is all too obvious to those who are

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 23

compelled to live with sufferers from gout or dyspepsia,
and we shall do justice to this aspect of the question
later. But the reverse effect of the mind on body is
incomparably greater. Meanwhile let us note that to
the materialist there is but one answer to our original
question : the mind will be abolished as soon as the brain
decays : the shadow vanishes when the substance is re-
moved: the music must end when the silver cord is loosed:
the flame flickers and dies when the wood is burnt to ashes.
B. The Idealistic. — The second theory of the relation
of mind to body carries us to the other extreme. In
the beginning was mind, and mind created the physical
world. The material universe is the plastic substance
out of which mind may mould her thoughts : the
instrument upon which she may play her melody of
passion and grief and then cast it off. Without mind
the earth would be without form and void : for it is the
indwelling soul that gives form to the shell and glad-
ness to the summer cloud. Without soul the leaf
would wither, the massive crag fall, and the crystal
crumble to an amorphous mass. Wordsworth, in his
meditations on Tintern Abbey, has described the
presence of this all-pervading mind.

And I have felt
A Presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

Mind is alone real and eternal : the brain is but a
deposit thrown out, precipitated, and then formed into
a coherent whole, and fashioned as the instrument by
which the mind communicates with the material world
and with other minds. The destruction of the brain
will have no more effect on the existence of the mind
than the breaking of a violin on the genius of a musician.
The mind, being eternal, is undisturbed by the accidents

24 IMMORTALITY ii

which may befall the material and temporary, whose
very nature is to decay,

I do not propose to discuss in detail either of these
two views. There is much to be said for both the
materialist and the idealist position, and full justice
must be done to both if we are to get at the truth.
But we pass them by for the purposes of our investiga-
tion, because both views if accepted in toto prejudge the
question at issue, and so rule out all further discussion
of our main problem. Both the materialist and the
idealist have in their philosophy decided beforehand
whether the mind can survive the destruction of the
brain : it is as impossible for the mind to survive on
the one theory as it is necessary in the other : and no
amount of argument could alter these conclusions.

C. The Psychological. — For the purposes of our dis-
cussion we take as our starting-point a third view,^
which is more empirical and open to scientific investi-
gation, namely, that of Psycho -physical interaction.
On this view every thought which occupies the mind
may have some influence on the nervous system : and,
on the other hand, every change which takes place in
the brain may leave its mark upon mental processes.
This theory allows of a certain freedom of action
to both the mind and the body, but yet affirms
their interdependence. At one time it is the mind
that initiates action which results in molecular and
vascular changes in the brain : at other times it is
the cellular activity of the brain which modifies the
thoughts and emotions of the mind. For example :
constant mental worry tends to diminish the secretion
of bile and so leads to indigestion ; on the other hand,
the presence of bile in the blood not only produces
jaundice but a depressed spirit and a "jaundiced"
view of life. A mighty emotion can sway the body,
throwing it into paroxysms now of fear and again of

' Psychology (I employ the word throughout as in modern scientific usage) in
so far as it does not profess, like Idealism or Materialism, to be a philosophical
theory of Ultimate Reality, is, of course, not exactly a third alternative to them.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 25

joy. Those of us who have seen men in mortal terror,
their eyes thrust out of their orbits, their hair like
bristles, realise how the mind in its emotion can affect
physical processes. On the other hand, all of us have
experienced the depressing effect on the mind of even
a slight physical indisposition, producing an irritability
which we know to be unworthy of us but which we are
unable to control. " The train of representation is
determined all along the line from both the neural and
the psychical side, with constant psycho-physical inter-
action, initiated now from this side, now from that." ^
Nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul !

Taking our start, then, from this theory of " Psycho-
physical interaction," and assuming that mind and body
are constantly influencing one another, we have yet to
study this interaction with a view to determining which
of these, the mind or the body, is the dominating factor
in our lives, and whether the neural or the physical
exercises the more compelling influence over the other.
If the mind is dominated by the body, we cannot hope
that it can " carry on " after the destruction of the
brain : but if the mind proves itself to have gained the
mastery over the flesh and can force its commands upon
the body, then we may infer that the mind holds its
destiny in its own hands.

In order to determine this question of dominance
let us proceed to our second main subject.

II. The Study of the Mind in its present
Stage of Evolution, establishing its
Dominating Influence over the Body

In order to do justice to both sides of the question
I shall deal first of all with

(i) The influence of the body over mind, and then
discuss

(2) The influence of the mind over the body.

1 W. McDougall in Mind and Body.

26 IMMORTALITY ii

(i) The Influence of the Body over the Mind

An impartial study of facts shows that the mind is
not that independent, detached, self-determined entity
which some would have us believe, but is often con-
ditioned by the state of the body and brain. Some
of the glandular secretions of the body, the thyroid,
for instance, and the ovarian, have a marked effect
upon the mind. Most of my readers will be familiar
with that form of idiocy in children due to want of the
thyroid secretion. This dull, heavy, dribbling child,
without inteUigence and without character, is treated
with a course of thyroid extract and becomes in a
few months as quick-witted and self-respecting as the
average child of its age. The discovery of the patho-
logy of Cretinism and its consequent cure have no
doubt contributed largely to the diminution in the
number of " village idiots " which we cannot but have
noticed. The mind and intelligence in this case were
obviously arrested by the want of this physical secretion,
and its artificial supply was followed by the liberation
of the mental faculties and the growth of intellect.

Some forms of insanity, such as melancholia, also
seem to be determined by physical conditions. In
many cases such a disease may have followed and been
partly caused by mental stress.^ But the treatment of
the mind alone seems to have little effect on this disease,
which seems to have a physical as well as a psychic
origin, and is probably due to an auto-intoxication, the
toxins of which must be purged from the body before
the mind can become sane and healthy again. It is
probable, indeed, that a good deal of what we call
*' temperament " is due to the secretions and toxins
which circulate in our system. It is interesting to note
that popular language suggests that the origin of these

^ I have been particularly struck in dealing with the insane amongst Naval men,
with the fact that even in mental diseases of an undoubted organic origin like
General Paralysis of the Insane, the onset of the symptoms appears frequently to
have been precipitated by a shock of a mental character.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 27

states is due to physical causes : we speak, for instance,
of a man being " phlegmatic," i.e. charged with a super-
abundance of " phlegm " or lymph : of another as
"liverish": and use phrases like "vent his spleen,"
" make his gorge rise," which ascribe mental symptoms
to physical causes. We are not, of course, defending
the use of such phrases as being accurate (particularly
in the case of the liver, that long-suffering organ, which
has shared with the kidney most of the abuse of the
quack), but to indicate how the popular mind has
fastened on the idea that one's temperament is
influenced by the effect of physical conditions on the
mind.

Another indication of the dependence of the mind
on the brain is to be found in the phenomena of local-
isation in the brain. If the visual centres in the occipital
lobe of the brain be removed or injured, we lose our
sight : if the area anterior to the occipital lobe be
injured, we retain our sight, can see things and copy
them, but we fail to understand their meaning. That
is to say, a psychical quality is lost with the loss of this
piece of brain, clearly indicating that besides the sensory
centres there are psychical centres in the brain upon the
integrity of which our mental condition to some extent
depends.

Let us for our third illustration point to facts
familiar enough to all. Let the reader try for himself
this experiment. When he is feeling gloomy and de-
pressed, let him force himself to smile : he will imme-
diately find the influence of his action in relieving his
gloom. Let a man who is walking with shoulders
bent and eyes cast to the ground in thought, raise
his head, square his shoulders, and walk upright. He
will immediately experience a martial feeling of self-
possession. So, clenching the hand, setting the jaw,
producing a sneer, and many other physical actions,
have a tendency to produce the mental emotion with
which they are associated. A very familiar illustration

28 IMMORTALITY

of this same law is that the attitude of prayer helps us
to realise a reverent spirit. We shall have reason to
refer to this subject again later : for the present we are
only concerned to show how physical conditions can
modify mental processes.

Let us, then, do justice to this side of the question
and admit that the brain has its share in influencing the
processes of the mind, and realise that the mind cannot
afford to spurn the advances of the body, but must for
its own health maintain amicable relations with it.
The mens sana and the corpus sanum are intimately
connected.

(2) The Influence of the Mind on the Brain and Nervous

System

Having acknowledged the service rendered by the
brain to the mind, we turn to the facts pointing to the
influence of the mind on the brain and nervous system.
We shall find that the mind not only influences the
body, but that it has an increasing tendency to dominate
the body and control its sensations.

Let us take a common illustration. A woman
receives the news of the sudden death of her husband.
This is a " psychic " cause : we call it psychic because
it is not the message as spoken that produces the efi^ect
on her (she had often before felt the impact of the sound-
waves of the word " death "), but its significance for her.
We see the flush — an attempt of the heart to drive suffi-
cient blood to the brain to stand the shock — the subse-
quent pallor, the sickness, the trembling, and ultimately
the loss of consciousness, by which means nature delivers
her from the agony of mental pain. These phenomena
of the circulation and nervous system are produced by
a cause that is purely psychical in origin, and prove
that the mind is able to use the body to express its feel-
ings and emotions, like the evening wind which makes
the trees rustle as in merriment or moan as in sadness.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 29

Again, there is conclusive evidence that the mind
can completely dominate sensations, not only by con-
trolling but even by abolishing all feeling of them.
Those, for instance, who are accustomed to use micro-
scopes are able to produce a psychic blindness in one
eye. Whilst the right eye, let us say, is kept focussed on
the slide, the left eye is kept open, but is yet blind to
the rays of light which come to it. The beginner is at
first confused with rays coming from the slide and from
the surroundings simultaneously, but a little training
enables him to cut out the vision of the surroundings
in the left eye even though this eye is kept open. The
rays of light from the table, stand, and other surround-
ings are still striking his retina, but the mind refuses
to admit them. The mind thus has the power to refuse
the sensations offered to it and to decide which
sensations it will reject and which accept.

A similar phenomenon is observed in the hypnotic
state. A hypnotised subject may be told to observe
every picture on a wall except one, and he will no
longer see this picture. His sight is not impaired in
any way, since he can observe the other pictures, but
a psychic blindness has been produced, the mind having
the power to refuse the sensations due to the rays of
light coming from that one picture. " Having eyes
they see not."

I have at the present time a patient who, in the
hypnotised state, converses with me and obeys my
commands. But should any one else command him
or speak to him he is completely deaf to the voice and
makes no response, telling me that he hears nothing.
But as soon as I tell him that he will hear the other voice,
he immediately responds, and carries out the commands
of the man to whose voice he was previously deaf.
The stimuli enter the brain alike in both cases : but in
the first case the mind is psychically deaf to them.

The extremes of concentration of which the mind is
capable are exemplified in the analgesia or loss of the

30 IMMORTALITY ii

sensation of pain which can be produced in a hypnotised
person. I remember a case (though I was not fortunate
enough to see it) in one of the operating theatres of
Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in which a major abdominal
operation (for hernia) was performed on a student
with no anaesthetic except that of hypnotic suggestion.
The patient was admitted to the hospital the day before
the operation, was hypnotised by his own family doctor
that night and told under hypnosis that the next day,
before the operation, the house surgeon of the wards
would tell him to sleep, and that he would pass into
a condition in which he would feel no pain. The
house surgeon duly carried out his instructions, and
though, as far as I remember, he had never had any
acquaintance with hypnotism before, his suggestion
produced the desired condition in the patient. The
patient was operated on painlessly, and recovered with-
out discomfort. Indeed, hypnotism is the ideal anaes-
thetic if the patient is sufficiently susceptible to its
influence, for it is followed by none of those nauseating
symptoms of chloroform poisoning so distressing to the
patient, and, what is even more important, it is not
accompanied by the same degree of shock. Hypnotic
anaesthesia differs from that of chloroform in that it
is an anaesthetic of the mind, in contrast to that of
chloroform, which produces its effect on the brain by
melting the myelin fat round the nerve cells, or by
some other chemical action which cuts off these cells
from external stimuli.

These illustrations of the reaction of the mind under
hypnosis are extremely important, for they show us the
mind so dominating the senses that it can abolish the
sensations coming from them, and maintain an attitude
of complete indifference to the most urgent calls of
physical pain. What more suggestive evidence could
we have that the ,mind is well on its way to that state
in which it may dispense altogether with the physical,
and wing its way to freedom and independence ?

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 31

Hypnotism, however, has discovered for us another
truth of great importance, namely, that the mind
presides over even those functions of the body which we
regard as " vegetative " ; we refer to the secretions of
glands, the flow of gastric and other digestive juices,
the function of digestion, the peristaltic movements of
the bowels, changes in the calibre of the arteries and so
forth. Are these functions controlled and regulated
by the mind, or by purely mechanical or reflex pro-
cesses ? Over these actions we certainly have no
'Voluntary control. Our efibrts to stop ourselves
blushing are as futile as our attempts to cure a spasm
of colic by force of will or expenditure of thought.
AH these effects are normally the result of reflex action,
and are regulated by the so-called autonomic or sym-
pathetic nervous system. It is usually the presence of
food in the stomach that excites the stomach to secrete
its hydrochloric acid, and it is the pressure of food,
or the irritation of some poison on the bowel wall, that
causes it to contract into a colic spasm in order to drive
out the irritant : it is the efi^ect of heat upon the skin
that dilates the arterioles, thus bringing the blood to
the skin surface, and so cooling the blood by contact
with the outside air. But it seems to have escaped
the observation of some physiologists that the sympa-
thetic nervous system, which normally acts reflexly, may
itself be controlled and modified by mental processes.
It is true that our conscious will has no influence over
them, but the " unconscious " part of the mind certainly
has the power to initiate or modify these functions of
secretion and circulation, as we may prove by experi-
menting with a subject under hypnosis. Let us try
this simple experiment (which the writer has per-
formed) : let a subject be hypnotised, and while he sits
calmly and quietly in his chair, suggest to him that his
hand is becoming suffused with blood. In the course
of half a minute or so this hyperaemia is produced in
the hand indicated, whilst the other hand remains

32 IMMORTALITY ii

pallid. The secretion of perspiration may be similarly
regulated. In some rare but well-authenticated cases
blisters have been produced on the skin by mental
suggestion under hypnosis.^ Again, the action of the
intestines, over which the conscious volition has no
direct control, is easily regulated by mental suggestion
when the subject is under hypnosis, and thus constipa-
tion may be rapidly and easily cured.^ So we might
review the other vegetative functions of the body, but
the illustrations given will be sufficient to prove that
the mind exerts a controlling influence over even the
reflex and autonomic functions of the nervous system,
and may at any time assert its claim to regulate and
direct them.

The Nature of Hypnotism and Suggestion

Before proceeding to discuss the power of the
mind in curing bodily disease, it may not be out of
place to refer to the nature of the hypnotic state and of
" suggestion." The name " Hypnotism " was origin-
ally introduced by Braid to describe this state because
it resembled sleep in its mode of induction, its outward
appearance of quiescence, and in the loss of memory
produced. But Braid abandoned the term because it
was found that the mind was really in a state of activity,
and in a subsequent hypnosis a person could recall all
that occurred in the previous seance. It therefore
became the fashion to attribute the phenomena of
hypnotism to a " subconscious self." There seems to
me, however, to be a much simpler explanation, and
one which avoids the necessity of assuming a separate
" self." Hypnotism, far from being a condition of
sleep, is a condition of heightened attention. In this

1 Since writing this I have performed this experiment ; cf. p. 74, Note A.

'^ I have at present a patient with chronic constipation whose condition became
so severe that he was invalided from his duties as a Probationary Flight Officer and
his commission cancelled. When he came under my care he had for months been
treated with the most drastic purgatives. After a fortnight's treatment by Psycho-
therapy his disability has disappeared and he is looking a different being. The con-
dition in his case had been brought on and perpetuated by worry.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 33

state the attention is so fixed on some dominating
idea, as, for instance, that the subject is in a garden of
flowers, that his mind is abstracted from everything
else, and there results a dissociation of consciousness.
In short, there is produced the same kind of psychic
blindness which I have illustrated in the bacteriologist
looking through the microscope, and in the patients
whose indifference to the sensation of pain I have
cited. The state of hypnosis, then, is a state of
abstraction from the world produced by devoting the
whole attention to one idea, or to a single complex of
ideas.

The method of inducing hypnotism also suggests
this as the true explanation. Whatever the method
employed — gazing at a bright light ; listening to the
monotonous beat of a metronome ; feeling the sooth-
ing sensation of " passes," or picturing some quiet
scene suggestive of rest — there is one feature common
to all and essential to the success of the hypnosis,
namely, that the attention of the subject is arrested by
one idea or group of ideas to the exclusion of all others.
This is brought about partly by suppressing other
sensations, and partly by focussing the attention upon
the object selected. The hypnotist having once arrested
the attention, and fixed it upon one idea to the exclu-
sion of all other ideas, thoughts, and sensations, can
then shift it from one point to another, from one idea
to another, to each of which the subject gives his
undivided attention. The magnet, as it moves from
point to point over a sheet of iron filings, concentrates
the filings and accumulates them into a little heap,
now here, now there. The hypnotist, working on
the mind of the subject, first arrests his attention,
concentrating it on one fixed point, and then is able to
shift his attention from point to point. During the
hypnosis the attention is at such a pitch of concentra-
tion, and is raised to such high pressure, that if a
channel towards motor discharge or sensory feeling

34 IMMORTALITY ii

is opened, the accumulated energy finds an immediate
outlet in action. There is no room here for the
criticism of the reason or for inhibition : all opposi-
tion is swept away, so that the subject forthwith per-
forms the action or is swayed by the feelings suggested,
however irrational these may be.^

It is interesting to note, however, that this flood of
energy is not sufficient to overcome the moral sense
although it may override the ordinary barriers of
convention and perform actions that are stupid. The
hypnotised person will refuse to do anything that is
strongly repugnant to him. I have, indeed, had such
opposition in a recent case of mine, where the patient
consistently refused to carry out an action to which he
was opposed, even when he was deeply hypnotised.
The case in point was one in which I wished to take
out the patient's teeth with hypnosis as an anaesthetic,
as he was too weak in health to have gas. For some
reason he had a rooted objection to this, which I could
not overcome. I could make him do all manner of
stupid things, laugh and cry alternately, or dance on
one leg, and could stick pins into him without his
apparently feeling it, but any attempts to persuade
him to have his teeth out invariably aroused his
opposition, and he absolutely reflised to have it done.
In another case of mine the patient, under deep hypnosis,
persisted even in an absolute lie, on which he had staked
his reputation, so rooted was his determination to carry
out the deception. The hypnotised person is therefore
not the automaton some people would have us believe.

This theory of hypnosis as a condition of heightened

1 Since writing this account of hypnotism I have read an article by Dr. W.
McDougall, of Oxford, on the "State of the Mind during Hypnosis." His view
differs from that suggested in this paper, in that he lays emphasis not on the
heightened attention of the one idea, so much as the suppression of the remaining
ideas and sensations in the brain. Both views, however, agree that hypnosis is the
relative predominance of one idea or group of ideas : and both seem to be opposed
to the relegating of hypnotic phenomena to a "subconscious self." I have the
feeling that the "subconscious self" has had too much imposed upon it by an
admiring public.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 35

attention also explains the tremendous force that lies
in suggestion under hypnosis. The suggestions of
health and well-being absorb for the time the whole
mind and exert a correspondingly powerful effect. If
presented to the mind in its ordinary waking state
such suggestions are immediately made null and void
by the reason, which criticises the ideas suggested and
tells the patient that he is, in fact, not well, that his
digestion is out of order, and his business is going to
the dogs. But under hypnosis the reason is inhibited
and the whole attention of the patient is concentrated
on the idea that he is becoming vigorous and strong,
that he will be determined to tackle his business
courageously, that his appetite will improve, and that
he will forget his melancholy in a flood of happiness.

By " suggestion " we mean the insinuation of an
idea into the mind in such a way that it does not clash
with the critical and reasoning faculty. This is essen-
tially the nature and meaning of " suggestion " in the
therapeutic sense. The suggestion exerts its influence
on the mind owing to the fact that it is working without
the opposition of the critical faculty, which is abolished
by hypnotism or the induction of a quiescent state in
the subject. Having induced this state we proceed to
make these "suggestions" of health and well-being,
which we have already described, and which produce
so potent an efi^ect on the personality of the patient.
We shall proceed later to deal with this power which
the mind possesses of modifying physical functions and
curing physical disease.

Auto-suggestion and Trance

The similarity of Hypnotic states to the condition
of Trance makes it necessary to say a little on this
subject, particularly as it has an important bearing on
the subjects discussed later in Essays VII. and VIII,,
pp. 261 f., 322 fi^.

36 IMMORTALITY ii

First let us enumerate the various stages of Hypnosis.
Probably the simplest type of the hypnotic state is
"reverie" — that condition in which the mind is absorbed
with its own thoughts of some far distant scene,
or pleasing recollection of the past, and so becomes
oblivious to all its surroundings. Some people are
more prone to these moods of abstraction than others,
and will walk along the busiest thoroughfares and yet
be entirely dissociated from all the sounds and sights
of their environment. This is really a very early stage
of hypnosis, in this case, self-imposed.

When I hypnotise a patient the first state into
which he passes is one in which he is completely con-
scious of all that is taking place, but is flaccid and
unable to produce any voluntary movement. In my
own experience of being hypnotised, I have found this
stage to be one of extraordinary lucidity. One's mind
seems to pass into space in which the atmosphere is
rarefied and thought clear and electric. One seems to
possess a bird's-eye view of events, to see them in
their entirety, and yet to be conscious of their minutest
detail. This condition most of us have experienced
when lying half- awake in bed. We know perfectly
well all that transpires, but we have not the voluntary
power to move and get up. It is significant that many
poets, philosophers, orators, and even mathematicians
receive some of their greatest inspirations in this condi-
tion, and solve problems which months of previous
labour had failed to elucidate. The clairvoyance of
the crystal-gazer appears to belong to this stage, and it
is probably whilst in this condition that mystics and
seers have their visions. As a rule, they are not aware
of having been in a state of mind in any sense abnormal,
but feel that they have their wits about them during
the whole period. This stage of hypnosis is an excel-
lent one for treatment by suggestion, for in it the
suggestions made are exceptionally lucid and carry a
conviction which ordinary speech could never produce.

II . THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 37

As I proceed with my hypnosis the patient passes
into a condition in which anaesthesia can be produced.
The patient may be perfectly conscious of what the
hypnotist is saying and may remember it all afterwards,
but yet under suggestion can be made to feel no pain.
This stage of hypnosis introduces us to the state of
mind of men who have severe wounds inflicted upon
them in battle, but are not conscious of their wound,
nor of the pain that it should cause, until the excitement
of the battle is over and their minds become less
abstracted from their condition. It also explains the
ecstasy of the martyr whose flesh is torn by wild beasts
or who is burnt at the stake but yet feels nothing be-
cause of the blessed vision of angels or his glorified Lord.

In the next stage of hypnosis the patient passes into
a state resembling sleep ; not that he loses conscious-
ness of what is taking place around, for he is perfectly
aware of what is said to him and of the people about
him, but when he is " wakened " he forgets all that has
transpired, and feels that he has merely been to sleep.

A stage further than this, and the patient may, on
the initiative of another or of himself, be made to
speak, rise up, walk about the room, and so behave
that a casual observer would not realise that there was
anything unusual in his behaviour. Yet in his normal
waking state the patient has not the faintest recollection
of what has happened. A part of his life has been
wiped out of his normal memory.^ This is a condition
analogous to that of the spiritualistic medium, who,
however, produces this condition by auto-suggestion.
In it the mind is extremely sensitive to suggestions of
the hypnotiser. It is only reasonable to believe that
when this condition is produced by auto-suggestion,
and the subject passes into the trance with the avowed

' The analogous pathological condition is seen in cases such as that of a patient
of mine at the present time who remembers being in hospital in Mesopotamia, and
then sudilenly found himself at home in Surrey. He had meanwhile lived for six
months, visiting Bombay and returning home by Suez, but all this was completely
abolished from his memory.

38 IMMORTALITY ii

intention of getting into communication with a certain
person, his mind will be particularly sensitive to thoughts
about that person, whether these come by direct com-
munication with the spirit of the person, as the spiritu-
alist holds, or whether from some other mind, as the
telepathist considers more probable.

We see, then, that in the phenomena of abstraction
and trance we may find conditions analogous to those
of hypnosis whichever stage of hypnosis we take. In
the first stage there is day-dreaming ; in the second
the clear mental state so conducive to prayer, and so
stimulating to the mind of the thinker, the seer, and
the visionary ; instances of the third stage we have
in the indifference to pain due to the ecstasy of the
martyr or the elation of the soldier on the field of
battle ; and finally the somnambulism of the medium.
I have some hesitation in thus pointing out the analogy
and identity of these states of mind with the stages of
hypnosis, lest it should be thought that I am merely
*' reducing " them to hypnotism. I would therefore
like it to be understood that in my own mind this
*' reduction " in no way limits the value of these states
of mind. These are all most valuable, each in its own
sphere, and the fact that they are shown to be natural
states of mind does not make them less valuable as
weapons of the spiritual. My purpose is not to show
that these states of mind are " only hypnotism," but to
show that they can be scientifically induced, and in fact
are induced in the various stages of what we call, for
want of a better name, " Hypnotism."

There are, however, certain deductions of some
importance which I may be permitted to point out.

First, that the various stages of hypnosis can be
induced without the aid of a hypnotist, by auto-
suggestion. It is obvious that moods of abstraction
and the anaesthesia of the soldier are produced from
within and not by suggestions from without. So also
is the state of mind of the crystal-gazer, the Hindu,

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 39

and the saint at prayer. The deeper stages of amnesia
and somnambulism are not so often self-induced, but
may be, as in the medium and the sleep-walker, in the
former voluntarily, in the latter involuntarily, but in
both without the aid of another person.

In the second place, let us understand that a person
may be in a condition analogous to the early stages of
hypnosis and not be aware of anything abnormal taking
place. A patient recently told me that I could not
hypnotise him, as others had tried without success. I
induced him, however, to let me try. I hypnotised
him and stuck a pin through a fold of skin in his hand,
and continued my suggestions of healing his " shell-
shock." When he was " wakened " he said he had
been awake all the time, had his wits about him and
heard every word I said. I then pointed to his hand,
and to his great surprise he saw the pin sticking through
his flesh without causing any pain. I may add that he
is now quite cured of his headaches, trembling, sleep-
lessness, and general nervousness. But I mention the
case to show how in this stage, as in the ecstasy of
martyrs and wounded soldiers, as well as in crystal-
gazers, it is quite possible to be in such a degree of
'* trance " and yet be conscious of nothing abnormal.

Lastly, I would emphasise the fact that hypnosis is
not an abnormal condition in the sense of being patho-
logical. In its early forms it is exemplified in every
mood of abstraction in which we indulge. The later
and deeper stages are merely an exaggeration of this
mental abstraction in various degrees.

There is no doubt that hypnotism carries with it its
own dangers, which makes it necessary that only duly
qualified men should be permitted to use it, but there
is no branch of surgery or medicine of which the same
cannot be said. Patient work and experience in opera-
tions on the mind as well as on the body teach one
what are the dangers and how to avoid them. In
neither case, in my opinion, is any one justified in using

40 IMMORTALITY ii

his skill for public entertainment, and perhaps not even
for experiment. Personally, I make a point of rarely
using hypnotism except for the cure of disease, not
because of its dangers — for I consider there are none
to the experienced hypnotist — but because it debases
the just uses of a valuable therapeutic agency.

The Power of the Mind to heal Bodily
Disease by Mental Suggestion

In the preceding paragraphs I have put forward the
rival claims of the psychologist and the neurologist to
explain the functions of the mind : the one claiming
that mental processes are the outcome of changes in the
brain cells, the other maintaining that the mind is also
able to initiate activity and control the functions of the
body. We have now to bring forward a further con-
tribution to the solution of this problem, and can put
the rival claims to the test of successful treatment. If
mental suggestion, by itself, can cure diseases of the
body we are compelled to conclude one of two things :
either that the physical disease had its origin in the
mind ; or, if the disease is organic, that the mind has a
direct influence in curing organic physical disease. In
either case the mind is the dominant factor in causing
or curing bodily disease.

Neurasthenia

Let us take the commonest of all these " borderland "
diseases, namely, Neurasthenia. It is a disease in which
both mental and physical symptoms are well marked.
The physical lassitude, irritability of reflexes, sluggish-
ness of bodily functions, constipation, headache, back-
ache, dyspepsia, fatigue after the slightest exertion, and
a '* tired feeling " even after a long night's rest, find their
mental counterpart in irritability of temper, indifi^erence
to the joys and sorrows of life, brooding, introspection,

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 41

worry, and loss of the power to concentrate the mind.
Most of us can claim relationship to some one who was
" born tired " and has been tired ever since.

This disease of neurasthenia is claimed both by the
neurologist and the psychologist, and is treated by these
rival claimants each in his own way.

Its Origin

The neurologist says that the worry and want of con-
centration and other symptoms are caused by physical
or chemical changes in the brain structure. " If we
could," says he, "but carry our investigations far enough,
as some day we shall, we should discover that there are
certain chemical changes in the brain cells to account
for the worry and lassitude." Huxley, for instance,
suggested that every psychosis has its cause in an
underlying neurosis. This is at present nothing more
than a hypothesis : for no one has yet demonstrated
the chemical changes in the brain cells that are supposed
to cause the mental symptoms. But it is, of course,
a perfectly tenable hypothesis on which to make an
investigation. If the absence of thyroid secretion can
produce idiocy, it is within the bounds of possibility
that some toxin may produce neurasthenia. The
thyroid, the suprarenal body, the pituitary body, high
blood pressure, low blood pressure, have all been
accused by physiologists of being the cause of neura-
sthenia. I believe that the neurologist is sometimes
correct. There is a type of ''neurasthenia" due to
wasting diseases like cancer or an organically dis-
organised digestion. I am convinced, however, that
the ordinary type of neurasthenia is not produced in
this way, and this opinion is backed by the history of
its origin in any particular case and by success in treat-
ment by mental suggestion alone, as I shall illustrate
later.

The psychologist (I use the term in its modern

42 IMMORTALITY ii

scientific, not in its more familiar philosophical sense)
looks at the disease from the other point of view. The
condition of the mind, he says, produces the physical
symptoms. The worry is primary and the physical
lassitude secondary. The psychotherapist, therefore,
delves into the mind of the patient, either by question-
ing him directly, or by employing the method known
as "psycho-analysis," to try to discover the underlying
mental cause. He finds that in a very large number
of cases the disease originated soon after some violent
mental strain, usually associated with a strong emotional
element. Disappointment in a love affair is one of the
most common : grief at the loss of wife or child : the
fear of battle : the shock of being torpedoed : anxiety
over business affairs : some wrong committed and the
consequent fear of exposure. Every clergyman and
doctor is familiar enough with these conditions, which
eat out the soul and depress the spirit of the victim,
and make life so heavy that he considers it better to
die than to live. Thus the origin of the complaint in
itself suggests that the psychologist is right in diagnos-
ing the disease as mental rather than physical.

Its Treatment

The correctness of this diagnosis is further con-
firmed by success in treatment by mental suggestion.
In the treatment of neurasthenia the neurologist, pro-
ceeding on the assumption that the symptoms are caused
by physical changes in the brain, treats it accordingly.
Ascribing it at one time to a toxaemia of the gastro-
intestinal tract, one physician treats the patient with
intestinal antiseptics, laxatives, and sour milk : another
stimulates the nervous system with strychnine or
soothes it with bromides : a third puts the patient on
a strict milk diet, treats him with massage and electricity.
Yet another physician, diagnosing the condition as
*' only neurasthenia," sends him off on a sea voyage or

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 43

to a spa. By these means the patient may or may not
be cured ; usually he is not. But if he is cured, it has
still to be proved by the neurologist that it was not
the mental influences, such as the personality of the
physician, or the mental relaxation of the spa, even
more than the change of air and the sulphur, that
produced the cure.

The psychotherapist in his treatment approaches the
patient from an entirely different point of view. Start-
ing from the discovery that in most cases the symptoms
of neurasthenia commenced after some mental strain,
he examines his patient to find out if he has had
any such experience. Having discovered the supposed
cause either by questioning or by psycho-analysis,^ he
begins to treat the patient with mental suggestion. Let
us suppose we have a patient sufi'ering from worry, the
disease of the age. The psychologist treats the patient
by verbal suggestions alone and cures the worry. The
only conclusion we can draw is that the disease was the
result of mental causes and not due to a physical
defect : or, on the other hand, if the disease is said to
be organic, we must conclude that the verbal suggestion

* I cannot stay to describe the methods of psycho-analysis in this paper. Freud's
method is to diagnose the patient's condition by analysing his dreams, which are
said to represent the patient's suppressed wishes expressing themselves in symbolic
form. Jung's method is that of word-association tests, the patient being given
certain words and asked to reply with the first word that comes to the mind. The
principle underlying this method appears to be that emotion checks thought. In
this way certain words {e.g. the word "water" to a patient who had contemplated
suicide by drowning) arouse emotions. The patient, theref(.re, delays in giving the
reaction word. Both by the delay in replying and also by the nature of the patient's
reply, the emotional complex in the patient's mind is laid bare to the physician even
when the patient is unwilling to divulge it or has even forgotten it. Personally, in
my investigations I combine the word-association test with another method suggested
and used by the Freudian school, viz. the "free-association" method. Having
determined the words, e.g., "water" in the illustration above, to which the patient
reacts emotionally, we take these words in rotation and ask the patient to say
exactly what comes into his mind when he thinks of the word "water" and the
other words reacted to ; what picture he sees before his mind, and so on. One
finds that whichever word is taken the thoughts ultimately wander to the one
important event — the central emotional complex of the mind — the desire to drown
himself. I may add that the fact that Freud attributes practically all cases of
hysteria to sexual causes has unfortunately blinded many to the real value both of
his psychology and of the methods of psycho-analysis. It is quite possible, however,
to employ his methods without accepting his conclusions.

44 IMMORTALITY ii

of the doctor is able to produce a change in the diseased
brain cells. The neurologist is thus placed on the
horns of a dilemma, and is compelled to admit the
dominating influence of the mind in either case.

In order to illustrate the cure of such cases by mental
suggestion, I may be permitted to mention some of my
own cases. The first case treated was that of a gentle-
man in Edinburgh who for six years had been suffer-
ing from worry, sleeplessness, and haunting suicidal
tendencies. He came to the conclusion, as many such
patients do, that he was going mad, and fear of the
asylum made him worse. I found that the symptoms
first arose when he was lying ill with diphtheria six
years previously, and when in this prostrate condition
he received news of the death of his little girl. Assum-
ing this to have been the cause of neurasthenia I put
the patient into a hypnoidal condition (in which, how-
ever, he was quite conscious) ^ and treated him with
appropriate suggestions, pointing out to him the cause
of the ailment, urging him to face it and then bury the
dead past : stimulated his faith in immortality and ex-
pectation of reunion with his lost child : impressed on
him the need of abandoning worry and care : taught
him how to be happy though worried, and prevailed on
him to abandon his anxieties and to renew his strength
by resting his soul in the Everlasting Arms. He was
cured after two sittings of about half an hour each, and
when I last saw him, some eight years after the treat-
ment, he had had no return of the symptoms. I would
not have it believed that all cases of neurasthenia are so
easily cured, but bring forward the illustration to show
what effect purely mental suggestion can have on this
class of disease which the neurologist attributes to
changes in brain cells, but which the psychologist
rightly regards as mentally produced. So rapid a cure

^ I may here repeat in parenthesis that for therapeutic purposes complete un-
consciousness in hypnotism is quite unnecessary, the only condition required being
the suppression of the critical faculty, so that the mind may be the more powerfully
concentrated on the suggestions to a degree impossible in ordinary conversation.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN

can only be accounted for on the hypothesis that the
cause was mental.

In the course of writing the account of this case I
have had a visit from an officer recently returned from
the front, who was formerly a patient of mine for
psychotherapy. A year ago he was a clerk in a
shipping office. He came to me with the symptoms
of physical exhaustion, anaemia, and sleeplessness. In
addition he had delusions that anything he touched, and
particularly his pen, was covered with microbes. Bits
of paper about the street and about the house filled
him with the same fear of contamination. It will be
readily understood that such delusions completely in-
capacitated him for his work, for nothing could per-
suade him to write a letter, and he was compelled to
abandon his work suffering from a nervous break-
down. Were the mental symptoms in his case due to
some toxin affecting the brain ? or, on the other hand,
were the physical symptoms caused by mental dis-
turbance .? The test of successful treatment will
furnish us with an answer. An attempt to discover
the cause of the condition by questioning failed to
elicit any satisfactory reason for the disease. I there-
fore applied the method of " psycho-analysis." By this
method I discovered the true cause of his malady ; it
turned out, as is so often the case, to be a suppressed
anxiety of a strongly emotional character, the nature
of which I do not feel justified in making public. In
this case the mere realisation by the patient of the
latent cause, once it was discovered, was practically
sufficient to cure the condition, on the same principle
that the best cure for a " tune running in the head " is
to sing it aloud, and the only cure for a hidden sin is
to confess it. I saw this officer a year ago a candidate
for the asylum : I see him now having been through
the fighting of the " Devil's Wood " in which one
third of his battalion was laid low, but far from being
afflicted with the nerve shock one would have expected

46 IMMORTALITY ii

he has won for himself a commission, and is one of the
few men I have met who genuinely desires to return to
the trenches. These two cases are sufficient to prove
that the primary lesion was not to be sought for in the
brain cells but in the mind, and illustrate the power
which the mind is capable of exercising not only over
mental but over physical conditions.

''Shell Shock''

The experience of the war has given to medical
science another group of interesting examples of
" borderland " disease, namely those grouped together
as " shell shock." ^ I have at the present time under
my care men of the Royal Navy who are suffering
from blindness, loss of speech, loss of control over
limbs and body which results in a condition of per-
petual tremor even during sleep, and other physical
nervous disorders, all of which are produced by " shell
shock." In these cases the affection of the nervous
system is of a functional and not an organic nature,
and exhibits no changes such as the microscope or test-
tube can discover. Examined by all the known tests
the affected nerve is in no sense different from any
normal nerve. This may, of course, be due to the
imperfection of our laboratory methods, but both the
origin and the treatment of these interesting cases
encourage us in the belief that " shell shock " is
primarily a mental rather than a nervous disease. One
or two cases I quote. One patient of mine, J. D.,
was on board a drifter when it was attacked by a sub-
marine. He was at the gun and eagerly gazing across
the waves at the submarine. This slight strain on the
eyes, coupled with the great emotional strain on the
nervous system, produced a blindness by the next
morning which was almost complete. Another patient
1 am still treating was occupied one Sunday in dragging

1 I use the term in the very widest sense, as practically equivalent to war stress.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 47

bodies out of the debris of an explosion. Next morn-
ing he woke up to find his arm paralysed. This
paralysis, like the blindness of the other patient, is
only of a hysterical type. I have obtained some move-
ment of his fingers under hypnosis, and still hope
to cure him entirely. A young Belgian I saw had a
bullet wound in his arm and lost the use of the fore-
arm. The surgeon, therefore, cut down to examine
the nerves which he supposed to have been injured.
He found no evidence of injury, the wound being only
a flesh wound. The lad was treated by the physician
in charge with suggestion, in this case without hypnosis,
and when I saw him he was well on the way to re-
covery. I have read of another case, one of many that
have appeared in the public press, of a soldier who was
struck dumb in battle but was suddenly cured on
being kissed by a young lady visiting at his bedside !

Perhaps I may dwell with a little more detail on
one or two of my cases. One' of my patients was in

H.M.S. when she was blown up by a mine.

When I saw him about sixteen months after the event
he was in a condition of extreme terror ; day and night
he had the sight of the sinking ship with all its horrors
in his mind. He had no control over his emotions,
was " blubbering " continually, and was shaking all
over from head to foot. If a plate fell in the ward,
he would literally jump out of bed and hide under
it. After the first treatment by mental suggestion
his tremors were greatly lessened : after the second
he could control his feelings and could discuss the
sinking of the ship without emotion ; his headaches had
also disappeared : and after further treatment, he was
so far cured that he expressed his desire to undergo
an operation on his ear and throat, the very thought
of which had previously produced in him a spasm of
terror. Another patient, J. S., aged 42, was in the
Dardanelles, on a mine-sweeper which was frequently
shelled. When I saw him his hair had turned white

48 IMMORTALITY ii

with the strain of work and constant exposure to
danger. He had bad nightmares, and tremors, especi-
ally of the limbs, which were in a continual state of
spasticity. He proved an excellent subject for hypnosis,
becoming a somnambulist. He has now lost his
spasticity, and his tremors have disappeared. At the
time of writing he no longer dreams, the nightmares
have disappeared, and he is well enough to return
home to his work. A very interesting case was that
of E. C, aged 37, officers' steward, who came com-
plaining of neuritis. On examination, however, I found
that he was completely anaesthetic from head to foot,
so that I could stick pins into him anywhere over the
body. He won for himself in the ward the nick-
name of the "living pin-cushion." I could not help
regretting that he did not require to have his appendix
removed, for the operation could have been done
painlessly without further anaesthetic ! We have in
this man a case of " hysterical " anaesthesia, produced,
as I interpret it, as an expression of his protective
instinct in order to ward off the " slings of fortune."
In his desire to avoid hurt of any kind, he has
quite unconsciously become anaesthetic. His case is
very interesting as another instance of the power of
the mind to cancel the incoming sensations. I have
managed to dispel his neuritis and cure his shakiness,
by mental suggestion, but, up to the present, even
under deep hypnosis, I have not managed to restore
his sensation of pain, and the conditions of service
prevent my proceeding further with the case.

The only conclusion we can draw from these cases
is that " shell shock," in spite of all its physical
symptoms of paralysis, etc., is primarily a mental rather
than a nervous disease. Psychologists are therefore at
the present time seeking for the explanation of these
lesions. The matter is still under investigation, but the
following view seems most in keeping with what is
known of such conditions.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 49

Those acquainted with psychotherapy are familiar
with the theory that neuroses and psychoses can be
caused by suppressed emotion. When a woman is
oppressed with grief even her next-door neighbour
knows that it is much better for her to " have a good
cry " than to suppress her grief. Suppressed emotions
are like suppressed steam, and often lead to disaster in
insanity and the asylum. An old lady I know lost her
husband by death, and at the time showed no grief
at the loss, but two days afterwards began to have
delusions that the rest of the family were going to be
taken from her, and subsequently she had to be put
under restraint. The theologian knows that unless
the sin is confessed it produces a depressed and brood-
ing disposition like that of Cain in the traditional
story, who seems to have started with a melancholia
and ended with the aimless, restless wandering of
mania. When the sin is confessed the sinner at once
feels himself a new man, the sky clears, and the spirit
is liberated because the suppressed emotion has been let
loose. Most of us have had the uncomfortable feeling
of having " something on our mind " which makes us
worry and feel restless. As soon, however, as we look
for the cause and bring it into consciousness, the rest-
lessness disappears. This principle we apply to shell
shock. The soldier on the field of battle, the sailor
mine-sweeping at sea, are constantly in a state of extreme
tension. The natural expression of fear is to turn and
run in flight. These men suppress that natural
impulse : nothing will induce them to give way to
fear : grim determination is written upon their faces.
But their very courage is a danger to them. Gun-
powder is the more dangerous when it is packed tight
and closely confined ; so, too, with the instinctive
emotions. The soldier succeeds in suppressing his fear,
but that very suppression makes an explosion the more
dangerous. A sudden bursting of a high explosive
stuns him for a moment, and deprives him of his power

50 IMMORTALITY ii

of control ; and in that moment the pent-up emotion
bursts forth. When he comes to himself he finds that
he has completely lost the reins, his grip over himself
has gone, his self-mastery has given way, and he falls a
victim to these symptoms of paralysis, or of general
tremors, characteristic of the cases of "shell shock."
It is thus often the bravest men, those who have been
most successful in mastering and suppressing their fear,
that fall victims to this disease. It is not maintained
that all cases of " shell shock " can be explained in
this way : many cases may be due to a complex of
causes. But it seems clear that the above is the cause
in many cases of the disease, and a contributory cause
in others.

I think these cases I have cited will be sufficient to
convince the reader of the extraordinary power of the
mind over the body, and to compel us to the conclusion
that, however much the body and its sensations may
modify mental conditions, the mind is the predominant
factor in the life of the individual.

Christian Science

In the popular mind the subject of Mental Healing
is so commonly confused with the claims of Christian
Science that a few words on this subject will not be
out of place. That many of the cures of Christian
Scientists are authentic I have no doubt. Convinced
as I am of the power of mind over body, I should be
surprised if it were not the case. But I am equally con-
vinced that the philosophy or "religion" on which it
is based is false. I am antecedently inclined to believe
the lady who told me that she had suffered from
nervousness and was troubled with aches and pains
shifting from place to place about her body, and that
she was cured by believing in the Christian Science
doctrine that " God was All, and that, pain and evil
being illusion, she must be healthy and have no pains."

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 51

But when a man tells me that he broke his leg, and
after treatment by Christian Science was immediately
cured, his statement is so entirely contrary to all that
is scientifically known about the body, that it would
require overwhelming evidence to convince me that,
assuming the person to be telling the truth, this was
not a mistake in diagnosis. Even if he tells me that
the fracture was diagnosed as such by a medical man
I should still be unconvinced, for even the best of
surgeons make mistakes on such matters. To take
another illustration. If a man's arm is paralysed by
" shell shock," in which there is no lesion of the nerve-
trunk, but where the function alone is at fault owing
to some blockage, I can conceive that a discharge of
energy from the mind, whether by the religious emotion
fomented by Christian Science, or by Suggestion under
Hypnosis, may break down the block, and so suddenly
and immediately restore the function. But when a
patient comes to me with his nerve-trunk severed by a
bullet, I do not believe that any amount of suggestion
or of faith will mend the lesion, and I assure him that
it will be at least some months before his arm regains
its power and sensation. This is the radical distinction
between the Christian Scientist and the Psychotherapist :
it is based on a fundamental difference between an
organic lesion like a ruptured nerve, and a functional
lesion such as we find in the cases of patients suffering
from " shell shock " to which I have already referred.

At the same time, I am quite prepared to admit that
Mental Healing may very favourably influence even
organic lesions. We have already shown what effect
mental suggestion may have on blood supply. But
the speedy restoration of bodily tissue is very largely
dependent on blood supply. It is quite obvious, there-
fore, that the process of healing can be accelerated in a
marked degree by increasing the blood supply under
mental suggestion. Again, healing is greatly aided
by the abolition of pain, so that, if the mind can abolish

52 IMMORTALITY n

pain, it will materially aid in curing organic disease.
Pain is a very valuable aid in the detection of physical
maladies : it waves the red flag to warn us that
disease is about to make an onslaught on our bodies,
so that we, being forewarned, may also be forearmed.
But its proper task is then complete. If it continues
to wave its flag and inflict constant and severe suffering,
it becomes a positive danger. Following the sugges-
tions of other hypnotists I have performed this interest-
ing experiment : I inflicted two burns on the arms of
a hypnotised subject. In the one case I suggested that
the pain should disappear, and it did so ; in the other
I allowed the burn to be normally painful. It was
found that the painless burn healed with much greater
rapidity than the other. This clearly indicates that,
after a certain point, pain acts as a deterrent to rapid
healing ; and the abolition of pain by suggestion may
therefore aid considerably in the cure even of organic
diseases. But in both illustrations, whether in the
regulation of the blood supply, or in the abolition of
pain, the efi^ect that the mind has in healing the body
is an indirect one, and has no relation to such a case
as the sudden knitting of broken bones which the
credulity of the Christian Scientist permits him to
believe possible.

Now, what is the significance of Mental Healing ?
It is that by the influence of the spoken word we have
been able to drive away physical pain, control physical
movements which have become uncontrolled, bring
back power to limbs afllicted with palsy. Physical
symptoms have been cured by psychical causes, thus
demonstrating the mastery of the mind over the bodv.
In other words, we have in the mind an energy which
acts not only in its own sphere of mental life, but flows
over and floods the arid clods of the physical plains to
produce health and gladness.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 53

Telepathy

Having pointed out that we have real evidence that
the mind can dominate the body and all its functions,
let us now consider certain evidence which suggests
that the mind can act without using the ordinary
channels of bodily sense.

Just as the pursuit of Astrology brought to light
facts which laid the foundation of the science of
Astronomy, so the pursuit of Spiritualism has brought
to light facts of thought-transference or Telepathy,
These have already given rise to a certain amount of
scientific investigation, and will be more thoroughly
investigated in the future.

Only the briefest indication of their nature can be
given in this place ; but some further illustration will
be found in Essay VII. of this volume. Probably the
subject first forced itself to the front owing to the
frequently recorded cases of " wraiths " appearing at
the time of death. Many of us have personal experi-
ence of having the thought of some person obtruded
on our mind, and have discovered later that this
person died at that moment, or passed through some
extraordinary experience. The image of the person is
flashed across our mind, perhaps visualised. I should
hold myself that, if visualised, the appearance is a
hallucination, the result of a subjective impression.
This states very concisely the difference between the
theory of Telepathy and that of Spiritualism.

The Spiritualist seems to believe that the spirit of
the departed is in the room and manifests himself in
some actual form, but a more reasonable theory is
that the impression is purely subjective, and due to
Telepathy from the dying person. It is to be noted
that in several of the best-authenticated of these stories
of apparitions of the dying, the death takes place in
India or Africa, and the recipient is in England. In

54 IMMORTALITY ii

the Proceedings of the S.P.R. many instances of exactly
this class are recorded.^

The following account by Dr. Leonard Guthrie,
relates the experience of a credible witness, E. W. M.,
a distinguished scientist and F.R.S. In his own words
he writes ^ : —

" When I lived in Canada, the following case
occurred : an Englishman and an American clubbed
together to try to reach the Klondyke goldfield by
the overland trail, i.e.^ by going due north from the
prairies, instead of following the usual course of cross-
ing by the Canadian Pacific Railway to Vancouver, then
taking steamer up the coast to Sitka, and crossing back
over the mountains via White Horse Pass. After the
pair had passed on their journey what the American
judged to be the outposts of civilisation, he shot the
Englishman while he lay asleep, tried to destroy the
body by burning it, rifled his baggage, taking every-
thing of value, and returned. When he was questioned
as to what had become of his companion, he replied
that he (the American) had become discouraged and
had given up the expedition, but that the Englishman
had pushed on. But there was an encampment of
Indians close to the spot where the crime had been
committed. The old chief saw two men come north
and encamp in the night, he heard a shot and saw one
man go south. He went to the camp, saw the body,
and informed the nearest post of N.W. Mounted
Police. They trailed the murderer, and arrested him
before he could escape across the U.S. border. He
was brought to Regina. Meanwhile, the brother of
the murdered man, in England, had a dream in which
he saw his absent brother lying dead and bloody on
the ground. He came down next morning very de-
pressed, told his dream, and announced his intention

1 For a case that has just come under my own notice, cf. p. 74, Note B.
- Extract from " Dreams and their Interpretation," by Sir Robert Armstrong-
Jones, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S., in The Practitioner.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN

of going straight out to Canada to see if anything had
happened to his brother. He arrived out as the trial
of the murderer was progressing. He identified several
articles in the possession of the murderer as the property of
his late brother. The murderer was hanged at Regina."

Such instances are comparatively common, and if
they do not convince the sceptic they at least afford
sufficient ground for scientific investigation. There
must be some cause for these phenomena, and if they
are not due to telepathy then it is just as necessary to
explain in some other way the psychology of such
mental aberrations.

In a series of seances arranged by the Society for
Psychical Research, with Mrs. Piper as medium, the
investigators sought to obtain an account of a certain
conversation which took place between Mrs. Sidgwick
and Mr. F. W. H. Myers, some time before his death.
This conversation was known to none except to the two
participants. In her trance Mrs. Piper claimed to have
access to " Myers," and an attempt was made to induce
the spirit of " Myers " to reproduce the conversation
through Mrs. Piper, As long as Mrs. Sidgwick was
absent and did not come into contact with Mrs. Piper,
the medium failed to reproduce the conversation.
When, however, Mrs. Sidgwick came into contact with
Mrs. Piper, there was a remarkable, though not perfectly
accurate, account given of the conversation. That is
to say, it was the proximity of Mrs. Sidgwick, who
knew the conversation, that made the diflference. Mrs.
Sidgwick, therefore, concludes, and rightly so in my
opinion, that the medium became possessed of the
information, not from the spirit of " Myers," but by
mental transference from Mrs. Sidgwick herself. In
other words, though it did not prove communication
with the spirit world it did afford important evidence
of telepathy.

The subject needs patient and thorough investiga-
tion. Are we to assume that there is a psychic ether

56 IMMORTALITY ri

pervading space in the same way as that material ether
which the scientist assumes to be omnipresent ; or are
we to believe in the theory of " brain waves," by which
the activity of one brain is transferred to another brain,
as the air conveys waves of sound from one man's
voice to the ear of another man ; or, as a third
possibility, is the mind altogether free from the limita-
tions of time and space, and does it thus possess the
power of presenting itself to two persons at once,
possibly at remote parts of the earth ?

On the one hand, experiments in telepathy, e.g.,
those conducted at Brighton, and quoted by Podmore
in the Encyclopedia Britannica, have shown that more
successes are obtained when the person giving and the
person receiving the message are in the same room,
which suggests that distance does have an influence on
the transmission of thought. On the other hand, the
fact that messages have been transferred from one
hemisphere to another, from Canada to England, sug-
gests that the process of transference is independent of
space and time and that it is concerned, therefore, with
mind itself. It is difficult to conceive how brain waves,
the very name of which suggests a material medium,
can overcome the obstacle of continents and penetrate
a brain in the uttermost parts of the earth, and to do so
with sufficient force to rise into consciousness.

Whatever the explanation, however, it is safe to say
that in telepathy we have an indication that the mind
is much less circumscribed by the limitations of the
material body than is ordinarily supposed.

III. Study of the Biological Development of
THE Mind (a) in the Individual and {b)
IN the Race, pointing to the Gradual
Ascendancy of the Mind over the Body

We now pass to another line of argument. In the
preceding section we have been examining the mind

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 57

of man as we know it in its present state of evolution.
This investigation has shown us the mind dominating
the body, having the power to abolish its sensations, to
cure its ills and, liberating itself, in a sense, from the
brain, to communicate with other minds at a distance
from it.

We have now to look at the mind biologically, as it
passes from its low and humble origin to attain that
position of mastery which it now possesses. This
study will convince us that in its earlier stages the
function of the mind is largely passive in the sense that
it has always to await the impact of some external
physical stimulus, and has no power of initiation in
itself : but in its later stages the mind is found to
acquire more and more the power of initiating action,
and seems to be on the way to becoming master of itself
and of its own destinies.

This development I shall trace both in the individual
and in the race. In reality the development is analo-
gous in both cases, for the individual passes through the
stages of evolution that the race has passed through,
from the speck of protoplasm from which each of
us originated to our present state of growth and
intelligence.

(^a) In the Individual

First, then, I shall trace briefly the evolution of vision
and of the emotions in the individual in order to draw
attention to that point in evolution where the physical
surrenders its rights to the sovereignty of the mind.

The development of Vision furnishes us with a» ex-
cellent example of this change.

The new-born child possesses the whole apparatus
of vision — cornea, lens, retina, optic nerve and tracts,
and centres of vision in the brain. But the child
does not see, and has as yet no sense of vision. For
the development of that sense external stimuli are

58 IMMORTALITY ii

necessary : the child must open its eyes and let the rays
from objects around, from its toys, its mother, or the
lamp, fall upon its retina and be conveyed to its brain,
where they produce an appropriate sensation. These
external stimuli, we repeat, are necessary to sight :
without them there would be no sense of vision. In
short, the mental representation is dependent upon
physical sensations.

But this does not remain so always. Look at the
child a few years later. The sensations have meanwhile
been stored as memories, combined to acquire meanings,
associated for the building up of visions that "eye hath
not seen." This power of calling up new visions we
call " imagination " : it is quite independent of external
stimulus. Indeed imagination is more vivid when these
stimuli are cut off. Consequently we shut our eyes
when we wish to image anything, and seers receive
their visions in the dark watches of the night.

In the highest examples we have the genius of the
artist, poet, and philosopher, each of whom expresses
in his own plastic material of words or of pigment
the creations of his imagination. The balance has now
turned : mental representation is altogether independent
of physical stimuli, and the mind can initiate its own
objects of imagination. Indeed we may go a step
further and we find that imagination can become so
vivid that it deceives the senses into believing that the
imaged objects are actually present. This we term
hallucination. The functions have been reversed and
the mind is now creating the sensations. The develop-
ment of vision, then, shows us the transference of
initia^ve from the periphery, namely the bodily sensa-
tion, to the mind at the centre.

The Emotions. — The second illustration we take is
that of the emotions. Readers of James's Psychology
are familiar with the theory there enunciated, that the
emotions are the result of bodily movement.

" The bodily changes follow directly the perception

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 59

of the exciting fact, and our feeling of the same changes
as they occur is the emotion. Common sense says we
lose our fortune, are sorry and weep : we meet a bear,
are frightened and run : we are insulted by a rival, are
angry and strike." In contrast to that James holds
that " we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we
strike, afraid because we tremble."

In this account of the emotions we have the direct
assertion that the mental states of emotion are dependent
on physical movements, and therefore subordinated to
them. We need have no hesitation in accepting this
theory, provided that it is intended to account only for
the origin and early development of the emotions.
Darwin, in his fascinating book on the Expression
of the Emotions^ has shown the physiological purpose
of emotional expressions, which seems to prove their
physiological origin. The scowl expressive of anger is
the vestige of the setting of the brow assumed by an
animal before charging a hostile animal. The sneer
which exhibits the canine teeth is all that remains of
the fierce threat of the wolf to devour. I have myself
often seen South Sea Islanders express disgust of others
by turning their back on them and lifting one leg in
the manner of the dog. We are therefore quite
justified in admitting the truth of this evidence, and in
accepting the theory that the emotions originated in
physical movements which serve a physiological purpose,
so long as it relates to the origin and development, and
not to the present state, of our emotions. These move-
ments, originally expressing physiological functions,
have now assumed a new meaning, having attained a
mental significance which has obliterated the traces of
their physiological origin. In the development of the
emotions there comes the time, corresponding to that
we have noted in the case of vision, when the move-
ment no longer creates the emotion, though it may
suggest it, but is itself produced by the emotion. The
balance of power has changed from the physical to the

6o IMMORTALITY ii

mental, so that the physical actions which originally
produced the emotions (as James has told us) are now
merely the expressions of those emotions. This con-
clusion is in keeping with the judgment of common
sense and of introspection. It is embodied in ordinary
language ; the word e-motion suggests a motion from
within outward, a movement originated in the mind
and expressing itself in physical activity. Thus we
now knit our brow because we are angry ; we- show our
teeth in order to express a threat ; smile because we
feel pleasure ; and run away because we are frightened.
In short, while mental emotion originated in physical
movements, the balance has now turned and the mind
now initiates these movements and uses them as modes
of expression.

The process which we have illustrated in the indi-
vidual, by which vision and emotion have liberated
themselves from the domination of the body, is also
found to be at work in the biological evolution of the
race. Here, too, we can trace the process by which
the mind grows from being a puny parasite of the body
to become its master and lord.

(^b) In the Race

In tracing the biological development of the mind
in the race I cannot, in the space at my disposal, even
mention all the varied stages through which it passes.
It is possible only to touch on the more important ones,
but these will suffice for our argument.

My purpose in outlining these stages is to trace the
gradually increasing ascendancy of the mind from its
humble origin, a weakling, dependent for its every
movement on the body, until it attains the full vigour
of mindhood which subdues the parent from which it
sprang, and makes the body its slave.

In the earliest forms of animal life, and even in
some forms of plant life, we find what appears to be

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 6i

evidence of mental activity, in that their actions seem
to exhibit an intelligent purpose. When the sensitive
plant is touched, its leaves curl up and droop, as though
to withdraw themselves from danger. The Venus Fly-
trap, which closes its petals over the fly and traps it,
appears to possess more wit and cunning than its hapless
victim. I'he single-celled amoeba, the earliest form of
animal life, puts forth its pseudopodia or prolongations
and, encircling a morsel of food, seizes and absorbs it.
AJl these organisms, although devoid of any nervous
system, perform movements which so simulate purposive
actions that the casual observer is apt to jump to the
conclusion that they are endowed with mental power.

But are we justified in concluding that these early
forms of life exhibit mental power : can we say that
they possess intelligence ?

From the philosophical point of view it is maintained
that the fact that their actions are directed towards
useful ends, suggests that a mind must be at work.
The philosopher will argue that these actions cannot be
explained except by postulating a guiding and directing
force which is essentially intelligent and purposive.
This, however, does not mean that these creatures have
minds in the individual sense, nor that they possess the
power of initiation with themselves as centre. I, per-
sonally, agree with the views of the philosopher, and
believe in the existence of the " cosmic mind " which
dwells in all living things and works out its purposes
in them ; but, as scientists, it is better that we should
not accept this as a postulate and argue from it as fact,
until we find some scientific and empirical evidence of
the presence of mind in these low forms of life. Looked
at from the scientific point of view there are several
facts which make us hesitate to affirm that these primi-
tive forms of life have minds. In the first place, their
actions are of a mechanical nature whereby we can
predict with certainty what their movements will be.
If you touch the Venus Fly-trap it will close its petals,

62 IMMORTALITY ii

quite irrespective of whether the stimulus is a fly which
it can eat or a bit of wood. In other words, it acts
without discrimination : its action is purely mechanical.
Similarly, in an animal like the mollusc, action is
purely reflex, so that when you apply any irritant you
can always predict with certainty that it will respond in
a particular way. In the case of the amoeba, the
mechanical nature of its movements have been demon-
strated in an experiment devised by Professor Schafer,
which reproduces these movements in a globule of olive-
oil under conditions which exclude the possibility of
mental interference.^

We cannot, therefore, claim that as yet we have
conclusive proof of a mind in these early forms of life,
except perhaps in the vague sense of a mind general and
diffuse, pervading all living things, and expressing its
power and purpose through them. We often hear it
said that a musician " makes his violin speak," his
piano " live." They are not living, but they are the
vehicle of a mind behind. In this sense we can perhaps
say that these primitive creatures possess a mind. But
they possess a mind only in a passive sense ; they
contain it rather than possess it.^

Let us pass to a higher stage in the development ot
mind, in which we find a store of nerve energy.

If we destroy the brain of a frog and then touch its
belly with acid, it will lift its leg and make movements
to scratch off the acid. This is a purely reflex action,
and acts with that mechanical certainty which seems to
exclude the working of an intelligence. But further,

^ " Take on a glass rod a drop of ordinary olive-oil which has been coloured
with Scharlach R., and place it gently on the surface of a i per cent solution of
sodium bicarbonate." The result observed is that the olive-oil sends out prolonga-
tions, and performs movements almost identical with those of the amoeba. This,
however, is purely a phenomenon of surface tension.

- It is only right to state that, whereas I have maintained the generally accepted
view of scientific men on this question, there is a growing opinion among scientists,
that even in these very early forms of life there are the manifestations of mental
activity and intelligence. Were such a view to become accepted I need hardly point
out that the general conclusion I am arguing for would be further strengthened, but
I prefer not to assume more than the evidence would be generally admitted to prove.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 63

let the leg be restrained from movement, and the brain-
less creature will lift the other leg to perform the same
service. This looks, at first sight, as if the animal,
realising that one action was frustrated, devised another
action to perform the same service, and, in doing so,
showed purposive intelligence. This, however, would
be going beyond our premisses. He would be a bold
man who would affirm that a brainless frog has a mind.
This experiment, however, does take us one stage
higher. In order to perform this action, reflex as it is,
we must assume that the creature has a store of nerve
energy. When this source of energy finds the normal
channel of outflow closed, it expends itself by passing
down another : denied access to one leg, it discharges
its force down the motor nerve of the other leg which
moves towards the irritated point on the belly. We
have here, then, a new factor which distinguishes this
" reflex " frog from the amoeba and lower forms of
life, namely, its power to store up nerve energy. It
has not, however, the power possessed by the normal
frog and all higher animals of determining at will into
which channel that store of nerve force shall be
directed.

The next stage is the all-important one, from our
point of view, since it introduces the psychic element,
and presents us with phenomena which can be explained
only in terms of mental life. The organism now
develops along two paths which are associated together.
. (i) On the sensory side, the organism now possesses
the power of recognising the sensations which come to
it — in other words, it develops Cotisciousness.

(2) On the motor side, the organism has the power
of directing its reserve store of nerve energy in any
direction in accordance with its own desires towards
carrying out its purposes and fulfilling its aims — in other
words, it develops a fVill.

In both Consciousness and Will we have phenomena
which the laws of Physiology entirely fail to explain,

64 IMMORTALITY ii

and which Psychology alone can even attempt to
elucidate.

(i) Consciousness is the sensation of psychic states.
When we speak of being *' conscious " of any sensation
we mean that by some means we become " aware " of it.
Let us realise that there are millions of sensations which
never rise to consciousness ; impressions that do not
impress our mind sufficiently to make us " aware " of
them. Such, for instance, are the " sensations " of
normal digestion, breathing, or the secretion of glands.
These functions are always sending impressions up to
the higher centres, but, under normal conditions, they
do not produce consciousness of their movements. They
become conscious only when these organs are disturbed
and their functions upset, in which case we may be very
painfully " aware " of them. But let us pause for a
moment. What do we mean when we say that we are
" aware " ? What is it to be " aware " ^ Who is it
that is conscious } We have, in using these terms,
taken a great stride : we have, in fact, passed from
physiological to psychical terms. In using such words as
*' aware " we are using terms for which we can find no
physiological substitute. We have, in fact, entered the
realm of *' mind," a sphere into which physiology can-
not enter and in which it cannot live. Like the fish
which cannot breathe in the open air, physiology pants
and expires in its efforts to follow the mind into the
psychic region ; the atmosphere is too rarefied : thought
is too ethereal to be grasped by it. In short, physiology
has to abandon this field to psychology.

In the earlier stages physiology may, with some
reason, claim to explain the phenomena presented. It
can trace the stimulus as it passes round the reflex arc,
up the sensory nerve, across the synapse or junction,
and down the motor nerve. This acts with the same
mechanical certainty as the touching of an electric button
at one end of a wire produces the ringing of a bell at
the other end. But when we come to consciousness.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 65

physiology fails to satisfy us, because we are dealing
with something that is different in kind from nerve
energy. We may make use of our last illustration
(remembering that it is only an analogy, and at best
only explains the mechanism of consciousness) to make
clear this difference. An ordinary current of electricity
produces heat in a wire — such is the normal mechanism
of nerve energy as illustrated in reflex action. But
let this current pass through a filament of exceptional
refinement, and be raised to a greater intensity, and
the heat will be transformed into light. Consciousness
is thus a phenomena of intensification : it is produced
when our sensations are raised to a sufficiently high pitch
of tension. It is due to mental friction : to the effort
to cut a new channel through the brain. Heat and
light may both be produced by the transmission of a
current of electricity along an electric wire : they may,
from the physical point of view, differ only in the
length of their waves and in velocity. But the essential
feature of our analogy, imperfect as it is, is that in its
resultant expression light is a different form of energy
from heat^ and therefore stimulates an entirely different
system of nerve-endings in our bodies. Consciousness
is thus a different form of energy from nerve energy,
though it may have arisen out of it ; it is, in fact,
psychic energy, which it is impossible to describe in
terms of the physical.

This dramatic leap from the physiological to the
psychical is the most important factor in the evolution
of mind. It is the decisive factor which once and for
all turns the balance and establishes the supremacy of
the mind over the body. This is that reversal of
power which we have already illustrated in the faculty
of vision and in the emotions, both of which were
born of sensory impulses but grew to become psychic
powers by throwing off the yoke of the flesh.

Henceforward the mind begins to live a life inde-
pendent of the body. The tulip springs from a bulb,

66 IMMORTALITY ii

and in its early stages derives all its sustenance from the
store of food in the bulb. But when its leaves are well
established, and it has exhausted its store of nourish-
ment, it begins to breathe in strength and force from
the sunlight and air around, without which it would
fade and wither and fail to produce the perfect flower.
So mind can come to perfection only by turning to the
light, and freely exercising its intellectual and aesthetic
functions. The mind arises from the body and its
sensations, but only in the sense that the dragon-fly
springs from the grub which lives in the mud of a
stagnant pool ; its origin is humble but its life in the
sunlight is a whirl of coloured brilliance and wanton
liberty. This new form of energy which we call con-
sciousness has a similar freedom and autonomy ; it
originated in physical sensations of the body, but has
taken wing, breathes the airs of the ethical blue, and is
nourished by spiritual food. Thus the mind has now as
little in common with the sensations of the body from
which it sprang, as this fiery, dazzling creature has with
the slime-covered grub.

Let us, then, note the significance of this change.
The mind has now the power to choose its own food,
because it knows what it is getting. This truth we
have illustrated in the individual by the power possessed
by the mind to refuse sensations ofi^ered to it and to
produce a psychic blindness and psychic deafness. The
results of this are very far-reaching from the point of
view of our mental and spiritual development. "Take
heed what (or how) ye hear," said the Master, realising
that it is in the power of man to respond or not to the
appeals of sense made to him. There are other ways
of resisting the voices of the sirens than the crude
method of stuffing the ears with wax ; the mind
may refuse to listen. St. Paul follows up the injunc-
tion of the Master by encouraging us to think only of
" whatsoever things are beautiful and of good report,"
realising that the mind is capable of seeking the best

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 67

things, by which alone it can develop and fulfil its
highest life.

(2) The Development of the Will. — Hitherto we
have dealt with the new stage in the biology of the
mind in so far as it affects the sensory side in the
development of consciousness. We have now to
study it on the motor side, and to discuss the power
of the mind to react as it wills to sensations in order
either to annul or to reinforce any tendencies to
action. Let us compare this stage with the foregoing.
In the case of reflex action, as in the occipitated frog,
we could always predict that the animal would perform
certain movements in response to certain irritation.
With the advent of will we cannot so predict action.
The normal frog, for instance, if touched with acid may
scratch itself, may shrink into itself, or may jump away,
and we can never say which it will choose to do. Again,
in the " reflex " animal the greater the stimulus the
greater is the reaction : the stronger the acid the more
violently will the frog scratch : the more a child is
annoyed the more vigorously does it cry. But the adult
man or woman in whom the mind is fully developed can
either inhibit or reinforce the tendency to any particular
action.

A man may be beaten with many stripes, and not
raise a finger in protest ; for he is exercising another
power than that of reflex action, the power of mental
inhibition or self-restraint. On the other hand, incoming
sensations may be greatly reinforced hy the mind, produc-
ing a more violent motor reaction. No casual observer,
for instance, would have understood why, in a certain
episode, the dangling of a bit of string by a 'bus con-
ductor should have produced such wild fury in the
driver of the 'bus behind. The grim humour of the
situation was, however, revealed and the tury accounted
for, when the conductor explained his little joke — the
driver's father was being hanged that morning. The
stimulus of a bit of string was quite insufficient in itself

68 IMMORTALITY ii

to produce the reaction ; but it was reinforced by the
mind which grasped the sinister meaning, and let loose
stores of energy which turned the driver's face purple
and the air blue.

These illustrations will convince us that the adult
mind does not react mechanically nor proportionately
to any incoming sensation, but has the power either to
react vigorously or to exert an inhibitory action in
response to it. This implies that there must be a store
of energy, a reservoir of nerve force, accumulated some-
where in the brain, which the mind can draw upon and
can either withhold or expend in response to any given
stimulus. This power we call the tVill. The will is the
power the mind possesses of directing as it desires the
store of nerve energy to the accomplishment of its own
ends. Contrast this with the lower forms of animal life
already illustrated, which have a store of nerve energy,
but which have not the power to direct that energy into
any channel they will, but must necessarily discharge it
down the most open or frequently used channel. For
will two things are essential, both of which we have in
the developed mind — a store of nerve energy and the
capacity to direct that energy into any desired channel.

There may, however, be those who are still sceptical
of the existence of a definite power we call the will, and
who consider that the discharge of nerve energy to which
we give that name can be accounted for by the purely
mechanical workings of the law of association. In order
to illustrate the difference between the law of association
and the working of will, I would recommend such to
try the simple experiment devised by Dr. McDougall
of Oxford. Take a series of nonsense syllables, read
them over a number of times in a casual, indifferent
manner, and record how many repetitions are required
to memorise accurately the whole series. In this case
the memorising is brought about purely by the associa-
tion of one syllable with another, the one mechanically
calling up the other. Now repeat the experiment with

ir THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 69

another series of nonsense syllables, but this time, instead
of reading them indifferently, " set your mind " to it,
directing your energies towards your object. It may
surprise you to find that it now requires only some ten
or twelve repetitions. Obviously, in this latter case,
some new force has been added which is something
diff^erent, and far more potent than mere association,
and produces a very different result. This additional
force is the will.

We may now summarise the stages of the evolution
of the mind. There are, of course, countless other
intermediate stages, but it is sufficient for us to have
mentioned the most important : —

( 1 ) In the first stage, that illustrated in the amoeba,
we have as yet no conclusive proof of the presence of a
mind, except perhaps in the sense of a pervading mind,
passive and impersonal, a part of the cosmic mind
working in and through the primitive creature.

(2) In the second stage, we have the animals which
possess a nervous system, whose actions are controlled
by the flow of nerve energy or neurokyme.

(3) In the third stage, we have those animals in
which incoming sensations have developed a centre for
sensations, the central nervous system, where nerve
energy is stored, and from which it is discharged
by regularly constituted channels, and in response to
specially strong stimuli.

(4) In the final stage, sensations are raised to a high
pitch of intensity, and in some unknown way produce a
psychic form of energy we call consciousness. In this
stage, also, the organism not only has a store of nerve
energy, but possesses the power of directing that energy
at will into any channel which leads to the fulfilment of
its conscious purposes.

In the will, as in consciousness, we have a new
element in the evolution of the life, the development
of a force which can dominate brain processes. It is
an autonomy, controlling the nervous system, and

IMMORTALITY ii

regulating the functions of the mind. It is a psychic
force which from its place of authority can direct the
stores of nerve force, now into this channel, and now
into that, by a power of choice which no physiological
law, and, indeed, no psychological law, can explain or
predict.

The body thus appears to have produced what it can
no longer control, nor even understand ; and evolution
has brought forth the flower and glory of its age-long
development.

Beyond this stage of mental evolution it is not neces-
sary to go, because we have now crossed the great gulf
between the physiological and the psychical, and have
set our feet firmly on that shore where the higher
faculties of the mind, reason and abstract thought, are
subsequently developed. These higher powers serve
only to point us still further along the road that
delivers us from bondage to the flesh, and leads us to
anticipate the complete emancipation of the mind from
the body. The mind may henceforth become indifferent
to the disasters which in the course of nature are bound
to overtake the body, and may hope to survive its
destruction and decay — and perhaps thereafter to find
or create for itself a " spiritual body " adapted to a
difi^erent sphere of existence and to other modes of
life.^

This brings to an end our examination, from the
scientific point of view, of the relation of body and
mind with special reference to the possibility of the mind
surviving the destruction of the body. The survey is
necessarily incomplete. We have, for instance, omitted
altogether the question as to the nature of matter. An
increasing number of scientists are devoting themselves
to this problem, and they tell us that matter is not that
solid, indestructible thing we take it to be, but consists
of ions vibrating at an extraordinary velocity. It will

1 Cf. Essay III. pp. 103 ff.

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 71

be extremely dramatic if science proves that matter
is after all only a function of some invisible force.
This and other similar subjects I have been compelled
to omit from this short study.

I do not pretend that the evidence I have brought
forward amounts to proof that the mind survives the
destruction of the body. I have merely attempted to
show, in the first place, that it is credible, and not con-
tradictory to the teaching of science as we know it at
the present day ; and, secondly, that it is not only not
contradictory to science, but that science points to
this supremacy and Hberation of the mind as the goal
towards which nature is working. It is only reasonable
to assume that the process which has been at work during
the whole of biological history will be continued to its
logical conclusion.

For the present, therefore, so far as science is con-
cerned, life after the grave is not a proved fact, but
the evidence is sufficient to justify faith in it. Such
"faith" is often looked upon as a specifically religious
function, and suggests to the casual observer a process
of "swallowing" what is incredible. Far from that
being the case, faith is a function which the scientist
employs constantly and without which he could not
conduct his investigations, x " Faith " is merely the re-
ligious counterpart of the "hypothesis" of the scientist.
He is bound to assume as a hypothesis the law of
gravity, and other mighty assumptions which he has
not proved ; but, having assumed any such hypo-
thesis, he finds that the facts of the universe as he
knows them fit so perfectly into it that he is con-
firmed in his belief in the legitimacy of his hypothesis.
Precisely the same process is employed by the religious
man who assumes the truth of belief in God and in
immortal life. Having accepted these hypotheses, he
finds that they explain so many of the deep problems of
the world that his faith in them is confirmed. Since,
therefore, the facts of science, which we have been

72 IMMORTALITY ii

studying, seem rather to confirm than to contradict the
hypothesis of a hfe beyond death, the religious man is
acting only reasonably when he accepts the belief as an
article of his faith.

I have, in the preceding discussion, tried to keep
within the bounds of scientific fact. It remains with
other contributors to this book to discuss these problems
from the religious and philosophical point of view. I
may be permitted, however, to trespass on their domain
to the extent of suggesting the broad conclusions to
which I feel myself drawn. We have looked upon the
emancipation of the soul from the body as a process of
evolution. This emancipation we may therefore assume
to be the purpose of our existence on this earth. Before
our birth we were undifferentiated " soul " ; we were
parts of the '* cosmic mind," we were as water drawn
in a pitcher from the " mind pool." Our destiny is to
grow personalities out of the raw material with which
we began life. In every stage of evolution it is only
the few who progress, the many remain unevolved.
So it may be in the passage from the physical to the
spiritual.

Readers of Ibsen's Peer Gynt will remember that
when the prodigal returned from his wanderings he
encountered the " Voice in the Darkness." The Voice
informed him in reply to his enquiries that he had never
developed an individuality, his life had been too pithless
to entitle him to any reward, for he was neither good
enough for Heaven, nor bad enough for Hell. His fate
would therefore be to be boiled down again in the same
melting-pot as Tom, Dick, and Hal, and so form raw
material again. Such may be the destiny of those who
never pass upwards. They have never grown per-
sonalities ; they have not even become individuals in
the highest sense ; they have, therefore, failed in the
main purpose of their lives. They were intended to
gain the mastery over their senses and develop minds
capable of dominating the body. Instead, even to the

II THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 73

end, they are completely under the mastery of their
senses, in which they find their only joy. These pro-
fane persons, like Esau, sell their birthright for a mess
of pottage. What will happen to them ? Since they
have chosen not to develop that " soul " with which
they were endowed into personalities in touch with the
eternal, their end may be to pass back again into the
melting-pot to be boiled down with the rest (for the
Master of the Universe wastes nothing) : they merely
return to that nonentity from which they came : from
them may be taken away even that individuality which
they have.

But there are those, too, who fulfil their destiny.
They, too, were drawn out of the " mind pool " before
their individual life began, and were thrown into this
material world to turn the soul substance into a living
personality realising and fulfilling the purpose of their
Maker. This is nature's way always : to transform
the simple and undifferentiated into the complex and
highly developed. What are the essential conditions
by which the personality passes from the terrestrial to
the immortal life .? These will be differently stated
according to the philosophy, creed, or Church to which
we adhere. In all true religions and philosophies
there is the turning away from evil and wrong to all
that is right and good in the belief that it is only truth
and beauty and love that are real and eternal.
Herein the intuition of the seer goes beyond the con-
clusions of empirical science, but it in no wise con-
tradicts them, for it is only travelling a little further
along the same road.

We may conclude, then, that before our lives began
we were each parts of the " world soul " without
separate consciousness, and without distinct individu-
ality, that our lives were offspring of the universal life
and that by interaction with other lives, with material
things, and with God, we are capable of developing
souls free and undetermined, and capable of immortal

74 IMMORTALITY ii

life. Our destiny is, that from the undeveloped soul
with which we started we shall become ever more
differentiated and more spiritual, in touch with the
Infinite, knowing and loving God. The world soul
from which we are derived came from God, and we
go to God who is our Eternal Home, Meanwhile
it is our business on earth so to live that we shall
prepare ourselves for the time when body and brain
decay but

When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

A (cf. p. 32). Since this Essay has been in type I have myself
succeeded in producing blisters by suggestion alone on three
diiFerent occasions — the first time unexpectedly, the other times
under strictly scientific conditions, the experiment being witnessed
by another medical man, besides the hypnotist, and the patient being
closely watched to avoid any possibility of fraud.

B (cf. p. 54). On the morning of August 14 a patient of mine
announced to his ward doctor that he was very troubled by a
dream that his brother was killed in France. On Tuesday,
August 21, he told me he had again dreamed this and was very
troubled. On August 24 I received word from the patient's father
asking me to break the news to the son that his brother had died as
the result of wounds received in action on August 14. His last
letter home, written when he was quite well, was dated August 13.
I may add that when the patient told me of his dream on the 21st
another surgeon was present, and I said to this surgeon, as well as
to another who was not present, that we would take note of it and
see if it corresponded with fact. The doctor of the ward also
confirms the story of the dream a week previously, so that the whole
account rests on very firm evidence. I have the signatures of these
surgeons as witnesses.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD

BURNETT HILLMAN STREETER

CANON RESIDENTIARY OF HEREFORD

FELLOW OF QJLTEEN's COLLEGE, OXFORD

EDITOR OF "foundations" AND "CONCERNING PRAYER "

AUTHOR OF "restatement AND REUNION "

SYNOPSIS

PAGE

The Proof of Immortality . . . . .78

The intuitions of great men.

The argument used by our Lord amplified and discussed.

Christ and His Contemporaries .89

Considerations bearing on the question of the sense in which
He accepted the current conceptions of His age.

The Resurrection of the Body . . . .91

The origin of the belief in Jewish Apocalyptic. Its accept-
ance by our Lord and by St. Paul qualified by their rejection
of a "flesh and blood" resurrection. Positive values which
their acceptance of it was intended to assert.

Time and Space in the Next Life . . . .96

The question whether the "spiritual body" is to be understood
in a purely symbolic or in a more or less realistic sense is
bound up with the question whether or no Space is a con-
dition of the next life.

Arguments to show that Space (and Time) is such a condition,
and that therefore some kind of local centre and organ
of expression of the personality — which may be called a
" body " — must be postulated.

Bodies Celestial and Bodies Terrestrial . . . 103

Further considerations on the nature of the "spiritual body."
How will recognition be possible ?

The Hour of Death . . . . . .110

The idea that the future fate of the soul depends entirely on
the state of mind at the actual moment of death to be
rejected as immoral.
Nevertheless, the way a man reacts to the circumstances of
death may profoundly modify his character and therefore
his future fate.

The Resurrection — its Time and Manner . . .113

The relation between the body of the present and of the future
life in no way one of material identity.
76

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 77

CAGE

The Resurrection of our Lord.

The transition from the "natural" to the "spiritual body."

No interval between Death and Resurrection.

The day of death for the individual also the Day of Judgment.

The Day of Judgment . .121

The traditional picture of the Dies irae is derived rather from
Jewish Apocalyptic, than from authentic teaching of Christ.

In the Fourth Gospel Judgment is regarded as an internal
automatic process of which the results will be revealed on
"the last day." At death we leave behind external posses-
sions and disguises ; supposing that we also assume a
spiritual body which completely expresses our real character
we shall be " found out " for what we really are. This will
be our condemnation or reward.

Is repentance and amendment possible after death .?

Ill

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD

The Proof of Immortality

Great men are greater than the arguments they use.
Their insight into the reality of things often transcends
what they can justify by logic. Plato, Zoroaster, the
philosophers of India, the Taoist sages of China, to say
nothing of outstanding thinkers of more recent date —
men divided from one another by race, temperament,
epoch, and civilisation — have all agreed, though on very
diverse grounds, in looking for some kind of life
beyond the grave. Their arguments may often fail to
convince, but the fact of their broad general agreement
is an impressive one. It is not to the pigmies of our
race that we owe the persistence of the belief in immor-
tality ; nor is it the mark of a moral weakling to value
or desire it.

Not the least impressive feature in this list is the
fact that there can be included in it the name of Jesus
Christ. A life beyond and better than the present was
one of the things which He most valued and about
which He was most sure. The precise degree of
authority to be attributed to His views is a matter on
which at the present day opinions vary immensely ; but
the absolute conviction on a point of this fundamental
importance of one whom few will estimate as less than
the world's supreme religious genius is a fact which
cannot lightly be dismissed.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 79

But however we may estimate the precise weight to
be attached to the mere intuition of supreme genius,
we have also, in the case of our Lord, to consider a
clear summary statement of what he regarded as the
main, if not the only, reason for His belief.

" As touching the dead, that they are raised ;
have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the place
concerning the Bush, how God spake unto him, saying,
I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob ? He is not the God of the dead,
but of the living" (Mk. xii. 26-27).

An appeal to a text of the Pentateuch does not at
first seem at all convincing. The actual form, however,
in which the argument is cast is due to its being
addressed to a body of men who acknowledged no
other authority ; but a very little consideration shows
that it is much more than a mere argumentum ad hominem.
To say that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob is to say that He is a God who sets a supreme
value on individual persons ; and it is argued that the
fact that God so values them is a guarantee that He
cannot allow them to perish. It is essentially an argu-
ment from the character of God ; and its point and
cogency lies in the assertion that belief in immortality
is a necessary deduction and consequence of a right
belief in God.

The argument will repay a close examination. What
is a right belief in God } What are its impHcations }

Man cannot conceive of the Infinite in His totality,
but we feel that we must speak of God as personal.
But when we ascribe personality to God we do not
mean to imply that He has the limitations of personality
as we know it but merely that personality — with its
free self-determined life of thought and love and the
delight in beauty — just because it is the highest thing
we know, is that something from the analogy of which
we can derive the least inadequate conception that is
possible of the Divine. If we say that God is personal

8o IMMORTALITY iii

we at least say something which is positive, something
which, though short of being the whole truth, we know
to be really true. To say that He is not personal is to
imply that He is less than personal, and that we know
to be untrue.

Within the conception of personality the Apostles'
Creed singles out for emphasis two outstanding aspects
of the Divine activity by styHng Him Father and
Creator. Father and Creator, when applied to God,
must, like Person, be understood as instances of the
highest activities known to our experience, taken as
types of a higher and richer activity of the Divine to
which these are the nearest and least misleading analogies
we can find. To what, then, do they point ? Let us
for Father say Parent, for in God must be combined all
and more than all we find in human Fatherhood and
Motherhood in one. And for Creator may we not say
Artist, to include all and more than all we mean by
constructor, inventor, thinker, poet .'' God — Parent and
Artist — what does this mean ? Both analogies alike
suggest one who brings into existence what otherwise
would not have been. And in the case of God this
bringing into existence cannot be thought of as a single
act, but as a continual activity of giving, guiding, sus-
taining, and perfecting. But this is only half and not
the most important half of what is meant. Artist and
Parent are not mere workers or mere producers, how-
ever diligent, however able ; they are above all things
those who supremely value, though for different
qualities and in a different way, that on which their
care is lavished. In different ways they are two types
of absolutely disinterested love — in the case of the
artist of the vision he vainly endeavours to embody in
his work, in the case of the parent of the living person
whom he or she has been permitted to bring into being
and to rear.

The human artist again and again destroys his work ;
but only when he feels it completely fails to embody

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 8i

the vision. In the rare cases where he knows he has
reached such relative success as is permitted to man-
kind, he would wish his work to last for ever — exegi
monumentum aere perennius. Still more rarely can the
human parent acquiesce in the extinction of a child —
to those who really know and love it any human per-
sonality, however imperfect, has a value other and
greater than that of the greatest work of art. Hence, if
the personality of a human parent or of a human artist
are dim reflections of elements in the character of the
Divine (that is, unless we are prepared to say that the
Infinite is in the last resort something less noble than
ourselves) He must be above all things interested in the
continual production of that which has supreme value
— of value in ever new and ever higher forms, and no
value which He has created can He lightly or willingly
suffer to perish. Not merely the Conservation of
Energy but the Conservation of Value, to use Hoffding's
famous phrase, nay, rather the Augmentation ^ of Value
must be a principle of the Universe.

But, we must ask, would not this principle of the
Conservation of Value, or even of the Augmentation of
Value, be satisfied without assuming the immortality of
the individual, so long as new and possibly ever better
and richer forms of life were being continually created .''
Would not the assumption to the contrary prove too
much .^ Would it not mean that the lily and the
butterfly have immortal souls }

If God were thought of merely as the Artist, the con-
tinuance of the species with its continual rebirth of fresh
lives to take the place of those who have deceased
might perhaps suffice. But not if we think of Him as
also Parent and Friend. The question resolves itself
into this, at what point does individuality as such
become a thing of absolute value .'' No two lilies, no
two butterflies, are exactly the same, but, despite this
fact, judged purely by aesthetic values, there is no

' Cf. Concerning Prayer, p. 6.

82 IMMORTALITY iii.

great loss when the lilies or the butterflies of one year
have replaced those of the year before. Whether
their individuality has a value other than aesthetic
must depend in the last resort upon whether they have
anything which we can reasonably call a conscious
personality, or, in other words, a soul. So far as we can
see they have not.

In the teaching of our Lord we seem to detect the
suggestion of a hierarchy of values in the scale of life.
There is the grass of the field which " God has so
clothed " — it has supreme aesthetic value — but which
to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the baker's furnace.
There are the sparrows " not one of which falleth to
the 'ground without your Father " — a phrase which
suggests something more of individual care. And there
is man, of whom it is said " ye are of more value than
many sparrows," and " the very hairs of your head are
numbered." We need not dogmatise as to the exact
point in the scale of being at which there first appears
a consciousness sufficiently individual to have a per-
manent value as such. There are some, for instance,
who hold that phenomena like " race memory " and the
instincts which compel the individual insect to sacrifice
its own interests to those of the species, point either to
the existence of an individual soul greater than can find
expression in the physical constitution of the individual
creature, or possibly to the existence of a corporate
soul of the species to which the individual is related
much as one's hand would be to one's self, if one could
conceive of the attachment of the hand to the self as
being of a purely psychic and not also of a physical
nature. I hesitate to accept such speculations myself,
but had they any foundation it would be conceivable that
even vegetable life might be the expression of a hidden
soul. If so, it is so effectively hidden that we can make
no positive use of the hypothesis. But when we come
to the higher animals the case is different. If love,
loyalty, and capacity for unselfish devotion rather than

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 83

intellect be the test of " soul," few lovers of the dog
would be disposed to deny that at least in some indi-
viduals, if not in whole species of the lower animals,
there is latent and can be awakened something to which
we cannot refuse the name " soul " — a rudimentary
soul if you like, but, then, even among men are all
souls equally advanced? Souls are not, like sixpences,
material objects all of the same size. Whatever is
sentient partakes of the nature of spirit, and the standard
by which we measure spirit is not magnitude but quality.
Dogs, at any rate some dogs, have at least an ele-
mentary sense of right and wrong. They know when
they have done wrong, and are capable of shame.
They may not understand the meaning of their offence,
but they know they have offended against the will of a
person higher than themselves whom they both love
and fear. The attitude of a dogr towards its master is
very like that of the ancient Hebrew to his God.
Perhaps the analogy may be pressed still further. It
is often pointed out that this apparent " sense of sin "
in animals appears to be confined to domestic animals,
and it is argued that it is merely a result of their inter-
course with man. Possibly — but is it therefore an
illusion ^ Nothing stimulates the growth of conscience
in man so much as willing service of and conscious
fellowship with a Being infinitely higher than himself.
Why should not relations with a master, made in the
image of God, do for the dog what relation with God can
do for the master ^ Indeed, it may possibly — I would not
say more than "possibly" — be the case that animals have
what is known as a " conditional " immortality, that is
to say, that they survive as individuals only if they
have, through contact with human beings, actually de-
veloped what would otherwise have been only a latent
possibility and achieved something which we may call
a soul or personality of a rudimentary kind. Hut if
they have once achieved personality we may suppose it
will still further develop, and that they might come to

84 IMMORTALITY iii

play in the next life a part in the fellowship of souls
analogous to that which little children play in this life.

But I should be unwilling to lay too much stress
on the arguments which bear on the difficult and
highly debatable question of animal survival. After
all, to approach the problem of the quality and indi-
vidual worth of life by first considering the vegetable,
insect, or animal world, is to begin at the end about
which we know least. The important thing to recognise
is that at the other end of the scale of life, in the fully
developed human being, we certainly have an individu-
ality which is a thing of intrinsic value as individual.
No two leaves of a tree are exactly alike, but no two
brothers of a family are even approximately identical
even though they may be twins physically almost indis-
tinguishable. What constitutes the individuality of
human beings is character — character possibly to some
extent a thing innate but ever developing through con-
scious reaction towards circumstances, experiences, and
especially through the infinitely subtle influences of
personal relationships ; and to any two individuals these
must be infinitely diverse. If there are men of whom
it must be said that it were " better had they not been
born," it is probable that, unless in some way their
characters can be revolutionised either in this world or
the next, they will ultimately cease to have any real
value to man or God and become extinct. But these,
we believe, are exceptional cases. No one who has
really loved another but feels that he has loved some-
thing which is unique and uniquely valuable.

There are many nowadays who urge that what we
love is only that element in our friends which is divine
and eternal, and that therefore it will suffice if we think
of this element as destined to survive only as part of
the Infinite Divine Life to be manifested again in higher
achievements of personal existence. " Whether," writes
Mr. Wells, " we live for ever or die to-morrow does
not affect righteousness. Many people seem to find the

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 85

prospect of a final personal death unendurable. This
impresses me as egotism. 1 have no such appetite for
a separate immortality ; what, of me, is identified with
God, is God ; what is not is of no more permanent
value than the snows of yester-year." ^

There is a note of idealism here ; but it simply is not
true to say that " it does not affect righteousness "
whether we live for ever or die to-morrow. For if the
Divine righteousness may lightly " scrap " the individual,
human righteousness may do the same. The most
conspicuous mark of the moral level of any community
is the value it sets on human personality. The moral
achievement of the individual may be measured largely
by his readiness to sacrifice his own life for others, but
the moral height of a society is shown by its reluctance
to sacrifice even its least worthy members. The dis-
interestedness which is content with a Universe in which
his own ego will soon cease to be is much to the
credit of Mr. Wells ; it would not be to God's credit
were He equally content.

Weary and disillusioned with ourselves and with the
world, there are times when most of us cease to desire
a future life and when we think that the one individual
about whom we have most knowledge is perhaps not
worth preserving. But Christ looked at it not from our
end but from God's. He did not consider the question
from the point of view of what we think about ourselves
or what we hope for for ourselves, but of what God
thinks and what God hopes. We are the children of
God, and therefore God wants us, and is not content to
cut down His plans and expectations for us to the level
either of our desert, our weariness, or our despair.

We are thus brought back again to the point that,
in the last resort, belief in individual immortality
depends on our conception of the character of God.
If God is at all like what Christ supposed Him to be,
personal immortality is completely proved.

1 H. G. Wells in God the In-visible King.

86 IMMORTALITY

III

But what if Christ be mistaken about God ? Why
should we trust His insight into reality rather than that
of some who have thought otherwise than He ?

My answer would be that, in regard to every question,
that man gets the right solution who most clearly sees
how to state the problem rightly, that man finds the law
which explains phenomena who realises which are the
really significant facts to be explained. And in this
matter of the essential character of the Power behind
the Universe, of all the facts Christ noted those which
are the most significant, and of all the questions that can
be asked He asked the most fundamental first. The
conceptions we entertain about God depend very much
on the moral and intellectual interests on which our
own lives are concentrated. If, like the early Semite,
we are preoccupied in internecine tribal wars, our God
will be the great avenger — on His enemies and on ours.
If, like the Buddha, we despair of life and seek only
respite from the "wheel of Things," God will evaporate
into the eternal calm of the ocean of unruffled Being.
If, like the pure metaphysician, we are seeking merely
the intellectual postulates of an intelligible world, we
may chance to light upon an Absolute " beyond good
and evil " or on some featureless Eternal which under-
lies the temporal. If, like the Scientific Materialist, we
focus all our attention on the stupendous revelationswhich
Chemistry and Physics have given as to the nature of
the material creation, we may see nothing in or behind
the Universe but matter and primal energy. But if,
following the lead of Christ, we take a broader survey
and look also into the heart of nature's last product,
man, we shall see that the most fundamental thing to be
explained is not the material Universe but the presence
of life, and that the most significant thing about life
itself is not its quantity but its quality. The real
problem of the philosopher is to explain this — to tell
us, not why we eat and drink, but why we can rever-
ence or admire, not why we need our fellows, but why

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 87

we can also disinterestedly love. Any tenable hypo-
thesis of the ultimate nature of Reality must, of course,
explain the material creation, it must explain biological
evolution, but it must explain in addition something
much more difficult. The world and the struggle for
life must indeed be accounted for, but in the last resort
what most requires to be explained is not the struggle
for life but the fact that men can rise above it and will
cheerfully sacrifice life itself for a cause or an ideal.

If the highest life we know is a life which is capable
of supreme devotion to ideals, we must surely attribute
to the Source of all life a sense of value deeper, not
shallower, than ours. That is what Christ taught — God
is love. And it is the quality of His love, not of our
achievement, which is the guarantee for our survival.
God is the Creator, the great Artist, and must value
what He has made just in proportion to the extent
in which He has expressed Himself in it — of all the
creatures, therefore, that we know on this earth, He
must value most the being who, in however imperfect
degree, is made in His own image. He is the great
Artist, but He is much more than this. He is the God
of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob — a God to whom
the individual is personally dear. He is the all-Parent
who cannot regard His children merely as details in a
picture however glorious, or as notes in a tune however
wonderful.

" What man is there of you, who, if his son shall
ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone ; or if he shall
ask for a fish, will give him a serpent ? If ye then,
being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your Father which is
in heaven give good things to them that ask him."
No one of us, could we help it, would consent to the
extinction of a child or friend of ours. Can God then
allow one of His children or His friends to cease to be ?
If so. He were either as impotent as we, or, not being
impotent, more callous than ourselves. I'his cannot be.

88 IMMORTALITY in

If human goodness has in it anything of real and eternal
value, if it is something grounded in ultimate reality,
if it is an imperfect reflection of a characteristic of the
Divine — then that Eternal and Divine Reality which is
the ground and source of our poor goodness must be
better, not worse, than ourselves. It must be more
just, more tender, not less so than ourselves. To It
even the falling to the ground of a single sparrow
cannot but be a matter of concern. In the eyes of the
Infinite Living Reality we are of more value than many
sparrows — therefore Death is not the end.

More than this, it follows that Death, so far from
being the end can only be a fresh beginning. If God
really cares for the things which we see to be supremely
valuable in life, why is it that their perfection is so
rarely, or rather never, actually attained ? Why is it
that achievement is so often missed, character so often
marred ? Why are lives so obviously of value, so clearly
moving on the upward path, in one case cut short by
early death, in another strangely ruined or frustrated ;
why are so many others checked and stunted at the very
start .'' Look where we will, poet and artist just miss
the perfection of their art, the work of the clearest
thinker is marred by some element of crankiness or
error, the highest and noblest character shows strange
inconsistencies and unexpected flaws.

There is but one possible answer. Life in this world
is but a stage on the road to something farther on and
better. It is a school whose curriculum is inexplicable,
except as leading to a life's career beyond. It is the first
act of a drama in which the characters are introduced,
the action set in motion, but the whole plot is not yet
seen. We see enough of life to feel sure that it is
(or rather that to those who make it so it can be)
an education ; we see enough of the play to catch an
inkling of a plot — but that is all. There is enough
evidence of purpose and design to justify us in asserting
that there must be more. And if so there must be a life

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 89

beyond the present in which that more will be worked
out.

If man is potentially the noblest of all the Creator's
works of art, he is also the most unfinished ; if he is
the child of God he is only in the nursery stage. A
God that was content to leave it so would be morally
of lower status than ourselves.

Christ and His Contemporaries

The Resurrection of the Body and the Day of Judg-
ment are the most striking features of the form under
which the nature and inauguration of the future life
are conceived of in the New Testament. If we are to
estimate the value of these conceptions for modern
thought we must first ask exactly what the phrases
meant on the lips of Christ Himself and of St. Paul.
This cannot be done without a momentary glance at
the history of the ideas. But the history of ideas alone
may be actually misleading, unless certain principles of
interpretation are already borne in mind.

To express in words thoughts even about simple and
obvious matters, completely, adequately, and without
possibility of misunderstanding, is always hard ; to do
so in deep matters about which we feel strongly is well-
nigh impossible. Poets and prophets often, less fre-
quently philosophers, have possessed to a supreme
degree the gift of expressing thought in words, but
in exact proportion to the originality of what they had
to say they too have found complete and adequate ex-
pression elude their efforts. Prophet, philosopher, or
poet can only express himself by means of the words,
ideas, and conceptions which are familiar to his con-
temporaries ; and some thoughts can only be conveyed
indirectly by association or allusion. Hence, to in-
terpret correctly the message of any great one of the
past it is necessary first to study the world of thought
and idea in which he lived ; we must know something

90 IMMORTALITY ni

of the background of historic memories, social usage,
literary tradition and education of the contemporaries
whom he was addressing. To seek his meaning we
must ask, not what such and such words, if literally
translated into English, would mean to us, but what
associations the words would have in the minds of those
who first heard or read them ; and this often means a
careful study of the history of the phrase he uses. On
the other hand, having once recognised this principle,
and having once thoroughly studied the environment
of the great man and the history and meaning to con-
temporaries of the words and conceptions with which
he deals, we must beware of the error of supposing
that by these words and ideas he means no more than
an average contemporary would have understood by
them. No great man is ever really understood by his
contemporaries simply because the mere fact that what
he says is so largely original makes' it impossible for its
full meaning to be brought home to the majority. Only
after his influence has penetrated and has actually modified
the thought-milieu of future generations does it become
possible for any but the selected few to understand
him.

No great man of the past can be interpreted aright
if these two to some extent opposing considerations are
lost sight of, but they are of more than ordinary im-
portance for the interpretation of our Lord's views of
the mode and circumstances of the future life. The
thought-world of the Palestine in which He lived was
so remote from our own that without some study of
the background of contemporary thought we are bound
to misconceive much of what He says. On the other
hand, the depth and originality of His thought is such
that it is not sufficient to study the meaning that the
terms which He uses would have borne to an average
contemporary. We must also remember that supremely
in His case interpretation must beware of losing the
spirit behind the letter, and we must recognise that the

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 91

key to the real meaning of His words must be sought
in the clear apprehension of His outlook upon life and
religion as a whole. And this is a key of which we can
only possess ourselves in virtue of the fact that sub-
stantial elements at least of His general religious attitude
have by this time percolated into and become a part of
the substance of European thought.

The Resurrection of the Body

The oldest Hebrew literature, like the oldest Greek,
reveals a belief in a dim, shadowy Underworld to which
go the spirits of the departed — Sheol, the Hebrew
equivalent of Hades, a world of ghosts and sapless
shades leading a faint and feeble existence in which the
same fate is shared by good and evil alike. " A land
of thick darkness, as darkness itself ; a land of the
shadow of death, without any order, and where the
light is as darkness" (Job x. 22). "Cast off among
the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou
rememberest no more ; and they are cut off from thy
hand" (Ps. Ixxxviii. 5). "The dead praise not the
Lord, neither any that go down into silence " (Ps.
cxv. 17). It was not until some time after the return
from the Babylonian Exile that the hope began to dawn
that the righteous might have something better to look
forward to than this land of darkness and of unsub-
stantial dreams. This dawning hope took the form of
the belief that the body would be miraculously restored,
its scattered elements recombined, and the soul brought
back from Sheol to animate it. But this hope and
expectation, it is important to remember, did not stand
in isolation. It grew up and it only existed in integral
connection with a particular development and extension
of the expectation of a "Day of the Lord" and aMessianic
Kingdom, very different in character from that looked
forward to by the older Prophets, which was elaborated
by a series of so-called Apocalyptic writers, beginning

92 IMMORTALITY m

with the second century b.c. The Book of Daniel and
the Revelation of St. John are the only two works of
the kind which have gained a place in the Canon, and
most of the intervening members of the series were lost
sight of quite early in the history of the Church.^ Their
rediscovery, mainly during the last half-century, has
shed an entirely new light upon the origin and inter-
pretation of that whole cycle of New Testament teach-
ing which is connected with the Resurrection and the
Day of Judgment, and on the meaning in detail of the
ideas associated with these two central conceptions.

A review of the various stages in the development
of the idea of the Resurrection, and a careful discrimina-
tion of the minor differences in which the conception is
worked out by different Apocalyptic writers, is not here
necessary. To students of theology it is familiar, for
others it would be tedious. Two points only require
to be emphasised : —

(i) The belief in the resurrection of the body was
in a sense a protest against the older idea — which still
survived among the powerful sect of Sadducees — of an
empty and meaningless ghost existence. Compared and
contrasted with life in Sheol, the belief in the Resurrec-
tion meant an immortality worth the having. In Sheol,
again, good and evil fared alike. The association of the
resurrection with a judgment on each individual accord-
ing to his works was an emphatic affirmation that the
consequences of right or wrong choice extend into the
next life. So far, therefore, the belief in the resurrec-
tion of the body was an immense moral and religious
advance.

(2) Without a return to life in the body it was felt
that the righteous dead could have no share in the
glorious Messianic Kingdom on earth, participation in
which was their obvious due. A common view of these
writers was that the old body of flesh and blood would
be raised up with all its wounds and weakness, but would

' For a brief account of this literature cf. p. 176, note.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 93

shortly be transformed into something more glorious
than the body of this life/ The amount of transforma-
tion thought to be required, and the conception of the
life to be lived in the transformed body, vary with
the degree of spiritual insight in different writers ; but
some extremely crude and materialistic ideas are found,
and it is probable that these appealed most widely to
the popular mind.

The real meaning of our Lord's answer to the
problem propounded by the Sadducees as to the woman
who had seven husbands (Mk. xii. 18 ff.) cannot be
properly understood unless it is considered in relation
to these elements in contemporary thought. Thus,
as against the belief in nothing better than a ghost
existence in the world below, to which the majority of
the Sadducees still adhered. He is emphatic that the
dead are raised — that is to say, that the life of the future
is something more glorious and more satisfying, not
something less so, than this present life. On the other
hand, He is equally opposed to any materialistic con-
ception of a future life which is merely a glorified
replica of the present, with marrying and giving in
marriage, and with all the physical and social limitations
which this inevitably involves in this world. The
cruder elements in popular Apocalyptic He rejects with
no less emphasis than He had rejected the empty,
joyless future of the Sadducees. The future life will
be no mere repetition of this ; it will be something
transcending all earthly experience — they will be " as
the angels in heaven."

The discussion of the subject by St. Paul in writing
to the Corinthians is conditioned by a somewhat
different background of thought. The via media
laid down by our Lord was defined in relation to
opposing elements in Palestinian thought. On the one
hand, to the cruder popular Apocalyptic expectation
of a flesh and blood resurrection ; on the other, to the

^ Cf. z Baruch 50-51.

94 IMMORTALITY iii

Sadducean belief in an unsubstantial life in Sheol. St,
Paul's solution is equally a via media ^ but not between
the same extremes. The difficulty felt by the
Corinthians depended upon their supposing that they
must make a choice between one of two alternatives.
On the one side there was the same popular Apocalyptic
belief in a flesh and blood resurrection still continuing
in much of early Christian thought, but, on the other,
there was, not, as in the case of our Lord's answer to
the Sadducees, a conception of a shadowy Hades, but
rather a belief in the immortality of the soul conceived
along the lines of later Greek philosophy.

Like our Lord, St. Paul is emphatic in repudiating
the notion that " flesh and blood " can inherit eternal
life, but, as against a section of his Greek converts,
he still argues that a body will be given by God — a
spiritual body, indeed, but still a body. What was
the point of this insistence } Greek thought valued
the intellect above all. The afl'ections were associated in
that philosophy with the life of the body, they belonged
to the temporal not to the eternal element in man's
nature. To Greek thought airadela^ incapacity to feel,
was a characteristic of the divine, and the life of God
consisted in Oeoopva, in pure intellectual activity apart
from feeling. vov<; only, the intellectual element in man
which was held to be most akin to the divine, would
certainly be immortal.

But to the Christian God is love, and the highest
capacity in man is love. Hence feeling, effort, experi-
ence — things which come to us in and through the life
of the body — are the things we value most, not least,
and supreme values would be lost unless something
corresponding to them exists in the life of the world
to come.

Again, " pure reason" is the same for all men, and an
immortality of the Reason only would tend to obliterate
all individuality and idiosyncrasy. If the " body "
stands for the medium of individuality, for the means

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 95

by which in the next world persons will be recognisable
or still distinct — then the body must survive.

Eternal form will still divide
The Eternal soul from all beside
And I shall know him when we meet.

To our Lord, then, and to St. Paul, the real meaning
and value of the idea of the resurrection of the body
does not consist in an affirmation of a material and
flesh and blood existence in the future — that they both
repudiate. It stands mainly for two things, that the
life of the future will be richer not poorer than this
life, and that individuality, personal distinctions, and
the results of the moral and emotional as well as of the
intellectual activities of this life will be preserved in
the next. More than that, it means that the capacity
for such activity will still endure. " Love never
faileth." The future will be no Nirvana of passion-
less contemplation, but a full activity of the whole
personality in conscious harmony with other souls.

It is probable, though less certain, that St. Paul
had another reason for insisting on the importance
of the body. His Epistles show that the tendencies
of thought which appeared a little later as Gnosticism
were already beginning to affect the Church. A
fundamental tenet of this type of thought was the
doctrine that matter, and therefore the body, is
intrinsically evil and that spirit alone is good. In
practice two contrary deductions could be and were
made from this theory — either that the body must be
crushed by an extreme asceticism or that the lusts of
the flesh might be indulged in at will, since the further
pollution of an already evil body cannot afl^ect the
spirit which is a prisoner within. The teaching that
the body is an integral part of the complete nature and
life of a being who is destined in his whole nature to
inherit Eternal Life proved to be one of the strongest
guarantees against the invasion of ideas which, though

96 IMMORTALITY iii

sounding to modern ears as unscientific as immoral,
had a strong appeal to serious thinkers in that age.

The foregoing summary makes it clear that the
belief in the resurrection of the body arose, was
developed, and was chiefly valued as being the most
natural and obvious way in which to express in regard
to the future life that belief in the Conservation and in
the Augmentation of Value which, as has been previously
argued, is of the essence of the Christian belief in God.
It is the genius of Christianity to put the inward before
the outward, the spiritual before the material ; hence
it is on the resurrection of the body as an expression
of belief in the preservation of spiritual values that I
would lay most stress. In so far as it is this, I would
urge that it rests on the firm and inexpugnable
ground of being a necessary deduction from our belief
in God.

But a further question must be raised. Does an in-
terpretation in terms of moral and spiritual values really
exhaust the meaning of the conception of a " spiritual
body " in the life to come ? Ought we to affirm that
the term " body " is no more than a mere symbol of
our belief that, in some way at present inconceivable,
spiritual values such as individuality, capacity for action
or affection, and the possibility of mutual recognition
are conserved .'' Or ought we to affirm that in the
next life there will still exist an organ of expression
of the activity of the spirit which, though not the same
as the flesh and blood body of this life, has some
recognisable analogy to it, and possibly even some direct
connection with it .''

Time and Space in the next Life

The answer to the foregoing question must mainly
depend upon whether we think of the future life as
being an existence in space, or whether we believe it
to be a state of being in which our consciousness will.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 97

in some way at present wholly inconceivable, be
independent of spatial relations.

There is a widespread notion among philosophers
and theologians that the Hfe of the world to come must
necessarily be one which transcends the conditions of
time and space, and in which pure spirit can exist and
function apart from all contact with or relation to
matter. Granted such presuppositions, it is clear that
the resurrection of the body is a meaningless phrase
unless the word body is understood to be used in a
purely symbolic sense. For a body in any ordinary
sense can only exist in space. I must frankly confess
that until lately I have felt bound to accept this view.
But more recent reflection inclines me to question, not
the validity of the deduction but the premisses from
which it starts, and to ask, Are we really bound to
assume that the life of the world to come is a lite that
is outside time and space ?

At first sight it might seem that the question I am
asking could not be answered without first obtaining a
satisfactory solution of that most diflicult philosophical
problem, what is the real nature of space and time?
If so, our question would have to wait long for an
answer and nothing less than a treatise would suffice
even to attempt it. But this is not required. The
widespread notion that the life of the next world is one
transcending time and space seems to me to be partly
the result of an acute reaction against the crude con-
ceptions of popular theology, and partly a confused
deduction from four propositions. The propositions
are of a very different character from one another, but
no one of them, even if we admit it to be true, will
really support the conclusion so often drawn from them.

These propositions are : —

(i) God exists outside time and space. To His
consciousness all time is simultaneously present as an
Eternal Now, and He is present in His entirety io/us
ubique at every point of space.

98 IMMORTALITY m

(2) Space and Time, according to Kant's famous
contention, are not things having an independent
objective existence, but are " forms of perception."
They belong to the subjective constitution of our own
mind, which is so made that it can only experience
things as happening successively in time, and cannot
think of them except as existing externally to the self
and to one another in space.

(3) Thought is independent of space. It is no
more difficult to think about the Dog Star millions
of miles away than about a lamp in the room upstairs.
A third-class railway compartment occupied by ten
philosophers is not more crowded if they begin to
discuss the Absolute, or less crowded if they all fall
asleep.

(4) In this life, especially with the progress of years
and infirmity, we are acutely conscious of material
" limitations " to the spirit. Human aspiration would
throw off all limitations in the life to come — and space
seems to be one of these.

The sum total effect of these four sets of considera-
tions is to produce a general feeling that somehow
or other Time and Space are slightly discreditable
and troublesome limitations belonging to the lower
life of flesh and blood which we shall transcend in the
world to come.

I submit, however, that a closer analysis of these
arguments does not bear this out.

(i) The proposition that the Divine consciousness
transcends Time and Space would be assented to by
most, though not by all, philosophers ; but assuming
it to be true it is irrelevant to the question of the
nature of our consciousness in the life to come — unless,
indeed, we assume that what happens after death is
a complete merging of the individual in the universal
consciousness.

The arguments in support of the view that the con-
sciousness of God transcends Time and Space are far

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 99

too complex to be summarised in this place. But so
far as I apprehend them they (or at any rate the most
important of them) are based on considerations which
apply to the Infinite Consciousness as such and are not
applicable to any finite consciousness. It is argued,
for instance, that there must be an ultimate Unity
which transcends all difference, an Absolute as the
condition of the existence of the Relative, an Unchange-
able as a background of change, a Perfection as the
presupposition of the possibility of Progress. But these
arguments (if valid at all) apply to God only because
He is assumed to be Infinite ; and for precisely the
same reason they do mi apply to any finite spirit.

The chief argument for the contrary view seems to
me to be this. In the world to come the righteous
may look forward to an ever closer union with the
Divine, and in so far as this is consummated they may
expect to share more and more of the Divine Life, and
so ultimately to share the Divine consciousness in every
way. Moreover, such a view seems at first sight to be
borne out by that indescribable experience of the Poet,
the Artist, or the Mystic which is commonly spoken
of as " an experience of the Eternal in the temporal."
This appeal to artistic and mystic experience cannot be
lightly dismissed, but I believe on further analysis that
the content of the consciousness in question will be found
to consist in a sense of abidingness and contact with
ultimate reality rather than in that complete elimination
of the experience of succession which would be involved
in perception outside time. Union with the Divine
means primarily complete harmony of will and taste ;
it implies an identical sense of values in regard to what-
ever the individual experiences ; it has nothing to do
with the capacity to understand and experience all
things whatsoever simultaneously in one coup d\vil. It
may indeed be ultimately possible for the individual
to become so closely identified with the Divine will as
to be able to apprehend reality with something even of

lOO

IMMORTALITY iii

the metaphysical transcendence of the Divine mind, but
even so this could only be in a partial and, as it were,
derivative way.^ Otherwise the individual would be
simply merged in the Universal consciousness, he would
become just a part of God — a view which is inconsistent
with that belief in individual immortality which on
other grounds I have urged we should accept, and
which in the last resort seems inconsistent with the
possibility of either the love of God to man or of man
to God, since an undifferentiated unit cannot love
itself.

(2) We can accept, if we will, the argument of
Kant that Time and Space are merely " forms of per-
ception " without committing ourselves to the view
that we shall be independent of them in the next life.
For his argument in no way depends on the fact that
we are beings encased in flesh and blood but on an
analysis of the nature of perception applicable to any
finite being. This point he himself makes quite clear in
the additions to the second edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason. " It is not necessary that we should limit this
intuition in space and time to the sensibility of man.
It is quite possible that all finite thinking beings must
necessarily agree with us on this point." "Such an
intuition {i.e. an intuition which is not limited to space
and time), so far as we can understand, can belong
to the First Being only." ^

Many philosophers accept Kant's view of Space and
Time in a modified form. They hold that these are,
indeed, as he maintains, merely subjective " forms of
perception," but go beyond him in supposing that they
are the forms under which the Universal mind perceives
things. God thinks the universe — that is what con-
stitutes creation — and He thinks it under the forms of

^ This appears to be substantially the view of St. Thomas Aquinas — himself a
mystic and the friend of the notable mystic S. Bonaventura. Cf. Summa i. 10. 5,
creaturae spirituales quantum ad affcctiones et intclligentias, in quthus est successio,
mensurantur tempore . . . sed quantum ad -visionem gloriae participant aeternitatem.

2 Cf. Max Miiller's translation, p. 735.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD loi

time and space. Hence space and time, though ideal
and subjective in relation to mind as such, are real and
objective in relation to finite minds. This is a con-
siderable departure from the teaching of Kant, since it
ignores his distinction between " forms of perception "
and " categories of the understanding."

But on this view it is even more clear that we can
never transcend the limitations of Time and Space.
For if the thought of God is what creates, and if things
are what they are because God so thinks them, then, if
God thinks them under the forms of Time and Space,
we could only think of them otherwise by thinking of
them as being something different from what they
really are — a privilege to which few would aspire.

(3) The fact that thought does not itself occupy
space and that distance is no impediment to thought,
though true, is irrelevant. My thought about an
elephant takes up no more room than my thought
about the fly on its ear, but I can only think of either
as occupying space and as being external to each other
and to myself. And again, though I can think of
Sirius as easily as of the house opposite, I can only
think of it as being something which is outside myself,
in the sense that I take for granted that the self which
thinks is situated at or somehow centred in a particular
spot in space which I call " here," and that the object
I think of is situated at a certain distance, whether fai
or near, from that spot.

Of course there is a sense in which anything which
is embraced by my thought is not " outside " myself,
and it is impossible to think of my personality as
strictly confined within the limits of my outermost
skin. But the difiiculty — a great one — of seeing how
personality can be attached to a local centre, or of
defining exactly where or what that centre is, does not
alter the fact that the very possibility of perceiving
objects in space implies that the percipient is " here " and
the thing perceived is " there," i.e. that the percipient

I02 IMMORTALITY iii

has, somehow or other, a centre of consciousness at a
particular point in space.

(4) The notion that space is a cramping limitation,
which we may aspire to transcend in another world,
is due to a confusion between space as a philosophical
concept and distance as a practical impediment to attain-
ing our desires. " O that I had wings like a dove "
is a common enough desire, but what we really wish
for is, not to escape from space altogether, but to
be wafted rapidly and easily to some other point in
space — to join some absent dear one or enjoy a fairer
scene. In the life to come, for all we know, we may
be able like Ariel " to put a girdle round the earth in
forty minutes," to take a week-end trip to Mars or a
six months' tour round the Milky Way. But an exist-
ence in which that was possible would be no more an
existence which transcended the limits of space than is
the life of a squirrel in a cage.

It would seem, then, that unless we suppose that
after death the individual consciousness becomes part of
the Universal Consciousness and *' the dewdrop slips
into the silent sea," that is, if there is such a thing as a
separate individual immortality at all, the presumption
is strongly in favour of the view that we shall continue
to imagine and to perceive in terms of time and space.

But an ego that thinks in terms of space must
necessarily have some centre of consciousness localised
at any given moment in a particular spot ; for other-
wise it cannot think of objects as outside itself, or have
any standpoint from which to survey them. Hence, a
state of existence in which we can perceive things other
than ourselves as existing in space is only possible if
our consciousness has some localised centre such as in
this world is provided by our body. This centre may
be capable of moving from one place to another with
incredible rapidity, but it must be something which
exists in space and is at a particular point in space at
any given time.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 103

But a consciousness with a centre which exists in
space at all must be conceived of as associated with or
attached to some entity which is at any rate on the way
to having a claim to the title " body " in more than
a merely symbolic sense. The considerations which
follow may seem to strengthen the claim.

Bodies Celestial and Bodies Terrestrial

It has been shown above that, once we dismiss from
our minds the idea that the next life is one that tran-
scends the conditions of time and space, and once we
clearly recognise that if we must expect still to look
out upon a Universe that exists in space, we are com-
pelled to assume that the ego must have some kind of
local centre. But if the ego is to survive at all it is
incredible that it will survive merely as a " looker on."
It must live and move and act. But this means that,
related to the local centre which we are bound to
postulate in order to make even " looking on " a possi-
bility, there must also be an organ or instrument of the
activity of the personality having something like the
same kind of relation to it that the physical body has
to mind and will in this life. At once we seem to be
driven to postulate something which may be called a
" body " in something like the ordinary sense of that
term. But if so, of what nature is this local centre,
this instrument, this organ of the spirit, this *' body " if
we may so call it. Is it material.?

Certainly not, if by " material " is meant something
which you can kick with your boot. But that is not
the proper meaning of the word. A cubic foot of
hydrogen, invisible and lighter than the air, is precisely
no more and no less *' material " than a cubic foot of
lead. And the ultimate atom of which any kind of
matter is composed has lately been shown to be no
undifferentiated " solid " mass but a vortex, a kind of
infinitesimal solar system, of electrons ; which electrons

I04 IMMORTALITY m

themselves seem, so far as can at present be determined,
to be units of electric force without any measurable
solid substratum. Matter is not necessarily something
gross ; indeed, if scientific speculation as to the ether
are correct, it is not necessarily even ponderable. We
need not even raise, much less attempt to settle, that
most difficult of all philosophical questions, what is
matter and what is its relation to mind ? By matter
is meant that which can be thought of as other than
mind or spirit. Whether mind or matter are in the
last resort disparate, or whether they are each an
aspect of some ultimate substance which is neither,
or whether one is a product of the other are ques-
tions on which the doctors largely differ. We need
not stay to discuss these questions ; for whatever views
are held about them, it would be admitted that what
exists in and occupies space must be called matter,
whatever its mobility, its tenuity, or its capacity for
rapidly assuming different forms. Hence we cannot
deny the attribute " material " in its strictly philosophic
sense to the " body " of the future life ; though in the
popular sense of the word "material" we assuredly
must do so — and that with emphasis, since we must
suppose it to be normally invisible and impalpable to
earthly senses, though probably both visible and palpable
to the acuter perceptions of the next life.

We may proceed to ask whether we can suppose
there to be any further analogies between the *' body "
of this life and this material instrument of the spirit in
the next, which would perhaps even more fully justify
the use of the term " body " to describe it ?

The time is past when a point of this kind could be
considered as settled by a discussion of the exact exegesis
of a text of Scripture, but it can never be wholly irrele-
vant to examine the underlying principle of the inspired
intuitions of such an original thinker and profound
religious genius as St. Paul.

What, then, is the fundamental idea at the back of

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 105

St. Paul's mind when he draws his famous distinction
between the natural body of flesh and blood (a-cofia
■>^v^(,k6v) and the spiritual body {o-co/jia TrvevfiarLKov) of
the life to come ? It is often supposed that by
" spiritual " he means *' made of spirit," i.e. " imma-
terial," This is a possible meaning ; St. Paul certainly
did not regard the future body as material in the crude
popular sense, for he expressly denies that flesh and
blood can inherit eternal life ; but the context makes
another interpretation more probable. Since " natural "
(-v/ru^t/coi/) in the context does not mean a body made of
^v)(i]^ but a body adapted to the life of the '^jrv^Vi it is
probable that by " spiritual " (TrvevfiartKov) body is
meant, not a body made of Trvevfia^ but a body adapted
to the life of the irvevixa. When in Greek the words
■^vxf} and TTvev/iia are used in contrast to one another,
the word -^vxv always stands for the life which man
shares with the animals, while Trveufia stands for those
higher capacities in which he transcends them. Thus the
" natural " body is one adapted to a life in which eating,
drinking, and the continuance of the species are neces-
sary ; the " spiritual " body is one adapted to a life in
which these things are left behind, but in which the
higher activities of life are to be pursued in an enhanced
and intensified degree. In fact, in each case he is
thinking not of the material of which the body is
composed, but, to use a modern phrase, of the environ-
ment to which it is adapted.

If this interpretation is correct, the idea that lies
behind St, Paul's mind, put into modern language, is
something like this. The body is essentially the means
of expression of the life of the spirit, and the organ of
its activity. As such it is adapted to its environment,
and it draws its substance and nourishment from that
environment. Change the environment, and the spirit
must find a new expression for its life, a new organ of
its activity, a new ** body." But the new " body " will
be as perfectly (indeed, we hope more perfectly) adapted

io6 IMMORTALITY iii

to the new environment as the old body was to the
old environment ; it must, therefore, be of an entirely
different character. "It is sown in corruption ; it is raised
in incorruption : it is sown in dishonour ; it is raised in
glory : it is sown in weakness ; it is raised in power : it
is sown a natural, it is raised a spiritual body " (i Cor.
XV. 42-44). And its substance (whatever that may be)
is derived from the new environment ; it is " a building
from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens" (2 Cor. v. i). "Thou sowest not the body
that shall be . . . but God giveth it a body" (i Cor.

XV. 37-38)-

The idea is one which it will be worth while to follow
out a little further.

In this world mind is the highest form of life, and
life only appears in connection with organisms made up
of material constituents. It is, however, important to
observe the relation which exists in any living animal
between the life principle and the material organism.
Whether we regard the life principle as a separate entity,
having much the same relation to the material organism
as a bird to its cage or a tenant to his house, or whether
we regard the organism as a single entity of which the
life principle and the body which is its material con-
comitant are merely two aspects, it is clear that the life
principle is, so to speak, the predominant partner. A
contrast must be made between what in popular language
is known as " living matter " and " dead matter."
" Dead matter," so-called, can only grow as a result of
accretion from without, and can only move as a result
of impact from some external force. Living matter
grows by absorbing into itself, by means of its own
spontaneous activity, matter originally outside it, and it
transforms the character of that which it takes in, so
that it becomes assimilated to itself. In the case of
animal organisms there is in addition a conscious selection
and rejection of the outside material according as it is
suitable or otherwise to assimilation ; and this purposive

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 107

selection is still further facilitated by a power of spon-
taneous movement in space.

The human body has its origin in a minute cell, or
rather in the conjunction of two minute cells, and from
this small beginning, first within and afterwards outside
the womb, it gradually increases in size and in differen-
tiation of function in regard to its parts till the age of
maturity. But the important point to notice is that it
is only by virtue of the continued activity of the life
principle within it that this process of growth is accom-
plished, and that the continued nourishment and repair
of the body when grown is maintained. There is, of
course, no point at which we can say that the life exists
apart from its material substratum, but it is equally true
to say that the developed body has been built up by and
is the result of the initiative, activity, and dominance of
the principle of life within it. The most highly evolved
expression of this principle of life is that complex of
will, thought, and feeling which we call mind or con-
sciousness. It would seem, therefore, that, up to a
point, it is literally true to say that the body is made by
the soul within it, using the term soul to include the
unconscious and subconscious as well as the conscious
manifestations of the principle of life.

Now, if we believe that the soul is a thing which has
such an intrinsic value that, if the universe is a reason-
able and tolerable universe, it must somehow or other
be preserved, it is surely reasonable to suppose that it
will not lose this capacity of building up for itself out
of its environment a body which can be an organ of
expression and activity adapted to its new environment.

" When they shall rise from the dead," said our Lord,
" they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but
are as the angels in Heaven." A body adapted to the
environment of the life to come will be one which will
not be adapted to eating, drinking, and the continuance
of the species. Our present bodies have been developed
during a long course of evolution throughout which the

io8 IMMORTALITY iii

environment has been such that the chief form of adap-
tation demanded has been in regard to activities of this
kind. Hence they are less perfectly adapted than we
could v^ish to those higher activities of the soul whose
possibilities and value have come into view comparatively
late in the physical history of the race. Our bodies are
the only means we have for the expression of our aspira-
tions, our creative, our ethical and our aesthetic activi-
ties, nevertheless they are felt to be clumsy and inefficient
mediums of such expression just in proportion to the
mental, moral, and aesthetic development of the indi-
vidual. What ardent soul would not wish to construct
for itself an organ of expression more subtly responsive
to its needs and aspirations than the body of this life ?
" Here in the body pent, absent from Thee I roam "
expresses a feeling which in one form or another few
have not experienced. A body, but one immune from
the weaknesses and limitations and grosser wants of this
world, is what we all should wish for. And, after all, is
there really any solid reason why we should not do so .''
Matter, let me repeat, exists in subtler forms than
flesh and blood. Bodies, as St. Paul says, may be of
many different kinds. Speculations as to bodies made
of ether or some such substance are too often nowa-
days pursued into the realms of the fanciful and the
absurd, nevertheless it is, I would submit, both un-
philosophic and unscientific to reject entirely every such
hypothesis as unworthy of serious consideration. Such
speculations, no doubt, are to be found most frequently
in books which portray the future life with a childish
elaboration of grotesque and material details vouched
for by fancied revelations, the greater part of which
clearly rest either on misunderstanding of the true
nature of phenomena like automatic writing ^ or medium-
istic vision, or on conscious fraud, or on a mixture of
the two. But is not the widespread popularity of such
literature the natural and inevitable result of the fact that

1 Cf. pp. 257-262, 322 ff.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 109

more sober teachers have been content, either to go on
merely repeating a traditional Apocalyptic symbolism
that has lost all meaning and attraction to the modern
mind ; or, by insisting that the life of the next world
must transcend the conditions of Time and Space, have
offered mankind a conception which to the intellect is
a puzzle and to the imagination an empty blank ?

The attempt to reach too precise and detailed a
conception of the nature of the *' spiritual " body is to
be deprecated. Speculations on the subject may easily
become so fanciful and uncertain that they tend to
throw discredit on the very idea of a " spiritual " body
at all. There is, however, one question which cannot
be altogether avoided. If I ask " With what body do
they come ? " I raise a question wider than that of the
constituency, material or otherwise, of the future in-
tegument of the soul. The body of youth is very
different from the body of old age. Shall we be
raised up young or old .'' In the resurrection of the
dead, will a man meet his mother as he remembers her
when he laid her grey-headed in the grave, or will it
be as his father saw her in the prime of life at the
marriage altar, or will it be as her grandmother knew
her a baby in the cradle .'' In this life we recognise
our friends by sight and touch and by the sound of
the voice. Will recognition of persons in the next
life also depend on something corresponding to sense
impressions .''

I think a distinction should be drawn. We cannot
imagine that in the life to come the Heavens will cease
to declare the glory of God ; or that the " music of
the spheres " (if such there be) should sound, and we
be deaf. In the immensity of the universe there must
be sights and sounds strange and beautiful yet to be
revealed. And why may not the mountains, the sunsets,
and the flowers of this earth still be open to our gaze
— but seen as still more glorious by the undimmed eye
and heightened perceptions of the body that shall be ?

no IMMORTALITY iii

The beauty and the glory may no longer come to us
through five separate avenues of sense ; perhaps it
may be through more than five, perhaps through less,
but obviously in a life under conditions of Time and
Space the capacity of aesthetic appreciation depends on
there being something corresponding to sense perception.
On the other hand, it is probable that the communica-
tion between soul and soul on which recognition,
mutual understanding, and fellowship depend will be
far less dependent there than here on sense perception.
Phenomena like Telepathy and thought-transference
and the richer though more familiar experience of
sympathy and fellowship in love and friendship, point
already in the direction of a possibility of recognition
and inter- communion without the need of sight or
hearing. But if this be so, then in the next life,
though we may expect to see and hear our loved
ones, we shall not be dependent on seeing and hearing
for knowledge of and communion with them. No
changes in outward form will prevent immediate recog-
nition of our friends ; and not only of them, but of
those also whom we have never known in this life.
Elijah and St. Paul will not look at all like the portraits
of them in stained-glass windows ; but we shall be able
to recognise them none the less.

The Hour of Death

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying ;
And now I'll do 't. And so he goes to heaven ;
And so am I revenged.

Thus Hamlet declines to kill the king at prayer, he
will rather wait till he can find him

about some act
That has no relish of salvation in 't ;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 1 1 1

The Idea of the supreme importance of the last few
moments of life on earth appears conspicuously in the
Prayer Book — in the Service for the Burial of the Dead,
" Suffer us not at our last hour, for any pains of death,
to fall from thee," in the petition in the Litany against
" sudden death," and in that for deliverance " in the
hour of death and in the day of judgment." In Roman
Catholic theology, again, it is held that one who has
committed any mortal sin must, if he dies unabsolved,
inevitably go to Hell, This widespread and deeply
rooted conviction as to the critical nature of the Hour
of Death contains an element which, I would submit, is
both true and important, and also an element which, I
venture to think, is superstitious and immoral.

AH is but lost, that living we bestow,

If not well ended at our dying day.

Oh man, have mind of that last bitter throe,

For as the tree does fall, so lies it ever low.^

The haunting fear that at the last moment some little
slip may cause a noble soul to trip and fall from Heaven
to Hell has been the cause of untold misery and super-
stition. While the idea that there will be a chance to
make it all right on one's death-bed has helped many
another to stifle the warnings of his conscience. It is
time that Christian teaching repudiated far more openly
and with far more emphasis than heretofore, all relics
of the notion that a man's life will be judged not as a
whole but solely by the thought or act of its last
moment. Such a view revolts our sense of justice ; it
is really inconsistent with a thoroughgoing belief in the
goodness of God. And, if God is not just and not
good — and that in a sense in which we can understand
those words — what becomes of the hope of Immortality
at all ?

On the other hand, it is important to remember that
the circumstances of death vary immensely. Very
often, so far as we can see, death has in it no element

'■ Spenser, Faerie ^lueenc, i. lo. 41.

112 IMMORTALITY

III

of crisis ; it is a mere passing away from this life which
is hardly likely to modify the character at all. In other
cases it occurs as the climax of a great moral, mental,
or physical struggle. Now, the way in which we react
to any great crisis in life, profoundly and permanently
modifies our character — either for better or for worse.
The circumstances of a man's last moments may be
such that the very fact of facing death may be the
expression of an act of choice of the highest moral
value. The sailor who goes down with his ship after
standing aside to let the women and children be saved,
the soldier who dies heroically for the sake of what he
believes to be the cause of right, are doing something
else than merely dying. They are performing acts of
supreme moral value ; and no one can perform any act
having any degree of moral excellence at all without
being permanently the better for it, whether he goes on
living in this world or the next. And what applies to
the sailor and the soldier applies also to many cases
where death follows an accident or an illness — the way
in which the soul reacts to the whole set of circum-
stances, be they prolonged or be they short and sudden,
which culminate in death, cannot but affect for better
or for worse the state in which he makes a new begin-
ning in the life to come. Again, the possibility of a
death-bed repentance is not a thing to be ignored.
Those who postpone repentance to their death-bed,
commonly find it impossible to repent then ; for
repentance means a real change of heart and not merely
the conventional reaction of a frivolous nature terrified
at the thought of Hell. But cases of real and genuine
change of heart on the death- bed do occur ; and when
they occur they constitute a real change of character
which cannot but affect the moral level at which a man
enters into the life of the world to come, and this, as
will appear from what follows, is really a matter of no
small moment.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 113

The Resurrection — its Time and Manner

" And the sea gave up the dead which were in it."
Christian art has delighted in the picture of waves
dividing, tombs bursting, and the dead coming forth,
naked or in grave-clothes, just as they were when last seen
by human eye, to stand before the Throne. Theology
has added that if any had been consumed with fire,
devoured by beasts or scattered to the winds, the bodies
of these also will be restored " bone to his bone " as
in Ezekiel's vision.^ This crude, but vividly dramatic,
conception of the resurrection, ultimately derived from
pre-Christian Apocalyptic, was held by many, though
by no means all, of the early Fathers of the Church.
But, as has been already shown, it is directly opposed
not only to the clear implications of our Lord's teaching,
but to the actual letter of St. Paul's — " that which thou
sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be" ; "flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." At
the present day there is not, so far as I am aware, any
theologian of repute by whom it would be maintained ;
but it is still sufficiently prevalent, especially among
the less educated, to be the cause of a widespread mis-
understanding, and consequently of a complete rejection,
of the real teaching of the New Testament, and too
often, along with that, of any definite and effective belief
in Immortality at all.

The notion of a material identity between the
present and the future bodies is one which ought to be
far more emphatically repudiated by the Church than
has hitherto been done ; but that does not mean that
there is no connection or continuity between them.
That connection, however, clearly cannot consist in
identity of material particles ; for even in this life, so
we are told, the material particles which constitute our

1 Ezek. xxxvii. In Ezekiel the original reference of the vision was not to the
resurrection of the individual but to the restoration of the scattered remnants of
Israel.

114 IMMORTALITY iii

bodies are completely replaced about once In every
seven years. The principle of continuity and connec-
tion between my body of to-day and my body of
twenty years ago is to be found, not in its material
particles, but in the form-giving, body -building
principle of life within, i.e. in the soul. The soul is
not, as the Gnostics thought, a mere prisoner in a body
of alien nature. Body affects soul and soul affects
body, and neither is complete without the other ; but,
as argued above, the soul is the *' predominant partner."
But if the principle of bodily continuity even in this
world is found, not in any identity of material particles,
but in the soul, it is obvious that the principle of con-
tinuity between the terrestrial and the celestial body
also must be looked for in the same direction. And
if we ask how the connection we seek can be adequately
supplied by the soul, the reply would be that it is in
virtue of that power inherent in the life principle of
determining form and of building up by assimilation
from its environment a new body suited to that environ-
ment — whether that environment be in this world or
in the world beyond our sight.

It may be asked whether some light on the relation
of the present and the future body cannot be derived
from the accounts in the Gospels of the Resurrection
of our Lord. This would undoubtedly be the case if
only we might assume that every detail in these stories
was to be relied upon as authentic. That assumption,
however, is one v/hich I personally am unable to make.
The belief that our Lord showed Himself alive after
His passion rests upon a stronger historical basis
than is often supposed. Quite apart from the literary
evidence, of which the most remarkable is the first-
hand and detailed account of the various appearances
by St. Paul (i Cor. xv. 3-8), the broad fact of the rise
of Christianity has somehow to be explained. It is
impossible to account for the fact that a body of
peasants — crushed and disillusioned by the crucifixion of

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 115

the leader they had regarded as the destined Master of
the world — started forthwith, in the face of incredulity,
opposition, and bitter persecution, to preach with passion
and conviction the Gospel that He was the Son of God
soon to return in glory as Judge of all mankind, except
on the hypothesis that some startling event or events
had occurred which put it for them absolutely beyond
doubt that He was still alive. But the historical value
of the accounts given in the Gospels of these events
is a very different matter. No doubt the bulk of the
material in the first three Gospels has a high degree of
historical value — of that a prolonged study of the subject
has convinced me — but there are special reasons why
I feel that too much confidence cannot be put in the
details of the accounts they give of the Resurrection.

Of these one of the most weighty is the unfortunate
disappearance of the original conclusion of St. Mark,
which is the earliest and (for purposes of narrative as
distinct from discourse) the most reliable of the three.
Another is the fact that, in spite of the clear teaching
of our Lord and of St. Paul, the early Church continued
to be largely dominated by the pre-Christian idea of
a flesh and blood resurrection ; and there are clear
indications that the influence of this preconceived idea
has modified the tradition of what actually happened
in this case. The most conspicuous, but not the only,
instance of this would be the statement (Lk.
xxiv. 39-43) that the Risen Master partook in the
presence of the disciples of a piece of broiled fish,
and invited them to handle a body of " flesh and
bones."

In view of this unreliability of the tradition in points
of detail, it seems to me impossible to make use of it
to elucidate our conception of the nature of the con-
tinuity between our bodies in this and in the next life.
On the contrary, my own inclination is to reverse the
process and to approach the particular question of the
relation between the crucified and the risen body of our

ii6 IMMORTALITY m

Lord Himself in the light of the conclusions arrived at
above as to the general question of the continuity and
connection between the " natural " and the " spiritual "
body. I am far from wishing to dogmatise on the
difficult subject of the manner of our Lord's Resurrec-
tion, but in trying to frame a conception of it for
myself, I am disposed to look first to His own teaching
and that of St. Paul on the nature of the Resurrection-
body. I cannot build upon the details of a tradition
which there is reason to think has been influenced by
the a priori conceptions of a generation which, in this
as in other things, only partially understood either the
Master or His greatest follower.

There remains to ask how we may conceive the
transition from the " natural " to the "spiritual " body
to be effected. Three main answers to this question
have been suggested.

We may suppose that during our life on earth we
are, although we know it not, building up an unseen
celestial body which is a sort of counterpart of our
earthly body but more exactly adapted to the expres-
sion of the character which our thoughts and conduct
are all the while developing. Or, again, we may hold
that the death of this body is the very act of birth of a
new body which will grow, possibly with immense
rapidity, to be a perfect expression of the character to
which we shall have by that time attained. In either
case we may expect the body to reflect the nature of
the self far more clearly than it does in this world. It
will be fair and vigorous when the character is good,
mean and weak when the character is bad. And in either
case, if there is any growth or change of our character
in the next life, it would be reflected and accompanied
by a corresponding growth in the " spiritual " body.

As between these two alternatives there seems little
to choose, and little evidence on which to base a
decision. The third possibility is one which, person-
ally, I am disinclined to accept, but, as the weight of

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 117

tradition can be pleaded in its favour, it demands a
serious consideration.

Christian theology inherited from Jewish Apocalyptic
the idea that after death there is an interval during
which the soul waits in a disembodied state until the
time is ripe for a general resurrection of all men for
the Day of Judgment, and that its assumption of the
risen body will be postponed till that date. The
validity or otherwise of this view cannot be considered
without a brief summary of its origin and history.

As has already been pointed out, the Jews, until long
after the return from Babylon, believed that the soul at
death left the body and departed to a joyless existence
in Sheol. The Apocalyptic writers started with the
conception of Sheol as an accepted belief. Their own
contribution to a more worthy conception of immor-
tality was twofold. They moralised the conception of
Sheol itself by making a considerable difference in the
degree of happiness and the quality of life enjoyed
there — a difference which depended on the degree of
goodness or wickedness in the life that had been led on
earth. In addition to this they taught that ultimately
ail the spirits of the righteous would be recalled from
Sheol altogether and would again assume their bodies
to enjoy a fuller and more glorious life. This bodily
resurrection was connected either with the establish-
ment or with the end and final sublimation into Heaven
of the Messianic Kingdom on earth. Thus the idea
that there must be a long interval between death and
resurrection in the case of any individual who dies
before the General Resurrection of all men was partly
due to the survival of an originally non-ethical concep-
tion of life in Sheol as the next stage after death, and
was partly due to the historical fact that beUef in the
resurrection (i.e. in a full and worthy immortality for
the individual) was to the mind of the average Jew
inextricably bound up with the conception of the
Messianic Kingdom upon earth.

ii8 IMMORTALITY iii

This idea, along with others, the early Church took,
over more or less uncriticised from Jewish Apocalyptic.
But there are two points worth noting.

(i) The belief in a long interval between death
and resurrection cannot claim to have behind it the
authority of our Lord's own teaching. True, there are
sayings of His which might appear to suggest it, but
there are others which imply something much more like
the view advocated above. A crucial saying is that to
the Penitent Thief, " To-day shalt thou be with me in
Paradise." Paradise in Jewish Apocalyptic (wherever
the word does not refer to the earthly Garden of Eden)
is one of the divisions of Heaven ; it does not mean a
department of Sheol. Our Lord therefore, it would
seem, expected that both He and the Thief would go
straight to Heaven without any interval in Hades.
The Parable of Dives and Lazarus, if we accept the
current view that *' Abraham's bosom " is a synonym
for Paradise, has precisely the same implication. Again,
His argument to the Sadducees, that the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God of the
dead but of the living, would lose half its force if we
suppose He thought of them as being in a " disem-
bodied state," i.e.^ as enjoying a less full and real life
than they had done on earth. ^ No doubt the idea that
our Lord Himself spent the interval between Good
Friday and Easter morning in Hades is found in the
primitive Church ; but that is easily explained as being
the natural, indeed the inevitable, inference which
minds trained in Jewish Apocalyptic would draw from
the fact that the series of events which convinced the
Apostles of His Resurrection began on the third day.
The inference was a natural one ; it does not follow
that it was correct.^

' The idea that the new life of the transformed ^I'XV follows immediately after
death, which appears in 4 Mace. ix. 22, xvii. 18, xviii. 23, may have been already
current in some circles in Palestine.

^ The clause "descended into Hell" first appears in a local version of the
Apostles' Creed about the year 400 a.d. Its probable reference is to the " raking of
Hell," i.e. to the belief that during tlie interval between His Death and Resurrection

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 119

(2) The question Is one on which St. Paul's views
appear to have undergone a change. When he wrote
the Epistles to the Thessalonians and the first Epistle
to the Corinthians he expected to be alive at a visible
Second Coming of Christ, and he taught that the dead
would first be raised (evidently from Sheol) to meet
the Lord. Later in life he writes to the Philippians of
his desire "to depart and be with Christ." Whether
or not he had faced the full implications of this remark
we cannot be certain. But we know that he habitually
thought of Christ and His celestial body as in Heaven,
not in Sheol ; and the expectation that after death he
will at once depart to be with Christ logically involves
the complete abandonment of the old belief in any
interval of waiting in Sheol at all before the entry
into the resurrection life.

Possibly, in another of its aspects, the idea of " the
end of all things " is one which should still be retained.
The realisation of the Kingdom of God on earth is as
much an integral part of the Christian hope as is the
entry of the individual into immortal life — and this can
only be realised after a long process, which may possibly
culminate in a final consummation before this planet
becomes uninhabitable, if, as is generally supposed, this
will sooner or later be the case. Again, if the dead
still take an interest in this earth — and at the very
least they cannot but be affected by the moral quality
of those who keep leaving this world to enter the
society of which they are members — there is a sense in
which " they without us should not be made perfect,"
since the full achievement of the glory of Heaven must
wait for the complete regeneration of Earth.

But the corporate regeneration of society on earth
and the entry by the individual into that state where

our Lord preached to, converted and baptizc<l the righteous men of old. In so far
as it is an endeavour to assert the principle that a way of salvation is provided for
good men who die without the opportunity of hearing the full Christian message
presented in a form wliich they can dctinitely accept, the insertion of the clause
marks a real improvement on the older form of the Creed. Cf. p. 202 n.

I20 IMMORTALITY iii

" this mortal shall have put on immortality " are two
quite different things. The one has to do with this
visible, the other with the unseen world. Jewish and
early Christian Apocalyptic, holding that both would
be achieved together through the coming of the
Messianic Kingdom, really confused two separate issues.
But it is surely unreasonable for us — who both clearly
realise the distinction between them, and also the
historical causes which led to their being confused —
to continue to suppose that the resurrection of the
individual must await the establishment of the Kingdom
of Heaven on earth. Hence, though we may recognise
elements of truth in the old expectation of the Last
Day, I would urge that Christian teaching would do well
to surrender avowedly and completely the belief that
the resurrection, that is, the assumption by the spirit
of its celestial body, is postponed to a distant future.

To reject the idea of a possible interval between
death and resurrection is no doubt to abandon the
form of primitive Christian belief, but it is really to
return to its substance. All the first generation of
Christians believed, like St. Paul when he wrote his
earlier letters, that in their own case there would be no
interval at all between this life and the entry into the
glorious life of the world to come. Thus, if we affirm
that we too, at once and without any interval of
waiting, shall take on our new celestial bodies, we affirm
exactly what the Apostles taught would happen to
themselves and to every member of the Church they
knew. The notion of an age-long interval between
death and resurrection is an inheritance from the letter
of Jewish Apocalyptic which the actual vital belief of
the first generation of Christians had in practice,
though not in theory, already discarded. For them-
selves they undoubtedly believed there would be no
interval of waiting ; and they never considered the
question in regard to generations yet unborn, for the
simple reason that they believed that the end of the

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 121

world would come in their own lifetime. Hence, I
would submit that, if we believe with regard to our-
selves what they believed with regard to themselves, we
are actually nearer to primitive belief than if we accept
the views of traditional theology.

But if we get rid of the supposed interval between
Death and Resurrection, we dispose at the same time of
the interval between Death and Judgment. And this is
a great gain, for it is only by so doing that we are able
to accept in anything like its original force and meaning
one of the central features in the teaching of our Lord.
" Watch, therefore, for ye know not the day nor the
hour." " In an hour that ye know not, the Son of
Man Cometh." These and similar sayings were un-
doubtedly intended by our Lord and understood by
the Apostles to refer to the Last Judgment, conceived
of as a stupendous crisis, which those who heard Him
might at any moment be called upon to face. " In the
midst of life we are in death," and if, but only if, we
hold that for each man the day of death is also the Day
of Judgment can we understand and realise in our own
lives the meaning of this vital element in His message.

How and why the day of death both can and must
be also a day of judgment will be shown later.^

The Day of Judgment

^uantus tremor est futurus,
Quando Judex est venturus,
Cuncta stricte discussurus.

Tuba, mirum spargens sonum
Per scpulchra rcgionum,
Coget oranes ante thronum.

The notion of one final Great Assize logically stands
or falls with the idea of a General Resurrection at the

' In Mediaeval and Roman Catholic Theology it is held, rightly, I would main-
tain, that a "Particular" Judgment of the individual follows immediately upon
death ; but the belief in a subsequent Universal Judgment on the Last Day, which
in that case is surely superfluous, is retained from the Apocalyptic tradition.

122 IMMORTALITY iii

Last Day. If we recognise this we are at once faced
with two questions. What are we to make of the
language of the New Testament with regard to the
Second Coming of Our Lord ? And how are we to
think of the Judgment at all .'' Of the meaning and
value for modern thought of the idea of the Second
Coming of Christ space will not permit a discussion
now, so I may be permitted to refer to my treatment of
it in the volume Concerning Prayer} The question,
however, of our conception of the nature of the Judg-
ment is vital to the subject in hand. Any attempt to
answer it must begin with a brief examination of the
words ascribed to our Lord in the Gospels.

If we wish to estimate truly the relation of the
teaching of our Lord to the Apocalyptic views of the
time, we must be careful never to lose sight of the
principles of interpretation outlined above (cf. pp. 89 ff.).
Besides this, it is of the first importance to note how
little in the way of detailed description can be found in
His sayings with regard to the closely associated topics
of Resurrection, Second Coming, and Judgment. This
is one of those cases where silence is evidential ; for it
is just this sort of detail about which all minds are
greedy for information and in which Jewish and
Christian Apocalyptic in general abounds. Those
sayings of our Lord have been preserved which seemed
most interesting and most important to contemporaries ;
if, therefore, the record contains little on a topic in
which contemporary interest was so strong, it can only
be because there was little to record. There is, more-
over, on purely critical grounds, reason to believe that
even the small amount of detail that is to be found in
His reported sayings is at least in part due to embellish-
ment by Christian tradition of the actual words He
used. Our Lord's avoidance of detail, therefore, was
clearly intentional. His declaration that He did not

^ Cf. section "Armageddon and the New Jerusalem " of the Essay on " God and
the World's Pain," pp. 12-19.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 123

know the hour of His Coming, and His explicit re-
pudiation before the Sadducees of the grosser forms of
the contemporary ideas as to the resurrection which
has already been discussed, all point in one direction.
While accepting the great ideas of Apocalyptic — judg-
ment and eternal life — He recognised the inadequacy
and even, up to a point, the misleading tendency of
the more elaborate details in the contemporary ideas.

The only two passages in the Gospels which describe
the Last Judgment with any approach to elaboration
occur in St. Matthew ; and it is probable that both of
these are instances of the tendency which undoubtedly
existed in primitive Christian tradition to bring His
language into closer accord with contemporary Apoca-
lyptic ideas by the addition of current phrases.^ In the
case of one of them, the description in Matt. xxiv.
29-31, this can be definitely proved. Practically all
scholars are now agreed that a large part of the First
Gospel has been copied with editorial modifications
from St. Mark or from a document practically identical
with St. Mark ; we have only then to compare this
passage of St. Matthew with the earlier version of it
in Mark xiii. 24-27 to see this process of elaboration
at work.

Matthew xxiv. 29-31. Mark xiii. 24-27.

But immediately after the But in those days, after that

tribulation of those days, the tribulation, the sun shall be

sun shall be darkened, and the darkened, and the moon shall

moon shall not give her light, not give her light, and the stars

and the stars shall fall from shall be falling from heaven,

heaven, and the powers of the and the powers that are in the

heavens shall be shaken : and heavens shall be shaken. And

then shall appear the sign of the then shall they see the Son of

Son of man in heaven : and then man coming in clouds with

shall all the tribes of the earth great power and glory. And

mourn^ and they shall see the then shall he send forth the

Son of man coming on the angels and shall gather together

' For the proof of the existence of this tcmlcncy, especially in the First Gospel,
cf. Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Pro61em,.fp. 425-436.

124 IMMORTALITY in

clouds of heaven with power his elect from the four winds,
and great glory. And he shall from the uttermost part of the
send forth his angels with a earth to the uttermost part of
great sound of a trumpet^ and heaven,
they shall gather together his
elect from the four winds, from
one end of heaven to the other.

Notice in particular that the famous " last trump "
does not occur in the more original version represented
by St. Mark.^

Moreover, it is not only clear that the editor of the
First Gospel has here elaborated the details of the
original passage in St. Mark ; there is also reason to
suppose that Mark xiii., itself, the so-called "Little
Apocalypse " (and the parallels in Matthew xxiv. and
Luke xxi. which are derived from it), is that section
in the Synoptic Gospels where the probability of the
presence of unauthentic details is at its maximum."

The second passage is the tremendous scene (Matt.
XXV. 31-46) where all the nations are gathered before
the Son of Man sitting on the throne of his glory to be
separated " as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the
goats." Here again, as is shown elsewhere in this
volume,^ there is reason to suspect that the details of
the picture have been modified through reminiscences
of Enoch and other Apocalyptic books. But, in any case,
the whole passage reads as if it were a parable intended
mainly to point the moral, " Inasmuch as ye have done
it unto one of the least of these. . . ." It does not
read as if it were meant to be taken as a description of
an event in which every detail is to be taken literally.

Even more important, however, for our purpose is
it to recognise how entirely the dramatic picture of an
external act of judgment disappears in the interpretation

^ The trumpet before the Judgment is found in Jewish Apocalyptic (cf. 4 Ez. vi.
23), and its mention by St. Paul (i Thess. iv. 16, i Cor. xv. 52) and by the editor
of the First Gospel is doubtless due to current Apocalyptic tradition.

^ Cf. Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Problem, pp. 179 ff.

^ Cf. Essay V. p. 197 n.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 125

given in the Fourth Gospel. In the teaching of this
Gospel judgment is not a single act by an external
power. " I am come a light into the world, that who-
soever believeth on me may not abide in the darkness.
And if any man hear my sayings, and keep them not,
I judge him not : for I came not to judge the world,
but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and
receiveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth him :
the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the
last day " (John xii. 46-48). Again, in John ix. 39, we
read : " For judgment came I into this world ; that
they which see not may see, and that they which see may
become blind." Judgment is by an internal and auto-
matic process, it is a necessary consequence of rejection
of the light, it is a process of moral deterioration, the
results of which, not always visible here, will be clearly
revealed " on the last day." Scientists tell us that every
act, every thought, every wish, leaves its record on the
grey matter of the brain, and common experience shows
that every deed and every Impulse leaves its trace on
character. In this life we simply cannot stand still, we
are perpetually compelled to choose and to act ; and
according as we accept or reject the light, according as
we incline in thought, word, or deed towards the good
or towards the evil, we are building up our character for
better or for worse. If Judgment means discrimination
between good and evil, it is automatically proceeding
all the while ; the Last Day will not be something new
and added, it will merely be the revelation of a fait
accompli. But it will be a revelation inevitably entailing
some startling and tremendous consequences.

And what, we may ask, will those consequences be }
If our previous argument is sound, we must eliminate
the idea of an interval between death and resurrection,
and say that for each individual, the day of death will
also be the Day of Judgment. A moment's considera-
tion will show that it requires no artificial machinery
to make it so. The distinction between the shqep

126 IMMORTALITY iii

and goats, in this world so obscure, in the next must
necessarily at once be patent. The very act of entering
into the next life means that we leave behind us all
those external advantages such as wealth, power, phy-
sical strength and beauty which so often in this world
win for us a respect and admiration wholly undeserved
and serve to disguise from others and from ourselves
our real character. We shall enter an immense society,
"join the majority" as we say, where we must stand
only on our merits. We shall be rated not by what we
have, nor by what we seem, but simply by what we are.

I?ut there is a further and still more important con-
sideration. Even in this world the outward appearance
of the body is to some extent modified by the life of
the soul within, which profoundly affects both its general
health and vigour and the expression of the face and
carriage. But if we accept in any degree at all the
view that the " spiritual " body of the next life will be
one which will be a more perfect organ than is our
present body for the expression of the spirit, then in the
next world the body will no longer be able to disguise,
it will, on the contrary, perfectly reveal the personality.
The body will be fair or foul, strong or weak, according
as would best express the character of the person it
serves. It will bear on it scars, indeed, but they will
be the scars of self-inflicted moral wounds, rather than
of physical wounds inflicted from without — these latter
may often be the nail-prints. of a cross transfigured into
lines of ineffable beauty. That new body will auto-
matically " bring to light the hidden things of darkness,
and make manifest the counsels of the heart " — either
for glory or for shame.

There is no reason to suppose that the mere act of
dying, as such, will bring about any miraculous change
in our characters or ideals, but it will in our bodies ; and
it will completely revolutionise our circumstances. It
will be the great revealer. We shall all of us be " found
out." The tyrant will have lost his throne, the success-

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 127

ful swindler will no longer impress his friends and even
enemies by the splendour of his country seat, the
sensualist may still have the itch for base excitement
but not the means to gratify it, the selfish beauty will
have forfeited her charms, the self-advertising quack
will have left behind his reputation. In this world there
are always some who look upon the rake as " dashing,"
the bully as a superman, the Pharisee as a saint ; but,
clothed in a body which really expresses their character,
they will all of them be " found out." That is why in
the next world, though it will be possible for the good
to help the evil, it will be less possible for the evil to
hurt the good ; for a person or an ideal which has been
" found out " has lost the power to seduce.

To be " found out " is an acute humiliation. It is
painful in exact proportion to a man's vanity, selfishness,
self-complacency, and to the degree of respect or admira-
tion he has previously enjoyed. But it often has one
salutary result. To be " found out " by other people
sometimes leads to the finding out of oneself. The
folly, meanness, cruelty, and contemptibility of our
own conduct often first really comes home to us when
we see how it strikes other people. And to discover
that one is not merely contemned but contemptible is
the greatest humiliation of all. But real self-knowledge,
painful as it is, is the first step towards reformation.

Partly for this reason, partly because it is natural to
think of the next life as a society in which the good
will be able to influence the evil, we may hope that
many, of whose character in this life we are tempted to
despair, may have the chance of a fresh start — at how-
ever low a level ; and may yet struggle upwards — at
the cost of however great effort and humiliation. A
" fresh start " under new conditions is often in this
world an opportunity for moral advance. A boy who
has got into bad odour at school not infrequently turns
out well at the University ; and some who have been a
failure at the University make a success of life in a

,28 IMMORTALITY m

changed cnvlronniciit. But in such cases the shock of
change, the presence of new interests, the influence of
better friends are only able to efl^ect a reformation where
there is present sufficient moral insight to appreciate, at
any rate to some extent, the new interests and the better
friends, and where there is a dawning perception (which,
be it noted, often follows rather than precedes the
first stages of reformation) that he has previously
" made a fool of himself"

Unless some perception of a higher ideal can be
awakened, no recognition of the error of previous
ways and no amendment is possible. It is often for-
gotten that the result of wrong doing or wrong thinking
is to blunt and blind the conscience. The v^orse a man
gets the less is he conscious of the fact ; the more selfish
and self-centred he becomes the less he is aware of it.
Hence, if the inevitable "finding out" by others which
will result on entering into the next world, the shock
which this will bring, and the kindly influence of the
better spirits he will find there do not sooner or later
bring such an one to recognise the bankruptcy of his old
ideals and the contemptibility of his old self, its effect
will be the reverse of redemptive. To be despised for
what one thinks to be one's excellence, to be pitied for
that of which one is most proud, to be convinced that
admiration, aff^ection, and respect are one's due, and to
receive the contrary, is to suffer acutely ; but it is the
suffering not of Purgatory but of Hell — for it is suffer-
ing which is not redemptive but wholly profitless.^ It is
the inevitable consequence of egotism in its extreme de-
velopment that it makes a man unable to perceive his
own nature, and that therefore he cannot but regard him-
self as an instance of merit unappreciated and goodness
misunderstood ; and he becomes ever more and more
sensitive and more and more resentful. But if a man
once repents and recognises past suffering as deserved,
even suffering which was resented and therefore profit-

' For a further development of this point cf. Concerning Prayer, pp. 30-33.

Ill THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD 129

less at the time may in retrospect be made redemp-
tive. So long as a man has the faintest perception of
an ideal that is higher than that which is expressed in
his own life there is a chance of reformation — that is
why the publican, though of a lower standard of actual
achievement, is more hopeful than the Pharisee. For
the incurably selfish, however, if such there be, there
must be an experience of Hell, that is to say, a period
of inevitable but wholly profitless suffering. But a
recognition of this fact does not bind us to suppose
that, as a matter of fact, any cases will be found to be
ultimately incurable ; or that, if so, the Hell in which
they will have necessarily lived for a time will not
ultimately be ended by their annihilation. On this
point I should wish to associate myself entirely with
the view expressed in Essay V.

But the Judgment will not be all of one kind. Not
only will the evil be " found out," the good will also
be revealed for what they are. And this will mean
that many of the apparent failures of this life will be
seen in a very different light. The rank and file of
brave, cheerful, kindly, dutiful, hard-working men and
women may stand out as more admirable than some
whom the world regards as saints and heroes. The
soldier who could not take the trench, the unknown
researcher who just failed to make the great discovery
but paved the way for some one else, the

village Hampden who, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood ;

all these will be " discovered " — much to their own
surprise. "Lord, when saw we thee hungry and fed
thee .''" they will exclaim with astonishment. Mirrored in
the eyes of those around they will see themselves trans-
figured, and with astonished ears will hear echoing from
lip to lip the cry of welcome, " Well done, good and
faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few
things : enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME

B. H. STREETER

131

SYNOPSIS

PART I

Till-: CoNDrrioNs ok the Life beyond the Present

1'a<;e

The Need of a Definite Conception . . . .134

The traditional pictures of Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell
liavc ceased to "grip" the modern man, even as symbolism,
with a consequent weakening of the belief in Immortality.

Hence the need of an alternative, but no less definite, way
of conceiving the nature of the future life.

Tentative character of the present Essay.

(Quality of Life, Locality, and Progress . . .136

Heaven is not a place above the sky, but no need to eliminate
the idea of space altogether.

Nevertheless, " Quality of life " must be our guiding
conception.

If so, there must be many gradations, not merely two (or
three) Heaven (Purgatory) Hell. But persons in different
stages not necessarily locally separated from one another.

Progress an essential element in our conception.

Purgatory . , -139

Criticism of modern Roman Catholic doctrine.

Any acceptable view must stress the positive idea of moral
growth rather than the negative idea of cleansing (a misleading
metaphor), and must also recognise value of joy as well as pain
in development of character.

Progress and Attainment ..... 141

The idea of Progress suggests an ultimate goal. But is
finality desirable ?

Reasons for passing over this question and confining our
attention to the life immediately following this, i.e. to the
proximate as distinguished from the ultimate Heaven, if such
there be.

PART II
The Nature of Eternal Life
God, Man, and Christ ...

Life in Heaven must be thought of as a participation in the
Divine Life ; but what do we know of the nature of the
Divine Life .>

The doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, properly understood,
132

145

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 133

PACE

answers this question. Christ is " the portrait of the unseen
God " ; but, if so, God must be very different from what
we are apt to think, and Heaven must not be thought of
after the model of " Solomon in all his glory."

Eternal Life . .148

St. John's conception of Eternal Life.

The highest life we know on earth is a foretaste of the life
of Heaven.

But what is the highest life on earth ?

The influence of Plotinus and the experience of supreme
moments has led to an under-estimating of the value of variety
in our conception of Heaven.

Our Lord's fondness for the symbol of the "Supper" shows
importance in His view of the more " homely " and of the
social elements in experience.

The Content of the Idea of Heaven . . . 154

Love.

"Charity never faileth " ; love will be the same in kind in
the next as in the present life ; which must therefore be
thought of as predominantly social in character.

IVork.

Creation not a finished act but an eternal activity of the
Divine Life ; there will therefore be work to do in Heaven.

Thought.

An essential element in the highest life and therefore eternal.
Importance attached to intellectual activity and the appre-
hension of truth by St. Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Beauty.

Popular Theology, influenced by the symbolism of the
Apocalypse, recognises the existence of aesthetic activity in
the next life ; but the conception of beauty implied is too
narrow.

Humour.

A quality exhibited by our Lord, and therefore an element
in the highest life.
In praise of Humour.

The Vision of God.

In the next life there must be elements which transcend
imagination. The language used about the Beatific Vision
has in practice led to an impoverishment of the idea of Heaven,
and consequently to a false notion of sanctity, i.e. of the kind
of life which is the best preparation for Heaven.

What we see in Goodness, Truth, and Beauty is really the
Divine, but, as God is personal, these do not reveal Him fully.

Christ will not cease to reveal the Father in the next life,
hence we may expect our knowledge of God to be consum-
mated in the vision of Christ in His "spiritual body."

The effect on the individual of the \'ision of Christ.

The unimaginable Beyond.

IV
THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME

PART I

THE CONDITIONS OF THE LIFE BEYOND
THE PRESENT

The Need of a Definite Conception

Among educated people it is recognised that the
traditional language about a Heaven " above the
bright blue sky " or a Hell beneath the earth can
only be accepted as figurative. We are commonly
told that we ought to think of Heaven, " not as
a place but as a state," and that the harps, palms,
and crowns are merely symbols. The phrase, " not a
place but a state," is only half satisfactory, but for the
moment we may accept it and note that it applies
also to Purgatory and Hell, supposing we feel bound
to retain either or both of these conceptions in our
creed. But, if we are frankly to abandon the old
mental pictures and really begin to ask what we mean
when we say that Heaven is not a place but a state, it
behoves us to ask with no slight insistence what kind
of state we mean. If we dismiss the old imagery as
merely symbol we are the more bound to ask what
kind of a thing does it symbolise .''

This question is one to which no final and no cut-
and-dried answer is possible, or even desirable. But it

134

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 135

is well worth while to make a resolute attempt to
arrive at an answer as clear and definite as is practicable
in view of the nature of the enquiry and of the limitations
of human experience and imagination. This attempt is
no mere interesting exercise in academic speculation, it
is a vital necessity for religion and life. The old con-
ceptions of Heaven and Hell which were developed by
the early and mediaeval Church, partly from hints in
the New Testament, but mainly on the basis of ideas
inherited from pre-Christian Jewish Apocalyptic, had
the great merit that they presented vivid pictures of
the nature of the world to come, — pictures clear and
definite enough to fire the imagination, to convince the
intellect, and thereby to mould the aspirations and
influence the conduct of mankind. At the present day
these conceptions are intellectually discredited, even at
the level of education which the Elementary School has
made universal. They cannot be galvanised into fresh
life.

Contemporary religion has no more pressing need
than the thinking out and popularisation of new ways
of presenting to the mind an idea of what is meant
by the Christian hope of immortality, clear and definite
enough to do for our generation what the symbols
and pictures inherited from Jewish Apocalyptic did for
our fathers. The lack of clear and reasoned guiding
conceptions as to the nature of the Future Life is, I am
confident, at the root of most of the widespread doubt
and disbelief in immortality at the present day.
People do not believe in a future life because the forms
in which the belief has been presented to their minds
seem, on the one hand, to be intellectually untenable,
and, on the other, to be unattractive or even repellent.
Traditional pictures of Hell seem morally revolting ;
while the Heaven of Sunday School teaching or popular
hymnology is a place which the plain man does not
believe to exist, and which he would not want to go to
if it did.

136 IMMORTALITY iv

This paper is an attempt to think out the implica-
tions of the New Testament conception of Eternal Life
in the light of the changed intellectual background of
the present day. It is put forward not with the dog-
matism of one who proclaims unchallengeable results,
but rather as a suggestion of the lines along which the
solution of an admittedly difficult problem may be
looked for. As such it is submitted, and as such I
would ask that it be judged.

Quality of Life, Locality, and Progress

At the outset I must observe that if, as has been
argued in the previous paper, existence in the next life
as in this must be thought of as existence in space, the
proposition that Heaven must be thought of rather as a
state than as a place can only be accepted if it means
that Heaven must not be thought of as one particular
and definite place situated locally above the sky — a con-
ception which belongs to an age which believed the
earth to be the centre of the Universe. The discovery
that the earth is not the centre of the Universe, but a
mere speck in a corner of it, one world out of many
millions, does not mean that we must eliminate the
notion of place from our conception of any life beyond
the present. On the contrary, it means that we must
infinitely enlarge our conception of the amount of room
there is and ot the number of places which the Uni-
verse contains. It thus becomes thinkable that in the
next life we may have the power of easy and rapid
movement from world to world ; or may have our
home, as it were, in some one world with the power of
visiting or communicating with this and other worlds.
We know nothing about the spatial conditions of the
next life, but it is important to insist that we are in no
way bound, because we discard the old Apocalyptic
Heaven above " this solid bowl we call the sky," to rob
our conception of the next life of that element of space

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 137

and spaciousness which must be preserved if we are to
attempt to imagine it at all.

The value of the proposition that Heaven must be
thought of " not as a place but as a state " lies in the
positive not in the negative part of the sentence ; for,
though we can only make the merest guess at the
spatial conditions of the next life, we can, if we are at
pains to think out what is implicit in the fundamental
ideas of the New Testament, arrive at very clear and
definite ideas as to the state or quality of life enjoyed
by the righteous in the world to come. In the second
part of this Essay I shall show that in the last resort
the New Testament idea of Heaven is thought out less
in terms of place than in terms of quality of life^ and I
shall endeavour to give clearness and definition to this
conception. But, before doing this, it is worth while
to point out certain very important consequences which
follow if we take as the basis of our idea of the world
beyond the present the conception of quality of life.

So long as Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell are thought
of mainly in terms of place, they must necessarily be
thought of as entirely separate one from the other, so
that a person who is in one could have little or no
communication with a person in the other. Again,
along with the idea of three dififerent places goes
naturally (if not in strict logic) the idea of three dis-
tinct states of desert and happiness separable from one
another by clear, definite, hard and fast lines. But if
we take quality of life instead of locality as the
starting-point of our conception of the Beyond, these
hard and fast distinctions and divisions immediately
disappear, with two important results.

First, between Dives and Lazarus there may be still
a great gulf fixed, but the gulf is one of quality of life,
expressing itself in feeling and character ; it is not one
which is constituted by distance in space. Once think
away these local conceptions and it would be as possible
for saint and sinner to get into personal contact in the

,38 IMMORTALITY iv

next world if they desired, as it is in this world for a
successful and a disappointed lover to be members of the
same house party, though one may be in Abraham's
bosom and the other in a state of torment. This
consideration removes what is a very real difficulty to
many minds. Take, for example, the case of a good
mother who has a worthless son. It is impossible
that both can, in the traditional phrase, "go to
Heaven " ; yet it is equally impossible that Heaven
should be Heaven to the mother if the son is not there.
Take away, however, the idea of locality from concep-
tions like Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell, and we see that,
however different may be the inner state or quality of
life led by the mother and the son, they can still be in
personal correspondence. The mother may yet be
able to do something towards restoring and reforming
the son — a possibility which not merely suggests a
solution of some of the problems of this life, but also
gives a concrete illustration of what we mean by saying
that in the next world there will still remain work to
be done and an opportunity for love and service. But
of this more will be said later on.

Secondly, if we think away the implications of locality
associated with the old ideas of Heaven, Purgatory, and
Hell, there seems no reason to maintain the notion that
there are three and only three clearly defined " states "
in the next life. If we think of the future in terms of
quality of life we should naturally suppose that there
would be an infinite number of degrees in quality,
shading off" into one another, and that, this would mean
a possibility of progress — certainly a progress upward,
probably also (though this is less certain) downward.
This consideration meets a difficulty widely felt, which
is commonly expressed in this form : " The great
majority of people seem when they die to be neither
good enough for Heaven nor bad enough for Hell."
To this difficulty there is no satisfactory answer unless
we assume the possibility of Progress in the life to

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 139

come. But if we surrender the notion of three distinct
and definite denominations, there is no reason why we
should not make Progress one of the most fundamental
and characteristic elements in our conception of the
future life.

Purgatory

The idea of Progress, however, in the world to come
must be clearly distinguished from the doctrine of
Purgatory, at any rate as understood in the Roman
Church. Even if the materialistic conceptions and
superstitious observances which have gathered round
it in popular belief are removed, there are in the offici-
ally accepted doctrine of Purgatory two points which
are open to serious objection. Firstly, it is held that
at the moment of death it is decided whether the soul
is ultimately destined for Heaven or Hell. If for
Heaven, at that moment its character is transformed by
supernatural grace so as to make it completely and
finally fit for the place it is destined to hold there.
Secondly, the pains of Purgatory are not, though the
derivation of the word suggests it, held to effect a moral
purification of the soul. They are purely penal, and
constitute as it were the repayment in the next life in a
currency of pain of a debt which has been incurred in
this life in a currency of sin.^ The postulate of a
miraculous transformation of character at the moment
of death, and the purely vindictive debtor and creditor
conception of Divine justice, leave a Purgatory so
conceived open to quite as many objections as the tradi-
tional Protestant dichotomy of the future life into
Heaven or Hell.

Outside the Roman Church, the word Purgatory
is often used in its ancient mediaeval sense to denote a
state of real progress and moral purification. There is

^ An eminent Roman Catholic theologian tells me that the present ciominancc
of this view is largely due to tiie inllucnce of the great Spanish Jesuit Suarez. Cf.
also Fr. von HUgel, TAc Mystical Element in Religion, pp. 240 f.

140

IMMORTALITY iv

nuich to he said for a revival of such an idea. It will,
however, he of little value so long as the main emphasis
is laid cither on the idea of getting rid of undesirable
qualities in the soul or on the element of pain which
that process will require. These two false tendencies
are due, partly to the wholly unchristian emphasis on
the purely negative element in morality which has
pervaded so much of the practical teaching of the
pulpit and the Sunday School, partly to a misconcep-
tion of the part played by suffering in the development
of character.

So long as Christian teaching puts the avoidance
of evil before enthusiasm for good, thus overlaying the
Gospel with the Law, Purgatory will be thought of in
the same negative way. But what is really wanted is a
conception of a Progress in the next life in which the
leading idea shall be that of addition rather than ot
subtraction, and which will emphasise the need of
enriching that which is good in the character rather
than merely the purging away of that which is evil.
We are often misled by our metaphors : moral evil is
not a stain that .can be removed by a negative and
external process like washing or burning. It is rather
a disease of the will which can only be cured by
a restoration to health, which is a positive process
akin to growth.

Again, moral growth inevitably and of course
involves an element of pain ; for repentance and the
recognition of the real nature of one's own mis-
conduct is a necessary condition of such growth.
And the realisation of the contemptibility of one's
own character, and of the extent and real character
of the wrong one has done, which is an essential
preliminary to repentance, is not likely to be less
painful in the world to come than it is in this. And
the more there is to repent of, the more lasting and
the more acute must be the pain. But Christianity
associates forgiveness with repentance ; and in the most

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 141

characteristically Christian teaching the joy of the
forgiven is not held to be a lesser thing than the pain
of the penitent. Suffering also of other kinds, if rightly
borne, plays an important part in the development of
character. But this is only one side of the matter.
Dazzled by the discovery of the supreme value of
suffering rightly borne, too many of the saints have
been blind both to the intrinsic and to the educative
value of joy. Hence Christianity has unfortunately
come to be associated in many minds vi^ith a refusal
of the joie de vivre^ and with a denial both of the
intrinsic value and of the beneficent function in the
development of character of simple pleasure, cheerful-
ness, and humour. But may we not hope that that
portion of the Church of Christ which has gone before
has recovered from this delusion ^

Progress and Attainment

Assuming, then, that the idea of Progress is an
essential element in our conception of the life to come,
a further question at once arises. Progress implies
direction. If it be true that most people when they
die are neither good enough for Heaven nor bad enough
for Hell, are we to suppose that movement in the life
to come will be in both directions ^ Will the person
whose life in this world seems to be a steady develop-
ment in the direction of increasing moral blindness and
deliberate rejection of good and light have a chance of
amendment in the next ^ And, if so, supposing he
rejects this second opportunity, will the process of
degeneration ultimately reach its logical climax .'' In
other words, does Hell exist ; arud, if so, what is it like
and who, if any one, will go there } This is an intensely
important question, but as I have already indicated
(pp. 128 f.) the kind of answer I should be disposed to
give to it, and as other aspects of it are discussed in
Essay V. of this volume, I will pass it by and confine

142

IMMORTALITY iv

my attention to the meaning of the idea of Progress
in the upward direction.

We are at once brought up against the question,
Is there such a thing as a final and perfect Heaven ? The
very idea of Progress seems to imply an ultimate goal
towards which the advance is being made. Hence,
strict logic seems to demand an ultimate Heaven in the
sense of a final goal for achieved perfection. We
human beings strive for perfection and we long for rest ;
but, on the other hand, when we think of it, the idea
of an eternity of existence in a static state of achieved
perfection seems intolerable. The fact that, in such a
state, nothing would remain to be hoped for, and
nothing would be left to be done, implies to many minds
the negation of one of the fundamental conditions of
happiness. The human heart has an insatiable demand
for apparently inconsistent things — activity and repose,
achievement and pursuit. We may go a little deeper
and say that the mind and will of man is essentially
creative, and that creation implies both the existence
of an end which it is possible to attain and the fact that
it is not yet attained. The difficulty (which, be it
noted, is the same as the standing philosophical difficulty
of getting a conception of the Divine Being which will
include both perfection and activity) is one which does
not admit of solution within the limits of analogies
suggested by our present experience. But, for practical
purposes, we may leave it on one side.

Experience shows that the result of any advance
towards a goal which is clearly seen, whether in know-
ledge, in artistic achievement, or in morals, leads to the
discovery of a goal and of an ideal beyond that origin-
ally perceived. And, in this world at any rate, it is the
case that those who have made most progress in any
department are also those who recognise most clearly the
infinite distance which still separates them from their
ideal. Every achievement brings with it an enhance-
ment of the ideal to be achieved. Not only that, but

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 143

we grow more rapidly in our perception of the character
and richness of the ideal than in our achievement of
what we have perceived. The distance between the
starting-point and the goal perceived increases rather
than diminishes as we advance ; and it is probable that
this would not be otherwise in the life to come. As far
ahead as, and further than, our imaginations can picture,
fresh vistas and richer possibilities will open up, new
heights to climb will continue to loom in sight. And
long before we have reached that finality which strict
logic seems to postulate, we may expect to have attained
an insight into the ultimate nature of reality which will
enable us to apprehend the solution of this as well as
of many other problems to which no answer seems now
forthcoming.

It would seem, therefore, that if our speculations
with regard to the future life are to have any practical
value, it would be well to confine them to the attempt
to make more precise our ideas of what that state of
life will be which follows immediately on the present.
Even if we feel bound to postulate the existence of a
final and ultimate state of perfection, in our present
state of knowledge and with even our imaginations
limited by the experience of this world, speculations as
to its nature are worthless. In what follows, therefore,
I shall endeavour merely to ask whether it is possible
to discover any principles which will enable us to realise
in a more concrete way the nature and character of the
life which immediately follows the present, and, as before
remarked, I shall simplify the problem by leaving out
of account the question of the fate of the unrepentant
sinner as being sufficiently dealt with elsewhere in this
volume.

If, as I suggest, we confine our attention to the con-
ception of what I may call the -proximate as distinguished
from the ultimate Heaven, we are relieved of the neces-
sity of any further discussion of the difficult question
of the relation of Time to Eternity, and its bearing on

144 IMMORTALITY iv

the nature of the future life. The conception of an
existence outside Time is one which baffles the imagina-
tion. It provides, no doubt, a solution to certain
difficult problems of philosophy, but, to my own mind,
it creates as many or nearly as many as it solves, and I
feel a reluctance to commit myself to an opinion as to
whether an existence out of Time either is or is not a
possibility, even in the case of God. But I think that
it is unnecessary to do so, for the question is really
irrelevant to the particular enquiry on which we are
engaged. Time may possibly not be a condition of
the life of God. If so, it may not be a condition of
the life of Heaven — if by Heaven we mean that final
state of achieved perfection which we may perhaps be
bound to postulate as the ultimate goal of progress —
though, for the reasons urged in the previous Essay ,^
I incline to doubt it. But the quest on which we
are now engaged is not an attempt to imagine for our-
selves the nature of existence in this ultimate Heaven,
if such there be, but merely in a proximate Heaven, i.e.
in that long period of progress which we have agreed
will follow this present life. In this proximate Heaven
Time is a necessity as much as it is for life on earth,
for progress is impossible except in Time. I hold,
therefore, that whatever philosophical view we adopt as
to the ultimate relation of Time and Eternity, we are
not only justified but bound to think of the life
immediately after death as life in Time, even if the
view be accepted, which personally I incline to think
erroneous, that we ought not to think of it in terms
of space.

1 Cf. pp. 96 ff.

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 145

PART II
THE NATURE OF ETERNAL LIFE

God, Man, and Christ

In the previous Essay it has been shown that the proof
of personal Immortality rests in the last resort on the
Christian conception of the character of God. Our
view of the nature and quality of the life of the world
to come is equally determined by this same thing. The
life of those in Heaven must be thought of as a
participation in the Divine life as full as is compatible
with their still remaining finite human beings. We
must first of all, then, ask what clear and certain know-
ledge have we as to the character and quality of the
Divine life ? This at once brings us up against the
question. What do we mean by saying that God is
revealed in Christ ? Only in so far as we grasp the
real meaning of this central feature in Christianity shall
we be able to make any progress at all in our present
quest. Hence a summary statement on this subject seems
to be a necessary preliminary to any further enquiry.

The notion that the same Person could be both com-
pletely divine and completely human, perfectus DeuSy
perfecius Homo^ as the Athanasian Creed puts it, is one
which presented insurmountable intellectual difficulties
to the mind of that Greco-Roman world to which the
early Church had to endeavour to explain and justify
its belief. Most of the doctrinal disputes and heresies
of the first five centuries were due to the fact that no
conception of the Person of Christ seemed intellectually
tenable to the average educated man of the time which
did not make out that Christ was either less than fully
divine, or else not really and truly human. The moral
and religious insight, however, of the Christian com-
munity could not rest satisfied with any view which

146 IMMORTALITY iv

seemed to impair, however subtly, the full reality either
of His humanity or of His divinity. Hence, since the
philosophy of the day v/as inadequate to suggest any
explanation which was intellectually satisfactory, the
Church was driven to affirm the complete personal
union of the two natures as an inexplicable mystery
to be accepted by faith. And it was defended by
definitions which aimed less at ofi^ering a satisfactory
explanation of what was believed than at ruling out
such unsatisfactory explanations as had up to that date
been formulated.

During the last century, however, it has been be-
coming more and more clear that the intellectual
difficulties felt in the matter by the ancient world — and,
indeed, by the majority of people in the modern world —
were due to the fact that an attempt was being made to
solve the problem of the relation of God and man in
Christ while leaving uncriticised pre-Christian concep-
tions of the nature both of God and man. If the same
Person is both completely divine and completely human,
it follows that both God and man are very diff'erent
beings from what is commonly supposed ; there must
be in man possibilities as yet unrealised, and in God
actualities as yet unsuspected. So far as man was con-
cerned this was early recognised, especially by the
Alexandrian Fathers. Athanasius' famous " He be-
came human that we might be made divine " states in
a word what was an accepted tenet of his school. But
it has taken a much longer time to realise that the
doctrine of the Divinity of Christ necessitates a far more
drastic revolution in pre-Christian (and, indeed, in most
current) conceptions of God than in pre-Christian con-
ceptions of man. Before Christ, the Jew had pictured
God as a monarch living in gorgeous splendour, sur-
rounded by celestial state and pomp, the embodiment
of power, magnificence, and splendour. The Greek had
looked on Him as the Absolute Being of philosophy,
immutable, impassible, who could not be thought of

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 147

even as Creator unless He worked through an inter-
mediary. But neither of these is the God whom Christ
called Father ; neither of these is the God of whom
Christ is the " image " here on earth.

Athanasius made a heroic effort to save the Church
from invasion by the extreme form of the half Greek,
half Jewish conception of God which Arianism stood
for. But he did not go far enough in the direction of
thinking out the full implications of his main contention,
that the Son is really and essentially Divine and that what
we see in Him is the substance and not the shadow of
the Divine life. Indeed, no man educated in Greek
Philosophy and accepting the Old Testament as verbally
inspired could have gone further than he did. Great
men should be honoured for what they did, not
blamed for what they left undone. But the present
age, unshackled by that philosophy and taught by the
Higher Criticism to see in the Old Testament not
one single authoritative revelation but a long struggle
towards ever higher and higher conceptions of the
Divine, can, and — if it is not to turn its back on
Athanasius — must go further forward along the road
he fought and suffered so much to keep unbarred.

The inherent logic of the doctrine of the Incarnation
necessitates a revaluation of the natural man's ideas, not
merely of things on earth, but also of things in Heaven.
If the Son of Man on earth repudiated the methods
and ideals of the Kings of the Gentiles who lord and
strut, if He taught that he who is the greatest on earth
must be servant of all, and that the King of Kings is
He who dies for all ; and if Christ is, as St. Paul puts it,
" the portrait of the unseen God," ^ then that must mean
that God and the life of Heaven are not what we are apt
to fancy. If " the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God is to be seen in the face of Jesus Christ," then the
glory of God must be a very different thing from what
most of us would otherwise suppose. If the life of

^ KiKfjiv Tov dfoO Tov dopdrov, Col. i. 15-

148 IMMORTALITY iv

Christ on earth is the picture in time of something
which is eternal in the life of God, then God Himself
is seen to share the suffering of the world and, at the
cost of His own agony, to be overcoming the evil in it.
And the pomp and circumstance, the dignity and domina-
tion, which seem to us magnificent and grand, are shown
to be a hollow fraud. A revolution in our scheme of
values is effected which at once puts down the mighty from
their seat and exalts the inconspicuous and the quiet.

But, if this be so, it follows that the popular con-
ception of Heaven errs, not so much through b'eing
symbolic — that is inevitable — as from the fact that its
symbolism suggests as the dominant characteristic of
the life of Heaven something lower than what Christ
taught us is the highest life on earth. It has in it too
much of Solomon in all his glory, too little of the beauty
of the lilies of the field. At its lower levels it suggests
the splendour of an Imperial court, and even at its
highest level it has left out something vital. Painters,
preachers, hymn-writers, starting from St. John's vision
of the Adoration of the Lamb or from a glorified
reniiniscence of High Mass in some great cathedral,
have tried to depict a Heaven compact of awe, sublimity,
and the rapture of mystic adoration. Heaven must
include these, but it must include much more. We
cannot conceive of a Heaven in which Christ would be
content to dwell unless there was to be found in it the
counterpart of other things He loved on earth, the
wild flowers and the birds, the children playing, friends
gathered round the common board, the fellowship of
labour and of love, and the quiet hour on the mountain-
side at dawn.

Eternal Life

If, then, we take our stand upon the doctrine of the
Incarnation, we see at once that the life of the world to
come must be thought of as differing from the highest
kind of life which we know on earth in degree rather

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 149

than in kind. And this, be it noted, is exactly how it
is thought of in the Gospel of St. John. The con-
ception of Eternal Life in this Gospel gives us exactly
the guiding principle we want if we are to attain any
clear, definite, and vital notion of the nature and quality
of the life of the world to come. To him we call St.
John, Eternal Life is something of which we can already
experience a foretaste in this world ; it is a life to which
death is not an interruption but rather the removal of
restrictions and impediments ; it is a life of which the
important characteristic is, not the place where it is
lived, but the quality of the life itself.

Eternal Life is said, by the author of the fourth
Gospel, to consist in " the knowledge of God and of
His Son Jesus Christ," What does this imply .'* Not,
surely, or at any rate not in the first place, philosophic
understanding of the nature of the Supreme Being or
historical information about the historic Jesus, such as
one may get by reading books or hearing discourses.
The knowledge of God and Christ which St. John speaks
of is such an intimacy with, such an appropriation of,
the personal Divine life revealed in Christ, that he who
has it sees eye to eye with Christ, loves the things that
He loves, shares His sense of values. The life, then,
of the world to come must be thought of, not in
terms of average life on earth, but only of the highest
life on earth ; and our test of what is highest on earth
is to be determined by that standard of value which
we have learnt from Christ.

The modern man, who is not habituated to express-
ing the ideals which most appeal to him in religious
phraseology, will be disposed to define the highest life
as consisting in absolute devotion to the triad Goodness,
Beauty, and Truth. Is this essentially different from
St. John's definition, " the Knowledge of God and His
Son Jesus Christ " ^ It is possible to be devoted to
Goodness, Beauty, or Truth without any conscious or
explicit reference to God or Christ ; but, in so far as

I50 IMMORTALITY iv

one or :ill of these are thought of and pursued apart from
any conscious recognition of the one Divine in which
they have their source and final harmony, there is some-
thing incompletely realised. It cannot be too often
insisted that all disinterested devotion to Goodness,
Beauty, or Truth is really and truly (whether the
devotee is aware of it or not) a recognition of, and
an act of service to, the One Divine, from whom these
flow and in whom they have their unifying principle
and ultimate explanation. On the other hand, it must
be no less emphasised that it is not possible really to
know and serve God unless we recognise Him, not only
as the Personal Reality over and above the totality of
things, but also as actually present and directly mani-
fested through nature and through man in the actual
world given to us by sense and thought.^

If the present life be regarded as a pilgrimage, a
preparation for the life of the world to come, our
expectations of what will be the chief activities of the
next life cannot but influence our idea of what ought
to be our chief activity in this. The widespread idea
that life in Heaven is to be thought of as one unending
act of undifi'erentiated religious adoration has undoubt-
edly led to a narrowing of the conception of the meaning
of sanctity on earth — with disastrous consequences.
The great tragedy of Christianity in modern times has
been, not its failure to attract or retain the allegiance of
the vain, the frivolous, and the materially minded, but
its failure to appeal to the idealist of to-day. And this
has been to no small extent due to the fact that the ideal
which the Church has held up to — or perhaps, to speak
more accurately, that aspect of the ideal life which it has
been most successful in effectively bringing home to — the
imagination of Europe has been narrow and one-sided.

In a matter of moral and spiritual values deliberately
to challenge what at first sight seems to be the verdict

^ For the further working out of this idea, see my Essay on " Worship " in
Ccnccrmng Prayer.

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 151

of the saints, may appear a rash proceeding. I would
maintain, however, that what I am challenging is not
the verdict of the consensus sanctorum^ but, at most, the
verdict of that section of the saints whom ecclesiastical
authority has seen fit to canonise. Nor is it really even
this. In the case of many of the canonised saints the
nearer we get to their authentic biographies the wider
and richer do we find was the ideal in accordance with
which they actually lived, and the less conspicuous and
dominating an element in their lives is that particular
set of interests and activities which are conventionally
associated with the idea of sanctity. We not infre-
quently find, too, that the saints themselves lamented
as a weakness what was really breadth of moral vision,
and, in deference to the authority of traditional views,
deplored what they supposed to be a failure in them-
selves to the extent of making considerable and ill-
judged efforts to force their thoughts, tastes, and desires
into accordance with the conventional pattern. The
latter part of the life of St. Francis of Assisi is a
notable case. And biographers have been even more
active in this direction, and have often completely suc-
ceeded in doing on paper what the saint was fortunately
unable to accomplish in real life.^

Again, the interpretation of their experiences given
by the great Mystics has often been to some extent
vitiated — probably even the actual form of the experi-
ence itself has been to some extent perverted — by a
conception of the nature of the Divine derived ulti-
mately from Plotinus. The concrete conception of a
richly personal, a feeling and acting Deity, which the
Biblical writers are all agreed in holding, is really in
marked contrast to the Neo-Platonic idea that God is
one whom we can best conceive of by denying to Him
any of the qualities or attributes of which we have

^ Contrast the Life of St. Francis by S. Bonaventura with the Speculum Per-
fectionis or the first Life of Celano. I am inclined to accept the view of Sabaticr as
to the later life of St. Francis as in the wain correct in spite of the great authority of
Father Cuthbcrt.

152

IMMORTALITY iv

experience ; and that He is a Being whom we can,
therefore, best draw near to by cutting ourselves ofiF
from all interest in earthly things. The substitution
of the Neo- Platonic for the Christian idea of God
could not but have important consequences. True,
few, if any, of the Mediaeval Saints effected more than
a partial substitution between the two views. In
practice they tried to combine them. But the effect
of the Neo-Platonic element in their theology, and the
ascetic element in their practice, has profoundly affected,
and that not for the better, the traditional conception
of the Beatific Vision. The via negativa which, on its
intellectual side, will only think of God in negative
categories, and which, on its practical side, mainly seeks
Him by turning its back on the ordinary life of man-
kind, cannot but introduce an element of abstraction
and monotony into our conception of what is the
highest life of the spirit in the next life as in this.

Something more is said on this subject in the con-
cluding section of the last Essay in this volume, so all
I would emphasise here is that the life of God must not
only be said to be, but actually imagined as something
fuller, richer, and more alive, as something more concrete,
not less so, than the life of man ; and that the life of
Heaven must be thought of as more, not less, teeming
with varied content than that of earth. Life here
would be intolerable without variety, and the life of a
world which is better than this would have in it more
and not less variety than that of this world.

One of the reasons why so few people are interested
in the Heaven of popular Theology is that the picture
it presents to the imagination of the life of the blessed
suggests a life of unbroken monotony. There are
those who would defend, or at any rate palliate, the
traditional picture by reminding us that in supreme
moments, whether of adoration or otherwise, we seem
to be lifted as it were out of Time into Eternity and to
feel that we could be content could such a moment

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 153

be prolonged infinitely. But our more sober reflec-
tion tells us that even if this were the case there are
supreme moments of different qualities and different
characters, and we would enjoy not one but all of these.
There is the moment when the discovery of new truth
dawns upon the seeker —

Then felt I like some \\atcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken ;

there is the moment of entrancement at the vision of
perfect beauty ; there is the moment of the union of
soul and soul in love. The passion of religious adora-
tion may interpenetrate and transcend, and, in that sense,
may include, all these, yet, unless they are experienced
seriatim and in separation, something of supreme value
will be lost for ever. And this variety is needed, because
the value of supreme moments lies not only in them-
selves, but also in their permanent and abiding conse-
quences in the enrichment and elevation of the whole
life — and that a life which is meant to be lived not in
isolation but in harmony with other souls. To dwell
over much on the hilltops of supreme individualistic
experiences, and to interpret their meaning and value in
the light of an overmastering conception such as that of
" the Alone with the Alone," is ultimately to impoverish
them. That which cannot be shared with others — if
not directly, at least in its results — may possibly be good
but it is not the best.

Why was it that of all the symbols current at the
time for expressing the joy of the coming Age, our Lord
so frequently selected the most homely and seemingly
the most material — the common meal, the Supper to
which a certain man invited his friends, the table round
which we shall "sit at meat" in the Kingdom with
present friends and with the great souls of the past ?
Why on that night when He was to be betrayed had
He desired with desire to eat that passover, and, failing
that, why did He break the bread and pass the cup

,54 IMMORTALITY iv

of which He was to drink no more till He drank a
new kind in the world to come ? Surely it all means
that to Him the frank, free union in love and friend-
ship, perhaps most often seen on earth round the
familiar board — that Kingdom which consists not in
eating or drinking, but in righteousness and peace and
joy, in that Spirit which was the spirit in and by which
"He lived Himself — is the highest thing on earth, and
is, therefore, a foretaste of the life of Heaven. The
nearest thing to Heaven that we can attain on earth
is the experience of love and fellowship, of the complete
harmony of mind with mind and heart with heart,
between those who feel themselves to be lifted out of
and above themselves, not only by the depth of their
personal affection but by their passionate devotion to
some common interest or ideal. This may be found
on earth without any religious bond explicitly so called,
but wherever that is the case I would affirm that there
is really an apprehension and realisation of the Divine
Presence even though it be unrecognised as such. But
it is only when personal affection and consecration to
a great ideal finds its natural consummation in conscious
fellowship in the experience of the Divine Presence
that we can understand what St. John means by Eternal
Life and can " know that we have passed from death
unto life because we love the brethren."

The Content of the Idea of Heaven

I will now proceed to work out in rather more detail
the conception of the character of the life of the world
to come which follows if, accepting the scheme of values
implied in the doctrine of the Incarnation, we think out
the full meaning of St. John's view of Eternal Life.
And lest I be thought to be attempting to read my
own personal hopes or foibles into the next life, I will,
in every case, base what I advance on some outstanding
passage in the New Testament.

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 155

Love

No thought is more fundamental to the teaching of
the New Testament than that the ideal of goodness
itself and all the rules of morality are merely divers
expressions of the one inward passion of beneficent
desire and activity to which is given the name Love.
To the Master, Love God, love thy neighbour, are the
great commandments. " Love," says St. Paul, " is the
fulfilment of the law."

In the famous hymn to Charity in i Cor. xiii. St.
Paul develops the great idea that, whereas all other
activities — prophecies, tongues, and the like — are rela-
tive to the temporary and transient conditions of life on
earth, Love is the great exception, *' Love never faileth."
This, and this alone, will be precisely of the same kind
in Heaven as it is on earth. It is a commonplace of
philosophers that we cannot think of God as exhibiting
the cardinal virtues except in a symbolic sense ; for the
very meaning of qualities like courage, temperance, or
even justice, is relative both to our personal limitations
and the limitations of our earthly environment. It is
otherwise with the principle of Love — that is why it
is possible that in the character of the Ideal Man the
very essence of the Divine should be manifest on earth.
And the Love which St. Paul speaks of as that which
will not fail or be changed into something very
different in the world to come is not the love of man
to God — that is not with most of us an experience
vivid enough to illuminate an unknown world — but the
love of man to man.

The life, therefore, of the world to come must be
thought of as life in a society — the New Jerusalem,
the Kingdom of God, the Communion of Saints ; call
it what you will. And the most conspicuous feature of
that society will be not merely that the exercise of active
love will be as possible there as it is on earth, but that
the love will be of an intenser quality, will lavish itself

156 IMMORTALITY iv

on a wider range of persons, and will be able to express
itself more freely and in more diverse ways. Gesture
and speech, which as often disguise as reveal our real
meaning, may perhaps be superseded, at least they
will be supplemented, by an acuter sympathy and
insight which shall make impossible the uncertainties,
misunderstandings, and embarrassments which hinder
love on earth or restrict its range to narrow circles.
A society in which every individual thought and did
exactly the same would not be a society ; individuality,
therefore, diversity of character, capacity, and taste,
must still remain. But the differences will no longer
be a source of strain and friction but will be united
into one great harmony like the notes of the very
various instruments in a great orchestra.

Work

" My father worketh hitherto and I work," our
Lord is reported to have said to those who objected to
His healing on the Sabbath day. Creation, the making
that to be which hitherto has not been, is not to be
thought of as something which God did once for all in
a remote past but as a constant eternal activity. And
some shadow, some counterpart of this creative faculty
has been given to man on earth. The farmer, the
builder, the inventor, the artist, are all in a sense creators.
They bring into existence that which, but for them,
would not have been. This creative capacity and
activity of man — an activity so valuable that we can
see in it a shadow and counterpart of the eternal and
characteristic life of God — shall it not continue in the
world to come ^ It must continue, though exercising
itself on different materials and adapting itself to ends
differing from those of which we now have experience,
as much as the present work of one who designs an
Atlantic liner differs from the making of paper boats
which occupied his childhood. What exactly the work

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 157

will be which we have to do we cannot even profitably
guess ; but there will surely be different kinds of work
for different kinds of people. And for some, if not for
all, we may suppose that part of it will consist in labour
for the souls of those who have entered the next life
lower down in the moral scale than themselves. And
why may not the work of some be to watch over and
inspire the lives of loved ones still on earth .?

Thought

" Now we see through a glass darkly ; but then
face to face : now I know in part ; but then shall I
know even as also I am known." The pursuit of
truth along the line of scientific investigation, though
existent in the Greek-speaking world, had probably
never been a very serious interest in the circles in
which St. Paul had lived. A wider and more dominant
interest of his age was the passion for truth along the
line of philosophic enquiry. Here, again, St. Paul's
early education had probably only brought him in
contact with the outskirts of this movement. Though
born at Tarsus he had been trained a Pharisee ; and
though the Pharisees were genuinely interested in
righteousness, they supposed they had already attained
all the truth that they required. Yet, in spite of this,
a passionate interest in the ultimate nature of reality
flashes continually through his words ; it is the pre-
supposition of his change of faith and the inspiration
of all his preaching of righteousness. True, he never
elaborated a systematic philosophy of religion, but he
produced creative thought which no subsequent philo-
sophy has been able to neglect. To the Corinthians,
indeed, corrupted by the conceit of a shallow intellect-
ualism, he will preach only the Cross of Christ. He
declines to gratify them with logomachies. But he
tells them that, for the initiated, he has a philosophy.
And when in the hymn to Charity he contrasts love

158 IMMORTALITY iv

with knowledge to the detriment of the latter, it is not
because he thinks poorly of knowledge and its pursuit.
Quite the contrary. It is precisely because he rates
knowledge of the truth so high that in praise of love
he says that love is higher even than knowledge. And
what he looks for in the world to come is, not the
abolition of the interest in truth, but its full and
complete fruition. The notion that the activity of the
reason in the pursuit of truth is something on which
Religion should look askance runs counter not only to
St. Paul's teaching but to that of all the greatest
Christian thinkers. St. Thomas Aquinas, indeed, goes
so far as to say that the Beatific Vision is an activity
of the intellect, actus intellectus^ and indeed an activity
of the speculative rather than of the practical intellect,
and more than once adopts to describe it St. Augustine's
phrase, ^'- gaudium de veritate.^^ ^

Beauty

The apprehension and enjoyment of the Beautiful
is that element in the ideal state of existence which
traditional apocalyptic conceptions of Heaven have
been fairly successful in bringing home to the popular
mind. The glorious vision of the descent of the New
Jerusalem which concludes the Book of Revelation,
the sublime poetry of which no amount of over-literal
and materialistic interpretation could disguise, is mainly
responsible for this relative success. But though the
apprehension of sublimer forms of beauty must be a
necessary element in our conception of the future life,
the sublime alone will not suffice. The highest and
most complete activity of the aesthetic instinct demands
for its satisfaction not merely the grandeur of an Alpine
vista, of an Indian sunset, or of a great Cathedral, but the

^ Cf. Summa Theologiae, Prima Secundae, iii. 4. I have no desire to defend
this particular conclusion but I quote it as showing the outlook of the man. What
the Church needs to-day is to abandon the letter in order thereby to recover the
spirit of the great Theologians of the past.

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 159

quiet, homely appeal of the violet, the mossy nook, the
village church. As I have already urged, our notions
of the beauty of Heaven and the splendour of it
have been modelled too much on the throne-room of
Solomon in all his glory, and too little on the lilies
of the field and on the everyday interests of Him
whose standard of values we profess to recognise but
have none of us yet completely apprehended. Stateli-
ness, dignity, classical perfection are the ideal of Pagan
art — Greek or Renaissance. The "modern taste, which
is not content with Praxiteles or Correggio unless it can
also have Rembrandt or Rodin, is moving nearer to the
aesthetic sense of Christ.

Humour

In the Bible there is not much humour, but the

place where we find it most is the place where, if the line

of argument I am pursuing is correct, we should most

expect to find it — in some of the sayings of our Lord.^

These instances of humour range from the delicate irony

of the suggestion that the Pharisees were such as " needed

no physician " to the touch of extravaganza in the

picture of the man naively volunteering to remove a

speck from a friend's eye while there is half a tree in

his own. Only those sayings of our Lord have been

preserved which happened to strike the original hearers

as supremely interesting and which, in addition, appeared

to the second generation of Christians, by whom our

Gospels were composed, to have a distinct moral,

religious, or apologetic value. Hence they have all

been, as it were, passed through a sieve, which inevitably

sifted out many things which seemed uninteresting or

unimportant to more conventionally-minded followers.

Thus only one saying of His implying a judgment on

aesthetics (" the lilies of the field "), one only indicating

His love for animals (" not one sparrow "), have been

1 Cf. T. R. Glover, Tin Jesui of History, pp. 49 ft".

i6o IMMORTALITY iv

preserved. But these cannot have been the only ones
of the kind that were spoken, for each implies a whole
philosophy ; and these two, Ije it noted, are recorded,
not for the sake of showing His love of nature or of
animals — the features in these sayings which are of most
interest to us — but for the sake of the moral which can
be drawn from them. There are, perhaps, not more
than half a dozen sayings recorded which are clearly
humorous. These are sufficient to prove that humour
was natural to Him ; and it is a reasonable conjecture
that it was a more conspicuous feature in His discourse
than at first sight we might infer from the relatively
small proportion of recorded sayings in which we can
still detect it.

Personally, I should not be satisfied by a future life
from which the element of kindly humour was excluded.
And the flict that it entered into the mental life of our
Lord would seem to justify the inference that there
will be something equivalent to it in the next world —
otherwise, a real loss of values would take place.
Humour is one of those things which is developed
rather late in the progress of the race. Primitive
humour like primitive courage usually has in it an
element of cruelty and brutality, often, too, of grossness.
But with the intellectual, and still more with the moral,
advance of the community the humour which consists in
jeers at the misfortunes of others or which expresses
itself in crude practical jokes gives place to a subtler
thing, of which the fundamental quality is a keen
perception of absurdity or unreality and in which the
predominant element is kindliness. In a society of
real friends humour is the solvent in which egoism, the
root of all unsocial thought and action, is insensibly
dissolved. Most of all so when a person sees or even
enunciates the joke against himself. The highest form
of humour implies the unerring perception of reality
which sees at once through shams, pretences, and self-
deceptions. It implies a gift of expression which can

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME i6i

absolutely fit word, thought, and gesture in the subtlest
combination. Again, it implies a keenness of moral
perception which can " understand all " and yet refuse
to " pardon all " without the expression of a subtle
criticism which can purify without wounding, because it
speaks not as from a moral pedestal, but from the
standpoint of one conscious of membership in a race to
which absurdity and self-deception is innate. It can
express, indeed it alone can express in little things, a
moral judgment without self-righteousness, because it
implies the humility which necessarily goes with the
recognition of reality. Humour, of course, can be
cruel, base, or filthy, but in its highest form it implies
a synthesis of the highest intellectual, aesthetic, and
moral perceptions. In another aspect it is an expression,
the most spontaneous perhaps of all, of the joy of life.
It is essentially thanksgiving though not consciously
realised as such. Again, it is before all things a social
virtue since it is only within a circle bound together
by real ties of fellowship and sympathy that it can
attain its subtlest, richest, and most spontaneous expres-
sion. But if there are to be jokes in Heaven, they
will be better and more kindly than most of those we
hear on earth.

The Vision of God

" And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God
Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And
the city had no need of the sun neither of the moon to
shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof."

Saints and theologians have always admitted, more
than that, they have always cried aloud, that it was the
unimagined and unimaginable to which they pointed
when they spoke of the Beatific Vision. Yet, in spite
of, perhaps even partly on account of, their emphasis
on its unimaginable wonder, certain ideas and associa-

1 62 IMMORTALITY iv

tions have gathered round the phrase which have led
to an actual impoverishment of our notions of the
life of Heaven, and have also exercised a misleading
and demoralising influence on religious life and practice
on earth. For this reason, and for this reason only, I
feel that I cannot altogether avoid the subject.

Clearly here, as in what has gone before, the guiding
principle of our enquiry must be that " the knowledge
of God and of His Son Jesus Christ," which con-
stitutes the essence of Eternal Life, is something of
which already in this world it is possible to have some
enjoyment. St. Paul, St. John, and the Saints in
general agree in regarding the conscious experience of
the presence of God in the life of the world to come
rather as an enhancement, an intensification, an exten-
sion, and a consummation, of the highest experiences of
this life than as something wholly different in kind.
But just because it is the highest of all experiences
that are here in question we must be especially careful
to bring our judgment of what it is that we mean by
" highest " to the test of the standard of values which
was set by Christ. The conflict is always with us
between the Christian and the Pagan conceptions as to
what is the essential test and quality of " religious
experience " or of the *' spiritual " ; and we do well to
study carefully what St. Paul has to say to the
Corinthians on the matter of " spiritual gifts." By the
Corinthians " speaking with tongues " — an ecstasy of
exalted emotion without clear content or articulate
expression — was regarded as the type of the highest
spiritual experience and activity, St. Paul does not
condemn the emotion or even the incapacity of expres-
sion ; but he clearly regards this incoherent emotionalism
as a very great danger ; and ranks it as far inferior
to the passionate apprehension and clear enunciation
of truth and righteousness which prophecy can give.
And he proceeds at once to "show them a more
excellent way " — the way of the love that never faileth

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 163

and is the only true and the final canon by which to
judge of spiritual values in heaven as on earth.

In modern religion the error of the Corinthians
most commonly takes two forms. First, there is what
I may call the " cult of the supreme moment," the
pursuit, for its own sake, of a religious experience of a
wholly emotional character. Secondly, there is the
notion that holiness or sanctity or " the supernatural
life " is a thing which can exist apart from what is
known as " ordinary " goodness, good sense or good
taste. The teaching and the methods by which it is
sought to attain this spurious religious experience or to
realise this falsely conceived sanctity differ considerably
according as those who pursue them are influenced by
" the corrupt following " of Catholic Mysticism or of
Evangelical Revivalism. The danger of the emotional
short-cut which thinks to enjoy an experience of
God without clear apprehension of and complete
devotion to the Goodness, Beauty, and Truth which are
the expression of, and the revelation in ordinary life of,
the very nature of the Divine, is one of which the
great Mystics and Revivalists themselves have often
been fully aware. It is the tragedy of all greatness
that it can be used to give an added prestige to weak-
nesses or errors, which may perhaps have existed in the
great man, but in him were either merely the reflection
of a general tendency of his time or were at any rate
the least characteristic element of his own real message.

If we start with a false conception of what is meant
by the worship of God on earth we shall reach a false
conception of the life of Heaven. I have tried else-
where^ to work out what I believe to be the true
conception of worship. In this place I can only state
my conviction that a life consisting in one unending act
of adoration — provided always that adoration be thought
of as something isolated from, and unrelated to the life
of social fellowship, creative work, aesthetic apprehension.

' Concerning Prayer, Essay VIII.

i64 IMMORTALITY iv

and active thought — is not the highest life. True
worship is an orientation of the whole self which colours,
conditions, and pervades these departmental activities.
It is not a uniform preoccupation with the realisation
of an emotional mystic experience which can supersede
them ; although in this world certainly, and possibly in the
next, definite times may be set apart for concentration on
the realisation of the Divine Presence apart from action,
thought, aesthetic apprehension, or human fellowship.

That which is revealed to us by truth and beauty
and goodness is not something other than the Divine, it is
very God ; but to say this and this only is to leave unsaid
something quite as important. God is a person, and
the Vision of God must mean a fuller realisation of this
in all its richness and meaning than is possible on earth.
The experience which goes with the perception of natural
beauty sometimes seems to carry with it the conscious-
ness of an Infinite Presence almost personal ; in the
next life the qualifying " almost " may disappear. But
this analogy will not take us all the way we want to go,
and it is hard not to surmise that to finite minds the
Infinite Being must always baffle and transcend our appre-
hension. It is just here that the Christian doctrine
of the Incarnation helps us. " No man hath seen God
at any time ; the only begotten Son ... he hath
declared him." If this is true on earth surely it will
not become untrue in Heaven. If we are right in
thinking that the " spiritual body " of the world to
come will be such as to completely express the real
nature of our personalities, and if even in the body of
His flesh and blood Christ could be for men the " image
of the unseen God," how much more will He in His
spiritual body be able to reveal to us the very nature
of the Divine personality, " the fulness of the Godhead
bodily " ? In this way we can imagine how what now
we see through a glass darkly we shall then indeed see
face to face.

And what, may we expect, will be the effect upon

IV LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 165

us of this visible personal contact with our Lord ? Not,
as is so often taken for granted, to dazzle, paralyse, or
crush. A personality that is truly great, great that is
in the sense in which Christ reckons greatness, is not
one which breaks the bruised reed or quenches the
smouldering wick in weaker characters. That is the
function of the vulgar Super- man. A really great
personality uplifts and inspires, it does not abash ; it
stimulates the individuality of others, it does not strive
to reduce them to a pattern ; it encourages them to
diverse and spontaneous activity, it does not drill them
into a uniform monotony.

The world is so full of a number of things,
I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Heaven will be more "full of things" than earth, and
Christ is not the supreme Egoist who must always have
all eyes directly gazing on Himself alone, but the supreme
Friend who will share with us all our interests and our
joys in their infinite variety.
" It is I ; be not afraid."

In the picture by Apelles of Agamemnon offering
up his only daughter in sacrifice to liberate the Greek
fleet from the curse of an offended deity, we are told
that on the faces of kings, chieftains, soldiers, and
attendants was depicted with a master's skill every
shade of sympathy, pity, horror, and awe ; but the
figure of the father was so turned that the expression
of his face could not be seen. What word or brush
cannot express imagination can sometimes compass.
But there are things in regard to which even imagination
must faint and fail. Our attempt to penetrate the
nature of the life that is to be has reached this point.

The principle of the continuity between the life of
Heaven and the highest life we know on earth — that
necessai'y deduction from belief in the Divinity of Christ
— will carry us a long way towards finding that definite

i66 IMMORTALITY iv

and concrete picture of the nature of the future life
which was the goal set before us in this enquiry. It
also indicates the direction in which further revelation
may be sought. If Christ is for us the " portrait of the
unseen God," our knowledge of God, and therefore of
the nature of eternal life, will depend upon the extent
to which we can enter into and understand the mind of
Christ. But this is something which is always growing
with the moral and spiritual growth, not only of the
individual, but also of the community. In exact pro-
portion to the effective realisation on earth of the
Kingdom of God will be the increase in our knowledge
of the real nature of the life of the world to come.

But something unrealised and unguessed at by man on
earth must still remain. Say that in the life of Christ
is revealed the life of very God, and you say it of the
life of One who " increased in wisdom and stature,"
who was made " perfect through sufferings," but who
only reached the climax of maturity in His experience
of the triumph over death and His entry into a life
which is beyond our present ken. The best we know
on earth is no mere shadow, it is of the very substance
of that which is to come, but it is still only an earnest
and a foretaste. There must remain heights and possi-
bilities yet unexplored. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the
things which God hath prepared for them that love
him." The fruit of the Vine which we drink on earth
is really and essentially Eternal Life, but we shall drink
it new in the Kingdom of God.

V
THE BIBLE AND HELL

CYRIL WILLIAM EMMET, B.D.

VICAR OF WEST HENDRED, BERKS.

AUTHOK OF "the ESCH ATOI.OGlCAr. Q_UESTION IN THE GOSPELS " J " 1 H K EhlSILt
TO THE GALATIANS " (uEADERs' COMMENTARY) ; " THE THIRD BOOK OF MACCABEES "
(apocrypha and PSEUDEPIGHAPHA OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, EDITED BY CHARLEs) ;
"the fourth BOOK OF MACCABEES " (s.P.C.K. TRANSLATIONS OF EARLY

documents), etc.

167

SYNOPSIS

PACE

Introduction . . . . . .170

The modern tendency to reject the idea of hell. Is this com-
patible with the teaching of the Bible, and in particular of
the New Testament ? Recent discovery and research into
origin and meaning of language used about future punish-
ment shows that doctrine of hell in the strict sense is not to
be found in the Bible.

The Teaching of the Old Testament . . . 173

Sheol ; sinners punished on earth. Late passages which suggest
punishment after death (Isaiah, Daniel).

The Teaching of the Apocrypha and Apocalyptic Litera-
ture ........ 176

The Apocrypha as a whole agrees with the Old Testament.
The change in Apocalyptic literature ; its importance. Perse-
cutors, oppressors, and apostates punished after death. Uncer-
tainty as to fate of Gentiles. Duration of punishment not
thought out ; loose use of " for ever," etc. Doctrine of anni-
hilation. Repentance after death and the ethical problem
(4 Esdras).

Zoroastrian Influence on Jewish Eschatology ■ . . 183

No strict doctrine of everlasting punishment in contemporary
religions. Zoroastrian influence ; its ambiguity on this ques-
tion.

The Teaching of the New Testament . . . 185

Comparative silence ; books in which future punishment is almost
ignored (St. Paul, St. John). The Synoptic Gospels 5 pro-
minence of the doctrine in the first Gospel as opposed to the
second and third ; evidence. Which is the more original ?
The group of Apocalyptic books on which the belief rests.
Do these books teach an everlasting hell } Fire ; "aeonian."
Three crucial passages.

Summary of New Testament Teaching . . . 198

I. The two classes. 2. General reticence. 3. Influence of con-
temporary Apocalyptic ideas. 4. The desire for retribution.
5. Everlasting punishment nowhere certainly taught. 6. No
evidence that it was taught by Christ. 7. Traces of Uni-
versalism.

168

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 169

PAGE

The Hardening of the Doctrine in later Thought and

THE Revolt against it . . . . 202

Everlasting punishment not embodied in any official Church
formula. Reasons why it became the accepted view. Protests
against it ; Origen. The Middle Ages. Opposition within
the Church of England ; an open question for her members.

The Spirit and the Letter of the New Testament

Teaching ....... 209

The two classes of the New Testament. Attempts to mitigate
the doctrine of hell : (i) death-bed repentance ; (2) poena
damni. The need of advancing beyond the explicit teaching
of the New Testament. The desire to do so ethical, and due
to the teaching of Christ Himself and the belief in the Father-
hood of God. Is a belief in hell a deterrent against sin .'' The
hope of future progress and amendment not a minimising of
sin. The possibility of ultimate dissolution in extreme cases.
The fundamental religious principles and the love of God
revealed in Christ.

THE BIBLE AND HELL

Introduction

In any average gathering of persons discussing the
future life from at all a modern point of view — always
supposing they were prepared to say frankly what they
thought, and not merely what they thought they ought
to think — it would be fairly safe to assume that the idea
of hell would be rejected almost without debate. By
" hell " in this connection I would be understood to
mean any state of punishment, whether bodily or spiritual,
from which there is no longer any prospect of the soul
deriving any benefit, and in which it suffers without
hope for itself or profit to others.

Our strongest ground for the belief in immortality at
all is our trust in the infinite Love of God and our con-
viction that in His Universe goodness must ultimately
prevail ; but the doctrine that through all eternity
there will continue to exist individuals suffering acutely
in useless and hopeless agony is too cruel and too ir-
rational to be compatible with that belief. Indeed, there
is no doubt that the notion that the doctrine of hell is
an essential part of Christianity has been one of the
main reasons of the widespread revolt against accepted
religious ideas on the part of so large a proportion of
the more thoughtful and seriously minded which has
taken place during the last century.

The probable tendency of discussion in such a group

170

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 171

as I am supposing would be to some form of Uni-
versalism, i.e. to the belief that so long as there was any
spark of goodness in the soul it might still be purified
and developed by the Divine discipline through the ages.
There might be differences of opinion as to the exist-
ence of any who could be regarded as irremediably bad,
but it would be agreed that if there were such, some
form of annihilation was the only end which could be
conceived for them.

The difficulty, however, at once arises that though,
no doubt, this is the general attitude of educated Chris-
tians to-day — and we shall consider later the ethical
grounds on which it rests — it is not what the Church
has in practice taught. And the traditional Christian
teaching in this matter is very generally supposed to
rest directly on the teaching of the Bible as a whole and
of the New Testament in particular.

It is the contention of this paper that this supposi-
tion is wholly erroneous. The recovery, during recent
years, of a large number of lost Jewish Apocalyptic
writings has thrown an entirely new light on the exact
nature of the problem contemplated, on the exact
meaning of the terms employed, and on the history
and origin of many of the ideas on this subject found
in the Biblical writers. The net result of modern
Biblical scholarship, with its application of the historical
method commonly known as the higher criticism, com-
bined with the light derived from these new sources,
is to make it quite clear that the doctrine of hell in the
sense in which that term was understood by our great-
grandfathers is not to be found in the Bible at all. The
Bible teaches, indeed, that the choice between right and
wrong action is one which has eternal and abiding
consequences. It is emphatically opposed to any belief
that, do what we will, it will make no difference in the
long run. What it does not teach is that, in the
last and final result of things, there will still remain in
the Universe beings suffering acute and everlasting

172 IMMORTALITY v

torment in permanent rebellion against the Divine Will
and for ever rejecting the Divine Love.

Before, however, submitting the detailed evidence
for this conclusion, it will be convenient to summarise
briefly the main considerations upon which it rests.

(i) In the Old Testament, except for a single
passage in one of the latest books, there is no clear
teaching of any punishment at all for the wicked after
death. They may be punished in this world, their
bodies may lie unburied, their children may sufl^er for
their sins, but they themselves will simply perish from
the earth.

(2) The idea of a punishment after death for the
wicked comes in with the so-called Apocalyptic litera-
ture, and the conception of the nature of that punish-
ment was probably largely due to the influence of
Zoroastrian teaching. Two points, however, of great
importance emerge from the study of this literature : (a)
The authors are mainly, if not entirely, preoccupied with
the problem of the punishment deserved either by
persecutors of the righteous Israel or by apostates from
the Faith. They are hardly, if at all, interested in the
future destiny of mankind at large, or even of ordinary
sinners in Israel. (/>) The punishment contemplated,
though often conceived of in crude and material terms, is
thought of as enduring for an epoch of limited duration,
not for ever. A careful study of the passages in which
they occur show that the words translated " eternal "
or " everlasting " do not as a matter of fact mean what
those words would imply in the English language.
There is indeed a notable passage in which life during
a period expressly defined as consisting of 500 years
is spoken of as " eternal."

(3) The writers of the New Testament lived in
an atmosphere which was saturated in the conceptions
and the imagery of the Apocalyptic writings. Their
relation to the whole cycle of Apocalyptic ideas is partly
one of acceptance, partly one of emancipation, but the

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 173

degree of acceptance or emancipation varies very much
in the different books of the New Testament. In
particular there is reason to believe that the teaching
of Our Lord, especially as represented in the first
Gospel, has been to some extent modified by tradition
so as to make it conform rather more closely to the
conventional Apocalyptic views of the time. The
general teaching of the New Testament appears to be
that, on the one hand, the choice between good and evil
in this world is one which involves abiding consequences
extending far beyond the limits of this life, but, on the
other hand, there is no clear evidence that any of the
writers contemplated for the sinner an unending exist-
ence in a state of torment and rebellion against God.

In the light of these results it will then be possible to
consider certain aspects of the problems of the destiny
of the wicked in the next life, which do not seem to
be explicitly contemplated by the Biblical writers, and
to ask what light is thrown upon them, in the form
in which they are presented to the mind of the present
day, by the underlying moral and religious principles
of the New Testament.

The Teaching of the Old Testament

It is now generally recognised that there are in the
Old Testament but faint traces of any real belief in
immortality. In the shadowy Sheol^ ^ the land of for-
getfulness and darkness, where men are gathered to
their fathers, there are no moral distinctions between
good and bad. When the problem of the sufferings
of the righteous arises in an acute form, as in Job,
Ecclesiastes, and some of the Psalms, it is of primary
significance that no new or future world is called
in to redress the balance of the old. The solution
of the problem is not found in any system of rewards

' Though this is generally represeated by " hell " in the A.V., we must beware
of transferring to it the later connotation of the English word.

174 IMMORTALITY v

and punishments after death. In the few hints which
are given of a life beyond the grave (e.g. Ps. xlix.,
Ixxiii., and perhaps Job xix. 25) the point is the
essential hnk of communion between the believer and
his God, a link which even death cannot sever. That
is to say, it is only the future of the righteous which is
here under consideration. With regard to the wicked
the solution is that they will ultimately perish from
this earth, or that their children will suffer, not that
they will be punished after death. In this Essay we are
only concerned with what happens after death, and
there can be no doubt that in the Old Testament the
fate of the enemies of Jahweh is simply destruction,
complete and final. This comes out very clearly in the
descriptions of the " Day of the Lord " in connection
with which we find, mainly in comparatively late
passages, the idea of a Day of Judgment on the nations
(first in Zeph. iii. 8 ; cf. Joel iii. 2 etc.). On this day
Jahweh takes vengeance on His foes, but it is on His
foes living on earth at the moment ; there is no sugges-
tion that His vengeance falls on those already dead,
or that it pursues its objects in any other way than by
their complete destruction.

We may consider one or two late passages which
might be regarded as exceptions. In the famous " Taunt
Song" on the king of Babylon (Is. xiv.) the point is
the contrast between his earthly pride and ambition
and his humiliation as he descends to join the shades —
the Rephaim — in the uttermost part of the pit. He
has hoped to be as God, and he shares the common lot
of men. Anything exceptional in his fate is apparently
connected with the fact that his body remains unburied :
" All the kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in
glory every one in his own house. But thou art cast
forth from thy sepulchre like an abominable branch.
. . . Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial "
{yv. 18 ff.). In order that Jahweh may punish such a
prominent sinner He must bring it about that his body

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 175

remains unburied.^ The inference is obvious that nor-
mally there were no rewards and punishments in Sheol.

Is. xxvi. 19 fF. does speak of the resurrection of
righteous Israelites, but nothing is said of the wicked ;
vv. 20 ff., which might conceivably suggest this, belong
apparently to another section.

Of greater importance for our purpose is the well-
known passage which closes the Book of Isaiah (Ixvi.
24): "They shall go forth and look upon the carcases
of the men that have transgressed against me : f()r their
worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched,
and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." The
meaning seems to be that in the new age the righteous
in Jerusalem will see the corpses of sinners, probably
in the Valley of Hinnom, decaying and burning.- It is
not said that their spirits live and feel the torture,
though this may be intended. At any rate the passage
is comparatively late, and it is beyond question important
historically as affording a basis for the later doctrine
of Gehenna.

The one clear exception which speaks of the punish-
ment of sinners after death is Dan. xii. 2 : " Many
of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and ever-
lasting contempt." The passage comes in the most
Apocalyptic of all the Old Testament books (the date
is 167 B.C.), and stands alone in suggesting a resurrec-
tion of sinners to judgment. We may note that the
resurrection is apparently confined to the very good and
the very bad, and, as seems probable from the context,
to Israel. The pinners the writer has in mind are
Jewish apostates, a feature which will meet us again
later ; they awake to shame and everlasting " ab-
horrence " (the word is the same as in Is. Ixvi. 24) ;
we do not yet get any mention of fire or torture.

' It is worth noting that great stress was laid on the importance of burial in
Babylonian religion, as in Greece and Rome. See Jastrow. Religious Belief in Baby-
lonia and Assyria, p. 359.

'•* Is. 1. 1 1 is sometimes thought to embody the same idea.

176 IMMORTALITY v

The Teaching of the Apocrypha and
Apocalyptic Literature

In the purely ethical and historical books of the
Apocrypha no very marked change is to be noted.
In Ecclesiasticus retribution is still confined to this
life ; sinners are punished only here, or in the blotting
out of their remembrance after death and in the
misfortunes of their descendants.^ Even in Wisdom
with its strong insistence on the blessed immortality
of the righteous we hear but little of the fate of the
wicked. They are conscious of the joys of the servants
of God and of their own folly (v. 2 ff.), but apparently
they themselves are destroyed rather than punished.
The stress is on their lack of burial (iv. i8), the vanity
of their life, and the perishing of their memory. On
the other hand, in 2 Mac. we do find a definite belief
in punishment after death (vi. 26, vii. 34 ff.) ; let us
note that both these passages have to do with the
encouragement of the martyr and the denouncing of
the persecutor. In 4 Mac, where the main theme is the
martyrdom of Eleazar and the seven brethren, the future
doom of the tyrant is a constantly recurring feature.
Each of the seven threatens Antiochus with the divine
vengeance after death, and the same idea is repeated
more than once with emphasis in the body of the book.

It is when we pass to the Apocalyptic literature^

^ In vii. 17, where the Hebrew has "worms," the Inter Greek has " fire anH
worms," thus adding the idea of suffering to that of decay.

2 This literature dates from the last two centuries B.C. and the first
century a.d. ; it includes 2 Esdras, found in our Apocrypha, the Books of Enoch,
Baruch, the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs, Jubilees, and shorter works. The
"revelations" are always ascribed to some well-known figure of the distant past.
Though there are in some books a few additions, or glosses, obviously due to
Christian influence, these do not affect their general independence ; as a whole
they are either earlier than, or contemporary with, the New Testament. Much
of this literature has either been discovered, or at least translated and edited,
within recent years, and our knowledge and understanding of it is chiefly due
to an English scholar, Dr. Charles. It may be studied in detail in his edition
of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, published by the Oxford
University Press, while a most readable and clear popular account is given in
his volume in the Home University Library, Between the Old and Neiv Testaments.
A series of cheap translations is now being issued by the S.P.C.K.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 177

proper that the real change of outlook comes. Since
this is still comparatively unfamiliar except to students
of theology, and is quite essential to the due under-
standing of the New Testament, it will be necessary
to discuss it in some detail. The books consist of
elaborate and detailed visions and prophecies, usually
expressed in bizarre and fantastic imagery, of the
" last things " — in technical language their eschatology.
They are known as '* Apocalypses," as claiming to
contain " revelations " of the future.

In the eschatological pictures drawn of the future
the punishment of sinners stands out very prominently,
particularly in the Book of Enoch. But in regard
to this, the essential thing to notice is that the classes
punished are mainly the enemies of God and of Israel,
the two being identified with no scruples of conscience
as to the adequacy of the purely tribal conception of
God implied. A terrible doom awaits the rebellious
angels and demons, the powers of the earth who have
been hostile to the chosen people (" the kings and the
mighty " of Enoch), and oppressors and apostates from
among the Jews themselves — the dissenters of the
day. Most stress is laid on the divine vengeance in
contexts which deal with persecution (as we have seen
in 4 Mac), or when party spirit and fanaticism run
high. This is the case in those sections of Enoch
which express the bitterness of the Pharisees against
the later Maccabean princes and the Sadducees. Or
a good example may be found in Jub. xxxvi. 19 ff.
" On the day of turbulence and execration and
indignation and anger, with flaming devouring fire
as He burnt Sodom, so likewise shall He burn his land
and his city and all that is his, and he shall be blotted
out of the book of the discipline of the children of
men and not be recorded in the book of life, but in
that which is appointed to destruction, and he shall
depart into eternal execration ; so that their condemna-
tion may be always renewed in hate and in execration,

1 78 IMMORTALITY v

and in wrath, and in torment, and in indignation, and
in plagues, and in disease for ever." The words
are put into the mouth of Isaac with reference to
Esau, but the real reference is obviously to con-
temporary Edom. Those who have described hell,
whether in word or in picture, have usually found
room in it for those they disliked, and it is worth
noting how strongly this feature stands out in its
earliest descriptions. We may ascribe to the same
spirit the insistence on the delight of the righteous
in the tortures of their enemies which meets us not
infrequently in this literature (Enoch xxvii. 3, Ixii. 12,
etc. ; Ass. Mos. x. 10). It is a somewhat rare touch to
find punishment after death considered in relation to
matters of purely personal ethics as in 3 Baruch iv. 16,
where it is drunkards who are warned that they are
"surrendering themselves to the eternal fire."

Again we hear comparatively little of the fate
of the mass of mankind or of those Gentiles who
have not come into direct collision with the chosen
people. In Enoch xci. 9, 2 Baruch xliv. 15, they are
all destroyed, but there is no gloating over their doom,
as is the case when the enemies of Israel are thought
of. Sometimes (The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs
generally, Enoch 1., xc. 30, 4 Esdras vi. 26) the
Gentiles are converted, but of course the reference is
only to those who are alive at the coming of the
Kingdom, not to the dead, of whom we hear nothing.

A specially instructive passage is 2 Baruch Ixxii.
(from an earlier source than ch. xliv. just quoted).
Here the Messiah summons the nations ; " Some of
them He shall spare and some of them He shall slay . . .
Every nation, which knows not Israel, and has not
trodden down the seed of Jacob, shall indeed be spared.
And this because some out of every nation shall be
subjected to thy people. But all those who have ruled
over you, or have known you, shall be given to the
sword." We see here very clearly how the view of

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 179

the future is dominated by the nationalist outlook, and
by the desire for vengeance on all who have ill-treated
Israel.

As to the nature of the punishment of sinners the
figures used are those familiar to us from the New
Testament and later Christian writers, but there
is far more stress on the details than in the New
Testament itself Fire and worms, ice and cold, chains
and darkness, are the constant instruments of torture.
For the purpose, however, of this paper the view enter-
tained as to the duration and results of the punishment
deserves a more special study. In this connection
" eternal," " for ever," and such like phrases are used
freely, but it is clear that they are used very loosely
and that the question of actual " everlastingness " is
not thought out. Sometimes '* for ever " — and the
point is of primary importance for our interpretation of
the New Testament — means only "till the Judgment."
In Jub. V. 10, fallen angels are "bound in the depths
of the earth for ever, till the day of the great condemna-
tion when judgment is executed." In Enoch v. 5
we find the words " The years of your destruction shall
be multiplied in eternal execration, and ye shall find
no mercy," but the following verses, which deal with
the blessedness of the righteous, seem to contemplate
a temporary state of bliss (" They shall complete the
number of the days of their life "). It is therefore not
probable that the tortures of the lost were regarded
as strictly everlasting. In Enoch x. 5 " for ever " with
reference to punishment stands for seventy " genera-
tions," while in 1;. 10 " eternallife " denotes 500 years.
Or again in 2 Baruch xl. 3 we read that the principate
of the Messiah " will stand for ever, until the world
of corruption is at an end" ; cf. Ixxiii. i. Similarly
4 Mac, which apparently emphasises the eternity of
punishment so strongly, can yet speak of the life of
the blessed as 7ro\vxpovLo<; ("very long," xvii. 12).
It is clear then that " for ever," " eternal," and the

i8o IMMORTALITY v

like sometimes, if not always, mean either " for the
duration of an aeon^'' or "until the final judgment."

What, then, is supposed to happen to the sinner
after this ? There are not a few passages which
suggest annihilation. In Enoch xix._ i angels are
judged "until they are made an end of" xlviii. 9,
speaking of the kings and the mighty, reads " On the
day of their anguish and affliction they shall not be
able to save themselves. And I will give them over
into the hands of mine elect : as straw in the fire shall
they burn before the face of the holy : as lead in the
water shall they sink before the face of the righteous,
and no trace of them shall any more be found." Such
language undoubtedly suggests complete destruction ;
cf. also ch. liii. Similarly 4 Esdras xii. 1^1^^ xiii. 10 fF.
38, seem to imply that the enemies of the Messiah shall
simply be destroyed, and the language of the Psalms
of Solomon, which is mainly modelled on that of the
Old Testament, is to the same effect.

Other passages do at first sight suggest an indefinite
period of punishment after death ; e.g. Enoch xci. 9,
" they shall be cast into the Judgment of fire, and
perish in wrath and grievous judgment for ever " ;
4 Mac. ix. 9, " thou for our cruel murder shalt suffer
at the hands of divine justice sufficient torment by fire
for ever " ; x. 11, " thou for thy impiety and thy
cruelty shalt endure torments without end." The
fiercely fanatical and nationalist Book of Judith goes
out of its way to explain that the fire does not destroy.
The Almighty puts '* fire and worms in the flesh of
oppressors, and they shall weep and feel their pain
for ever" (xvi. 17 ; cf. Enoch cviii. 3), Such passages
clearly exclude immediate annihilation after death, but
in view of the examples given above of the loose use
of *' for ever," it is dangerous to interpret them as
necessarily implying everlasting punishment. In the
Secrets of Enoch part of the third heaven is a hell
prepared for " an eternal inheritance " for sinners, and

V THE BIBLE AND HELL i8i

mansions are assigned to good and to bad, but in the
climax of ch, ixv., after the " seven weeks " there is one
" aeon " when time ceases and the righteous live eternallv,
while the fate of the wicked is passed over in silence.

With regard to the result of such punishment after
death, it is not infrequently depicted as bringing open-
ing of eyes and repentance. In Enoch Ixiii. i the kings
and the mighty implore respite from their torments in
order that they may fall down and worship before the
Lord of Spirits and confess their sins before him. In
Ixvii. 9, " in proportion as the burning of their bodies
becomes severe, a corresponding change shall take
place in their spirit for ever and ever ; for before the
Lord of Spirits none shall utter an idle word." So in
4 Esdras ix. 12 those who have defied the Law during
the time of repentance " must be brought to know after
death by torment." But though we might seem here
on the verge of a more ethical view in which punish-
ment could be regarded as remedial, the possibility of
any efficacious repentance after death is explicitly denied
both in 2 Baruch and 4 Esdras.

In a case such as this, however, even denial may
mark a step forward, since it at any rate shows that
the difficulty is coming to be realised. And in fact the
two books just mentioned do stand on a higher ethical
level in this respect than the rest of the Apocalyptic
literature, and even, it must be confessed, than the New
Testament itself.^ For they realise the tremendous moral
problem involved if anything like eternal punishment or
extinction is to be regarded as the future fate of a large
proportion of mankind. There is a curiously modern
note in passages such as the following from 4 Esdras : —

O thou earth, why hast thou brought forth, if the mind is
sprung from the dust as every other created thing ! It had
been better if the dust itself had even been unborn, that the
mind might not have come into being from it. But as it is,
the mind grou's with us, and on this account vi^e are tormented,

* Sec below, p. 214, «. 2.

1 82 IMMORTALITY v

because we perish and know it. Let the human race lament,
but the beasts of the field be glad ! Let all the earth-born
mourn, but let the cattle and flocks rejoice ! For it is far
better with them than with us ; for they have no judgment to
look for, neither do they know of any torture or of any salvation
promised to them after death. But what doth it profit us that we
shall be preserved alive, but yet suffer great torment ? For all
the earth-born are defiled with iniquities, full of sins, laden with
ofFences. And if after death we were not to come into judgment,
it might, perchance, have been far better for us (vii. 62 fF.).

This is my first and last word ; better had it been that the
earth had not produced Adam, or else, having once produced
him, for thee to have restrained him from sinning. For what
doth it profit us all that in the present we must live in grief, and
after death look for punishment ? (vii. 1 16 fF. ; see also x. 9 f.).

What, indeed, is the purpose of the infinite skill and labour
lavished upon man ? We are all one fashioning, the work of
thine hands, as thou hast said. . . . And afterwards thou sus-
tainest it in thy mercy, and nourishest it in thy righteousness ;
thou disciplinest it through thy law, and reprovest it in thy
wisdom. Thou wilt kill it — as it is thy creature, and quicken
it — as it is thy work ! If then, with a light word thou shalt
destroy him who with such infinite labour has been fashioned
by thy command, to what purpose was he made? (viii. 7 fF.).

The writer of the book can himself find no solution
to the problem. The angel bids him " rejoice over the
few that shall be saved and not grieve over the multi-
tude that perish " ; " many have been created, but few
shall be saved." He falls back, as does St. Paul in a
similar connection, on the inscrutability of the ways of
Providence, coupled with an almost desperate faith in
the love of God, " Lovest thou him [Israel] better than
him that made him .? " " Thou comest far short of being
able to love my creation more than I." The consistent
application of this principle must occupy us later ; we
can only in passing pay our respect to the nameless
questioner who realised so clearly the fundamental
elements of the problem.^

^ For a fuller discussion of the teaching of 4 Esdras on this and related questions,
see the writer's article on "The Fourth Book of Esdras and St, Paul" {^Expository
Times, xxvii. p. 551).

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 183

To sum up the results of our survey : the Apocalyptic
literature, unlike the Old Testament, Jays considerable
stress on punishments after death, and this stress is very
definitely connected with feelings of bitterness towards
persecutors, oppressors, or heretics. Various views are
held as to the duration of such punishment, but it is
clear that " for ever," " eternal," and the like, rarely, if
ever, connote everlastingness. There is no trace of any
idea of an efficacious repentance after death, though the
sporadic hints of the efi^ects of punishment in opening
the eyes of the sufi'erer contain the germs of a higher
point of view. The ethical problem of the fate of the
mass of mankind is raised, but no solution is found.

ZOROASTRIAN INFLUENCE ON JeWISH EsCHATOLOGY

This doctrine of future punishment was, as we have
seen, a new feature in Jewish thought. It is natural to
ask whether it can be traced to any external non-Jewish
influences. A full consideration of the subject would
involve a discussion of the sources of the post-exilic
eschatology as a whole, and the influence of Babylonian,
Egyptian, Persian, and Greek ideas upon its develop-
ment. If, however, we confine ourselves to a few
remarks bearing on the vital point of the conception
of punishment after death in contemporary religions,
Babylonian religion at once drops out, since it had
no real doctrine of rewards and punishments in the
other world. " The absence of the ethical factor in the
conception of life after death, preventing . . . the rise
of a doctrine of retribution for the wicked, and belief
in a better fate for those who had lived a virtuous
and godly life, had at least a compensation in not lead-
ing to any dogma of actual bodily sufferings for the
dead. ... A hell full of tortures is the counterpart
of a heaven full of joys. The Babylonian-Assyrian re-
ligion had neither the one nor the other." ' Egyptian

' Jastrow, Religious Belief in Babylonia and Aisyria, p. 373.

1 84 IMMORTALITY v

religion, on the other hand, in its faith of Osiris, had
developed its view of the weighing of the soul and of
judgment after death ; the condemned, however, were
destroyed, not punished indefinitely.^ The Greeks had
their well-known myths of tortures in Hades, and
theories of future punishment were carried further in
the Orphic Mysteries. But outside Orphism punish-
ments were only thought of in the case of notorious
and very special sinners, like Sisyphus and Tantalus, and
as in the " Myth of Er " at the close of Plato's Republic.
The Olympian religion was too easygoing to believe in
eternal punishment ; and it is thought by some scholars
that so far as it existed at all the belief was due to
Orphism, where it was essentially the fate of the un-
initiated.- In the same way Dr. Farnell writes : ^ " To
suppose that the crowds that sought the privilege of
initiation were tormented, as modern Europe has been
at certain times, by ghostly terrors of judgment, is to
misconceive the average Greek mind. The inferno of
Greek mythology is far less lurid than Dante's, and it
is to the credit of the Greek temperament that it never
took its goblin world very seriously, though the belief
was generally prevalent that the gods might punish
flagrant sinners after death."

The main influence behind the Jewish eschatology,
in this as in other doctrines, must undoubtedly be sought
in Zoroastrianism. Here we find the definite separation
of good and bad after death, with rewards and punish-
ments, mainly by fire. On the question how far the
punishment was conceived of as eternal there is some
doubt as to the original teaching of Zoroaster himself.*

^ Enc. Rel. a>:d Ethics, s.-v. " Egyptian Religion," v. p. 243.

- Cf. Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to Greek Religion, pp, 612 ff.

" Cults of the Greek States, iii. p. 193.

^ Moulton (Early Zoroastrianism, p. 312) holds, in contrast to his previously ex-
pressed view, that the Gathas imply " penal suffering without end." He admits,
however, that the molten metal which accomplishes the separation suggests
annihilation of the sinner or of the sin, and he adds a note by Prof. Jackson to the
effect that there is in Zoroastrianism exactly the same problem as in Judaism with
regard to the real meaning of the term " everlasting." The Pahlavi interpretation
renders the original phrase by "till the future body" or "until the resurrection."
See also pp. 157, 173, which leave the doctrine equally ambiguous.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 185

There is, however, no doubt that in later developments
of Zoroastrianism, which go back to a period before the
date of the Jewish Apocalyptic literature, and therefore
represent the form of Zoroastrianism with which post-
exilic Judaism came in contact, the belief was definitely
held that the punishment of the sinner only lasted till
the commencement of the final age when Ahriman and
his hosts are annihilated and hell itself becomes pure.^

This brief comparison of contemporary thought,
therefore, confirms the position already reached that
the question of strict " everlastingness " was not thought
out with regard to the punishment of the sinner. The
ethical instinct required that he should suffer after death,
if he had prospered here, and it depicted his sufferings
in a terrifying form, but it did not condemn him to an
eternal hell.

The Teaching of the New Testament"

We find in the New Testament a sharp division
into two classes, those who will enter the kingdom and
those who will not, those who inherit life and those
whose end is death, the sheep and the goats. We are,
however, told far less than is usually supposed about
the final fate of the latter, and details as to future
punishment are largely confined to books of a single
type. In view of this fact it will be simplest to make
no attempt at chronological order in our treatment of
its literature, but to clear the ground by beginning
with the groups in which the subject is least prominent.

In the Johannine literature, outside the Apocalypse,

' Enc. Rel. and Ethics, s.-v. " Eschatology," v. p. 376.

" The reader who may be disinclined for detailed discussions of passages may
omit what follows and pass straight on to the summary on p. 198. No doubt it
would be convenient if such discussions could be short and simple, but the New
Testament was not written as a "Handbook to Theology." It consists of books
written for different purposes, by different writers, and at different dates, and ex-
pressed in tiie language and ideas current at the time. It is therefore wise, on
many points at least, to look with some suspicion on what claim to be brief dog-
matic statements of the teaching of the New Testament, unless they arc based on a
thorough examination and comparison of the relevant passages in the light of con-
temporary modes of thought.

1 86 IMMORTALITY v

the main thought is the contrast between death and
life, with the self-acting judgment of the hearer's
own attitude towards the truth, ^ There is no kind of
emphasis on the future punishment of the sinner, or
on what his " death " implies. The eschatological
denunciations of the Baptist are omitted in common
with practically all the other eschatological features of
the Synoptists, The passage at the end of ch. v.,
which includes the awakening to a resurrection of
judgment, stands alone, and may perhaps best be ac-
counted for as a more or less inconsistent retention of
the popular point of view. Otherwise the writer
contents himself with saying that the wrath of God
abides on the unbeliever (iii. 36), or that the unfruitful
branch is cast into the fire and burned (xv. 6), a phrase
which suggests annihilation.^

In the teaching of St. Paul we find a similar anti-
thesis between death and life, the flesh and the spirit.
Sinners cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (Gal. v. 21,
I Cor. vi. 9, Eph. V. 5) ; there are fairly constant
references to judgment and to the wrath of God, especi-
ally in Romans. But it is very doubtful whether St.
Paul speaks of the resurrection of the wicked except
in so far as it is implied in the gathering of all before
the judgment seat (Rom. ii. 14 ff., 2 Cor. v. 10). This
is indeed emphasised in the speeches of Acts (cf. xvii. 31,
xxiv. 25 ; cf. St. Peter in x. 42), but it is often held
that on this point St. Luke somewhat misinterpreted
his master's teaching. In the Epistles the resurrection
is generally something to be won or attained to (Phil,
iii. 11), the privilege of those who have received the
adoption of sons and the first-fruits of the spirit (cf.
Luke XX. 35). Except in i and 2 Thess., which we
shall consider later, there is no sort of doctrine of what
happens to the sinner after judgment, certainly no
emphasis is laid on any punishment, eternal or other-

^ Cf. Essay III. p. 125.
- For "the sin unto death" (i John v. i6) see below, p. 195.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 187

wise. This feature is somewhat remarkable, as St. Paul
was not always specially tender to those who differed
from him, and it is noticeable that in the Pastoral
Epistles, with all the fierceness of their denunciations
of false teachers, there is no reference to their future
doom, except, perhaps, in 2 Tim. iv. 14.^

In Hebrews we find considerable stress on the finality
of choice and the impossibility of repentance for back-
sliders. Punishment is spoken of in terms of fire which
devours (x. 27) and consumes (xii. 29) ; the language
not only suggests but implies annihilation.

Acts has nothing bearing on our subject, except the
references to judgment already quoted. Here again
this mildness of tone in a book which deals largely with
persecution and opposition is in strong contrast to the
language of the Apocalyptic books. A similar reti-
cence is found in i Peter, which, again, is written in an
atmosphere of persecution. The furthest the writer
goes is to speak of the approaching judgment ; in it
" if the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the
ungodly and sinner appear.?" (iv. 18). James again
only speaks generally of the coming of the judge who
is able both to save and to destroy (iv. 12). It is
worth comparing the passage in ch. v. on the tyranny
of the rich, with its reserve as to their future fate, with
Enoch chs. xciv. ff"., where very similar language is used
combined with a fierce exultation in their approaching
torments and destruction.-

We pass to the teaching of the Synoptists. Here
the immediate goal is the coming of the Kingdom,
whether on earth or in Heaven ; but it must not be
assumed that the conception is in all respects identical
with our modern view of the " Heaven " awaiting the
good after death or judgment. There is a sharp dicho-
tomy between those who will enter the Kingdom and

' "The Lord shall rcwanl him (Alexander) '" ; the words are a quotation from
I's. Ixii. 12, Prov. xxiv. i ;, ami seem to mean simply, "I leave him to God."

" The passage in James is perhaps based on Enoch ; "day of slaughter" occurs
in both, but this phrase may have been taken independently from Jer. xii. 3.

1 88 IMMORTALITY v

those who are to be cast out. Here the teaching of
Jesus and the early Church was in entire agreement
with contemporary Jewish thought, the only difference
being as to the principles on which the composition of
the two classes was to be determined. Few in fact
find the narrow way ; " many " will find themselves
shut out (Mt. vii, 13, I>k. xiii. 23 ff.). Some kind of
penalty is undoubtedly contemplated for those who
refuse the Gospel. What is its nature ? How far do
Our Lord and the Gospels teach a doctrine of " hell " ?

Attention may first be called to a fact which has
been very insufficiently realised ; there is a marked and
striking difference in this respect between the teaching
of Our Lord as reported by St. Luke and His teaching
as reported by St. Matthew. It will be necessary to
give evidence of this statement in some detail.

" Fire " as applied to future punishment is found in
Luke only in the teaching of the Baptist (Lk. iii. 9,
17), in Mark only in the "offences" passage (Mk.
ix. 43 ff.). By Matthew it is used 10 times, in 6
different contexts.

" Gehenna " occurs in Lk. only in xii. 5, in Mk. only
in the "offences" passage, in Mt. 7 times (5 different
contexts).^

" Eternal " (atwi/to?) is never used by Lk. of future
punishment, by Mk. only of " the eternal sin," by Mt.
3 times, as well as being implied in the substantival
phrase, " either in this aeon or in that which is to come,"
once (xii. 32).

"Day of judgment" is never used by Lk. ; Mt. 4
times. Lk. has " in the judgment " 3 times ; Mt. this,
or similar phrases, 5 times ; Mk. has neither. Mk.
and Lk., but not Mt., according to the best texts, have
the phrase, " these shall receive greater condemnation "
{jjrepia-a-OTepov Kpt/xa^ Mk. xii. 40).

' Elsewhere in the New Testament only in James iii. 6 (the tongue set on fire
of hell). In Lk. xvi. 25 ff. (the Lazarus parable) we have "Hades," ''torments,"
and " flame."

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 189

"Outer darkness" occurs in Mt. 3 times (viii, 12,
xxii. 13, XXV. 30), and nowhere else. Since in each
case Lk. has close parallels to the Matthean narratives,
his omission of the reference to future punishment is
significant. Similarly the phrase, "■ There shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth " occurs in Lk. only in
xiii. 28, while Mt. has it 6 times. In Mt. xxii. 13,
xxiv. 51, XXV, 30, the fact that the more or less
parallel Lucan context does not contain the words is
again significant. Again Lk. in xxii. 22 omits the
words, applied to Judas both in Mt. and Mk., " it were
good for that man if he had not been born."

Positively there are indications of a milder view of
the future life in the Lazarus parable (the context where
future punishment is most prominent in Lk.), with its
hint of the rich man's better feelings in his torment, in
the repentance of the thief at the last moment, and in
the saying about many and few stripes (Lk. xii. 47),
implying degrees of punishment. All these are peculiar
to the third Gospel, while Lk. alone, after the saying,
" one shall be taken, the other left," adds the question,
" Where, Lord ^ " with the ambiguous answer, " Where
the body is, thither will the eagles also be gathered
together" (xvii. 37). This logion is clearly intended
to exclude any undue dogmatising as to the future.^

We have, therefore, sufficient evidence that Luke's
attitude as to the future punishment of the sinner
excluded from the Kingdom is much milder than
Matthew's. The question at once arises. Which is nearer
to Our Lord's own teaching ? - Has Luke toned it

' The saying "Thou shall not come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost
farthing" occurs both in Mt. v. 25 and Lk. xii. 59. It seems to be a general
statement of the principle that when the time tor reconciliation is allowed to slip
by the law must take its course. It is not clear that it refers in any way to God's
dealings with man. If, however, it is to be understood as the sudden introduction
of a pronouncement as to the nature of future punishment, it is ambiguous. It may
at least imply that the debt can ultimately be paid.

'^ It must be remembered that even when we have decided which is the earliest
form of the varying traditions presented to us in our present Gospels, it cannot be
assumed tiiat wc have aiways yot back to the ipsiisima -verba of Christ. See below,
p. 200.

I90 IMMORTALITY v

down or Matthew added to it ? It is « priori possible
that both processes have been at work to some extent.
On the one hand Luke's reticence might be an instance
of his " PauHnism " ; we have already noted a similar
reserve in the Pauline Epistles. On the other, the
language of Matthew is in line with the general Judaic
and Apocalyptic tone of the first Gospel, and its
accuracy will depend on whether these features as a
whole can be regarded as representing the original
teaching of Christ (see Essay III. pp. 123 if.).

At this point we may ask, What light is thrown on
the question by Mark, our earliest Gospel ? The
relevant passages are : iii. 28-29 {^^^ against the Holy
Ghost) ; viii. ^S (^^^ possibility of losing one's "life,"
'>\rvx'n)\ ix. 43 ff. (the command to cut off what offends) ;
the sayings that the Pharisees shall receive greater
condemnation (xii. 40), and that it were better for
Judas if he had not been born (xiv. 21).^ The latter
saying occurs in Enoch xxxviii. 2 (plural instead of
singular), and though Our Lord may have quoted a
current saying (whether directly from Enoch or not),
the fact of its being a quotation, together with its
omission by Luke, makes it very possible that it may
be an early addition to an original " woe to that man
by whom he is betrayed." The Marcan language as a
whole is at any rate vague and lays little emphasis on
future punishment ; it supports the originality of Luke
in this respect as against Matthew. Again, in view of
the fact that Matthew shows definite traces of later
controversies between Jews and Christians, it does
become very probable that these have left their mark in
a heightening of the severity of Our Lord's language
against the Pharisees and other unbelievers and apos-
tates." We have already seen, and shall see again,

1 In the non-Marcan appendix (xvi. i6) we have the general statement, "he
that (iisbelieveth shall be condemned."

^ It may be remarked that from the point of view of the strict inerrancy of the
Bible, the theory that Luke has toned down or omitted the severe sayings is no
easier than the theory that Matthew has added to them. Those who hold the

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 191

that the belief in hell has always owed much to such
types of religious bitterness.

There remains to discuss the books in which the
doctrine of future punishment is prominent. They
are Matthew, i and 2 Thessalonians, 2 Peter, Jude, and
Revelation. The curious significance of this grouping
of books is at once apparent, in that they are the very
books which are recognised as showing most clearly the
influence of contemporary Apocalyptic ideas.

In I Thess. v. 3 we hear of sudden destruction and
wrath (v. 9) falling on the unwary : the nature and
result of the vengeance remains undefined. The language
of 2 Thess. goes further; here God "recompenses
affliction to them that afflict you," and brings
" vengeance," " punishment, even eternal destruction
from the face of the Lord " (i. 6 ff.). We note the follow-
ing points. The passage suggests annihilation rather
than indefinite torment ; it is strongly Apocalyptic
in character ; and once again the main motive is in-
dignation towards persecutors. Finally this language
occurs in an early Epistle (assuming the authenticity of
2 Thess., which, however, is not undisputed), and does
not, as we have already seen, represent St. Paul's later
teaching.

2 Peter and Jude are, of course, definitely in line
with the older Apocalyptic books ; the stress is on the
punishment of fallen angels, false teachers, and rebels
against authority ; the language used is conventional
and somewhat vague, suggesting death and destruction.

The Apocalypse has much to say of the final doom
of the sinner. The prominent features are such things
as the second death, the lake of fire, the abyss, and the

doctrine of hell argue rightly that, if it is ex hypothesi true, it is the real charity to
" declare the whole counsel of God " (see e.g. Liddon's Sermon on this subject in
Clerical Life and JVork), and that it is treason to gloss over it. Luke's consistent
omission of this type of teaching is, therefore, very hard to explain on any theory
that the Gospels were mechanically inspired in their record of Christ's teaching.
From the modern point of view there is no special difficulty either in Matthew's
over-emphasis or in Luke's toning down, and we are free to choose between the two
on the principles of historical criticism.

192 IMMORTALITY v

familiar elements of earlier Apocalypses. It should,
however, be noted that many of the " woes " refer
to the temporary tribulations which usher in the
establishment of the Kingdom. Once mor^ attention
may be called to the fact that the underlying motive of
the book is denunciation of the persecuting power of
Rome and the conviction of its final doom.

We go on to ask how far even these books teach
the everlasting nature of the punishment of which
they speak. They use freely the figure of fire,
sometimes with the epithet " unquenchable." Fire
suggests suffering with one of two results, either the
purging away of dross and impurities (it is so used
in I Cor. iii. 13, 15, in an eschatological context,
I Peter i. 7, Rev. iii. 18) or the destruction of the
whole of what is committed to it. This latter is certainly
the prima facie impression conveyed when we read of
chaff (Matt. iii. 12) or tares (xiii. 40) cast into the fire
(cf. John XV. 6 and Heb. x, 27, etc.). It would, in fact,
be difficult to find any figure which suggests more
completely speedy and final annihilation. " Unquench-
able " in this connection means simply that the fire will
not be extinguished until it has done its work ; the
same applies to the undying worm of Mk. ix. 48, etc.
So generally, unless we hear explicitly to the contrary,
we have no right to assume that the victims of the fire
suffer eternally without being consumed ; that they do
live on is never stated in the New Testament. The
same principles apply to language about death, the
second death, destruction, and the like. They all
suggest ceasing to be.

There remains the word " aeonian " {aldavtos;)
together with cognate phrases using the noun aeon. As
we have seen, in the Synoptics these are applied to
future punishment only in Mt. xviii. 8., xxv. 41, 46,
xii. 32, with the exception of Mk. iii. 29. Elsewhere,
outside the Apocalypse, they occur only in 2 Thess.
i. 9, Jude 7, 13. John viii. 52, x. 28, xi. 26 promises

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 193

that the believer shall not die " for ever " (et9 rbv aloiva)
and so implies that others may do so. It is recognised
that the translation ''everlasting," found in A.V., is
wrong ; R.V. has " eternal." ^ The word properly
means "age-long," lasting for an aeon, whatever that
may be. It is used freely in the Septuagint of things
which are in no sense everlasting, and takes its meaning
from the context. The Jews of the day believed in a
variety of aeons or ages, including sometimes a temporary
Messianic age. No doubt in the New Testament
" aeonian " is used vaguely ; the point is that we have
no right to read into it any metaphysical idea of
unending duration. As we have seen with regard to
the Apocalyptic books, from which this language is
derived, there are various views as to the duration of
punishment, and " for ever " sometimes means only till
the final judgment or the like. We have, in fact, a
clear example of this use in the New Testament ;
Jude 6 speaks of angels " kept in everlasting bonds
under darkness unto the judgment of the great day'' The
word used here is not " aeonian," but another Greek
word (atSio?), which actually emphasises unendingness
more strongly. If this can be used in this way much
more can "aeonian." If we look at the context of the
New Testament passages we see that in Mt. xviii. 8 it is
applied to fire, in 2 Thess. i. 9 to destruction ; both of
these are compatible with annihilation, while when we
read in Jude 7 of Sodom and Gomorrah " suffering the
punishment of eternal fire," it is not an obvious inter-
pretation that their inhabitants have been miraculously
kept alive to feel it. There are, however, passages in
Revelation where unending duration is suggested by the
phrase " to ages of ages (eh aloiva<; tmv alcovcov). Let it
be noted that this in itself implies that anything belong-
ing to a single " aeon " was not necessarily unending.

' The difference between the two may not be obvious at first sight. The point
is that "eternal" need not suggest endless duration ; it may apply to that which
belongs to another order of being and is out of time, cf. Essay III. pp. 97 fl.

194 IMMORTALITY v

The phrase is used in xix. 3 of the burning of Babylon —
not necessarily a personal reference at all — in xx. 10 of
the torments of the devil, the beast and the false prophet,
and in xiv, 1 1 of the worshippers of the beast. The
last passage is the most important ; it is, however, a
direct reminiscence of Isaiah xxxiv. 10, which refers to
the desolation of the Land of Edom, In Isaiah
there is certainly no idea of the unending torment of
men ; it is simply a picture of complete doom on a
country, and it is precarious to read too much into the
quotation of such a phrase in a very rhetorical context
such as Rev, xiv. In xix. 20 it is only the beast and
the false prophet who are cast alive into the lake of fire ;
their followers are killed and their flesh given to the
birds. The contradiction with xiv. 1 1 shows how far
we are from any idea of a formal doctrine of the
unending punishment of sinners. Indeed when we find
cut-and-dried theological dogmas based on the obviously
figurative and conventional language of the Apocalypse,
we can only wonder at the artificiality of the older
Biblical exegesis.

There remain three important passages in the Gospels,
in which it is argued that the context itself clearly
implies everlasting punishment.

(a) Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (Mk. iii. 28,
Mt. xii. 31, Lk. xii. 10). • This saying of Our Lord's
is one of those which occur in a slightly difl^erent
version in Mark and also in Q — the hypothetical
document assumed to have been incorporated, in some
form or another, in the first and third Gospels.
Wherever Mark and Q contain similar matter it will
usually be found that Matthew combines the two
versions, while Luke either gives both, but in different
contexts, or prefers to follow Q. Scholars are divided
on the question whether in these cases Mark's version
was derived from Q, or whether he represents an
independent tradition, but it is usually agreed that the
Q version is the older and as a rule more original.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 195

Hence we are justified in assuming with regard to the
saying before us that the form of words in Lk. xii. 10
is likely to be the nearest to the original.^

We are mainly concerned here with the concluding
clause :

Mk. " Hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an
eternal sin."

Lk. "It shall not be forgiven him."

Mt. " It shall not be forgiven him, either in this
world or in that which is to come."

Granted that the Lucan form is the most original,
the word " eternal " was not used at all by Our Lord
in this context.

As usual, Matthew is most explicit and seems t6
combine Mark and Q.

As to the meaning, we may emphasise the implica-
tion that all other sins are forgivable, conceivably
hereafter, if not here. Blasphemy against the Holy
Ghost alone is not. It is not said that the soul guilty
of this sin will suffer everlastingly ; the words are con-
sistent with annihilation. This is entirely in keeping
with the modern point of view. If, as is probable,
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost means an obstinate
refusal to recognise the good, this refusal, if persisted
in, must at last destroy the power of doing so. Such
a state would be hopeless ; the soul could only cease
to be.2

{b) The cutting off of what offends (Mk. ix. 43 ff.,
Mt. v. 29, xviii. 8 f.). This passage is not found in
Luke. Its importance for our present purpose lies in
the epithets "eternal" and "unquenchable" applied
to the fire, and in the description of Gehenna as the
place " where their worm dieth not and their fire is

' On the whole question of the relation of Mk. and y, see Strectcr in Stuiiia in
the Synoptic Problems, pp. 1 66 ff. W. C. Allen in the same volunic- (p. -53), .ind
Harnack in the Sayings of yesus, accept the Lucan form of the saying considered
above as the original. It is worth emphasising the fact that this conclusion is
arrived at purely on grounds of literary criticism, and not from any desire to eliminate
a possible reference to future punishment.

^ The sin unto death of 1 Jolin v. 16 may be understood in the same way.

196 IMMORTALITY v

not quenched." ^ It has already been argued that such
language does not necessarily imply that the fire and
worm do not destroy that on which they feed ; the
present tenses " state simply the law or normal condi-
tion of the worm and fire. . . . The question of the
eternity of punishment does not come into sight." ^
The description of Gehenna is an almost exact quotation
from Is. Ixvi. 25,^ and may well be an early or editorial
addition to an original saying of Christ. But whether
the words were actually spoken by Him or not, it is
most precarious to build a doctrine of eternal punish-
ment on an ambiguous quotation.

It may be added that the passage is a very difficult
one. Assuming, as is no doubt the case, that the
maiming is to be understood metaphorically, it would
seem to be implied that the self as a result of its
necessary discipline will enter into life in some sense
maimed and with its natural powers impaired. This
can hardly be regarded as the final state of the saved
soul, and if this be granted it is at least possible that
the entry into Gehenna is not the last word for the lost
either.

(c) The sheep and the goats (Mt. xxv. 31 fF.). A
glance at Patristic quotations and general literature
dealing with eternal punishment will show that of all
Gospel passages this is the one most confidently relied
on. The crucial words are " Depart from me ye
cursed into the ' aeonian ' fire which is prepared for the
devil and his angels" (v. 41) and "These shall go into
' aeonian ' punishment, but the righteous into ' aeonian '
life" (v. 46). It is argued (i) that the mention of
the devil and his angels shows that the fire is neither
purgatorial nor temporary, unless we are to hold that
the devil will be either saved or destroyed. (2)
That since ' aeonian ' is used of the life of the blessed

^ According to the best reading the phrase occurs in Mk. only in -v. 48. not, as
in A.V., in -w. 44, 46.

■'' Swete, TJie Gospel according to St. Mark, ad he.
^ See above, p. 175.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 197

as well as of the doom of the lost, if the one comes to
an end the other must also. This is Augustine's
famous argument against Origen. As to (i), those
who hold that the only end conceivable for the
irremediably bad is that they will cease to be, will no
doubt hold the same of the devil, if they think of him
in terms of personality. (2) Assuming that ' aeonian '
is indeterminate in meaning, it is perfectly true that
we could not argue from the particular epithet here
applied to the life of the blessed that that life was ever-
lasting. But in fact our belief in this depends on quite
other grounds than the nuance of an adjective, and we
are not in the least driven to hold that communion
with God will come to an end because we believe that
punishment will do so.

Apart, however, from the question of the juration
of punishment this is undoubtedly one of the strongest
passages about future punishment itself. It is there-
fore well to note (i) that it is peculiar to Matthew ;
we have already seen how strongly he emphasises this
feature of eschatology. (2) The whole passage is
charged with reminiscences of the Apocalyptic books.^

■* It will be worth while stating these in detail.

The "Son of Man coming in His glory," "sitting on the throne of His glory"
as judge, is practically verbatim from Enoch xlv, 3, Ixii. 5, etc.

For the faithful as "sheep," sinners and Gentiles as other animals, see Enoch xc.

For the blessed on " the right hand " at the resurrection see Test, of Benjamin
X. 6.

For the whole idea see Secrets of Enoch ix. : "This place, O Enoch, is pre-
pared for the righteous who . . . make righteous judgment, and give bread to the
hungering, and cover the naked with clothing, and raise up the fallen, and help
injured orphans . . . for them is prepared this place for eternal inheritance." In
ch. x. another place of fire, cold, and other horrors is prepared, also for an eternal
inheritance, for t^ose who amongst other sins oppress the poor, " who being able to
satisfy the empty, made the hungering to die j being able to clothe, stripped the
naked."

For the sequence of the acts of mercy cf. also Test, of Joseph i. 5 fF. :

"I was taken into captivity and His strong hand succoured me.

I was beset with hunger and the Lord himself nourished me.

I was alone and God comforted me.

I was sick and the Lord visited me :

I was in prison and my God showed favour unto me."

It is needless to give special references for the " fire prepared for the devil " and
for "aeonian punishment," which are commonplaces of Apocalyptic.

It will be noted that it is the phraseology and the setting of the parable which
seem to be borrowed from Apocalyptic, not its essential features — the stress on

198 IMMORTALITY v

It is therefore very probable that, though the parable
may in substance go back to Our Lord's own teaching,
a good deal of the phraseology is due to modification
of His original words either in oral tradition or by the
editor of the first Gospel.

Summary of New Testament Teaching

1. The constant features are the sharp division into
two classes and the sense of the importance of the choice
made in this life. But note that, generally speaking,
only those are considered to whom the opportunity of
choice has actually been offered ; the rest are simply
ignored.^

2. There is in fact far less about future punishment
than is usually supposed.^ Whole groups of books,
including the majority of the Pauline Epistles and the
Johannine writings, outside the Apocalypse, do little
more than speak in general terms of judgment and
death as awaiting the sinner.

3. The language used about future punishment is

acts of omission and the Judge's identification of Himself with " His brethren."
These, so far as I am aware, are original, and the lesson drawn from them is quite
independent of the particular character of the penalty inflicted on those who have
failed to show charity. The underlying idea is found in Mk. ix. 37 (cf. -v. 41) :
"Whosoever shall receive one of these little ones in my name, receiveth me," and
if we suppose an authentic parable of Christ's developing this thought, some of its
features may well have been emphasised later under the influence of the Apocalyptic
ideas which are so prominent in the first Gospel. The point is that it is not neces-
sary to reject the parable as a whole because we find reason to suspect certain
phrases in it.

^ The chief passages which speak of a general judgment are Rom. ii. 14 ff., 2
Cor. V. 10, Rev. xx. 12, and the passages from Acts quoted above (p. 186). It is doubtful
whether Mt. xxv. 31 is really universal; it is possible that the reference is to
those from " all nations " who have come into contact with the despised and perse-
cuted Christians, " My brethren," and, without being converted themselves, have
treated them kindly j so in Mk. ix. 41 the reward is for the cup of cold water
given "because ye are Christ's." 1 do not, however, feel quite confident as to this
limitation of the idea.

^ N.B. the confusion caused by the use in A.V. and in popular theology of such
terms as "hell," "damnation," " perdition," etc. A recent and regrettable example
may be seen in Moore's The Brook Kerith, where he makes Our Lord say, " Thou
shalt eat my flesh and drink my blood, else perish utterly, and go into eternal damna-
tion " (p. 222). Such words may be justified in their strict etymological meaning,
but they have come to have a connotation which suggests everlasting punishment
and is in the highest degree misleading.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 199

quite clearly of the same type as that found in the
Apocalyptic literature, and is practically confined to a
single group of books which is in other ways strongly
Apocalyptic in tone. We are therefore fully justified in
arguing that it is a direct reflection of the current
Apocalyptic teaching. Whilst this does not imply that
this side of New Testament teaching can be altogether
ignored, it does show that it was not a deliberate crea-
tion of Our Lord and His followers, but was simply one
of the elements taken over from contemporary thought.
Like other elements so taken over, e.g. the demonology
of the day, it may be subject to very considerable modi-
fications. The belief in the immediate Parousia and an
imminent and miraculously manifested end of the age
was a similar heritage, and history has proved this to
have been untrue in any literal sense.

We must bear in mind that the real and fundamental
meaning of any writer is to be found in the ideas which
are original and characteristic, not in those which are
simply inherited from the current thought of his age.
That which is specially characteristic and original in the
New Testament is precisely not the Apocalyptic element.

4. We found in the earlier literature that the doc-
trine owed a good deal to the sense of injustice and the
desire for retribution aroused by persecution and oppres-
sion, as well as to the intolerance so commonly evoked
by religious differences. It may be conceded that the
same motives, though in a lesser degree, are at work in
the New Testament, especially in Rev., 2 Thess., and
Peter and Jude ; traces of them are also found in the
first Gospel, though not so prominently. At the same
time it should be remembered that, with the partial
exception of the Apocalypse, there is far more restraint
and far less gloating over details than, e.g.., in Enoch.
And we must never forget that the thought throughout
is of the immediate enemies of the Gospel, not of the
mass of mankind, whether living or dead, whose fate is
practically ignored.

200 IMMORTALITY v

5. On the question of the everlasting nature of
punishment, the Apocalyptic books themselves are, as
we saw, really vague and indecisive. The same is true
of the New Testament. There is no passage which
absolutely requires it when due allowance is made for a
rhetorical use of quotations from earlier literature and
the conventional employment of current figures. In
some cases it is a possible interpretation of its language,
but the general trend of the New Testament as a whole
is definitely in the direction of annihilation.

6. With regard to the teaching of Our Lord the
evidence is still less decisive. The belief that He
taught everlasting punishment rests mainly on the
evidence of the first Gospel. It is a commonplace
of criticism that on many points besides this much of
the matter which is found only in this Gospel bears
very definite traces of the controversies of the sub-
Apostolic age. The moment we abandon the position
that every saying attributed to Christ in the Gospels
must be regarded as a literal and infallible report of
His words, we have no choice but to apply critical
principles.^ The general objections to the authenticity
of the language about punishment attributed to Him ^
are that it is very often weakly attested, that the form
in which it is recorded varies considerably, that it is
definitely traceable to contemporary Apocalyptic ideas,
and that, as many will hold, it is out of keeping with
the general tone of His character and teaching. More
will be said on this point later, but admitting for the

^ On this question I would beg leave to refer to my article on " The Teaching of
the Historic Christ" {Nineteenth Century, January 1914).

^ For a recent and very careful discussion of this see Rashdall, Conscience and
Christ, pp. 294 flF. To those who regard all such criticism as "subjective" it may
be said that the moment we question the literal accuracy of any document or report,
sacred or secular, we are thrown back upon probabilities which will to some extent
be variously estimated by different minds. In this sense all such criticism is "sub-
jective," as is all reasoning which falls short of mathematical proof. But subjective
need not be the same as arbitrary, and there are quite cogent and definite principles
of historical criticism which we all use in everyday life, e.g. we apply them to the
various war reports which reach us, rejecting some and accepting others, perhaps
with modifications j and we do so on precisely the same kind of principles as those
which critics use with regard to the Bible.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 201

moment the truth of this objection, it is obviously sound
criticism to regard with some suspicion, and to refuse to
build a far-reaching conclusion upon, a definite and not
very large class of discordant and exceptional sayings,
the origin of which can readily be otherwise explained.
Those who hold the doctrine of hell have based it
almost entirely on "revelation," i.e. on the recorded
teaching of Christ and His followers ; in many cases
they would gladly abandon it, were it not that they
felt compelled to hold it on these grounds. If then
this supposed basis can be shown to be at best very
doubtful, the main argument in favour of the doctrine
disappears at once.

7. There are in the Pauline Epistles very definite
hints of a certain type of Universalism. Christ is to
be all in all ; it is the purpose of God to sum up all
things in Him ; through Him to reconcile all things to
Himself (Eph. i. 10, Col. i. 16, 20, iii. 11) ; He has
shut up all unto disobedience that He might have mercy
upon all (Rom. xi. 31 ; see also i Cor. xv. 27 ff.). It
is not clear whether in such passages St. Paul actually
contemplated the salvation of individuals already dead
or of the spiritual powers of evil. He seems to be
thinking rather of the cosmos as a whole and of all classes
and types of created beings within it. Rom. xi. refers
to the Jewish nation as an entity and to those who
chance to be alive at the consummation, rather than to
those members of the race who had already refused the
Gospel.^ But whatever the primary meaning of such
language, the principles which underlie it, when thought
out, cannot allow us to ignore the fate of previous
generations, and they are certainly not consistent with
the existence of a class of rebellious souls suffering un-
ending torments. It is, however, very difficult to find

^ Rev. xxi. 24 ft'., xxii. 2, refer to a great conversion of the Gentiles during the
Millennial Kingdom (see the convincing reconstruction of these chapters by Dr.
Charles in the Expoiitory Times, xxvi. pp. 54, 119). But (l) only those are included
who chance to be alive at the time ; (2) the passage is not universalistic since
sinners remain without the city.

202 IMMORTALITY v

in the New Testament any real indications of further
opportunities after this life, and this applies just as
strongly to the heathen who have never heard the
message as to those who have heard and refused. If
we do believe in repentance after death, we must frankly
base our belief on something other than isolated texts. ^

The Hardening of the Doctrine in later
Thought and the Revolt against it

The doctrine of everlasting punishment does not
figure either in any creed ^ or in the pronouncements
of the first four General Councils.^ Though it was
vigorously debated at the time, the Church remained
silent on the subject. Dr. Gore* admits that even
Universalism, which he himself rejects, " has never been
formally condemned by the Church with any ecumenical
judgment." At the same time it is only too obvious
that the belief in hell soon became dominant both in
popular and in official theology. If our contention is
correct that this is a misinterpretation of the real teach-

^ The Lazarus parable does contain such a hint, and the obscure passage in i
Peter iii. 19 fF. certainly implies the preaching of the Gospel to the dead. It is, how-
ever, confined to those who died before the Flood. The supposed traces of a similar
idea in Enoch are very doubtful ; we may see in i Peter rather the influence of the
pagan myth of the conquest of the powers of the underworld by an unrecognised
divine hero (Bousset, Kjirios Christos, pp. 32 f.). In any case, we cannot use an
isolated passage such as this to explain other writers. St. Paul, the universalist,
gives no hint of a similar belief ; Eph. iv. 9 has no mention of preaching. The
"harrowing of hell" plays a large part in later Christian thought, but the point is
mainly the rescue of the good men of old, not the offering of another chance to
sinners. In Ignatius, Magn. ix. 3, it is the prophets who are rescued. In Hermas,
Sim. ix. 16, 5, the Apostles descend to baptize "those who have fallen asleep in
righteousness." The descensus becomes an answer, as in Dante, to the problem of
how the good men of old can be saved if baptism and faith in Christ are necessary
to salvation ; from this point of view it has no bearing on universalism.

2 The English version of the Hymn of Athanasius has "everlasting," "ever-
lastingly," but these can scarcely be defended as renderings of the original Latin
word " aeternus." The Creed is intended to represent the New Testament
language ; therefore " whatever Our Lord's words mean, the Creed means the
same." — Gibson, The Thirty- Nine Articles, p. 352.

* On the vexed question whether and how far Origen and his doctrines were ever
formally condemned, see Pusey, What is of Faith as to E-ver lasting Punishment, p. 137 ;
and Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria, ch. viii., esp. pp. 323 ff".

■* The Religion of the Church, p. 91.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 203

ing of the New Testament, how are we to account for
its early rise and general acceptance ?

There would seem to have been four main in-
fluences at work. ( i ) When Christianity passed from
its original Jewish surroundings to the Graeco-Roman
world the key was lost to the right interpretation of
the language in which many of its doctrines were
clothed. The Latin mind in particular tended to force
the Eastern metaphors and picturesque language of the
New Testament into a literalistic and legal mould.
This especially affected the understanding of the
eschatological system of thought, out of which, as we
have seen, the belief in future punishment developed.

(2) It was not realised that the New Testament,
like other documents, must be interpreted in the light
of contemporary ideas and with a due regard to the
history which lay behind its doctrines. The belief in
inspiration led to a mechanical system of interpretation
which, whether literal or allegorical, based itself on the
letter, and treated all books and texts as equally im-
portant. This method already existed as applied to the
Old Testament, and it was transferred bodily to the
New. In particular it was taken for granted that all
the books represented a single homogeneous theology,
accepted by all its writers alike. Apparent divergences
must be explained away, and in particular silence must
be understood as consent. Accordingly those books
which really say little or nothing as to everlasting
punishment, instead of being counted as witnesses
against it, were simply assumed to be in agreement
with the doctrine, though, as we have seen, it is in
fact almost exclusively confined to contexts where the
Jewish eschatological influence is dominant.

(3) The influences which we have found at work in
Apocalyptic literature and the New Testament operate
with increasing force in the history of the Church.
The growth of the belief in hell was largely due to
a very intelligible indignation at the cruelty of

204 IMMORTALITY v

persecutors and a desire to stem heresy. TertuUian's^
outburst of mocking and exultant joy at the coming
sight of kings, persecutors, philosophers, and poets
writhing in the flames is well known, and Pusey ^ quotes
a long catena of passages from the Acts of the Martyrs
and similar literature, insisting on the belief in ever-
lasting punishment.

(4) Added to this, there was on the philosophical
side the growing belief, inherited from Plato, in the
natural immortality of the soul. This led to the
ignoring of the prima facie meaning of the Biblical
passages which speak of annihilation.^ If the soul
is essentially immortal and indissoluble and the possi-
bility of repentance after death is not contemplated, the
sinner can only suffer unendingly.

At the same time there have always been isolated
voices raised in support of other views. There are
hints of a belief in repentance after death, as well as in
conditional immortality and annihilation.* The out-
standing figure in this respect is of course Origen ;
reference may be made to the full account of his views
in Bigg's Christian Platonists of Alexandria. The
salient points are these. He held that all punishment
is remedial ; future suffering is not a penalty, but a
wholesome reaction by which the soul casts out poison ;
the " fire " is spiritual and inward. " The sin which is
not forgiven in this aeon, or the aeon to come, might
yet be blotted out in some one of the aeons beyond." ^
At the same time he apparently believed in a final poena
damni or exclusion from the sight of God. " The soul
which has sinned beyond a certain point can never

1 De Sped. 30.

^ What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment, pp. 155-172.

•* The Jewish conception of the temporary Messianic age had ceased to be
familiar, particularly as Millenarianism (the reign of Christ for 1000 years)
passed into disrepute. It will be remembered that in the Apocalyptic books the
final destruction of sinners is often placed at the close of this period.

* For references see Enc. of Religion and Ethics, s.v. " Annihilation " ; " Conditional
Immortality"; " Eschatology " (v. p. 388).

6 Bigg, p. 277.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 205

again become what it once might have been. The
' wise fire ' will consume its evil fuel ; anguish,
remorse, shame, distraction, all torment will end when
* the wood, the hay, the straw ' are burnt up. The
purified spirit will be brought home, it will no longer
rebel ; it will acquiesce in its lot ; but it may never be
admitted within that holy circle where the pure in heart
see face to face." ^ At the same time, in view of what
he considered the teaching of Scripture, he is sometimes
uncertain as to the final fate of those rejected on earth.
" Who is that guest who ... is cast into outer dark-
ness ? You will ask whether he remains bound in the
outer darkness for ever i' — for the words ' for this aeon '
or * for the aeons ' are not added — or whether he will
in the end be loosed ? for it does not appear that any-
thing is written about his future release. It does not
seem to me to be safe, seeing I have no full understand-
ing, to pronounce an opinion, especially in a case where
Scripture is silent." " In the same way it is not clear
whether he really believed " that the devil will be saved,"
though some of his followers seem to have done so.

Origen's views were strenuously combated by
Augustine, whose influence prevailed on this, as on
other subjects. In fact, to the four reasons already
given for the wide spread of the doctrine of hell, the
almost unquestioned supremacy of his authority, at
least in the west, may be added as a fifth.

From his time, and through the period covered by
the Middle Ages, there is little in the development
of eschatological theories which need detain us here.^
The doctrine of Purgatory with its corollaries came to
occupy a central place. But this was always a prepara-
tion for heaven, not a mitigation of hell. No doubt it
provided a temporary half-way house for those who

' Bigg, p. 343.

" Origen, In 'Joan, xxviii. 7, quoted by Bigg, p. 278.

^ For John Scotus Erigcna and " Dionysius the Areopagite," who were in
sonic sense Universalists, see H. B. Workman, Chr'nt'ian Thought to the Reformation,
pp. 150 ff., and literature there quoted.

2o6 IMMORTALITY v

were neither good enough for the one nor bad enough
for the other. But it is a mistake to suppose that it
practically ousted hell. Dante and mediaeval art and
literature in general show that hell remained a serious
possibility, not merely for those outside the Church but
even for Popes, Bishops, and the highest ecclesiastical
dignitaries. The practical authority of the Church,
exercised in the last resort by excommunication, rested
largely on the belief, or at least the fear, that its con-
demnation did in fact carry with it the certainty of
everlasting punishment. This was the secret of its
power over heretics and secular princes. Gregory's
excommunication of Henry IV. and the Emperor's
humiliation at Canossa are the outstanding proof of
the seriousness with which the power of the keys was
regarded, a seriousness bound up with the belief in the
reality of the torments of an unending hell. " His
[Gregory's] premises once admitted — and no one dreamt
of denying them — the reasonings by which he established
the superiority of spiritual to temporal jurisdiction were
unassailable. With his authority, in whose hands are
the keys of heaven and hell, whose word can bestow
eternal bliss or plunge in everlasting misery, no other
earthly authority can compete or interfere : if his
power extends over the infinite, how much more must
he be supreme over the finite." ^ At the same time
the fact that such anathemas were sometimes disregarded
combines with the extraordinary flippancy with which,
then as now, hell was often treated in art and literature
to suggest the existence of an undercurrent of scepticism.
The prevalent attitude was no doubt very much that of
" Pascal's wager " : the Church's view of the future
might not be true ; on the other hand it might. And
with so much to gain and lose if it did turn out to be
true, it was better to be on the safe side and stake
what you conveniently could upon it.

The Reformation, where it swept away the doctrine

^ Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, p. 16 1.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 207

of Purgatory, left heaven and hell in still sharper op-
position. Everlasting punishment remained the official
teaching of the Reformed churches. Opposition came
mainly not from theologians but from philosophers,
such as Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, and Mill. Isolated
protests were however heard from time to time from
within the Church.^ It would take too long, and would
not really be much to our purpose, to attempt to discuss
these here. We can only add a few words on the
modern history of the controversy within the Church
of England.

Here an important stage was marked by the publica-
tion in 1 860 of Essays and Reviews. Mr. Wilson closed
his essay on "The National Church" with a very cautious
and moderate expression of his belief in Universalism.
This formed one of the counts in the " Essays and
Reviews " trial. After the Ecclesiastical Court had
condemned the writers, the judgment was reversed by
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the part
of the Judgment with which we are concerned running
as follows : —

*' We are not required, or at liberty, to express
any opinion upon the mysterious question of the
eternity of future punishment, further than to say
that we do not find in the formularies to which this
article refers any such distinct declaration of our
church upon the subject as to require us to condemn
as penal the expression of a hope by a clergyman
that even the ultimate pardon of the wicked who are
condemned in the Day of Judgment may be consistent
with the will of Almighty God."

The ecclesiastical opinion of the day still took
another view, and a Declaration signed by 11,000
clergy expressed the belief that the Church of England
teaches in the words of our blessed Lord that the
punishment of the " cursed " equally with the " life "

1 Sec Farrar, Eternal Hope, Appcmlix : " Brief Sketch of Eschatological Opinions
in the Church."

2o8 IMMORTALITY v

of the " righteous " is " everlasting." Similarly Dr.
Pusey writes : *' If the highest Court of Appeal allows
our clergy to take the word everlasting in a sense
contrary to its known English meaning , . , how
can our people believe that we mean anything that
we say ? "

A few years previously (in 1853) a similar spirit had
been shown when Maurice was deprived of his Chair at
King's College on account of a very tentative rejection
of the current doctrine of hell and the expression of
a hope that some sinners might have an opportunity
of repentance after death.^ Many will remember the
storm raised by the publication of Farrar's Eternal
Hope^ which was on much the same lines. It is worth
while recalling these controversies as some indication
of the change which has come over the theological
world in recent years with regard to this doctrine.
It is probably safe to say that except in a few restricted
circles a living belief in hell has practically vanished
to-day in the Church of England. It is no doubt still
held conventionally by many, but it is not seriously
preached or taught in spite of the efforts made from
time to time in the correspondence columns of the
religious press to galvanise it into life. And now the
semi-official theology of the Church is falling into line
with what has long been the instinctive attitude of lay
opinion. The present Bishop of Oxford in a Manual
of Membership, " intended as a summary statement
of the religion of the catholic church," while rejecting
" Universalism," abandons the strict doctrine of hell.
" I do not think ... we are absolutely shut up
into the almost intolerable belief in unending conscious
torment for the lost. . . . Final moral ruin may involve,
I cannot but think, such a dissolution of personality as
carries with it the cessation of personal consciousness.
In this way the final ruin of irretrievably lost spirits,
awful as it is to contemplate, may be found consistent

■• Tennyson's poem "To the Rev. F. D. Maurice" refers to this.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 209

with St. Paul's anticipation of a universe in which ulti-
mately God is to be all in all — which does not seem
to be really compatible with the existence of a region
of everlastingly tormented and rebellious spirits." ^

There can be no doubt that the impression that a
belief in everlasting punishment is an essential element
in the official theology of the Church has long been,
and still is, one of the greatest stumbling-blocks in
the minds of serious men. If it does not lead to the
rejection of Christianity itself, it prevents them
associating themselves with any of the churches. It
is well, therefore, to emphasise the fact that according
to the strictest interpretation of her formularies
considerable latitude is now allowed to her members,
at any rate within the Church of England.

The Spirit and the Letter of the New
Testament Teaching

The modern mind, then, with some unanimity rejects,
either explicitly or implicitly, the doctrine of hell. While
it may not always believe in the ultimate salvation of all
men, it does hold that the majority of souls will be purified
by discipline after death and will gradually attain, if
not to the fulness of the beatific vision, at least to some
measure of a profitable and happy state of being. We
must now consider how far this is really compatible
with what we have seen to be the teaching of the
New Testament. Let us remind ourselves once more
that the belief in hell depends upon the words of the
Bible to an extent which is probably true of no other
doctrine. We have already seen reason to hold that
its teaching is at best ambiguous and not always
consistent with itself, and this fact alone should be
fatal to the doctrine as a necessary matter of faith.
But though the New Testament is not decisive as to
everlasting punishment, the difficulty is that it does

' Gore, The Religion of the Church, pp. 92 f.

2IO IMMORTALITY v

definitely contemplate the existence of two clearly
defined classes — the sheep and the goats, the saved
and the lost — and it does not explicitly suggest any
possibility of improvement hereafter for those on
the wrong side of the line, whether they are there
because they have been deliberately rebellious or are
only unconverted through no fault of their own. Now
there is no getting away from the fact that those on
the wrong side of the line constitute a large proportion
of those whom on a prima facie view the language of
the New Testament contemplates. Few enter in at
the strait gate ^ ; the foolish virgins are half the number.
It is clear that the "tares" and the "goats" stand for
a class, which, though indefinite, is quite considerable.
Whether in the Pauline Epistles, or in the fourth
Gospel, it is perfectly obvious that those who are not
saved by faith in Christ are by no means a negligible
fraction. It has been a commonplace that the leaven
of true Christians must always be small.

Attempts are often made to remove the difficulty
by arguing that we are never told of the damnation
of any specified individual, that God alone is judge,
and that there is always the possibility that the soul
may have accepted Christ at the moment of death.
Pusey ^ goes through the list of notorious sinners of
the Bible — Ahab, Absalom, Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar,
Antiochus Epiphanes — and argues with regard to each
one that he may have repented at the last. Now we are
quite sure that the writers of the Jewish Apocalypses,
or of 4 Maccabees, had not the least intention of
excluding an Antiochus ^ from the fire they describe,

^ See Lk. xiii. 23 ff. (Mt. vii. 13). In answer to the question, "Are there few
that be saved?" (cf. 2 EsHras vii., viii.) Our Lord refuses to define the proportion,
but He does say that " many " shall fail to enter the Kingdom, and the following
verses emphasise the same fact.

" What is of Faith as to E-uerlasting Punishment, pp. 12 ff.

^ It is true that in i Mac. vi., 2 Mac. ix. Antiochus is represented as filled with
remorse at his oppression of the Jews, and as recognising in his illness the hand of
divme vengeance. Such a touch has an obvious dramatic fitness, but neither in
2 nor in 4 Maccabees is it suggested that he will thus escape his future doom.
Punishment after death is not referred to in i Maccabees.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 211

nor had the author of Revelation any idea of placing
Nero and his satellites in the work of persecution
among the redeemed arrayed in white robes. And the
argument is really a good example of a well-known
fallacy. It holds good " distributively " but not
" collectively." It may apply to any given individual,
but it cannot be extended to the whole class. If it
really means that the great majority of such sinners
repent " between the stirrup and the ground," it waters
down the idea of hell quite as effectually as any theory of
future opportunity. But it is even less ethical, and it is
untrue to observed experience. As a warning against
any presumptuous attempt to anticipate the judgment
of God by passing sentence on any one individual it is
of course valuable, but it does not ease the problem
of what must be, on the ordinary view, the large
number of the lost. All attempts to retain a theoretical
hell, while suggesting that probably no one goes there,
are in fact diametrically opposed to the teaching of
the New Testament. The one point on which this
is quite clear is that only a fraction are fitted for
and receive the Kingdom. The question is whether
those who do not are really condemned to hell. If
they are, hell is by no means empty, whatever be our
doubts as to the fate of any particular person.

Again the issue is often confused by language used
about what is technically known as the poena damni^
which figures as we saw in Origen's theory. It is argued
that the soul of the sinner is worse off throughout
eternity as the result of his sin, that his God-given
faculties have not been so fully developed as they might
have been. At the same time it enjoys something which
might be called life ; it is not an aimless existence of
suffering, but one of growth, activity, and hope, how-
ever much it falls short of the full vision of God which
under other circumstances it might have attained
This is in fact very much the view which will be advo-
cated in this paper, but the point at the moment is that

212 IMMORTALITY v

it does not, as is often maintained, agree with the
teaching of the New Testament, understood in anything
Hke its literal sense. It certainly does not agree with
it interpreted in terms of everlasting punishment, nor is
it equivalent to the doctrine of annihilation which, as we
saw, is sometimes the most reasonable deduction from
its language. Fire, darkness, exclusion, and death are
not the figures of a life good so far as it goes, though
truncated of much which might have been.

It is best in fact to admit quite frankly that any
view of the future destiny of those " on the wrong side
of the line " which is to be tolerable to us to-day must
go beyond the explicit teaching of the New Testament.
It has come to be recognised that this is the case with
other questions. Our views of slavery, the position of
women, the social order, the claims of art and beauty,
are not limited by what the New Testament writers
actually say on these subjects. We claim the right in
all such cases to develop the essential principles of
Christianity. It will be a great gain when the same atti-
tude is adopted quite explicitly with regard to the future
of sinners. We have indeed seen reason to believe
that the New Testament teaching is not in fact so ex-
treme as is usually supposed, that it is ambiguous and
not always consistent with itself. But it does not really
give us all that we want, and it only leads to insincerity if
we try to satisfy ourselves by artificial explanations of its
language. And we are in the end on surer ground when
as Christians we claim the right to go beyond the letter,
since we do so under the irresistible leading of the moral
principles of the New Testament and of Christ Himself.

It has lately been remarked with reference to social
problems that we often " underrate the ethical driving
force of the revolutionary ideas." ^ This certainly holds
good of the question we are now considering. The
impossibility of believing that all who are not saved in
this life are in any sense lost for ever arises not from

^ Report of the Archbishops' Committee on Church and State, p. 257.

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 213

philosophical or critical assumptions, but from definitely
moral principles. We saw that the belief in future
punishment itself owed much to the ethical motive
which demanded due vengeance on the persecutor and
the oppressor. It was based on the sense of justice and the
desire that there should be a compensation in the next
world for the wrongs of this. At the time this marked
a real ethical advance, and it contains elements for which
we must find room in any final solution. But it is not
the highest stage, and it is the teaching and the Spirit of
Christ Himself which enable us now to rise to some-
thing higher. It is our belief in the Fatherhood and
love of God as revealed in Christ which makes the idea
of unending torment strictly intolerable.^ If a dog
acquired irremediably vicious habits, making him a
nuisance and a danger, what should we say to a master
who, instead of shooting him at once, chained him up
to starve and torture him until he had " expiated " the
mischief he had done .'' If it be urged that in the case
of a responsible personality "justice" requires that sin
should be followed by a certain amount of " retributive
suffering," apart from its effect on the character of the

^ This can hardly be put better than it is in the Life of that strange saint of
God, John Smith of Harrow. " One of the elder boys once opened his heart to
John Smith upon the subject of future punishment. . . . 'What proof,' I said,
' have you that all will be eventually restored ? ' I shall never forget the way in
which he stopped, put his hand on my shoulder, and looking up to heaven, said in
his expressive voice, ' Our Father ' " {Life, p. 54).

One result of the dropping of any general preaching of the doctrine of hell has
been that those who continue to use the conventional language have forgotten what
it really implies. We should do well to exercise our imagination by trying to think
what everlasting punishment means. We may look at some of the quotations given
in Farrar's Eternal Hope (especially pp. xxvi, 26 f.), or better still, read for ourselves the
Works of Jonathan Edwards, and see it all in the full horror of its context. The
writer will never forget the impression made upon him years ago when, on taking
down one of these from the shelves of a library and opening it almost at random, he
lighted on the following: "The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of
the Saints for ever ; it will give them a more lively relish " [fVorks, vol. vii. p. 521).
If eternal punishment is really consistent both with the justice and the love of God
and a completely good universe, it docs follow that the righteous must approve of it
and even rejoice in it.

It is a minor point whether we think of it in terms of material and bodily suffer-
ings, or of mental and spiritual pangs. Those who reject the former usually go on
to insist that the latter are the more terrible. Of course if we regard these as
remedial and as leading to repentance and progress, they are on a different plane, but
then this is not hell.

214 IMMORTALITY v

sufferer, that punishment must at least bear some pro-
portion to the sin. To say that any sin deserves an
*' infinite " penalty is an outrage to the very sense of
fairness which the argument invokes. Many will find
it difficult to conceive of the God of Jesus inflicting
any punishment after death which is not in some way
remedial and disciplinary ; it is certainly impossible to
regard Him as condemning any sinner to unending and
purposeless torments. To fall back on the arbitrary
decrees of God, to say that in this respect His ways are
not as our ways, and that the highest ethical judgments
we can form are no criterion of His actions, is simply
fatal to all religion. " We who believe in Christ know
nothing more certainly than the character of God. We
know that He is perfect love, perfect equity. We are
quite justified in refusing to believe about Him anything
which would be inconsistent with the highest goodness
we can conceive." ^

Once more there are grave moral difficulties with
regard to the belief in the dissolution of personality as
the universal fate of sinners. For it is an admission of
the failure of the love of God. The absolute value of
each soul is a cardinal doctrine of Christianity. We
must believe that God created each soul for a good end,
for the happiness of communion with Himself and
others, and of playing a part in the working out of His
purpose for the universe. The soul that ceases to be
represents, therefore, a failure of the divine purpose,
however much that failure may be due to its own sin.
It means that love has failed to overcome the obstacles.
If it is difficult to believe this of any souls it is almost
impossible to believe it of a large fraction of mankind.^

^ Gore, Rtligion of the Church, p. 90. On the question of the validity of our
ethical judgments as a criterion of God's ways, I would venture to refer to what I
have written elsewhere in The Faith aiii the War, pp. 193 f.

2 See above, p. 210, on the point that the New Testament does in fact regard a
large proportion as "on the wrong side of the line." The question naturally arises
as to why the New Testament writers failed to realise the moral difficulties involved
in this position, difficulties which were plain to the author of 4 Esdras. It may be
suggested that they were completely possessed v/ith exultation at the extension of
God's love to which they bore witness. Potentially all Gentiles were admitted on

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 215

The force of these ethical difficulties is widely felt,
but it is feared on the other hand that to surrender the
belief in hell or in final annihilation would be to deny
the eternal consequences of right or wrong choice, to
cut at the root of the sense of ultimate responsibility,
to minimise the awfulness of sin and remove a main
incentive to the struggle against it. If everything is
bound to come right in the end, why need we bother
overmuch ?

In the first place we may reply that it is in fact
very doubtful how far the fear of future punishment
is a very effective deterrent against sin or incentive to
virtue. The ages when it was treated most seriously
are certainly not the most moral or the purest in church
history. Tyrrell's experience is perhaps not very common
when he writes : *' I cannot remember any time of my
childhood, or afterwards, when the fear of hell or desire
of heaven had the slightest practical effect on my con-
duct " ; ^ but it is quite certain that the ultimate effect
of a threat which the conscience does not acknowledge
as just or moral cannot be either very great or desirable.^

In the second place, we are not shut up to the view
that it will be " all right " for every one after death,
that good and bad, loving and selfish, will all find them-
selves equally well off. The New Testament division
into two classes does no doubt correspond to some divi-

equal terms ; in fact many more were to be saved than any one had expected. This
was enough for the moment, and they did not go on to face the problem of those
who refused the message or had not heard it. To us the difficulty is not that some
Gentiles should be saved but that any soul should be finally lost.

* Autobiography of George Tyrrell, i. pp. 22.

'■* An anonymous satirist has stated the argument unmercifully, but not unfairly :

To others the doctrine of love may be dear ;

I own I confide in the doctrine of fear :

There's nothing, I think, so effective to make

Our weak fellow-creatures their errors forsake.

As to tell them abruptly with unchanging front,

*' You'll be damned if you do ! You'll be damned if you don't."

A new generation forthwith must arise.

With Beelzebub picture<l before their young eyes.

They'll be brave, they'll be true, they'll be gentle and kind

Because they have Satan for ever in mind.

2i6 IMMORTALITY v

sion in the next world, the nature of which we can only
dimly imagine. But we do not interpret it as final in
the sense that it excludes all hope of future progress
and amendment for those in the lower class. We may,
if we will, retain the language of fire, worms, darkness,
and even death, so long as we interpret them in terms
of purgatory ^ and not of a final hell. Discipline and
suffering, pangs of repentance and the sense of what
might have been, delay in the fulfilment of God's pur-
pose for the self and the sense that His love has been
thwarted, will surely all be elements in the purifying
process through which the soul will have to pass. Such
a doctrine of the future is not an easygoing ignoring
of sin, while it does satisfy our ethical demands.

And though here we refuse to dogmatise, we keep
open the solemn possibility that final dissolution will be
the ultimate end for such souls as have completely lost
the power to recognise and desire goodness and respond
to the love of God. But we hold that so far as we can
see, this stage is seldom reached in this life. Even in
the worst we know, we ourselves can always find some
spark of goodness, some traits of love and unselfishness ;
all evangelical work depends on this principle. So
long as there is the faintest spark of the divine life
in the soul, there remains the possibility of better
things, and the love of God has something on which
to work. We dare not abandon the hope of progress
and forgiveness after death for such a soul.^ Only

1 As has often been pointed out, it is very remarkable that the modern Roman
doctrine in its most widely prevalent form teaches that Purgatory is only penal and
vindictive ; it is the place where the soul, -which is already sa-ved and Jorgi-ven, works
out the temporal consequences of its sin. The growing modern use of the term, like
the early mediaeval, regards it as a place of purification and growth, while of course
it rejects the various superstitions connected with it. Cf. p. 139.

- A popular view, keeping the theoretical doctrine of hell but attempting to
minimise it as far as possible, holds that in such cases the soul is redeemed in this
life by an unconscious faith in Christ, however rudimentary. But this, like Pusey's
extension of death-bed repentances, only keeps the form of the orthodox language at
the expense of its meaning. The New Testament writers did not include in the
Kingdom all who died with any unextinguished spark of goodness, even in the some-
what rare cases where they contemplate salvation without a personal faith in Christ
(see above, p. 198).

V THE BIBLE AND HELL 217

where the Spirit is definitely quenched will the soul
cease to be.^

As to details, the how and where of progress, the
stages through which the soul must pass, and where it
will finally rest, we may refuse to dogmatise, or even to
surmise. We are only certain about our religious and
ethical principles — that the God revealed in Christ is a
God of love, that each soul He has made has an
absolute value, that He cannot allow His children to
suffer hopelessly and without purpose, that His love
has supreme power to draw out the best in every soul
and to destroy evil. These principles are admitted by
all Christians, but they have not always been applied
unflinchingly and consistently to the doctrine of the
future.^ Augustine speaks of Origen's followers who
tried to do so as " deceived by a certain human kindness."
But it is a very halting faith which fears that a thorough-
going belief in the love of God and in the reflection of
that love which we find in our own conscience and
actions at their best will deceive us. The Good
Shepherd who seeks for the lost sheep will not rest till
he has saved the goats.

The infant Church, of love she felt the tide
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave.

And then she smiled ; and in the Catacombs,
With eye suffused but heart inspired true,
On those walls subterranean, where she hid
Her head 'mid ignominy, death, and tombs,
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew —
And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.^

^ This is not quite the doctrine of •' conditional immortality." That says the
soul is not immortal till it has won eternal life j this says it is immortal till it has
forfeited its boon by an extreme of wilful sin. More and more we sec that it is
goodness which is essentially immortal and there is no serious philosophical difficulty
in believing in the dissolution of the completely bad personality.

2 There is food for thought in a pregnant remark of Dr. Charles : " The
eschatology of the nation is always the last part of its religion to experience the
transforming power of new ideas and facts. The eschatology of Israel was at times
six hundred years behind its theology." "So far as the Christian Churches hold
fast to the doctrine [sc. of eternal punishment] taken over from Judaism at the
Christian era, their eschatology is nearly two thousand years behind their doctrine
of God and Christ." — Benveen the Old and N civ Testaments, pp. 128, 131.

3 M. Arnold, The Good Shepherd with the Kid.

A DREAM OF HEAVEN

A. CLUTTON-BROCK

219

SYNOPSIS

Myths of Heaven and their meaning. They give us life emptied of
irrelevance. That irrelevance is the struggle for life — from which we
escape in art. In art men are led to prophesy of Heaven. But the myths
of the artists are taken literally and misunderstood. So comes the conven-
tional idea of Heaven, of characterless angels and saints. An example.
But we are not fit for the perfection we imagine in Heaven. We must
need to be trained to it and yet to remain ourselves. But there we shall be
rid of all the unreal part of ourselves, and the reality in us will recognise
the reality of Heaven. The problem of the wicked. Purgatory will really
be enrichment. We know that what we need is enrichment. How shall
we be rid of the evil in ourselves ? By punishing ourselves. The pain of
Heaven will be in our sense of our inadequacy. The reality and uncer-
tainty of Heaven.

A DREAM OF HEAVEN

There have been many myths of a future blessed
state, Valhalla, the Islands of the Blessed, Dante's
Paradise and the Visions of the Apocalypse ; and there
is no truth in any of them except for those who know
that they are myths — in Plato's sense of that word —
and for whom they express a belief that can be expressed
only in an artistic form. These myths, for those who
understand their nature, have the same relation to reality
that music has to actual experience. Music is an expres-
sion of actual experience, but in terms of pure emotion
not of representation. So the myth is an expression of
what is believed to be real but not in terms of repre-
sentation. It is art, not science ; it is like music, an
answer given by the mind to reality, an answer which
does not reproduce reality but transmutes it into another
form. There is prophecy in it, as there is in music, the
prophecy of another state of being freed from all the
insignificance of this ; and of that state of being man
can prophesy only by creating it in an artistic form.
" Heaven is music," Campion says ; it is life become
music ; and when men dream and talk, as they naturally
do, of this heaven of music, they mean, if it has any
reality to them, not a perpetual singing of hymns but a
life that is music, a life not emptied of its content but
freed from its irrelevance, as poetry is speech not emptied
of content but freed from irrelevance.

This irrelevance in life is, for all of us, the struggle

222 IMMORTALITY vi

for life, the fact that we are here tied and bound by a
perpetual effort to go on living. It is from the thought
of that struggle that we escape in art. Our common
speech is hampered by haphazard necessities ; it is a
hand-to-mouth means of expressing our wants and has
been developed in the expression of them. But we
have always the idea of a speech freed from these wants
and no longer at the mercy of haphazard necessities ;
and we make that speech in poetry. The rhythm of
poetry is itself a freed movement, which has escaped
from the pressure of the struggle for life ; it is a move-
ment willed by the poet, not imposed upon him by
emergencies, a movement in which he expresses himself
and not his wants. And so the dance is freer and more
expressive walking ; and, as for music, it is sound freed
altogether, sound become purely rhythmical and expres-
sive in itself, being freed even from the fetters of sense.
So all rhythm is a prophecy of a freer state of being, a
state in which man escapes from the struggle for life to
the expression of his own values, his own ideals ; and
in all art, the more completely it is art, there is the sense
of heaven, whether it be a triumphant prophecy of it
or an aching desire for it. Even in despair the artist
conjures up the freedom of that heaven of which he
despairs ; for he expresses his despair in the free speech
of heaven.

And this free speech leads men to prophesy of
Heaven, almost without knowing it. Morris suddenly,
in a poem to Iceland, is carried by his own music into
a myth of Iceland which his music brings to life in his
mind : —

Ah ! when thy Balder comes back, and bears from the heart of the

Sun
Peace and the healing of pain, and the wisdom that waiteth no

more,
And the lilies are laid on thy brow 'mid the crown of the deeds

thou hast done,
And the roses spring up by thy feet that the rocks of the wilderness

wore ;

VI A DREAM OF HEAVEN 223

Ah ! when thy Balder comes back and vvc gather the gains he hath

won.
Shall we not linger a little to talk of thy sweetness of old,
Yea, turn back awhile to thy travail, whence the Gods stood aloof

to behold ?

There is the desire making a prophecy of what It
desires ; there is the poet making a heaven out of what
he loves in this world and impelled to make it by the
heavenly freedom of his own speech.

But, though in these heavens of art life is freed from
its slavery to the struggle for life, it is not therefore
emptied of content but rather enriched with more of it.
It is a fuller life because a freer ; and the artist makes
his myth to express his longing for freedom, for a posi-
tive freedom. He conceives of a state in which men
shall act without the spur of the struggle for life. That
is what immortality means to him ; above all, it is the
consciousness of freedom, it is an everlasting now. Into
which man can throw the whole of himself without
looking before or after. It is not that he will live a
life emptied of sorrow, but that he will rejoice or mourn
always with the freedom of passion, and not for himself.
For It is the struggle for life that binds us to ourselves ;
the tyranny of the struggle for life is the tyranny of a
self that cannot be forgotten ; and that is what the
constant passion in the mind of man rebels against.

But the myths of the artist — and the prophets and
seers who created the Christian myth were not the
less but rather the more artists because they had
religious genius — are always being misunderstood by
those who have not imagination enough to conceive of
a life which is still really alive though freed from the
struggle for life. For them Heaven is mere Idleness ;
and they cast about for something to do in It. They
assume that it must be a pious idleness ; they are told
by the artist in his myths that it is the free life of art ;
but they do not understand what he means by this. So
to them this free life of art means worship, not for the

224 IMMORTALITY vi

sake of worship, but because worship is a means of
acquiring merit, because God is supposed to like it.
Heaven is music, they are told by the poets ; and they
suppose this to be a statement of literal fact. So, if
they are members of the Church of England, they sup-
pose that Heaven is an eternity of Hymns ancient and
modern, sung to God because He likes to hear them.

Where the bright seraphim in burning row
Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.
And the Cherubic host in thousand choirs
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires.

Empty that of the artist's passion for positive free-
dom ; empty it of the meaning in its music, which is
all its meaning ; regard it, not as a myth, but as a state-
ment of fact, and it becomes the conventional notion of
heaven, as far from what Milton meant as a reproduc-
tion of Fra Angelico's Paradise on a picture post-card
is from what Fra Angelico meant when he painted the
picture.

It is a curious fact that the conventional idea of
Heaven, produced by people for the most part morbidly
absorbed in morals, is a state of being in which art will
be the only activity. Heaven to them is music, and
music which they will all know by heart, like Church
hymns. But a decent state of being cannot be all
art any more than all morals. The artist must live ;
he must experience before he can give out his experi-
ence in art ; and he enjoys the taking in as much as
the giving out. Besides, he must produce his own
art out of the exercise of all his other faculties. He
must in fact be free ; and freer in a future state than
here, if it is to be anything like Heaven and not
rather on the way to Hell. Hence it is that the con-
ventional Heaven of the conventionally devout is
unreal ; unreal even to them because it is bad art, art
emptied of content and so life emptied of content. It
is joy, but a joy they cannot conceive, and therefore an
empty conventional joy ; the joy of an Academy picture.

VI A DREAM OF HEAVEN 225

or of that hymn which cries, " Oh, let us be joyful,"
without knowing how to set about it.

Our notions of perfection, in so far as they come at
all from our actual experience, are notions really of
sudden and extreme joy, of achievement, recognition,
or reconciliation. This joy there must be in Heaven ;
but it always has to be earned, and could not be itself
if it were not earned. We cannot, so to speak, pay a
life subscription for it and have it without further effort
throughout eternity. Nor should we be satisfied with
a universe in which we could. Such a Heaven would
be like an everlasting club, in which we should all pass
the time, having retired from business. But the best of
men do not wish to retire from business ; they wish
rather for a business freed from the struggle for life,
and all the more intense for that reason.

Again, in the conventional Heaven all the human
beings there are, like the hymns they sing, emptied of
content ; they are made good by losing their characters.
And this comes of men's impotence to conceive a life
freed from the struggle for life. That is why the myths
are meaningless to them, since they are myths of a life
freed from the struggle for life yet not emptied of its
content ; and of human beings freed also, but not
emptied of their character, and not left with nothing to
do. Heaven would not be Heaven to us if we ourselves,
and all others, were made good by losing our characters.
If we are to love each other in Heaven it must be we
ourselves that love each other, ourselves with all the
savour of individual character still about us. If we
think of Heaven as a real place it is as a heaven of real
people doing real things. I imagine to myself, for
instance, Henry James in Heaven. If it were the con-
ventional state of blessedness, what a polite but per-
sistent note of interrogation he would sound in it ; how
he would still labour incessantly to find the phrase that
would exactly describe his dislike of it. At least, if he
did not, he would be no longer Henry James, but a

226 IMMORTALITY vi

spirit beatified, like the spirits in the bad pictures, by
being emptied of content. Just as he used to watch the
splendours of the rich, seeking all the while his phrases
for them and making the splendours tolerable to him-
self only with the phrases ; so he would watch the four-
and-twenty elders casting down their golden crowns
beside the glassy sea.^

" Yes," he would say, " it is a ritual, most im-
pressive no doubt, all that one can imagine of disciplined
ardour. There is achievement, a very real achievement,
in it ; and yet I find myself asking more and more
insistently — Why ? and above all — Why so often ? I
cannot conceal from myself that it all seems to belong
to the past, to be a little musty and romantic, like the
smell of incense in a Baroque church. I take off my
hat to it of course ; one must be grateful to an
entertainment so splendid, so finished ^ — but will it
never be finished ? That is what I find myself asking,
as I say, with ever-increasing insistence. Let us come
away, my dear fellow, to some quiet place, if we can
find one, and talk it all over." His state of blessed-
ness, if he were still himself, would be talking it all
over with an enhanced power of hinting, in involved
but exquisitely adjusted sentences, just what he would
prefer instead of it.

In any future life we may have a great access of
knowledge and power ; but that access must come to
us ourselves. It is I myself that will experience it.
It is I and so it will be I. The will be must be
connected with the is ; or I shall not be I. In many
ideas of a future state the will be is not connected with
the is at all through the I, and that is why so many
men cease to believe in a future state at all or even to
desire it. They cannot imagine themselves as being,
if they are not to be themselves.

But are any of us, being what we are, fit for a life

^ Henry James must have admired, as much as any man, the magnificent imagery
of this scene. He would be wearied by a Heaven in which it was not imagery but
fact.

VI A DREAM OF HEAVEN 227

without the struggle for life ? We may be able to
conceive it, to prophesy of it, in art ; but art here is
not life ; and we must never forget that. Life here is
not music, but a struggle for life which at best rises, at
rare moments, into music. Beauty for us, righteousness
for us, flower out of the struggle for life ; seeming to
be wonderful by-products of it, and yet the by-
products for which we live. A man of science said
to me once that the struggle for life is only a pass
examination ; you must pass it so that you may go
on to the real content of life, and rise to its real
meaning. But we have to be passing it all the time ;
and could we rise to the real content of life at all, if
we were not always passing it ? We have this power
of rising above it for a moment ; all of us have it,
even if we are not artists ; but could we have it if
there were not the struggle to rise above.'' That is
the question we must always ask ourselves ; and
because we cannot answer yes, we know that we are
not fit for Heaven, even if it be there waiting for us.
We are not fit for a life free from the struggle for life.
Out of that very struggle arises for us fellowship
between men and the love of a mother for her child,
the wild virtues from which Christianity has drawn its
idea of God himself. Love, fellowship, these come to
us out of the struggle for life ; it is through that very
struggle that we transcend it, just as beauty comes into
objects of use through their use. Divorce them from
their use, and the beauty is meaningless ; and so, it
seems to us, we should be meaningless if we were
divorced from our struggle for life. If we were turned
suddenly into Angels we should be but domestic pets
kept by God.

We are all so unfit for perfection that it would be
a nightmare to us if we were thrown into it. God is
not so cruel as that, and if He loves us, He loves us
for what we are. He does not wish to change us into
something utterly different. He must have liked

228 IMMORTALITY vi

Henry James, as he was here ; He could not wish to
change him into a pattern saint, so that he might enjoy
a pattern Heaven, Besides, our capacity for enjoyment
is ourselves ; and we exist in a relation with real
things, in a relation already with God who is real even
here and will be more real hereafter. But He is real
to us in these real things, and in the very imperfection
of them which is akin to our own imperfection. There
is always something homely to us in our sense of Him,
and we are most sure of it in homely and humble and
very imperfect things, when we suddenly discover their
beauty by our own effort. As the poet says of children,
" God's speech is on their stammering tongue, and His
compassion in their smile." But we have to find it.
It is not forced upon us like the finished charms of a
society beauty or the splendour of a grand hotel.
These things are unreal, however much we may think
we admire them ; because we ourselves make no answer-
ing effort to them. What they have to give us is forced
upon us, like the condescensions of a kind lady to the
poor. Heaven cannot be like that or it would be
Hell to all except the abject. No ; the future life
must be more real, not less ; and we too shall be more
real both to ourselves and to each other. Already we
are the children of God, and that means that we are
growing into a kind of equality with Him. This
equality cannot be given to us or it would not be
equality. We must grow into it and be always grow-
ing. God is love before He is power ; power is merely
an attribute of the love ; and because God is love we
must have an independence of Him. He could not
love us if we were His creatures in the old mechanical
sense. He can love us only if we are ourselves, as He
is Himself ; and we are equal with Him in that we are
ourselves, and not creatures made to love Him like
mechanical toys for His amusement. What we call
creation is the gift of independent life without which
we could not be loved or love. And we must keep

VI A DREAM OF HEAVEN 229

this notion of independent life in all our ideas of a
future state, or it will not be life at all.

And this future life must be such that it will
accommodate all the actual people whom we know
here well enough to love them. But, on the other
hand, it will not accommodate our ideas of the people
whom we do not know and do not love. It will not
contain our ideas of the Germans, or the German ideas
of us. These are in the main phantoms of this life ; for
it is infested with phantoms that we throw up out of
ourselves, that are, as we say, subjective. For here we
have not enough commerce with reality and are always
making unreal substitutes for it. The madman is
one who cannot face reality and who is always altering
it in his own mind and believing in his alterations.
And we all have this tendency to madness. We
throw out these phantoms and live among them. But
the future life will be swept clean of them and we
shall leave them behind us like dust and litter when
we change houses. It will be swept clean of our
hatreds, our hostile generalisations about hostile classes
and peoples, our sense of status, our bad art, our
formulae, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic, our habit
of valuing the temporal as the eternal. These are the
phantoms, our own absurd creations, that we shall leave
behind with death. They are not part of reality, as
dreams are not part of our waking hours. We shall
feel them gone like a nightmare, when we wake
from it, but we ourselves with all our capacities still
imperfect will not be gone.

The mere act of dying cannot, of course, free a
man at once from all capacity for illusion. Some
men have false standards of value so deeply engrained
in them, they have trained themselves so thoroughly
into blindness to reality, that on the threshold of the
next life they may begin again to create for themselves
new phantoms and new delusions. But, at least, there
will be the possibility of a fresh start.

230 IMMORTALITY vi

If the universe, if reality, is really a home to us, we
shall find it more of a home when we are rid of the litter
and phantoms of this life, which are here our property
and not ourselves. And we shall come into this home,
not as strangers needing to learn the customs and
the language, but as exiles returning with memories
awakened at every step. Everywhere we shall recognise
those people and things that are according to our
idea and memory of home, as we now recognise a
great tune when we hear it for the first time. It is
as if we were helping to make it ourselves. It is
we ourselves that speak in it and say what we have
always wanted to say. So this future life will seem
to be ours and always to have been ours ; only we
have never managed to live in it before. It will be
the expression of what we always knew about reality
but could not even dare to whisper to ourselves. Nor
will it seem to be a reward to us but rather something
that we have been fools not to make for ourselves
before. Music is not a prize for being good ; it is
not something that the musician imposes upon us,
but a revelation that suddenly we share with him.
And we can share it only because in our values we
are his equals and of like mind with him, though we
could not have expressed our minds without his
help. That is an image of our equality with God.
He makes the music but we recognise it ; and He
does not make the music for Himself but for us ;
His joy is in our recognition of it, and to be one
with us in that recognition.

What we have in common with each other is
this power of recognition of the same thing, the same
God, the same reality, quod semper^ quod ubique^ quod
ah omnibus. How much of what separates us from
each other is in those phantoms which we throw up
out of our own minds and which fill the spiritual
air between us and pester us with the sting and buzz
of our own egotism ! When they are gone it will

VI A DREAM OF HEAVEN 231

be an ampler aether, a diviner air, in which we shall
recognise each other and shall be more purely our-
selves. There, too, we shall not be born as we are
here into a life infested with the phantoms of past
minds that have gone and left them behind, with
bad art, and formulae, and inherited rancours. But
this future will not be unsubstantial because free of
all those phantoms ; rather it will be far more real, for
it is the phantoms here that afflict us with a sense
of unreality, cutting us off from that fellowship in
which alone reality can be found. Reality, to me,
here, is in what I love, not in what I hate ; and I do
not love from mere habit and just what happens to
be round me. I love from recognition of what is
everlastingly lovable ; and this will last into a future
life. That everlastingly lovable will be the connection
between the future life and this one, as I myself shall
be the connection. It is the spirit that gives form,
and the beauty of things made by man is the form
given to them by the spirit of man. So, as the spirit
will persist, the beauty will persist also and will be
of the same nature, whether it come from man or
from God, and whatever its material may be. The
beauty we shall recognise even if its material be strange
to us. We shall not have to l^arn it all afresh ; and
we shall recognise it the more easily because all our
present ugly phantoms of beauty will be gone. So
will the false phantoms we mistake for truth, and the
evil phantoms we miscall goodness.

In this life progress means that we become freer
of the tyranny of the past. I am aware of progress
in myself when I am able suddenly to live in the
present and no longer to see it only through the
phantoms of my own past. Only then do I become
myself and not something else subject to what I have
been. The difficulty, for us, is to go on being freshly
ourselves in an eternally fresh relation with what is.
We are always falling behind our actual experience,

232 IMMORTALITY vi

judging it as if it were a something that had happened
before, as if it were actually in the past for us ;
and so we judge other men as if they were tied by
their past. That is how we find it difficult to forget
and to forgive. They are to us what they have done ;
and we become to ourselves what we have done ; and
so come to think of all things as bound by a chain
of cause and effect. But progress in another life will
be a greater freedom from this tyranny of the past.^
We shall begin afresh, but it will be we ourselves
that begin. All status will be swept away like cob-
webs. We shall love Shakespeare for himself, not for his
reputation, and we shall come much nearer to loving
God also for Himself and not for His reputation.

We all have some fear of the strangeness of a
future state into which we shall come like new boys
to school. Certainly we may feel naked there because
we shall have lost all status, we shall be free of our
past both ways, from the comfort and from the dis-
comfort of it. So Mr. Roosevelt will not be asked to
make a speech there ; but neither will he be caricatured
in comic weeklies. It will no doubt be hard for all
of us at first to do without the comfort of our past ;
but we shall soon find it bracing. We may wish
to fall back upon our own past achievements out
of the new life of everlasting fresh achievement and
activity. When we have done something well we may
wish to step back and look at it, instead of going
on at once to do something else. But the others
will be doing well too and not talking about it ; and
we shall soon find that we are happier than we had
ever thought possible in admiring what they do. There
will be a perpetual current of all things drawing us
into fellowship with a force that may be painful to us
at first ; and those who have grown part of the current
will have forgotten utterly the dividing habits of this

^ I need hardly say that by freedom from the past here I do not mean loss of
memory.

VI A DREAM OF HEAVEN 233

life so that they will gently discourage us from talking
about ourselves. There will be none of those silent
treaties of egotism by which some men band together
to despise others ; and, if we at first make ill-natured
jokes, no one will see the point of them ; as a child
does not see the point of a dirty story. All that
may even seem a little insipid to us at first, as fruit
is insipid to an East End child fed on liquorice and
whelks ; but in time we shall learn to relish the
celestial fruit, and raise ourselves to the capacity of
enjoying the new life.

But what will happen to the people who seem
here entirely disgusting — to the wicked .'* The difficulty
is that if they are at all the same as in this life, they
will not like the new life. Even the confirmed club
bore will not like it unless he can find other bores
to talk to ; in which case we shall begin to have the
same old trouble all over again. It may be possible
for the wicked and the bores and the bad artists to
band together and make this new world for them-
selves, and partly for others, like the old one. But
all these people live among their own phantoms here,
and these they will have left behind. There may
be a very small residuum of reality left to them
when all the phantasmal part is gone, but this residuum
will grow. They will be weaker than the good, they
will not have the perverted power they often have
here, and they will have to depend on the good and
on the fulness of their life. I think they will be
like convalescents after a long illness, very frail and
timid and pathetic, looking on at the happy sports of
the healthy ; and they will desire gradually to share in
these sports. They, too, will be drawn into the current ;
and life will come to them from their contact with
it. All kinds of long-forgotten memories will quicken
in their minds, and with these will return to them
the sense of reality which in this world they had lost
among their own phantoms. There are people who

234 IMMORTALITY vi

have no sense of reality at all except in their memories
of childhood. All that they do and think and feel now
seems to them merely provisional. It is all a means
to something else. They pass through life, in fact,
as if they were in the waiting-room at Clapham
Junction ; and on the faces of the vicious, one always
seems to see a provisional look, as if they lived among
makeshifts, as indeed they do. In the future Hfe
they will not be able to stay themselves with makeshifts.
They will be back like children among realities, among
the things that are worth doing for their own sake,
and they will slowly nerve themselves up to realities
and lose all that false shame, which in this world
persuaded them that realities were childish and beneath
the attention of men of the world.

Here they have believed nothing ; there they will
learn to believe. The process may be painful at first ;
one may call it Purgatory, but the word has an error
latent in it. For it is not purging that we shall need,
but enriching. In the very word Purgatory there is
already a perversion of what we really mean by it, a
perversion caused by our dislike of one another. It
seems to us that other men need to be purged of all
that we dislike in them, but if we think of ourselves we
know quite well that what we need is to be enriched.
Purging would not make us fit for Heaven, there would
not be enough of us left for it when we were purged.
We shall be purged enough by leaving this world and
its phantoms behind us ; but we shall be weak and
empty after the process. In some cases that thread of
self connecting this life with another will be very thin.
There will be little reality to remember from the past
when all the phantoms are forgotten, but in that small
residuum of reality will be the faint beginnings of the
future life. Whatever we have known of reality here
will help us to recognise reality there. Whatever we
have really loved here will be there to be loved again,
to be recognised like the sound of bells from an old city

VI A DREAM OF HEAVEN 235

church, like the swinging open of gates, like the sunrise
over the mountains, like all those things that are eternal
to us, that seem to call us into that place when no more
time shall be " but steadfast rest of all things firmly
stayed upon the pillars of eternity."

For what is the reality of ourselves to ourselves ?
Not that part of us which is absorbed in the struggle
for life ; that is merely the routine self, the mechanical
part of us. The real self is that which rises in the very
process of the struggle for life to absolute values. One
real self is aware of another, is aware of itself, only in
love. A great part of our relations with each other is
merely mechanical, a matter of business, as we say ; and
we wear business masks to each other, hiding our reality.
There are some who wear these masks always to others
and even to themselves. They have subdued them-
selves to the conception of a business universe ; they
despair of reality altogether ; they have forgotten their
own absolute values. Their relation with God Him-
self, if they had one, would be merely a business
relation.

What is the artist except a man who does reveal the
real part of himself, not to individual men in some per-
sonal intercourse, but to all the world through his art ^
In that he is aware of his real self through love, he does
rise to absolute values. But art, prophetic of Heaven
as it is, is not enough, because it is not a personal inter-
course between man and man. Heaven would be the
fusion of the artist and the saint, the real, not the
conventional saint, who is hero and lover and poet in
one ; it would be absolute values mastering all conduct
and turning it into art, making it as beautiful as music.
In Heaven conduct would be music. But there is not
enough material in us, not enough even in the artist or
the lover, to make this music. We are not real enough
to make it with each other ; the artist himself has to
make it for an ideal audience ; he cannot speak to the
man in the street as he speaks to an imagined world in

236 IMMORTALITY vi

his art. He has to suppose saints and angels Hstening
to him before he can begin. Only at rare moments are
two human beings at one with each other in their sense
of absolute values and then they have a glimpse of
Heaven ; but it passes because they cannot sustain
the moment ; they become unreal to each other and
to themselves. Heaven would be a universal and
everlasting fellowship in the enjoyment of absolute
values, a concert of all minds, of all thoughts, and all
actions, like that concert of the Cherubim and Seraphim
which Milton himself can only express for us in terms
of music. He says trumpets and harps ; but he means
speech and thought and action all become music. He
must impoverish the content of Heaven so that he may
represent it at all ; and that is a proof how far too poor
we all are now for the life of Heaven. There is not in
us yet soul enough for a life free from the struggle for
life. We are pained by the very desire for a love and a
fellowship not forced on us by that struggle. There is
a warmth in the desires of the flesh without which
we should seem to ourselves cold nothings. Our very
values seem to be far away from us when we try to
obey them for no reason except that they are our values.
And yet we know that all our reality is in those values ;
and our worst sorrow in life is the knowledge that they
are not quite real.

Lord, it is my chief complaint
That my love is weak and faint.

That is the chief complaint of all men, if only they
knew it. Their cry is, not to be purged, but to be
enriched.

And yet evil does exist ; and in our myths of Hell
and Purgatory we insist that it exists, that it is positive,
a hard fact in the very nature of man and not imposed
on him by circumstances. Man does really will evil if
he wills anything ; and this we know from our experi-
ence of ourselves. Therefore man needs to be purged

VI A DREAM OF HEAVEN 237

of evil ; and the common notion is that he must be
purged of it by punishment. The myths of Hell
and Purgatory are not all an expression of our dis-
like for each other, of our bad temper. They are an
insistence on the fact that evil does exist, and that we
cannot rid ourselves of it by a mechanical process of
salvation. The notion that all men will necessarily be
saved is repulsive to us, not merely because there are
some men whom we do not wish to be saved, but
because it makes life and the universe unreal to us. It
makes evil an illusion imposed on us by God ; and, if
we believe in God at all, we do not believe that He
plays tricks with us.

Further, it is the essence of reality for us that it is
uncertain. The future is really the future, the unknown ;
and our values depend on the fact of this uncertainty.
If we were sure of an escape from all evil we should lose
our values ; the future, no longer a real future, would
become a mechanical process, and the good would fade
out of it with the evil. So in all myths about our rela-
tion with God it is implied that God Himself is not
certain of our fate. There is more joy in Heaven over
one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine
just men. There could not be that joy if there were
foreknowledge ; it would not be a real joy but a mere
ritual of welcome. And if Heaven is real to us it is
not a mere ritual, a perfect theatrical performance of
the same happiness for a million and one nights, but a
life utterly spontaneous and improvised, a life free of
servitude to the past or calculation about the future,
free of looking before and after. And that is what we
mean by eternity, an everlasting now, such as we attain
to sometimes when we hear great music, a now in which
there is succession but not that sense of duration that
comes of weariness and anxiety.

But here we are cut off from this freedom by evil
in us and outside us. This evil exists and yet we
protest continually against its existence. In fact evil

238 IMMORTALITY vi

is to us that which is unreal and yet exists. We never
consent to it in theory, even when we do evil ourselves
in practice. Evil is unreal and yet we are evil. That
can only be because we are unreal ; but all the while
there is a reality in us that rebels against this unreality.
If I have been in a rage, I say, when I emerge from it,
that it was not really I who was in a rage. Yet the
rage existed ; and I consented to its existence. So, in
the case of all sin, the sin exists and the sinner consents
to it, is for the moment subdued to its unreality. And
it continues to exist in its consequences after he has
withdrawn his consent ; that is why we are convinced
of the existence of evil in spite of its unreality. It is
a tyranny of the past over the present and of the present
over the future ; and Heaven is to us an escape from
this tyranny into the everlasting now.

But it is an escape that we must win for ourselves
and not attain to by a mechanical process, such as death.
It is we ourselves that must become completely real by
an effort of our own ; and yet, as we know in this life,
we become real only by being aware of a reality not
ourselves. That reality exists and passionately desires
us to be aware of it ; it appeals to us constantly, it
pleads with us, in all righteousness, in all truth, in all
beauty. From it, if we will consent to open ourselves
to it, we get a strength that is not our own. It does
not punish us ; we punish ourselves by ignoring it ;
and, what is worse, we punish each other and are cut
off from each other, and become alone with ourselves
and the sinful unreality of ourselves. The notion that
God punishes us, which taints our myths of Purgatory
and Hell with our own cruelty, is the result of a failure
to conceive of God. All real punishment is self-
punishment ; it is the real in us rebelling against the
unreal, and yet a slave to it. But, if God is real, He
is deliverance from the unreal, "as the sun is deliverance
from darkness ; and this real causes us pain only
because we refuse the deliverance, refuse the love of

VI A DREAM OF HEAVEN 239

God. So there is no punishment from God for us
either in this world or in another.

But, if in that other life God is more instant to us,
more plainly revealed in a more piercing righteousness,
truth, and beauty, it may be that we shall suffer a
sharper pain than here from our failure to rise to our
opportunity. Beauty often makes us sad here, because
we are ourselves inadequate to it. There our inadequacy
may make the far greater beauty almost intolerable to
us. We shall have lost all our comfortable unrealities,
our sense of status, our vulgarities, our formulae, and
our hostile generalisations ; we shall have no one to
encourage us in our nonsense ; and we shall be face to
face, all naked and bare as we are, with that which here
we call the beatific vision. We shall know that it is
the beatific vision ; and yet it will hurt us with our
own inadequacy to experience it. That is what the
myth of Jupiter and Semele means. We are not equal
to the contemplation of subHmity, for here we have
consented to admire an unreal sublime as if it were
real. Here we are always tainting our ideas of beauty
with our own egotism. We prefer Solomon in all
his glory to the lilies of the field, because we should
like to be Solomons ourselves. Only through the
lilies of the field could we prepare ourselves for the
beatific vision. Blessed are the meek for they shall
inherit the earth ; blessed are the pure in heart for
they shall see God.

But this sublimity of the beatific vision is not a cold
sublimity, as we often suppose ; it is not a sublimity
emptied of all content or absorbed in the enjoyment of
itself. There is desire in it calling to our desire, the
love of God calling to the love of man ; and it is the
urgency of the call that will pain us —

Lord, it is my chief complaint
That my love is weak and faint.

To fail in the answer to this ineffable appeal, to baffle

240 IMMORTALITY vi

the desire of God with the faintness of our own desire,
that will be the pain of Heaven. Nor shall we know,
nor will God know, whether we shall ever be able to
satisfy His desire with our own. But at least this pain
of ours will be real, as his desire is real. It will be
real like the sorrow of a great piece of music, not
unreal like the routine of this life to which we subdue
ourselves even while we rebel against it. It will be
real like the Crucifixion, which continues for ever and
must continue, until man has risen to an equality with
God ; but that time is hidden in the darkness of the
future, for it rests with man himself whether he shall
so rise. But all the beauty and glory of the universe
is in the desire of God for man to be equal with Him-
self, and in the answering desire of man. And that
also is the beauty and glory of heaven, more intense
than on earth because there man is closer to God.

VII
THE GOOD & EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM

BY THE AUTHOR OF

"PRO CHRISTO ET ECCLESIA"

(lily dougall)

author of

"christus futurus," "voluntas dei,"

"the christian doctrink of health," etc,

ALSO OF
"beggars all," "the ZEITGEIST," " the MORMON PROPHET," ETC.

241

SYNOPSIS

TAGF,

Spiritualism and Psychical Research . . . 244

Truth underlying the popular dislike of the occult.
Distinction between Spiritualism as a religion and scientific in-
vestigations of psychic phenomena.

Telepathy ....... 247

{a) Telepathy of ordinary sympathetic intercourse.

{b) Crowd emotion.

{J) The telepathic impression received by B from A and con-
veyed later to C, a medium.

(e) Crucial test in Mr. A. J. Hill's Psychical Investigations ;
also incident from Raymond.

Objections to the Spiritualist Hypothesis . . 253

First objection : until we know the limits of telepathy between
the living, we cannot assume it insufficient to explain medium-
istic phenomena.

{a) Fortune-telling gipsy.

(b) Mrs. Piper and the Conner case,
(f) Medium's dramatic interpretations.

Second objection : communications from the next world by
automatic writing always reflect the thought ot the medium's
environment.
Third objection : the dream consciousness of the medium vitiates
the telepathic message.
{a) Dream life dramatic.
{b) Medium's "control," probably a personality of dream

life,
(f) Air castles.
Fourth objection : clairvoyance is a possible source of knowledge.
{a) Dowser's second sight.
{b) Hypnotic second sight.

[c) The Willett Scrip — the "Ear of Dionysius."
{d) The photograph incident in Raymond.

Fifth objection : messages are of flippant type.

[a) Sir W. R. Barrett's " tie-pin case."

[b) The "Ear of Dionysius."

Sixth objection : the difficulties in believing in verbal inspiration.
{a) If God's revelation were not also man's discovery
man's mental powers would not be educed.

242

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 243

PACE

(A) History shows that spirits from the other worlds have

not imparted "ready-made" knowledge to man.

" Revelations " of mystics and seers are not in advance

of their time.
{c) The highest prophetic writings show inference from

judgment of ascertained fact.

Ghosts ........ 278

Their probable explanation.

The Anti-social Sin of Credulity .... 279

(a) The credulity of spiritists hinders investigation of

veridic phenomena.

(b) The credulity of the orthodox concerning demonology

induces foolish fears.

The Gains of Psychical Investigation . . . 284

{a) They furnish proof of telepathy.

(b) They witness to communion, as distinguished from
communication, with discarnate spirits.

Conclusion . . . . . - .291

VII
THE GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM

Spiritualism and Psychical Research

Most of us dislike anything that may be called occult.
The temperament of the average Anglo-Saxon is by
nature unfortunately not characterised by scientific
patience, and very many are too apt to think that a
scientific temper consists in cutting the Gordian knot
of some difficult question depending on evidence with
the sword of preconceived, anti-superstitious opinion.
The expressions, " I believe," " I am profoundly con-
,' vinced," " Every sane man believes," or " No sane
' man believes," are constantly used among us as a means
of shirking the discomfort of suspended judgment about
. matters not yet adequately investigated. Touching all
that field of thought and emotion commonly called
" superstition " this attitude of mind has a certain
working value, because it is sometimes exercised in
genuine mistake for something true to the best in man
and truly scientific. For example, if the average
Anglo-Saxon were to say about spiritualistic phenomena,
" I am quite sure that at the heart of the universe lie
order and reason and health — that God is the God of
order and reason and health in all human affairs — and
therefore I can, with a light heart, leave the investigation
of alleged spiritualistic phenomena to expert scientists ;
I am quite certain that whatever turns out to be true
will also prove useful to man and honouring to God," he

244

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 245

would really say what in intention lies behind much
futile asseveration of scorn and unbelief.

It is important to distinguish clearly between
scientific investigations such as those undertaken
by the Society for Psychical Research (which, as
regards attempted communication with the dead, is
carried on by mediumistic methods) and the religious
or quasi - religious movement which goes by the
name of Spiritualism in England and America and of
Spiritism on the Continent. This distinction must be
kept in mind, and with it one or two points which bear
upon the literature of the subject, (a) It does not follow,
because a man or woman has won a reputation in some
department — say chemistry or electricity — that either
their repudiation or their investigation of occult matters
will be scientific. Many people keep their science, just
as many others keep their religion, in water-tight com-
partments. When this infirmity of great minds is
grasped we shall no longer be confused by the fact that
Professor This, who has won real distinction in some
special department of science, disbelieves in the possi-
bility of communicating with the spirits of the dead,
and Professor That, equally distinguished, daily obtains
such communications. (h) Another point to be re-
membered is that because a man, even a scientific man,
belongs to the S.P.R. it does not follow that he works
with the temper and caution which have characterised
the official work of the Society. (c) Yet a further
point is that, although certain prominent men who
profess Spiritualism in the religious sense are also
members of the S.P.R., that is no reason why we
should confuse Spiritualism with the official work of
this Society.

There are very few who have ever taken the
trouble to read even an article giving an authentic
rhume of conclusions arrived at by reliable people who
have for years followed the investigations of the Society
for Psychical Research. As a matter of fact, this Society,

246 IMMORTALITY vii

which numbers among its members many illustrious
names, has not seen its way to put forth as yet any con-
clusion with regard to the alleged phenomena of Spiritual-
ism further than the following : it has proved many
mediums to be fraudulent, but in cases where all
suspicion of fraud has been eliminated by the most
careful observation, the most serious members of the
Society admit that there is evidence, either of non-
sensuous — i.e. telepathic — communications between the
minds of living people to a degree not commonly
admitted, or of direction by some discarnate spirit. I
believe that it is foolish to ignore or discard the
evidence. In face of it it is futile to say one day that
we do not believe in communication with discarnate
spirits, and the next day that we do not believe in what
is called " telepathy " ; the results of the scientific
investigations of the S.P.R. are such that to disbelieve
both these alternatives is as unreasonable as to say that
we do not believe in any other of the common working
hypotheses of life which are accepted only on cumulative
evidence.

What is our object in thus doggedly disbelieving
that mind may act independently of the body ? There
is a purpose in it. Usually we want to preserve our
friends and our families from contact with what appears
to us an unhealthy interest. But if our friends and
families sooner or later find that they are faced with
inexplicable facts that they cannot disbelieve, they will
set aside us and our judgments as valueless. If we
show credulity in making negative assertions on in-
sufficient evidence, they will show similar credulity in
accepting deleterious superstitions. It is true that
superstition inhibits the best activities of the soul by
dwarfing the love of truth, but prejudice also dwarfs it.
If any well-attested fact is subversive of our traditional
beliefs, instead of getting angry or scornful, let us
consider it patiently. If it be true we may be quite
sure that it has been true from the foundation of the

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 247

world. If true, it has been awaiting our discovery, and
when further explored and assimilated to all the rest of
our knowledge, we shall find that it is something that
is part of the warp and woof of our familiar life, just
as much a part of all our safe and kindly intercourse
with the world of sense as any other part of experience.

In endeavouring to make a dispassionate examina-
tion of Spiritualism I am going to take my stand upon
what I believe to be proved by the evidence furnished
by the S.P.R. There are "mediums" who are honest
and entirely convinced that the words they give forth
by their various automatisms are inspired by some
discarnate spirit. This they believe on the strength of
the fact that when their talk or their automatic script
or their visions have been analysed, they are found to
contain information certainly not consciously acquired
through their physical senses.

I propose first to show that the hypothesis of tele-
pathy between the living is the more probable explana-
tion of the super-physical knowledge of these mediums.
Afterwards, I hope to show that even though their
claims to hold verbal communications with the dead
are not substantiated, there may still be an important
element of truth in spiritualistic experience.

Telepathy

In small ways we are all quite familiar with telepathy,
although we have not called it by that name. Like " Le
Bourgeois gentilhomme," who talked prose all his life
without knowing it, we shall find that we have been
telepathic and ignored it. To begin with, most little
children know that "mother" can "understand with
half a word " what it would be very difficult to explain
to any one else. The trouble or joy in question may
have occurred quite away from the mother, yet how
quickly she knows all about it from a few incoherent
words. When we are grown-up we all know the same

It:.

248 IMMORTALITY vii

thing to be true between us and our best friends ; indeed,
it is this quickness of understanding, this ability to
dispense with endless verbal explanations, which makes
friendship. Now, if we examine this phenomenon, we
know that neither the mother nor the friend could say
in so many words, before we speak, what we have to
tell them; but neither can the *' medium" do this,
unless she throw herself into some abnormal condition
in which what is called for convenience " the subcon-
scious mind " works automatically. It is a quite
tenable hypothesis that her subconscious mind is, at all
times, taking photographs, as it were, of the minds of
those with whom she comes in contact. Then the auto-
matic power would appear to constitute merely the
developing process applied to the photographs taken,
so that they may be described by the "medium" and
others. On the hypothesis that the mother or friend
knows subconsciously very much of what goes on in
the lives of those they love, such knowledge would lie,
like an undeveloped photograph, until some demand upon
sympathy so far developed it that the conscious mind
became able dimly to trace its outline. In other words,
a demand on sympathy makes the sympathetic person
mediumistic to a degree perfectly healthy and normal,
so that the emerging subconscious knowledge meets
half-way the halting verbal deliverance of the other
who seeks sympathy. The old proverb, " It is love
that makes the world go round," may thus be trans-
lated into the assertion that without the emotion that
causes this sympathetic quickness of understanding,
outrunning and transcending speech, human society
would not hold together. We have too little, not too
much, of such understanding, and the telepathic law
lying at the bottom of it may be awaiting discovery by
those who investigate spiritualistic phenomena. Such
a discovery would add to our knowledge, and might
help us to value more truly the fact explained : it
would not alter an age-long fact.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 249

There are other well-known social phenomena which
may prove explicable also by the power of the human
mind to take subconscious photographs of other minds,
photographs which sometimes, under stress of emotion
or public excitement, seem to start, with outline more or
less dim, into consciousness. Among such phenomena
may be mentioned the spread of rumour, which pro-
verbially flies in front of any messenger ; the corporate
manias which from time to time afl^ect societies, and
were just as common before the existence of daily news-
papers as they are now ; the power of panic to affect
those having no knowledge of the cause of danger ; and
other more common and well-attested social facts.

Another fact germane to our hypothesis is the
mental ascendancy gained over an hypnotic subject
by the man who habitually hypnotises him. This
ascendancy, although absurdly and deplorably exagger-
ated in fiction and journalism, has extended in some
well - authenticated cases to cover absent suggestion,
i.e. the suggestion that passes from one to another
without physical presence or communication. In such
cases we get, first, the susceptibility of the subject to
oral suggestion during hypnotic sleep ; second, a prone-
ness to the mental suggestion of the hypnotiser when
present during that sleep ; third, the mental suggestion
operating in absence.^

Thus we see that the telepathy with which we
propose to explain the super - sensuous knowledge of
mediums is allied to phenomena with which we are
all familiar. Reverting to the stages in hypnotic
suggestion just noted, it is the second that is commonly
reproduced in a private seance with a medium, when
the medium, by some process of self-hypnotism, goes
into sleep or trance, and so passes under the influence
of the " sitter's " mind as to interpret with variations
what he or she already knows. The investigators of
the S.P.R. all admit that when a medium in trance-

^ See Studies in Psychical Research, by F. Podmorc, pp. 219 ft".

250 IMMORTALITY vii

speech or automatic writing reproduces in any form
any idea in the mind of some one present during the
trance, there is no evidence of anything but telepathic
communication between the two. The automatic con-
dition is supposed to make the mind mediumistic or
pecuHarly susceptible to telepathic impressions.

The following story, taken in connection with such
facts of common life as are noted in the previous
pages, seems to suggest that the automatic condition
is peculiar, not in receiving telepathic impressions, but
in developing them in consciousness. I believe the
story, told me recently by a friend, to be true as I
give it, although when told to me it appeared more eerie
and quite as incredible as any other story of ghostly
happenings. My friend, whom we will call " Miss A,"
received a visit from an acquaintance we will call
" Mrs. B." The mind of Miss A was at the time
absorbed by the details of some striking events which
had lately occurred in her own circle, but she did not
mention these events to Mrs. B, who was not an inti-
mate friend, and was not personally concerned in them.
In the course of conversation Mrs. B said she was on
her way to keep an appointment with a visualising
medium. Asked why she made such appointments,
she replied that this medium had the power to see as
in a vision the most important factors of her life, and
in that way to give her wise advice as to how to act in
the present and immediate future. Mrs. B took her
leave, but in a short time unexpectedly called again on
her way home, to tell Miss A that her visit to the
medium this time had been disappointing and useless.
The medium had had and described a series of visions,
but nothing in them was recognised by Mrs. B, and
neither she nor the medium could make any sense out
of the visions. Out of politeness, Miss A enquired
their nature, and was amazed when Mrs. B's recital
set forth with considerable detail the events which had
absorbed her own mind during Mrs. B's visit before she

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 251

went on to the seance. One curious detail was added :
the visions had been ushered into the medium's plane
of vision by the figure of a Chinaman in fine apparel.
Now, the odd thing was, that that very morning Miss
A had happened to pass the Chinese Embassy in London,
and had seen two gorgeously attired Chinamen coming
down the steps, whose dress had greatly pleased her
artistic sense. These Chinamen had, of course, nothing
to do with the other events over which in those days
her mind was brooding.

We may describe what happened — figuratively — by
saying that Mrs. B's subconscious mind had carried
away what might be called a photograph of Miss A's
thought as they sat together, a photograph that did not
emerge into Mrs. B's consciousness, but was perceived,
developed, and described by the medium's subconscious
mind. The other possible hypothesis — that the medium
visualised Miss A's thought direct — would seem to
deny any limit at all to the medium's power of thought-
reading, as in this case he had never seen or heard of
Miss A.

In the light of this incident I should like to analyse
the one given in Mr. J. Arthur Hill's Psychical In-
vestigation and headed "A Crucial Test." Mr. Hill
says (p. 172) : "I give, below, a recent case in which
the theory of telepathy from the sitter is excluded."
He then describes how his medium, Mr. A. Wilkinson,
had seen a woman called Ruth Robertshaw.

" A. W. Did you know somebody called Ruth
Robertshaw .^

''J. A. H. I don't remember anybody at the moment.

^' A. IV. ... I saw her perfectly. A crescent-
shaped light was over her head, and her face was
illumined. She would be inclined to be rather pious in
her way (quite meaningless to me). This woman
Ruth is no relation to you, I think. There was a
gentleman belonging to her, called Jacob. I think he
would be her husband. Whoever he was, he was older

252 IMMORTALITY vii

than her. He would be seventy-three. She would
be about ten years younger. . . .

" All this conveyed nothing to me. But previous
experience (see pp. 167-169, etc.) warned me not to
dismiss it hastily, and it occurred to me to write to the
last visitor I had had, three days before — a Miss North
— in case the two people belonged to her, though I
thought it unlikely, for I knew of no Robertshaws
among her relatives or friends.

" Her reply was : ' You make me feel creepy. Ruth
Robertshaw was my father's cousin — one of the
sweetest women that ever lived. She was a beautiful
old lady when I knew her, and good. Jacob was her
husband. The ages given are just about right.' "

Now the likeness between this case and the previous
case of " Miss A " and " Mrs. B " is obvious. They
differ in that three days elapsed between Miss North's
visit to Mr. Hill and his visit to the medium, while, too,
we have no proof that during her visit to Mr. Hill
Miss North's mind was actively occupied with the
Robertshaws. Otherwise the likeness between the two
cases is striking. Even apart from the Chinaman, we
must rule out any interference of a discarnate spirit
in the case of " Miss A " and " Mrs. B " ; and the
addition of the living Chinaman makes such an
hypothesis absurd. So we must disagree with Mr.
Hill when he says (p. 173) : "To me (this case
of Miss North) is conclusive of something beyond
either normal knowledge on the medium's part or
telepathy from me ; and indeed I can find no satisfactory
explanation except the spiritistic one. Apparently
those on the other side are aware of the movements
of those in whom they are still interested down here,
and are in some sense ' with ' them, even to the extent
of being perceivable by a sensitive through an after-
influence left some days before." Mr. Hill suggests, as
the only mind-reading theory that might be advanced,
that this "after-influence" established a rapport by which

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 253

Wilkinson was able to read the mind of the distant
and unknown Miss North, and dismisses the idea as
credulous and superstitious. He does not consider
the explanation my story suggests. It will be noted,
however, that he attributes to Miss North the know-
ledge which the medium, Wilkinson, communicated,
and he regards the spirits as perceivable by the medium
because they were " with " Miss North some days
before and left an " after-influence." In the case of
" Miss A " and " Mrs. B " the after-influence perceived
by the medium., though left some hours before, was
not a spirit, but obviously a telepathic impression, and
the persistence of such an impression for three days
in Mr. Hill's mind is not a priori impossible. The
difference of three hours in the one case and three
days in the other is hardly a proof that a discarnate
spirit was present in the latter case and not in the
former.^

Apart from my story, there is abundant evidence
that certain honest mediums have shown an extra-
ordinary knowledge, not only of events present to
the minds of enquirers who went to them in a receptive
mood, but of events that such enquirers were convinced
they did not know, but which people connected
with them did know. An instance of this occurs in
Raymond (pp. 147-148), where the medium gives the
name " Norman " as a nickname given to Raymond
by his brothers, a nickname which the sitters at the
seance did not know.

Objections to the Spiritualist Hypothesis

• We may now proceed to state the principal objec-
tions to the belief in detailed verbal communication
from discarnate spirits which Spiritualism maintains.

' It occurs to me as possible that the incident may throw light on the case
of the photograph in Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond, discussed below, pp. 268-269.

254 IMMORTALITY vii

(i) Telepathy usually an Adequate Explanation

The first objection has been already indicated. It
is that as yet we do not know the limits of the sub-
conscious mind's power of access to other minds on
earth, nor the length of time an impression thus made
may persist before it is brought into consciousness.
Because thought-transference or telepathy certainly
accounts for so large a part of so-called " communica-
tions," we are forbidden by the Law of Parsimony to
seek another cause till we are assured that this or
some other known cause will not serve. While
our knowledge of the limits and working of tele-
pathy remains imperfect, this is not a final objection,
but it has much greater weight than convinced
spiritualists will commonly allow. They urge that the
explanation of messages as obtained by telepathy from
the living is often much more complex or roundabout
than the spiritualist explanation, and this argument
sounds plausible. But science has often found that
what seems the simpler explanation is not the true
one. Many people used to be indignant at the
suggestion that the common cold is caused by an
infectious microbe. They felt chill ; they developed
a cold ; why drag in the complicated theory of the
catarrhal microbe } Yet the more complex theory was
the true one. And in every department of research
science has had to replace simple and obvious explana-
tions which were false by the more complex truth.

In our present problem we must remember that
telepathy from the living is proved to be the source
of part of the information imparted by mediums.
No one who has studied the subject will deny this. I
once had an interview with a fortune-telling gipsy
whose ways were obviously mediumistic. She told me
that I would receive a letter in the first week of the
new year containing a hundred pounds. 1 was much
impressed, because I expected this amount at exactly that

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 255

time, believing the money was then due from my publisher.
When the time came I discovered that the publisher
did not pay till six months after the year's accounts
were rendered, and that then ten pounds of it would go
to the literary agent ! The gipsy's information was
obviously a reflection of my own mind at the time
we met,

A notable instance of the same sort is given in
an account by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick of a case in which
Mrs. Piper gave false information, part of which was
certainly derived from the minds of the enquirers
concerned. Briefly the facts are as follows. Conner,
a young citizen of the United States, went to the city
of Mexico to work as electrician in a theatre, but
was soon taken ill with typhoid fever, removed to
the American hospital, and died in the spring of 1895.
An official account of his death and burial was sent
by the American Consul - General to his father in
Vermont. A few months later his father had a vivid
dream in which his son appeared to him and said he
was not dead, but alive, and held a captive in Mexico.
Conner's friends consulted Mrs. Piper, who in trance
confirmed the dream. Her controls claimed that he
had been taken from the hospital at night by the " South
road " and was being held for ransom or some other
dark purpose, and that the body of another patient who
had died was dressed in his clothes and buried as Conner,
Thus fortified in their suspicions Conner's friends sent
a Mr. Dodge, who knew him well, to Mexico to look
for him. Ultimately he got leave to exhume the body,
now buried about a year, and " was pretty well
convinced at the time that " it was that of Conner.
Mrs. Piper's controls, on the contrary, continued to
assert that he had been taken along a South road — to
a country house, said one ; to Tuxedo, said another.
Mrs. Piper was ill for a good part of 1896, but in
October of that year Mr. Dodge had another sitting
with her, in which her control gave a lurid account

256 IMMORTALITY vii

of Conner's condition at or near Puebla in some sort
of lunatic asylum. The friends again started in
search, directed by telegraphed instructions given in
trance by Mrs. Piper. The directions as to his where-
abouts were precise, but they were always incorrect
or inadequate, and the seekers returned puzzled
and disappointed. Ultimately the gentleman who
published the story satisfied himself that the descrip-
tions were misleading, that Conner could not have
been confined as described without the knowledge of
the authorities, and, moreover, that there could have
been no motive for kidnapping him. He also found
the nurse who had actually seen Conner die, and, in
fine, set the whole question at rest. As to Mrs. Piper,
it would seem that " the enquiry set her subliminal
imagination to work." Mrs. Sidgwick says, " She got
some things right according to the ideas of Mr. Dodge
— perhaps in part by thought-transference from him,
and, once started on the wrong line, embroidered on
it further." One incident at least seems a remarkable
instance of telepathy from the sitter. A certain
landscape view, as seen by Mr. Dodge at Puebla,
was in his presence vividly and accurately described
by the controls.^

It appears to me that in such a case it is probable
that what Mrs. Sidgwick calls Mrs. Piper's " subliminal
imagination " gave a dramatic representation of the
uneasy fears of Conner's friends. From visits of
my own to mediums and from what others tell me,
I have formed the opinion that all that is commonly
obtained from a professional medium is, at best,
a dramatic reproduction of what is, consciously or
unconsciously, in the sitter's mind. By a dramatic
reproduction I mean that the medium sees the know-
ledge imaginatively as in a dream ; his or her statement
comes in an unexpected form, and therefore see7ns fresh.
I once asked a medium for my mother's name, and was

' S.P.R. yournal, vol. xvii. No. cccxxxiii.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 257

told that the name, which she gave correctly, was
" written in fire across the table " !

The source of the knowledge is telepathic ; the form
is given by the dream imagery discussed later. That
some telepathic impression from the enquirer is the
most frequent source of the medium's knowledge is
recognised by many investigators of the S.P.R. Sir
O. Lodge says : " The possibility of what may be called
normal telepathy, or unconscious mind -reading from
survivors, raises hesitation about accepting messages as
irrefragable evidence of persistent personal existence." ^

Even accepting as something seriously to be reckoned
with, the evidence offered by the S.P.R. , we clearly need
much more investigation before we can be assured that
mediums possess any spiritistic source of information.
But the belief of the ordinary spiritualist runs far in
advance of anything for which the annals of the S.P.R.
offer evidence. A notable development of spiritualism
is the publication of whole books purporting to have
been dictated by discarnate spirits to mediums who took
down these dictations in automatic script. By " auto-
matic script " is meant writing that is done when the
mind of the writer is either entranced or diverted from
the operation of writing ; the writer does not look at the
paper and professes to be ignorant of what is written.

(2) Automatic tVriting

The second objection concerns such '* inspired "
writing of the spiritualists, much of which is now pub-
lished and has great currency. While it is impossible
to assert of any one passage from published automatic
writings that it certainly represents the earthly environ-
ment of the medium, and not the mind of any discarnate
spirit, it is worthy of note that when we get whole books
of automatic writing supposed to be inspired by some
individual from the next life, we find that on the whole

' Raymond, p. 346.

258 IMMORTALITY vii

we have nothing that does not correspond with the
intellectual, moral, and religious environment of the
medium. Beside the automatic writings reported by
the S.P.R. I may refer to three such books of whose
origin I happen to know something. One was written
in the house of a personal friend ; one by a lady
medium well known to some of my friends ; the third
by different members of one family all quite well known
in a neighbourhood where I often visit. I have reason
to believe that each of these three books is an honest
effort to give to the world what is honestly believed to
be a revelation from another world, verbally inspired by
a discarnate spirit. What is most striking about all these
collections is that they reflect the general thought of the
circles and households from which they emanate. What
might be called the general telepathic environment of
the medium is exactly reflected, and nothing more.

If " mediumship " means, as I believe it does, a
greater awareness than the ordinary person possesses of
telepathic environment, a greater quiescence of the
individual judgment and the conscious reason, such
faithful reflection of mental environment would be just
what we should expect. I find no individual style or
character in these books. They ripple on with serious
but monotonous and insipid platitudes on a level with
surrounding thought and belief.

Such physical and mental automatisms as writing or
speaking or screaming or dancing are well known to
medical science. They can be self-induced in various
ways. A child, after its grief is appeased, will some-
times go on sobbing, unable to stop. The laughter of
a hysteric is analogous. Public speakers, even of strong
character, sometimes find themselves unable to bring a
speech to a desired end : sentences which add nothing
to the force of what they have said keep rising in their
mind and rolling from their lips because mind and
voice, habituated to the exercise, work automatically.
Men who are forced to think on certain subjects by

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 259

day often find that they cannot help thinking of them
by night ; their conscious thoughts go on and on, but
produce no conclusion. Automatic speech or writing,
so far as it is physical, may be precisely the same sort
of affection in kind, although it is a further develop-
ment of the power of mechanical habit. So far as it is
mental it may be referred to the dream consciousness
discussed later on. Responsible members of the S.P.R.
are generally of the opinion that the fact that speech or
writing is automatic is not in itself any evidence that it
has any source beyond the subconscious mind of the
medium. Such automatic writings as the S.P.R. has
offered for public criticism have been interesting only
because they appeared to contain information which the
medium could not have obtained in any ordinary way,
and which was of such a nature that it could be verified.
As to descriptions of the next life, what spiritualists
tell us is of no importance if it rests on no other
evidence than that some medium has produced it in
automatic speech or writing and attributed it to the
dictation or revelation of some discarnate spirit.

(3) Dream-consciousness of the Medium

This brings us to the third objection to the claim
of spiritualists to know the conditions of the next life :
even if a discarnate spirit were striving to communicate
through a medium's automatic speech or script, the
medium's dream-consciousness would always, potentially
at least, vitiate the message. Thus we must consider
the working of the dream-consciousness of human beings.
It has often been proved that dramatic dreams, which to
the dreamer appear of long duration, have taken place
in a few moments of time and have been suggested by
some simple external circumstance, such as a knock at
the door, a street cry, or the touch of something near
the dreamer. This proves the facility with which
the human imagination, when unbridled by conscious

26o IMMORTALITY vii

reason, groups scenes and narratives round some casual
sensuous suggestion, a facility well known to every
candid student of dreams. The scenes and narratives
will depend upon the temperament, environment, and
experience of the dreamer, but the imaginative power
to produce them when in a dreaming state is common.
The same sort of power is seen in those hallucinations
which in mist or half light frequently startle waking
people. Some half-seen object by its outline or colour
suggests something else, and straightway the percipient
sees the thing suggested in all its detail, although the
detail can be proved afterwards not to be there. I once
stood for a full minute with a friend gazing at a wonder-
ful apparition of Mary Queen of Scots in the exact
costume of her best-known portrait. She was kneeling
by a chair in a darkened room, her hand and face up-
lifted apparently in prayer. We both saw the same
person — the attitude, the costume — in the light from
the door we had opened ; but when we recovered from
our astonishment and went forward to investigate, we
found only a black velvet gown with lace frills, which
a maid had thrown carelessly on the chair. The real
outline suggested, but only suggested, what we saw.
The imaginative element in all perception, heightened
in such a case as this, is probably the same that runs
riot in our dreams. Only yesterday I was told that a
friend had had a long and vivid dream of a hound that
sprang on his bed and grabbed at his stomach : he
awoke to feel an acute pain in that organ, caused
by a fit of indigestion. When I was a child having
lessons in English composition my class was given the
task of writing an essay upon the herring. I idled
my time and went to sleep with the heavy conscious-
ness that I had no paper ready to give in the next
day. I dreamed of a parliament of herrings under
the sea, in which, with dramatic ceremony, a red
herring was elected their king. Hastily transcribing
my dream, I gave in a paper, and later was amazed to

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 261

receive an ill-deserved prize for imaginative composi-
tion. Had I gone to sleep with my mind full of the
death of some friend and heavy with perplexed ques-
tions concerning the after-life, I should have been quite
as likely to have had a coherent dream of the after-life.
If, on repeating such a dream to parents or friends, it
had been much discussed I might easily have had more
dreams on the same subject, none of them less vivid and
coherent or more authentic than that of the herring
parliament.

To the facility of the sleeping dream we must add
the facility of the day-dreaming imagination. Weaving
stories of our own pleasurable expectations or " building
castles in Spain " is a very common source of self-enter-
tainment. With many young people of the dreamy
temperament it becomes a sort of second life, and the
dream-self becomes a second personality. Some have
several different dream-selves to suit different moods,
and each moves among a different set of characters. As
long as the day-dreamer remains sane and wide awake,
the difference between these dreams and reality is not
blurred ; but such dreams attest the facility of dramatic
imagination in a large class of young people, and in
some throughout life. Further, there are times, on
going to sleep and on awaking, when most day-dreamers
confuse the habitual dream-story with reality. It is in
bed, on the verge of sleep, that most children derive the
liveliest pleasure from their " castles in Spain," because
then they seem to be in reality the dream-self and to
mix with the dream surroundings.

It has been pointed out in a previous Essay ^
that Reverie or day-dreaming is only the first of a
series of self-induced hypnoidal states which fade off
insensibly into one another until they culminate, in
what looks like a deep sleep, in the hypnotic trance
— of which the trance of the medium seems to be a
variety. We cannot, however, realise too clearly that

1 Pp. 35 ff-

262 IMMORTALITY vii

hypnoidal states, or hypnotic trances, are not — though
the name suggests it — states of sleepiness or sleep.
They are rather states of heightened attention, in which
the mind is withdrawn from voluntary trains of thought
and (at certain stages) from sensation. The conscious-
ness thus liberated is intensely awake, and is aware of
impressions and alive to conclusions which at other times
would be unnoticed. Things that we know, but do
not know we know, may arise in it. Vivid imagina-
tions started by chance suggestions may pass before it.
Thoughts from other minds may intrude upon it —
indeed susceptibility to " suggestion " is a marked
characteristic of the hypnoidal state. When the state
has been induced by another person, that person can
by suggestion largely determine the content of the
mind of the subject. But when the hypnoidal state is
self-induced, the general tenor of that content will
probably be governed by the real, although perhaps
not conscious, tenor of desire and purpose in the life
of the subject. Hence where, as in the case of the
automatic writer an elementary, or in the case of the
medium in trance an advanced, stage of the hypnoidal
state is self-induced with the express purpose of getting
into communication with a person in the spirit-world,
the subject is likely to be peculiarly sensitive to tele-
pathic suggestion from other minds, or to be domi-
nated by an uprush of ideas latent in his own mind,
concerning some person in the spirit-world.

In the light of these considerations we may examine
the conception of the " control " developed by mediums.
Sir O. Lodge says : " The kind of medium chiefly dealt
with in this book is one who, by waiting quietly, goes
more or less into a trance, and is then subject to what
is called ' control ' . . . which certainly is a secondary
personality of the medium, whatever that phrase may
really signify." ^ It is to the dramatic imagination of
the dream-consciousness that I should judge the apparent

^ Raymond, p. 86.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 263

personality and communications of the " control " to be
due. But Sir Oliver speaks of the " control " as receiv-
ing some, but only some, messages which he thinks arc
from " the next world," and " transmitting them through
the speech or writing of the medium, and with man-
nerisms belonging either to the medium or to the
' control.' The amount of sophistication varies accord-
ing to the quality of the medium and to the state of the
medium at different times ; it must be attributed in the
best cases physiologically to the medium, intellectually to
the control." ^ It is when the dream padding is coherent
that Sir Oliver apparently calls it " sophistication."
When speaking of information given by Mrs. Leonard's
control, " Feda," as to the nature of the next life, he
says that some records are " of a very non-evidential
and perhaps ridiculous kind, but I do not feel in-
clined to suppress them. ... I should think, myself,
that they are of very varying degrees of value, and
peculiarly liable to unintentional sophistication by the
medium. They cannot be really satisfactory, as we
have no means of bringing them to book. The diffi-
culty is that Feda encounters many sitters, and though
the majority are just enquirers, taking what comes and
saying very little, one or two may be themselves full of
theories, and may either intentionally or unconsciously
convey them to the control ; who may thereafter retail
them as actual information, without perhaps being sure
whence they are derived." "

The passages in the sitting referred to are given by
Feda dramatically as spoken by Raymond, or glibly,
describing Raymond's experience. " He's been attend-
ing lectures at what they call ' halls of learning ' : you
can prepare yourself for the higher spheres while you
are living in lower ones. He's on the third, but he's
told that even now he could go on to the fourth if he
chose ; but he says he would rather be learning the
laws ap-per-taining to each sphere while he's still living

' Raymond, p. 87. '•* Ibid. pp. 19 1- 1 92.

264 IMMORTALITY vii

on the third. . . . He went into a place on the fifth
sphere — a place he takes to be made of alabaster.
He's not sure that it really was, but it looked like that.
It looked like a kind of temple — a large one. . . . He
went in, and he saw that though the building was white,
there were many different lights ; looked like certain
places covered in red, and . . . was blue, and the
centre was orange. These were not the crude colours
that go by those names, but a softened shade. And
he looked to see what they came from. Then he saw
that a lot of the windows were extremely large, and the
panes in them had glass of these colours." ^

Before giving these and analogous passages. Sir O.
Lodge says : " I am inclined myself to attribute a
good deal of this to hypothetical information received
by Feda from other sitters ; but it seems unfair to
suppress it. In accordance with my plan I propose
to reproduce it for what it is worth." ^ Sir Oliver
does not himself pronounce any final decision as to
whether these messages are from the discarnate spirit
and therefore veridical, or not. He seems to admit the
possibility of their genuineness without sufficiently
emphasising the grave dilemma involved. If these
long, and — to us — certainly ridiculous accounts of the
next life are genuine, it becomes impossible to defend
their triviality, and the general triviality of spirit com-
munications, on the ground that it is so difficult to get
through coherent messages ; yet that is the ground on
which the scrappy or trivial nature of such communica-
tions is always defended. On the other hand, if these
long screeds of Feda's proceed from the medium's
dream-consciousness, it must be observed that they come
with just the same credentials as any other message
from Raymond or other discarnate spirit given by other
mediums. If these are false there is no sufficient reason
for accepting any spiritualistic description of the next
life.

1 Raymond, pp. 263-264. ^ Ibid. p. 262.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 265

We have seen that the imaginative faculty appears
to work most freely when the subject is in a semi-
waking or waking condition, but with the conscious
reason entirely diverted or inactive ; such a condition
is just what we appear to get when mediums obtain
their supposed messages from discarnate spirits ; it
is therefore but reasonable to expect that their dream
imagination will work actively on any suggestion given
to them when in a semi-sleeping or trance or automatic
state. What Sir Oliver Lodge calls " padding " appears
to show that such dreams figure in the communications
of mediums who are not conscious of any fraudulent
intention.

Young people who indulge in ordinary day-dreams
are usually surrounded by friends who show no in-
clination to take .interest in such dreams. The
dreams are so obviously of the stuff that would wake
derision in the bystanders that the dreamer, however
prone to this private folly, is never tempted to credulity
concerning it. But young people of the same tempera-
ment among spiritualists, if they betrayed any sign of
being " mediumistic," would find encouragement to
believe a certain class of waking or half-waking dreams
inspired. The psychological result of such encourage-
ment requires investigation. As an example of the sort
of automatic or impressionist script that is accepted and
published among spiritualists, I quote from a book
which seems popular among them. A mother purports
to speak to her children : —

" I told you of my experiences with a band of newly
arrived people who were led with me to hear some
beautiful music. After that music had ceased, they did
not all disperse, but we went on in a little company still
further along the spacious valley till we were met by a
band of shining ones, who came towards us as on the
wings of the wind — so swift and undulating was their
motion, and each of these messengers — for such they
were — had a bright star on his or her forehead ; and

266 IMMORTALITY vii

when they met us they advanced to my companions
and each of them took one or two by the hand and
so drew them away by different paths ; but one of these
fair messengers remained with me, and led me apart to
a green spot on the banks of one of the bright streams
that adds so much to the music and the beauty of this
land, and sitting on that sweet-scented bank, this
comrade from a higher sphere opened his heart to me,
and taught me more of the true wisdom that comes
like drops of balm to the thirsting, eager spirit. He
told me that other work was awaiting me than that
I was now doing ; that it would come gradually ; and
he assured me it would not separate me from Earth
and the loved ones I had left there, but would greatly
add to my powers of helping and serving them." ^

This is quite evidently just the sort of thing that
the habitual day-dreamer can produce " for seven years
together, eating and sleeping hours excepted."

(4) The Possibility of Clairvoyance

There is another difficulty in accepting as conclusive
even some of the most *' evidential " of the automatic
scripts published by the S.P.R. Those that are nearest
to being convincing to my mind are given by Mr.
Gerald Balfour in the Proceedings of the S.P.R., vol.
xxix. No. Ixxiii. They are passages from the script
of a medium called Mrs. Willett. The communicators
purport to be Dr. A. W. Verrall and Prof S. H.
Butcher, both dead. The evidence consists in the fact
that in several sittings given in 19 14-15, a number of
apparently disconnected classical allusions are furnished
— afterwards found to circle round the " ear of
Dionysius " — and the sitting is closed with the words,
" Enough for this time. ... A literary association of
ideas pointing to the influence of two discarnate minds."
The apparently disconnected allusions were finally found

^ Messages from the Unseen, pp. 1 40- 141.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 267

all together in a classical work by an American scholar,
a copy of which Dr. Verrall possessed and used when
preparing his lectures. The contents of this book were
certainly not known to the medium, and were not con-
sciously known to Mrs. Verrall or the other investi-
gators. As there appears to have been no one concerned
in the investigation, or connected with the medium,
who had in mind the various classical stories involved
or was consciously aware of the one historical incident
with which they were all connected, it follows that there
is little in these scripts that can be attributed merely to
thought-transference or to the dramatic dream-con-
sciousness of the medium. The conclusion of Mr,
Gerald Balfour and some others is that they were
dictated by the discarnate mind of Dr. Verrall ; others
think that the medium really had the knowledge and
had forgotten it. But there is another possible power
of the subliminal self which I think needs to be taken
into account. It is called "second sight," and is the
faculty of seeing at a distance or into a closed room, or
reading a closed letter or a closed book. We should
need to know much more of the nature and limits of
this power of "second" or " super -normal" sight
before we can rule it out as a possible factor in pro-
ducing this script, and hence before we could consider
the evidence proved the operation of discarnate minds.
I have personally known cases in which certain people
at certain times appeared to obtain a correct impression
of letters or books before they were opened. Thus,
I have seen a child open a large Bible, apparently at
random, and straightway put her finger on a somewhat
recondite text that had been asked for, although by
any normal method she could only have found it after
long search. Any one such case may, of course, be
mere coincidence, but there is a body of experience
affording evidence of such a faculty, for it is obviously
quite as easy to read a closed book or letter as to see
water underground or see what is passing in another

268 IMMORTALITY vii

town. The operations of " dowsers " seem to support
this theory, as also do some of Swedenborg's well-
attested experiences.

Other evidence of the same faculty can be found in
Myers's Human Personality^ vol. i. p. 352, appendix
236A ; and p. 370, appendix 41 5 A. Vol. vii. of the
Proceedings of the S.P.R. contains two articles by Mrs.
Sidgwick and one by Dr. Alfred Backman, of Kalmar,
Sweden, which appear to establish the fact that when
the subconscious mind is liberated by the hypnotic
trance it evinces some power of seeing what could not
be discerned by the agent's physical eyes — e.g. seeing
into rooms at a distance. This is called " travelling
clairvoyance." It appears to be regarded as proved
by Sir O. Lodge.^

Whether the subconscious minds of educated people
can or cannot see into closed books which they do
not consciously consult, remains to be proved.

My suggestion as to a possible explanation in
the case of the Willett script — if it be true that no
one concerned had other means of acquiring this
knowledge — is that Mrs. Verrall's subconscious mind,
excited by an accidental reference in an early script
to the *' ear of Dionysius," may have been working
upon the subject and obtaining by clairvoyance from
Dr. Verrall's books around her, evidence which she
was able to transfer — also subconsciously — in a patchy
way to the mind of Mrs. Willett. Such a description
of the way our mental affairs may be conducted is,
I confess, fantastic in the extreme, but the evidence
of second sight or travelling clairvoyance given in
the articles to which I have referred is also extremely
fantastic — one would have said, incredible, and nothing
could appear more incredible than the true story which
I have told of Miss A and Mrs. B.

Turning again to Raymond, we find the most
evidential circumstance given is the description of a

1 Cf. Hibbert Journal, April 1917.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 269

photograph of Raymond communicated to Sir Oliver
Lodge, who had not seen it. The case is this : On
September 27 Lady Lodge was informed by a medium,
Peters, that among the portraits she possessed of " this
boy " was one where he was in a group of other men,
adding, " He is particular that I should tell you this.
In one you see his walking - stick." As all officers
carry canes and are often photographed in groups,
there is so far nothing evidential, but what follows
is noteworthy. Lady Lodge at that time had no such
photograph and knew of none such ; but on Novem-
ber 29 she got a note from a Mrs. Cheves, a stranger
to her, but the mother of one of Raymond's friends,
offering to send her a group photograph in which
her son Raymond appeared, and adding, " I have
often thought of you and felt so much for you in
your great sorrow." Before the photograph arrived
Sir Oliver Lodge consulted another medium, Mrs.
Leonard, and in reply to questions got some correct
and striking details concerning the photograph. The
question remains whether travelling clairvoyance may
not have given this information to the mediums.^

( 5 ) Character of Messages

The fifth objection concerns the character of the
messages put forward as coming from spirits of the
dead. Moral and religious people are objecting that
they are too trivial to be credible. But I do not con-
ceive mere triviality or littleness to be a real objection.
To the observant nothing is insignificant ; and the
characters of the greatest men may be read in their
trifling, half- unconscious actions. On earth " God
comes to us in the little things."

' An alternative explanation of tliis incident would be that the medium
was able to " photograph " impressions telepathically conveyed to Sir Oliver
from Mrs. Cheves j the only difference between this and the cases quoted
on pp. 250-253 would be that Sir Oliver and Mrs. Cheves had not been in actual
personal contact, though they had clearly been thinking about one another in con-
nection with Raymond.

270 IMMORTALITY vii

If the next life is continuous with this, we have no
need to think of it as of huge, empty spaces in which a
few magnificent realities loom dreadful to the naked
soul. If God is Creator He is eternally Creator. To
create means to manifest thought in form. There, as
here, we must know Him in the beauty of His creation.
If He is eternal Love, there, as here, life will be in the
human family, social, hence interesting ; there, as here,^
the reign of God will be within blessed souls, and their
activities will make its outward manifestations, even in
smallest words and actions. Therefore I think the
objection of mere triviality cannot hold.

What is really felt, though seldom said, is that all
communications are disappointing ; those which cannot
be verified are feeble, while those which have the best
verification are, for the most part, under the circum-
stances, flippant. Sir William Barrett, in his book, On
the Threshold of the Unseen, tells us of a young officer
who was killed in France, and who before leaving for
the front had been secretly engaged to a girl who was
unknown to all his relatives. Shortly after his death a
message was spelt out on the ouija board purporting to
come from him, merely bidding his mother to give his
pearl tie-pin to his fiancee, whose name he supplied.
The information was verified, and he was found to
have left his effects by will to the lady. What should
we think of a young man who, lying wounded in a
base hospital after going through the terrible experi-
ences of the war, is able to send one short telegram to
his mother, and uses the opportunity merely to arrange
the disposal of a tie-pin, in such a way announcing
a secret engagement } And is such a message less
unfilial and flippant if it come from the other side of
death ? 1 cite this case as typical of many messages
from missing soldiers that would have seemed imper-
tinent or insane if arriving by telegram from a German

^ Spatial terms are used without prejudging the question as to the nature of the
inter-relation of the two worlds.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 271

prison or a foreign hospital, but are cherished as evidence
of survival, though obviously a more appropriate and
feeling message could have been just as simply expressed
and just as evidential. When the substance of such
messages can be verified in fact it is more likely that
they result from telepathic impressions received by
relatives before the death and only realised afterwards.

The same objection applies to messages which
" evidentially " are of a much higher type. Let us
take, for instance, the communications published by the
S.P.R. under the title " The Ear of Dionysius," referred
to above. In this case two learned men of fine
character are represented as deciding together in the
unseen how to get some evidence of their personal
survival to their friends on earth. They had been
absent from those friends for some months, and those
friends in the meantime had been experiencing the shock
and grief of the present war. Surely the circumstances
are such that jokes and badinage and literary reminis-
cences of the lightest type, charming enough if timely,
are not expressive of a rational and kindly standard of
relative values. It must be impossible to give evidence
of personal survival that will admit of scientific proof;
only a strong presumption can be created ; but there
are many incidents in classic lore more appropriate to
such an occasion than that chosen, and as suitable
to indicate survival. Evidence of this sort appears to
many to raise more difficulties than it allays.

(6) Spiritualism postulates Verbal Inspiration

The last and greatest objection which I have to urge
concerns the whole question of the possibility of verbal
inspiration from the unseen world.

If it be urged that communications from friends
who have passed into the next world are not of the
nature of a revelation or inspiration, but that they
would naturally talk to us by words and signs just

272 IMMORTALITY vii

as they did upon earth, it may be answered, first,
that we cannot possibly take communications from
those who have passed into a discarnate state as
though they were on the level of our earthly powers
and experience. They have a great experience which
we have not ; presumably they have powers and
opportunities of knowledge which we have not. We
are therefore not in a position to judge what in
their communications is probable and what is not,
as we judge the communications of living people.
Their words, if they reach us, have a new authority, or
at least a new importance ; and, unfortunately, to-day
the air of large religious circles is rife with notions
that are supposed to have been got in this way, notions
which do not conduce to wisdom. If we receive from
our dead communications concerning the next life,
these communications, if true, are certainly revelations
concerning that life, and therefore of vital import to
us. Further, if we and they be religious we shall
naturally believe that, while such revelations are given
us through our friends, they are still given us by
the grace of God. Thus we cannot blame people
who receive even foolish notions as authoritative if
they believe them to be communications from the
dead. In the second place, the word " inspiration "
implies some thought or message which a living
person believes himself to receive, not through his
senses, but within that sphere in which his super-
sensuous nature operates. Methods of medlumistic
operation are thus described by Sir O. Lodge : —

" When the method of communication is purely
mental or telepathic, we are assured that the com-
municator ' on the other side ' has to select from
and utilise those ideas and channels which represent
the customary mental scope of the medium. ... In
many such telepathic communications the physical
form which the emergent message takes is that of
automatic or semi-conscious writing or speech ; the

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 273

manner of the utterance being fairly normal, but the
substance of it appearing not to emanate from the
writer's or speaker's own mind : though but very
seldom is either the subject-matter or the language
of a kind quite beyond the writer's or speaker's
normal capabilities. In other cases, when the medium
becomes entranced, the demonstration of a communi-
cator's separate intelligence may become stronger and
the sophistication less. A still further stage is reached
when by special effort what is called telergy is employed,
i.e. when physiological mechanism is more directly
utilised without telepathic operation on the mind." ^
Here, then, we see Sir Oliver recognises at least three
methods of communication from those in the next life :
First, an impression made telepathically on the mind of
the medium : Secondly, when the communicator has
some share in the control of the semi-conscious thought
or speech of the medium, who is entranced : and,
Thirdly, when the communicator usurps the medium's
vocal chords or the muscles which manipulate the pen.
Messages arriving through any of these three methods
may quite legitimately be called " inspired," if they are
believed to give a true account of the next life they are
regarded as a revelation. If, then, we believe that by
these methods we obtain messages verbally dictated by
departed souls, we have returned to a belief in verbal
inspiration, and I wish to submit that all the difficulties
with which we are familiar in believing that our Scrip-
tures were thus inspired are to be urged against any
belief that our friends in the next world give verbally
inspired messages to those who remain in the flesh. This
may not be a final objection to all messages from another
world, but it is a serious difficulty and must be faced.

Which of us believes that our sacred Scriptures were
verbally inspired } If we do not believe it, why not }

There is no need to recall the familiar objections
arising out of historical contradictions and inaccuracies

' Raymond, p. 88.

274 IMMORTALITY vii

or the " moral difficulties " of the Old Testament and
the like. But it is perhaps worth while to suggest two
less obvious but, as it seems to me, even more cogent
reasons.

Firstly, if we can discern any purpose at all in the
universe it is the educing of life and the latent powers
of life by enterprise and discovery. The evolution
of mind or soul seems to be an aim of the biological
process ; it is the going forth to seek food that develops
mind. Even in our small reach of biological knowledge
and in human history we see that when food for
the stomach or for the soul is superimposed, mind
remains servile and stunted. It is alone by the
enterprise and adventure that engage all his powers
that man grows. In him is planted an insatiable desire
to know, to admire, to love. This desire is an open
mouth, and is only fed by what he discovers for him-
self. The vegetable feeds only on what comes to
it, and develops no mind. The process of the develop-
ment of mind is so costly that if God be God or Good
the value of what is educed by it must be the supreme
value of our world. If, then, by " revelation " we mean
knowledge concerning things as yet undiscovered by us,
do we expect this knowledge to be given us in a spoon,
as it were, from another world ^ No, we conceive
that it must come by the use of our own powers, for
only by use can they grow strong enough to assimilate
new food. On the other hand, God cannot be any-
thing to which we could give that name if He does
not put within reach of our attainment what we require
for development. It is because of the Divine Spirit
within us that we seek truth ; it is because of the
Divine Spirit without us that there is truth to
discover. This Divine urgence to our new discovery
is one consideration which causes us to reject the
theory of God and of truth implied in the belief in
verbal inspiration or revelation.

The second consideration which causes us to reject

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 275

the belief in verbal inspiration is historical. If man
did not receive this saving knowledge we infer that
God could not give it without doing violence to man's
freedom, without stunting the whole development of
humanity along the line of free initiation. Because,
if God had from time to time imparted knowledge to
mankind, either direct from Himself or through any
discarnate intelligence who, by being removed ever so
little from this earth, might see the trend of earthly
events in truer proportion, how very much of the
world's misery might have been saved ! Even if the
instruments of our better information had been the
souls of well-intentioned people who had recently left
the earth, and who presumably have, as Tennyson
says, *' larger, other eyes than ours" ; it is evident that
there is much they might have imparted which would
have been of wonderful use to well-intentioned people
still in the world.

If Socrates could have imparted to Aristotle right
principles of scientific investigation, the communication
would not have been more complex or more difficult to
reduce to human speech than the messages which spirit-
ualistic books purport to give. If the prophet Moses
could have imparted to the prophet Isaiah such truths
as that it is not God's will that woman should be
regarded as man's chattel, that slavery must disappear
with the development of true religion, that animals,
children, and servants can be better and more easily
trained and controlled by kindness than by the rod, how
greatly would even our Western manners have been
ameliorated and God vindicated ! Or again, how easy
it would seem for some of the Apostles to have made it
clear to one of their successors — say St. Augustine —
that religious persecution was always instigated by evil
passions, that torture is not the best way of obtaining
truth from a suspected criminal, nor severity of punish-
ment the best way of maintaining discipline. Or if they
had revealed to the Church that magic is futile and that

276 IMMORTALITY vii

we dishonour God if we either admire or fear or perse-
cute those who profess to exercise it, how enlightening
it would have been. If such information, and even in-
formation more vital, was not given, the reason must be
either that the dead are as ignorant as the living or that
they are not able, or do not care, to impart their know-
ledge to us.

There is, of course, much in what is called " inspired
writing " that purports to come by vision, dream, and
message. Such visions would seem to be the judgment
of the seer, heightened by prayer, taking objective form.
Dr. Rufus Jones has made careful analysis of the con-
tents of many of the visions of well-known mystics, and
he is convinced that what occurs in such so-called
" revelations " is an awareness of the Divine Presence
which heightens the natural powers of the mystic, while
the actual content of the vision always reflects the
thought of his community and age — that is, the
heightened power enables the mystic to select from the
thoughts possible to his age and place those that are
truest, and to give them their best application. Hence,
no dictation by God of thought or language is involved,
for there is no trace of thought or language that
transcends what might be evolved by a religious genius
of that age.

Most Old Testament scholars would admit that the
same analysis is applicable to the prophetic writings ;
indeed, in all the greatest utterances of the Bible we see
clearly a method of inspiration and revelation very
different from the supposed method of verbal inspira-
tion. The universalism of the great Hebrew prophets
is clearly a God-guided inference from the character of
the good to the character of God.

In the New Testament we see this inference from
the judgment or conscience or higher reason of men to
the character of God. Our Lord reasoned in this way.
^ " He taught His disciples that they could take the

1 The Manhood of the Matter, by Dr. Fosdick, p. 12.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 277

most beautiful aspects of human life, like fatherhood,
and lifting them up to the best they could imagine,
could say, God is much better than this. ' If ye then,
being evil,' He said, ' know how to give good gifts unto
your children, how much more shall your Father.' . . .
Jesus taught men to interpret God in terms of the
spiritually best they could imagine. Whatsoever things
are just, true, honourable, pure, lovely, and of good
report, if there was any virtue and any praise, Jesus
affirmed these things of God. When a scientist catches
this method of Jesus in thinking of God, he says, in the
words of Sir Oliver Lodge, ' I will not believe that it is
given to man to have thoughts higher and nobler than
the real truth of things.' When a poet takes fire from
Jesus's joyful conception of God, he pictures — as
Browning does in ' Saul ' — a man longing to help his
friend and then rising from this human love toward
God to cry :

'Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou — so wilt
Thou.'"

If indeed God could — or we might better say
"would" — communicate truth in human words or
earthly pictures that are not the product of the human
mind, what must we conclude concerning His mercy ?
The old theory was that God dictated thoughts to those
who truly served Him and sought truth : if that were
so we must conclude, either that those who truly serve
God and seek truth are very few, or that in all ages
God has left the toiling millions of earth without many
kinds of enlightenment that He could have given.
Thus, on the hypothesis that it is God's will to limit
human freedom so far as to dictate thoughts to His
servants, we are driven to a very low estimate, either
of the religious morality of men, including even the
greatest prophets, or else of God's mercy. On the
other hand, if we believe that to those who seek God
and truth God imparts His Spirit to heighten all their

278 IMMORTALITY vii

powers of thought and feeling and volition so that they
may reason truly and read aright the thoughts of God
in all creation, we shall infer that the Divine will is the
education of the human mind rather than magical or
mechanical gifts of knowledge, and we shall be very
slow to believe that discarnate spirits find channels for
the arbitrary dictation of information concerning our
immortal life or our present welfare.

Ghosts

So far nothing has been said of the " evidence " of
the presence of discarnate spirits derivable from stories
of what used to be called " ghosts " but are now called
** apparitions." Near the time of death apparitions of
the dead or dying have been frequently seen. The
evidence for this is good. But much the most probable
interpretation of the evidence is that the apparitions are
caused by a subjective telepathic impression. For the
person who " appears " does not always die ; and occa-
sionally, though in some peril, remains in perfect health.
Again if, as is quite likely, a telepathic impression may
persist in the mind of the percipient for some time
before it is developed in consciousness, the occurrence
of such apparitions some time — perhaps a year or two
after death — would not prove the presence of a discar-
nate spirit. Also, if any living person had clearly in
mind the form of a dead person, or the form of a tradi-
tional ghost, the ghostly appearance of these forms to
another person could be explained by thought-trans-
ference. It is noteworthy that it is very rare to find an
authentic case of an apparition that some one does not
at once triumphantly " identify." If apparitions were
the result of telepathy from the dead, the living would
surely frequently see forms that could not be identified,
just as we meet with strangers in the street.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 279

The Anti-social Sin of Credulity

In Psychical Research, more perhaps than in any
other subject, progress in our knowledge is hindered by
credulity. It is time, and more than time, that we all
realised that credulity is an anti-social sin, whether it
is shown in regard to this or to any other matter.
Credulity may be defined as a disposition to believe on
insufficient evidence, or we may call it uncritical belief.
Webster's Dictionary illustrates by the following quota-
tion from Sir W. Hamilton : " That implicit credulity
is the mark of a feeble mind will not be disputed."
Since Hamilton's day we make a distinction between
those who are by mental defect feeble-minded, whether
they will or no, and those who voluntarily indulge in
folly to the deterioration of their own powers and the
standards of social intelligence. Of the first class it can
hardly be affirmed that credulity is a sin ; they cannot
help it, poor souls ; but that any one should voluntarily
act as though their powers of reason were naturally
impaired, is deliberately dishonouring to themselves
and the community, and if they are religious, it is dis-
honouring to the God they profess to serve and the
religious society to which they belong.

It is very difficult to obtain any real evidence for
super-normal phenomena. In many cases even what
appears to be the best evidence breaks down under
critical investigation. It is safe to say that no first-hand
evidence can be found for the great majority of the stories
of " evidential " messages from mediums or ghosts.
Track it as far as we will, it is nearly always " some one
else " who saw the ghost. If we are sure we have good
second-hand evidence, we may place it in our minds as
something about which we hold our judgment in
suspense — a very different attitude from that of belief.
Unless we have first-hand evidence which stands the
test of any questions as to details which we put, it is
not worth while to believe the story. When we have

28o IMMORTALITY vii

first-hand evidence offered to us the first point to
decide is whether the percipient is a person reliable
about other things — first as to honesty of intention,
and secondly, as to good judgment. If either of these
points is doubtful, we may well doubt the story. Given
these points satisfactorily settled, and assured that our
friends were not half-asleep or unwell, we have to bear
in mind that the wisest of us is quite frequently under
delusions about the ordinary happenings of life. If
you cross-question several people about any one incident
which they have all observed, you will find the evidence
so conflicting upon some points that it becomes clear
that one or two of them thought they saw something
which they did not see, or thought they heard some-
thing they did not hear. And this degree of inaccuracy,
common as it is even among truthful or mentally trained
people, must throw uncertainty on the greater number
of marvellous stories. Very common examples of in-
accuracy are stories of mediumistic messages which
purport to come from the other world and are alleged
to state facts unknown at the time but afterwards
verified. In such cases it can almost always be
discovered, either that the message is not repeated
exactly as the medium gave it, or, if accurately re-
ported, that it does not precisely define the fact it is
supposed to have revealed, or that the fact was really
known to some one concerned before the medium re-
vealed it — in which last case telepathy is not ruled out.
Unless we can be quite certain that we have accuracy
on all these points, and that our friend, in retailing the
story, is not relying merely on that treacherous thing,
the story-teller's memory, the story is not worth
harbouring in our minds.

Let us examine for a moment the harm it does to
give currency to untrue stories of this sort. Suppose
in a community of one thousand persons there are three
veridical cases of super-normal phenomena, and that
there are twenty-five stories in all of such phenomena

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 281

which pass from one to another and are believed by
half the community. Twenty-two of these stories will
be founded, either upon the exaggerations of rumour,
or upon a misunderstanding, or upon delusion of some
sort. Now, the three veridical cases are of real im-
portance, because they can furnish some further evidence
for some serious hypothesis with regard to our com-
munication with the unseen. It is therefore important
that they should receive serious attention, be analysed
and probed to the uttermost, and classified, so that we
may find out whether some hypothesis which has
accounted for other cases can be held to also explain
them, or whether they add evidence in favour of some
other hypothesis. It is only thus that any real know-
ledge on such matters can be acquired, and it is only
upon genuine fact that we can base any reasonable
inference for some fresh aspect of faith. The result of
the credulity which adds to the currency of three
veridical cases some twenty-two which will not bear
any examination, is that the unbelieving half of the
community will not give fair consideration to what is
worth it. They find themselves wading knee-deep in
nonsense if they listen to reports, and will therefore
turn a deaf ear to all. But this is not the only harm
done. All stories of super-normal phenomena which
are true will tally with each other in certain respects,
will corroborate a true hypothesis when such exists ;
but untrue stories may easily discredit the truest
hypothesis, and when they are believed and repeated
confuse the minds of even genuine researchers.

But the anti-social sin of credulity does not belong
only to spiritualists. A certain class of religious thinkers,
even to-day, encourage a much worse form of credulity
in preaching the terrors of demonic influence. On
this point I will quote, with his permission, from a
recent sermon of the Master of the Temple, printed in
The Guardian of February 22, 19 17 : —

" Superstition is the acceptance of religious beliefs

282 IMMORTALITY vii

which are contrary to or not justified by the assured
results of human experience and human thought.
Superstitions die hard. To observe accurately and to
draw just conclusions from one's observation is not
easy. Metaphysics, the study of the nature of ultimate
reality, is a difficult subject. And, moreover, the in-
terpretation of religious experience which the average
man makes for himself is unlikely to be satisfactory.
Primitive explanations of God and His realm of action
continue to be too readily accepted by the unreflective
mind. Man progresses slowly ; and the mass of men
will often accept or hark back to false ideas which the
leaders of the thought of their time condemn. Especi-
ally is this likely to be true at a period of emotional
activity.

" The modern consensus of educated opinion which
regards magic and witchcraft as worthless imposture
is little more than two centuries old. Belief in the
possibility of magical practices was almost universal
until the middle of the seventeenth century, and the
record of the teaching and legislation of Christendom
in regard to such matters is deplorable reading. Those
who are unfamiliar with Europe's history of blood-
stained credulity should read the first chapter of Lecky's
History of Rationalism in Europe. They will find
that Church Councils from the Synod of Elvira in
A.D. 306 onwards not only denounced the practice, but
firmly believed in the possibility of black magic. St.
Thomas Aquihas, the ablest theologian of the fourteenth
century, maintained alike its reality and heretical nature.
Gerson, who possibly wrote the Imitatio Christie defended
the belief. The Inquisition drenched Europe in blood
to extirpate witchcraft. And Luther and the followers
of Calvin were at one with Rome in believing it true
that diabolical powers were derived from the devilish
compacts which they denounced.

" Nor did theologians alone hold such superstitious
beliefs. Many of the ablest English Judges of the

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 283

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries conducted elaborate
trials of witches, and by their speeches and judgments
showed that they fully shared the popular credulity.
The fact should be a significant warning that often in
psychical investigations even the ablest men discover
what they set out to seek. Gradually, however, the
superstition vanished. In England the last trial for
witchcraft occurred in 171 2, and the laws against
sorcery were repealed without controversy in 1736.

" It is sad reading — this record of the struggles of the
Christian Church and of Christian communities to free
themselves from primitive demonology ; from beliefs
long anterior to Christianity, still referred to in Italy as
la vecchia religione. I would not mention the subject
to-day but for my fear lest a belief in demonology
should be revived. Lecky points out how, whenever
disease or political catastrophe has made men acutely
conscious of evil, or when the growth of a new spirit of
critical enquiry has challenged the optimism of an
assured faith, the rapid growth of a belief in magic,
with all its evil consequences, has shown itself. Shall
we see the same terrible return to human error as a
result of present calamities ^

" Last Wednesday Lord Halifax, the President of the
English Church Union, spoke at St. Martin's-in-the-
Fields on Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond. I rejoice to see
that one usually regarded as the spokesman of a large
party in the English Church warned his hearers of the
evil results which often attend the morbid excitements
of spiritualism. When I discussed the subject in this
church I tried to urge with equal emphasis the danger
to moral health which those incur who enter the atmo-
sphere of fraud, delusion, and psychical pathology that
surrounds seances. I pointed out that the evidence for
communication with the dead was entirely inadequate
to establish the fact, and urged Christians to leave such
investigations to highly-trained unemotional scientific
observers. But if I understand aright the copious

284 IMMORTALITY vii

extracts from his address, given in The Guardian of
Thursday last, Lord Halifax does not regard the
practices of the medium as a mixture of imposture and
delusion. He credits her with some, at least, of the
supposed powers of the old witch. He explicitly likens
the controls, Feda, Moonstone, and the like, to the
familiar spirits Pluck, Catch, and so forth, who figured
in a celebrated trial for witchcraft in 1593. Apparently
— I fear that I do him no injustice — he accepts the
mediaeval demonology that we thought we had dis-
carded. He states that in the communications of the
medium ' the evil is plain, and for a Christian the
source of their inspiration is clear.' He asks Sir Oliver
Lodge whether the knowledge assumed to be possessed
by Raymond may not ' come from an altogether
different source,' and significantly in the next sentence
says : ' Satan for his own purposes can transform him-
self into an angel of light.'

" The difference between my own view of spiritualism
and that of Lord Halifax can be summed up in a
sentence by using an oft-employed metaphor. I do
not think that there is any evidence to prove that
telephonic communication with the other world has been
established ; his lordship thinks that a devil is speaking
into the receiver at the other end."

The Gains of Psychical Investigation

So far we have been dealing with the objections to
accepting the main evidence for communication with
discarnate spirits which has been advanced by the
Spiritualists and the enquirers of the S.P.R. On the
other hand, there are, I feel convinced, two very sub-
stantial gains which come to us through these channels.
The first is that an important, if only initial, step has
been taken towards discovering the ways in which mind
may prove itself independent of the body ; and, secondly,
we have a mass of evidence which cannot be ignored

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 285

that living people have felt themselves to be in the
presence of, and in some sort of tacit communion with,
departed spirits.

In regard to the first of these points, another essay
in this book ^ makes it clear how far such phenomena as
telepathy between living minds and the clairvoyance of
the hypnotic state tend towards a rational belief in the
survival of the human soul in its integrity. These tele-
pathic powers seem to involve will, memory, and reason ;
therefore the evidence for telepathy and clairvoyance
strengthens the presumption that these powers do not
pass away at death. For if thought can traverse the
world, and make itself comprehensible between men at
a distance, it is thereby proved not to be dependent
upon sense connections. It need only here be added
that while the investigators of the S.P.R. tell us again,
and again that their object in proving the fact of verbal
communications is to show that the soul in passing
through death does not lose the normal powers which
characterised it here, they have gone very far to establish
a strong presumption of the survival of these powers,
without proving these communications.

The second point will require a more detailed con-
sideration. What is the value of the witness of many
honest people who are assured that they have ex-
perienced some sort of contact with their discarnate
friends ? If we admit the testimony of religious
experience as one ground for our belief in the possibility
of communion with God, we cannot disregard this
conviction of honest people that they commune with
their dead. For this conviction is separable from, and
is quite independent of, any stimuli offered to the
senses in objective apparitions, or movements of objects,
or voices, or human words dictated to mediums who
speak or write. All these things appeal to our senses,
and we have as yet no proof that they are not all the
work of the subconscious earthly human mind. But

^ "The Mind and the Brain," pp. 52 ff.

286 IMMORTALITY vii

the hypothesis I would suggest is that these things
occur as the result of an effort to interpret the sense
of the " presence " of a discarnate spirit which I believe
to be veridical, but that they are usually a mistaken
interpretation. For when we sum up all such sensuous
experiences, how unsatisfactory they are if regarded as
a true interpretation of our relation to the world of
departed spirits ! But in spite of this I think we may
take it that the effort of spiritualists to interpret, the
constant recurrence of this effort, the insistence of the
human soul on this aspect of life, does indeed point to
reality — i.e. to the existence of a real touch between the
visible and invisible worlds.
Vr*' I personally find it incredible that so many reason-
'^'^■- I able and truth - loving people should have followed
1-^ I this way for so many years and should have so
easily accepted as cogent evidence that which, when ex-
amined dispassionately, appears insufficient, unless they
had had some true experience which cast a glamour of
apparent truth over much that was false. Further, if, on
other grounds, we believe both in immortality and that the
character of God and of His universe is such that those
who seek find, it appears more reasonable to believe
that those who earnestly sought to come in contact
with some one they had loved and lost, found what
they sought, and, experiencing the inner truth of this,
and in the light of it, interpreted sensuous phenomena
which but for this would have appeared trivial and
inconclusive.

It has, of course, become a dogma with many men
of science that this life is cut off from any invisible
life, if such there be, beyond the grave. On the
whole, this has been a very respectable belief, both
for men of science and for religious people who desired
to think reasonably. For it must be remembered that
the choice as presented to minds in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries lay between becoming a victim of
the silly fears engendered by the common ghost story

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 287

and disbelieving the possibility of any communion be-
tween the dead and the living. It lay, also, between the
conception of God's aloofness, which made supplication
to the Virgin and the saints necessary to a cheerful life
of prayer, and the conception of the human mind as
having access only to God and to none else in the
invisible world ; between explaining away all vivid
telepathic impressions as mere coincidence, and believing
every phantasm of the mind to have objective reality.
The choice they made was a wise one under the cir-
cumstances, for nothing more inhibits true faith than
the superstition that peoples the unseen with romantic
beings for whose existence there is no shred of real
evidence.

We are not in their position. For us there is
sufficient evidence, gathered mainly by the honoured
labours of those who have done yeoman's service in the
S.P.R., of the power of mind to communicate with mind
irrespective of material contact, to justify us in revising
the verdict of the sturdy common sense of our ancestors.

In the first place, all " ghost " stories and stories of
apparently supernatural knowledge, when they can be
proved true, can be explained more reasonably by the
telepathic hypothesis than by any other. We need no
longer be afraid that intelligent minds will succumb to
theories of the supernatural world based on fantastic
mental experiences, nor need we fear the dominance of
any religious system which teaches that men must
be afraid of speaking directly to God, or that any lesser
spirit can be nearer to them than Divine Love. Again,
we have already much careful evidence as to the nature
and result of telepathic impressions, and we look for-
ward confidently to the progress of scientific research
along this line ; but what we already know convinces
us that when such a telepathic impression comes into
consciousness, the thought or feeling of the agent or
agents giving the impression is already mixed with the
interpretation of the individual mind which receives it.

288 IMMORTALITY vii

So that individual experience of this sort must always
be referred to the common sense of the many, must be
assimilated to all else that is found true or credible,
before what is received in this way, even if it did come
from another world, can be counted as adding to the
store of truth.

We may, therefore, with perfect safety ask ourselves
whether within our own experience we may not find
real evidence of telepathic touch with discarnate spirits.

We have already learned that there is much more
in our actual experience than we consciously attend to.
A common illustration of this is that when we come
to know a new word we see it frequently in books
and newspapers. This is not because it suddenly enters
books and newspapers, but because before we learned
the word, to use the Gospel phrase, "our eyes were
holden " and we did not see it. We had eyes and
we saw not. So in our summer gardens, after we learn
to distinguish the note of a certain bird, we constantly
hear that little bird singing to us in the bushes. The
bird sang before our enlightenment. We had ears but
we did not hear it, and were only conscious of the
larks and thrushes whose notes we had learned in
our childhood.

We need not on this account suppose that we
need " a sign from heaven " in order to receive a
new revelation about the things which belong to
our peace.

An artist is constantly making discoveries — seeing
in colour and form what he never saw before, but
what was always there to be seen. Again, there are
many authentic instances of men and women under
an anaesthetic or in delirium having shown themselves
able to remember matters they had never consciously
known. Similarly, then, it is possible that in the
experience of the inner life evidence may be found
which, if it tally with all else that is true and reason-
able, may give us real light on things at present

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 289

unapprehended. I was once speaking to a man
distinguished in practical affairs, and I chanced to
say of a family matter, " How much this would
delight your wife if she were still living and could
know it." He replied, " She is living, and she does
know it." I said, " How do you know she knows
it?" He replied quite simply, "I asked God to tell
her, and after that I knew that she knew." We
are too reverent to probe such an experience as this,
but the quiet certainty of his tone convinced me
that some experience had satisfied his own well-
balanced judgment. Yet at another time this same
man could speak with some contempt of people who
imagined they could have sensuous impressions of what
was spiritual. Such an experience as that I have
just quoted recalls to our minds the undoubted fact,
which all to whom God has revealed Himself will
recognise, that in God we have, if we will use it,
a means of speaking to our beloved dead.

My own opinion is that there is real ground for
reverent investigation ; much to encourage us, along
with much negative evidence to discourage us. If there
is truth to be discovered and we meet only with what
seems to us blank negation, we must remember that our
own negative attitude toward the whole subject would
be only too likely to make us deaf and blind. I think
the method most likely to be safe and helpful for
most of us is — while never omitting to bring all our
fears, doubts, hopes, and questions to God — to pray
for the welfare of those whom we have loved and
who are lost to sight, and after such prayer, take time
to think of them in the silence and ask ourselves
whether we have not some reason to believe that
they also are thinking of us.

To make clear what I take to be the distinction
between " the sense of presence " and any evidence
of verbal communication with a discarnate spirit, I
would refer to the family " table-sittings " which Sir

290 IMMORTALITY vii

Oliver Lodge so faithfully describes in his book,
Raymend.

In these " table - sittings " of the Lodge family in
their attempts to communicate with Raymond, we
are strongly impressed with the sense of Raymond's
presence, which is here so graphically described. I
get this impression all through the book. What I
would suggest is that this sense of presence may be
perfectly veridical, but that the actions of the table
may have been entirely the result of the subconscious
mentality of the Lodge family, and the character of its
movements decided by minds strongly moved by that
sense of presence.

" A family sitting," says Sir Oliver,^ " with no
medium present is quite different from one held with a
professional or indeed any outside medium. Informa-
tion is freely given about the doings of the family ;
and the general air is that of a family conversation."
And again ^ he says that when a table is employed
the communicators (i.e. the spirits of the dead persons)
" say they feel more directly in touch with the sitters
than when they operate through an intermediary or
' control ' on their side. . . It (the table) can indicate
joy or sorrow, fun or gravity. . . and, most notable of
all, it can exhibit affection in a most notable manner."

When serious- minded persons speak of a table
as " exhibiting affection," one can only suppose that an
overwhelming sense of the presence of the spirit of
the departed has caused the family group to read
into the motions of the table a meaning which is really
derived from their own inner experience of direct
contact with an unseen person.

I have myself experienced the tilting and dancing
of a table under the hands of several people and
the inexhaustible but coherent platitudes it could so
spell out. But in my experience, although the table
did all these things, and although the four people

^ Cf. Raymond, p. 2i8. 2 /^/^ pp 363-364.

VII GOOD AND EVIL IN SPIRITUALISM 291

whose finger-tips were on it were quite incapable of
deception and unconscious of producing the fantastic
results, there was no medium present and no talk or
thought of discarnate spirits. We had been told
that the "subliminal self" — whatever that was — could
tilt tables ; we did not believe it, but upon trying we
found that it could. We none of us had the slightest
doubt — nor have I yet — that the mechanical force and
rudimentary intelligence came in some way from
ourselves. If the mechanical force come from the
'* sitters " — in our case we had to run round the room
after the table — there can be no reason to suppose that
the " sitters " do not also supply the intelligence.

On this point. Sir Oliver Lodge admits (p. 137) :
" The effort required to tilt the table is slight, and
evidentially it must no doubt be assumed that so far
as mechanical force is concerned it is exerted by
muscular action."

But though I hold this view of the origin of the
mechanical force exerted, the account of private family
sittings at Mariemont (Pt. II. chap, xix.) suggests to me
the inference that the spirit of Raymond was probably
with them and able so to come into personal touch with
them that they were perfectly aware of (i) his presence,
(2) his sympathy with their moods and diversions, (3)
his desire to assure them of his own integrity and
continued happiness. But I remain unconvinced that
anything that the table did or said was a correct inter-
pretation of Raymond's thoughts in detail.

Conclusion

The real cause of the hold which Spiritualism has
on many religious minds is the failure of the Church
to realise in practice the meaning of the Communion
of Saints. The Mediaeval Church failed on account of
the unchristian superstition which pictured the next
stage of existence as a state of mere torture and punish-

292 IMMORTALITY vii

ment. The reaction of the Protestant mind against
mercenary prayers and ceremonies to relieve the misery
of the souls in Purgatory was healthy. But with
this came in another superstition, that it was wrong to
pray for the dead or to believe in their fellowship with
the living. In so far as it is a reaction against this
newer superstition, Spiritualism shows a healthy instinct.
But the methods employed by spiritualists to bridge
with friendly overtures the stream of death appear to
be mistaken and therefore dangerous. They are, at
best, only a roundabout way of obtaining a sense of
companionship with those who have passed on, since
the same sense of companionship might be obtained
better and more easily by prayer. Then, too, when
this sense of companionship is attained in the spiritual-
istic stance, or by some private automatic means, it is
inevitably mixed with, and confused by, communica-
tions from the inner mind of the medium or agent,
which is always subject to telepathic intrusions from —
none can tell whom.

In the concluding essay of this volume I hope to
show how love can open a door between this life and
the next, by which we can get more real knowledge of
that next life and a truer communion with those who
have entered into it than we can by any attempts to
get sensuous indications of their presence through
mediums, table-turning, or other such means. I have
read a good deal of Spiritualist literature, and — apart
from the light it incidentally sheds on purely scientific
problems like telepathy — 1 think that the grain of
wheat in the chaff is this sense of presence, which I
believe to be authentic and to be the real cause why
many really noble minds accept evidence of sensuous
communications on most insufficient grounds.

VIII

REINCARNATION, KARMA AND
THEOSOPHY

BY THE AUTHOR OF

"PRO CHRISTO ET ECCLESIA"
(lily dougall)

293

SYNOPSIS

PAGE

Part I. — Reincarnation and Karma 295

Reincarnation as a speculation of religious philosophy.
{a) Its historic origin.
(A) Objections to the belief.
Karma and Retribution.

{a) Attractiveness of the doctrine.

(b) Its origin.

(f) Sin and suffering.

(i.) The sinner's suffering does not cancel results of

his sin.
(ii.) Traditional theory of punishment ineffective,
(iii.) The sinner's fate not suffering but degradation,
(d) Karma a false theory of justice.

Part II. — Modern Theosophy . . . -317

Theosophy as a religion.

(i) The claim to occult knowledge.

(a) The claim as made.

(b) Hypnoidal conditions and their content,
(f) Prayer and Ecstasy in Christian devotion.
{d) Barrenness of Trance-experience.

(2) Doctrine of the common origin of all religions.

(3) The conception of Personality.

294

VIII

REINCARNATION, KARMA AND
THEOSOPHY

PART L— REINCARNATION AND KARMA

Reincarnation as Philosophical Theory

The doctrine of Reincarnation presents itself to the
thought of the modern Western world with the prestige
derivable from the fact of its primitive and widespread
currency. It comes down to us through two ancient
and apparently independent traditions of religious philo-
sophy. One tradition derives from the doctrine of
Karma, which first appears in the early Upanishads of
India about the seventh century B.C. It was adopted
into Buddhism with certain modifications, but as these
characteristic modifications have disappeared in later
Buddhism, the doctrine of Karma in its original form
has become the very core of the religious belief of a
large portion of mankind. At the present day, through
the influence of modern Theosophy, it is beginning to
gain large numbers of adherents in Europe and
America. Along another line of tradition the doctrine
of the pre-existence of the soul comes to us from Plato,
being derived by him, it is supposed, from the Orphic
Mysteries, which were probably uninfluenced by Indian
thought ; and it is being upheld on metaphysical
grounds at the present day by no less a philosopher
than Dr. McTaggart. An ancient doctrine so widely

295

296 IMMORTALITY vm

held and so ably supported cannot be dismissed without
serious consideration, whatever one may think of some
of the other views of the religions and sects, ancient
and modern, which maintain it.

Dr. McTaggart's doctrine of Reincarnation is bound
up with his metaphysical belief in a pluralistic universe,
and stands or falls with it. A critical examination of
the theory of a pluralistic universe cannot be under-
taken in this place ; but it may be pointed out that it
is not shared by most modern philosophers or by the
writers of this volume. We need not, therefore, deal
here with his argument for Reincarnation, which is a
mere corollary of his general metaphysic. It may be
noted, however, that he rejects any argument for the
immortality of the soul which is based on the goodness
of God ; but he perceives that, assuming the goodness
of God, as the Christian thinker does, immortality could
be proved more easily than pre-existence. Given its
premises, he allows the force of the Christian argument
for immortality in the following passage : —

" Arguments of this type (assuming the universe the
work of a benevolent creator) could prove immortality
more readily than they could prove pre-existence. No
wrong can be done to the non-existent, and it could
hardly be made a reproach to the goodness of the uni-
verse that it had waited a long time before it produced
a particular person. But, once produced, any person
has a certain moral claim, and if it could be shown that
his annihilation was inconsistent with those claims, we
could argue from the goodness of the universe to the
impossibility of his annihilation." ^

Belief in the transmigration of souls, or Metem-
psychosis, seems to appear in its earliest definite form
as totemism. Many totemistic tribes believe that at
death man becomes like his totem — a tiger, an ox, a
frog, etc. Further, they explain conception as the
descent of some discarnate spirit from some dead tree

1 Human Immortality and Pre-existence, by Dr, J. M. E. McTaggart, p. 75.

VIII REINCARNATION AND KARMA 297

or animal.-^ From all this it is an easy step to the later
idea that the better men might again become men. It
is obvious that in speculating, as all men have done,
upon what may happen to the soul after death, the
thought of a return to the only life they know is a very
natural one ; in any case, it was a belief common to
many tribes and to several ancient civilisations.

But though Reincarnation was in earlier ages a very
natural belief, and may seem attractive now to those
who seek authority from the past, there are certain
considerations which, I think, combine to present an
argument of some weight against it.

(i) The objection to Reincarnation which perhaps
first strikes us is the lack of conscious continuity between
the incarnations of a soul. Even granting all that may
be claimed to exist in this life as " intimations " of a
former life or lives, it amounts to very little ; one
feels that a future life that has no more conscious con-
nection with this one than this has with any former life
is not worth accepting as personal immortality, indeed
a continuance of memory is necessary to personality.

It is true that, under the pressure of the Christian
stress on personal immortality, later Oriental thinkers
maintain that the soul when it attains a certain eleva-
tion is able between its incarnations to look back on all
its past lives, and that when it rises high in the scale of
being it is able to bring this continuous memory back
into its earthly lives. Modern Theosophists claim,
indeed, that their Adepts, now alive upon earth, have
such a continuous memory. No adequate evidence is
forthcoming, however, to substantiate this claim ; and
it must be noted that the thing which on this theory
is supposed to survive and be reincarnated is at best
not a person ; it is something which has lost all emotion
and all desire. Judging the doctrine on a p?'iori
grounds, the ordinary man will deem it weary work to
plod through some hundreds of reincarnations before

^ Consult T/ie IVay of Nir-vana, by Professor de la Vall6e Poussin, pp. 1 1, 18.

298 IMMORTALITY viii

attaining to any continuous thread of memory con-
necting them.

(2) Again, it is important to observe how geocentric
at bottom the doctrine is — a fact not often realised.
Hindu philosophers no doubt held vaguely the exist-
ence of other worlds in different cycles of manifestation ;
but the geocentric conception of our present universe,
common when the belief was formulated, prevented the
belief in other worlds having any discernible influence
on their theory of the future life. We find the influence
of the same geocentric conception of the universe in
other religious philosophies. For the Greeks there
was but one world where discipline and social experience
were possible. For us there are other, probably habit-
able, worlds, and no need to hold the difficult doctrine
of physical rebirth as the mode of the soul's entrance
to them. Even assuming its further experience is in
material conditions, when we think of the vastness of
this magnificent universe of ours, of its innumerable
solar systems, no idea could be more unnatural to us,
if we did not inherit it from the past, than that this
remote speck of star-dust called our earth should be
the only part of it utilised by God for the progress
of the human soul. It is, of course, conceivable
that human souls should be so bound to this planet
that they must return again and again by rebirth, but
it does not appear the more reasonable hypothesis.
It certainly seems to us a gratuitous limitation of possi-
bility to assume as axiomatic that only in this little
corner of the universe, and under the exact physical
conditions of life here, can our destiny be worked out.
This geocentric conception of a future life, almost
necessary to an earlier age, in our days bespeaks, not
merely an intellectual limitation, but poverty of imagina-
tion. To us the discovery of the infinite range of a
universe teeming with millions of worlds has indeed made
the earth seem smaller, but it has made the possibilities
for the future life seem infinitely wider and more varied.

VIII REINCARNATION AND KARMA 299

Notwithstanding this, it is true that to the imagina-
tion of many people the enormous number of souls
which earth appears to generate through successive ages
presents a real difficulty which belief in successive
rebirths would meet. These spiritual Malthusians are
greatly occupied with the housing problem. They cry,
"What limit is there otherwise to the generations?
Where can they be accommodated ? " To other minds
the multiplicity of solar systems extending in space
as far as we can hazard any guess, with their innumer-
able habitable worlds which it is reasonable to suppose
available, is a corresponding difficulty. In any case it
is more reasonable to suppose that the two difficulties
have a corresponding solution than to assume a number
of successive births and deaths for every soul. We
must not forget that both theologians and philosophers ^
carried a tidy-minded desire to limit the number of
worlds in the universe to an absurd extreme before
they would admit the logical inference of astronomical
discovery ; it is exactly the same limitation of thought
that makes us imagine that a universe with fewer souls
would be more tidy.

Dr. James Ward ^ argues that, viewed from the
general standpoint of science, " the probability is not
against, but enormously in favour of, a plurality of
worlds, as men of science almost unanimously allow " ;
and goes on to show that, "granted that in the one
universe there are many worlds, the Christian theo-
logian has the strongest grounds for believing that they
are spiritually and historically, and not merely physically,
interconnected."

All these worlds may, for aught we know, be stages
in the destiny of each human person. He may pass
from world to world with memory intact and without
physical rebirth. He may continue his age-long pro-
gress in the society of his own generation and possibly

* Sec Pluralism and Theism, by Dr. J. Ward, pp. 1S1-184.
2 IbiJ. p. 18+.

300 IMMORTALITY viii

also of preceding and following generations. This is, of
course, speculation, but so also is the theory of reincar-
nation on this earth.

(3) Much ancient thought, with the exception,
perhaps, of Semitic and Persian varieties, conceived of
the soul's spiritual life as solitary. A right attitude
and course of action toward other beings was part of
its discipline, but the aim was to get beyond this dis-
cipline. The aim and goal of the soul's progress being
thus non-social, it "was natural to suppose that until the
jostling with fellow-creatures experienced in this life
had had its perfect work, the soul must return again
and again to this earth. The Hebrew conception of
social virtues and social obligations as " eternal "
(aeonian), and of social salvation as a goal, has been
endorsed by Christianity and is more in harmony with
all that sociology and social psychology have of late
years been teaching us of the unity of the race and of
our mutual interdependence.

All this drives the modern mind to think of every
stage in the soul's future, during probation or in
heaven, as social, and makes it impossible to suppose
that social experience and social discipline only obtain
in the earthly life.

(4) Again, in Hindu thought the doctrine of re-
incarnation is bound up with the ancient idea that all
being proceeds in endless cycles, and that in the
universe all things tend to repeat themselves by an
endless return. But, though this theory of the revolv-
ing wheel of existence fascinated the ancient Indian
mind, and appealed by the splendour and sweep of the
conception embodied in it to some of the Greek and
Roman poets and thinkers, modern science offers us no
shadow of proof, or even presumption, that physical
creation revolves in returning cycles. For the modern
thinker the idea is obsolete, and so also is the analogy
it furnished for the conception of the soul as revolving
on an eternal wheel of life and death.

viri REINCARNATION AND KARMA 301

(5) A final difficulty concerning Reincarnation is
little touched upon by its advocates, that is, that it
makes childhood, which appears so beautiful and so
holy as the beginning of a virgin soul, a gigantic lie,
merely a part of nature's protective mimicry intended
to deceive parental love and human reverence, the
greatest of the illusions of sense. It is hard to con-
ceive how any mother can look into the dawning
intelligence of her child's eyes and be satisfied to believe
that in innumerable past lives that same soul has gone
through experience savage and civilised, has probably
been in turn harlot or rake, victim or tyrant, wife
or warrior, layman or priest, and perhaps all these a
hundred times.

If we take the beauty of that story of Jesus Christ
setting a little child in the midst of His disciples and
telling them that to become " like this little child " is
to find the door of the heavenly kingdom, we shall
realise how for us the whole beauty and point of the
scene vanish if we think of the soul of that child as
already an aged pilgrim, scarred and seamed by evil
experience, only innocent in the sense in which the
senile are innocent when memory entirely fails.

The facts of life often advanced as arguments for
pre-existence are the following : —

(a) The sudden friendship that often springs up
between people before unknown to each other.

To account for this it may be urged that the extra-
ordinary complexity of human life, the innumerable
strains of heredity that are combined in any child's
inheritance, would seem sufficient to account for such
characteristic predelictions ; whereas if they indicated
recognition of the friends of a past life, and if all
human beings now living had experienced many lives,
such recognitions ought to be of more frequent occur-
rence, for even among people whom Theosophists
would consider on a similar plane of development they
are comparatively rare.

302 IMMORTALITY vm

(^b) It is argued that the tendencies and quahties in
precocious children which do not seem to be accounted
for by either ancestry or environment are proofs of
knowledge acquired in some previous life. But the
evidence seems to point the other way, for there is,
again, the great difficulty that infant prodigies so very
rarely occur, and when they do, their genius always
has to do with numbers, and runs to music or arithmetic.
This suggests that it follows some psychic law by which
the operations of the mind having to do with numbers
may be early and abnormally developed. We do not
get any good evidence of child-philosophers or child-
painters or child -statesmen or child -scientists ; yet if
the acquirements of a past life were the cause of infant
precocity we surely should get all these.

On the whole, those arguments from the nature of
the self which seem to me to point to the probability
of its immortality do not appear to point also to a
series of former births and deaths, but rather to a
spiritual origin for all that we may call created life, the
soul of each child being interpreted as a differentiation
of the universal life which comes from God.

It appears, then, that unless there exists some strong
reason, based on our perceptions of moral necessity, to
believe in a multiplicity of earthly lives for each soul,
this hypothesis of the whence and whither of every
earthly life may be set aside. The doctrine of Karma,
however, is held by many to afford just such a valid
reason for belief in reincarnation, and this we have
now to consider.

Karma and Retribution

Attractiveness of the Doctrine

Not long ago I heard at a London dinner-table a
conversation among rather influential, but quite ordinary,
religious people.

VIII REINCARNATION AND KARMA 303

One lady said with a touch of scorn, " I have too
much respect for personality to beheve in the trans-
migration of souls ; the soul that had been a hundred
different persons would have no personality."

Another vigorously replied, " I could not believe in
God if I did not believe in Reincarnation and Karma.
Before I understood those great truths I wasted my
energy raging at the injustice of the universe ; now I
can work intelligently."

The first answered, " I don't understand your idea
of justice."

The other retorted confidently, " The law of Karma
is the only perfect justice ; it alone vindicates perfect
righteousness. In it we see that each soul suffers
precisely according to its sins ; no one suffers for the
sins of another. When men are born to suffering it is
because in past lives they have deserved it ; and it is
only by deserving something better that they can escape
suffering. We owe a great debt to the Theosophists
for having taught us this,"

The conversation then became general, and, upon
the whole, most present were inclined to assent to the
doctrine of Reincarnation and Karma as a good working
hypothesis, because it satisfied their belief in the moral
government of the world.

It is well to realise clearly what are the strong points
of this doctrine. These seem to be : —

First ; it is an attempt to solve the greatest of all
moral and religious problems — the problem of evil.
It is an attempt to affirm, in the face of apparently
contradictory experience, the fundamental conviction
of the human heart that the Universe in the last resort
is morally governed. As such, it invites a sympathetic
consideration.

Secondly ; it clearly recognises the prevalence of the
law of cause and effect in the moral sphere. Every
action has inevitable consequences, and those conse-
quences extend beyond the present life of the individual.

304 IMMORTALITY viii

Thus, it is an emphatic asseveration of moral responsi-
bility and of the eternal consequences of right choice.

Thirdly ; it gives a moral basis for a conception of
the nature and character of the future life which it is
easy for the most unimaginative to grasp.

Origin of the Doctrine

The doctrine of Karma originated with the In do-
Aryan tribes during the period in which they were
subjugating northern India. A very interesting and
easily accessible account of it is given in the Hibbert
Lectures of Professor de la Vallee Poussin.

Karma did not form a part of the religion which
these early Aryan tribes brought with them into India.
Modern teachers of Brahmanism read the doctrine into
the hymns of this early religion by a process of inter-
pretation akin to that which has been used by Christians
in reading later Christian beliefs into the Old Testament.
It seems certain, however, that the religion of this
noble and most gifted race, as seen in the Rigveda, is
free from pessimistic ponderings on the problem of evil
and the terrible entail of sin.

Professor Poussin thus describes the earlier belief of
the Rigveda : —

" Superstitions connected with the belief that the
dead are living in the grave, depending for this shadowy
life on the offering poured on the grave, are not
abolished in the Vedic civilisation. The general view
is nevertheless an altogether hopeful one. The dead,
who are called the Fathers, do not envy the living as
did Achilles. Some of them are now gods. The first
of the mortals, Yama — ' who first went over the great
mountains and spied out a path for many, who found
us a way of which we shall not be frustrated ' — Yama
the King sits under a tree with Varuna the righteous
god. The Fathers are gathered around him, drinking
nectar, enjoying the libations of the living, enjoying

VIII REINCARNATION AND KARMA 305

also — and this point is worthy of notice — their own
pious works, their sacrifices and their gifts, especially
their gifts to the priests. The abode of the Fathers
is an immortal, unending world, ' There make me
immortal,' says the Vedic poet, ' where exist delight,
joy, rejoicing, and joyance, where wishes are obtained.'
It is not a spiritual paradise. Whatever poetical
descriptions we may find, ' supreme luminous regions,
middle sky, third heaven, lap of the red dawns,' the
pleasures of the Fathers are essentially mundane ones ;
rivers of mead, milk, and waters, pools of butter with
banks of honey, also Apsarases or celestial damsels. The
dead were happy ; their life was worthy to be lived." ^

Professor Poussin is concerned to account for the
ascetic religious "disciplines" which arose about the
seventh century B.C., and, contrasting them with the
early religion of the Vedas, says : —

" One sees how radical a change was necessary for
asceticism and the disciplines of salvation to be possible.
. . . What were the causes of this change .''... To
begin with, we must not forget that the Sanscrit-speak-
ing peoples, the priestly and feudal aristocracy who
created the disciplines of salvation, were no longer of
unmixed Aryan race, as the old poets of the Vedas, but
a mixture of Aryas and of the aborigines. ... It is
certain that the ' intellectual ' Aryas, at the time of
the compilation of the Rigveda and later on, did not
feel as their ancestors did. . . . This aristocracy was
likely to borrow from the aborigines, and from the
mass of the Aryan people in daily contact with the
aborigines, many superstitions or beliefs — confused
notions connected with penance, ecstasy, reincarnations.
. . . Such notions, it is certain, they borrowed : this
can be proved in many cases. . . . The change we are
studying is, to a large extent, not a revolution, but an
evolution ; and the safest way to understand it is
perhaps to describe it as an autonomous alteration of

^ The H-'ay of Nirvana, pp. 12-14.

3o6 IMMORTALITY viii

the genuine Aryan beliefs and notions. The Brahmans,
endowed with an equal genius for conservation and
adaptation, were the workers of the change. . . . The
Brahmans were, by profession, busied with gods,
sacrifice, and ritual. After a time, before even the
Rigveda was compiled, they became philosophers." ^

An interesting account of the course of their thought
as it may be conjectured from evidence in the Upanishads,
is given by Dr. J. N. Farquhar : —

" This theory, that a man's health and fortune in
this life are the recompense of his deeds (in this life),
has been held by many other early peoples, notably
by early Israel. But facts are too stubborn for such
a theory : clearly it is not true. The stage in Israel's
history when the old belief became incredible comes
vividly before us in the Book of Job. We may con-
jecture that at the time when the transmigration theory
came to the notice of the Indo-Aryans, they had by
experience found the theory of material recompense in
this life untenable, and that they seized on the idea
of transmigration as a means of solving the problem.
But all this is but conjecture. We know only that
in the ' Brihadaranyaka ' and ' Chhandogya Upanishads '
a few of the more advanced men teach, as a new and
precious truth, the doctrine that as a man sows in this
life he will reap in another.

" From these passages it seems clear that the doctrine
was first thought out and stated with reference to the
future, and that it was some little time before reflection
led to the further thought, that a man's present
circumstances and experience are the recompense of
his behaviour in past lives. Then this train of thought,
carried farther both backward and forward, would in-
evitably lead to the conclusion that the series of lives
can have neither beginning nor end."

With regard to the desire for release from this chain
of rebirths, he remarks : —

^ The Way of Nir-vana, pp. 16-19.

VIII REINCARNATION AND KARMA 307

" When reflection had made some progress, men
began to regard these many lives as most undesirable,
and to long for emancipation from the necessity of
rebirth. When this unexpected change occurred, men
began to deplore their own good deeds, because they
led to rebirth as surely as their evil deeds ; so, that
which originally was the highest possible reward became
hated." '

As it thus appears in the original Hindu philosophy
it would seem that the doctrine of Karma was first and
foremost an attempt to solve the moral problem — the
problem discussed at length in the Book of Job — of the
glaring injustice apparent in this life in the matter of
individual merit and prosperity. Why is it that some
are born to lives of hardship, misery, disease, and failure,
others to lives of ease, prosperity, and fulness of oppor-
tunity .'' Ought not this difference, if it exists at all,
to have some close correspondence with differences in
degree of goodness or badness in the character or lives
of the persons concerned ^ The Indian philosophers
explained the enigma by the hypothesis that seemingly
unmerited misfortunes in this life are really the punish-
ment for wickedness in a previous existence, while
seemingly undeserved prosperity in this life is the due
reward for goodness in a previous existence.

Sin and Suffering

It will be seen that the doctrine of Karma takes for
granted that wrong action both ought to be and can be
expiated by suffering. This idea is not confined to
Hindus or Theosophists. It is implicit in the tradi-
tional, but, as is shown elsewhere in this volume,^ the
really unscriptural, conception of Hell ; and it is the
view of the functions of the pains of Purgatory of
which Suarez is the most notable exponent, and which

1 The Croivti of Hinduism, by J. N. Farquhar, D.Litt., pp. 136-137, 138.
2 Essay V.

3o8 IMMORTALITY viii

has prevailed almost universally in the Roman Church.
Indeed, it has been very widely held until compara-
tively modern times, and it cannot be said that the
reaction against it is by any means complete even
among enlightened statesmen, philosophers, or theo-
logians. Nevertheless, I believe it to be as funda-
mentally unsound as it is antagonistic to the best
modern thought upon human justice. In spite of the
eminence of some of the names of those who still
uphold it, I would maintain that the vindictive or
retributive theory of punishment, which requires that
suffering be proportioned to sin, is in the last resort a
relic of the primitive savagery which confused justice
with vengeance and then attributed its own conception
of justice to the divine.

The requirement of a moral universe is that sin
once committed should at all costs be removed — i.e.
the injury inflicted must be made good and the sinner
must be made righteous. But how is this to be done .?
Does the torture of the sinner accomplish it ^

To answer this a slight analysis of the theory of
human punishment is necessary.

It is evident — no one would dispute it — that legal
and domestic punishments, which are based on the
retributive theory, have been a very useful social device :
(<?) as an emphatic expression of moral opinion where
it has so far made for itself no other mode of expres-
sion ; (^) as deterrent — helping to prevent wrongdoing
by fear ; {c) as arresting a sinner on a heady course
and evoking reflection.

In all these ways social and domestic punishment
has been an immense advance on moral anarchy. But
the questions we have to ask are :

(i) Does the suffering of the sinner do away with
the injury his sin has done to others }

(2) Have we any reason to believe that the suffering
of the sinner does away with the consequences of the
sin in his own soul ?

VIII REINCARNATION AND KARMA 309

(3) Have we any reason to believe that there is any
law in the universe by which suffering is meted out to
the sinner in proportion to his sin ?

(i) The answer to the first question is, of course,
in the negative, A reformed sinner may sometimes
do much to make amends in this world, and if he can
influence in the immortal life those whom he has injured
in this, may, by God's help, more than repay his victims ;
but it is not by any torment he can endure that he will
make good their injuries. He must first be recreated.
But how is this to be done .'' This leads us to our
second point.

(2) Do the sinner's torments recreate his own soul,
i.e. make him good.'* Certain facts have to be recognised.
{a) Experience shows that where a character is not
specially vicious or criminal but has a tendency either to
arrogance or to frivolity, it often happens that a sharp
rebuke or penalty acts as a steadying and sobering influ-
ence. But this result ensues only when the character is
fundamentally sound. It *' brings people to their senses,"
we say — implying truly that the sense is there all the
while underneath, (b) Yet again, suff^ering faced cheer-
fully and heroically undoubtedly ennobles the character ;
but it cannot be too often emphasised that it is not the
sufi^ering itself, but the way in which it is faced, that
produces this result. Suffering per se does not ennoble
or purify ; on the contrary, unless it is met in the right
spirit it inevitably hardens and degrades. The extent
to which suffering elevates is in exact proportion to the
original goodness of the character. He of whom it is
said that "He was made perfect by suffering" is the
same of whom also it is said that He was " without sin."
(c) Punishment, again — i.e. the infliction of suffering as
the penalty for wrongdoing, whether by parent, school-
master, or magistrate — often has salutary results. But
all experience in educational or criminal reform shows
that the less there is of penal infliction of pain upon the
offender, and the more elevating personal influences can

3IO IMMORTALITY vm

be brought to bear instead, the more effective the results.
Above all, it is found that unless the opprobrium ex-
pressed by the infliction of punishment is regarded by the
offender as "just" — not perhaps at first, but ultimately
— the punishment hardens and degrades instead of
elevating. Excessive punishments may, indeed, operate
as a deterrent ; they may make a particular offence too
dangerous to be worth risking ; but they cannot produce
a change of mind in the offender v/hich makes him
cease to desire to commit it or condemn himself for
desiring to do so or prevent him doing it v^^hen risk of
detection seems small. On the contrary, they rather
tend to arouse in him moral condemnation of the power
which punishes as being merely oppressive. That is to
say, they have no moral value. The moral value of
punishment depends on the degree to which the individual
recognises the punishment as just, that is, as being the
expression by the punisher or the community of a moral
principle to which he himself assents. But it is the
element of good in him, shown by his assent to the
principle and the consequent way in which he reacts
towards the inflicted pain, not the inflicted pain per se,
which reforms him. And this is made none the less
true by the fact that, in many cases, without some
strong reminder of the moral principle and of the dis-
approval of its infraction by the community, he would
have gone on uninterruptedly in his old courses. Fichte
well distinguishes between Punishment properly so called
and Outlawry, and he argues that the logical treatment
of one who offends gravely against the law of the well-
being of the community is outlawry, i.e. his complete
elimination, whether by death or otherwise, from that
society. Punishment, on the other hand, is the inflic-
tion of something less than outlawry, in the hope that the
offender may yet live to conform to the law. Common
feeling supports this view ; when a criminal is con-
demned to death the rigours of prison diet and dis-
cipline are relaxed ; another chance in this life being

VIII REINCARNATION AND KARMA 311

denied him, it is felt that further punishment is useless
cruelty. So, too, as is argued elsewhere in this volume,^
if any soul continues to set itself in hostility, in this
world and the next, to the Divine goodness, annihilation,
not endless torment, seems the only end compatible
with justice.

In the interests of society penalties which are purely
deterrent, and, in the last resort, complete annihilation,
may be justified while society has no better method of
moral education. But punishment, in its truest and
highest sense, must have in view the possible reclama-
tion of the offender. Reformatory punishment implies
that the person punished is a being who knows that
he has offended against a moral principle. You do
not punish a sow who — as occasionally happens —
devours her young alive ; you do punish a human
mother who even neglects her children. Only in so far
as the criminal is capable of recognising that he has done
wrong — i.e. only in so far as there is still alive in him a
certain amount of moral insight — is there any likeli-
hood of the penalty having a reformatory effect. The
more morally degraded a person is, the less of such
moral insight remains, and the more likely is he to
regard the penalty as unjust, as being merely the tyran-
nical infliction of a hostile power, and hence to become
a more embittered enemy of society than before. This
is true when the soul remembers its wrongdoing ; but
Karma brings pain to bear on the soul that has forgotten
its past, and which, therefore, cannot recognise the sin-
fulness of its past, and it brings the heaviest pain on
the souls who are most degraded. We all recognise
that to punish a man who had lost both memory and
moral insight would be futile ; therefore Karma, in its
essence, is not disciplinary or purgative, but vindictive."

^ Essay V. pp. 216-217.

- In justice to their capacity for clear thought it is only fair to notice that in
Indian philosophy Karma is frankly thought of as involving punishment of the
" vindictive " type. It is only modern interpreters who by reading into it a purga-
torial conception have, in order to save its morality, made it logically absurd.

312 IMMORTALITY viii

From this analysis of the human theory of punish-
ment we see that while the purely vindictive or retri-
butive theory assumes that Justice with her scales
demands an almost mechanically weighed-out equivalent
of suffering to expiate so much sin, the application of
such a theory to practice leads, not to the decrease of
iniquity, but to its increase. This conception of Justice
required revision, and in fact it has been revised by a
large consensus of modern opinion.

Our answer, then, to the question. Can suffering do
away with sin .'' is in the negative. Sin can only be can-
celled — that is to say, its results, in so far as they take
the form of the degradation of the soul that sins — can
only be wiped out by a change of heart, which, again,
only takes place by the conscious experience of a fresh
access of love to good or God. The only thing that
can do away with moral badness in the soul is something
which replaces that moral badness by moral goodness.
Only by saving a sinner out of a condition of sin into a
condition of active moral goodness can he be saved from
the results of sin ; only by active beneficence, inspired
by divine wisdom, can he counterbalance the harm his
sin has done to others. It is therefore only by active
goodness, both of God and man — God giving, man
responding — that evil can be remedied. A certain
form of suffering accompanies all reformation ; for
repentance implies sorrow for the past, and this often
involves very acute suffering. But the essential differ-
ence between true repentance and the notion of expia-
tion by mere suffering, is that repentance, with its
correlative forgiveness, has in it also an element of
refreshment and joy — the joy of a psychic re-creation
into a freer and nobler life. When Jesus Christ said
of a woman, " Her sins which are many are forgiven
her, for she loved much," He clearly taught that the
basis of her salvation was not suffering, but the love in
the woman's soul for the goodness she saw in the heart
of Jesus. We know this to be true in everyday life.

VIII REINCARNATION AND KARMA 313

Reformation of character depends on a fresh access of
love for goodness, and is the outward aspect of the
inward grace of forgiveness ; for all goodness is ulti-
mately of God, and God's forgiveness is not the remitting
of some arbitrary penalty, but the gift of His good
Spirit to the repentant soul. The soul that can go out
of itself in love is already on the upward path because
it is already joined to God.

(3) Our third question was whether we have reason
to believe it to be a law of the universe that the suffer-
ing of the sinner is in proportion to his sin. As a
matter of fact, so far as we can observe, the results of
wrongdoing in human life are not proportionate suffer-
ing, but proportionate degradation. Degradation, of
course, involves some suffering, but the suffering is
most acute in the initial stages of degeneracy. It is
certainly not cumulative, nor is it intensified as the man
continues the downward path. The blear-eyed, half-
paralysed drunkard, who has given up all moral conflict,
is very uncomfortable, but is not able to suffer as acutely
as he did when he took the first wrong steps ; and he
does not begin to be capable of the same acute suffer-
ing as his innocent and high-minded wife feels on his
behalf. Nor is his degeneracy merely that of deadened
nerves. He will be found to have become more and
more selfish, more and more incapable of recognising
the claims of other people in relation to his own. In
many cases he becomes egotistical and dishonest, with
shorter and shorter intervals of maudlin repentance.
This is a case where degeneracy and its accompanying
callousness are easily seen ; but exactly the same growth
of degeneracy and callousness can be traced in any
habitually immoral life. No egoist knows that he is
one, and so he may complain loudly of the inexplicable
loss of friends that his egoism brings him ; but though
he whine and brood, it is obvious that he becomes
hardened to all that makes the acutest suffering of
noble souls, just as he becomes callous to their acute

314 IMMORTALITY viii

enjoyments. The more a soul becomes enriched,
ennobled, and consequently purified, the more it be-
comes capable of intense delight and intense sorrow ; but
wrongdoing has a disintegrating effect, not only on the
body but the mind. Coarseness, obliquity, brutality,
inevitably come in its train, but not anything that deserves
to be called intense suffering. True suffering in the
sinner appears to be due quite as much to the upward
beat of the wing as to the descent ; while the greatest
suffering must always be experienced by the highest
natures, who also are alone capable of the greatest joy.^
Again, let us ask ourselves what our innate power
of appreciating truth has to say, in the face of fact, to
this theory that all suffering is deserved. Can any
normally constituted father or mother, seeing a little
child in the grasp of some cruel physical disease, believe
that the child is expiating some hideous crime ? More-
over, how can those who are able to comfort themselves
with the conviction that the drab lives and painful
privations of the poor are always deserved, ever clearly
perceive their own responsibility for righting great
social wrongs ? Indeed, the doctrine of Karma, which
explains that a man is born a Brahman as a reward, or
an Outcaste as a punishment, for his deeds in a former
life, supplies the Hindu with a moral justification of
the system of Caste.

Karma embodies False Notion of Justice

The doctrine of Karma was an advance on what
preceded it. The Brahmans who conceived it made a
splendid hypothesis and raised a trivial conception of
the moral world into grandeur. But their hypothesis
has been found inadequate to express the facts. They
assumed the " vindictive " theory that in the individual
life suffering ought to be proportionate to sin ; so that

^ The subject of sin and suffering is more fully treated in the Essay on " Repent-
ance and Hope " in Concerning Prayer.

VIII REINCARNATION AND KARMA 315

they added nothing to the explanation given by earlier
thinkers of the problem of suffering, they only enlarged
the sweep of the still more primitive explanation.
Primitive man says that the gods punish the sinner
here and now — we see this in the Old Testament ; later,
he says that they punish him in another world — we see
this stage reached in Jewish Apocalyptic ; the philo-
sophers of Karma said that in a thousand earthly lives
he would be punished. The problem of evil is larger
than the problem of suffering ; it asks why, if the
Power manifested in the universe be good, should any
living soul be so constituted and environed that it will
choose to do wrong and thus cause suffering.'' To
this the thinkers who conceived of Karma gave no
answer, unless it was that the experience of wrong-
doing is necessary for the soul's development.

We must respect the real effort this philosophy
makes to vindicate the moral government of the
universe, though it fails to vindicate it. If the experi-
ence of wrongdoing be necessary for the soul's moral
growth, how unjust to punish by age-long suffering ;
if it is not necessary, then this philosophy offers no
explanation of the existence of evil. We have seen
that suffering neither makes the bad man righteous nor
makes good the injury he has done. So that the law
of Karma, if it held good, would not point to a moral
government of the world.

Intellectually, the strong point of Karma is its
insistence on the reign of law in the moral sphere — on
the fact that an action inevitably produces its inherent
consequences, good if the act be good, evil if the act
be evil. But we have discovered that the necessary
and inherent consequences of evil action are the degrada-
tion or degeneration of the sinner, which lessens his
capacity to suffer ; and its most usual results are mis-
fortune for the innocent and grief for the noble-minded.
Thus we conclude that law does rule in the moral
sphere, but that it is not the law set forth jjby the

3i6 IMMORTALITY viii

doctrine of Karma. These Hindu philosophers failed
to see how progress is actually achieved in the moral
life. The whole process of progress, as we see it in
this life, would need to be reversed to fit into their
theory ; for in this life the soul progresses when the
capacity alike for sorrow and for joy increases, and
goes backward as sensibility to either diminishes. The
greater part of the pain resulting from sin falls — as
the early Hebrews saw — on children's children, i.e. on
the innocent. It falls also, and with sharpest stroke,
on the noblest souls. It is Moses who was agonised by
Israel's sin, while the people were satisfied with them-
selves ; and we are sure that Absalom was incapable of
the pain which David suffered when he cried, " Would
God! I had died for thee, my son ! my son ! "

If the believer in Karma holds that all human
suffering is the direct result of the sin of the sufferer,
he must frankly hold it on the mere verbal authority
of Sages or Adepts, for there is nothing in known fact to
corroborate it. But, assuming for the sake of argument
that it is true, let us ask if, carefully considered, it
really appears just. According to this doctrine the
Supreme Being permits fallible beings to be born into
this world of temptation with sensuous natures which
necessarily lead them at first to place a mistaken value
upon sensuous pleasures. If they fall, the universe is
such that they incur suffering, and if they do not
reform under this suffering in successive lives, it grows
more and more severe while they grow less and less
able to profit by it. Thus it may be endlessly pro-
longed. That is the law of Karma, and I submit that,
candidly considered, it offends the instinct of justice in
any healthy mind that believes in God. The fact that
Christian thinkers have often taught as crude and cruel
a doctrine of the Divine government of the world does
not make the law of Karma, as expounded by Theosophy,
more just. It portrays horrible injustice on the part of
a Divine Power, who binds fallible men upon the wheel

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 317

of time and offers them no escape but by toilsome effort
and the fire of suffering, while He Himself holds aloof
both from effort and suffering.

Prophets of deeper insight, pondering on the mystery
of God and man, came to think that if the God who
originated both fallible men and the earth on which
they are bound, shared their suffering and offered them
the immediate escape of forgiveness and restoration
when they fell, exerting His own energy to supply their
lack of moral power, and afterwards compensating them
with fuller joy, the scheme — although still mysterious —
could not be conceived as unjust ; for the Supreme
Power would be taking the responsibility and sorrow
on Himself, and giving to men in the end what would
repay their effort and distress. The fact that the
noblest souls, capable of the greatest joy, grow also in
the power of sorrow, leads us to perceive that sorrow
is divine. Such a God we recognise to have been
preached by Jesus Christ, and exemplified in His own
suffering and death ; but we get no hint of this sort
of Divine suffering and exertion, or of the offer of
immediate escape and of personal care and compensa-
tion, in the law of Karma, which offers no real justifica-
tion for the ways of God to men.

PART II.— MODERN THEOSOPHY
Theosophy as a Religion

The Buddhists accepted the belief in Karma and
Metempsychosis from the Brahmans, and it was from
Buddhism, to begin with, that the founders of the
modern Theosophical Society took these doctrines and
preached them in modern Europe. Along with these
theories they taught a harmony of all religions, and a
path of salvation by which the evolution of the soul
toward bliss may be hastened, and other beliefs, chiefly
Indian in origin, but partly neo-Platonic.

3i8 IMMORTALITY viii

The success of the Theosophical Society in attracting
numbers of pure-hearted and earnest-minded Christians
is, I believe, due to two things — (a) the emphasis laid
upon disinterested love and fellowship, and (i*) the
control over self and circumstances which its disciples
often exhibit.

(a) The emphasis laid on love and fellowship as the
first essential of the spiritual life is far in advance, not
of Christian principle, nor of the highest ideal of the
Hebrew prophets, but of the bulk of Old Testament
righteousness which was, and is, constantly taught in
our Sunday Schools and Churches under the name of
Christianity. I may confirm this assertion by reference
to the value still attached in many circles to the
imprecatory Psalms and the widespread opposition to
their being omitted from the daily services of the
Church, a proposal which has only quite recently
gained any concerted support. With regard to the
right attitude of mind toward an enemy, the Buddhist
doctrine that " hatred ceaseth not by hatred at any
time but only by love," teaches a reaction of the
virtuous mind against sin probably more effectual and
nearer to truth and the mind of Christ than the
" righteous anger " so generally exalted as a primary
virtue by Western Christianity. The insistence on love
to all as necessary to the path of salvation draws saintly
minds to Theosophy.

{l>) Theosophy also teaches as part of the way of
salvation, definite habits of auto-suggestion by which
certain forms of self-control and control over others
are actually obtained. Serenity and helpfulness acquired
by a discipline of concentration and contemplation,
produce a happiness little known to the average
worried and careworn Western mind, and this throws
a glamour over Oriental beliefs concerning the life after
death which those beliefs, dispassionately considered by
themselves, would not possess. One turns from the
perusal of certain books written by Theosophists upon

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 319

the way of salvation with the conviction that here
are ideals of the duties and privileges of life on earth,
of the soul's passage through discarnate heavenly states,
and of its final goal, very much nobler than the complex
of lower Old Testament and Apocalyptic ideals so often
set forth as Christianity. It is the bigoted persistence
of our religious teachers in perpetuating such lower
ideals which is the true cause of most of our modern
heresies.

But to dwell on the religious aspect of Theosophy
would be irrelevant to our subject, which is the views
of Theosophists on the after-life, and in discussing the
theories of the after-life set forth by the Theosophical
Society it is no part of our work to criticise the circum-
stances of its foundation or the character of its founder
or present leaders. We are concerned only to examine
the grounds on which it endorses the Oriental doctrines
of the life after death which it is spreading in
Christendom.

We have to examine :

(i) Their claim to base their belief on occult
knowledge.

(2) The claim of Theosophy to be the nucleus of all
religions.

(3) The conception of personality involved in their
view.

(i) The Claim to Occult Knowledge
The Claim as made

The Theosophical teachers are not content to
speculate ; they assert that they know. William Q.
Judge, one of their American founders, says : —

" Theosophy is sometimes called the Wisdom-
Religion, because from immemorial time it has had
knowledge of all the laws governing the spiritual,
the moral, and the material. The theory of nature
and of life which it offers is not one that was at first

320 IMMORTALITY viii

speculatively laid down and then proved by adjusting
facts or conclusions to fit it ; but is an explanation of
existence, cosmic and individual, derived from know-
ledge reached by those who have acquired the power
to see behind the curtain that hides the operations of
nature from the ordinary mind. Such Beings are called
Sages, using the term in its highest sense. Of late
they have been called Mahatm^s and Adepts." ^

Similarly, Mrs. Besant testifies as to the method by
which it is possible for Theosophists to discover and
reveal the working of the divine mind as seen in the
universe : —

" Theosophy accepts the method of Science — observa-
tion, experiment, arrangement of ascertained facts,
induction, hypothesis, deduction, verification, assertion
of the discovered truth — but immensely increases its
area. ... It has observed that the condition of know-
ing the physical universe is the possession of a physical
body, of which certain parts have been evolved into
organs of sense, eyes, ears, etc., through which percep-
tion of outside objects is possible. . . . The Theosophist
carries on the same principle into higher realms." She
goes on : " That there should be other spheres, and
other bodies through which those spheres can be known,
is no more inherently incredible than that there is a
physical sphere, and that there are physical bodies
through which we know it. The Occultist — the
student of the workings of the divine Mind in Nature
— asserts that there are such spheres, and that he has
and uses such bodies. The following statements are
made as results of investigations carried on in such
spheres by the use of such bodies by the writer and
other Occultists ; we all received the outline from
highly developed members of our humanity, and have
proved it true step by step, and have filled in many
gaps by our own researches. We, therefore, feel that
we have the right to affirm, on our own first-hand

^ An Epitome of Theosophy, William Q. Judge, p. 2.

viri MODERN THEOSOPHY 321

experience — stretching over a period of twenty-three
years in one case and twenty-five in another — that
super-physical research is practicable, and is as trust-
worthy as physical research." ^

It is on the evidence of such experience as this that
the Society has reaffirmed the doctrines of Reincarnation
and Karma.

It is by this " scientific " method, too, that Theo-
sophists obtain pictures of that life after death to which
they are taught to aspire. E.g.: after describing the
soul's discarnate experiences on the '* astral plane," where
it sheds emotion and desire, Mrs. Besant tells of the
" mental plane ": —

" Comparatively few people, at the present stage of
evolution, can function freely in the mental world,
clothed only in the higher and the mental bodies,
separated from the physical and astral. But those
who can do so can tell about its phenomena — an im-
portant matter, since heaven is a part of the mental
world guarded from all unpleasant intrusions. The
inhabitants of the world are the higher ranks of nature-
spirits, called in the East Devas, or Shining Ones, and
by Christians, Hebrews, and Muhammadans Angels —
the lowest Order of the angelic Intelligences. These
are glowing forms with changing shades of exquisite
colours, whose language is colour, whose motion is
melody. The heaven-portion of the mental world is
filled with discarnate human beings, who work out into
mental and moral powers the good experiences they
have garnered in their earthly lives. Here the religious
devotee is seen, rapt in adoring contemplation of the
Divine Form he loved on earth, for God reveals Him-
self in any form dear to the human heart. . . . Every
high activity followed on earth, every noble thought
and aspiration, here grow into flowers, flowers which
contain within themselves the seeds which shall later
be sown on earth. Knowing this, men may in this

' Theosopky, by Annie Besant, pp. zi-i-T,,

322 IMMORTALITY viii

world prepare the seeds of experience which shall
flower in heaven." ^

To any one who can take these extracts au pied de la
lettre it must be rather a shock to be told that, after
a few centuries of this heaven, the soul needs to be
re-born on earth.

Hypnoidal States and their Content ^

The assumption of knowledge, the experience of
direct vision of things unknowable by sense and reason
— such as described above by Mrs. Besant — has by
many critics been met with outward indifference and
the tacit accusation of fraud, an accusation at some
time or other levelled at all religions. This accusation
has never served to condemn a religion with its
adherents or to elucidate truth ; for, though there is
probably fraud and hypocrisy among the teachers of
many, perhaps all, religious societies, no such society
was ever held together by the mere practice of deceit.

The experience of being " caught up into the third
heaven " ^ or of " going out into the astral plane," and
of so acquiring supposed knowledge in other planes or
spheres of being, is a widespread mental phenomenon.
Many men of undoubted good faith have reported such
experience ; the important point is to study scientifically
the nature of the mental states in which such experience
occurs. It appears to belong to the phenomena of
hypnoidal states. In all religions the attempt to attain
enlightenment has been connected with semi-hypnotic
states induced by penances or intoxications or the
psycho-physical exercises known as " trance-practice."
In such states the subject realises a sense of liberty and
power unknown to the sober, waking consciousness.*
In such states suggestions given to him, or self-induced,

^ Theosop/iy, by Annie Besant, pp. 38-39.

"^ This section should be read in connection with the discussion on " Auto-
suggestion and Trance," Essay II. pp. 35-40.

' Cf. p. 331. * See Essay II. p. 36.

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 323

operate powerfully in his immediate future. In such
states also he is subject to dreams ^ that, when afterwards
remembered, appear to him to be revelations from an
objective source. The "schools of the prophets" in
all times and everywhere have been more or less partial
to trance-practice. It is an essential part of the " Path "
of Indian religion. It is more unwittingly practised in
many Christian forms of devotion.

It is desirable to have in mind exactly what is meant
by *' trance-practice." It is the habit of falling into
self-induced hypnoidal conditions of mind, either as an
end in themselves, under the belief that the condition
is spiritual, or with the deliberate intention of acquiring
knowledge or magical power or moral discipline or
religious emotion. It is very important to understand
that such states of mind are in no way supra-normal.
The earlier stages of hypnosis are both natural and
wholesome ; we are often lulled into them without
recognising the fact. It is equally important to re-
cognise clearly that the powers of the human mind
which come to light in these, its quiescent, moments —
suggestibility, thought-transference, clairvoyance, etc.
— are not supernatural but natural, and that the state in
itself is no more " spiritual " than the state of rational
activity.

Of Hindu trance Professor Poussin says : —
" It was admitted that Man obtains, in semi-hypnotic
states, a magical power. The name of a thing is
supposed to be either the thing itself or a sort of
double of the thing ; to master, during trance, the
name, is to master the thing. Just as penance, trance
became a means to spiritual aims. That is the case
with Brahmanism. Trance is the necessary path to the
merging of the individual Self into the universal Self. . . .
Buddhism teaches in so many words that not every
trance is good. A trance which is not aimed at the
right end, eradication of desire, is a mundane affair.

* See Essay VII. pp. 261-262.

324 IMMORTALITY viii

When undertaken with desire, in order to obtain either
advantages in this life, namely magical powers, or some
special kind of rebirth, trances cannot confer any
spiritual advantage. Of course, if they are correctly
managed, they succeed, as any other human contrivance
would succeed.^ . . . The intention of the ascetic and
his moral preparation make all the difference between
mundane and supra-mundane trance." For example,
he says : " The monk makes a disk of light red clay.
. . . Then the meditation begins ; the ecstatic has to
look at the disk as long as it is necessary in order to
see it with closed eyes, that is, in order to create a
mental image of the disk. To realise this aim he must
contemplate the disk sometimes with his eyes open,
sometimes with his eyes shut, and thus for a hundred
times, or for a thousand times, or even more, until the
mental image is secured. . . . The mind, once con-
centrated and strengthened by exercise with the clay
disk or any other exercise of the same kind^ is successively
to abandon its content and its categories. The ecstatic
starts from a state of contemplation coupled with
reasoning and reflection ; he abandons desire, sin, dis-
tractions, discursiveness, joy, hedonic feeling ; he goes
beyond any notion of matter, of contact, of difference ;
. . . finally, he realises the actual disappearance of feel-
ing and notion. It is a lull in the psychical life which
coincides with perfect hypnosis." ^

But there is more to be understood. In our con-
sideration of Spiritualism we saw * that the mediumistic
condition — which, of course, belongs to trance-practice
— does actually carry with it a certain susceptibility to
telepathic knowledge, and a certain power of what is
often called " clairvoyance." There is good evidence
for the actual operation of these powers, which has
been carefully recorded and indexed in the Proceedings

^ Much in what is called "New Thought" is illuminated by this.

2 The italics are mine. ^ The Way of Nirvana, pp. 160-165.

* See Essay VII. p. 262.

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 325

of the Society for Psychical Research^ and Is accessible
to all.

There is also some evidence of another power
possessed by the mind in an early stage of hypnosis,
and that is the power of influencing others who are
passive or in some sympathetic personal connection.
It was assumed, on a priori reasoning, by earlier
investigators of. telepathy that the agent in the tele-
pathic communication must exercise determined volition
while the subject remained passive ; but there is a good
deal of evidence to show that the agent also must have
entered a state of quiescence, or what is called " the
silence of the soul," if he would make his influence
eff^ective. An experienced medical woman, not at all
religious or infected with mystical notions, once told me
that she believed " absent treatment " by mind-healers
was in some cases actually efi^ective. She said she had
known sudden and unexpected recoveries which had
synchronised with the action of an absent healer who
worked unknown to the patient. A similar body of
evidence comes from Christian Scientists. My point
is that in such cases the healer seeks the " inner silence
of the soul," and there endeavours to experience the
power of God for his patient. The only volition
involved is to induce the passive state. In the in-
numerable veridical cases of apparitions at the time of
death there appears little evidence of volition on the
part of the dying ; the transference of thought, which
no doubt originated the apparition, seems more likely
to have taken place when the dying person is sinking,
and hence passive.

The Buddhists reckon that there are four distinct
phases of rapt meditation. In the first, attention is
** directed and sustained." The second is the " inward
tranquillising of the mind, self-contained and uplifted
from the working of attention " ; this state is " born of
concentration." In the third, " through the quenching
of zest " man " abides indiflferent but also mindful " ;

326 IMMORTALITY viii

of this state it is declared, " he who is indifferent but
mindful dwells in happiness." The final state is " pure
mindfulness and indifference, wherein is neither happiness
nor unhappiness." ^

In our own language, and from what appears to be
the evidence concerning states of quiescence, we may
say that the first state is that of intent and pleasant
thought upon some special subject. Secondly, from the
strain of attention, especially if any outward object of
adoration or contemplation is seen or imagined, the
mind becomes slightly exhausted, and slips into what
may be called inward silence or a cessation of all the
inward voices of mind and heart. This state can be
achieved by some practice without the previous state
of meditation. It is extraordinarily useful as a rest to
the harassed mind, and after such a rest the mind may
often reap the harvest of its best previous labour. The
subject soon becomes incapable of criticising any sugges-
tion that may come, unless it be too deeply antago-
nistic to be acceptable. This is a stage in which the
crystal-gazer sees visions in the crystal, in which the
devotee may see unwonted sights or hear voices or
experience revelations. It is also the stage which is
the parent of hallucination and delusion, because the
mind apparently always believes itself to be completely
alert, not recognising its hypnoidal state. In any
normal condition the rest is very short. If by practice
this period can be unduly prolonged, or if the strain
of the mind's vision is fixed upon any object too long,
a third state ensues which is hypnotic sleep or trance.

We require a far more thorough scientific study
than we now have of these natural powers of the mind
in quiescent conditions, in order that we may unravel
the good and evil strains in trance-practice. It is prob-
able that knowledge of actual facts arising from the
natural powers of the mind in hypnotic conditions, and,
appearing supernatural, as it must to those who do

^ Buddhism, by Mrs. Rhys Davids, p. 200.

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 327

not know its real cause, casts a glamour over the
memory of mere hypnotic dreams, making them seem
veridical, and throws a false sanctity over objects and
beliefs connected with all the milder forms of self-
hypnosis.

The key to the problem of discriminating the valu-
able and the worthless elements in all such " revelations "
is to be found in two facts already noted in Essay
VII. Firstly, that the general tenor of the content
of the mind in any self-induced hypnoidal state is
determined by the real, though not always conscious,
tenor of the desire and purpose of the self. Secondly,
that the telepathic influences from other minds to which
it is most susceptible are thoughts or pictures in
harmony with that real desire and purpose. Hence
the value of the thoughts or visions which rise in the
mind in such states depends entirely upon the mental,
moral, and aesthetic Interests of the subject. They
must be tested by their quality, not accepted uncriticised
as a revelation from the unseen world. The content
of such hypnoidal states as come short of trance is
remembered by the subject ; hence in spite of the
compelling force which attaches to suggestions made
in these hypnoidal states (cf. p. 36) the responsibility of
their interpretation lies with the reason of the subject.
The interpretation of what is said and done in deeper
trance lies with the reason of the observers.

The problem of interpretation has been entirely
confused by the absurd idea that if the state is due
to auto-suggestion, its content must be also. The
hypnoidal state is always due either to auto-suggestion,
or to hetero-suggestion which is not repelled, or to
some degree of physical exhaustion. When the subject
of the hypnoidal state is of weak or vagrant mind the
content of the self-induced state will be due to any
chance suggestion, verbal or telepathic. When the state
is entered into with a distinct desire for a certain type
of content, the content will again be due to suggestion.

328 . IMMORTALITY viii

and will have only the value of that suggestion. At
the same time, in this state, the poet, the painter,
the musician, the discoverer, the thinker, the saint,
may sometimes attain the vision which is the crown of
their laborious lives, and that vision is a vision of
objective reality because truth and beauty and God
have objective realities, and the quest for these realities
has been the ruling passion of their ordinary life.

We are thus forced to believe that all these hypnoidal
mental states — whether of Apocalyptic Seers, Christian
Mystics, Theosophical Adepts, or Spiritualist Mediums
— however induced, are in themselves negative, and that
their content may be expected to reveal objective
reality only so far as the life of the subject exhibits an
endeavour after such reality. Their content must at
all times be rationally criticised.

We have three ways of approaching truth — know-
ledge of fact, current and historic, the experience of
the self or of others ; hard thinking ; and the intuitive
vision of quiescent moments. Truth arrived at by
such insight must not contradict knowledge attained in
these other ways.

Prayer and Ecstasy in Christian Devotion

In petitional or intercessory prayer, the reason is
active, the attention alert to the train of thought. But
Christian practice sanctions certain devotional methods
under the names of meditation, concentration, adoration,
and contemplation, which are usually varying degrees
of trance-practice — wholesome if held in check by
reason, unwholesome if unduly indulged.

Every Catholic priest knows that after people have
knelt in adoration for some time before some object
which fixes the gaze, the vows or resolutions they then
make are likely to be operative ; but he does not know
why. Evangelists produce the same effect by the
singing of hymns whose words and music are such that

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 329

they silence the reason rather than stimulate thought ;
but they do not understand their own procedure. Part
of the psychological explanation is simple : give a sug-
gestion to a busy mind, and it is neglected, as a candle
in a light room is unnoticed ; but suggestion in a
quiescent mind makes a vivid impression, like a search-
light suddenly penetrating the subdued landscape of
night ; or, if we want another illustration, the best
food introduced into a full stomach only produces
indigestion, while when the stomach is prepared by
rest, the same food is received with appetite, easily
digested, and produces strength.

A beautiful English girl once told me of a method of
meditation which she had been taught — by her vicar, if
I remember rightly. She said, " You take the name of
the subject you wish to understand — love, or humility,
or anything else — you make yourself see just the word
with your eyes shut. By and bye you can see each
letter outlined in fire ; then you get through." There
was a note of happy triumph in the word *' through."
" Through where ? Through to what .'' " I asked.
*' Through to reality," she said reverently — "after that
it is quite different."

In the light of such experience we must ask. What
is the value of trance - practice to devotion ? It is
important to realise that the law of mental rhythm is
a law of God, one of those natural laws the breaking of
which produces confusion. The inward silence of the
mind is as necessary before coming to the conclusion of
any train of thought, as rest before any important
effort. The natural summing up of the mind's insight
which seems to come almost automatically after such
inward silence, will combine the fruit of the more im-
mediate work and the tenor of the whole mental life.
The Divine Spirit, who is always, everywhere, seeking
to enhance man's powers and attract him toward truth,
undoubtedly sustains the mind in its rest and conse-
quent strength. At such an hour God is not nearer

330 IMMORTALITY viii

than at any other, nor the voice of truth more personally
directed to the soul ; but man by conformity to nature's
rhythm is better able to exercise his innate power of
appreciating truth. Because this is true whatever the
subject of thought, it is true also in devotional thought.
Because it is true of all intuitions, it is certainly true of
religious intuitions. In all cases the value of the experi-
ence is the value of the aspirations or desires or efforts
of the mind that has the experience. This would still
be true although, as appears to be the case, the soul at
such times is liable to be reinforced by telepathic influ-
ence. What the mind receives by telepathy from other
minds will be only such moods or wordless thoughts
as are of the texture of its own habits of thought.

Again, we have seen that the content of the mind
in any self-induced, hypnoidal states, and the influence
from without to which it is susceptible, are largely
determined by the purpose which was dominant in
inducing the state. If the purpose of prayer is com-
munion with a Being who is all goodness and all love,
this cannot but exercise a favourable influence on the
content of the mind. On the other hand, prayer to a
God conceived of as petty or vindictive is liable to have
the worst results — a reflection which shows that idolatry
is indeed the worst of sins, for idolatry does not consist
in making images of wood or stone, but in holding
the unworthy conceptions of God which are usually
embodied in such images.

But while the godly soul is thus not in danger from
hypnoidal states as such, danger certainly arises from
misinterpretation. Because a laborious and noble mind
discovers truth in the inner silence, mere emptiness of
mind is often held to be a door to God's secret place :
objects used to concentrate gaze and thought come to
be regarded as possessing in themselves divine power ;
visions seen in crystals, in convent cells, or in dim
chancels, are thought objective, and dream voices that
arise in the soul are taken for revelations from another

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 331

world. The subject is too large to be more than
touched on here.

While prayer is essential in the teaching of Jesus,
trance-ecstasy is not, in His teaching, either the test of
true prayer or its culmination. Experiences of the
deepest trance are very rare in the lives of men who
have brought great enlightenment to the world in any
direction. When they occur unsought in the lives of
men whose aspirations are set upon truth and righteous-
ness and who, like St. Paul, are habitually using all their
faculties in the service of these, mistakes concerning
their nature can do no harm. They may well bring
into consciousness conclusions that are a true revelation,
because they have been ripening in a sober and active
mind, inspired in all its operations by the spirit of
truth.

But — and this is the point with which this paper is
concerned — the spectacular or verbal content of the
state arises from the subject's own mentality, and the
visions seen or words heard cannot be accepted as a
source of accurate information about the unseen world. ^

Barrenness of Trance-Experience

The unprofitableness of the pursuit ot such experi-
ences is confirmed by the fact that in communities where
trance is most prized and encouraged there has been
for centuries least contribution to the world's thought
and least improvement in its manners and customs.

Several modern Hindu writers, who have no leanings

' In regard to the memory of trance-dreams inHuceH by suggestion, and to the
persistent vision of auras claimed by many Theosophists, I would quote the testimony
of a scientific hypnotist of experience : "It is perfectly possible, and is indeed quite
customary, for one in a hypnotic trance to remember afterwarcis all that happened
in the trance. As for the colour aura, to find out how it may be visualiseil, I
hypnotised a patient and told him that after he wakened he would think my uniform
was green. After he got up I asked him, 'What is the colour of my uniform?'
He said, 'Green.'" In this case the patient after an interval, having the real
uniform before his eyes, was able to give the correct colour. But the self-hypnotised
Theosophist has no such real object by which to correct the suggestion if ever a
colour aura becomes associated in his mind with a particular person.

332 IMMORTALITY viii

towards Western religion, are waking up to the fact
that the assiduous trance-practices of the Hindu are
inimical to the acquirement of truth. Thus Professor
Har Dayal (in the Modern Review^ July 1912) ^ says : —

'* India has hundreds of really sincere and aspiring
young men and women, who are free from all taint of
greed or worldliness, but they are altogether useless for
any purpose that one may appreciate. . , . ' Samadhi '
or trance is regarded as the acme of spiritual progress !
. . . To look upon an abnormal psychological condition
produced by artificial means as the sign of enlighten-
ment was a folly reserved for Indian philosophers."

The experience called by Mrs. Besant, " going out
into the astral plane to acquire knowledge," is well
described by Dr. Jacks in the words of a character drawn
true to life as we know it : —

" Well, I've often done it, and many's the story I
could tell of things I've seen by day and night ; but it
wasn't till I went to hear Sir Robert Ball as the grand
idea came to me. ' Why not throw yerself into the
stars. Bob } ' I sez to myself. And, by gum, sir, I did
it that very night. How I did it I don't know ; I
won't say as there weren't a drop of drink in it ; but
the minute I'd got through^ I felt as I'd stretched out
wonderful, and blessed if I didn't find myself standin'
wi' millions of other spirits, right in the middle o'
Saturn's rings. And the things I see there I couldn't
tell you, no, not if you was to give me a thousand
pounds. Talk o' spirits ! I tell you there was millions
on 'em ! And the lights and the colours — oh, but it's
no good talkin' ! I looked back and wanted to know
where the earth was, and there I see it, dwindled to a
speck o' light." ^

Here we discern three elements in the experience
— the practice of some form of self- hypnotism by a
man who did not accurately know how he did it ; the

' Quoted by Dr. Faiquhar in The Crown of Hinduism, p. 37.
■■^ Writings by L. P. Jacks, vol. i. Mad Shepherds, pp. .32-33.

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 333

suggestion derived from an absorbing lecture by Sir R.
Ball ; and the memory of a dream that appears veridical
but added nothing to the store of the world's knowledge.
Thus, Theosophy comes to us as a rampant oc-
cultism, setting the seal of occult " knowledge " upon
its teaching of the after-life. In its " illumination " I
can find no idea that has not long been current. The
very phrases and notions seem to come straight from
Oriental or neo-Platonic literature, or from modern, but
not the latest, philosophy and science. It is the pro-
fession of its teachers that all the truth they teach has
always been in the possession of the world-sages ; they
therefore admit that it makes no original contribution.

(2) Doctrine of the Common Origin of all
Religions

We are now in a position to criticise the occult or
trance-acquired knowledge of the Theosophists as to
the essentials of religion. I have read five primers or
manuals of Theosophy. They all insist that the essen-
tials of all religions are the same, since they have been
revealed through Adepts or Mahatmas, appearing from
time to time as Prophets or Founders of the Historic
Religions, but all teaching the one Universal Religion.
But a very little real knowledge of actual religious
systems, e.g. of Old Testament Jahvehism and Buddhism,
shows that it is just in essentials that they differ most —
in their conceptions of God, and in their beliefs con-
cerning the origin and goal of man and concerning the
nature of goodness. The idea of an original Universal
Religion, the parent of all existing religions, was once
plausible, but it has been completely exploded by the
scientific study of Comparative Religion.

"The bodyof doctrine," says Mrs.Besant,"is obtained
by separating the beliefs common to all religions from
the peculiarities, specialities, rites, ceremonies, and
customs which mark off one religion from another ;

334 IMMORTALITY viii

it presents these common truths as a consensus of
world-beliefs, forming, in their entirety, the Wisdom
Religion, or the Universal Religion, the source from
which all separate religions spring, the trunk of the
Tree of Life from which they all branch forth. . . .
The community of religious teachings, ethics, stories,
symbols, ceremonies, and even the traces of these
among savages, arose from the derivation of all
religions from a common centre, from a Brotherhood of
Divine Men, which sent out one of its members into
the world from time to time to found a new religion,
containing the same essential verities as its predecessors,
but varying in form with the needs of the time, and
with the capacities of the people to whom the Messenger
was sent. . . . Comparative Mythology cannot bring
one single proof from history of a religion that has
evolved from savagery into spirituality and philosophy ;
its hypothesis is disproved by history. The Theo-
sophical view is now so widely accepted that people do
not realise how triumphant was the opposing theory,
when Theosophy again rode into the arena of the
world's thought in 1875, mounted on its new steed,
the Theosophical Society." ^

We cannot accept this view. The following passage
by Mr. C. C. J. Webb will suffice to explain both its
origin and why it must be regarded as obsolete : —

" When the distinction between Natural and Re-
vealed Religion was most in vogue, some would frankly
regard Natural Religion as that religion the truth of
whose tenets was sure and certain, as the general
agreement upon them indicated. . . . The difficulty
which thus confronted those who maintained the
value of the special doctrines of their own religion
could not be adequately met with the help of an
abstract Logic untouched by the theory of develop-
ment, which took little account in dealing with other
peoples and other ages of the different intellectual

^ Theosophy, pp. 12, 14-16.

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 335

contexts in which their statements were made, and
scarcely conceived of any relation between the different
doctrines which obtained in different periods or among
different nations, except the relations of agreement or
disagreement. With such a logic it was only possible, if
one held to the truth of the doctrines of one's own
religion, either to suppose all other doctrines simply
false, a view difficult for men of culture who were
aware how much they themselves and their religion
owed to the believers and teachers of other religions ;
or to suppose that one and the same esoteric doctrine
(whether traceable or no to one primeval ' revelation ')
had been taught unchanged in divers religions under
different phraseology. This last view does not now
recommend itself to scholars or scientific theologians,
but it has still great attractions for many who have
enjoyed only a general and unsystematic education, as
the success of the Theosophical Society and of kindred
movements sufficiently proves ; and in a former age
it was entertained by men who stood in the first rank,
of the learning and science of their day. Without
going back to the attempts of ancient thinkers like
Philo to find Platonism in the Old Testament, and
the like efforts of later theologians and philosophers,
a notion of this sort is the leading principle in a work
of vast learning and deep thought, the production of
which conferred honour on Cambridge and England
in the seventeenth century, Cudworth's Intellectual
System of the Universe ; and we may find a lingering
echo of this way of thinking in the late Mr. Gladstone's
discussion of Homeric religion in his Juventus Mundi.
. . . To advance further, it was necessary to introduce
the conception of development. . . . We have also
come to think it less profitable to study under the
name of ' natural religion ' a religion reached by
abstracting from each religion what is peculiar to it
and retaining only what is common, a religion therefore
which never really exists as the religion ot any nation

336 IMMORTALITY viii

or people. We think it better to try to understand
a real actual religion, one which has grown up with
the natural development of a people's mind, to seek
to discover why it has just the peculiarities which it has,
why in these particular respects it has departed from
some older religious system which may have preceded
it, or has opposed itself to the religious systems which
confront it in the same or neighbouring lands." ^

If what Mrs. Besant puts forth as the central tenet
of Theosophy, endorsed by her occult investigations,
has no basis in the facts as now more clearly elucidated
by the comparative study of religions, the authority of
the Theosophical Society as an exponent of occult truth
concerning the future life must be shaken.

(3) The Conception of Personality

The third point in which Theosophist teaching seems
to fail is with regard to the conception of personality.

There is in the teaching of the greater prophets and
psalmists of the Old Testament, in the teaching and
example of Jesus Christ, and in much of the religious
experience recorded in the New Testament, a concep-
tion of the relation of God and man that commands
our acceptance by its moral beauty, and that, by its
splendour and tenderness, causes the beliefs in Reincar-
nation and Karma to appear tawdry and trivial. The
main objection to these doctrines is that they belittle
personality, and that . in three ways: (i) The view
of a thread of psychic life on which different earthly
lives could be strung, like beads on a string, is an
abstraction of thought : the minimum or life principle
common to a hundred or a thousand lives does not con-
stitute personality. (2) A continuous memory is not
held to be necessary to life progress ; but we are to our-
selves and to our friends only what memory makes us.
(3) Under the law of Karma men are supposed to be

1 The Notion of Revelation, C. C. J. Webb, pp. 6-8.

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 337

punished cruelly for wrongs they do not know they
have committed ; this would be seen to be an outrage
upon dignity and freedom if God, or fate, was conceived
as respecting man's personality. When personality is
accepted as the standard of value, and exalted as an
attribute of God, the belief that the human soul in its
aeonian pilgrimage casts off a hundred different per-
sonalities, each like a soiled garment, becomes profane.

The nature of personality has always been a difficulty
to the philosopher. It will not lend itself to abstraction.
The moment it is conceived of as cut up into will and
emotion and intellect, into soul, mind, and spirit, or into
any other division, that moment it ceases to exist for
the mind who thus conceives it. The conception
becomes at once a misconception, useful for certain
purposes of dialectic, but representing nothing real.
The trend of modern philosophy is, in spite of all diffi-
culties, to emphasise personality as central to the thought
of reality. But personality only exists for man qua
father or son or brother or friend ; the philosopher,
unless he hold fast to his experience of friendship as
a basis for his search for reality, will not succeed in
retaining personality for man.

In Hindu religion, where the more primitive and now
obsolescent philosophic conceptions of the Brahmans
became dominant, friendship is belittled by asceticism,
personality becomes a thing of nought ; or perhaps
because personality is belittled by ascetical thought,
friendship is not valued. Disgust for life is esteemed
holiness. This is a natural result, for human love —
motherly, brotherly, and friendly — is the only salt
which keeps life wholesome and ever fragrant.

There are many things at which a philosophy must
necessarily stumble if it proceeds by processes of
analysis and abstraction — the freedom of the human
will ; the knowledge of God ; problems of the one and
the many, the finite and the infinite. There are things
that the human mind knows in their entirety and knows

338 IMMORTALITY viii

directly — that Is, as soon as it becomes aware of them
it knows that they are real. Personality is reality for
the soul. Love is seen to inhere in persons and to be
possible only because of individuals. God is known to
be real through His personality ; and other problems,
insoluble through any other conception of reality, are
through this one made more easy. The soul that
admits its knowledge of the distinction between persons,
knows also that the unity of homogeneity, even if
infinite, is something far lower than the possible
harmony of differentiation. The soul, even in child-
hood, knows these things. To the Hindu sage, to the
Greek philosopher, the Hebrew prophets were like un-
reflecting children ; but to us, on the contrary, it is
clear that their thought, being based on an intuitive
perception of personality as the fundamental quality
of ultimate reality, really went further and deeper.

It is curious to note how little time and place alter
this vision of the soul that has its first true religious
experience, and brings forth its criterion of personality
as the test of reality. In this matter deep answers to
deep across some twenty-five or twenty-seven centuries,
and we see moderns like Mr. Wells making, by a
personal experience of religion, the same discoveries as
were made by the Hebrew prophets. The more we
study the purer strain of Hebrew religion the more we
realise how close it is to the purer strain in, e.g.^ Mr.
Wells's conception of religion. In both we have the
insistence upon God as a veritable person ; both look to
personality at its highest for the character of God.
Thus, the prophets assert that God loathes blood-reeking
altars, and loves kindness and truth ; and Mr. Wells
cries, " God fights against death in every form . . .
against the petty death of indolence, insufficiency,
baseness, misconception, and perversion," ^ Both insist
that our knowledge of God comes from direct personal
friendship with Him. " The Lord is my shepherd . . .

1 God the Invisible King, p. 1 18.

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 339

He leads me . . . He restores my soul." ^ " 1 sought
the Lord and he heard me." ^ " God comes. ... It
is like standing side by side with and touching some one
that we love very dearly and trust completely." ^ Both,
having direct knowledge of God, are comparatively
indifferent to any complete philosophy of the universe
or any definite conception of the after-life. I am not
setting Mr. Wells and the makers of all that was best
in the Hebrew religion on a level ; I am simply showing
that where there is the true religious experience, even
in those who are agnostic concerning the after-life and
the Divine omnipotence, there is the uplifting of human
personality into the heavens, and the certainty that it
is men as persons that God personally loves. If the
abiding part of man is, as the doctrine of Reincarnation
affirms, not man at all but a mere principle of life that
may manifest itself on earth as first a mouse and then a
lion, a cannibal, a squaw, a warrior, a philosopher, a
Christian monk, a Buddhist ascetic, his God will also be
a mere principle of life, something we cannot now know
and love. The test of reality and the whole standard
of value changes and becomes "as moonlight unto sun-
light, as water unto wine " ; instead of confidence we
get fear, asceticism instead of fulness of life, benevolence
in place of friendship.

Again, how mean and dreary to us appears the
individualistic belief that each soul must suffer only for
its own sins, never for those of others, expiating all its
own sins to the uttermost through innumerable suffering
lives without God's interposition. To find a faith with
nobler appeal we need not turn to the tender experience
and reasoning of Jesus Christ ; wc find in Hebrew
literature, from the eighth century b.c. onward, a faith
concerning God's interposition on man's behalf which
convinces us of its truth because we all know that we
are most nearly divine when we can bear the burdens

' Psa. xxiii, "^ Psa. xxxiv. 4.

' God the In-visible fCing, p. 27.

340 IMMORTALITY viii

which others have incurred, and relieve them of their
sin's ill consequence, while we help to restore their
moral insight and strength.

The following passage is from an unpublished
lecture by Professor Kennett : —

" This brings me to that characteristic of the Old
Testament for which it will be valued so long as men
are seeking after God. In the Hebrew Scriptures we
have the language of perfect faith ... a certainty that
there is no wrong which God will not redress, no social
or political sore too inveterate for His healing touch,
no sorrow which He cannot comfort. To quote in
length is impossible, for the Psalms and prophetic books
must needs be quoted almost in extenso. It is enough
to suggest such utterances as these : ' God is our
refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble ;
therefore will not we fear.' ^ And this : ' He hath
swallowed up death for ever, and the Lord God will
^wipe away tears from off all faces, and the reproach of
His people shall He take away from off all the earth.' " ^

Again, we get the faith reiterated — as over against
the conception of human expiation and expiatory
sacrifice — that it is at cost to Himself that God saves.
*' In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel
of his presence saved them." ^ "I have blotted out, as
a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy
sins ; return unto me, for I have redeemed thee." *

Just as in the Old Testament religion we see a
constant struggle going on between the sacrificial cults
whose morality tended always to inhibitions and ritual
exactions, and the prophetic conception which made
friendship with God the criterion both of religion and
ethics, so in Christianity we see the same struggle going
forward ; but in Christianity a third combatant has been
added, who takes sides with the sacrificial cults, i.e.,
the Oriental monastic disciplines which had come into

' Psa. xlvi. " Isa, xxv. 8.

^ Isa. Ixiii. 9. * Isa. xliv. 22.

VIII MODERN THEOSOPHY 341

Europe through Egypt. Although, as I have said,
much teaching called Christian about Retribution — in
this life or the next — is on a lower level than the
doctrine of Karma, and some elements in our "religious"
disciplines and devotional practice are merely on a level
with Oriental monasticism, there is, in what is essentially
Christian, a religion much higher than anything to be
found in Hindu philosophy or in Theosophic teaching.
The keynote of Christianity is personality. Com-
panionship with Jesus teaches us that the open-eyed
friendship with God which prophets and psalmists sought,
is the way even to returning sinners and to little children.
Prayer becomes reasonable and confident and constant,
because the child's instinctive knowledge of the reality
of personal contacts is seen to be the entrance to, or
basis of, the heavenly wisdom, the true philosophy.
Notions of infinitude and omnipotence are seen to be
mere pale reflections of truth until they are translated
into the terms of personal Love. The power of true
majesty is seen to be attraction, not compulsion, and
hence the only remedy for sin is the influx of the
Divine Spirit of love into the soul. In the sunburst
of Christian friendship with God and man, the doctrines
of impersonal spirit and of the expiation of sin by the
suffering of the sinner are shadows that flee away.

IX
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

BY THE AUTHOR OF

"PRO CHRISTO ET ECCLESIA"

(lily dougall)

343

SYNOPSIS

PAGE

I. The Sting of Death ..... 345

Christendom has not overcome the dread of death. It is
reflected in Mediaeval miracle and mystery plays.

The attitude of Shakespeare's characters to death indicates
no certain hope.

Post-Reformation literature tells the same tale.

II. The Revival of Interest in the Future Life . . 349

This fear due to ignorance of what lies beyond the grave ;
and the ignorance largely due to lack of interest. This
lack of interest shown in philosophy and poetry.

The present desire to know more is the promise of its own
fulfilment.

III. The Path towards Discovery .... 352

Certainty concerning the after-life can be found if we seek
it by : —

A. Prayer ...... 352

The common discouragements of prayer are ex-
plained by our inability to picture the end from
the beginning, and to know what we want.
God always gives what we really want if we
only knew it.

B. A living theology ..... 356

Distinction between traditionalism and theology.
The early Christian records speak of the Chris-
tian life as a constant discovery of truth. The
doctrines of (a) The Resurrection ; (b) The
Invocation of Saints 5 (c) The Communion of
Saints.

C. Reinterpretation of experience . . . 364

By a more careful interpretation of our inward
experience we find evidence that the next life
interpenetrates this. Colloquy illustrating two
ways of seeking communion with our dead.

D. Consideration of the goal of existence . . 367

Two conceptions of this goal : (i) absorption into
God — a state without individual distinctions or
activities ; (2) ever-increasing friendship with
God — a social state in which personal distinc-
tion attains its fullest development.

The trend of biological progress, and the
fact that the ideal community is only realised
through more complete individuality, suggest
that the second is the truer conception of the
goal.

344

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

I. The Sting of Death

" O Death, where is thy sting ! " St. Paul made
this exclamation in exaltation of spirit when writing in
passionate, poetic joy of the Christian doctrine of the
Resurrection. But is the fear of the grave vanquished ?
Has death no sting ? We shut it out of our minds,
and busy ourselves with other thoughts. We hypnotise
ourselves with religious or philosophic maxims which we
mistake for insipid truisms until we find ourselves i^ice
to face with the contrasting realities of life and death ;
then how many of us can feel St. Paul's thrill of
triumph ?

In the heart of Christendom, a thousand years
after St. Paul's martyrdom, we come upon miracle and
mystery plays better calculated to instil the terror of
death than the peace of God. Sometimes they rise to
the level of real poetry which comes from the heart.

Mors cxecrabilis !
Mors detcstabilis !
Mors mihi flcbilis !
Fratris interitus
Gravis et subitus
Est causa gcmitus.

Thus sings Martha at the death of Lazarus, and the
chorus of consoling Jews answers : —

345

346 IMMORTALITY ix

Non per tales lacrimas
Visum fuit animas

Redisse corporibus.
Cessent ergo lacrimae
Quae defunctis minime

Proderunt hominibus.

But there is nothing in the latter part of the play
that comes home to the common heart as this does.
Although one would expect the Christian triumph to
come with poetic conviction, there is no later verse that
rings with the energy and poignancy of this opening.

When the truths of Christianity had for several
centuries been taught to the people by such plays, by
sermons and services in the splendid churches that were
built in every locality, by instruction from populous
convents and monasteries which stood in almost every
fertile vale, how stood the mind of the common people
concerning death ? If death for them had lost its sting,
confidence in the life after death would by Shakespeare's
time have become a common sentiment. It would have
been taught to little children in those household maxims
which become the warp of thought of which after-experi-
ence is but the woof-thread. Had Christian joy in the
life after death been the common attitude, Shakespeare
must have put it into the mouth of many dramatic
characters. But this triumph of faith is not echoed
from play to play as some other serious sentiments of
even a more recondite nature are echoed. The con-
fidence that a good conscience gives in battle, the
superiority of mercy to retributive justice, are thus
echoed ; but the attitude of man toward death — what
is it .?

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest, Act IV. Sc. i.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where.

Measure for Measure, Act III. Sc. i.

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 347

The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

Ibid.

. . . the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country. . . .

Hamlet, Act III. Sc. i.

... all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. . . .
Life's but a walking shadow.

Macbeth, Act V. Sc. v.

A century of Protestantism does not seem to have
much altered the attitude of mind towards death. In
The New England Primer for Children, published in
1737 we get,

Our days begin with trouble here.

Our life is but a span,
And cruel death is always near.

So frail a thing is man.

When Steele in The Tatler writes a paper on " Sad
Memories," it is of one bereavement after another that
he writes, and there is no suggestion of resurrection.
The first was his father's death : —

" I remember I went into the room where his body
lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had
my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin,
and calling papa ; for, I know not how, I had some
slight idea that he was locked up there. My mother
catched me in her arms, and, transported beyond all
patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost
smothered me in her embraces ; and told me in a flood
of tears, ' Papa could not hear me, and would play
with me no more, for they were going to put him
underground, whence he could never come to us again.'
She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and
there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness
of her transport ; which, methought, struck me with

348 IMMORTALITY ix

an instinct of sorrow, that, before I was sensible of
what it was to grieve, seized my very soul."

And if we turn to the last optimistic century, and
the most popular poet of the most optimistic of nations,
we are told that : —

The air is full of farewells to the dying.
And mournings for the dead.

And this even in the same set of verses in which he
assures us : —

There is no death ! What seems so is transition,

Longfellow, " Resignation."

Of all Tennyson's poetry, the first part of " In
Memoriam," which voices passionate grief, is the
truest poetry. It is here alone that he reaches that
region in which poetry unerringly reveals to men their
own thoughts and emotions. The later part of the
poem contains a metaphysical argument that falls below
the level of much of his other verse, wanting the touch
of reality.

How varied are the sentiments we hear read at the
burial of the dead ! No one can say that the sting of
the unknown or the sorrow of bereavement is removed
by the teaching of that service. Contrast the misery
of Psalm xxxix. with the triumphant expression of St.
Paul's faith in i Cor. xv. ; and the committal sentences,
" In the midst of life we are in death : of whom may
we seek succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our
sins art justly displeased , . , deliver us not into the
bitter pains of eternal death," with the expression of
the '*sure and certain hope" which follows. The
misery obliterates any certainty of hope. It is quite
impossible that, if the soul of the common people were
really and habitually rejoicing in the victory over death,
the service could remain in use as it now is in the Book
of Common Prayer. The sting of death remains.
Much as we wish to determinedly claim that genuine

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 349

Christianity overcomes all uneasiness in face of the
unknown, solaces all passionate grief, we can only
truthfully assert that for certain favoured souls it does ;
and it is because they have discovered for themselves
some assurance, some certainty, some glimpse into the
beauty of the unseen, that is not the possession of the
majority. The average friendship or domestic tie does
not long survive death. It is forgotten, and the heart
becomes apathetic to it, because there is no vivid sense
that the friend in the unseen is still the same and can
still remember. In quiet hours memories of the lost
recur, and " never again " rings through the soul in
thoughts that lie too deep for tears. Neither the
Christian Catholicism of the first fifteen hundred years,
nor the Christian Protestantism of the last five hundred
years, nor Atheism, nor Agnosticism, nor any form of
free thought has given to the common sensitive man
in the common street or the common field, lightness of
heart concerning the death of his beloved or in face of
his own certain end.

This condition ought not to continue. If Christi-
anity is to be justified Christians must attain to a new
outlook upon the country beyond the grave.

II. The Revival of Interest in the Future Life

The cause of our lack of confidence in face of death
is ignorance. The cause of our ignorance is largely
that we have not sought importunately to know more
than we do of the soul's further pilgrimage and its
goal. Until recently the majority have accepted as
final, unsatisfying traditions concerning the nature of
the future life which the enlightened minority have
declared to be discredited. No one enquires into
matters that are thought to be finally settled, or that
are not worth knowing. But for the last three-quarters
of a century a change has been coming over religious
thought. Any long-established religion is liable to be

350 IMMORTALITY ix

conservative and slow to move, and the (to us) curious
lack of interest shown by the Christianity of the last
few centuries in the future life is in harmony with the
fact that its accredited teachers, until quite lately,
discouraged all speculative thought on the subject.
But this lack of interest was quite genuine in the
common mind, and was not imposed by religious
dogma ; rather, the dogma was the result of previous
lack of interest. No one will accuse the philosophers
or poets of the nineteenth century of slavery to
dogmatism, yet their lack of interest in this subject is
obvious. We give only two illustrations out of many.
Dr. McTaggart ^ discusses the fact that "Hegel treats
at great length of the nature, the duties, the hopes, of
human society, without paying the least attention to
his own belief that, for each of the men who compose
that society, life in it is but an infinitesimal fragment
of his whole existence, a fragment which can have no
meaning except in its relation to the whole " ; and Dr.
McTaggart asks, " Can we believe he really held a
doctrine which he neglected in this manner ^ " He
goes on to show that Hegel's honesty and the explicit
statements of his belief in immortality prove he did
hold it, and adds : " The real explanation, I think,
must be found elsewhere. The fact is that Hegel
does not seem much interested in the question of
immortality," and proves this by showing that, while
he held the doctrine he made no use of it. Observe,
again, the obvious lack of interest in the conditions of
the after-life in Wordsworth's " Ode," written con-
fessedly on " Immortality," and contrast this with
Tennyson's eager speculations on the future.

This interest, growing for fifty years, has now
become acute and all but universal. A vast death-
dealing conflict of nations has stung both the world
and the Church into consciousness of their former
apathy.

^ Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 5.

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 351

In other regions of knowledge the desire for truth,
and lively speculation upon a problem, have always
preceded discovery ; and if we believe that all truth is
of God we must believe all desire for it to be inspired
by Him, and that persistent effort in its quest never
exists without the co-operation of the Divine Spirit,
and is therefore bound to succeed. We may well
believe this even though truth, when found, be long
sneered at or neglected or even utilised by some for
bad purposes, for it is the law of our life that all good
things may by man's free choice be either neglected
or abused. If we look back through history we shall
see that it is the seeking communities that have found,
and that to those who in divine discontent have
hammered on the door of truth that door has opened.
It was because the Greek sought after wisdom and
beauty that his nation created the intellectual and
aesthetic tradition of Europe ; it was because there
was always left a " seven thousand in Israel " who sought
first after righteousness and the knowledge of God that
the Christ was born a Jew.

If this be so, we have now every encouragement to
hope that we shall receive new enlightenment with
regard to the future life if we seek it in the right way.

We have seen that some expect to obtain scientific
certainty as to the survival of departed friends through
the channels of psychical research. But even if this
were obtained, it would be merely a bald fact that
would at best only bring reasonable conviction of
exactly what was proved and no more. It would also
rouse in us a thousand more disquieting questions.

What we need in this matter is the sort of satisfying
knowledge that cannot receive scientific proof, but is
none the less assured for that. In this life we know
that our friends will continue to love us ; we know
that Truth and Beauty have objective reality — that they
exist independently of us and that we shall learn more
and more of them. But this knowledge is not based on

352 IMMORTALITY ix

the empirical evidence with which science deals. Yet
how certain we are of these things, what deep joy
these certainties give !

It is this sort of intuitive certainty that we want
to acquire concerning the continuance of the soul
after death with unimpaired powers and personal
distinction. We wish to know that life after death
is an enterprise continuous with this, an enterprise
bringing ever- increasing powers of character, ever-
increasing discoveries of truth and beauty and love,
ever-increasing diversity of experience and consequently
of personality. Now all this is for us included in
the conception of increasing knowledge of God, in
the approach to the direct vision of God, in our
conception of life in Him. We can argue about this
conception of the next life ; we can convince our-
selves in certain hours that it must be so ; but we want
to have the assurance of it, the unquestioning realisa-
tion of it ; just as we have the unquestioning, realisa-
tion, in earthly things, of the objectiveness of beauty,
or of the loyalty of love, or, in things of religion,
that God, of whom we are conscious, is friendly to
us and to all mankind.

III. The Path towards Discovery

But how are we to attain to this unquestioning
conviction .?

I believe that God will give us assurance concerning
the life after death if we seek it by confidence of
prayer and by travail of thought. This means that
four things are required — prayer rightly understood ;
a living theology ; a truer interpretation of experience ;
and a consideration of the goal of our existence.

Prayer

First, we need prayer ; but it must be the prayer
of faith. Most of us have little faith in prayer.

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 353

We fix our minds on something we want to get
from God, or on the hope for instruction about
something we want to do. We picture to ourselves
the thing we ask. We ask for it first with complete
expectation that we shall have what we picture ; then,
when the answer tarries, with entreaty and some persist-
ence. We may not get what we have pictured to
ourselves ; then we are discouraged. What child has
not gone through this experience ? After that come
explanations from religious teachers, by which the things
which Jesus said about prayer are explained away.
Some teachers tell us that we shall seldom get what we
want, but that we must go on praying because it is
a duty, and God will give us spiritual endowments by
which we can successfully meet the lack of those good
things for which we ask Him. They also explain
that even such dutiful prayer is only to be offered
according to certain elaborate conditions of self-abase-
ment. At this explanation those who have made
childlike prayers divide into three classes. The first
class turn away, for they feel that they have been
offered a stone for bread ; or, if they continue to pray,
they seek vaguely for a good they do not attempt to
picture, and in their habits of prayer they do not
lay hold of God for any special purpose. The second
class make a habit of repeating definite prayers without
expecting much result. They have not the faith that
will bring light to the world. The third, and much
the smallest class, give themselves to realising the
conditions laid down, and praying with ardour and
expectation for what they believe to be purely spiritual
gifts, but in doing so they seek to belittle human
spontaneity and natural affection,

I do not think that such explanations are true or
right. What Jesus taught about prayer is meaningless
if what God sees to be good for us is usually the
thwarting of our natural wishes. God is more than
able to give Himself with every gift we ask for, so that

2 A

354 IMMORTALITY ix

each gift becomes a sacrament of His grace. Prayer
that has not the momentum of impulse and spontaneous
desire, and does not leap forward with the hope of
gratification, will never attain its full growth, or serve
us in such hours of the world's need as we experience
to-day. The reason that we do not get what we expect
when we pray is that our expectation of future circum-
stances is always fallacious. When men set aside all
natural desire, and pray for some spiritual benefit for
themselves, or others, or for the world, they do not get
what they definitely expect any more than in simpler
prayers for other delights. And if we turn at any
point to the process of life, and look at it with candid
eyes, we shall see that the end which any one proposes
as the result of a course of action is very different
from the end he achieves ; and this is most true
when the course of action is most successful. If
any of us look back to our own childhood or youth,
and can remember the vivid pictures we often painted
for ourselves of future joys, together with the reality
that happened along the line of our expectation, we
shall see how different was the real joy from the
imaginary, even when quite satisfying. We shall
realise that the mental picture was more often than
not tawdry and artificial. Memory is short ; we
are not conscious of any feeling of disappointment
when we enjoy something quite different from what
we anticipated. But if our mind remained fixed on
our first expectations, we should always be disappointed.
It is true of life generally that the eye of the mind
hath not seen, nor the ear of the mind heard, the things
that the future has really in store. But in prayer our
expectations, because of repetition, remain more fixed,
and we expect a speedy realisation, an artificial notion
of Divine omnipotence rendering us unreasonable. A
mother, if omnipotent, would not give her child what
it cries for when it cries for the moon ; she would
give it a yellow ball, for that is what it really wants.

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 355

The important truth — the real explanation of
disappointment in prayer — is that what we picture in
our mood of hope is seldom what we should hope for if
we understood our real desires. A child cries for a
complex and difficult toy ; but what he wants is the sort
of pleasure the toy would give if he were mature enough
to take care of it and understand how to work it.
The pleasure he desires can only be given through
another plaything. A man pictures himself as happy
with a certain woman for his wife, but what he really
wants is a mated happiness which might or might
not be possible with her. Or if it is merely mated
happiness he pictures, he may want other things more
which would be incompatible with it. And so with
all the round of life : God could not give us what
we want if He gave us what we think we want. So
in prayer : there is no evidence that the good we
really want when we pray, is not given to us just as
quickly as it is possible for us to assimilate it to
our other benefits and enjoy it. Faith realises that
we live and move and have our being in the love
of God, just as a long-wished- for babe lives and moves
and has its being in its parents' love. It is impossible
for us to turn the attention of our souls toward God
without receiving, when burdened with any desire,
the gratification of the desire. That is what Jesus
said, and it is absolutely and unreservedly true. But
we must realise that in prayer, as in every other
aspect of our life, we have consciously but a dim
knowledge of the end we have in view. In the ordinary
affairs of life, if we form no picture of the ends we
have in view, and seek not to attain them, we shall
become futile. So in prayer some definite picture of
what we want is necessary, even though we recognise
that the picture may have but a distant likeness to
what we really and whole-heartedly desire.

It is only when we realise that prayer never fails
that we can have faith. It is because prayer never

2S6 IMMORTALITY ix

fails that we should betake ourselves to prayer, when
we feel the burden of ignorance about the undiscovered
country beyond the grave. What do we want when
we are in this sorrow ? We want to know that those
who were so kind and attractive and pleasant when
with us are alive and well and making good progress
in another country^ that no loss of memory or com-
prehension separates their minds from ours ; that when
we go to them they will still be the same to us, but
better off for the experiences of the years of separation.
We do not dress in black, or subdue our laughter
because a son or father, a daughter or friend, has gone
to fill some good appointment in a far land, where
we conceive that love and character and fortune may
mature before we clasp hands with them again. It is
this that we want to know about our dead. Let us,
then, take our wants passionately to God, assured that
He will give us, not any detailed pieces of information,
but something more and better than we can ask or think.
He will give us increasing knowledge of Himself, and,
included in that, increasing knowledge of our dead.

^ Living Theology

The great Christian theologians, each in his own day,
pushed forward the faith by their whole individual might
of intellectual travail. They have left us a splendid
heritage. But when Christian theology becomes tradi-
tionalism and men fail to hold and use it as they do
a living language, it becomes an obstacle, not a help
to religious conviction. To the greatest of the early
Fathers and the great scholastics theology was a lan-
guage which, like all language, had a grammar and a
vocabulary from the past, but which they used to
express all the knowledge and experience of their own
time as well. They enlarged its vocabulary ; they
modified its grammar. But in this particular of helping
the common man to rejoice in the sure knowledge of

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 357

the immortal life, their lack of knowledge — e.g. of the
origin of the Apocalyptic imagery — hampered them,
and they had only a very partial success. And yet it
is probable that in their time the ordinary, unlearned
Christian, with the priest at his bedside, felt more
complacency as to the death of his dear ones or of
himself than did his heathen forefathers. But since
Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summa a world of new
knowledge has swum into our ken ; and the tradi-
tionalism which refuses to assimilate this into the
splendid structure of Christian theology has been
rampant.

This distinction between living Christian theology
and traditionalism is of the greatest importance. Just
as a language that expresses a great civilisation is a
great mental achievement, inspired by the Spirit, built
up by the many, and greatly advanced by each genius
who uses it, so is the theology of any honest religion ;
and of all religions the most intellectual, the most finely
thought out, is Christianity ; the classical Christian
theology was the greatest of all the structural growths
of human thought about God and man. But we must
cease any longer to acquiesce in the teaching of Chris-
tianity as a dead language. It is as a dead language
that the multitudes to-day have been taught the doctrine
of the Resurrection. And because of this they have
not learned the truth as it is in Christ about death, or
at least have learned but a small portion of it.

Christ came to give us unbounded hope and con-
fidence in the willingness of God to impart fresh truth.
At the end of the first Christian age the most thought-
ful of our Lord's followers interpreted His teaching
thus : —

"Truly, truly, I tell you all, you shall see heaven
open wide, and God's angels ascending and descending
upon the Son of Man." ^

" Truly, truly, I tell you, he who believes in me will

1 John i. 51, Moffatt's trans.

358 IMMORTALITY ix

do the very deeds I do, and still greater deeds than
these. For I am going to the Father, and I will do
whatever you ask in my name." ^

" I have still much to say to you, but you cannot
bear it just now. However, when the Spirit of Truth
comes he will lead you all to the truth, for he will not
speak of his own accord, he will say whatever he is
told ... he will draw upon what is mine and disclose
It to you.

In the Synoptic Gospels we see Jesus declaring in all
the ways in which it is possible to speak that those who
seek to understand have free access to the wisdom of
heaven. '*Ask, and it shall be given." The least in
His Kingdom is said by Jesus to be greater than the
greatest prophets of a former age. To His followers
He says, " Unto you it is given to know the mysteries
of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he
shall have abundance." ^

The first friends of Jesus bear witness to the spirit
of wisdom and knowledge which they believe to be the
gift of the risen Christ. Thus in Acts, St. Peter says
to the chief priests, " We are his witnesses, and so is
also the Holy Ghost whom God has given to them
that obey him." ^ And St. Paul to the Corinthians
says, *' But the manifestation of the spirit is given to
every man to profit withal. For to one is given
by the spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word
of knowledge by the same spirit."^ In the bene-
diction that ends 2 Peter believers are bidden to '' grow
in grace and in knowledge." St. Paul desires for the
Philippians " that your love may abound yet more and
more in knowledge and all discernment ; so that ye
may try the things that differ." ^ In the comparatively
brief writings of the New Testament the number of

1 John xiv. 12, Moftatt's trans.
2 John xvi, 12-13, Hid. ^ Matt. xiii. 11-12.

* Acts V. 32. ^ I Cor. xii. 7-8. ^ Philipp. i. 9-10.

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 359

passages in which the Spirit of Christ is associated with
increasing knowledge and increasing understanding is
so striking a feature that it is surprising that the vital
connection between the possession of the Christian spirit
and increasing knowledge ever became obscured or
denied.

Again, if we are seeking, daily praying and knocking
upon the door of heaven, for more abundant knowledge
concerning the life after death, let us note that Jesus
clearly said that truth can only be shown to " whosoever
hath ears to hear." Are we listening — listening intently
to Truth, who is always speaking in the " still small
voice " of the mind.^ — to Truth, who is always speaking
parables in the science of history and in the discoveries
of science concerning all that world that lies open to our
physical sense .'' Just as it is the province of science to
find out what the facts of life are, to classify them and
use them to verify or discredit whatever theory may
have been advanced concerning them, so it is the
province of a living theology to be constantly seeking
from God the wit and wisdom that will interpret anew
and more truly the parable of life.

We cannot do more here than give three illustra-
tions of the way in which accepted Christian doctrines
may be cross-examined in such a way that they may
yield increasing help on the problem of the immortal
life, taking as examples the doctrines of the Resurrec-
tion, the Invocation of Saints, and the Communion of
Saints.

Christian theology has always insisted that on His
Resurrection our Lord took His humanity into the
next world. As we believe that on earth He lived
manifesting the ideal humanity, we must believe that
it was the ideal humanity that He manifested in His
passage into the next world. Years after He had died
St. Paul believed himself to see Him and speak to
Him again and again. St. Paul was not alone in this :
immediately after our Lord's death His closest friends

36o IMMORTALITY ix

appear frequently to have seen Him and known Him.
In the early Christian records we have very vivid pic-
tures of such experiences. Nor have we any real reason
to suppose that this power in Jesus Christ to make
Himself known to men on earth in any way diminished
as time passed on earth. All down the centuries cer-
tain faithful souls have given witness to the same sort
of experience, and notably in the foreign mission-field
to-day it is possible to find innumerable humble workers
with whom awareness of their Lord's presence and
inward conversation with Him is a vivid and common
experience. We may, if we will, believe that the com-
munion Jesus held with His followers after His death was
telepathic, but that the strength of His spirit and His
love were such that He could give clearer and stronger
impressions of His presence than other spirits can ; or
we may, if we please, believe that all spirits in the next
world clothe themselves in some ethereal form, and that
He had the power to make this form manifest while
faith was very weak ; but the truth we must perceive
to be essential is that this power to make Himself
known and to re-create the flagging spirits of His
friends is associated with the unique moral and spiritual
achievement of His life ; which suggests that the men
and women who come nearest to the moral and spiritual
level of His life here will be those who have most
power in the beyond to touch and help the friends they
have left and all who in all times are working for the
reign of God.

The author of the Fourth Gospel reports His Master
as saying just before His death to His disciples :
" Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know . . .
I am the Way." This strongly suggests that the way
in which in the after-life He lived in ever closer fellow-
ship with His followers on earth has a bearing on the
problem of our own passing into the next life, on the
conditions in which we shall exist there, and upon what
sort of conduct here will enhance our future powers of

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 361

living in communion with our friends on earth. The
outstanding idea we seem to gather from our Lord's
example and teaching is that the better and nobler the
life here the more closely it will be associated with the
helping of humanity after death. The assumption of
Oriental speculation that the reverse is the case is
founded upon belief in the inherent evil of matter, and
the consequent belief that time and progress must free
the spirit more and more from association with it. But
Christian experience is Hke the sunshine of spring, which
glorifies all matter, causing it to break forth into bloom
and song ; and it teaches that the higher and stronger
the flight of a human spirit into the heavens, the more
it is able to return upon the rays of divine light and
bless the earth.

In the practice of the Invocation of Saints Christian
consciousness has witnessed to the belief that they who
have attained some special degree of grace upon earth
are able in the after-life to hear the prayers of the
living and to give them wisdom and aid. Where we
think this doctrine has become artificial and uncon-
vincing is in the assumption that any earthly organisation
has the insight to decide who are or are not the best
men and women, together with the assumption that
God is such that we need them as mediators of our
prayers to Him. We find that canonisation has often
been decided by a standard of values which we cannot,
in this age of the world, acknowledge. It is not that
many of these canonised saints have not lived most
nobly, but that we are sure that hundreds of men and
women, whose lives have made little appeal to the
admiration of the official Church, have Hved as nobly
and in as close communion with God, If the power
to return and bless the earth, and cheer and elevate
children and children's children, is the reward of moral
achievement, these also must have won the power.
Just as all who live nobly on earth in manifesting their
truth and love to us manifest God, so any of these who

362 IMMORTALITY

have passed beyond the reach of our senses may touch
our souls and manifest God to us in other ways. We
all know Browning's verses entitled "Apparitions," in
which beauty is revealed to him in a flower, hope in a
star, and God in a human face. Such apparitions of
beauty on earth are of Heaven, and the beauty that
may come to us in the silent experience of the soul by
the touch of some noble discarnate spirit will be also
of God. Such unseen " apparitions " as are the mani-
festation of God in the medium through which He
chooses to appear bear no relation to those unhappy
" ghosts " that are supposed to haunt certain localities
or certain people, and as a fact engender only moods of
fear and curiosity. Our reasons for doubting whether
these bear evidence to the presence of discarnate spirits
have been already given. ^

Let us now consider what fresh light on our problem
the doctrine of " the Communion of Saints " may yield.

In an essay in Concerning Prayer^ I have en-
deavoured to show that because salvation for humanity
must be a social salvation, the communion of saints, or
the ties which bind together human society in the next
life and in this, ought to be realised in our thoughts
and in our prayers. We must reflect that fellowship is
of the very essence of Christianity, and we cannot
perfectly realise fellowship with the living if we do not
regard friendship as something stronger than death,
something unimpaired by death. It is true of every
spiritual or social development that it takes its tone
and standard from the end in view, and if we look
forward to the truncating of any friendship by death,
or to its sudden vapouring off into something incon-
ceivable, its whole standard will be lower, much lower,
than if we realise the meaning of the communion of
souls in this life and the next. This will also be true
of our wider social friendships. How different would be
our service to the cause of " the poor," " the drunkard,"

^ Essay VII. p. 278. ^ Essay on " Prayer for the Dead."

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 363

" the prostitute," or " the party politician," if we realised
the certainty of meeting each now unknown person
benefited or injured by our efforts, and discussing our
motives and methods with them in a future life in
which all concealment had become impossible, and in
which their welfare and ours were plainly inter-
dependent. It is not left to us to choose whether our
salvation shall be social or not ; we are born into a
bond far closer than that of earthly kindred — a tele-
pathic bond including every other human soul. Their
thoughts, their feelings, their acts of will, are woven
into the mental atmosphere in which we live, whether
we will or no. We inherit our very thoughts and
feehngs from all past generations ; the knowledge that
they have accumulated is the very breath of our minds ;
and if man is immortal, as we believe, they all await us
in another world, where, if such evidence as we now
have of telepathy be any promise for the future,^ our
connection with them will be far closer than it is now,
so that our fate will be still more closely bound up
with theirs. It therefore not only behoves us to desire
to know more concerning the social nature of our
salvation both here and hereafter, but to pray for the
welfare of those who have passed into the unseen as
we pray for our own.

Along similar lines other of the tenets of Christian
theology might, if interrogated, help us to a clearer know-
ledge of the after-life. They are rich in truths that lie
undeveloped, and the work of many minds is needed for
their development. In late centuries the Church has
been all too remiss. A contemporary writer observes :

'* The conception of immortality brought to light in
the Gospel . . . such a reinforcement, and enrichment,
and intensity of life beyond the grave as no language
can describe, no imagination picture forth . . . was the
' hope of glory,' begun in foretaste here. . . . Not
mere continuance of such a life, even at its best, as we

1 Cf. Essay III. p. no.

364 IMMORTALITY ix

now enjoy ; but a full realisation of what comes to us
here only in inspired moments, in ecstatic foreshadow-
ings, in dreams and visions of the soul. . . . The
Resurrection Life of Jesus was the morning-star of this
glorious day. This it was that set the seal on his
promise that where he was they should be also, and
filled them all with such confidence. ... It is strange,
but true, that the Christian Church has only realised
at rare intervals in its long history the splendour of
this vision, and has lived under its inspiration only by
fits and starts." ^

We must hope and pray that our modern theologians
may take heart of grace and help the questioning world.

Reinterpretation of Experience

Theology deals chiefly with the religious experience
of the past, and the interpretation that great thinkers
give to that experience ; but we have also our own
present experience to interrogate.

Let us, then, candidly ask whether this life is really
in our experience as much cut off from the next as we
are apt to believe.

It is quite possible that we have made an entire
mistake in supposing that the souls of our dead friends
are cut off from us. When a soul develops the God
consciousness it finds God continually within and with-
out; communion with God becomes a constant and
familiar reality. It is not to be imagined that God
was not with such a soul before, as well as after, its
awakening. Just so, it is at least possible that our
souls may have communion with the discarnate souls
of those they have loved on earth, but may be unaware
of the fact, for we overlook many things in our lives
till we obtain some new light upon their nature and
importance.

I would like to illustrate what I mean by tran-

^ Faith and Immortality, by Dr. E. Griffith- Jones, pp. 305-307.

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 365

scribing what I believe to embody a true experience.
It is a colloquy between a widow and a modern vicar.
The latter, having lost his only daughter at the same
time as his son was killed in the war, had been plunged
into depression and had received great comfort from
visiting a medium through whose lips he believed he
had caught characteristic messages from his children.
In paying a visit he spoke of this in confidence to the
widow, saying at the same time how inadequate he had
found the ordinary consolations of religion.

" Well," said she, " when I was young I lost my
husband. I was mad with grief. He was all the
world to me, and I was a silly little, thing without
much religion and with almost no faith ; and I had
the children to bring up, and no one to help me. I
just raged against God for taking my James from me.
So when the parson came I raged at him for calling a
God like that good. All he said was, ' I don't know
whether your husband's death was God's will or not.
It may have happened because of the sinful condition
of the world ; but of one thing I am quite sure, and
that is that it is God's will to be your Comforter.' "

" Yes," said the vicar, " we all say that, but comfort
sometimes comes through indirect channels, and I think
that in Spiritualism God may be guiding us to find
such a channel. Did you find the comfort of which he
spoke .'' "

" I will tell you what happened if you care to know,"
said the widow. " I didn't believe I should get comfort
his way. I was angry at heart, but I was honest. I
asked the parson how God could comfort me, and he
said that God could be to me all that my husband had
been, and more. I was so angry that I got in the way
of defying God in my heart. A dozen times a day,
when I wanted my husband, I would say to God, * Now
and here, this is what I need, and you can't give it to
me.' Perhaps it would be advice I wanted ; perhaps
I wanted to show my husband how bonny the children

366 IMMORTALITY ix

were ; perhaps I wanted to tell him of the clever things
they said ; or perhaps I was tired and wanted a hand
to help. I thought this was a wicked habit of mine,
telling God that He couldn't meet my needs. But after
a while I came somehow to feel that God liked the
honesty of it. Sometimes I seemed to think quite
suddenly and unexpectedly of the Lord Christ looking
at me with a twinkle in His eye " — she paused for a
few moments. " It was just wonderful how, some way
or other, after a few months the world was all full of
God for me. I was very young and foolish, and I am
none too wise now, but I have known a secret since
that time that I can't put into words. But what I
was going to tell you when I began was something else.
It was one day a year after my husband died, and I
went out with God into the garden to get some flowers
to put on his grave, and there, suddenly, I knew that
my husband himself was there with me in the garden —
just himself, only braver and stronger and more happy
than I had ever known him."

" Did you see anything .? " asked the vicar.

" Oh no. I thank God I have always kept my five
wits about me. If the sort of form he had were the
kind my eyes could see, of course I should see him all
the time, and not occasionally standing about like a
silly ghost."

" Did you hear anything ? " enquired the vicar.

" No, I didn't. How could I hear what I couldn't
see :

" How did you know that he was there .'' " asked
the vicar.

" I don't know how I knew — but I knew ; and
times and times since I have known ; and if you want
any proof that what I tell you is true, I should say.
Apply the old test — look for the fruits ! Look at my
children. Do you think the foolish undisciplined girl
that I was could have trained and taught them as they
have been trained and taught .'' What I think is that

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 367

whatever comfort you got through your medium, I got
a better form of comfort, for I found God and my
husband too."

Afterwards, in speaking about it, the vicar remarked
that she was evidently an unusual woman, spiritually
minded, healthy and intelligent ; but he added that
he also thought she had a lively imagination, and he
questioned the veridical nature of her experiences. As
for me, I question the veridical nature of his ; I do not
find his evidence at all convincing.

The Goal of Existence

We have seen that in our knocking at the door
of knowledge concerning the life after death we must
seek to enter into the past of Christian experience and
its interpretation, and that we must also seek to enter
with more intelligence and patience into the present
experience of the inner life. Lastly, it is evident that
whatever we may learn about the goal of our existence
must throw light upon our relations here and hereafter,
and the relation between the here and hereafter.

There are two distinct conceptions of the ultimate
future of man ; the one seems to be founded upon the
ecstasy of mystic vision, the other upon the experience
of the excellence of fellowship or friendship. In the
one conception high Heaven is a rapture in which all
particulars are fused into the Infinite : in the other
the Heavenly state is social, emphasising personal
distinctions. Let us consider these two ideals in more
detail.

The irradiation of the inner vision when the soul
first becomes conscious of God is an experience in
comparison with which all other aspects of life seem
partial and poor. When a man is not brought up in
the God-consciousness — which a child ought to share
with its mother from the dawn of life — the first hour
of his consciousness of God is often ecstatic. In it

368 IMMORTALITY ix

the power of thought fails ; hence all distinctions are
blurred, and the new experience of self-devotion or
self-forgetfulness which the thought of God evokes is
confused with the loss of all outline, all character, all
individuality, in the sense of infinitude.^ This failure
of the power of thought in times of great emotion is a
consequence of our insufficiency. We are, as yet, too
weak, too undeveloped, to feel greatly and to think
clearly at the same time. One transcendent idea pro-
duces a state of mental rest, necessary to our feebleness,
since the rhythm of our immature lives is as yet slow.^
But because this is our beginning in the apprehen-
sion of God, it is a mistake to suppose it to be the
goal. This mistake arises from our confusion of God
— whom we dimly perceive, and the clear apprehension
of whom is our goal — with the effect upon our weak-
ness of perceiving Him. God is the beauty from
which all beauty comes, the truth in which all truth
centres. He imparts the health, the mirth, the energy
of life, because these are His attributes. He is also
the personality in whose love our personal characters
become worthy. Thus, when we first become personally
aware of His beauty and delightfulness, thought fails ;
nor are we conscious of volition, but only of being
attracted and of His attraction. But this incapacity of
ours to think clearly, to will strongly, while we feel
intense attraction, is not the supreme good. God is
the supreme good, not the failure of thought and will
in our undeveloped nature which is so often involved
in our glimpses of Him. Yet some mystics, in all
ages, have mistaken the failure of thought and will, in
contemplation, for the highest good, because they have
confused the perfection of that which is adorable
with the imperfection of the adoration. They have
sought to return again and again to the beginning,
mistaking it for the goal. They have sought, con-
sciously or unconsciously, to acquire a habit of this

1 Cf. Essay II. p. 38. ^ Cf. Essay VIII. pp. 329-330.

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 369

fainting of reason and will before the vision of God.
They have sought to conceive of the abeyance of
thought and will as eternal. Strong natures who have
made this mistake have held other strong beliefs about
God which are not compatible with it. They did not
see the incompatibility, and by their conscious com-
munion with God their personalities became lusty, their
individuality clearly defined, their activities widespread
and beneficent. These were the great mystics, and
while they speak of the immortal life in phrases which
suggest absorption into God, they do not teach either
the future annihilation of the self or the intolerable
emptiness of an existence that approaches the Nirvana
of the Orientals. But to weaker natures the mistake
of believing contemplation which has no intellectual
content ^ to be the goal of the religious life, is fatal ;
and under the delusion we see men and women whose
wills become weaker, whose thoughts become more
and more shallow, whose virtues are largely negative,
and whose prayers seem ineffectual. Their lives, on
the whole — judged by any liberal standard of human
responsibility in face of the world's need — are less
worthy than the average life of men and women who
have declared that they have no consciousness of such
a God as this worship indicates, and no desire to
participate in the worship.

Again, the belief that we at our highest fall back into
God, as a planet might fall back into the sun and
become indistinguishable from the sun, is fostered by
our natural inability to reconcile the finite and infinite
or time and eternity. We cannot think of God as
personal and as infinite at the same time ; we cannot
think of Him as the All, embracing both good and
evil, and at the same time think of Him as the Good.
Argument is useless here, because we are on the bed-
rock of things that underlie all argument. By sophisti-
cation we may indeed argue any of our natural certainties

' Cf. Essay VIM. pp. 331-332.

2 B

370 IMMORTALITY ix

out of consciousness, but they come back to us when
we consult truth in simplicity and silence. Our hearts
tell us that God is personal ; if we know Him we
know that He is our Friend : our reason tells us that
God is infinite : our own power to will tells us that
God, too, makes choice between good and evil — that
He chooses good and not evil. All these truths come
to us as the voice of God in the soul. Dispute them
for a time we may, but they return upon us in the first
uprush from the depth of that part of our mind lying
below consciousness. Argue as we will, sophisticate
ourselves as we will, degrade ourselves as we will,
yet in the first quiet hour when we listen to the voice
of truth in our souls we know that evil exists, and that
God is good and not evil. Now, because, in our
immaturity, we cannot reconcile God's personality and
goodness with His infinitude, it is pure folly to think
that a return to homogeneity — the mere disappearance
of the particular, the individual, the personal — would
vindicate the divine infinitude and give us the unity we
desire. To bring the finite to an end is not to reconcile
it with the infinite, any more than setting a term to
time can reconcile it with eternity. For we, and all
things, exist in God's infinitude now ; our individuality
battens within it ; our personality grows strong because
of it ; and we know, if we know anything, that while
the more we approach the good the more we please
God, at the same time the more men approach the
good the more nobly distinctive, the more beautifully
individual, do their characters become. To imagine,
then, that at the end of this life we shall cease to exist
as conscious beings, that our characters, our personalities,
will fall back into some boundless being, instead of
becoming more and more definite, more and more
individual, is certainly not to exalt God ; for it is
founded on the belief, either that God is now belittled
by our present individuality, or that our present in-
dividuality is a mere delusion. In the latter case God,

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 371

whom we find in the depths of our souls, is doubtless
also a delusion, for if the self is not real it is no
respectable witness on whose testimony we can accept
God. Our deepest mature conviction is that finite and
infinite interpenetrate, as time and eternity interpene-
trate, and our problems must be solved in the light
of that conviction.

Yet our minds are so made that they must find
unity. The question we are discussing is, how may
we realise unity .'' The highest unity of which experi-
ence teaches us is a society of highly developed person-
alities, clearly defined characters, who are loyally united
to one another in love and in purposeful activity for
some great end. That was our Lord's conception of
the kingdom of God : that, at its highest, has always
been the ideal of Christians for the Church.

To suppose that in the ultimate heaven a higher
unity can be found by the extinction of individuality
and personality, venerable as the speculation is, seems
to imply the confusion of thought which we have just
been seeking to analyse, I have suggested that this
idea is engendered by the way in which our will and
reason seem to faint and fail in contemplation of God's
goodness or beauty, and is fostered by our partial or
abstract ways of thought which create the problem of
the finite and infinite. We know certainly that unless
in this life our nature quickly rights itself from the
failure of reason and will in adoration, we shall fail
to live nobly. Experience, too, teaches us that, as we
grow in understanding of and likeness to (jod, the
attitude of worship becomes more and more compatible
with clear thought and strong volition.

The better thing, then — in sight for us even now —
is an increased vitality, in which all the powers of our
nature can work together in perfect and restful harmony,
so that we may be able, while we adore beauty, to grasp
the perfection of separate beauties ; while we contemplate
personality, to perceive the necessity for distinct persons ;

372 IMMORTALITY ix

while we worship truth, to be able to rejoice in the
recognition of separate truths. At perfect rest in the
harmony of life, we ought to be able to choose with
strong will between the better and the worse — the will
strengthened, not weakened, by our consciousness of
the infinite Good. As a matter of fact, simple natures
who in quiet ways move on instinctively from strength
to strength of love and activity and common sense, do
attain to this harmony of powers "without observation,"
and find no difficulty in the Christian faith of personal
immortality and an endless, conscious, and ever ennobling
fellowship with all men and friendship with the God
in whom now they live and move and have their being.

But the opposing conception — that the energies of
the self must pass away in the ecstasy of the Divine
Vision — has had a far-reaching, and in my view baneful,
influence. Largely through it the Christian hope of
immortality has been emptied of content. It is not
Christian ; it came into the Church from Oriental and
neo-Platonic sources. The greatest minds of the Church
have never proclaimed it ; but it has been held by
certain sections of Christians all down the centuries,
and their words and experiences still influence many
minds both Christian and non-Christian. The idea
that it is noble to give up " individual desire," to
become " impersonal," to cease from wanting an in-
dividual immortality, is quite common now, and was
originally due to the mystics who in the religious life
set ecstasy above the joy of friendship.

If, on the other hand, we accept the ideal of friend-
ship as the perfect unity we must realise that it implies
distinction of selves. Love is an attribute which only
exists in a person and in relation to other persons.
Love always desires that its object should become
more of a person — more individual, of stronger and
more defined character. That, indeed, is the meaning
of the parable of biological evolution. It is the progress
from what is all alike, all the same, all one, all absorbed

IX THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 373

in an infinite sameness or principle of being, to what is
definite, the most distinctive form of individuality —
the person, compact of thought, feeling, and volition,
all dominated by and reflecting the personal outlook.
Can God love an amoeba ? Yet a thousand times
sooner can Love greet the amoeba for the promise of
individuality it enfolds than feel attraction for the
homogeneity out of which it springs.

Here on earth the human soul begins by being
separated from all else, a self ; and by degrees attains
to greater and greater differentiation. Can we believe
that in another life its progress will be by returning to
selflessness .'*

Again, we do not get co-operation, much less unity,
by selflessness here. The men whom we call nonentities,
the women whose desires and wills have been suppressed
until impulse and volition have atrophied — these do
not long hang together in any enterprise. They need
to be driven like sheep, and then their movements are
never harmonious but merely similar. Loyalty to the
unity of any friendship, private or corporate, requires
strength and distinction of character.

We have, then, two rays of light illuminating the
highest paradise we can conceive. They are like
searchlights from the lanterns of earthly truth, and we
see their long, slender pencils traversing the unknown
heaven. The one afiirms that if the ultimate unity is
the perfect friendship of all living selves with each
other and with God, each individual soul living for
this high destiny must become ever more clearly out-
lined in distinctive personal beauty. The other affirms
that if the progress of the soul is from selflessness to
clearer and clearer definition of personal distinction,
the ultimate unity of all in all must be the perfect
friendship. So they meet in the zenith.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Adoration, 148, 150, 152 f., 163, 328, 371
Animals, mental activity in, 60-63, ^7
moral sense in, 83
survival of, 5 f., 83 f.
Annihilation, 73, 8.}., 87, 129, 171, 180,

186, 187, 192-195, 200, 204, 208,

212, 214 f., 216, 311
Apocalypse, the, 13, 92, 158, 191 f., 194,

199
Apocalyptic literature. See Eschatology

and Future Life
Arianism, 147

Athanasian Creed, 13, 145, 202
Automatic writing, 108, 247, 250, 257-

259, 272

Bible, The, and Hell, Essay V. passim
authority of, viii, x, 147
inspiration of, 273 f., 276
Body —

and mind, Essay II. passim. &e Mind

and soul, x, 106-108, 114, 126

the material, 92-95, 103-110, 113 f.,

115 f.
Resurrection of the, 89, 91-96, 97.

See also Resurrection
the spiritual, 70, 94, 96, 103-110,
113 f., 115 f., 120, 126, 164
Brahmanism, 304, 306, 314, 317, 323,

337
Buddhism, 295, 317, 318, 323, 325 f.,

333

Christ and His contemporaries, 89-91
as Friend, 165

Crucifixion of, 114, 157, 240
Divinity of, 145-148, 149, 164-166
His love of nature and animals, i 59 f.
His revelation of God, 85-S7, 166,

213 f., 217, 277, 357 f. See also

Divinity of
humour of, 1 59 f.
Resurrection of. See Resurrection
Second Coming of, 119, izz

Christ, teaching on prayer, 331, 353,

3S5. 357 (■
teaching on Future Life and Resur-
rection. See sub verba
Christianity, false presentation of, 319,

.341
Christian Science, 50-52, 325
Church, the —

its teaching on Hell, 202-209

Mediaeval, 135, 205 f., 291

of England, 207-209, 224

primitive, 113, 115, 118,202-205
Clairvoyance, 36, 266-269, ^^Si 3^3>

324
Consciousness, 63-67
Credulity, sin of, 279-284

Dead, burial of the, 1 1 1, 348

communication with the. Essay VII.
passim

communion with, 285-287, 291 f.,
360-363, 364-367

interest of, in this earth, 109, 119,
157, 360 f., 364-367

prayers for the, 289, 292, 362 f.
Death —

apparitions at time of, 325

hour of, 1 10-1 12, I 39

moral significance of, i 11

not the end, 12 f., S8

premature, 88

repentance at, 111, 112, 139, 216

revealing character, 1 2() f.

the " second," 192

the sting of, ix, 345-349
Demonology, 199, 281-284
Dream-consciousness, 36, 38, 259-266,

323. 327

Emotionalism, 162 f.
Kpiphenomenalism, 22
Eschatology, in the New Testament,
119, 172 f., 185-202
Jewish, 117 f., 172, 173-185, 193

375

376

IMMORTALITY

Eschatology, later ecclesiastical, 113,

202-209
Eternity, 10, 153, 237

Time and, 143 f.
Evil, moral, 140, 236-238

problem of, 315

Faith-
confused with superstition, 13 f.
in future life. See Future Life, belief

in
nature of, 71

tainted with egotism, 4 f., 6-10
Forgiveness, 140, 195, 216, 312 f., 317
Future Life, the —

activity of intellect in, 157 f.

a fuller life, 93, 95, 148, 149, 152,

158, 165, 223, 363
Apocalyptic conceptions of, 91-93,

113, 117-121, 122-124, 135) I5^>

171-173, 175, 176-183, 191-193,

199 f.
as home, 74, 230
as social, 126 f., 153 f., 155 f., 270,

300, 362 f., 367
beauty in, 158 f., 231, 239, 270
belief in, vii, xiii, xiv, Essay \. passim,

44, 71, 78 f., 85, 170, 286, 346-

352» 372
causes of disbelief in, vii f., 3-10,

"3. 135
Christ's teaching on, 78 f., 90, 93,

107, 113, 122-125, 153 f., 173,

188-190, 195-198, 200 f.
Church's teaching on, 202-209, 356 f.
desire after belief in, ix, 7, 8, 350-352,

367
geocentric conception of, 136, 298
Greek philosophy and, 5, 78, 94, 184,

204
Hindu philosophy and, 78, 295, 298,

300, 304-307. See also Reincarna-
tion and Karma
humour in, 159-161
inter-communication in, 109 f., 127,

137 f-, 363
Jewish beliefs in, 91-93, 117 f., 120.

See also Eschatology
love in, no, 155 f,, 225, 234, 235 f.,

372 f-
need of new and definite conceptions

of, vii-x, 134-136
primitive beliefs in, 13 f., 296 f.
progress in, 127-129, 138, 139-143,

209, 211, 216 f., 226, 228, 232-

235. 299 f., 352
rewards and punishments in, 5, 8,

173 f. See a/jo Hell a«(i Punishment

Future Life —

time and space in, 96-103, 136, 138,

vision of God in, 164,209, 211, 239,

352, 372
work in, 138, 156 f., 225

Gehenna, 175, 188, 195 f.

Ghosts, 13 if., 91, 278, 279, 286 f.,
362

Gnosticism, 95, 114

God-
as Absolute, 146
as Artist, 80, 81, 87
as Creator, 80, 87, 100 f., 156, 270
as Father, 80, 85, 147, 213, 228,

277
as immanent, 150, 274
as Infinite, 73, 79, 99, 164, 341, 367-

371
as love, 8, 73, 87, 94, 100, 155, 170,

172, 182, 213 f., 216 f., 227, 239,

270, 287, 341, 355
as omnipotent, 8 f., 339, 341, 354
as Parent, 80, 81, 87
as personal, 79 f., 150, 164 f., 337-

339: 368-371

Christian conception of, 80, 85-87,
94,96, 145-148, 152, 164 f., 213 f.,
217, 227 f., 276 f., 296, 336, 341,
372

communion with, 99, 197, 214, 285,

330, 364, 369
inadequate conceptions of, 6, 7, 86,

146 f., 151 f., 282, 330, 333
justice of, 8, 111, 139
knowledge of, 149 f., 162, 166, 337^,

339, 352, 355
presence of, 154, 162, 164
sufl^ering of, 148, 317
vision of, 152, 158, 161-165, 209,

2", 239, 352, 367 369, 372
wrath of, 9, 174, 186, 238 f. See

also Hell and Punishment

Hades, 91, 94, 118, 184
Heaven, a dream of, Essay VL passim
and perfection, 119, 142-144
as quality of life, 137 f., 149
localised, 5, 14, 134, 136-139
pain in, 239 f.
symbols of, 134 f., 148, 153, 221-226,

236
traditional conceptions of, 134 f.,

136-139, 148, 152, 158, 224 f.

vision of God in, 164, 209, 211, 239,

352, 372. See a/io Future Life

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

377

Hell, doctrine of, 9, 135, 170, 171,201,
202-217
existence of, 141
fear of, 9, 112, 215
fire of, 178, 180, 187, 188, 191 f.,

194, 195 f., 204 f.
rejection of belief in, 9 f., 170, 209,

212-217
Roman Catholic teaching on, 1 1 1
The Bible and. Essay V. passim
traditional conceptions of, 9, 134 f.,
137 f., 236 f., 238, 307
Higher Criticism, viii, 147, 171
Holy Spirit, 194, 277, 313, 329, 351,

358 f.
Hypnotism, 2i, 28-40, 249, 261 f., 2S5,
322-328, 332
and suggestion, 32-35, 51, 249
dangers of, 39 f.

Immortality —

conditional, 83, 204, 217

personal. See Personality

proof of, 78-89, 145, 296. See also
Heaven and Resurrection
Incarnation, the doctrine of, 147, 154,

164. See also Christ, Divinity of
Individual. See Personality
Inspiration, verbal, 271-278
Intuition, 73, 79, 100, 328

Jahweh, 174, 333

Joy, in Heaven, 224 f., 237

of forgiveness, 312 f., 317

of God, 230

value of, 141, 161, 314
Judgment, xiii, 210 f.

Day of, 89, 91 f., 117, 121-129, 180,
186, 188, 197 f., 207

in Fourth Gospel, 125

Particular, 121 n.
Justice, 15, III, 139, 213 f.

Divine, the, 8, m, 139

false conceptions of, 308, 312, 314-
317

Karma, 295, 302-317, 321, 336, 341
Kingdom of God —

Christian hope of, 119, 155, 166
Christ's teaching on, 153 f., 187 f.,

371
Jev/ish view of, 91, 92, 117, 120,
186 f.

Life, as preparation, 88, 150

Eternal, 95, 136, 148-154, 162, 166
sacrifice of, 85, 87

Life, struggle for, 9, 87, 221-223, 225,
227
theories of, 10 f., 86 f.

Magic, 275, 282-284

Matter —

as evil, 95, 361

nature of, 10, 70, 95, 103 f., 106,
108

Mediumistic experience, 37, 108, 245-
247, 248-253, 254-278, 324, 328

Metempsychosis, 296, 317

Mind —

and Brain, ix, Essay II. passim
and Disease, 26 f., 40-52, 325
and the emotions, 58-60
and Will, 63, 67-69
cosmic, the, 23, 61, 72
development of, 22, 56-70, 274
independence of body, 21, 24, 56, 70,

72, 246, 284 f.
interaction of body and, 22-56
survival of, x, 21-25, 70"74> ^^S

Mystic experience, 36, 99, 151, 163,
276, 328, 367-369

Myth, 221, 223 f.

Neurasthenia, 40-46
New Jerusalem, 13, 155
Nirvana, 95, 369

Occultism, 319-322

Paradise, 118, 221
Personality —

absorption of, in the Divine, 84 f.,

100, 102, 369, 370-373
extinction of. See Annihilation
growth of, 12, 72 f., 127-129, 138,
>39-'43. '55 f- 2i8, 231-235, 274,

373 .... „ o ,

survival of, viii, xiii, 73, 81, 84 f.,
87-89, 94 f., 100, 102, 117, 119,
145, 156, 225 f., 297, 372 f.
Thcosophicnl conception of, 336 f.
value of, 8, 72, 79-81, 84, 214, 217,

337-34'. 372-373
Prayer, 38, 289, 292, 328-331. 341,

352-356, 358. 362 f-
Book of Common, 1 1 1, 348
Psychical Research, x, 54 f., 244-247,
279, 283, 351
Society of, S4 U 245-247, 256 f.,
259, 266-268, 271, 284, 187, 314 f.
Psychotherapy, 21, 40-52, 325
and Christian Science, 50-52

378

IMMORTALITY

Punishment, idea of, 9, 170, 213-215,

■ 238, 275, 308-317
Punishment, Future, 8 f., 128, Essay V.
passim
as everlasting, 171 f., 179-183, 185,

188, 192-198, 200, 202, 209
in Church teaching, 202-209
in New Testament, 170-173, 179,

185-202, 203, 209-217
in Old Testament, 172, 173-175
in teaching of Christ, 173, 188-190,
192-201
Purgatory, 128, 134, 137-140, 216,
234, 236 f., 238
Roman Catholic teaching on, 139,
207, i.16, 292, 307 f.

Reality, nature of, 10, 12, 87, 230 f.
Reincarnation, xiii, 295-302, 303,

321, 336, 339
Repentance, 140, 312 f.

after death, 127-129, 141, 181, 183,

187, 202, 204, 216
deathbed, iii, 112, 139, 216
Resurrection —

Apocalyptic expectations of, 91-93,

113, H7-121, 122-124, 175
Christ's teaching on, 93, 95, 107,

116, 118, 122 f,
development of idea of, 91-96
general, 117, 12 1
interval between death and, 1 17-121,

125
in Old Testament, 14, 91, 175
New Testament teaching on, 92-95,

104-106, 113-121, 186
of Christ, 5, 114-116, 118, 359 f., 364
of the Dead, Essay III. passim, 357,

359
physical, 5, 14, 89, 91-96, 115, 117
St. Paul on, 93, 95, 104-106, 113,

114-116, 119, 186, 345, 348
Rigveda, 304

Sadducees, 92, 94, 118, 177

Saints, canonisation of, 151, 152, 361

Communion of. The, 155, 291 f.,
3597 362

conventional, 235

Saints, Invocation of, 359, 361
Shell-shock, 39, 46-50
Sheol, 91, 92, 94, ii8, 119, 173 '
Soul, and body, 72, io6-io8, 114, 126

destiny of, 73, 139, 211 f., 285, 297

of animals, 5 f., 83

of species, 82

pre-existence of. See Reincarnation

World-, 73
Spiritualism, viii, xiii, 53-55, Essay
VII. passim, 324 f., 365

as a religion, 245, 291

gains of, 284-292

objections to, 253-278
Suffering, and sin, 213 f., 307-317, 341

of God, 148

penal, 139. See Punishment

profitless, 128 f., 139, 170, 213

redemptive, 129, 140 f., 214, 309 f.
Suggestion, auto-, 35-40, 318, 327

mental, 40, 42-44, 47, 51 f.

under hypnosis, 32-35, 51, 249
Superstition, 13, iii, 244, 246, 281-

284, 287, 291 f.

Table-turning, 289-291, 292
Telepathy, 21, 53-56, 110, 246, 247-
253> 2S4-257> 272 f., 278, 280,

285, 287 f., 292, 323, 324 f., 363
Theology, need of a living, ix, 352, 356-

364
Theosophy, xiii. Essay VIII. passim
Trance-practice, 35-40, 249 f., 261 f.,

322-333
and devotion, 328-331

Universalism, 171, 201, 202, 207, 208
Upanishads, 295, 306

Valhalla, 221

Values, absolute, 4-6, 87, 94, 96, 151,
162, 235 f.
Christ's scheme of, 82, 149, 162
conservation of, 81, 96, 107

Witchcraft, 282-284

Worship, 163 f., 223 f., 328-331, 371

Zoroastrianism, 78, 183-1S5

INDEX OF NAMES

Apelles, 165

Aquinas, St. Thomas, loo, 158, 282, 357

Aristotle, 275

Armstrong- Jones, Sir R., 54

Arnold, Matthew, 217

Athanasius, St., 146 f.

Augustine, St., 158, 197, 205, 217, 275

Backman, Dr. A., 268

Balfour, Mr. Gerald, 266 f.

Barnes, Dr., 281-284

Barrett, Sir William, On the Threshold of

the Unseen, 270
Besant, Mrs., 320-322, 332, 333 f., 336
Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria,

202, 204
Bonaventura, St., loo, 151
Bou^set, Kyrios CAristos, 202
Braid, 32
Browning, Apparitions, 362

Saul, 277
Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 206
Butcher, Prof. S. H., 266

Calvin, 282

Campion, 221

Celano, ii;i

Charles, Dr., 201, Befween the Old and

New Testaments, 176, 217
Concerning Prayer, 81, 122, 129, 341, 362
Correggio, 159
Cudworth, Intellectual System of the

Universe, 335
Cuthbcrt, Father, 151

Dante, 184, 202, 206, 221

Darwin, Expression of the Emotions, 59

Davids, Mrs. Rhys, Buddhism, 326

Edwards, Jonathan, 213
Essays and Re-vteivs, 207

Farnell, Dr., 184

Farquhar, Dr. J. N., The Cro^vn of
Hinduism, 306 f., 332

Farrar, Eternal Hope, 207, 208, 213
Fosdick, The Manhood of the Master,

276 f.
Fra Angelico, 224
Francis, St., of Assisi, 6, i 5 i
Freud, 43

Gibson, Dr., The Thirty-nine Articles, 202
Gladstone, Jwventus Mundi, 335
Glover, T. R., The Jesus of History,

159
Gore, Dr., The Religion of the Church,

202, 208 f., 214

Guthrie, Dr. Leonard, 54

Halifax, Lord, 283 f.
Hamilton, Sir William, 279
Har Dayal, Prof., 332
Harnack, Sayings of Jesus, 195
Harrison, Miss, Prolegomena to Greek

Religion, 184
Hegel, 350

Hill, Mr. J. A., 251-253
Hobbcs, 207
HOft'ding, 81
Homer, 14
Hilgel, Fr. von, The Mystical Element

in Religion, 1 3 9
Huxley, 22, 41

Ibsen, Peer Gynt, 72
Ignatius, St., 202

Jacks, Dr. L. P., Mad Shepherds, 332
James, Henry, 225 f., 228
James, William, Psycholop; 58-60
Jastrow, Religious Bdiifin Bahy Ionia and
Assyria, 175

Job, 4, 173 '"•'.-\°^

Jones, Dr. Griffith-, 364

Jones, Dr. Rufus, 276

Judge, William Q., An Epitome of

Th,osof>hy, 319 f.
Jung. 43

379

38o

IMMORTALITY

Kant, 98, 100 f,
Kennett, Prof., 340

Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe,

28z, 283
Leonard, Mrs., 263, 269
Liddon, 191
Locke, 207
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 277

Raymond, 253, 2-57, 262-265, 268 f.,

272 f., 283, 290 f.
Longfellow, Resignation, 348
Luther, 282

Macaulay, ix

McDougall, Dr. W., 25, 34, 68
McTaggart, Dr., Human Immortality and
Pre-existence, 295 f.
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, 350
Maurice, F. D., 208
Mill, J. S., 207
Milton, 224, 236
Moffatt, Dr. J., Ne-w Translation ofN.T.,

357, 35*^
Moore, G., The Brook Kerith, 198
Morris, William, 222
Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, 184
Myers, Frederick, 55
Human Personality, 268

Nietzsche, 5

Origen, 197, 202, 205, 2H, 217
Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Problem,
123, 124, 195

Paul, St., ix, 14, 66, 89, 93-95, 104-
106, 108, no, 113, 114-116, 119,
147, 155, 157, 162, 182, 186, 201,

331, 345, 348
Philo, 335

Piper, Mrs., 55, 255 f.
Plato, 5, 78, 184, 204, 221, 295
Plotinus, 151
Podmore, F., 56
Poussin, Prof, de la Valine, Way of

Nir-vana, 297, 304-306, 323 f.

Praxiteles, 159

Pusey, 202, 204, 208, 210, 216

Rashdall, Dr. H., Conscience and Christ,

200
Rembrandt, 159
Rodin, 159
Roosevelt, 232
Rossetti, D. G., The House of Life, iii

Schafer, Prof., 62
Shakespeare, 22, 1 10, 232, 346 f.
Sidgwick, Mrs., 55, 255 f., 268
Smith, John, 213
Socrates, 275

Spenser, Faerie Siueene, in
Spinoza, 207
Steele, The Tatler, 347
Suarez, 139, 307

Swete, The Gospel according to St. Mark,
196

Tennyson, 275

In Memoriam, 348, 350

To Rev. F. D. Maurice, 208
TertuUian, 204
Tyrrell, George, Autobiography of, Zi^

Verrall, Dr. A. W., 266-268
Verrall, Mrs., 267 f.

Ward, Dr. J., Pluralism and Theism, 299
Watson, William, The Great Mtsgi-ving,

ix
Webb, Mr. C. C. J., The Notion of

Re'velation, 334-336
Wells, H. G., God the Invisible King,

84 f., 338 f.
Wilkinson, Mr. A., 251-253
Willett, Mrs., 266-268
Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, vii
Ode to Immortality, 350
Tin tern Abbey, 23
Workman, H. B., Christian Thought to

the Reformation, 205

Zoroaster, 78, 184

THE END

Printed, by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.

Third Impression. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

Edited by
Canon Streeter and Miss Dougall

CONCERNING PRAYER

ITS NATURE, ITS DIFFICULTIES
AND ITS VALUE

CANON STREETER.

GOD AND THE WORLD'S PAIN.
WORSHIP.

I. The Nature of Worship.
II. The Psychology of Public Worship.

THE AUTHOR OF 'PRO CHRISTO ET ECCLESIA'(L.Dougall).
REPENTANCE AND HOPE.
PRAYER FOR THE DEAD.

The Rev. HAROLD ANSON, M.A.

PRAYER AS UNDERSTANDING.
PRAYER AND BODILY HEALTH.

EDWYN BEVAN, M.A.

PETITION (Some Theoretical Difficulties).

R. G. COLLINGWOOD, M.A.
THE DEVIL.

The Rev. LEONARD HODGSON, M.A.
INTERCESSION.

RUFUS M. JONES, M.A., D.Litt.

PRAYER AND THE MYSTIC VISION.

The Rev. W. F. LOFTHOUSE, M.A.

PRAYER AND THE OLD TESTAMENT.

The Rev. C. H. S. MATTHEWS, M.A.

THE EUCHARIST— AN ANGLICAN VIEW.

The Rev. N. MICKLEM, M.A.

THE EUCHARIST— A FREE CHURCH VIEW.
A. C. TURNER, M.A.

FAITH, PRAYER AND THE WORLD'S ORDER.

ATHEN/^UM. — " Nor will any rc.ider he .able to lay the book aside without
feeling that he is enriched by many new and striking thoughis."

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Seventh Impression. 8vo. lOs. 6cl. net.

Edited by Canon Streeter.

FOUNDATIONS

A STATEMENT OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF

IN TERMS OF MODERN THOUGHT:

BY SEVEN OXFORD MEN

The Rev. B. H. STREETER, M.A.

THE HISTORIC CHRIST.

The Rev. R. BROOK, M.A.
THE BIBLE.

W. H. MOBERLY, MA.

THE ATONEMENT.

GOD AND THE ABSOLUTE.

The Revs. A.E.J. RAWLINSON and R. G. PARSONS.
THE INTERPRETATION OF THE
CHRIST IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

The Rev. A. E. J. RAWLINSON.

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY.

The Rev. N. S. TALBOT.

THE MODERN SITUATION.

The Rev. W. TEMPLE.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.
THE CHURCH.

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unmixed gain that we should have their statements presented to us in a form so
free from the jargon of party and from the distressing discord of controversy."

HinBERT JOURNAL. — " It may be that this book will constitute a turn-
ing-point in the history, not of a party, but of the Chiu"ch of England and of the
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RESTATEMENT AND REUNION. A

Study in P"irst Principles. Crown 8vo. 2S. 6d. net.

CHURCH QUARTERLY RE V/EW.— "This is an admirable lxx)k—
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but even those of us who most disagree with him will wish that it might Ix; so.
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(LILY DOUGALL)

PRO CHRISTO ET ECCLESIA. Crown

8vo. 5s. 6d. net. Globe 8vo. is. 6d. net.

BOOKMAN.—^' . . . ^nch !i gem \s Pro Christo et Ealesia. . . . It will
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CHRISTUS FUTURUS. Crown 8vo.

4s. 6d. net.

TIMES. — " A laborious and fascinating discussion on many things — prayer,
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only to stimulate thought but to excite obedience and to spread sincerity."

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RECORD. — " This is a book to be read and pondered over. . . . Ever)' page
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SPECTATOR. — "It is our author's pleasure to set us thinking and to
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A THENyEUM. — " It is a well -considered examination of Christ's teaching,
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problems ; and it is at once a criticism and a challenge."

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF

HEALTH. A Handbook on the Relation of Bodily
lieallh to Spiritual and Moral Health. Crown Svo. 2s. net.

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SOME NEW BOOKS
ESSAYS ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE

CHURCH AND MINISTRY. By Various Writers.
Edited by H. B. Swete, D.D. 8vo.

CONTENTS :

Prefatory Note. By the late Henry Barclay Swete, D.D. I. Conceptions
of the Church in Early Times. By Canon Arthur James Mason, D.D. II. The
Christian Ministry in the Apostolic and Sub-Apostolic Periods. By Dean Joseph
Armitage Robinson, D.D. III. The Apostolical Succession. By Cuthbert
Hamilton Turner, M.A., F.B.A. IV. The Cyprianic Conception of the
Ministry. By Archbishop J. H. BERNARD, D.D. V. Early Forms of Ordination.
By Walter Howard Frere, D.D. VI. Sacraments and Terms of Communion.
By Prebendary Frank Edward Brightman, M.A.

THE CHURCH IN THE FURNACE. Essays by
Seventeen Church of England Chaplains on Active Service in
France and Flanders. Edited by F. J3. Macnutt, Senior Chap-
lain to the Forces, Canon of Southwark. Cr. 8vo. 5s. net.

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS.— Bishop Llewellyn H. Gwynne, C.M.G.,
D.D.; Canon F. B. Macnutt, M.A.; Rev. F. R. Barry, D.S.O., M.A. ; Rev.
F. W. Worsley, B.D.; Canon M. Linton Smith, D.S.O., D.D.; Rev. Bernard
W. Keymer, M.A. ; Rev, Geoffrey Gordon, M.A. ; Rev. E. Milner- White, M.A. ;
Canon C. Salisbury Woodward, M.C., M.A. ; Rev. Marcell W. T. Conran, M.C.,
M.A. ; Rev. Neville S. Talbot, M.C., M.A.; Rev. T. W. Pyne, D.S.O., M.A.;
Archdeacon H. K. Southwell, C.M.G., M.A. ; Canon J. O. Hannay, M.A.
("George O. Birmingham"); Rev. P. C. T. Crick, M.A. ; Rev. J. S. Kennedy,
M.A.; Rev. Kenneth E. Kirk, M.A.; Rev. Edward S. Woods, M.A.

PRIEST OF THE IDEAL. By Stephen Graham, author of
" With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem," etc. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
Priest of the Ideal is written in the form of a novel with emblems. An American
comes to Great Britain with the idea of purchasing spiritual treasure for America,
any castles, churches, old manuscripts, illuminated gospels, pictures, memorials —
anything we feel we have outlived. He is in a position to offer any money for
such things, and he visits the sacred and national spots of Britain : Stonehenge,
Glastonbury, lona, Lindisfarne, Durham, York, Lincoln, Stratford-on-Avon, etc.,
questioning as he goes and making notes. An English idealist shows him round,
and this idealist is the " Priest of the Ideal " who gives the book its title. This
affords the author a great opportunity for examining our national spiritual inherit-
ance and discussing what belongs to the dead past and what is really our ' ' im-
perishable substance" as a nation. A great deal of the book is descriptive and
humorous, there are satirical and also poetic pages, some lively impressionism,
and a love story which runs through all.

CHRISTIANITY IN HI^ORY: a Study of Re-
ligious Development. By j. Vernon Bartlet, M.A., D.D.,
Professor of Church History, Mansfield College, Oxford, and
A. J. Carlyle, M.A., D.Litt., Fellow and Lecturer, University
College, Oxford. 8vo.

SERMONS PREACHED IN WESTMINSTER

ABBEY. By R. H. Charles, D.D., Canon of Westminster.
Cr. 8vo. 5s. net.

LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.

3 1158 00133 2088

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