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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
PRESENTED BY THE
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY
JANUARY 1917
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EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE,
FROM REASON AND REVELATION.
" ;^a8 man witbin him an immortal seed^ EJr does the tomb take all? "
BY
LUTHER A. FOX, D. D.,
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ROANOKE COLLEGE.
PHILADELPHIA: LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY.
/ /9501J'
Copyright, 1890,
LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY.
TO
My Wife,
HENRIETTA C. FOX,
whose; sympathy and hei.p have made this work possible and piveasant.
I.. A. F.
JV/io hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. — Paul.
" To me the existe^ice of another world is a necessary supple- m,ent of this, to adjust its inequalities and imbtie it with moral significance.''^ — Thurlow Weed.
^^The doctrine of the souVs immortality cannot be established by rigid demonstration^ any tnore than that of the Divine ex- istence. But in the one, as in the other, there are necessary principles involved which work to obvious facts, and issue in a connectio7i which m,ay be described as natural'' — McCosh.
'■''The importance of a clear and well-founded belief in an eternal destination can scarcely be overrated. It elevates, com- forts and sanctifies ma7i with a peculiar power, whilst the re- sistance of it ordinarily brings about the fnost unfortunate results for religion and morality, as well as for the cause of humanity. ^^ — Van Oosterzee.
" 3Ty own dim life should teach me this. That life shall live forevermore, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is. ' '
Tennyson.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I. The Need and Character of Proofs of Immor-
TAIvlTY II
CHAPTER II. Argument from Anai^ogy 27
CHAPTER III. Universal Beuef 43
CHAPTER IV. Conscience 78
CHAPTER V.
INTEI^LECTUAI. POWERS 99
CHAPTER VI. Sensibilities 112
CHAPTER VII. Condition of the World 128
CHAPTER VIII. Evidence from the Bible 150
CHAPTER IX. Proofs from the Old Testament 171
(V)
VI CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER X. Proofs from thf Nfw Testament i88
CHAPTER XI. Soui, AND Life 210
CHAPTER XII. B101.0GY 225
CHAPTER XIII. RE1.AT10N OF Mind and Body 240
CHAPTER XIV. Nature of the Mind 257
CHAPTER XV. Sensation 277
CHAPTER XVI. The IMMATERIA1.1TY OF THE Soui, 291
CHAPTER XVII. IMMORTA1.1TY OF Brutes 295
CHAPTER XVIII. HiSTORiCAi, Sketch of Phii^osophic Bewef 307
CHAPTER XIX.
PRACTICAI, RESUI.TS OF DlSBEWEF IN A FuTURE IvIFE. • 355
PREFACE.
n^HIS book was commenced as the first part of a work on Eschatology, but it is deemed better to publish it as a separate and independent volume. It has been written because it seemed to be needed. No one observant of the current thought among reading people can fail to notice a feeling of uncer- tainty and doubt as to a future life and a desire for clearer evidence. There is a want of fixed opinion. Many are respectful towards religion because they are not sure that there will be no future retribu- tion, but their doubts neutralize religious impres- sions and paralyze their spiritual energies. They would be glad to accept the truth if they knew how to find it. Much of the seeming weakness of the Church and the lack of power in the pulpit has its true explanation in the absence of a faith in our immortality.
There are Christians who have not attained (7)
8 PREFACE.
intellectual satisfaction. They have religious faith, but they would like to have proved to their under- standings what their hearts accept.
This uncertainty has been felt in all ages. It is due in our day to the fact that fundamental beliefs are being subjected to a thorough re-examination. It is known that some of the old proofs of immor- tality have lost much of their force, but it is not known how many remain untouched. Science has made wonderful discoveries, and there is a suspic- ion, encouraged by reckless speculators, that it has been proved that there is no other life.
The lack of satisfaction arises in part, also, from a failure to consider the nature of the only possible evidence in this question. If one looks for demon- stration where demonstration is impossible he must go away dissatisfied. It is of the greatest import- ance to know the kind of proof to be expected and upon which he must form his judgment.
The aim of this book is to show the nature of the proof of a future life and to set forth the evidence in the light of the present. The author from personal experience and from association with educated
PREFACE. 9
young men knows how to sympathize with honest doubt. He appreciates the cravings of the heart and the mind, and has sought to deal frankly and fairly with them. He has tried to state honestly and fully every objection that fell under the line of his discussion, to minimize no difficulty and mag- nify no proof. He has endeavored to present the truth in its true light and leave it to the judgment, of his readers. How well this aim hd!s been met, . and the field been covered by this book the public- must decide.
The plan will be so easily seen that only a word in regard to it is necessary. In the first chapter there is a general view of the nature of the argu- ment. To the eleventh chapter there are positive proofs. The following seven are chiefly defensive. They are necessarily largely metaphysical and the facts are condensed, sometimes it may be to a little obscurity. The historical review proves to be a strong argument. The last chapter shows the truth by the results of disbelief.
So many references are given in the body of the book that no general acknowledgement is required.
lO PREFACE.
The author has drawn from his general reading and has used, doubtless, the thoughts of other writers while mistaking them for his own, but the most important question is not in respect to originality but truth.
The author must be excused for expressing the hope, as he parts with this little book, that it may accomplish some good in the world.
ly. A. F.
Roanoke College^ October^ i8go.
CHAPTER I.
THE NEED AND CHARACTER OF PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY.
WHAT is after death? This is the greatest problem of the world. The question as to our origin, often coupled with it, is much less im- portant, for it has only a speculative value except as it helps to determine our eternal destiny. We want to know from what we came that w^e ma}^ learn what we are to be. The desire for immortal- ity is universal, and it increases in force as we rise in nobility and worthiness of character. It is quickened under a sense of danger of losing it. The current of scientific opinion tends towards the belief in a future life. There is a "visible diminu- tion in the hostility once entertained by science to the idea." But as so many old faiths have been shaken there is a fear in the public mind that the fouudations upon which this rested has been un- settled. Anxiety because of the great interests in- volved makes a new demand for the proofs that death does not end all.
The discoveries in science and philosophy wathin (II)
12 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
the present century has brought some new light to this problem. Biological studies and physiological- psychology have taught us much upon the nature of life, and the relation of the body to thought. We have learned more of the methods of nature in the development of the world. Our acquaintance with the range of law in all directions has been ex- tended. We may not be ready yet to determine the final bearing of the new truth upon the faith in our future existence, but we may gather up the results already attained and see the trend of scien- tific investigation. We may learn how many of the old proofs remain to us, what new ones have been furnished, and some of the tendencies of the higher thought upon this subject. We may see very clearly that nothing now known warrants the opinion that science has proved or will ever be able to prove that there is no future life, or if there is, that we can know nothing about it.
By a future life or immortality, we understand a continued conscious existence. The Materialist and the Pantheist speak of immortality, but not of a conscious self after death. As one of them has said, "We believe in an immortality, not of the individual but of the race.'^ David's Positivist's Primer has expressed that common faith a little
NEED AND PROOES OF IMMORTALITY. 1 3
more fully: ''We believe that there is a real im- mortality for man, both objective and subjective, but no conscious life hereafter so far as our facul- ties go." Harrison still more clearly said: "It may be useful to retain the words soul and future life for their association, provided we make it clear that we mean by soul the combined faculties of the living organism, and by future life the subjective effects of each man's objective life on the actual life of his fellowmen." The Materialist does not deny that the separate powers, which in combination constituted life, continue to exist. The doctrine of the correlation of forces, now universally ac- cepted, prevents him from believing in absolute annihilation. But according to Materialism we lose at death our identity, and we continue to exist only in other forms. The organism is de- stroyed, and with it mind and self perish. The elements which made us are dissipated and enter into new and diverse combinations. The Pantheist may believe in the unity of the personal force and regard it as something distinct from the body, but that something is at death absorbed in God. All personality is lost. Memory, will and conscious- ness are destroyed. That which we call ourself is swallowed up in deity. He may think that the
14 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
present life lias some influence upon our future con- dition, and that it is important to live in such manner as will enable us to pass over into the next form in the best possible condition, but of real ac- countability and reward there are none. In the view of both philosophies, self as such is annihi- lated.
Such unconscious impersonal existence as these philosophers hold out to us has the least possible degree of importance or interest. It is not the Christian doctrine of a future life. It is not what men in all ages mean by immortality. It. is not that which the human heart desires nor that in which it instinctively believes. Under the form of reality the doctrine resolves into a shadow. We feel that we have been mocked. We asked for bread but are given a stone, and for a fish there is given a serpent. It is not mere existence that we want. We are not particularly concerned about the fate of the forces of the body. We desire the con- tinuity of conscious life. We want to carry with us our memories to testify to our identity. We want the preservation of our faculties which are the elements of self. This is the only immortality worthy of our personality. Having conceived the possibility of such a future life we are indignant at the tender of any other.
NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTAUTY. 1 5
The Christian believes in his immortality be- cause it is a fact of 'revelation. The Bible does not offer any argument for the immortality of human life except that which is drawn from itself Christ in answering the objection of the Sadducees to the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection proves a future life, which was involved, by appealing to the books of Moses. The Bible assumes our im- mortality as a fact. It claims to be a revelation, and the certification of that claim, which it pre- supposes, sets aside the necessity of direct argu- ments for its facts. But the Bible affords us our greatest certainty. All the evidence which it has for itself as a supernatural revelation is evidence also of our immortality. Even if we deny it a supernatural character, and regard it inspired only in the lowest sense, its statements must be taken as the highest attainments of quickened insight and therefore as truth. It gives us evidence, also, by awakening a conviction stronger than that which comes from external credentials. It calls into exercise the higher elements of our nature and with them comes the assurance of a personal relationship with the eternal. It begets a sense of immortality. Under the power of its truth, we know ourselves immortal by a spiritual intuition.
1 6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
To the mere rationalist this may seem like mystic- ism. Whatever name may be appropriate for it the fact belongs to Christian experience. Men whose characters are well known to be above sus- picion of fanaticism or superstition or irrational sentiment, unless all religion is superstition, have borne testimony to it. "The faith of immortality depends on a sense of it begotten, not on an argu- ment for it concluded." (Bushnell.) "Faith in eternal things brings into the soul a sense of eternity." (James Freeman Clarke.) "It would seem that the highest and holiest soul carries with it, like an atmosphere, a perfect serenity, a sense of present eternity, a presage of immortality." (Merriam.) "It is the life of humanity in Christ that is the evidence of the incorruptible, the immortal life. The Christ has brought to the spirit of man, the realization of life and immor- tality; he has brought life and immortality to light." (Mulford.) "The belief in immortality is at first only a wish and a belief on the authority of others; but the more that any one assures to himself his spiritual life by his own free efforts and a pure love of goodness, the more certain does eternity become, not merely as something future but as something already begun." (Hase). "Im-
NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 1 7
mortality begins here." (Channing). This idea is embodied in the lines of Tennyson:
"Who forged that other influence, That heat of inward evidence By which he doubts against the sense.-*"
And Ivessing seems to have had the same thought when he said, "Thus was Christ the first practicai' teacher of the immortality of the soul. For it is one thing to wish, to conjecture, to hope for, to believe in immortality as a philosophical specula- tion— another thing to arrange all our plans and purposes, all our inward and outward life in ac- cordance with it." To these testimonies a great many others, collected from different ages and countries, might be added. This Christian assur- ance comes largely as a feeling, but there is a per- ceptive power in all feeling as there is a feeling in all perception. Hamilton says that every ultimate truth is a feeling ; and the self-evidence of primary principles is closely connected with the feelings. The analogy to philosophic truth and the testimony of so many thoughtful men are certainly sufficient reasons for checking a rash charge of fanaticism, upon the Christian's certainty of a future life.
Besides this first and great source of certainty there is other evidence. President Bascom has said'-
l8 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
"The foundations of a faith in a future life lie out- side of revelation and ought therefore to be dis- closed independently of it." The attempt to sepa- rate knowledge and faith, now popular in high quarters, is an effort to divorce that which God has joined together. Bacon remanded all religious truth to faith and has had a disciple in this respect in as devout a Christian and eminent a philosopher as Prof. Baden Powel. A faith that does not stand without conflicting with science must at length fall. Our nature is a unity and our intellectual and religious convictions must harmonize. The Chris- tian feels a certain satisfaction in finding his faith confirmed by reason because his intellectual nature has wants as well as the religious. Because of the unity of his being there is an inter-dependence among the different elements, and he cannot throw off" these laws. The body exerts an influence upon the mind, and the mind upon the body, and both upon the religious character. The flesh lusteth .against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and if we live after the flesh we shall die. The report of the senses are subjected to the test of the understanding, and the theories of the understand- ing are tested by the senses. Scholasticism neg- lecting observation paid the penalty by its barren-
NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTAI.ITY. 1 9
ness. The understanding obtains its laws from the reason, and reason without the material furnished by the understanding is empty form. The under- standing rebelling against the reason is chained to the contingent, and the reason throwing aside the help of the understanding soars into the mists and loses itself in airy nothingness. Whenever the natural relation is disturbed there is a vague unsat- isfied desire. So the facts of the religious life must be brought down, whenever possible, to the test of the intellect. In this way we keep our faith rational and avoid fanaticism and superstition. This intel- lectual want is seen in regard to the faith in the existence of God. No Christian doubts that God is, but the large number of books giving theistic proofs show how much interest the Christian un- derstanding takes in them. He believes independ- ently of the arguments, but he draws from them a confirmation of his faith. They meet a demand of his nature. In the same way the Christian faith finds a satisfaction in the proofs of a future life.
The Christian religion presupposes a belief in immortality, and that belief must come from proofs independent of Revelation. These proofs show those who are not Christians that there are some rational grounds for the Christian's hope.
20 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
These proofs may not produce positive conviction, but they open the way for religious impressions. They answer a purpose analogous to the evidences of Christianity. No man rising from a careful study of the evidences has ever felt that there was not a possibility of doubt. The evidences alone have never made a man a Christian, and therefore no converted infidel has been able to explain satis- factorily the steps by which he became a believer. But these evidences are of great importance in over- coming opposition and creating a religious suscep- tibility. Wesley is said to have done more than Butler to overthrow Deism in England, but Wesley's work would not have been possible with- out that of Butler and his great co-workers. The arguments for a future life may not leave us with- out some doubt, but they are important to lead us under the influence of Christian truth which gives us certitude,
A review of the arguments for immortality is the more important, both for the Christian believer and for others, because of the sceptical tendencies of our age. There is a materialistic spirit or mater- ialistic habit of thought out of which doubts as to the future life spring up spontaneously in the pub- lic mind. The spirit originates in three causes.
NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 21
One is the rapid strides in material progress made in the more recent years. So many energies of mind and body are concentrated upon material things, that the habits of thinking have beeii thrown into materialistic channels. Another cause is the rapid progress of physical science. The at- tention of the reading world is largely occupied with the new sciences which have recently sprung up, and the great discoveries made in the older ones. In the physical world the law of necessity rules, and as we watch the operations of that law we lose sight of the world of freedom. The last cause is the state of philosophy. In the English speaking world a materialistic philosophy, if not dominant, is exerting a very great influence upon public thought. It has its power because it falls in with the general modes of thinking. Specula- tive philosophy in Germany, in the early part of the century went entirely beyond the range of ordinary minds, and, as many philosophers have thought, lost itself in the mists of the Absolute. The results were not satisfactory, not even to the Germans, and there has been a groping about to find a sub- stantial basis for metaphysics. Many have become sceptical in philosophy and discard metaphysics. It is no uncommon thingf to hear scholarly men
22 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
say, "We have no confidence in metaphysical philosophy. We want facts. " Materialistic phil- osophy professes to proceed by observation and bring all its reasonings down to the test of feeling. It claims to assume no a priori principles, but to deal only with facts. It denies, under the modest disclaimer of not being able to know the existence of God or a spiritual substance. It grew out of the condition of the public mind and reacts upon it, intensifying, by seemingly justifying the public sentiment. It is important, therefore, to call at- tention again to the evidence that we are not ma- chines, that life is not mechanical, that we do know a force that is not under the law of necessity, and that there are strong reasons for believing in a future life.
Too much is often expected from the proofs of immortality. We are so deeply interested in the subject we would be glad to have every doubt re- moved. What would be regarded as overwhelming evidence on most subjects leaves us in this with the feeling of Johnson, "I wish that there were more proofs." We would be glad to have absolute cer- tainty, and if we do not find it we are inclined to depreciate the value of the ;^oofs we have. This is the reason for the neglect of the arguments which
NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTAUTY. 23
have come down to us from the past. It is not be- cause they have no force, but because they have not all the force the feelings crave. The character of the problem is forgotten, and unreasonable de- mands are made by the feelings.
The proof cannot be demonstrative. A demon- stration is a necessary deduction from self-evident principles. It starts with necessary truths, truths which cannot without absurdity be denied, and it proceeds by self-evident steps. We can demon- strate a proposition in Geometry because we start with axioms, and having created figures in pure space we apply these axioms to every step in the analysis, and thus test the correctness of the pro- cess. Demonstrative proof belongs to mathematics. But there are no intuitions of reason to be taken as premises for a demonstration of a future life. There is no A=A in the argument as Leibnitz says there is in mathematical reasoning, and by which he explains the absolute conviction produced. The steps are not exposed to intuitions so that we can test and verify them as we proceed. We can- not find premises so certain that the contradictories are absurd, and there must always remain in the conclusion the possibility of doubt. The mathe- matical form of reasonino' is sometimes assumed
24 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE UFE.
and many persons are deceived by it. Spinoza's Ethics appears to be a mathematical demonstration, but he started from principles which are not neces- sary, and in the process he introduced elements from experience. We may throw the argument for immortality, or the argument against it into a demonstrative form, but it can not be a demonstra- tion or reach an absolutely necessary conclusion. The subject lies outside of the sphere of necessary truth. The range of demonstrative proof is very narrow. The most practical things cannot be demonstrated. We cannot demonstrate that the seed sown will produce its kind, or that the sun will rise to-morrow. Our demonstrations are con- fined to things that have the least to do with char- acter. To ask for that kind of certainty in things to which it can not possibly apply is simply foolish. If we cannot believe in immortality because we cannot demonstrate it, we are doomed to self- appointed doubt.
The proof is necessarily of that kind which ■philosophers call probable. It is called probable not because it is opposed to certainty, but to math- ematical reasoning. The premises are obtained from testimony and experience; and while they may be unquestionable facts, they are always subject to
NEED AND PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 25
the thought of a contrary possibility. We can always think the contradictory of the premises. These probable proofs admit of additions. The convictions produced range from a mere belief up to a certainty only short of the absolute. The great body of our knowledge is, in the philosophic sense of the word, probable. This is the law of our present condition, and we cannot get above it. Since the time of Bacon, great importance is at- tached to induction, and no one doubts that by the faithful application of his rules we get truth; but inductive reasoning is only probable reasoning. Historical and Geographical facts beyond our own personal sphere are known by probable proof. Reasoning from personal experience belongs to the probable. It is only by probable proof that we know that water will on to-morrow relieve thirst, or that there will be a to-morrow. We are gov- erned continually by probable reasoning. It is upon these probable proofs we must rest our faith in our immortality.
We may recognize this fact, but still want the evidence brought within the reach of our senses. We think that if we could see a disembodied soul or have some sensible proof of its existence after the death of the body we would be above doubt.
26 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
We can conceive the possibility of sucli evidence, but we must recognize it as something outside of the established order of facts. It can not be re- alized and it is useless to wish for it. We must accommodate ourselves to the world as it exists. But if gratified we might not find all we antici- pate. The Great Teacher, who has uncovered so man}^ of the principles of our nature and revealed to us so much of ourselves, said, "If they hear not Moses and the Prophets neither will they be per- suaded, though one rose from the dead." We might be like the Sadducees who knew of the resurrection of at least three persons but still denied that there are angels and spirits. If we may trust the wisdom of Him who has done so much for us, it is better that we should not have these sensible proofs else He would have given them to us.
CHAPTER II. ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY.
ANALOGICAL reasoning is based on resemb- lance. When one thing resembles another in known particulars, we conclude that it resembles it also in the unknown. Logicians differ as to the exact subjects of resemblance. Some say that it does not imply the similarity of two things, but of two rela- tions. Thompson says, "But in popular language we extend the word analogy to resemblance of things as well as relations. " With this Mill agrees : "We extend the name of analogical evidence to arguments from any sort of resemblance, provided they do not amount to a complete induction ; without peculiarly distinguishing resemblance of relations." Whether we place the resemblance in relations or in objects, the argument implies that the resemblance originates in some common cause not yet known.
Analogy is like induction in several important particulars. Both are based upon resemblance, and both proceed upon the uniformity of nature. If the proof stops short of complete induction, it is called
(27)
28 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
analogy. It produces every degree of belief, from that of slight probability up to a very strong con- viction ; but it can never, from its nature, give us certainty. It has been of great service in several directions. It has led science to experiment and thus beeA the means of discovering very important facts. It has guided philosophy to profound prin- ciples. It is often very useful in answering objec- tions. It offers support to other methods of prob- able reasoning.
Analogical reasoning is exposed to many falla- cies. There are metaphorical analogies which are always either false or worthless. Logicians have given us canons which must be carefully observed. Thompson states the most important in this way : ^'The same attributes may be assigned to distinct but similar things, provided they can be shown to accompany the points of resemblance in the things and not the points of difference." The points of resemblance must be compared with the known points of difference and with the probable qualities not yet known. The greater the number of points of resemblance among the known, the stronger is the probability of agreement among the unknown, A radical difference destroys the argument drawn from a number of agreements.
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 29
All analogical reasoning assumes the fact that nature is uniform. Without this principle neither analogy nor induction would be possible. It is not necessary to defend the principle, but it may be important to call attention to the fact that it is not itself a primary truth. We can, without a feeling of absurdity, imagine the whole order of nature changed. The uniformity of nature is an inference from the primary principle that the same forces under the same conditions must produce the same results ; or, in other words, the same causes must produce the same effects. Resemblances imply the same or similar causes, and from known effects we infer others not known.
Resemblance may be produced by different prox- imate causes, and may seem at first to be worthless as proof, but sometimes the common result may be traced back to the same remote cause. The same power operates through different agents. Carbon is brought as a nourishment in very different arti- cles of food. Until chemistry discovered the com- mon constituent, very different causes seemed to produce the same effect. It is a well-known fact that the world is made up of a few elements, and there are indications that the number will be still further reduced. Philosophy, centuries ago, guessed
30 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
at this result. The ancient Greek philosophers thought that there were only four elements. An- aximander thought that the infinite was reduced to order by condensation and rarefaction. Others thought that there was only one thing, as water, fire, air or ether, which was both the material and efficient principle. Within recent centuries New- ton's law of gravitation has brought into unity a great diversity of phenomena. Further discoveries will find one law controlling facts which are now never thought of together. Monistic philosophies, which to-day dominate so large a portion of the speculative world, are efforts to reduce the entire universe to unity. Analogy may obtain a wider range than is thought of in the present stage of science. The force in metaphors and illustrations may yet be shown to be a half-conscious recogni- tion of the hidden relations of causes.
Theism believes that all causes originate in a Great First Cause — a personal God — who is author of all things. Materialistic science, as soon as it begins to account to itself for its faith and look for ultimate principles, is compelled to recognize a great first force, the source and centre of all forces. Atheism knows nothing behind it, but Theism recognizes a Being to whom the force belongs.
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 31
We know force in will, but we know of no force that is certainly independent of will, and Theism starts from the known while Atheism proceeds from the unknown. The great world force pro- duces intelligible results. It has built up a world full of beauty and order. It has brought into ex- istence intelligent beings. It must therefore be itself intelligent, for no effect can rise higher than its cause. This intelligent force we call God. He established the laws of the universe, and in him we have a unifying principle for all diversity. In God analogy and induction find their highest and only sufficient ground. Natural forces working blindly may produce resemblances, but these facts cannot furnish a basis for reasoning, for causes which have no thought cannot give rise to thought in others. The fact that mind can understand the operations of matter shows that there are some laws common to mind and the physical world ; the inter-depend- ence of the religious, moral, intellectual and physi- cal powers shows that there are laws that compre- hend all of them. Theism best explains the world as it is by saying God created all things and rules them by the highest laws, making the lower and more familiar things means of revealing the higher and more hidden truths. But even if we stop in
32 RVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
our conclusion short of a personal God, the har- mony which we are compelled to admit points back to some great principles which hold the world in unity. Thus, according to either scheme. Atheistic or Theistic, the fact of these higher laws warrants us in reasoning from the resemblances between physical and spiritual in the known to still further agreements. Analogy strengthens our belief in revealed doctrines. When we find these agree- ments between the facts of nature and scriptural teachings increasing under profounder studies, we are confirmed in our faith in those where no special analogy has been, or can be, discovered. Indi- rectly, at least, analogy furnishes a proof of a future life.
Recently Prof. Drummond has called attention to some remarkable correspondences between the laws of the natural world and the teachings of the Bible. He has perhaps misnamed his principle by calling it natural law in the spiritual world. So far as he has pointed out laws, they were not physi- cal laws that reached up to the spiritual, but great laws lying behind both, ruling them in common. The spiritual and natural are distinct, and every effort to lift up the physical to the spiritual, or bring the spiritual down to the physical, must fail.
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 33
But having one common Author they are ruled by the same ulterior common laws, and there are many striking resemblances. The one illustrates , the other because the one exhibits in well-known facts the law that rules in the other. This is seen in re- gard to life. Physical and spiritual life are of very different natures, but the law of all life manifests itself in both, and the natural life illustrates to us the movements of the more hidden spiritual life.
The Paracelsians in the seventeenth century caught a glimpse of the unity of the universe. They taught that God operates in the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of nature by the same laws, and that those who understand how natural bodies are changed, understand the changes of the soul in regeneration. Robert Fludd, whom Mosheim pronounces a man of uncommon genius, and whose works Kepler answered; Jacob Boehm, the great mystical philosopher, and John Arndt, belonged to this school. But the truth was not clearly con- ceived nor faithfully applied, and mixed with cabalistic doctrines, was carried into Pantheism.
Jesus Christ puts the matter of great common' laws beyond question. His masterly power of parabolic teaching is universally acknowledged;. His parables carry the force of argument. They
34 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
are not merely illustrations, but proofs. He shows us the spiritual world by holding up before us the natural world. He does not point out the hidden forces or name the great laws, but we see that there is a common bond between the movements of the natural and the spiritual. These laws are the great major premises which control the conclusions but do not appear in the argument. God feeds the fowls of the air; he will, therefore, feed you. I am the vine, ye are the branches, therefore ye must bear my fruits. The rich man died and lifted up his eyes in hell. These parables are not metaphors, but the wonderful grouping of facts under great principles; and no one has been able to duplicate them because no one has had the profound insight of the Master into the laws of both worlds.
The proof of a future life from analogy is not based upon direct resemblances. We have no sensible evidence of the continued existence of any individual life after the death of the organism. The argument can not be put in this form: A. lives after death. The soul is like A. in several other respects. Therefore the soul, like A., lives after death. But the analogy is based on some great laws, and thus furnishes a proof. The possi- ibilities of analogy have not been exhausted, and
ARGUMENT FROM ANAI.OGY. 35
some great philosophic mind may yet give it the force of which we now only faintly conceive.
Bishop Butler has presented the argument in its strongest form, and the remaining part of this chapter will be devoted mainly to the reproduction of the leading points in that argument.
Assuming the fact of personal identity or the spiritual nature of the soul, the change from the present to a future life is analogous to changes in nature and in ourselves. Prior to experience, we would have found a statement of the changes from infancy to manhood, from embryotic to separate life, from the crawling worm to the flying insect, as difficult to believe as we now do the promise of a life after death. If the unborn infant could be told of the changes at birth, he would be as in- credulous as we are as to those at death.
With the assumption of a personal identity, independent of the bodily organism, we may reason from the great law of continuity to a future life. That law is: Everything which is now in ex- istence will continue to exist until some greater power destroys it. Nothing originates itself; nothing can destroy itself. The suicide only puts himself under the influence of powers which destroy his physical life. The law of continuity
36 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE UFE.
is a law of the universe, as comprehensive as ex- istence itself. We constantly reason and act upon it. No one doubts it. We have the powers of thought now, and upon the law of continuity will have them after death, unless death destroys them. We must believe that they continue after death, unless there is a reason for believing that death destroys them. But there is no such reason, (i) because we do not know what death is and there- fore cannot know its effects further than they are sensibly manifested. These sensible effects do not extend to the destruction of the soul. (2) We can have no evidence that death destroys the soul, because we do not know upon what the exercise of the powers of the soul depends. In sleep and especially in swoons, the very capacity to exercise them seems to be suspended. Why it is sus- pended or how it is restored, we do not know. If we are ignorant of that upon which its activities are dependent, we are more ignorant as to that upon which the soul itself rests. Nothing known to us warrants us in saying that death interferes with the law of continuity.
These arguments are of force only when the distinct existence of the mind and body are admitted. Butler carries his analogy back to
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 37
prove what had been assumed. His first argu- ment is metaphysicah The unity of the soul is inferred from the unity of consciousness. We can not divide the consciousness of self, and therefore the substance in which it inheres, the subject of which it is the phenomenon, is indivisible and indestructible. From its unity is inferred its dis- tinct existence.
This conclusion is confirmed by the facts of ob- servation. The limbs and senses may all be lost without affecting the soul. The limbs and senses even of the infant may be lost, and yet its soul ex- ists. The particles of our body change, but the soul maintains its identity. That which is con- stant in the midst of so much fluctuation must be distinguished from the particles which are being changed. The members of the body are only in- struments of the soul. The eye may be assisted by glasses, the ear by tubes, the lost limb replaced by an artificial one. That the one is in organic rela- tion to the soul does not invalidate the inferences that both are only instruments, and that the soul is distinct from them. The soul furnished with facts through the senses is by its memory and re- flection and imagination independent of these senses, and could carry on its work without them.
38 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Mortal diseases do not destroy the soul, for it often retains its powers in undiminished vigor up to the very moment of death. Even if mortal disease did always diminish the activities of the mind, we could not infer that death destroyed them, because sleep and swoons always affect them, but do not destroy them. We do not know and have no rea- son for believing that death suspends the present powers of the soul, and much less therefore for be- lieving that it destroys them.
The argument seems to prove too much, and therefore proves nothing. It seems to prove that the instinct of the animal and the life of the vege- table are immortal as well as the soul of man; but as these are known to perish, it does not prove that man is immortal. This objection assumes as true what is not known and what is not universally admitted. We do not know that either animal or plant life ends at death. But if we did, we could not infer from their fate the destiny of man. The soul of man has far higher powers than the vege- table life, and higher also than the mind of the most intelligent brutes. The differences are more important than the agreements, and no legitimate conclusion can be drawn. We are wholly ignorant as to their future, and we have no analogy. The objection, therefore, is without force.
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 39
Bishop Butler's argument rests upon two great laws. The first — the law of continuity — is clearly announced. The other is only implied. It is this: distinct phenomena imply distinct substances, and different effects imply distinct causes. A large part of his argument is devoted to the evidence of distinct effects in human life, phenomena that can- not be accounted for on the supposition of only one substance in human nature. The phenomena of life lead us to believe that the soul is a distinct essence, and the law of continuity that it survives the body.
The law of phenomena and substance governs us in our practical thinking. It is only through it we distinguish one object from another. It has in- fluenced the thought of the world in regard to the natures of the mind and body. The facts of con- sciousness are wholly diverse. Two contrary series of phenomena come into view. The one belongs to the body, and the other is ascribed to self. The distinction between self and the body may be an original datum of consciousness. The child seems to learn by experience that its limbs belong to it. The savage distinguishes between the man and his body, and while the body is in the grave he thinks of the man as living in some other sphere. We
40 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
seem to make the distinction spontaneously, for it is implied in much of our thought about ourselves.
Self in its own movements recognizes itself as distinct from that material organism with which it finds itself united and which it employs as its in- strument.
This distinction, which is enveloped in the unre- flecting minds of the masses is easily drawn out into clear consciousness. Plato gives a dialogue between Socrates and Alcibiades in which is illus- trated the process of reflection, and it may be used as a supplement to the argument of Butler:
Socrates. — Does not he who uses a thing seem to you always different from the thing used ?
Alcibiades. — Very different.
Soc. — Does the currier cut with his instruments alone or also with his hands ?
Ale. — Also with his hands.
Soc. — He then uses his hands ?
^/^.— Yes.
Soc. — And in his work he uses also his eyes ?
^/^.— Yes.
Soc. — We are agreed, then, that he who uses a thing and the thing used are different ?
Alc.—W^ are. /
Soc. — The currier and lyrist are therefore different from the hands and eyes with which they work ?
Ale. — So it seems.
ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY. 4 1
Soc. — Now then, does not a man use his whole body ? Ale. — Unquestionably.
Soc. — A man is therefore different from his body ? Ale— So I think. Soc. — What then is the man ? Ale. — I cannot say.
Soc. — You can at least say that the man is that which uses the body ? Alc.—X&s.
Soc. — Now, does anything use the body but the mind ? -^/<:.— Nothing.
Soc. — The mind is therefore the man ? Ale. — The mind alone.
We reduce the argument to this form. The mind, which by spontaneous judgments, by analogy, and possibly by immediate intuition, recognizes itself as distinct from the body, must, upon the law of continuity, believe that it survives that which de- stroys the body.
The argument from analogy has had much force in all ages. Sir Humphrey Davy gives a beauti- ful and forcible application of it. "The three states — of the caterpillar, larva and butterfly — have since the times of the Greek poets been applied to typify the human being — its terrestrial form, appar- ent death, and ultimate celestial destination; and it seems more extraordinary that a sordid and crawl- ing worm should become a beautiful and active fly
42 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
— that an inhabitant of the dark and fetid dunghill should in an instant entirely change its form, rise into the blue air, and enjoy the sunbeams — than that a being whose pursuits here have been after an undying name, and whose purest happiness has been derived from the acquisition of intellectual power and finite knowledge, should rise into a state of being hereafter where immortality is no longer a name, and ascend to the source of unbounded power and infinite wisdom."
CHAPTER III. UNIVERSAL BELIEF.
THE historical proof of a future life is based upon the universal belief. It consists of two parts : first, the establishment of the fact ; and secondly, an estimate of the importance of the fact as evi- dence.
When it is said that the belief in a future life is universal it is not meant that absolutely all men, but that the vast majority of men, in all ages and countries, have believed in it. There have been individuals and even classes who have denied it. Positivists, Materialists and Pantheists cannot logically believe that for the individual there is another life. Skeptics, without denying, doubt. But the exceptions are not as numerous nor as important as is often supposed. Many who upon philosophic grounds deny, really believe. Strauss somewhere rebukes the pantheistic philosophers for the tenderness which spared self after they had repudiated God. He calls the hope of another life mere boastfulness. He attributes the desire in Goethe to weakness following worn-out genius.
(43)
44 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I^IFE.
Atheists, though they have torn up the foundation of the faith, not unfrequently look forward to exist- ence after death. Positivists shrink from annihil- ation, and Comte believed it possible, by an act of will, to survive death. Pantheists sometimes seek to save individuality, and Hegel is said to have re- plied to one who charged upon his system the destruction of personality, that his categories did not include the soul. Hume, though bound by his philosophy only to doubt, said of himself at the time of his mother's death, "Though I throw out my speculations to entertain the learned and meta- physical world, yet in other things I do not think so differently from other men."* Voltaire, who was the great leader of infidelity in France and was very closely connected with those who avowed atheism, was only skeptical in regard to immortal- ity. Condorcet says, "He remained in almost ab- solute uncertainty as to the spirituality of the soul, and even its permanence after death, "f John Stuart Mill seems often to abandon all faith in a future life, yet he gives expression to this sober judgment, "The indulgence of hope with regard to the government of the universe and the destiny of
* McCosh's Scottish Philosophy.
t Cairns' Unbelief in Eighteenth Century.
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 45
man after death, while we recognize as a clear truth that we have no ground for more than hope, is le- gitimate and philosophically defensible." *
The disbelief, when it really exists, is not spon- taneous, but the result of speculative philosophy. We can not only distinguish between speculative and practical thought in general, but also find them in the same persons widely separated. Kant's dis- tinction between the speculative and practical rea- son is well known. Berkeley and Fichte were speculatively absolute idealists, but practically they were, like other men, natural realists. Theologi- cal rationalism in Germany furnishes many ex- amples. Professors in their lecture-rooms struck at the very foundations of Christianity, yet held to their hymn-books, liturgies and Bibles. Hume makes the distinction in the sentiment already given. Disbelief and doubt in regard to a future life are often only speculative, the published utter- ances are the language of the study, while behind them there is a practical faith shaping the life, and, on occasions calling for it, giving forth its own confession. Whatever hold they may have upon us, they are always the product of logical processes. Men come to them through reasoning. They are
* Three Essays, p. 249.
46 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
always secondary, following in respect of time the belief in immortality. The opinions, therefore, of speculative philosophers cannot be taken as import- ant exceptions to the universality of this faith.
THE EVIDENCE OF THE FACT.
The fact of the universality of the belief in a future life is now widely admitted, but it will be of service, especially to those who have not ex- amined the evidence, to have some of the more prominent points of it brought forward.
In Europe the earliest man was cotemporary with the mammoth and the cave hyena. He has left traces of his life and thoughts in the caves in which he dwelt. He lived by hunting, and carried on a fierce struggle with wild beasts and inclement sea- sons for his existence. His period cannot be accurately determined, but conservative thinkers put him in the quaternary age, several thousand years before the generally accepted date of man's appearance on the earth. This European man is the oldest geological man. Rude as he was, and with a life little above the brutes, he cherished hopes of another life. Foster, who holds very ad- vanced views of man's antiquity, says: "Primeval man did not regard death as an endless sleep, as is
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 47
shown by the implements and ornaments found in the sepulchres. That homage which in all ages and among all nations the living pay to the dead, those ceremonies which are observed at the hour of final separation, that care which is exercised to protect the manes from all profane intrusion, and those delicate acts prompted by love or affection which we fondly hope will soothe the passage to the happy land — all these observances our rude an- cestors maintained. These facts show that deep as man may sink in barbarism, brutal as he may be in his instinct, there is still a redeeming spirit which prompts to higher aspirations and that to him even there is no belief so drear}- as that of utter annihil- ation."* The Canstadt race is regarded as the oldest in Europe, and thus the oldest known to Geology. Only a few of their dwelling places have been discovered. There are no traces thus far found of their places for burial, and we have no clew as to their view of death, and another life. They were followed by the Cro-MagJion race. The earlier members of this race were not much superior to the preceding one, but there are marks of a lit- tle progress in the improved implements. They were hunters, and in addition to the larger animals
"^ Prehistoric Races, p. 33.
48 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
the horse appears as a favorite food. They had the rude beginnings of art, and there are etchings of animals and of men. Qua trefages asks, ''Had the quaternary man any belief in another life? Had he a religion?" and answers, "There can be no doubt as to the first of these questions. The care bestowed upon burial-places shows that the hunters of Men- tone, as also those of Salutre and Cro-Magnon, be- lieved in the wants of the dead beyond the tomb. Our acquaintance with the customs of so many savage nations of the present epoch forbids any other interpretation of the interment of food, arms and ornaments with the body."* The next race was the Furfooz. The two experienced the great climatic changes of the glacial age. Like their predecessors they were hunters, but were pacific in disposition. In intellect they belong to a very low order, but they have left proofs of their belief in another life. In the sepulchral grotto where the Les Nutons buried their dead, are a number of perforated shells, ornaments in spar, flat pieces of sandstone traced with sketches, a vase and flint implements. "It is clear that they had been laid in the sepulchral vault under the impression that they would serve to supply the wants of the de-
* Human Species, p. 328.
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 49
ceased in the new existence which was opening before them."*
At a later period, bnt at an unknown age, were created in England the dolmens, menhirs and cromlechs, and great burial mounds. They are so many monuments of the belief of that day in a future life. Tylor thus speaks of them: "Pre- historic burial places in our country are still- wonders to us for the labor they must have cost their barbaric builders. Most conspicuous are the great burial mounds of earth or cairns of stone. Some of the largest of these seem to date from the stone age. But their use lasted on through the bronze into the iron age. Within the old burial grounds or barrows, there may be a cist or rude chest of stone slabs for the interment, or a chamber of rude stones, sometimes with gal- leries." "In the barbaric religion which has left such clear traces in our midst, what is supposed to become of the soul after death ? The answers are many, but they agree in this, that the ghosts must be somewhere whence they can come to visit the living, especially at night time."t
The date of man's appearance in America is a
* Human Species, p. 344. t Anthropology, p. 348, 349.
50 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
disputed point. The juxtaposition of bones in Missouri, and a pipe with a good drawing of the mammoth found in Iowa, seem to indicate that man came before that animal disappeared. But this is denied by eminent authority. The earliest known race was the Mound-builders. Their period is undetermined. Short says, "We have seen that as }'et no truly scientific proof of man's great antiquity in America exists. This con- clusion is concurred in by most eminent author- ities. At present we are not warranted in claiming for him a much longer residence on this continent than that assigned him by Sir John Lubbock viz; three thousand years."* These Mound-builders may belong to any period from a thousand to three or four thousand, or even longer, years ago. They belong, however, to what are called the prehistoric races, and at the time they occupied the territory of the U. S. were low in the scale of civilization. The mounds, among other purposes, were burial places. From a burial mound near Chillicothe, about two hundred pipes carved in stone, pearl and shell beads, copper tubes and copper ornaments, were ob- tained. This mound is a specimen of them, though * North Americans of Antiquity, p. 130.
UNIVERSAL BELIEI^. 51
the offerings to the dead were in the earlier mounds very often of a ruder character. Foster has described their burial customs as learned from the relics: "The corpse was almost invariably placed near- the original surface of the soil, enveloped in bark or coarse matting, and in a few instances fragments of cloth have been found in this connection. Sometimes it was placed in a sitting position, again it was extended, and still again it was put within contracted limits. Trinkets were often strung about the neck; water- jugs, drinking cups and vases, which probably contained food, were placed near. The com- parative absence of warlike implements is a noticeable fact." "All the circumstances seem to indicate that burial was a solemn and deliberate rite, regulated by fixed custom of perhaps re- ligious or superstitious origin."* Some of the mounds were for sacrifices, and there were human offerings. These things touchingly reveal to us the deep feelings towards God and the life to come, that stirred in the bosoms of the men who roamed in the western wilds many centuries ago. All scientific evidence, as well as Biblical, points to Asia as the original home of man. Far back
* Prehistoric Races, pp. 188, 189.
52 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
the great Aryan race divided, and one branch rolled down into India and became the Hindu peo- ple. The relation of their language to ours, the increased facilities of becoming acquainted with their ancient books, and growing commercial rela- tions, have developed among us a profound interest in them. There is evidence that they carried with them from central Asia a belief in a future life. In the Vedas Yama is the impersonation of life after death. He has been supposed to be in their tradi- tions the Adam of the Scriptures. He is repre- sented as receiving all who die into the spirit world. The Iranians call the impersonated future life Yima. The father of Yama in the Vedas is Vivasat, and the father of Yima in the Zend-Avesta is Vivanghat. The similarity of names of both father and son shows that the Yama of the one is the Yima of the other, and also that both races be- lieved in a future life before the division which took place beyond the reach of certain historic chronology.
In the earlier books of the Veda there are not many statements as to future existence, but they are sufficiently numerous to show that belief in it lies at the very heart of their religion. "It was not a positive, abstract conception," says Fairbairn,
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 53
** still it was as comprehensive as was possible to the early Hindus."* Samuel Johnson, writing of the same early age, says, '*We hail the simplicity of this moral and religious instinct, so frank and direct, like the opening eyes of the child, or move- ments at play. This entire confidence in immortal- ity was based on an instinctive trust in the con- tinuity of life and in destiny proportionate to the best desires." *'The instinct of continued exist- ence is found so deeply embodied in the Vedic poems for the very reason that it is so closely as- sociated with the affections. Every god and every good act it would seem was the promise of immor- tality." He quotes Burnouf: "The belief in the immortality of the soul, not naked and inactive, but living and clothed with a glorious body, was never interrupted for a moment; it is now in India what it was in ancient times, and even rests on a similar metaphysical basis. "f The simple faith of the Vedas under the influence of the priests and philosophers was made more definite, and at last was almost or quite lost in Brahmanism. In the Bhagavid Gita we find still the old belief in a personal immortality. "As the soul in the body
* Cotemporary Review, 1871.
t Oriental Religious. India, p. 133.
54 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
undergoes changes of infancy, youth and age, so it obtains a new body hereafter. As a man abandons worn-out clothes, and takes new ones, so does the soul quit worn-out bodies and enter others."* It is well known that the later Hindus believed the doctrine of transmigration, a new form of the old doctrine, attesting the existence ,of the belief in immortality. Buddha introduced the idea of Nirvana. About the exact nature of Nirvana schol- ars are not agreed. James Freeman Clarke says, "At present the best Buddhist scholars incline to the belief that Nirvana does not mean annihilation, but immovable rest. It probably means what Christianity means by the rest of the soul in God."t But if it does mean annihilation, it has only the value of a speculative opinion.
The age of the Chinese is not known, but they came down from a very early period. They are tenacious of customs, and from the present na- tional habits we may reason back to a remote past. The ancestral shrine testifies to the belief in a future life. It has been transmitted from a very early day. "From the oldest times," says John- son, "the ancestral shrine has held the first place
*Ch. 2.
t Ten Great Religions. Part II, p. 332.
UNIVERSAL BELIKF. 55
in the Chinese affections." "The Shiking de- scribes the music and dances and pleasant viands in these dwellings of the expected ones, three thousand years ago." "The candle at the bedside of the dead, and the paper money and clothes burned for his service, have been supposed to prove that the dead aiie conceived as ghosts groping in darkness and indigence, but the symbols of senti- ment must not be too literally read." "The filial piety of the living would fain establish a real union with the dead. Such invocations are common : 'Thy body is laid in the grave but thy spirit dwells in this temple of our home. We beseech thee, honored one, to free thyself from thy former body and abide in this tablet forever.' "* The Chinese have held for centuries a doctrine of evolution. Man was born of nature, but he is composed of a spiritual, as well as animal part. At death the spiritual ascends to heaven, the animal descends to dust. The philosophers did not directly teach the doctrine of immortality, but they taught nothing inconsistent with it according to the Chinese mode of thought. The people carry the belief into every-day life. They announce every important family event to their ancestors. They pay devo-
^ Oriental Religions. China, p. 700, etc.
56 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
tions to the patron saints of their vocations. The carpenter adores Pang, once a famous artificer in the province of Shang-tung ; and the soldier Kwang-tae, the war-god, who was once a distin- guished soldier.
Shintooism, one of the religions of Japan, is evi- dence of the belief of a future life among the Jap- anese. Among the inferior deities of the Empire are nearly three thousand deified men.
Egypt was one of the very oldest of civilized countries. Its original settlement is not known. Egyptologists do not agree upon the date of the accession of Menes, the first known king. Mariette puts it at 5000 B. C. ; Brugsch at 4400; Bunsen at 3059; Poole at 2700; Rawlinson between 2450 and 2250. But all agree that civilization was carried here to a high state of perfection at a very earl}^ period in the history of man. There is evidence that from the first they believed in another life. Their monuments, coming down from their earliest ages, are records of their belief in immortality and the resurrection. The Book of the Dead, a copy of which was deposited in every mummy case, gave minute directions to the soul how to work its way to heaven, and contained specific descriptions of the other world and life in heaven. The mum-
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 57
mies are witnesses of their belief even in a resur- rection of the body. The Egyptian lived with the thought of a future life constantly with him. ' ' The sun when it set seemed to him to die, and when it rose the next morning, tricking its beams, flamed once more in the forehead of the sky, it was a per- petual symbol of the resurrection. ' ' Here was also found the doctrine of transmigration; and Herodo- tus, not comprehending the idea of a resurrection, supposed that they embalmed the body because the delay was prolonged as long as the body was kept undecayed.
The Assyrians and Babylonians also have great antiquity. Bunsen put the beginning of the Chaldean kingdom at 3784, but Rawlinson says that from the monuments alone we should not be compelled to place it further back than 2025. They worshipped several deified kings and Hea, god of the under- world. *
The Zendic books date, as Haug, and approved by Rawlinson, thinks about 1500. The Iranians many years before had deified Yima. The Zend Avesta gives clear expression to the belief in a
* Assur, Merodach, Nebo, Nergal god of hunting, Vul storm- god, Asur king of heaven, and Hea lord of hell, were the prin- cipal gods. Smith's History from Monuments, 10, 11.
58 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
future existence. * 'Joyously go the pure souls to the o:olden throne of Ahuraand his immortal ones." "The soul of the righteous attains to immortality, but that of the wicked has everlasting punish- ment." Johnson, who has given these with other extracts, says, "Immortality in the Avesta is not involved in transmigration; it does not tend to ab- sorption in Ahura; it does not mingle man with the brute, nor merge him with the gods. It is dis- tinctly and completely personal."*
The Greeks were very careful to discharge the duties which they supposed to be due from the liv- ing to the dead. They believed that the soul wandered about the world, not permitted to enter Hades, until the body was buried; and they provided for it an honorable interment. As soon as dead the friends put in the mouth of the corpse a coin to pay the ferryman across the river Styx. Honey-cake was given it. The body was washed, anointed with perfumes, crowned with flowers and dressed in white. In some ages various objects, as painted vases, mirrors and trinkets, were placed in the tomb.t All these testify to a belief in another life. The funeral customs and the faith inspiring them
* Oriental Religions. Persia, p. 66. t Becker's Charicles, Burials.
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 59
came down from the very earliest times. The Homeric age may not have had a clear conception of the fact that the thinking powers snrvived the body, but there is abundant evidence that the people of that day believed that man did not wholly die. Fairbairn says, "The Homeric belief in a future life of the soul was a faltering, inconsistent, indis- tinct, yet veracious utterance of that great human instinct which demands for man continued exist- ence."* Psyche often appears as a shadow, a ghostly form of man, destitute of the properties of either mind or body, a vague, intangible some- thing, yet somehow continuing the life of the per- son. Then, it sometimes appears as self-conscious, with power of appearing and speaking to the living either asleep or awake. Patrokles appears to Achilles and begs for burial.
"Let my pale corpse the rites of burial know, And give me entrance to the realms below; Till then the spirit finds no resting place, But here and there the unbodied spectres chase The vagrant dead around the dark abode. Forbid to cross the irremediable flood."
Ulysses' mother describes her own death and what has happened in Ithaca. Achilles rejoices to
* Contemporary Review.
6o KVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
hear of the heroism of his son. In these and other passages the soul embodies all the essential elements of man. In Hesiod the conceptions become clearer and more consistent. The earliest philosophers were materialistic and could find no solid ground in their philosophy for immortality, but the belief in it shows itself in their speculations, and some- times obtained clear expression. Heraclitus said, *' When we die our souls revive and live." '*The gods are immortal men." The tragic poets re- flected the common faith, and their utterances are not doubtful. Socrates represents both the instinct- ive public belief and that of the philosopher. As a philosopher he offers two arguments: the perfecti- bility of the soul, and its nature as divine. As a man he talks confidently to his friends on the night of his death, of that higher state upon which he was about to enter. Plato discusses it in many places, and his profound convictions come out as an essential element of his philosophy.
The Etruscans were the acknowledged sources of the augury, games, architecture and religious rites of the Romans. Rome, probably, obtained from them the whole of their early civilization. They lived in the northern part of Italy along the Po, until they drove out the Umbrians and located
UNIVERSAI. BELIEF. 6 1
in Etruria. They were probably of Turanian origin. Historical critics have been perplexed about the time of the commencement of their civil- ization. Some have fixed it at 1400 B. C. ; others locx); others as late as 650. They attained con- siderable skill in massive architecture, painting, music, and statuary in bronze. They had many physical comforts and indulged in luxuries, enjoy- ing an elegance in their houses, a variety and rich- ness in dress, and a magnificence in their orna- ments, equal perhaps to any cotemporary. Their religious ideas were low. They had a form of nature worship. They practiced gloomy supersti- tious rites, and offered human sacrifices.* But they had a strong belief in a future life. They buried their dead in vaults and in tombs hewn out of rocks. The ceilings were ornamented wath painting or sculpture. With the body were de- posited bronze instruments, gold ornaments, rings and engraved gems. On the walls of the tombs were inscriptions recording their hopes of another life, such as: "While we depart to naught our essence rises. " "We rise like a bird." "We as- cend to our ancestors." "The soul rises like fire."
* Origin of Nations.
62 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
The belief in immortality has been found among every people known to history since the Christian era. Of the Goths and Huns, those terrible ene- mies of the Roman empire in the days of its de- cline, Sir William Temple says, "It is certain that an opinion was fixed and general among them that death was but an entrance to another life." The Teutonic tribes thought of death as going home. The Celts believed in a metempsychosis.
The North and South American Indians at the time of the discovery by Columbus were divided into a large number of distinct tribes and peoples; but while differing widely as to the degrees of civi- lization and religious practices, they all believed in a future existence. Charlevoix, in an oft-quoted remark, says, "The belief best established among aboriginal Americans is that of the immortality of the soul." Dr. Robertson says, "With respect to the great doctrine of religion concerning the im- mortality of the soul, they were more united. We can trace the opinion from one extremity of Amer- ica to the other, in some regions more faint, in others more developed, but nowhere unknown." Brinton, in his "Myths of the New World," tells us "that there was only one class found among the Indians of North and South America, and that a
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 63
very small one who seemed to have no notion of a future life; and even they believed in charms, dreams, and guardian spirits." Clark says,* ''The Mexicans said to the dying, ' Sir, awake, the light is approaching; the birds begin their song of wel- come. ' The Esquimaux looked to the land of per- petual day, where there are plenty of wolves. Nic- araugua Indians thought the soul comes out of the mouth in the form of a living person." The Pe- ruvians believed that the soul, at a time not exactly determined, would return to the body, beginning a new terrestrial life.f Schoolcraft tells of the vam- pire among the iVlgonquins, and adds, "The belief in necromancy and witchcraft was universal, and that of transformations and metempsychosis was equally common, east and w^est of the Alleghany mountains. J
The lowest and most brutal races have been found by more recent travelers to believe that the soul lives after the body dies. Among the lowest are the Bushmen. It has been said that they have no religion and no idea of a future life. Living-
* Clark's Teu Great Religions, Part II, p. 139.
t Rivero and Tschuddi's Peruvian Antiquity, by Hawkes, p.
151- J Iroquois, p. 144.
64 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
stone traveled among them and became acquainted with their habits and modes of thought. He found at Zanga a Bushman's grave which "showed dis- tinctly that they regarded the dead as still in an- other state of being, for they addressed him and requested him not to be offended even though they wished to retain him a little while longer in this world."* He says that the tribes in South Africa show so little reverence and feel so little in regard to God and a future state that it is not surprising that some have supposed them entirely ignorant on the subject, and gives an instance of a similar mis- take he made with a Bushman. He questioned the Bak wains "as to their former knowledge of good and evil, of God and the future state, and they scouted the idea of their ever having been without a tolerably clear idea on all these subjects. ' ' f When they speak of the dead they say he has gone to the gods. The Barotse showed somewhat more relig- ious feeling than the Bechuanas, but still very degraded. He asked a priest at Santuru's grave for a relic, but was refused because Santuru ob- jected. At Tete he met Senhor Candido, who knew the language of the country perfectly, and
* Travels, p. 183. t Do., 176.
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 65
whose statements, Livingstone says, may be relied upon. Candido told him that "all the natives of that region fully believe in the soul's continued existence apart from the body, and they visit the graves of relatives, making offerings of food, beer, etc."* Kolben, quoted by Prichard and endorsed by Quatrefages as above suspicion, writes of the: Hottentots : "That they believe in the immortality of the soul seems evident, i. They offer prayer to^ good Hottentots who have died. 2. They are apprehensive of the return of departed spirits. 3. They believe that witches have power to restrain them."t
In Western Africa are the people of Guinea, who are placed very low in the scale of intelli- gence. Oldendorp, also quoted by Prichard, says: "There is scarcely a nation in Guinea which does not believe in the immortality of the soul, and that after its separation from the body it has certain necessities, performs actions, and especi- ally is capable of happiness or misery. The negroes believe almost universally that the souls of good men after their separation from the body go to God, and the wicked to the evil spirits." I
* Travels, p. 686. ' t Natural History of Man, Vol. II, p. 688. JDo., p. 705.
66 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Purches wrote in 1625, "We asked them what became of the soul when the body dies. They made answer that when they die they know that they go into another world, and that therein they differ from the brutes."
The Australians are exceedingly low, but Quatrefages says that they ''believe in a kind of immortality of the soul, which passes success- ively from one body to another. But before finding a new abode the spirit of the dead wanders for a certain length of time in the forests, and the natives very often affirm that they have been seen and heard."* He says that the Tahitans believed in rewards and punishments after death. "The chiefs go to Paradise. The others go into Po, where they have no very decided pleasure or pain. But the guilty were condemned to un- dergo a certain number of times a scratching of flesh upon the bones. The sins expiated, they too were admitted to Po." f
The Mincopies have been pronounced atheists, but Symes and Day have shown that they do worship certain deities, and believe in another life. "They keep lighted fires under the plat-
* Human Species, p. 487. t Human Species, p. 489.
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 67
form which bears the body of their chief, to appease his powerful spirit." *
The people of Terra del Fuego did not seem to Darwin to have any religion, yet they blow into the air to keep away evil spirits.
This review of the evidence, limited only for the want of space, is sufficient to prove beyond question that the belief in a future life is part of the universal faith of man. We have found it in the very oldest, and in the most brutal and savage, as well as in the most enlightened. It has ap- peared in all ages and conditions. It was promi- nent in the early dawnings of civilizations, and asserted itself while men were maintaining the fiercest struggles for a mere existence. It lingers even in those people who have become so stupid as to seem indifferent to it. The universality of no subjective fact can be more fully established.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FACT. Universal beliefs have the guarantees of our faculties. To discredit them sends us into Pyrrhon- ism. If we reject one without showing clearly and precisely the source of the error, we involve all the others. Philosophers and philosophic thinkers of
* Human Species, p. 480.
68 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
all ages have attached a great deal of importance to them. "What appears to all, that is to be be- lieved, whereas what is presented to individual minds is unworthy of belief ' ' (Heraclitus). ' ' What appears to all, that we affirm to be; and he who subverts this belief, will himself assuredly advance nothing more deserving of credit'^ (Aristotle). "The consent of all races must be regarded the law of nature." "About that which the nature of all agrees, it is necessary that it be true" (Cicero). "It is better to trust all than a few. For individu- als can be and are deceived. No one deceives all, and all deceives no one" (Pliny, the younger). "The common nature of man is neither itself void of truth, nor is it the erring index of the 'true; in virtue thereof all men are on certain points mutu- ally agreed, those only excepted who through pre- conceived opinions and a desire to follow them out consistently find themselves compelled verbally to dissent" (Alexander of Aphrodisias). To these may be added a large number of other philosophers of modern times. Adherence to the instinctive be- liefs constitutes the strength of the Scottish philos- ophy, and the abandonment of them the weakness of the German. Kant, after well-nigh wrecking all philosophy, was compelled to return to them.
UNIVERSAL BELIEF, 69
Not only philosophers, but all men, hold as true what has been universally approved. We have the aphorism: ''The voice of the people is the voice of God." Hesiod gave utterance to the common judgment in the lines closing his Work and Days:
"The word proclaimed by the concordant voice Of mankind fails not; for in man God speaks."
The universal beliefs are somewhat analogous to instinct, and they have not unfrequently been called instinctive. The instinct of the animal and of man does not err, and on the ground of analogy all the instinctive beliefs must be held as certain.
There are two kinds of universal beliefs. One class is universal through self-evidence and neces- sity. We are compelled to think them, to accept them, whether we will or not. The other class does not appear so imperiously in our conscious- ness, and we may throw them off. To this class belongs the belief in the existence of God and a future life. We are not guilty of absurdity in deny- ing the latter class, as in the former. We can bring proofs for the one, but not for the other. But as both grow spontaneously out of our nature, in repudiating the last we in large measure discredit the first.
70 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
This proof of a future existence has a force which has been felt by those who have denied the doc- trine, and they have attempted to evade it in two general ways.
First, they have tried to disprove the fact of the universality of the belief. The accumulated evi- dence has put the fact beyond question, for it is now known that if it is not absolutely universal, the few exceptions which have appeared or may hereafter appear are unimportant.
Secondly, they have attempted to prove that the belief is not natural, but acquired. It has been said that it originates in the instinctive desire for life. For self-preservation God gave us a strong love of life, and this begat and nurtures the belief in a future life. But this desire is instinctive, and, accompanied by a belief, becomes a pledge of the fact. The desire is itself a proof of our immortality.
A far more plausible explanation has been found in the dreams of the savage age. Our savage ancestors mistook the vivid subjective realities of dreams for objective facts, and when they dreamed of their dead friends they supposed that those friends really returned to them. Herbert Spencer proposed this theory, and Mr. Tylor has ably sup- ported it by facts which his extensive acquaintance
UNIVERSAI. BELIEF. 7 1
with savage life furnished him. He states the theory in this way: "What then is this soul which goes and comes in sleep, trance and death? To the rude philosopher the question seems to be answered by the very evidence of the senses. When the sleeper awakens from dreams he believes he has somehow really been away, or that other people have come to him. As it is well known by experience that men's bodies do not go on these excursions, the natural explanation is that every man's living self or soul is his phantom or image, which can go out of his body and see and be seen itself in dreams. Even w^aking men, in broad day-light, see these human phantoms in what are called visions or hallucinations. They are further led to believe that the soul does not die with the body, but lives on after quitting it; for although a man may be dead and buried, his phantom figure continues to appear to the survivors in dreams and visions. That men have such unsubstantial images belonging to them is familiar in other ways to the savage philosopher, who has watched their reflec- tions in still water or their shadows following them about, fading out of sight to re-appear suddenly somewhere else, while sometimes for a moment he has seen their living breath as a faint cloud, van-
72 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
ishing though one can feel that it is still there. Here, then, in few words, is the savage and bar- baric theory of souls, where life, mind, breath, shadow, reflection, dream, come together and ac- count for one another in some such vague confused way as satisfies the untaught reasoner."* As a confirmation of this theory he appeals to language. *'Bven among the most civilized nations language plainly shows its traces, as when we speak of a person being in an ecstacy or 'out of himself and ' coming back to himself,' or when the souls of the dead are called shades (that is, shadows) or spirits or ghosts (that, is breaths), terms which are relics of men's earliest theories of life."t
This theory does not have direct proof, nor can it be met by positive facts. It is possible that the belief in a future life originated in that way, and if man was originally a savage this is doubtless the real genesis of it; but then it is not shown that it did. On the other hand it is impossible, without the Bible, to prove positively that it did not. It is a question of fact which lies beyond the reach of secular history.
The theory originates in the exigencies of a
* Anthropology, p. 343. f Do., p. 345.
UNIVERSAL BELIEF. 73
materialistic philosophy. That philosophy, to make good its claims, is bound to account by ex- perience for every idea. It has been engaged a long time with the task, which its opponents will not suffer it to forget, but there are ideas that will not submit to its laws. It cannot charm away, among others, the idea of cause; and Hume has shown beyond a doubt that this does not come from experience. While the paternity of this theory does not of itself condemn it, the source is sufficient to put us on our guard until we have time to ex- amine it.
The theory assumes the fact of evolution. But the doctrine of evolution has not been clearly estab- lished. It postulates, without scientific proof, not merely spontaneous generation, but also the trans- mutability of species. It is possible that species may not only be variable, but also transmutable; but science has not a single fact of it. It assumes certain orders of beings as links, but it has not the slio^hest trace in fact of their existence. It assumes that the history of the missing links was lost in the missing pages, but it takes no account whatever of their absence from the pages where the records are complete. It fails to explain all the facts — for example, the eye, whose complexity required for its
74 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
evolution a great many ages, yet whose perfection was necessary to give its possessor the slightest ad- vantage in the struggle for life. It fails, too, as many of its friends admit, to account for the mental and moral nature of man. The doctrine of evolu- tion has not attained that unquestioned authority that makes this theory as to the belief in a future life necessary.
This theory assumes, with evolution, that man was originally a savage. This is far-from being an established fact. The oldest man known to geology was found in Europe; but all tradition and all facts of science point to the interior of Asia as the original home of the race. Science is not com- petent to tell us whence we came or what was our primal condition. No man is better authorized to answer in its name upon this subject than Quatre- fages. This is his answer with his own emphasis: "To those who question me upon the problem of our origin, I do not hesitate to answer in the name of science, I do not know. ' ' * Man, as he appears in the oldest traces of him in Egy^pt, Babylonia, and Phcenecia, is far from being a savage. The theor}' assiimes therefore as a fact that which all accessible facts deny. Those who accept the Bible
* Human Species, p. 128.
UNIVERSAI. BELIEF. 75
have its high authority for believing that man did not appear on earth as a savage.
Dreams may account for the belief in the fact of a future existence, but they do not account for the idea of a future retribution which so generally ac- companied it. The idea of future rewards and punishments grew out of our moral nature. The theory of dreams must be supplemented by the theory that man's moral nature was acquired. One of the most stubborn facts the doctrine of evolution has had to encounter, is the conscience. A theory that must be bolstered up by a still more doubtful theory, violates one of the canons of the hypothesis and has very little scientific value.
The theory fails to explain, and is inconsistent with, the fact of the persistence of the belief long after the savage stage has been passed. The great majority in every stage of culture, from the lowest up to the very highest, believe in a future life. Centuries after a people have learned to know the nature of dreams and shadows, they look forward to an existence after death. If the dreams were the cause of the belief, the effect would cease with the cause. There must be some principle in our nature upon which the belief is based and even if we could prove an original savage state, that prin-
']6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
ciple is necessary to account for the origin of this belief.
The theory proposes to explain the belief in the existence of God. It claims that the first religion was Animism and next Polytheism. As a matter of fact, the earliest religion was Monotheism, or as Max Miiller calls it, Henotheism. If religion originated in dreams, the religious nature remains a fact, the influence of religion in human progress unquestionable, and this acquired belief is proved to have an objective reality. Some who are willing to admit that religion started in Animism, believe that it was God's way of leading men up to a knowledge of himself ; and the belief in a future life, starting in dreams, was only the first step in learning the truth. But the theory is against the facts, and this is a sufficient answer.
Mr. Tylor's proof from language has no force. All our metaphysical terms are taken from sensible objects. Those which have been most recently in- troduced, as well as the oldest, are suggested by physical analogies. Men had ceased to think that the soul had eyes before they began to talk about intuitions^ or that it had hands before they spoke of apprehension.
The effort to prove the belief acquired has failed.
UNIVERSAL BKLIEF. 77
It is much less probable than that it is intuitive, a belief which comes from immediate intuitions. It seems to spring out of our nature and must be ac- cepted as true, as we do all spontaneous belief. Natural beliefs never deceive us. They are much more to be trusted than the deductions of the understanding. Philosophers have often erred, but the universal faith never. We conclude with Davies:
** If then all souls both good and bad do teach,
With general voice that souls can never die, 'Tis not man's faltering gloss, but nature's speech,
Which like God's oracles can never lie. But how can that be false which every tongue
Of every mortal man affirms for true ? Which truth has in all ages stood so strong,
That loadstone-like, all hearts it ever drew. ' *
CHAPTER IV.
CONSCIENCE.
"\ /TAN'S moral nature has always been regarded ^^^ as one of the clearest indications of a future life. Cicero, from the standpoint of ancient philosophy, said, "It is something clinging to the mind and is an augury of a life to come. It ex- ists in the noblest minds and in the tnost exalted spirits." Adam Smith, as a modern philosopher, gave expression to the same opinion. "We are led to the belief in a future state, not only by the weakness, by the hopes and fears of human nature, but by the noblest and best principles which belong to it, by the love of virtue, and by the abhorrence of vice and injustice."
The moral nature, which is called conscience, consists of two elements. The one is rational and the other is emotional. The rational is the apprehension of the right in its principles and facts. The emotional is the response of the sensibilities to these apprehensions. The two do
not always exist together with equal strength.
(78)
CONSCIENCE. 79
There is no feeling without an intellectual act, but it is conceivable that there may be intellect- ual acts without feeling. Those who attempt to reduce conscience to the emotional miss the most essential part of it and mistake a variable adjunct for the great factor.
The rational is partly intuitive and partly reflective. The intuitive lays hold of the funda- mental principles of duty. The function of reason in the moral differs from that in mathe- matics and philosophy only in respect to the char- acter of the truths apprehended. In the one it knows immediately fundamental laws of right; in the other it knows immediately more general axioms and primary principles. The reflective faculties apply the laws furnished by reason to the various conditions of human conduct, and deduce other laws. As the conditions and rela- tions of life are more fully understood, the laws reg- ulating them are more clearly grasped. Casuistry arises, not from any darkness of the first principles, but from the difficulty of applying the law in doubtful relations. The comparative faculty ap- plies the rule as known to actions as understood, and pronounces them right or wrong. Its judg- ments may be mistaken when the law is badly
8o EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE LIFE.
apprehended or the condition of the action misunderstood.
The sensibility gives a response to the law by a sense of obligation, and to the judgment upon actions by a feeling of approval or disapproval.
The correlative of the moral nature is the moral law. The conscience presupposes this law as the eye does light or as the reason does truth. The law is objective, but reveals itself in our con- science. It is not a mere necessity of thought. It existed before we did, and doubtless holds in worlds of which we know nothing. It does not grow up in us, but stands ready to exercise its authority over us as soon as expanding reason is able to catch its voice. It is like reason in respect to truth. Reason never creates truth, but only apprehends it. Truth is universal, and we can never appropriate it so as to say ' my truth. ' We do say 'my conscience,' speaking of our faculty, but never 'my moral law.' The moral law is simply truth embodying obligation. It is truth with behests upon life. It is not all truth, as Wollaston said, but truth of which the essen- tial characteristic is ought. One may have no impulse to obey, but in seeing the law, he must have an apprehension of the obligation. The
CONSCIENCE. 8 1
intellectual factor remains as long as reason is re- tained, but the emotional may be lost. The law revealing itself intuitively to all men is what Paul calls the law written upon the heart.
The fact of our moral nature cannot be denied, but there is a question among philosophers as to its origin. There are two great schools coming down^ from the Greeks, called then the Epicurean and' Stoic, but known now as the Utilitarian and Intu- itive. The Utilitarian holds that conscience has been derived; the Intuitive, that it is original, or innate. This question is of importance in the proof of immortality drawn from the moral nature.
The Utilitarian resolves the moral element in us into a more refined and intelligent love of pleasure. *' Pleasure is the only good."* "Moral good and evil are only a voluntary conformity to a law that will bring pleasure and pain." t "Without pleas- ure, justice, obligation, duty and virtue are empty sounds."! Lecky closes a review of the principles of this school with this remark: "We have seen that the distinctive characteristic of the inductive school of moralists is an absolute denial of the ex- istence of any natural or innate moral sense or faculty enabling us to distinguish between higher
* Hobbes. f Locke. % Bentham.
4*
82 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
and lower parts of our nature, revealing to us either the existence of a law of duty or the conduct which it prescribes. We have seen that the only postu- late of these writers is that happiness, being univer- sally desired, is a desirable thing; that the only merit they recognize in actions or feelings is their tendency to promote human happiness, and that the only motive to a virtuous act they conceive possible is the real or supposed happiness of the agent. The sanctions of morality thus constitute its obli- gation, and apart from them the word 'ought' is absolutely unmeaning."* Regarding the moral law as only a sublimated rule of pleasure, and the conscience as only a refined prudence, they were confronted by the question: How was the transition made? They have attempted to give the process. The earliest men obeyed their passions, but experi- ence taught them that there were certain immutable laws with which an unbridled indulgence conflicted, and that to secure happiness it was necessary to avoid certain injurious things and to observe prudence. They learned, too, that some painful things were useful. They were taught by their feelings to seek some objects and avoid others, and
* European Morals, Vol. I, p. 19.
CONSCIENCE. 83
to approve and blame themselves for their prudence or imprudence. Sympathy brought them together, and they obtained from each other the benefits of individual experience. They began at length to generalize and formulate principles of action, and thus moral maxims were formed. These were changed into more authoritative rules by society, and became laws. The long continued habit under the two-fold constraint of prudence and civil law, became constitutional and was transmitted under the natural law of heredity. The maxims appear now as innate and self-evident principles. As all men passed through similar experiences, the laws are universal.
This historical theory itself has a history. Hobbes recognized injustice, ingratitude, arro- gance, pride, iniquity, as contrary to the eternal and immutable laws of nature. All knowledge of these laws has its origin in the sense, for there is no conception which ''has not at first totally or by parts been begotten upon the organs of sense." Man in a savage state might adopt maxims, but morality prior to civil law had no existence. Mutual assistance is necessary to many pleasures, and there must be organization. Laws are enacted to secure the restraint required for association and
84 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
cooperation, and these laws were enforced by such penalties as to make it the individual's advantage to obey them. The legislators were the first moralists. The civil law is not co-extensive in the sphere of morals with the private life; and especially with mere thoughts and feelings the law has nothing to do. The penalties cannot reach a large part of moral conduct. The theory of Hobbes was inade- quate and was supplemented by a revival of the old doctrine of the arbitrary will of God. It was re- produced by the schoolman Occam, and defended by Crusius, Pascal, Paley, and many others. The motive was enlarged by the hopes of reward and fears of punishment in another life. Locke con- trasts this theory with that of Hobbes: "If a Chris- tian be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give as his reason, because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if a Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, be- cause the public requires it; and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not. ' ' * Paley, a distinguished expounder of the theory, says, "Virtue is doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God and for the sake of everlasting happiness, "t
* Essay, i, 3. f Moral Philosophy, 7.
CONSCIENCE. 85
This theory made God's will neither holy nor un- holy, power the source of right, and demanded a revelation as a means of knowing God's commands. It was a virtual abandonment of philosophic methods, and was never popular with philosophers.
Hartley made a most important contribution to the theory by accounting for the moral idea as it appears in consciousness. It is in our conscious- ness independent of all motives of interest. It is not associated with the useful. The moral is not a means but itself an end. Utilitarianism, both philosophical and theological, was compelled to ac- count for this fact. Hartley proposed the theory of association as the explanation. Things at first sought as means are often turned into ends. jNIen seek money as a means of acquiring gratifications, but at length seek it for itself and become misers. Men love praise for the advantage it brings, but at length desire posthumous praise that can never be of personal benefit.
This theory required years for its operation. It could not explain the appearance of moral ideas in the child except by education. It sfill left the phenomena of self-evidence and the fact of innate- ness unaccounted for.
Modern materialism found the solution in the
86 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
law of heredity. James Mill carried the associa- tion back to sensation, and reduced even conscious- ness itself to sensation. As the seven colors of a rapidly revolving wheel are blended in white, so the lingering sensations of pleasure are blended in morality. Sensation is a movement of nerves, is physical, and, formed into habits, is transmissible. As the white man propagates the white color, so the moral sensations are communicated to offspring and appear as intuitions. Morality, like heroism, appears in races.
Utilitarianism in all its forms falls under the charge of selfishness. Its advocates have resented it, but disclaimers are not disproofs. Bentham's theory of ''the greatest good for the greatest num- ber," and Adam's Smith's "sympathy" started with the happiness of the individuaL "By sym- pathetic sensibility is to be understood the propen- sity that a man has to derive pleasure from the happiness, and pain from the unhappiness of other sensitive beings," says Bentham.* "The idea of the pain of another is naturally painful. The idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable. In this, the unselfish part of our nature, independ- ently of inculcation from within, lies the founda-
* Leckj-'s European Morals.
CONSCIENCE. 87
tion for the generation of moral feelings," says J. S. Mill.* The defenders of the school have struggled with the difficulty. Mr. Mill distinguished between the kinds of pleasure and made the theory respect- able, but only by abandoning the " fundamental ground. He attempted to give the steps by which the personal feeling might become disinterested, but he introduced a new element to effect the trans- formation. The charge of selfishness stands unre- futed.
This contradicts the universal judgment of man- kind as to the essential nature of the moral good. The world has made a broad distinction between the moral and the selfish. Language crystallizes opin- ions and is a better exponent of the public mind than formal statements. In all languages there are words expressive of honor, justice, truth, dis- interested virtue, self-sacrifice; and they convey widely different ideas from prudence, foresight, in- terest, self-love. So far as self becomes the end, so far any action falls in the estimate of men below the virtuous. The reputed hero becoming known as inspired only by personal ends at once loses all the glory of heroism. So we think to-day, and so has man from the earliest recorded periods thought.
* Essays, Vol. I, p. 137.
88 e:vidence of a future life.
Utilitarianism fails to account for the fact of ob- ligation. Bentham recognized this and admitted it by saying that the word "ought" should be erased from our vocabularies. Darwin put it upon persistent desire; Bain, upon external authority; and John Stuart Mill, upon personal feeling.* This is neither sound philosophy nor good morals.
The sense of obligation according to this theory is but the permanent influence of authority. Parents taught their children the prudential maxims which they had learned from experience. Legislators enforced them by penalties. Priests, upon the authority of the deities, inculcated them. In the lapse of time the authority of personal wills was transferred to the law itself.
This may explain the habit, but not the sense of the necessity of obedience. The sense of obligation is resolved by the theory into a delusion. There is no difference made by it between imprudence and sin. As soon, therefore, as we have learned the true nature of the obligation, it appears in its original character as purely individual and relative, and we may repudiate it. We havfe the right to examine and reject any one of the precepts. Man made the right, and he can unmake it. He was
* Calderwood. Moral Philosophy, pp. 145-152.
CONSCIENCE. 89
before all law, and each may act as lie thinks best. Those who blame him are the slaves of prejudice. Thus utilitarianism as a moral system destroys it- self.
Utilitarianism reverses the true theory of life. It exalts the mere feeling above the intellect as the governing principle.
It has utterly failed to find a rule of life. It has never laid down a test of virtue or a law that an- swered the universal idea of the right.
The intuitive theory is in harmony with the uni- versal opinion of men upon morals. Conscience asserts itself in consciousness as an independent faculty, with its distinct sphere and entitled to an independent place. While taste deals with beauty, it deals with right. While the reason in thought apprehends truth, in conscience it apprehends duty. We can know nothing out of consciousness, and when men get behind that they go beyond the range of knowledge and we decline to follow.
Conscience is universal. Men everywhere have ideas of right and wrong.* Those tribes which were at one time reported as destitute of moral
*See Janet's Theory of Morals, Chap. IV, p. 309, and Quatrefages, Human Species.
90 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
conceptions have since been shown to have been misrepresented. It has been proven also that there is everywhere essential agreement upon fundamental moral principles. The differences, of which so much has been made since the days of Montaigne, are easily explained on ethical and psychological grounds. Men often excuse sins even when they know the right, and often they have difficulty in applying the principle to special cases. They never condemn the right even where they excuse the wrong. This agreement is a confirmation of the Intuitive theory and a proof that conscience is a part of our nature.
The conscience, which holds its place as an original part of our constitution despite the efforts of strong men to dislodge it, reveals its purpose by the nature of its work. It was given to form character. It was not intended to be a guide merely to temporal happiness. Prof. Clifford in the monograph in which he makes un- blushing and blasphemous professions of atheism, says that we are under a law of right, and that we ought to be truthful and honest and chaste without regard to any ulterior personal ends, and that no matter how profitable it may be to us, we
CONSCIENCE. 91
ought not to practice deceit. If temporal and temporary happiness had been its chief end, conscience seems a blunder. The brute with only instinct makes fewer mistakes. If that was its end, the law of selection, according to the evolution scheme, became erratic and took a downward course; or, in conferring conscience, according to the theistic scheme, God appears to have made a bad choice of means. Instinct would have been a better guide. But if charac- ter formed here for a life hereafter is the aim, conscience was the only means.
Conscience implies freedom of the will. There are metaphysical difficulties with which Kant's famous antinomies have made us all familiar. The necessitarian controversy, which has been carried on for centuries, has not been settled. There are apparent causes outside of the will controlling its volitions. Statistics reveal remarkable uniformity in human life, and ''positive" philosophers have boldly predicted a time when the actions of men will be foretold as we now do natural phenomena. But many of these difficulties are in appearance only, and not in reality. Some are real, and we may not be able to meet all of them. Metaphysi- cians have found difficulties in physical as well as
92 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
mental causality; but no one really doubts that he knows causes. So no one really doubts that his will is free. It is a fact of consciousness in every act of the will. We do not trouble ourselves with the possibility when we have the fact itself. The consciousness of freedom gives us the sense of responsibility. If we are not free we are not under obligation, and we can not be either punished or rewarded. We may suffer evils, but conscience deceives us when it tells us that we are punished. Thus, our nature becomes a lie. Whatever may be the other difficulties, they are not so great as that which the direct denial of the intuition of con- sciousness involves. The problem of explanation may be, as Dr. McCosh thinks, insoluble, but the fact itself is as certain as any fact can be.
The freedom of the will is evidence of immor- tality. It stands alone among the facts of the world. Every other cause is under necessity; the will only is free. Every other power acts blindly; the will only is self-determining. Everything else must obey laws imposed from without, and move inevitably to a given end; the will only has spontaneity. This shows the will's independence of nature. That which .is above the range of natural law cannot be involved in changes pro-
CONSCIENCE. 93
duced by that law. Death, which is natural, cannot reach it. The consciousness of freedom keeps alive the consciousness of the distinction between mind and body, and begets the certainty of its own sur- vival of the destruction of its organ. This intui- tion is the data upon which rests the universal belief in a future life. The belief is a necessary inference from the intuition.
Freedom and intelligence are the elements of personality. Because we have intelligence and freedom we are persons, and, as persons, we have rights. "Human personality is inviolable." Kant held that inviolability is involved in the very idea of personality. Among these rights is that of ex- istence. It is a right over against every other individual and against the State. To be deprived of life without having forfeited it is the greatest of wrongs. The right to existence is a natural right. It is a right which God has conferred, and in con- ferring it He limited himself. He cannot take away our existence and violate personality by destroying it, without an act of great injustice. God never does wrong, and, therefore, the soul is immortal.
Conscience is related to the eternal, and in that relation it reads its own immortality. The law
94 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
whose behests it must obe)' is higher than the laws of nature. We can conceive of any of these physi- cal laws as coming into force, of being annulled, of being indefinitely modified. The law of gravita- tion, the most general of all of them, is not a necessity of thought, for we can think of worlds where it does not exist. But we cannot think of the moral laws as commencing or being abrogated. If in imagination we stand in empty space while there was naught but God, we find moral law ready to assert itself over a free intelligence as soon as it would come into being. We cannot think of a world where it would be right to tell a falsehood. Not even God is above it. He cannot violate it without wrong. It is, therefore, an absolutely universal law. The conscience is the response to that law. It is the voice of eternal principles. The conscious relation to these principles is a pledge to the soul that it is itnmortal.
Matter is also related to eternal laws. If it exists it must exist in space, and if it moves it must move in time. But^the analogy fails in an essential par- ticular. Matter knows nothing of these relations. The consciousness of them gives a nobility and worth to its subject which does not belong to unconscious matter. Pascal in his own inimitable
CONSCIENCE. 95
way has given expression to this truth : "Man is a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. Even if the universe should crush him he would be more noble than that which killed him : for he knows that he dies, and he recognizes the advantage which the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of this." We know the eternal law because we are akin to it.
Conscience foreshadows a higher tribunal than any found in the present life. It is a part of our nature, but it is clothed with an authority which is above the human. This feature is so prominent as to give it its name : con and scio^ knowing with. In conscience we know with God. Its voice is so authoritative and so little under our control that God seems to speak through it, pronouncing judg- ments in our hearts.
The decisions of this tribunal are often perverted. Its judgments are often drowned. Its penalties never satisfy for crime. It tells us, therefore, of another tribunal to review and correct its discus- sions and administer the rewards which it makes us feel we deserve.
If there is no other tribunal. Nature's method is unsuccessful. Its court fails to reach all the cases. Its executioner's arm may be paralyzed and his
96 EVIDENCK OF A FUTURE LIFE.
voice stilled. The worse the criminal, the greater the impunity; while the man who strives to live vir- tuously is lashed and scourged for his smaller of- fenses. If death ends all, conscience loses its chief significance and becomes a troublesome factor, which for the greatest peace of mind we must restrain within moderate limits.
Conscience reveals to us our moral defects. It places before us an ideal character and urges us up toward it. But it testifies that after our most earnest efforts we fall very far below perfection. It declares that this imperfection, not like that in knowledge or physical strength, is guilt. The consciousness of imperfection and guilt is univer- sal. Men in all ages have had some means by which they sought to propitiate the offended Deity. Human sacrifices, offered in so many countries and extending down even into the Christian era in Rome, testify to the deep sense of sin in the human heart. The growth of civiliza- tion taught men increasingly better methods; Christianity points to the sacrifice on Calvary; but nothing has removed the sense of guilt. Philoso- phy that taught that sin is only a sense of imper- fection necessary in the process of evolution, found no response in the heart. We are so conscious of
CONSCIENCE. 97
guilt that we read with pitying but sympathetic emotions of the altars of the prehistoric age so often red with human blood. Life, as a school fitting us for another stage of being, has a rational explanation. But if these high ideals and lofty aspirations are to perish in the grave, and this sense of guilt is without eternal significance, why have they been given us? Why reveal to us a character so far above attainment? Why lash us with a sense of guilt when we are only imperfect? Possibly these utterances of conscience have ele- vated the race, but they have involved immense losses in feeling to the individual. If the race only is benefited, instinct would have accomplished the same end, and the wounded spirits which con- science creates could have been avoided. If the individual is not immortal, the race itself must perish, and the elevation of the race only post- pones, but by no means relieves the difficulty. Without a future life where the ideal may be realized, life is a mystery, and it may well be asked — Is life worth living?
Conscience points in so many ways to a future life, that when it is awake it seems to bear imme- diate testimony. It is not the criminal made sen- sible of his crimes who has doubts about immortal- 5
98 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
ity, but it is the easy-going, respectable, moral man who is skeptical. As conscience is soothed we lose our sense of the relation to the eternal world, forget the eternal tribunal, and sink into indiffer- ence; but when some sin has aroused it and it has resumed its sceptre, we know we are immortal. We see, as by intuition, that personal character cannot perish in a grave.
CHAPTER V. INTELLECTUAL POWERS.
IF there is no future life, all the ends of our exist- ence must he met in our present life. We need no knowledge beyond that which is useful for our physical and social spheres. But the range of the mind is far wider than simply practical ends require. All our higher knowledge has only a remote bear- ing upon utility. We know more of astronomy than is needed for navigation, of geology than can be employed in mineralogy, and of mathematics than can be used in mechanics. If our intellectual powers have no higher purposes than the brief period of life on earth requires, they seem to be an unnecessary expenditure of means. The end could have been accomplished in a much simpler way. The bee builds her cell according to principles she does not understand. The bird finds its way uner- ringly through the pathless air. The horse will work his course in a direct line where man would be lost. Some one has said, "If this life is all, the human mind is like a huge engine in a fishing
craft.'*
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lOO EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
The mind is formed for knowing truth for its own sake, and the truth we learn here subserves its highest end in developing the mental powers. De- velopment, and thus preparation for grasping higher truth hereafter, seems to be the highest and best mental attainment possible to us here. The scientific man is intentionally ignorant of a great many things that he may busy himself in seeking other things. What he wants is the activity for the sake of enlarging his powers. Aristotle said, "The end of philosophy is not knowledge, but the energy employed about knowledge." Lessing's saying in regard to search after truth is well known. Mere potency is worthless. The philosophic in- stinct, driving us onward to increasing power that is to perish in the grave, is absolutely unmeaning. The development is purely individual, and if the individual is annihilated all that is lost. The rest- less effort after self-improvement incidentally brings out much truth for the benefit of the race, but the result is not proportionate to the outlay of energy. There is an immense waste. The thought of annihilation leaves us with a deep mystery. But if the mind fits itself by its present activity foi fruitful labor in another life, the scheme of Provi- dence seems wise and beneficent.
INTELLHCTUAI. POWERS. lOI
The field of knowledge is immeasurable. No one mind can compass all that is known to men. New fields are being opened, and each field stretches out indefinitely. To stand among the first in any de- partment of science it is necessary that one be a specialist. Two centuries ago a brilliant genius like Leibnitz might be a master of jurisprudence, a rival of Newton in mathematics, an equal of Locke in philosophy, and a great controversalist in the- ology; but the day has passed when one man can be an authority in more than one science. What is known by the greatest is within the range of human powers, but life is much too short to learn all. Several thousand years w^ould be necessary to read even the books of some of the larger libraries. The past is offering treasures of vast extent in his- tory and geology. The future has its possibilities for every science. God is a subject for infinite study. • We know enough to create an intense de- sire to know more of His character and works, but eternity will not reveal the whole to us. The work of the life time of some men may seem great when compared with that of other men, but it is exceed- ing little compared with what one would like to do. Men are great as measured among themselves, but they are the veriest pigmies, the greatest of them,
102 EVIDENCE OE A EUTURE EIEE.
when measured with the expanse of truth which lies about us. Can it be believed that all we shall ever know are the few fragments we have been able to pick up during the leisure moments afforded amid the struggles to preserve life ?
The brute knows very little more than is neces- sary to preserve its life and perpetuate its race. Those capable of domestication may be taught enough to make them efficient servants of men. x\ll beyond that is to the lower animals non-existent. Nature shows its kindness in withholding from them any intimations of knowledge above their reach. But man, the noblest of creatures, and in many respects Nature's favorite, is exalted above the beasts only to be tantalized if there is no future life. He is shown alluring prospects, but only to be mocked. It had been very much kinder to have kept his conceptions within the range of that which is attainable. He could have met all the ends of life with mental powers only a little above the higher order of animal intelligence, and greater are not only not needed but make him unhappy. If it had been the purpose of Nature to make him the object of cruelty, with so many resources at command, why did it not make him more miserable ? What creature in obeying its natural impulses and com-
INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 103
plying with the laws of its nature brings upon it- self unnecessary pain? In seeking truth, and in developing mental powers, there is obedience to innate impulse and conformity to natural law, but the reward is pain. If the present is the only life, Nature has been not only unwise in the choice of means, but also unkind to her greatest child.
It is much more reasonable to believe that these- capacities, in common with all the other powers of our nature, are given for a wise end and reveal. to us God's purpose. Our appetite and the power of digestion show that we were intended to take food. The social instinct and the idea of justice show us that we were made for society. Our re- ligious feelings show us that we were created for worship. Obedience to these instincts has elevated men; disobedience has always ended in degradation. The hermit withdrawing from society and denying himself proper nourishment, if he escaped idiocy, became a mere caricature of man. Forced celibacy has resulted in great evils to the individual and society. Kveii if religion be regarded as a super- stition, it must be admitted that when the people have repudiated it they have always paid a terrible penalty. If these great mental capacities are not exceptions to the other parts of our nature, they
I04 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
were given us for another life, where we may con- tinue our acquisitions of truth.
The imagination gives intimations of a wider sphere than the world, and thus, in some degree, the promise of another life. It gilds life, clothing in beauty the homely affairs of every-day experi- ence, and imparts variety to what would otherwise be most wearisome monotony. It widens to us the realm of the actual. The poet often proves the forerunner of the philosopher. It creates new forms higher than any found in nature. The crea- tions of fiction and poetry and sculpture have made many additions to the beauty of the world. It catches visions of brighter and purer things than any that have been realized in the things about us. It serves, then, a most valuable purpose in our present life. But it has higher ends. The world is too narrow for the exhibition of the possible, and through the imagination God has enlarged our horizon, and thus given us a pledge of a higher sphere than that of the earth. He lifts us up that we may have gleams of that which ^ill be enjoyed hereafter. As ultimate, the world is far from being the best possible, and our imagination only enables us to realize its imperfections more fully; but as a place of training for another life, with imagination
INTELLECTUAI. POWERS. 105
to create ideals, it is admirably adapted to its ends. The use in multiplying the beauties of the world and making life happier, therefore, is not the sole end of the imagination. That it meets well a lower, is no proof whatever that it was not intended also for a higher purpose. But more, if these crea- tions of the imagination, the pure ideals, are never attained, we are the sport of pure delusions, and we are enriched only by false promises. It had been better for us if the range had been more limited. The peasant would have lived contented and happy in his mountain hut, but having seen the splendor of a great metropolis becomes dissatis- fied. It would have been better for him never to have w^andered beyond the mountain gorge. If there is no other life, it w^ould have been better if imagination had been granted power only to touch with her weird fingers the rougher things of the world, but not to give any visions of an existence better than the present.
Memory is one of the most useful of our facul- ties. Without it the action of the others would be either impossible or almost worthless. Even the brute has memory. But the memory of man is much greater than is necessary for the purposes of the present life of the individual or the interest
Io6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
of the race. It is not improbable that nothing is forgotten.* A great many instances are recorded where the past that seemed wholly effaced was re- called. It has occurred in the life of all of us that things of which we had not thought for years sud- denly recurred to us. We have often tried, at the suggestion of friends, to recollect circumstances and were unable to find the slightest trace in mem- ory, but afterwards they flashed with great vividness upon us. The remarkable case of the German servant girl as related by Coleridge is frequently cited, and is beyond doubt authentic. During the delirium of disease this girl, who was illiterate, re- peated I^atin, Greek and Hebrew sentences. Of the Hebrew, only a small part could be traced to the Bible; the remainder seemed to be Rabbinical. A young physician became deeply interested and looked up her past life, and learned that she had been for a time a servant to a Protestant minister, whose habit it was to walk up and down a hall opening into the kitchen, reading aloud his favor- ite books. He was a fine Latin and Greek scholar, and especially fond of Hebrew. Among his books
. * Sully says, "We never can be sure that reproduction is im- possible, even in cases that seemed beyond recollection." Out- lines of Psychology, p. 281.
INTRLLKCTUAL POWERS. I07
were found a collection of Rabbinical writings and several Latin and Greek Church fathers. The girl had heard repeatedly, perhaps, the same passages, not a word of which she ever understood, and then in the delirium of fever reproduced them by the memory alone of unmeaning sounds.
The case of Comtesse Laval is given by Lord Monboddo, and quoted by Sir William Hamilton. The Comtesse during sleep had been observed by the servants to speak in a language which none of them understood. Once she was attended by a nurse from Brittany, who recognized her own dia- lect. The Comtesse could not understand the lan- guage when awake. She had been born in that province, and had been nursed during infancy in a family where it was used. She had never been able consciously to speak it, yet in her dreams she employed it.
It has been often observed that persons in their last illness return to the language of childhood, the use of which had been long discontinued.
It is generally reported that the whole of the past life flashes upon the drowning.
We are warranted in saying, though it is not fully proved, that nothing is ever forgotten; the memory has powers much beyond the needs of the
Io8 EVIDKNCK OF A FUTURE LIFE.
present life, and therefore reqnires a future life as a sufficient explanation of their purpose.
The mind in none of its faculties attains in any case its highest possible development. The great- est mind has felt when compelled to lay down its work that that work was really only begun. In everything else in the world possibilities, so far as we can know them, are in some instances realized. Many a tree is blasted in the bud, but some come to perfection. Many an animal remains a dwarf, but some reach their highest type. The mind alone must always stop on the threshhold of what opens before it as its true destiny. The doctrine of final causes, upon which nature carries on all her works, requires for us another life.
The argument in this chapter has been teleologi- cal — the destiny of the mind as revealed by ends manifested in its powers. But these powers give intimations of a future life through their own nature without regard to ends. If we can see clearly that the mind is a distinct essence from the body, we have no difficulty in believing that it lives after the body dies. Whatever indicates a difference of essence, indicates a future life.
The effort to reduce all our knowledge to sensa- tion has failed. If it had succeeded, or shall in the
INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 109
future become successful, it will not necessarily follow that the soul is merely physical. Locke, the father of modern empiricism, and Condillac, his eminent but radical disciple, as well as many other sensualistic philosophers, have believed in the im- mortality of the soul. But until all thought is reduced to sensation, we must hold the mind as something other than the body.
There is a close relation between the mind and the brain. For every brain-movement there is thought- movement, and whatever affects the brain aflfects also the mind. This would be true if the mind were the product of the brain; and it would be equally true if the brain were only the organ of the mind. The brain-movement is not thought. The impossibility of reducing them to the same terms has been admitted by materialists, and this impossibility shows that whatever may be the rela- tion between them, that which thinks is not the molecules of the brain which move.
Memory has a brain organ, and when it is dis- eased memory is affected. But memory is psychi- cal, and materialists have found no physical basis for it. It is the power of reproducing the past by its own innate energies, without the help of any picture on the brain. There is no trace of any
no EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
physical modification whatever which memory employs. The imagination has also its brain organ, and it draws its material from sensible ob- jects, but it is so removed from mechanical laws that its productions are called creations. It creates ideals that matter never realizes, and if it is mater- ial matter transcends itself. Both memory and imagination are under the control of the will. The origin of activity is in the mind — the determination to recall or depict is before the recollection or cre- ation. The materialistic theory must start with the acts of recollection and of imagination as sponta- neous molecular movements, or postulate some self- conscious molecule which rules over all the others. But nobody knows anything of this great autocrat. There are ideas that have stubbornly refused to be reduced to sensation. They are the conditions of experience. Without them sensation would be unmeaning. They gather up the diversity into unity. One is substance, another is cause, and a third is personal identity. The idea of substance does not come through sensation, because the senses give only phenomena. The idea of cause cannot originate in the sense, for sense gives only succes- sion. Personal identity does not, for in every sensa- tion there is the fact that it is my sensation, and the subject is pre-supposed. How can a sensation beget
INTEI.I.ECTUAI, POWERS. Ill
the idea of me? — for until felt it is not a sensation.
and, if felt, who feels it? The ideas of infinity, of space and of time, are also supersensible. In- finity cannot come into finite experience. Beauty is seen through the sensible form, but it is some- thing different from that which falls under the eye and ear. The right is connected with action, but the senses do not grasp it.
If the body has these intellectual powers, two wholly distinct and opposite classes of properties belong to the same substance. If we reject the distinction between mind and matter, we must, on the ground of all analogy, end with a substance behind both mental and physical phenomena of which they are the manifestations. The efforts to reduce materialistic phenomena to mind or ideal- ism, and mental phenomena to matter or material- ism, have thus far accomplished so little that we feel sure they will always fail. If mind is a distinct substance, or even a modification distinct from the body, there is no evidence that it ceases to exist when the body dies. This much it seems necessary to say here in regard to the nature of the mind, but the subject will come up for a fuller discussion in subsequent chapters. We feel authorized to draw the conclusion that the mental powers, both by their purpose and nature, promise us another life.
CHAPTER VI. SENSIBILITIES.
THE Sensibility is dependent upon the Intellect. It is the reaction of the mind upon the objects apprehended. It is purely psychical. It is the capacity of pleasurable or painful response to everything brought within consciousness. As the body is drawn towards that which is in harmony with it and repelled by that which is injurious, so the mind is drawn towards that which is in har- mony with its nature and repelled by that which is not congenial. The feelings are of different de- grees of intensity. If the idea is stronger in con- sciousness, our attention is directed to it and we speak of the intellectual act; but if the feeling is stronger, we almost overlook the intellectual factor, and speak of the emotion. Both are essential parts of the mind, and the one may reveal our nature and destiny as well as the other. They are guides in our present life, and they are pledges of a life to come.
There is evidence of a future life in the innate, desire for it.
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Desires may be classified as natural and ac- quired. A natural desire is a promise from Nature. A natural impulse may be perverted, and appear under a new form. The desire for food may be changed into gluttony. By persistent effort that which was at first repulsive may be converted into an object of intense craving; as, for example, to- bacco and whisky. But for every desire there is. a corresponding object. We may not be able to- secure the gratification, but that which, if within, reach, would satisfy, is somewhere in existence.. To this law there is not a single known exception.
The universal desire for a future life implies the fact of that life. If there are any exceptions whatever to the universality of this desire, the number is too small to be taken into account. Men may not believe it, but still they desire it. They may fear the punishment which that life may bring, but yet they desire the life. The be- lief found everywhere is nurtured in some degree by the desire.
The desire is original. It is not tfie outgrowth of an instinctive love of a life which cannot be maintained in this world, and therefore turns to the future. The love of life and the consequent shrinking from death are Nature's means for self-
114 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
preservation. Without it we would be reckless, and a majority of individuals would be carried off prematurely. The race itself would probably be- come extinct. We understand God's purpose in endowing us with this clinging to our physical ex- istence. The desire for another life may seem to be only a necessary consequence of this instinct. But this is not the true origin of it. We share the instinctive love of life* with the brutes. We, not they, desire another life. The brute does not know what death is, and does not shrink from it because he is afraid of extinction but by a mere law that works through him. The highest ani- mal intelligence does not reach a fact as high as the nature of death. That law is sufficient to guard individuals from unnecessary exposure and to preserve the animal species. Within historic periods only two or three species have disappeared. That law would have been sufficient to accomplish our self-preservation, and there was no need of supplementing it with the desire of another life. Just so far as the belief in a future life is opera- tive, it counteracts the instinctive desire for the present life. When men look with perfect confi- dence to existence beyond the grave, they are less concerned about holdino; on to a life so full of ills
SENSIBILITIES. II 5
as is the present. With intelligence the thought of the possibility of another life was unavoidable, and with the belief in the possibility the desire was inevitable. But the desire has no corrective. We are left to cherish it, and Nature therefore is the responsible author. Even if it were not orig- inal, it is natural, growing necessarily out of nat- ural powers, and is therefore Nature's gift and Nature's pledge. But the case is stronger. The desire grows out of an intuition. The belief is in- stinctive, and the desire is primitive. They were implanted by the Creator, and if there is no future life He disappoints us.
For every natural desire there is a corresponding object. Though all men who desire wealth do not obtain it, there is wealth, and the gratification of the desire is not an absolute impossibility. It is so with every other natural desire. But if there is no future life, here is one desire which is universal but cannot possibly be met. This is the only excep- tion. It may be thought that the desire, though disappointed, may accomplish good. The desire for wealth is a benefit to tho6e who never obtain it, because it makes them prudent and active, and the benefit justifies the universal principle. So the desire for immortality makes us more careful as to
Il6 EVIDENCK OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
character, and the good realized from it more than compensates for the disappointment. This is true, but nowhere else does Nature allure us by an abso- lutely impossible end. In regard to wealth the promise is conditional, and the object under proper conditions is secured. In regard to a future life, if there is none, Nature promises unconditionally the impossible. We are prompted to seek a better character by a false promise. A holy God cannot use deceit and falsehoods as means to His ends. He never promises, by word or act, what cannot, under any circumstances whatever, be granted. No matter whether original or secondary, the desire belongs to our constitution, and in it we have God's promise of another life — at least as a possibility to some. There is, therefore, a future life. There is no escape from this conclusion except in atheism.
The desire for wealth is a reflection of the desire for immortality. Though the desire for riches is general, it is not in the strictest sense original. It is the perversion of another desire. Wealth is the accumulation of the means of gratification. It is intended to meet future wants. Its end is pros- pective. It is the fruit of labor saved for subse- quent enjoyment. It brings with it power, and thus it is related to the innate love of power. Upon
SENSIBIUTIES. 117
these two principles — the provision for the future and love of power — the love of wealth is based.
Much greater wealth is desired than is needed to meet the wants of our physical nature, or to provide for the capacity for enjoyment. Human pleasures are limited. Beyond the gratification of these wants, wealth has no other purpose than to give us a sense of power. Men are not satisfied with it as a means of physical enjoyment. They pile up riches beyond any possible personal use. No man, except as a means of other accumulations, is able to em- ploy a million dollars, but they seek hundreds of millions. They want it for the power it brings. But except so far as is necessary for the protection of self and rights, why is power wanted? The answer is found in the love of personal being. What we own is in some sense a part of ourselves. We set our mark on it, and in some way it reflects ourselves. It is a product of our labor, and em- bodies so much of our strength. It is ours over against others. Thus our wealth becomes a re- flection of self and seems to be an expansion of our personal being. Increasing our power, it also in- tensifies our self-consciousness. It gives us a feel- ing of superiority over the world and of our indi- viduality. That this is related to the desire and
Il8 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
faith in a future life is seen in this fact, that with material prosperity there is, unless counteracted by a quickened religious life, a weakened sense of immortality. The extension of self here abates for the time the desire for the life hereafter. The de- sire for unnecessary wealth seems to be, then, a perversion of the desire of a future life.
The principles upon which this conclusion is based have many facts to illustrate and confirm them. Men generally with the accumulation of wealth manifest an increased self-consciousness. They show by their bearing a feeling of superiority, and the world acknowledges it by paying them deference. That feeling may not be offensively dis- played, but whenever circumstances favor it the dis- covery is made. We use this feeling of self-respect from possessions as a means of elevating the lower classes. We encourage them to make accumula- tions, and in order to assist them we establish sav- ings banks. The spirit of the slave denied all possessions is always mean ; but even the slave w^ho has been permitted to lay up a little sum, as was often seen among the negro slaves, rises above that meanness. But at the same time, with this grow- ing self-respect from unneeded wealth, there is a diminishing interest in the reality of a life after
SENSIBILITIES. 119
death. Those who love wealth most have least concern in regard to a future world. Solomon in Ecclesiastes makes numerous references to this fact. Christ speaks of it several times. **It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." The young man "went away sorrowful, because he had great possessions." The rich man who lifted up his eyes in hell seems to have had no vice except callousness. Paul also speaks of it frequently, warning men lest riches "drown them in perdition." Men who have other means of deepening and enlarging the sense of individuality are rarely covetous. Men of learning or eminence are not often avaricious. Spiritually minded men to whom heaven is a certainty are not concerned about great accumulations. Wealth despiritualizes. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." "The love of money is the root of all evil." Periods of ad- versity are not periods of skepticism. Great relig- ious awakenings follow general financial depres- sions. Our skepticism to-day grows out of our great material prosperity. Because wealth is not the natural end of the desire which prompts its accumulation, it never satisfies. The desire for im- mortality diverted to another object and losing
I20 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
itself in it goes on intensifying itself, and therefore the more men get the more they want.
The inordinate desire for fame is also a per- verted desire for a future life. The love of praise is natural. It grows out of our desire for personal worthiness. Praise is an evidence of that worthi- ness. But the desire for esteem is susceptible of abuse in two directions. It may be sought be- cause of its advantage, and thus a noble sentiment is perverted into a selfish one. It is more gener- ally sought to gratify the love of personal being. Distinction gives a sense of importance — makes one more fully conscious of self. It lifts us up above the masses, and sets us out more clearly in our individuality. But present eminence never satisfies. Men want other portions and other honors. Daniel Webster would have added noth- ing to his eminence if he had become President; but not satisfied with the glory of being the great American orator, he sought the Presidency with an avidity that approximated weakness. Life is too short to satisfy the craving, and men court a fame that will live after them. They sufifer obscurity and poverty and a thousand ills to win a posthumous name.
If death is the annihilation of personality, what
SENSIBILITIES. 121
does it matter whether or not there be any remem- brance of us? Why should there be concern as to what men think or say of us after we are dead? What is fame? Is it not, as some one has said, a breath? What is it worth to those who exist not? Hannibal's fame has been satirized :
"Go climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool, To please the boys and be a theme at school."
If Luther or Washington live only in name, what benefit is loving remembrance to mere nothingness? But absurd as is the thought of any possible rela- tion of praise to an absolute blank, by an instinct- ive impulse all men want to be remembered.
"So strong the zeal to immortalize himself
Beats in the breast of man, that even a few, Few transient years, won from the abyss abhorred Of blank oblivion, seem a glorious prize, And even to a clown."
Shakespeare has given expression to the same fact as a universal characteristic.
" To go down to the pit, And moulder into dust among vile worms, And leave no whispering of a name on earth — Such thought was cold about the heart and Chilled the blood. Who could endure it ? Who could choose Without a struggle to be swept away
From all remembrance, and have no part with living men ?" 6
122 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
The desire for fame testifies to the fact of a future life in the same way that the desire for wealth does. Both of them grow out of the desire for the con- sciousness of individuality, both of them are insat- iable, and both of them are perverted desires for immortality. The love of post-mortem praise testi- fies in another and stronger way. No one wants to be forgotten, because no one wants to be annihi- lated, or believes that he will be. Addison sums up the argument thus:
*' Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality ? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into naught ? Why shrinks the soul Back on itself and startles at destruction ? 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself that points out a hereafter And intimates eternity to man."
The affections, another class of feelings, give still further pledges of a future life.
Human love in some of its forms is in certain degrees like affection among brutes. Both men and brutes have affection for offspring. The end of this love is the perpetuation of the species. Where the care of the mother is not needed in infancy, as in the case of fishes, it does not exist. Where the
SENSIBILITIES. 1 23
young can not provide for themselves there is often a passionate fondness in the parent. Where the care of both parents is needed, as in many birds, it is found in both. But as soon as the young are able to take care of themselves, the parents become indifferent and cast them off. The end of Nature has been accomplished, and the parents forget. The love of the human parent has in part the same end. The mother's fondness for her babe secures to it the tenderest care, the best instruction, and the surest guarantee of preservation. That love also makes the care and labor for the child a pleasant duty. But the preservation of the race is not the sole end. The love lives on when the attention and care are no longer needed. The mother does not cease to love her child after it has left her home and is able to take care of itself She never ceases to love it. What end does this continued love sub- serve ?
We are mutually dependent. Solitary life, if not impossible, is barren. Love of society brings men together, and thus they are made to help each other. Love renders society happy and gives it efficiency. Where animals need each other, they are by instinct gregarious. They obey the instinct witliout knowing the end. This mutual assist-
124 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
aiice is one aim of the social instinct in man, but this is not the sole purpose. Love lives after asso- ciation has ended. Great oceans separate homes and the family will no more be brought together, but love continues. I^ove spans death itself. The pain of bereavement diminishes; the anguish, that paralyzed effort at first, passes away; but love itself remains. The thoughts as the evening shades come on fly beyond the golden gate in the west to the home where the loved one has gone.
The memory of the dying is frequently busy with thoughts of those long since dead. The old man in the delirium of disease talks lovingly of the companions of his youth and early manhood. Affection reaching out to those who have crossed over the river, wonders if they retain their love for us and asks with Mrs. Henians:
"Tell us, thou bird of soleiuu strain, Can those who have loved forget? We call and they answer not again ; Do they love — do they love us yet?"
The love that goes beyond the grave, defying separation and death, has existed in all ages. The splendid monuments erected to their memory, the inscriptions upon tombs, and various other mementoes, bear witness to it in the early dawn
SENSIBILITIES. 1 25
of history. The Egyptian mummies, the Chinese ancestral shrines, the American mounds, testify to that affection down through the ages. The rudest savages as well as the most cultivated races cherish the love for their dead. It is there- fore a natural affection. It subserves no purpose in life, and if it does not point to a future life, what is its meaning? But clearer than any logic, and above all logic, it is in itself a testimony. It bears in itself by instinct, or intuition, or inner revelation, or whatever one may be pleased to call it, the evidence that rational love can never perish.
Among the affections we find also love for God, who is an infinite person. There is not much need for such a love in the narrow limits of life. Mere utilitarianism can not satisfactorily account for it. The attempted explanation is that it in- fluences character. But if life here is all of existence, there is not much need of character. Good health is better than character in the merely mortal. The work of to-day has its full fruits to-morrow, and so each succeeding day. If it all does not end in naught, there must be a future life.
If this love of God was a natural product and intended solely for earth, we should have found in
126 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
this, as in other purely natural instincts, uniform- ity of results. As a matter of fact all men have the faculty, but the great majority do not actually ex- ercise it. * Paul said the natural heart is at enmity with God. The history of the world confirms the judgment of the Apostle. Men have feared and shrunk from God. The great body of the world had forgotten the one God, and not being able to do without religion, had fallen into polytheism. This is inexplicable on the ground of pure naturalism, but is in complete harmony with that religion which teaches a fall of man and a future life.
The love of God has here no sufficient scope. The most devout come far short of their desire. In their best service there is imperfection, and in their deepest devotion a consciousness of falling below the demand. An infinite God deserves infinite praise and love, and another life is needed to perfect these affections. There is a capability of the indefinite expansion of our affections, and another life is needed to complete that which is here only happily begun. If there is any worth in character at all, love toward God is the noblest and best thing. We intuitively pronounce it the best. It is irra- tional to think otherwise. But if there is no future life, Nature's highest, noblest, best work perishes in
SENSIBILITIES. 127
its very beginning. Its grand promise turns out a failure. The noblest and worthiest aspirations are awakened, but only to be blasted. The success which marks Nature's work everywhere else forbids us to accept this conclusion. The capacity to love God is a proof of the existence of a God to be loved, and a perfect God would not leave so grand a scheme to fail. With or without the thought of God, the afifections point clearly to a future life.
CHAPTER VII. CONDITION OF THE WORLD.
THE world does not meet the promises contained in its constitution. It has capabilities that are not developed, better possibilities than are real- ized. Many things were left intentionally imper- fect, that man might find his home a school for self-discipline and self-development, but there are many imperfections and evils which are not needed for this purpose. The greatest failure is man. He has fallen much below what seems the mani- fest purpose of his Maker. He is made for one end, but he reaches another. A few individuals rise up above th^ race towards the ideal of life, but even they are conscious of great imperfections, while the masses are perverted from the higher aims of existence. These are dark facts from any point of view. No satisfactory theodicy has yet been found. But if there is no future life the darkness is greatly intensified, and pessimism ap- pears the true philosophy. We must, on that sup- position, ascribe the world either to a force w^hich
works blindly and is unable to carry out what we (128)
CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 1 29
mistake for purposes, or to a fickle Deity, who changed His plan in the midst of His work and left the world an orphan.
Happiness. — We were created for happiness. There are many things provided for our comfort. The colors blending in beautiful harmony delight the eye; the concord and cadence of sweet sounds through the manifold forms of tone please the ear; the delicious flavors and fragrances gratify the taste and smelling. There are domestic, social and intellectual pleasures — something in every re- lation and at every turn to make us happy. There is pleasure attached to the activities necessary to preserve life. The young have buoyant spirits, bright hopes, high aspirations and lively passions, making life brilliant and gay. Passing years tone down the exuberance of spirits, but middle life has its duties that furnish an ample compensation. Old age has its weaknesses, but also its peculiar joys. Pains beyond a certain degree are lost in unconsciousness, and sorrows after a while become sweet memories.
It is true that the world has its discomforts, but
it has also its provisions against them. There are
diseases, but there are remedies and safeguards.
There are bereavements, but there are sympathies 6*
130 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
that afford a solace, and time, the sovereign healer, at length brings relief. There are poisons, but there are antidotes. Nature did not leave us un- exposed to the evils surrounding us. We cer- tainly were not intended to be miserable, but to be happy.
But men are not happy. They often make themselves unhappy by overlooking the thousand comforts and fixing their attention upon some one thing which they have lost or which they covet. Many Ahabs with superabundance weep and refuse to eat because they covet the little gardens of Na- boths. Men pervert pleasures and turn them into pains. Proper labor is itself pleasant and condu- cive to health and happiness, but the millions toil inordinately and wear out life in ceaseless strug- gle. The furrow fixed by care upon the brow is not effaced by the smile that plays in the social circle. Our passions are inflamed by unreasonable indulgences. Weakened constitutions follow ex- cesses. Selfish aims create conflicts. There are so many sufferings that it has been gravely ques- tioned whether life is worth the living. The race falls far short of its possible happiness.
Freedom. — Man was made for freedom. The ancients had no clear conception of this truth, and
CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 13I
even Plato and i\ristotle taught that some men were by nature slaves. The differences among men were more obtrusive, and great as were these phil- osophers, they failed to see the common humanity which lies back of all outward diversity and con- stitutes one common brotherhood. The universal desire for liberty might have taught them that no man was born to be a slave. Alen in bondage pine as imprisoned birds. Years in servitude may make the yoke tolerable, but never pleasant. No heredi- tary influence can render it natural. The free will, the power of self-determination in the higher sphere of character, protests against shackles as unnatural, and cries out for freedom. It gives the lie to all the badges of bondage. All men, because they were created rational, were created free, and so far as the value of humanity reaches they are equal. Because they are men they are entitled to liberty. Slavery is a wrong. It is an outrage upon our common nature. It is an indignity to humanity, and an insult to the race. Unless we read Nature's purposes backward, all men were created to be free.
But as a matter of fact, all men have not been free. Millions have been in bondage. In the days of the Gracchi, two-thirds of the population in
132 EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE UFE.
Italy were slaves. In Greece, whicli has long been celebrated as the cradle of liberty and whose strug- gles for freedom have stirred the schoolboy's heart in all succeeding ages, only the favored few were freemen, and the rest were slaves. In Egypt the slaves were so abundant that several hundred thou- sand lives might be sacrificed in gratifying the whim of a king. The ancient world never had the idea of personal freedom — theirs was only civic liberty. It was the freedom of the State, and not that of the individual. While England was grow- ing up in its liberty, and long after it had wrested from John its Magna Charta, the churls were slaves and the serfs mere chattels. Feudalism, which ruled in Europe for several centuries, was an organ- ized system of slavery where a few nobles held the rest in bondage. When England emancipated her slaves under William IV. in 1834, there were still, despite the labors of philanthropists like Clarkson and Wilberforce, three-fourths of a million in the Empire In the United States, the home of free- dom, that country which published the doctrine that all men are created free and equal,, there were four millions of slaves emancipated in 1865. In South Africa the Boers, with the connivance of England, steal and enslave the African tribes about
CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 1 33
them. There are in various parts of the world many millions still in slavery. From the days of Abraham, men have been bought and sold. There has been a large portion of the race which has lived and died in slavery. Thus the purpose of the Creator has been thwarted, and millions, without any fault of theirs, have, through gross injustice, never known one of the greatest pleasures of exist- ence, or enjoyed one of the most sacred rights of man. If there is no future life, these wrongs can never be set right.
Knowledge. — We were made for intelligence. Instinct does less for us than for any other part of the animal world. It directs in the first effort to obtain nourishment. It furnishes the first expres- sion of want and pain. It assists in some acts necessary to personal preservation, as startling in sudden danger, and in some connected with the perpetuation of the race. But all else is left for us to learn. The babe is seen learning the distinction between himself and his body, the uses of the members of the body, and how to form judgments from sensations of sight and hearing, touching and smelling. He learns what is pleasant and what is hurtful. All this, so far as the brute ever knows it, is given by instinct.
134 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
It is impossible for us to determine how mnch man has learned by his own powers. We cannot prove that he was originally a savage, and then infer that all he knows he has acquired. We have no minute history of the early races. The Bible tells us that Cain tilled the soil and afterwards went to the land of Nod and built a city. But that city was very rude, and his agriculture must have been of a very simple form. At that time the use of iron and brass was unknown. It was in the sixth generation we find Tubal-Cain, "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." In that same age we find Jabal, "the father of all such as dwelt in tents and have cattle;" and Jubal, "the father of all such as handle the harp and organ." These statements give us the rise of certain things which we now think belong to the lowest form of civili- zation. Whatever may have been the state of so- ciety before this, we have here the evidence that nearly all the implements of common life were obtained through invention. The growth of im- provements as known in history is an interesting study. Some have been discovered by accident, but most by experiment. The wonderful im- provements within the last century give promise of others still greater and more wonderful in the
CONDITION OF THK WORLD. 1 35
future. These things are incomparably superior to the few things which the highest form of animal intelligence has been able to learn.
We have faculties for knowing things lying entirely beyond the range of the useful. The great body of our science has no practical bearing. As a motive for exercising these faculties Nature has given us a keen spirit of inquiry. We are exposed to ennui from sameness, and we are driven to something new. The love of novelty often runs into radicalism, which not rarely blunders upon important truth. The purpose of Nature could not have been more clearly indicated than is done in placing us in such conditions that we must learn in order to live, and in giving us higher faculties, stimulated by curiosity and the desire to know for the sake of knowing.
But this purpose is not met in the great masses. A large part of tlie world is engaged in winning bread, and seeks no knowledge above that which is necessary to make a living, and the little current in neighborhood gossip. In the most enlightened countries, until within the present century, there were no proper provisions made for the diffusion of knowledge among all classes. The poorer chil- dren, except in rare cases, cannot be educated
136 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
without the assistance of the state. Governments, for nine centuries, have provided higher schools. Alfred the Great established Oxford, and Charle- magne encouraged learning. During the Middle Ages every sovereign in Europe, and particularly in Germany, wanted a national university. But common schools are one of the chief glories of our own century. England did not adopt common school laws before 1870, and in Great Britain a large per cent, cannot read. In France, fourteen per cent, are illiterate. In Germany even, where the greatest attention has been given to popular education, there are two per cent, unable to read. It is true that an elementary education is not the only means of intelligence, and ability to read is not an absolute test. Louis IX. of France and Otto I. of Germany were much more intelligent than many a parish clerk of their day. Many who can read do not read anything worth it, and re- main in almost complete ignorance of everything beyond the narrowest circle. But where illiteracy is great, there we know general ignorance is deep. In America, where there are schools of all grades, where there are a great number and variety of per- iodicals, where the mail facilities are very good, where books abound, and agents carry them to the
CONDITION OF THK WORLD. 1 37
door, and by practiced arts press them upon the people, there are marks of rapid development, but there is evidence also of a very considerable degree of ignorance. When we turn from enlightened countries to the semi-enlightened and barbarous, from Europe and the United States to Africa and Asia, the dark belts are very broad. When we look from the present through the past, we have only a small fraction of the race who may be called intelligent. The human family as a whole has not met Nature's aim in regard -to intelligence.
Peace. — We were made for peace. All the highest interests of men are jeopardized by war. Progress is always retarded by the conflict of arms. Often war has been made conducive to ultimate progress, but only by some higher power overrul- ing its own nature to the general good. The end could have been reached and the higher interests subserved better by other means. War is irra- tional, and it is a sad thing to see men w^ho can reason take a question from its proper tribunal to the arbitrament of the sword. It is unnatural. Might can never make right, but every war is an appeal to force. The world is coming more and more to understand its nature, and will not now, as formerly, sacrifice thousands of lives for mere trifles.
138 KVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
But history is so full of the stories of battles that war seems to be man's normal condition. The ancient monuments are covered with the accounts of victories. In a thousand years the temple of Janus was closed only three times, each time only for a few months, and Rome in this respect was not so much unlike its contemporaries. In medi- aeval ages Europe was in such constant war that the interference of the Church imposing the truce of God, preventing any battle from Saturday until Monday in each week, was a great benefit to soci- ety. The Crusades were a continuous war for two centuries. Then followed war after war, until the peace of Westphalia brought a little respite. The close of last centiiry and the beginning of the present were marked by the great Napoleonic wars. The United States, outside of the circle of antag- onistic influences that so often disturb Europe, has been engaged in three important wars since the revolution which secured it its national existence. It has been estimated that one-tenth of the race has perished in war. This, then, is another of Nature's aims that has not been met.
Virtue. — We were made for virtue. A law with its internal rewards and penalties has been implanted within our nature. We were placed
CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 1 39
under sucli relations to social and physical laws that virtue is rewarded and vice punished by natural consequences. Our happiness is so con- nected with virtue that utilitarianism has many plausible supports in common facts. The world is arranged by its temptations and warnings to give us moral discipline. A purpose could not be more clearly revealed than that we were made to be virtuous.
But the world is immoral. The picture of Grecian and Roman morals in their best days is ugly enough, and in their decline is horrible. The courts of Europe, with some notable exceptions, have been disgraced by gross immoralities, and these are indexes of the general public sentiment of their times. The truth of Scriptural statements as to the general depravity of man cannot be denied. Men have testified to their guilt by the historic efforts to atone for it. Those who have been purest have been most frank in confessing that they were sinners. The world has had its reputed saints, but knows only one spotless character : Jesus, the Son of God. Sin abounds.
Wrongs. — The world is full of wrongs as well as failures. The innocent often suffer; the guilty frequently escape. The pious, truth-loving man
140 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
dies a martyr, while the wicked tyrant lives in ease. The hard-faced, iron-hearted inquisitor is honored by the world and rewarded by his rulers, while the humble confessor languishes in a dungeon without books or light, is put occasion- ally upon the rack, and at last is dragged out to be burned at the stake. Millions have been executed for the impossible crime of witchcraft. Justice often fails before the best courts, and frequently the wrongs never can be corrected.
There are many other forms of evil which men suffer without compensation in this life, and with- out any fault of their own. The little child with splendid but yet undeveloped powers, and the young man with a bright and useful career open- ing before him, fall victims to inherited disease. A pre-natal accident imprints a hideous mark or even produces idiocy. A careless nurse suffers a child to fall, and deformity and lifelong suflfering ensue. The poor widow with a house full of children is driven from office to make way for an able-bodied, lazy man. Silly women, with narrow selfish spirits, fritter away life in frivolous gossip, while under the shadow of their palatial residences, worthy women with noble hearts and intellectual cravings are worn by poverty which holds them
CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 141
down to the points of needles to obtain the scantiest living. The favors of the world are most unevenly distributed. Many an ignoble and vicious Saul wears the crown, while a princely David begs for bread. These wrongs meet us everywhere. They contradict our idea of justice. They exist despite the manifest tendency of the principles of the world. God's purpose is not met. If there is no future life, these wrongs can never be set right, and God is either unable to correct them or indifferent to them, or there is no God.
Objection Stated. — To the argument of this chapter it may be objected that the fact that the world is under a general government has been overlooked. General laws are established for gen- eral results, and cannot regard special cases. This is true of every law, both civil and natural, and injury to individuals is unavoidable. All the evils mentioned in the argument are the results of gen- eral laws, and have their parallels in nature. Much of the unhappiness, slavery, ignorance, war and personal evil is brought upon men by them- selves, and the remainder is produced by the gen- eral course of the natural world. These evils belong to the nature of things. The very laws
142 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
which make happiness, intelligence and virtue possible, make misery, ignorance and vice also pos- sible. There could not be pleasure without possi- ble pain. The imperfections of character grow out of our natural condition. By a law some- where we are born with a strong bias to sin, a bias so strong that theologians call it total depravity, and yet no one who believes in God regards him as the author of sin. It must be ascribed to nat- ural law. The sufferings which come from the laws of nature may be injurious, but they are not wrongs. The cyclone arising in atmospheric con- ditions demolishes a man's house, kills his chil- dren, and sweeps away all his property. It would be silly for him to complain of injustice. A law which brings general good must be accepted, and when evils come from it to individuals they must patiently submit. The idea of future compensa- tion for the natural evils of life involves too much. It would prove that the beggar must be higher than the rich man who was equally good, and that the life-long sufferer must be saved, or there is no possible compensation for his evils. To perfect the plan of the world and correct all the wrongs, not merely a future life is necessary, but universal salvation; for as long as one individual is lost, the
CONDITION OF THE^ WORI.D. 143
purpose of happiness, knowledo^e and virtue for all is incomplete. The plainer and simpler way is to rest satisfied with the common results, and regard with pity the innocent victims of the course of the world.
Answered. — There is force in this objection. On atheistic ground, it is, perhaps, unanswerable. The atheist regards the world as the product of blind force, and the irresponsible laws of the world can not do an injustice. They are carried forward without a plan, and, therefore, can not be charged with failure. The argument of this chapter, then, can have little weight with one who denies the ex- istence of God, nor with one who denies the fact of Providence. On theistic ground, some of the points of the objection carry us back to the great problem of evil, and cannot be fully met. We must take the facts on both sides, and determine on which side lies the greater probability.
It must be admitted by all, atheist and theist, that man has higher rights than other creatures, and suffers wrong where they suffer only injury. We cannot reason from the myriads of blasted buds, and the bruised plants, and twisted and gnarled and stunted trees, to the injuries of men. Nor can we reason even from the waste of animal life and
144 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
feeline, the countless numbers of birds and fish and more feeble animals brought forth simply to perish in their infancy, the affectionate dogs kicked and starved, and faithful horses strained and whipped and killed by heartless masters. The plant has no rights, and philosophers like Kant and Hickok have denied that even animals, because wanting in personality, have rights and claims. But whatever we may think of this philosophic opinion, the claims of animals are not of the same order as that of man, and when an animal is injured we are not so offended as when man is. We are not so indig- nant at the cruel master of the brute as at the cruel owner of human slaves. The difference in the judgment may be grounded in selfishness, but still it is the universal feeling. We cannot regard the evils in the human world in the same way that we do similar ones in the lower order of beings.
'We have a consciousness of individuality which modifies the conception of our relation to general law. The brute has a feeling of identity and a sense of pain, but not of personality and wrong. He may be sunk in the interests of his species without a feeling of injustice. We are aware of relations to our race, and of great claims upon our- selves that may even demand our self-sacrifice, but
CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 145
we never lose the consciousness of individuality. When life is given for the general weal it must be offered voluntarily or we feel most deeply wronged. Individuality is never sunk in the mass. There are personal claims never surrendered. We have a right to our moral character against the world. No seeming good, whatever, to the world can make a valid demand upon the individual for a single- immoral act. This claim holds against the uni- verse. If we could imagine that an infinite being were to chain us Prometheus-like to a rock and torture us forever because we refused to commit a vile act, we would denounce him as a tyrant. This conviction has long existed as a maxim: ^^I^et justice be done though the heavens fall."
The individual seems to have claims, therefore, against general law. If there is nothing behind physical law, no responsible agent, man has no claims and can only submit to be crushed. He may try to make the best of it and look for com- pensation in a better character. But it may be that the injury he has received issues in an early death. The character may last, say, only two or three months, and then, after intense suffering all the while, go out into nothingness. It is cold comfort. As one stands over the smoking ruins of 7
146 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
bis home in which went down his family, he may possibly dismiss thought with the remark, *'It cannot be helped," but the heart is not satisfied. The innate sense of wrong asserts claims, and thus implies a God behind these general laws who will recompense for the evil done. The cyclone may ruin, but if we can feel that there is another life where the injury will be converted into good, every demand of justice is met, and there is inward satis- faction. The pre-natal mark may disfigure and embarrass, or the inherited disease may cut off life as it opens brilliantly, but the mind and heart are at rest when it may look forward to another life. There may be an inherited tendency to sin, but if there are motives and influences sufiicient to re- strain it and form personal character and shape destiny, there can be, and there is, no sense of in- justice. An infinite God can and will make all things that happen unequally under general law equal in the future life. But when we shut off faith in that life the world is full of wrongs that can never be corrected, and we escape madness by declining thought.
If we take our stand with atheism, we are the products of blind force, and feel that we are its victims. There are no claims or rights except as
CONDITION OF THE WORI.D. 1 47
man against man. There may be, for aught we know, an eternal future of misery without guilt, and we dare not complain of it as injustice. The idea of character grew up out of sensations and now remains only as an inveterate prejudice. There are no eternal principles of right, but certain max- ims of prudence which have been transmuted into conscience, and there is really no such thing as character. The world came we know not how, and will go we know not where, and all is gov- erned by the iron rule of fate. Our sense of justice is a fiction of legislators which we find profitable to perpetuate, and all our primary ideas are illu- sions. We are the sports of fortune. Coming out of darkness and going back into it again, we can know nothing beyond the narrow range of experi- ence. It is best to drift along with the current, making ourselves as comfortable as possible, and when the tide turns against us bow to our fate and end all by one blow. This solves the problem by writing failure upon the destiny of man and clos- ing the darkest curtains about our heads. This is the outlook from atheism.
But if we take our stand in theism we have a sufiicient cause for the world. We have a Ruler who is able to correct all the evils growing out of
148 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
the general administration of the laws of nature. We have an infinitely wise and holy power presid- ing over our destiny. He never does evil by mis- take or weakness. He is able to perfect all His plans. He will never leave a wrong without cor- rection. He is the centre of those principles which we are compelled to regard eternal, and affords a sufficient cause and ground for our own personality. Because the present life does not furnish scope for the execution of His schemes and the adjustment of the evils, He has ordained for us another life and given us promises in the innate desire, in the uni- versal belief, in the sense of justice, and also in a claim which He has implanted in our hearts. Every proof of the existence of God is a proof of a future life. If there is a God and not another life, there are promises which He never fulfills, and plans which He never carries out. He stands, in all the light we have now, convicted of injustice.
It may be said that in the absolute blank which will follow the close of human life on earth — a close which science even is able to foresee — in the absolute stillness that comes when the last wail of human grief has ceased, there will be no one to charge Him with failure or blame for injustice. There will be no one but God Himself. He will
CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 149
be left to reflect upon the facts that the world was never perfected; that He gave us capacities that were never fully developed; that He inspired us with hopes that were never realized; that He en- dowed us with a sense of individuality and rights which He never respected; that He crushed mill- ions of persons for the benefit of a few for only a moment in the vast sweep of eternity; that He made promises only to deceive. He will stand condemned before His own conscience and will be tortured by the thoughts of His own degradation. No, no: God cannot do wrong. We shrink from the statement of the possibility, even though it be to bring out truth. We must believe in a future life or leap back into atheism. If there is a God, we shall die only to live again. If there is no God, then welcome annihilation. Nothingness is infi- nitely preferable to an eternity without a heavenly Father. Having had the conception of infinite truth and holiness, let it go out only with exist- ence.
CHAPTER VIII.
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE.
'T^HB Bible contains the sacred books of more -*- than one-fourth of the human family. The Old Testament is held in devout, almost super- stitious reverence by eight millions of Jews. The whole Bible is received by four hundred millions of Christians as a divine revelation.
The Bible is a very old book. The latest part cannot be later than the fourth century A. D. As a complete book it is therefore, at the very least, fourteen hundred years old. In its oldest part it dates back three thousand five hundred years. The most radical criticism admits that portions of the Pentateuch belong to the Mosaic age. If it is not the oldest, it is certainly one of the very oldest books now extant.
The Old Testament grew up among the Jews. They were inferior to their cotemporaries in science and art, but they were superior in religious conceptions. Their monotheism and moral code have been accepted by the civilized world. They (150)
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBI.E. 15I
have been the teachers of the world in religion. Christianity sprang up in the Roman Empire dur- ing its Augustan period. It fought its way up through persecution, brought to its aid all the higher elements of society, and has been the power of the highest civilization for fifteen hundred years.
Such old books, having so great authority and power over the most enlightened people of the world, are entitled to respect, and their teaching has certainly some weight. If the most intelligent part of our race has been deceived upon a matter in which the profoundest interest has been felt, we may well despair of the truth.
The Bible teaches clearly the doctrine of a future life. The earlier statements may be somewhat vague and uncertain, but enunciations become clearer and more distinct until we reach the New Testament, where they are very positive and defi- nite. The dreamy, confused hope grows into a most decided conviction. The belief is implied in every Christian doctrine, and so interwoven into every thread of the system, that if it be eliminated we have nothing of its religion left worth the saving.
If the Bible were only a human book, its testi- mony to a future life would be, in some degree,
152 EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE IvlFE.
evidence of the fact. What has been believed by so many and for so long a time, must have a basis in truth. But the Bible claims to be a revelation from God. This claim is fundamental. If that claim can be invalidated, the essential element of its character is destroyed, and it is difficult for us to hold it in that respect which in any case it de- mands as a record of human beliefs. But if its claims can be maintained, it becomes ultimate in authority, its teaching as to a future life the answer of the Author of our nature to the great question of humanity, "If a man die shall he live again?'* and here doubt ends. Absolute certainty as to the validity of that claim gives us absolute certainty of Hie after death; but if that claim can only be made worthy of our belief, then its doctrine of future existence is made to the same extent credible. Whatever evidence the Bible commands in support of its claims is evidence of a future life. All the arguments, internal, external and collateral, of Christian evidences, are so many arguments for our post mortem existence. We cannot attempt here a general discussion of a subject upon which so many volumes have been written, but must con- fine ourselves to a brief statement of a few points bearing more immediately upon the evidence of our immortality.
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 1 53
The books of the New Testament have all the evidence as to their authenticity- that can be reason- ably asked. They are very short, most of them being letters either to individuals or to congrega- tions. The age in which they were written did not keep strict records of authorship. Even Chris- tians did not as a rule cite their authorities by name until the last quarter of the second century. We cannot look for proofs of authenticity in contem- porary literature. How many books of the first century could stand this test ? But the evidence is very strong that they were in existence in the Apostolic age, were regarded as sacred, and were entrusted to the strictest custody of the ministers of the churches. Clement of Alexandria tells us that a continuous line of bishops bore testimony to their genuineness, and no book was received which was not so accredited. We know that a great deal of care was taken in forming the canon, and that no book was admitted that did not have positive proof. Some books known now to be equal in evidence with the others, were long held in q^ies- tion by parts of the Church because they were not fully certified. The Tiibingen school of criticism left us four epistles of Paul as unquestionable, and these four assure us of the great events in the life
154 EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE LIFE.
of Christ, including the greatest of His miracles. But the Tiibingen theologians have been driven away from the position of Bauer, and now acknowl- edge as certainly authentic all the books necessary for our argument. No books of that period can command a tithe of the evidence which the books of the New Testament have as to their authentic- ity.
Aside from the proof of their authenticity, there is other evidence of their credibility. They record what was universally believed among Chris- tians of the first century. They give us what the disciples believed. They are the records of eye- witnesses, no matter who wrote them. This evi- dence is so clear that many acknowledge their credibility in general, but still question it in re- gard to the miracles, because they suppose that miracles are impossible.
Miracles do not now have the prominence in Apologetics that they once had. More importance is attached to other proofs. But they are so con- nected with the Biblical story and with our reli- gion, itself professing to be miraculous, that they never can cease to be important. The Christian will always be called to defend his belief in them, and they must remain one of the chief grounds of
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 1 55
his faith. If they can be shown to be impossible, or the evidence for them incredible, Christianity, as we now regard it, must be abandoned, and be- reft of our certainty of a future life, we must fall back into a wavering hope.
Miracles are not impossible. John Stuart Mill has given the weight of his great name to what is really a dictum of common sense: God is a suf- ficient cause for miracles. He may not choose to do it, but an Almighty Being can work miracles if He will. Only atheists can say that miracles are impossible.
Miracles are not improbable. Serious men in all ages of the world have felt the need of some direct revelation of God's will. Some of the deep- est longings of the heart cry for a word from God, clearer and more distinct than any which comes through nature. Men who have professed to have direct messages from Him have never failed to find an audience. On its spiritual side, this is the secret of the power of Mormonism in our day, just as it was of Mohammedanism in the early centuries and of Numa in the beginnings of Rome. If God is the kind, loving Father that Nature indicates, and our hearts in their better moods instinctively regard Him, He will not leave 7*
156 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
that great want unmet. He did not plant that de- sire merely to torture us, but will at the proper time gratify it. He does answer the cry of His children, and out from behind the cloud He speaks to them.
God could give a revelation to each individual, or He could make it to the world through certain chosen agencies. If there is a revelation at all, it is not made to each person, nor is it written upon the sky, but it was given through prophets to be com- municated at first orally, and then to be committed to writing. A miracle is a sufficient credential for one chosen to communicate a truth imparted to him by inspiration. He who works above the laws of nature to confirm a message must be sent of God. Nicodemus, believing that Christ wrought mira- cles, gave expression to a rational judgment when he said, "No man could do the things which thou doest, except God be with him." No other creden- tials are so good as miracles. If the revelation be within the range of reason, no one can be sure that it was not simply a discovery by reason, and com- mending itself to reason, it needs no credential. But if it be above reason, its confirmation must be sought in some light outside of itself, and that can be found only in miracles. If God gives a general
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 1 57
revelation, like that which the Bible claims to be, and takes the only sufficient and best possible cre- dentials, he will give his agents miraculous power. Miracles are as probable as is a direct communica- tion from God.
Upon these points there has been little contro- versy. The main question is in regard to the sufficiency of the evidence of the miracles of the Bible.
Miracles can be proven by testimony. Hume's celebrated argument is sophistical. He held, on the basis of the philosophy of Locke, that all know- ledge comes through experience. It is through experience that we learn both the uniformity of nature and the reliability of testimony. But ex- perience teaches that nature is perfectly uniform, while human testimony, sometimes by intentional misrepresentation and sometimes by misconcep- tion, often deceives us. However great the evi- dence from testimony as to a miracle, the evi- dence from nature is always greater. Hume fell on this argument in a discussion with a Romish priest about miracles reported to be taking place at that time. He found that it answered the pur- poses of his skepticism and elaborated it, but it may not be too much to say that he himself never
158 EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE I.IFE.
fully accepted it. It is true that individual and conspired human testimony sometimes deceives us, but concurrent testimony without previous agreement does not and cannot. If three or more competent persons, without any complicity, testify to the same miracle, open to the full test of the senses, we are forced to believe. That concur- rence is a fact that can have no cause except in the truth, while the miracle has a cause in the power of God. The case may stand thus: a fact with an adequate cause against a fact without a possible cause.
Huxley, the editor and biographer of Hume, re- cedes from Hume's argument. He admits that if one man of sufficient scientific ability to make a thorough examination and of well-established ve- racity were to testify that he had seen a centaur, he would believe. Prof Huxley in common with the world believes that a miracle may be proven by testimony. It is then only a question of fact. Is the testimony sufficient to prove the miracles of the Bible?
The testimony comes to us from both friends and enemies of Christianity. The facts were not called in question for several centuries after the Apostolic age. Julian, the emperor, admits them,
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 1 59
but tries to minimize them. Hierocles attempts to offset them by publishing the stories about Apollo- nius of Tyana. The Sanhedrim voiced the feel- ing of that and subsequent ages, when it said, "That great and .notable miracles have been done is known to all the people of Israel, and w^e cannot deny them." Christians everywhere from the beginning boldly asserted it, and their enemies admitted that miracles were performed by Christ and by the Apostles. The testimony can be assailed only on the ground of the incompe- tency of the age to judge of the miraculous.
Mr. Lecky has said, and brings strong proof of the fact, that it was a superstitious period disposed to see miracles, a^d therefore saw them. Testi- mony, he thinks, may prove a miracle, but not that of the first Christian century.
The superstition has been magnified. The Jews were not so superstitious, so disposed to find miracles, that they attributed the miraculous power to John the Baptist, though they all believed that he was a great prophet. They had not discovered any miracle for four hundred years. How then did this inventive power become suddenly so active? It is strange that a people so easily deceived should have given rise to the greatest religion of the world.
l6o EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Paul and John, as well as the masses, believed that they witnessed them, and both these men were fully persuaded that they themselves wrought them. What is stranger still, is that all were de- ceived in matters that were open to the tests of the senses. It is inconceivable that honest men should think that they saw a man whom they had long known to be blind given sight by a touch, when they did not; or a man long helpless suddenly re- stored, when no such thing really occurred. Super- stition may carry men very far into blindness, but it has its limits. It could not be so deep as to make a whole age of friends and enemies alike be- lieve in such miracles as are recorded in the New Testament, numerous, varied, manifest, when they did not take place.
Christ claimed to perform miracles. It was a claim deliberately and repeatedly made. If He merely pretended to perform them. He was an im- postor; and if He was Himself deceived. He was a weak man. If He was an impostor, how did He create those holy conceptions He communicated to the world? and how could He beget the impression of that ideal character so falsely imputed to Him ? If He was weak, how d-id He gain His influence over the world, and as teacher win the profoundest allegiance of the greatest minds?
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. l6l
Rationalism in the last century failed to account for the miracles on the ground of naturalism. It has failed as signally in our own on the theory of myths, though supported by all the ability and learning of David Strauss. It haughtily declines explanation where it finds so much difficulty, and with Matthew Arnold says, *'We know that miracles do not occur." But we reply that this is, not sufficient reason for saying that they never did.. Men are to-day neither immediately created nor evolved from the lower animals. Shall we say that they belong to an infinite series? ''We know that Shakespeares do not occur," and shall we deny that there ever was a Shakespeare? When the reason for miracles ceases, the facts disappear.
If we disbelieve in the miracles of the New Testament, it must be in the face of evidence that would be regarded as superabundant in other things, and we fall back on the mere possibility of error in a case the very nature of which prevents anything like a demonstration.
From the New Testament we reason back to the Old. Christ and the Apostles endorsed the Jewish canon as divine books, and it makes no great differ- ence to us when or by whom they were written. A book approved by inspiration has all the author-
l62 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE. ,
ity of one divinely inspired. Having satisfied our- selves as to the miracles of the New, we cannot doubt those of the Old. We believe the story of the sun's standing still, of the ass's speaking, of the whale's swallowing Jonah, and all of them, not in the sense in which the uneducated understand them, but as real miraculous events.
Prophecies are supernatural facts, miracles, in the sphere of mind. They are predictions of events above all possible human forecast. They may serve the double purpose of preparing those for whom they are intended for the events, and of be- coming credentials of the system to which they belong. To be sure of a prophecy, we must be certain both as to the prediction and the fulfil- ment.
There are prophecies in both Testaments. In the New we have the predictions of Christ concern- ing His own resurrection and the circumstances attending the destruction of Jerusalem. There can be little doubt that the Gospels of Matthew and Ivuke were written s-everal years before the great Jewish war. There is both internal and external evidence of the fact. The authors write in a sim- ple, unaffected way about the temple as if still standing. The whole manner and style are those
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 163
of historians, not those of novelists. Tradition that was not questioned for many centuries, too late to be overthrown, assigns the composition of these two Gospels to the period before the siege of Jeru- salem. These books give us many minute predic- tions. Josephus, who did not know of them, and without any sympathy with Christianity, wrote the history of his own times. Unintentionally he records the most exact fulfillment of all that Christ foretold concerning the last days of the sacred city. In the Old Testament we have predictions con- cerning individuals, as Cyrus and Alexander the Great; concerning cities, as Babylon and Tyre; and concerning nations, as the Egyptians and Jews. The fulfillment of these prophecies is given in history and on monuments remaining to the pres- ent time. The prophecies which are most used as evidence are those concerning Christ. They are largely typical, and their prophetic value has been questioned; but they were regarded as prophecies by the Jewish people, who understood best their own modes of thought and forms of expression. These prophecies led them to look for a Messiah at the very time Christ came, and enabled them to find His birth-place and determine many of the particulars of His life. The argument drawn from
164 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
the prophecies was always of greatest force with a Jew. The prophecies were certainly in existence several hundred years before Christ came. The Septuagint version, made under Ptolemy Philadel- phus about 270 B. C, gives us the fullest proof of this fact. In these prophecies we have miracles as great as any recorded in the Bible.
The Bible carries with itself its own light. The truth and the miracles mutually support each other. Bach furnishes a proof to the other. It is not strange, then, that we find some emphasizing more the miracles and others more the truth.
The Bible is a book of religion, and it is not ad- dressed directly to the reason or the moral nature, but to religious intuitions. It seeks to reach the religious nature through the understanding and conscience, but its ultimate aim is always the reli- gious element in us. In calling out the religious character it elevates the whole man, stimulating the intellect, quickening the conscience, and pro- moting the well-being of every factor of his na- ture. A true religion must civilize and enlighten. According to this test, Christianity is the truest religion ever offered to the world.
Its power in modern civilization is above dis- pute. It has gained its influence by its own inher-
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 165
ent truth. It has discarded all the means employed by the world, yet it has risen from a remote corner to the supremacy of the most enlightened peoples of the earth. It has sometimes fallen into the hands of most unworthy friends. The outward Church has often been blind and degraded, and has exposed itself to severest censure, but Christianity is always distinguishable from its professors. It be- trays a want of honesty in any scholar who makes Christianity responsible for the evils of the Church. Despite these errors of its professors, the religion has held its course. It has risen up from under the superstition that was piled around it, and dis- engaged itself from all the false alliances forced upon it. It has an inherent energy independent of those who propagate it. It has shown a vitality that can be nothing less than divine.
The Bible commends itself to the human heart. It reveals the human spirit to itself It opens up its mysterious depths and portrays its hidden char- acter. The woman of Samaria said, "I have found the Messiah, because He has told me all that ever I did." As she stood before Christ she felt that she was in the presence of one who thor- oughly understood her as only God could, and therefore He must be the one sent from God.
1 66 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
The Bible has made millions tremble before this strange power. It uncovers our hearts to our own inspection, and flashes on us a sense of our sinful- ness. It makes us stand with unveiled faces in a divine light. It makes us feel that its author fully xmderstands us. It brings with it life. It works not merely a moral reformation, but a renovation. The Bible calls it regeneration, and so the Chris- tian feels it. It creates a radical change such as no human instrumentality has ever done, such as we believe only God can do.
The Bible meets the deepest wants of our spirit- ual nature, and comes therefore with the marks of its divine paternity upon it. We feel that our hearts and the Bible have one common Author.
This can be positive and direct evidence only to the personal subjects, but it has also its evidential value for others. When a great number testify to the same experience from the same cause, we be- lieve. Millions have testified to this power of Christianity over themselves. The changed char- acters confirm their testimony. Whatever influ- ence Christianity has had over the world in its moral, intellectual and political phases, has been only the reflex power from the religious transfor- mations it has wrought. The new face the world
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 167
wears is a confirmation of what Christians claim to have realized. If error has such happy results, we need not be so much concerned about the truth. If Christians are deceived and Christianity a delu- sion, the world ought to rejoice over the deception. But falsehoods and lies never sanctify. They can- not make men better, and Christianity cannot be false.
The Bible presents us with the only perfect life in history. Mr. Lecky, the able historian of Eu- ropean Morals, said, "It was reserved for Chris- tianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen cen- turies has filled the hearts of men with impas- sioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments and conditions, and has not only been the highest pattern of vir- tue, but the highest incentive to its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to soften and re- generate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. This has been the well-spring of whatever is best and purest in the Christian life. Amid all the
* Vol, 2, p. 8.
l68 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft, the per- secutions and fanaticism which have defaced the the Church, it has preserved in the character and example of its Founder an enduring principle of regeneration." Christ was not simply the greatest of great men, but the only perfect man.
This character is portrayed in the Gospels written by fishermen. The ideal which lives in the Church was not a fiction, a slow creation of excited imagi- nations, but was drawn from the writings of the disciples. They write as plain historians, noting only facts as they occurred. In these simple narratives they have drawn a perfect life. Christ lived it, and in an artless manner, surpassing the highest art, they have described it.
Christ was not a product of His age. He was a carpenter, the reputed son of an humble mechanic. He was brought up in the little city of Nazareth, hid away in the Galilean mountains. He had no predecessors except John the Baptist, above whom He towers in infinite grandeur. He stands a soli- tary figure among His own countrymen, as He does in the world. This life is a fact, and if it had not a divine origin, it was without any known cause.
This life stands in a peculiar relation to Chris- tianity. It is its central principle. The whole
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE. 1 69
system depends upon it. Eliminate the personal history of Christ from His religion, and the vital power is destroyed. No other teacher has sustained such a relation to his doctrines. In this Christianity is wholly unique among all the philosophies and religions of the world.
The religion of the Bible is, therefore, a super- natural power introduced among the forces of the world. It is a miracle, and having accepted it ac- cording to its claims, we cannot stumble at its miracles. The supernatural events which attended its introduction and its most important additions, were only in harmony with its own nature, and were to be expected. The Jews looked for great miracles at the coming of the Christ, and asked in wonder at those performed by Jesus of Nazareth. "When Christ is come, will He perform greater works than this man?" The miracles were digni- fied and benevolent, and serve to illustrate the truths He taught. They were works worthy of God.
The truth taught in the Bible, bearing in itself a divine light and power and confirmed by mir- acles, is worthy of our credence. It has com- manded the confidence of the vast majority of the greatest thinkers for eighteen hundred years, and
170 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
the failure of all recent assaults shows how impreg- nable the rock is upon which our faith rests.
When it tells us that we shall live forever, it comes to us as a voice from God, giving us cer- tainty instead of a simple hope.
CHAPTER IX. PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT.
THE Jews obtained their position in history and literature chiefly, if not exclusively, from their religion. They were never important factors in the political world. The prominence which they had for a short time under David and Solomon in their own section in Asia, was soon lost. Their kings during most of the subsequent ages were tributaries to the great monarchs of the East. They were not eminent in art, or science, or letters. They lost their country eighteen hundred years ago, and since that time have been scattered through the earth. They have given rise to no very great writers or philosophers who remained true to their ancient but now perverted faith. Men like Spinoza and Neander and Delitzsch are not thought of as Jews. The Jews are merely a rem- nant, numbering only about eight millions. Yet they hold a prominent place in the eye of the world. It is not on account of what they now are, or what they have done in the political world, but (171)
172 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
because of the part they have taken in religious history. Through them has come the most im- portant of all religions, and their work in this matter will not permit the world to overlook or forget them.
The Old Testament contains their sacred books, and in them we may trace the history of their doc- trine of a future life and the evidence upon which it was believed.
The Jews made a distinction between spirit and soul. Sometimes they seem to have regarded them as distinct principles, but at other times as different phases of the same principle. The spirit was supposed to be the animating principle. The brutes have spirits, though essentially different from the human. The soul springs out of the spirit, contains the substance of the spirit as its es- sential principle, and lives only by the power of the spirit. The soul gives individuality. It is the person. In swoons the spirit departs ; in death, the soul. The Queen of Sheba was overcome by the splendor of Solomon, and 'Hhere was no more spirit in her." David, recovered from extreme ill- ness, said, "Thou hast brought my soul out of Sheol."
There are two opinions, each advocated by able
PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 73
men, in regard to the Old Testament doctrine of a future life. Some, as Hahn, have held that the Jews believed in annihilation, while others have found even in the Pentateuch a clearness and defin- iteness of conception of another life little less than that of the New Testament. Two questions, easily confused, ought to be kept distinct: What did the Jews believe? What does the Old Testament teach ?
It is improbable, in advance of the examination of the facts, that the Jews in the time of Abraham, and especially in the time of the great Pilgrimage, were ignorant of a future life. It is certain that Moses was not, for it had long been a positive faith of the Egyptians, and he was learned in all their wisdom. The statement of Tacitus is not worth anything as proof of the source of their belief, be- cause he was too far removed from the age and the means of information; but it does give us the fact that the belief in existence after death had been common among the Jews for a long time, and also his opinion as to its probable origin among them. He says ' ' that they learned from the Egyptians to bury the body rather than burn it, and there was the same conviction and care for the souls of the dead."
174 evidence: of a future life.
$ The Jews were the custodians of revelation, God made a covenant with Abraham and renewed it with his sons. He gave the law through Moses and instituted the Jewish worship. They had, many centuries in advance of all other people, the doctrine of monotheism clearly taught in their sacred rites. The one God of the Decalogue was soon revealed as the only God. They were taught that man had been created in the image of his Maker, because God had breathed into him a living breath and made him a living soul. It is not prob- able that they would be so much in advance of their contemporaries in the more abstract concep- tions of God and have so much clearer views of moral duty, and yet be so much behind them in regard to their own eternal destiny.
But when we come to look at the records of their faith, we are surprised at the indefiniteness and con- fusion of their statements. Is it the result of ig- norance, or reserve ? From Augustine to Warbur- ton, theologians have recognized the problem and tried to solve it. Account for it as we may, the fact is clear that so far as the history shows there was a positive conviction as to a future existence, but not a cheerful, hopeful view of death. Per- owne thought the silence in the Pentateuch pro-
PROOFS FROM THE OI.D TESTAMENT. 1 75
found and says that ''only a hint is dropt here and there suggestive of a belief which is never expli- citly stated." But the hints are strong enough to indicate the fact that they believed that the soul passed into a state called Sheol and was at rest from earthly cares. There was also a positive element of comfort in their conception of Sheol, because they believed that they were there gathered unto the fathers. ''Abraham gave up the ghost and was gathered unto his people." (Gen xxv. 8) So it is also sai4 of Isaac (Gen xxxv. 29). Jacob comforted himself over the death, as he supposed, of Joseph by the hope of meeting him in Sheol. " I will go down into Sheol unto my son mourning" (Gen xxxvii. 35). It was not the grave, for he supposed that Joseph had been devoured by beasts. Jacob died and was gathered unto his people. Where we look for more distinct hopes, as we would naturally expect at the death of Aaron or that of Moses, we find nothing. Balaam, though not a Jew, seemed to rise to the conception of a higher fate for the righteous after death when he said, "Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his." But into even this language we may read more than he intended.
In the Mosaic laws there is no use made of future
176 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
retributions as motives of obedience. The rewards and punishments are confined to this life. This has exposed Mosaism to attacks from Deists and Rationalists. They have charged it with Eude- monism. De Witte says it made the people ex- ceedingly unhappy, and begot a gloomy view of life. The charge in the sense intended is false, but serves to bring out clearly the fact that the Mosaic religion sought to emphasize the great privilege and happiness of communion with God irrespective of time, and did not make prominent the retributions after death.
So far as appears from the Pentateuch only, the Jews seem to have failed to draw the inferences which naturally followed from the great truths of man's creation and of his covenant relation to God. Without any positive proof, we would believe that they had more definite views and clearer hopes than have been preserved in their history. The author of the book of Hebrews in the New Testa- ment asserts it. *' These [the patriarchs] all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off^ and were persuaded of them and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they
PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 77
seek a country. And truly if they had been mind- ful of that from whence they came out they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city." If we accept this as inspired, there is no longer ques- tion that there were hopes and convictions more positive than were recorded in their own books.
In the immediately succeeding period the ex- pressions are somewhat clearer, and the faith grows , a little more definite; but there is still much, of vagueness, and often seeming inconsistency* Sometimes Sheol is represented as a place of forget-- fulness. David said, "For in death there is no remembrance of thee ; in the grave who shall give thee thanks?" (Ps. v. 6.) Even God forgets the dead: "Free among the dead, like the slain in the- grave whom thou rememberest no more." (Ps. Ixxxviii. 5.) Sometimes it is spoken of as a place of silence, where the dead cease to praise God. "The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into the pit." (Ps. cxv. 17.) "What profit is there in my blood when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it give
thee thanks?" (Ps. xxx. 9.) "Wilt thou show 12
178 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
wonders unto the dead ? Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy loving kindness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark ? and thy righteousness in the land of forge tfuln ess?" (Ps. Ixxxviii. 10-12.) There is no work there. *'The dead know not anything; neither have they any more a reward. There is no work, nor desire, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest." (Eccl. ix. 5, 10.) As late as Heze- kiah we have the same gloomy view of death. ''The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot cele- brate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth." (Is. xxxviii. 18.)
Along by the side of this dark view of death there is a growing consciousness of the great privi- leges involved in their covenant relation to God. The shadow of sin, bringing death, gives way slowly to the light of redemption. Death had appeared only as a curse. Now they begin to realize that the covenant reaches beyond death, and will at last destroy it. So running along with this gloomy line of passages, there is another, cheerful and hopeful. But we must be careful not to read all of our New Testament light into them. The authors did not understand the full import of their
PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 79
own words. It is, therefore, the more interesting to w^atch the throes through which the higher faith came into existence.
In the time of the Pilgrimage there was a belief that through conjurors the spirits of the dead might be brought back, and laws were passed against the superstitious practice (lycv. xix. 31; xx. 6; Dent, xviii. II.) In the days of Saul there was the famous Witch of Bndor, who was believed to be able to consult the dead.
Job often refers to Sheol as a place of mere existence. Translated grave, his words do not imply even so much as that (iii. 22; v. 26; x. 17; xvii. i; xxi. 32). He asks desparingly, ''Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?" (xiv. 10.) "If a man die, shall he live again?" But conscious of life that cannot perish he adds, "All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come. Thou shalt call and I will answer thee : thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands." (Vs. 14, 15.) Then the stronger faith gleams out for a moment: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth ; and though after my skin worms destroy this body,
l8o EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
yet without my flesh shall I see God."* (xix.
25-27-)
Hannah may have had some faint ray of the fact
of a resurrection when she said, *' The Lord killeth and maketh alive" (i Sam. ii. 6), but she was thinking more directly of the extremes of dis- tress, rather than of death, from which the Lord might deliver.
In the Psalms the conflict of the old and new faith is most manifest. If David said, "In death there is no remembrance of thee," he said also of himself as well as prophetically of Christ, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption" (Ps. xvi. 10). If he said, "Shall the dust give thee thanks?" he said also, "As forme I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when
*This passage has long been in dispute among scholars. Oehler says, "Notwithstanding the multitude of erroneous ex- planations which have been offered, the only view which can be accepted as doing justice to the words is that which regards the passage as expressing the hope of a manifestation of God to be made in Job's favor after his death." "Still the passage, even according to this explanation which we have adopted, speaks only of a momentary beholding, which, however, presupposes a continuance of Job's communion with God after death.'* Old Testament Theology, § 248.
PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. l8l
I awake with thy likeness" (Ps. xvii. 15). "God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol " (Ps. xlix. 15). "Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory" (Ps. Ixxiii. 24). "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore " (Ps. xvi. 11). " Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the I^ord forever" (Ps. xxiii. 6). In his bereavement he consoles himself with the hope of a happy reunion with the deceased child in the spirit world.
If David had seen all that we may find in his words he could not have written the former class of passages; or if he had thought of Sheol as a place only of darkness and gloom, and of the future life as simple, bare existence, he could not have written the latter. We find the solution to the seeming inconsistency in the fact that his life fell in the transition period.
The idea of a future life, which struggled for its existence in the time of David, obtained in the following ages a more definite character and a firmer hold in the religious consciousness. In the time of the later prophets the view of Sheol had greatly changed. The doctrine of the resurrection
l82 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
of the body became a common faith. Though Hezekiah still speaks so gloomily of death in the time of Isaiah, that prophet in exultant hope ex- claims: "Thy dead men shall live: together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust." (Is. xxvi. 19.) Eze- kiel based his vision of a national resurrection upon the general belief in the resurrection of the dead. "O, ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; ' Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live.' " (Ez. xxvii. 1-8.) Hosea also used the common faith to hold up the hope of a redemp- tion of the nation. "I will ransom them from the power of the grave. I will redeem them from death." (xiii. 14.) Neither of these prophets spoke directly of the resurrection of the dead. They foretold certain great redemptive national events. They drew their bold imagery from the resurrection which must have become not only a general but a very familiar idea. Daniel speaks certainly of the final resurrection and advan- ces to the conception of a future punishment of the ungodly. "And many of them that sleep in the dust shall awake; some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt." (xii. 2.)
PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 83
In the period succeeding the close of Prophecy, the Jews began to philosophize upon the doctrine of immortality which they had inherited from their fathers. In the Apocryphal book of Wisdom the fact of an endless life is based upon the original creation. "God created man to be immortal, and made him to be the image of his own eternity. Nevertheless, through envy of the devil, came death into the world." "But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to be utter destruction; but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality." (ii. 23, 24; iii. 1-4.) The strength of the common hope is touch- ingly illustrated in the story of the seven brethren and their mother who suffered persecution under Antiochus. After the persecutors had put the first of the brothers to death they made a "mocking- stock" of the second. "When they had pulled off the skin of his head with the hair, they asked him, 'Wilt thou eat before thou be punished throughout every member of thy body?' But he answered in his own language and said, ' No. ' And when he was
l84 EVIDENCE OK A FUTURE I.IFE.
at the last gasp he said, * Thou like a fury takest us out of this present life, but the King of the world shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, unto everlasting life.' " (2 Mac. vii. 1-42.) The doctrine of retribution, reward in Paradise for the right- eous, and punishment in the fire of Gehenna for the wicked, that was commonly held in the time of Christ, grew into clearness and distinctness dur- ing this age.
We have traced the development of the idea of a future life, as it has left its impressions in the sacred books, from a belief in a mere existence among the fathers in Sheol up to a strong hope in a resurrection of the body and future rewards. A slow unfolding of the truth in the consciousness of the people is not what we might have expected, but it is what we have found. We ought not to be surprised. No doctrine was revealed at once in all its fulness. God made His revelations as the public mind was prepared to receive them. This doctrine of a future life was subject to the common law.
We may go back from this review of the history of the doctrine to study the evidence upon which the faith rested.
The Jewish belief was not the product of phil-
PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 85
osophic Speculations. There is no evidence of any attempt, before the latest centuries, to reason upon the subject. In the age just before Christ, the Alexandrine philosophy extended its influence to Jerusalem, and tried to plant the religious hope upon purely rational grounds. But when they had drifted away from their revelations and spiritual intuitions, they fell into uncertainty, and the skeptical Sadducees sprang up.
At first their faith was perhaps little more than the universal instinctive belief, which subsequently gathered about itself the great truths which neces- sarily implied for the righteous at least an endless life.
God revealed himself as the Creator of man. He had indicated the dignity of man's nature by the symbolic act of breathing into his nostrils. He had made man in His own image, and given him power over every creature. Sin had changed the relation, but had not wholly defaced the image of the Maker. Man was still the object of God's care. Communion with God was still in some degree maintained. A being of such exalted dignity and powers could not be destined merely for the brief day of a single individual's life. The great truths divinely revealed unfolded in the consciousness of
l86 EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE LIFE.
the Jewish people, and brought out according to the divine intention the assurance of immortality. The truth thus developed was as certainly and fully divine as if it had been immediately revealed. In this we have an instance and illustration of the combination of revelation and the evolution of faith.
There were given from time to time special evidences and pledges which, although not wholly appreciated in their own times, come to us in their fullest significance.
Enoch was translated before the flood, and Elijah in the time of the kings. Samuel in response to the call of Saul through the Witch of Endor came from the spirit world, and announced the fate of the dishonored king. Elisha raised the dead son of the Shunamite. These cases were distinct proofs of continued existence after death, and the translations were at the same time types of the resurrection of the body.
It is true that we cannot verify the miracles by direct examination of the facts, but the accounts come to us in connection with a dispensation con- firmed by numerous miracles. They are related to us by inspired men, whose statements are ap- proved and confirmed by other inspired men whose
PROOFS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 87
claims are open to our closest examination. We fully believe therefore that the events took place as narrated, and they become to us of great eviden- tial value.
The Old Testament dispensation was preparatory and typical of the Christian. The events and utterances of faith, as well as the direct predic- tions, were prophetic. There was meaning in their words and actions which they did not comprehend. The New Testament is an inspired commentary upon the Old. From it we can go back and find the truth which they either wholly overlooked or partially understood. David's words, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol," becomes a prophecy of the resurrection of Christ, and thus a pledge of •our own. His hope that God would guide him by His counsels and then receive him to glory becomes to us a divine promise. His premonition of fulness of joy at the right hand of God becomes to us an assurance.
The Old Testament, therefore, comes to us as a word from God, answering the question which itself propounds, "If a man die, shall he live again?"
"I am the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob." But he is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
CHAPTER X.
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT.
TN the teachings of Jesus Christ and His Apostles -*- we have the fact of a future life not only asserted, but richly explained. The pages of the New Test- ament are luminous with the truth concerning human destiny. Nowhere else do we find so much instruction on our state after death. It is here we reach our greatest certainty. For this reason, amoHg others, Christ is said to have "brought life and immortality to light."
It is through the New, as we have already observed, the Old Testament obtains its greatest importance. Christ lifted the veil and showed its deeper meanings. He pointed out the vein of prophecy running through it, and by his interpreta- tion we find a significance in the words and actions of the ancient Jews of which they themselves did not dream. We may without violence obtain from their inspired utterances proofs which wholly escaped them. The books of the Bible become one book, the Book above all others in respect to our
duty here and our existence hereafter. (i88)
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 89
Christ was not in the ordinary sense a philoso- pher. He did not employ the common philosophic methods. He did not appeal to the philosophic, but to the religious reason. He did not aim to call out the logical faculty, but the spiritual intuition. His manner was in striking contrast with all the philosophers, and he taught with strange authority. We cannot look, therefore, in His teachings for proofs of immortality, such as the philosophers offered. He does not speak to the reason independ- ent of religion, but to the reason swayed by relig- ion. The Christian finds assurance where the sim- ple rationalist sees nothing. Christ makes men feel their immortality through their religious con- sciousness, while those devoid of it are as insensible to it as the blind are to the brightest light. But there are facts connected with Christ's life and teaching which carry a great deal of force to what theologians would call the natural understanding.
Christ offered only one argument for a future life, and that was a vindication of it against the Sad- ducees. This sect denied the existence of angels and spirits and the resurrection of the body. Josephus calls them a philosophical sect. This is doubtless correct as to their starting point, but in the time of Christ they were rather politicians and
1 90 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Opponents of the innovations of the Pharisees. They had fallen back into an extreme conservatism. They acknowledged the divine authority of the sacred books, but holding in special regard the Mosaic law, they o^ave rise to the common opinion that they accepted only the Pentateuch. They were driven into the inconsistency of receiving divine books and yet believing that God took no interest in the world. Christ met them on the common ground of the sacred books. He appeals to the- authority of the Scriptures which they ad- mitted. He proves from the relation of man to God that man is immortal, and from this infers the resurrection of the body. God calls Himself the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, long after these patriarchs had passed away from earth; but God is not a God of the dead but of the living, and therefore these patriarchs live. If the spirits sur- vive the bodies, there is no special difficulty in believing that they will at some time reanimate their bodies.
Christ taught on His own personal authority. He claimed to be the Christ, the Son of God, God himself. He claimed, therefore, the authority of God. He asked a verification of those claims. He proposed four tests. To the Jews He offered
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 191
their own Scriptures. "Go search the Scriptures, and they testify of me." To the disciples also He appealed to the prophecies. He proposed, at other times. His miracles. *'If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not; but if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works." ''The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me." "The works which the Father has given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me." He appealed also to the power of the truth. "My words are spirit and life." "If the Son makes you free, ye shall be free indeed." "Every man that hath learned of the Father cometh unto me." " He that is of God heareth God's word." He ap- pealed, finally, to His own character. "Who of you convinceth me of sin?" The fulfilled pro- phecies, the wonderful miracles, the divine power of His teaching, and His perfect character, united to confirm His claim and prove Him the Son of God. What He taught must be accepted upon Hife own authority. What He reveals about our future we must believe, because He said so. We must either accept His claims or regard the whole history as a myth which gathered itself about the life of an otherwise insignificant Jew.
192 EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE LIEK.
There is no question that the Christ of the Gos- pels taught a future life for His own people, but it has been said that He taught only a conditional immortality. Did He teach that all men shall live after death?
The final extinction of the wicked has been in- ferred from the teaching both of nature and of Christianity. Sin disorganizes. It destroys na- tions, breaks up associations, alienates friends, and induces disease and death. It creates conflicts be- tween the mental powers, weakens thought, and cripples the will. These facts are thought to indi- cate the final destruction of the soul. The Scrip- tures say that "the wages of sin is death," and " the soul that sinneth it shall die." Everlasting life and immortality are the rewards of the right- eous. Everlasting life is understood by those who hold to a conditional immortality as continued ex- istence, and everlasting death as a cessation of be- ing. Did Christ teach that the wicked are anni- hilated at death?
The Jews at the beginning of the Christian era believed that the wicked and pious alike are im- mortal. The Pharisees held the common doctrine. Josephus states it thus: "They also believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 93
under the earth there will be rewards and punish- ments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be de- tained in everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to rise and live again."* The Kssenes also taught the immortality of all souls. Only the Sadducees believed that the soul dies with- the body. Christ took the side of the Pharisees in- this controversy. He adopts the language of his. day. He takes no pains to correct the common- faith. His language and manner implied its essen- tial correctness. He also directly taught the con- tinued conscious existence of all. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the two represent the two great classes. The rich man was as fully and consciously alive as Lazarus, and each received his proper retribution. Christ spake of the fire that is never quenched, and the worm that never dies. He warned repeatedly of the danger of hell-fire. The wicked are to go away into everlasting pun- ishment. If the wicked are to be annihilated, there is no meaning in these expressions. If one ceases to exist, the worm and the fire have for him no significance. If there is annihilation, there cannot be everlasting punishment, for there can
*Antiq., b. 14, c. i, s. 3.
194 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
be no punishment without existence — when one ceases to be, his punishment must necessarily end.
Peter tells of the spirits in prison, held there for their disobedience in the days of Noah. Whatever doubt there may be as to the time of the preaching to them, there is none as to the time of their dis- obedience and of their confinement in prison in the other world. They were wicked spirits, and in the days of the Apostles their punishment had con- • tinned through three thousand years.
John tells us also of some the smoke of whose torments ascend forever and ever.
Christ made a distinction between simple exist- ence and life. He taught that life is a proper relation to God. "This is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God." " He that hath the Son hath everlasting life." ''I am come that they may have life." " Your life is hid with Christ in God." "He that heareth my words and believeth on Him that sent me, shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life." "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." He calls those who are out of that relation to God dead. To believe is to "pass from death to life." Those who are dead
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 95
through indifference to God shall hear His voice and live. The same idea runs through the writ- ings of the Apostles. ^'You hath he quickened who were dead in trespass and in sins." *' Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God." "Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." *' Twice dead," said Jude, because they had gone back from life into a state of death. "A name to live," said John, ''but art dead." This was not new language. It had come down from the creation. " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Adam did die the very hour of transgression. He did not cease to exist even on earth, but he lost his spiritual power. Life in the Biblical sense is a spiritual principle which gives existence its highest value, and death is the want of that principle. The whole force of the argu- ment for a conditional immortality lies in a mis- conception of the Scriptural meanings of everlast- ing life and of death.
Christ brings out the old argument, based on man's relation to God, in a new light. God is not only our Creator, but is also our Father. We are the objects of his special care. We are the children of God. We are made partakers of the divine
196 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
nature. We are renewed in the image of God. We are taken into fellowship with Him. We are lifted into union with Christ and receive His life as the principle of our life. ' * Christ is our life, ' ' and, therefore, ''death is our gain." We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Those whom He so loves and dignifies, for whom He cares, to whom He imparts a divine life, cannot perish. We have in us a germ of immortality that death cannot touch. In making us feel God's nearness to us, Christ makes us feel our immortality. It is the conscious inner life that makes the Christian cer- tain of life beyond death. While Christ taught immortality for all, He gives pledges, guarantees and positive assurances to the righteous.
The New Testament adds to its teaching a num- ber of examples.
It gives a number of instances of the manifes- tation of angels — spirits independent of matter. These show that mind can exist and be cognizant of the facts of the world and can reveal itself without a material body. As soon as we are convinced of this, we find little difficulty in believing in the future existence of the soul.
It gives an account of the transfiguration, at which Moses and Elijah appeared and talked with
PROOFS FROM THE XEW TESTAMENT. 1 97
Christ about His approaching death. Elijah had been translated. Moses had died and his body been buried on Mt. Nebo more than a thousand years before. Here were two persons, one with and the other without a body, who had been living a num- ber of centuries in another world.
The account of the transfiguration comes down to us in three of the Gospels. It is referred to as a well known fact in one of the Epistles accredited to Peter. There is no doubt as to its being one of the earliest traditions of the Church, current long before the death of the Apostles Peter, James and John. If Mark wrote his gospel under the direc- tion of Peter, we have in it Peter's personal testi- mony. If the story had been false, the Apostles, while they lived, would have corrected it. Chris- tians believed it upon the authority of these eye witnesses. Neander pronounces "the attempts that have been made to resolve it into a mythical narrative absurd."* The theory of a subjective phenomenon supposes the improbable fact that three should fall at the same time into the same wonder- ful mental condition, and also robs it of all the importance in the life of Christ which is clearly indicated in it. If a vision at all, it must have
* Life of Christ, g 1S5.
198 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
been miraculously produced, and so far as regards the presence of the two saints, had objective reali- ties. There were three witncbses, and these among the most competent of the twelve. Their substan- tial agreement in relating it is shown by the agree- ment of the written accounts. They could not have been mistaken, and their whole lives show that they were not false.
The New Testament gives account of a number of resurrections from the dead. Besides the evi- dence which they bring to the whole system, and thus to the teaching concerning a future life, they bear special testimony in showing us instances of the fact. Three of the miracles were wrought by Christ. They rise in importance. The first was that of the centurion's daughter, who had just died. She was regarded as dead, and the people misunderstanding Christ's words, laughed in de- rision when He said that she was sleeping. The miracle was wrought in a private house, in the presence only of the friends and of three disciples. The circumstances might have left room for doubt as to the fact of a miracle. The next was the resurrection of the son of the widow of Nain. This was more public. It took place in the streets and in the presence of the funeral cortege. But
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1 99
in that hot country, where interment speedily fol- lowed death, this might have been supposed to have been only a case of suspended animation. Still, it would have been strange that life should return at a simple touch, without any further re- storatives. In the last case there was no possible place for doubt. Lazarus had been dead four days. His death was known. He was raised in the presence of a large company. It was done at Bethany, in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem. It was immediately published, and was thoroughly investigated by His enemies. The fact was an- nounced repeatedly, and written accounts circu- lated in the community where it occurred. Public attention in deep interest was attracted. If it had been possible the miracle would have been denied, but it was not.
Matthew tells us that at the crucifixion "the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the city and ap- peared unto many." The genuineness of this passage has been called in question on internal grounds. It seems to have been inserted into the midst of the narrative. The fact is not mentioned by any of the other writers. But it has the best
200 EVIDENCE OK A FUTURE LIFE.
manuscript authority, and we accept it as part of the original Gospel, having all the authority of the Apostolic testimony.
A young woman at Joppa was raised by Peter. "She was sick and died, whom when they had w^ashed they laid in an upper chamber.'* "The widows weeping showed the coats and garments which she had made." " Peter put them all forth and kneeled down and prayed, and turning to the body said, Tabitha, arise, and he gave her his hand and lifted her up, and when he had called the saints and widows he presented her alive."
At Troas Paul is said to have raised the young man, Kutychus, who fell from the window and " was taken up dead." It is related by Luke, the physician, who was the traveling companion of Paul.
These miracles come to us as fully accredited as any part of the gospel story, and must be believed or rejected with it.
The greatest of all the resurrections, and that which has for us preeminent importance, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the chief corner- stone of the Christian faith and hope. It demands, therefore, a more careful study.
That we may have the argument in the clearest
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 20I
light, we will recall the principal facts upon which it rests.
Christ's life and character are historical facts. John Stuart Mill, a great but unsympathetic scholar, gives, with some disparaging remarks on John's gospel, his mature judgment, together with something of the reason for it. " It is the God in- carnate, more than the God of the Jews or of nature, who, being idealized, has taken so great and salu- tary a hold on the modern mind; and whatever else is taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left; a unique figure, not more un- like all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that Christy as ex- hibited in the Gospels^ is not historical^ and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of his followers suffices to insert any num- ber of marvels, and may have inserted all the mira- cles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among the disciples of Jesus or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and char- acter revealed in the Gospels ? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul,
202 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good in them was all derived from this higher source." ..." But about the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality, com- bined with profundity of insight, which, if we abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision when something very difierent was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in His inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast."* The words of depreciation of the Church and of parts of the history, written in this connection and elsewhere, make Mill's testimony to the sublime character of Christ all the more important. If we deny with Deism the miracles, we have left in Christ Himself the most inexplicable and greatest of all miracles. The resurrection is in perfect harmony with such a life.
Another fact as unquestionable as any in His life, is that of His crucifixion at the time of the Passover, when Jerusalem was crowded with visi- tors not only from Palestine, but various parts of
* Three Essays, p. 254.
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 203
the world. This was a part of the very earliest tradition, and was publicly preached everywhere from the very beginning of the Christian move- ment.
Another fact is that He was really dead. His enemies took special pains to assure themselves of His death. The soldier's test would have destroyed life if it had not already been gone.
Another fact equally certain is that He was buried, and the grave was in the -hands of the enemies.
The disappearance of the body, another fact in- disputable, cannot be explained except by its resurrection. The enemies did not remove it, and the feeble, disheartened, demoralized and disbanded disciples could not. These facts are so clearly established, that the theory of a swoon has been proposed to evade the evidence of a resurrection, but that supposition cannot stand before the evi- dence of His death.
Another fact fully established is that the dis- ciples, in a few days after the crucifixion, began to preach that Christ had risen. A very great and sudden revolution took place in their feelings. The timid, cowardly apostles at once became heroes. The Peter who had denied Him, in that
204 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
same city pronounced severe denunciations against those who with wicked hands had crucified the Lord of glory. Thousands were convinced of the truth and were added to the followers of the lately despised Nazarene. From Jerusalem they went everywhere proclaiming the fact of Christ's resur- rection ; and during the life-time of those present in Jerusalem when it took place, and from that very assembly thousands were converted to the new faith.
Another fact beyond dispute is that two days commemorative of His resurrection, the one weekly and the other annual, began in the time of the Apostles to be observed everywhere in the Church. Jews with all their inherited feelings of sanctity for the Sabbath, in common with Gentile converts, commenced observing the first day as the Lord's day.
Another fact above question is that from the very beginning there was the profoundest convic- tion of its truth, and the facts establishing it were carefully preserved among all Christians.
Another fact admitted by the most radical his- toric criticism, and therefore denied by none, is that Paul wrote Romans, the two Corinthians, and Galatians. In these letters he expresses his own
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 205
perfect faith in it. This is of greater value when we remember that he was in Jerusalem soon after it occurred, was high in the counsels of his nation, and acquainted with all the facts in the possession of the rulers in regard to Christianity, of which he was at first a fierce persecutor. In these epistles he appeals to the fact of Christ's resurrection as well known and universally admitted among Christians. He tells us that he had several con- ferences with the Apostles who had seen the risen Lord. He briefly reviews the evidence — not dwell- ing on it because facts so well known required only the most rapid mention. He says that Christ was seen of Peter, then of the twelve, then of above five hundred, then of James, then of all the Apos- tles, and last of all by himself. These epistles were all written within thirty years, at the very longest, after the crucifixion.
Another fact that cannot be disproved is that the Gospels, whether authentic or not, give us the facts as they were preached from the beginning of the Church on down through the first century. These facts we^e transmitted by public preaching to the age when these books were certainly ac- cepted as genuine. Besides the allusions in the writings of Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp
206 EVIDENCK OF A FUTURE LIFE.
and the Shepherd, we have the direct and extended statements of Justin Martyr, placing this fact be- yond dispute.
The testimony to Christ's resurrection, which was repeatedly given under the most solemn cir- cumstances and sealed with the blood of the wit- nesses, is that Christ after His resurrection showed Himself to Mary Magdalene in the garden about sunrise; immediately after to a number of women as they were returning to the city, and permitted them to embrace His feet; then to Peter, but the place is not given; then to the two disciples going to Bmmaus; then to the ten disciples, with whom He not only talked, but by whom He was handled, and in whose presence He ate bread and fish. These manifestations were all made on the day of the res- urrection. On the next first day He showed him- self to the eleven. Some days after He showed himself to seven on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Soon after He was seen by the five hundred. Then He was seen by James in a private interview, as He had formerly been by Peter. Then at last by the disciples, as He went with them to Mt. Olivet, from which He ascended.
This is the evidence as it has come down to us. In all important respects it has been correctly re-
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 207
ported from the lips of the witnesses. It has never been successfully impeached, nor its force fairly evaded.
The most recent and plausible effort to get rid of the facts is Strauss' s celebrated mythical theory. The disciples had some mental hallucinations which served as a basis for the myths which grew up into the story as we now have it. The theory necessa- rily implies prepossession, definite expectancy. But all the facts show that such expectancy was en- tirely wanting. They had been so prepossessed with another idea that they misunderstood His predic- tions of His resurrection, and His death filled them with the deepest despondency. They saw Him when they least expected it, and sometimes were slow in recoo:nizinof Him. In His manifestations He de- livered to them long discourses, walked with them frequently,' and even took food with them. He was at much pains to remove their doubts and convince them that He was not a vision but an ob- jective reality. The theory of vision ignores all these facts. Myths are of slow growth. It re- quires ages for them to mature. But the story of the resurrection was fully completed a number of years before Paul wrote his epistles. It was full grown long before the first thirty years had elapsed.
2o8 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
It started, so far as the evidence goes, immediately after the event occurred. This theory, so preten- tious and specious, has been abandoned by almost all scholars.
The preaching of the resurrection introduced new life into the world. A revolution was com- menced which, both as to means and success, is without a parallel. A germ was planted at Jerusa- lem by Galilean fishermen that transformed the society of Europe, and has sent its blessing down through eighteen centuries. The Church in all its grand proportions and its splendid work was founded upon it. The result which followed from it is the highest confirmation and surest testimonial.
No event in history is sustained by a stronger array of facts than those proving the resurrection of Christ. This has been admitted even by ration- tionalists. We must accept it, or give up faith in historical narratives.
The resurrection of Christ is a proof of our future existence, because it is the divine confirma- tion of all His teaching. It puts beyond doubt His claims to be the Messiah. It is also a proof be- cause of His relation to the race. He is in orofanic union with the family of men. He was one of us,
PROOFS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 209
but was also our Head. He was representative, and acted for all. Because He lives we shall live also. The Christian, through Paul, before the fact of assured life raises the exultant shout: "Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
CHAPTER XL
SOUL AND LIFE.
TT7H come now to consider the evidence to be ob-
* ' tained from the nature of the soul. Our
study must necessarily, for several chapters, be
metaphysical.
We descend from the bright, clear light of Chris- tianity to the dust and smoke of modern science. We do not seek positive proofs, but safeguards against doubts and fears awakened by scientific experiments and speculations. We desire to see how many of the old fundamental faiths remain to us, and how far the old proofs and evidence have been influenced by the new faAs. We commence with the relation of the soul and life.
The materialist believes that matter is the sole : substance, and that material things are the only realities. He believes, therefore, that mechanical, chemical, vital and mental phenomena are pro- ducts of material forces. These phenomena are manifestations of the same principle in different spheres of activity. The mental and vital belong
to the same agent. If the soul is nothing but the (210)
SOUL AND I.IFE. 211
vital principle, and the vital is the result of the material organization, then when the body dies life and soul perish together. The argument is not conclusive until every step has been proved. If he fails to establish the identity of the vital and mental principles, his argument fails.
Some dualists have agreed with the materialist in the opinion that the mental and vital are only different phases of the same agent. President Porter, who believes in the immortality of the soul and stands up vigorously and firmly against materialism, states the doctrine in regard to the relation of the soul to life in these words: "The force or agent which at first originates the bodily organism and actuates its functions, at last mani- fests itself as the soul in higher forms of activity, viz. : in knowledge, feeling and will. In other words, the principle of life and of psychical activ- ity are one."* To this the materialist can sub- scribe.
The most ancient Greek philosophers known to us were hylozoistic, and knew of no agent or principle separate from the common life of the world. Every form of motion or action came from life. Thus Thales ascribed the attraction of the
* Human Intellect, p. 36.
212 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
magnet to its life. The world was regarded as a great organism, like a plant or an animal. Anaxa- goras began to distinguish between the Creator and the world, but he used the idea of God to ex- plain what he could not account for by natural forces. The Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, were atheists, and ascribed the cosmos to mechan- ical principles. All of them regarded the soul as a function of life — the Hylozoists as the animating principle manifesting itself in man through men- tal phenomena, the Atomists as a result from the vital human organism.
The tendency started with Anaxagoras was de- veloped by Socrates. The distinction between the soul and body was clearly recognized, and was re- peatedly discussed and illustrated by that great Athenian philosopher. Plato taught the pre-exis- tence of souls and the ethereal nature of their essence. He divided the human soul into three parts corresponding to vegetable, animal and mental phenomena; but he wavered as to the relation of the two former to the body, sometimes maintaining that they survived with the intellectual, and some- times that they perished with the body. Aristotle, while holding to the common belief in its principal facts, made a wide departure in regarding the
SOUL AND LIFE. 213
notes as superadded to the lower elements and capable of existence after their destruction. These ancient philosophers of the Socratic and pre-So- cratic schools, so far as they have left evidence of their speculations on this subject, supposed that the soul is the animating principle, and they spoke of the soul of plants and animals, as well as of men. Aristotle is the only one who seems to have made in any respect a distinction between the higher faculties and the soul, or lower mental powers, the entelechy of the body.
There are expressions in the Old Testament which indicate that the Hebrews, as the Greeks, believed that animals and plants as well as men have souls, and they are supposed to have regarded the soul as the animating principle. But the high- est authorities in this branch of theological learn- ing are not agreed as to whether they believed in trichotomy or dichotomy. Both views are sus- tained by numerous passages. *
Among the school-men there was no special inter- est felt in this subject, and there were not man}' utterances upon it. Thomas Aquinas, with Aris-
* As it was a matter of science and not religion, different opinions may have been held in different ages, and found ex- pression in the sacred books. We should no more go to the Bible to settle a question in psychology, than in astronomy.
214 EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE LIFE.
totle, calls the soul the entelechy of the body, but ascribes to the same soul rational, animal and vege- table functions. William Occam is opposed to the identification of the intellectual, the sensitiva anima and the organizing principle of the body. He held to three powers. Bckhart, the pantheistic m3^stic, said clearly that the soul is the vitalizing principle of the body.
Descartes produced a revolution in philosophy, and French philosophers say that the publication of his book on Method was the birth-day of mod- ern philosophy. He made the broadest distinction between matter, whose essence is extension, and spirit, whose essence is thought. One of the great problems for the Cartesians was the possibility and manner of influence between mind and matter. "Occasional Causes" and ''Pre-established Har- mony" were theories proposed for its solution. Spinoza offered his noted scheme of pantheism. The Cartesians, after Descartes himself, believed that the vital belonged to the material, and attri- buted to it, through reflex influence, the instinct of animals. The brute was an automaton. With them the vital and mental were entirely distinct agents.
Leibnitz thought that the soul is the governing
SOUL AND LIFE. 215
monad or substantial centre of the body, control- ling the monads of the body, or furnishing the rea- son for physical changes, though it was not done by a direct influence, but according to the pre- arranged harmony.
Modern materialists have revived, in one phase or another, the old Grecian hylozoistic doctrines- Voltaire could not think that the soul was an un- extended substance in the brain, and preferred to consider it a mere abstraction or personification of a peculiar psychical force. De la Metric, from per- sonal observation upon himself during an attack of fever, concluded that mental actions are the- results of bodily organization, or that the mind is a function of the body. Prof. Huxley attempts to- reduce mental activity to reflex influence.
Ulrici, among more recent Germans, is a decided^ and strong opponent of materialism. He wrote his great work, "God and Man," to demonstrate that the soul is an independent existence, but he is not sure that it is not identical with the vital force.
Modern science, by means of the microscope and the study of fossils from the remotest ages, has brought new light to the study of life. A new- branch has established for itself a place among the sciences. Biology has discovered new facts in re^
2l6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
gard to the lower forms of life, and new relations between the different orders of being. It has fur- nished strong support to the doctrine of evolution, the greatest and most important of all the theories offered in recent years to the scientific world — a theory w^hich has threatened to overturn our most fundamental beliefs. Biology has reopened the question, Is the soul the principle of life? It is not a question vital to the belief in the future ex- istence of the soul, but it has assumed a new im- portance.
President Porter has given a number of reasons for regarding the vital and mental agents as one:
I. The vital phenomena are antecedent to the psychical. Some months have elapsed after the first living activities, before there is any manifes- tation of the distinctively mental. The first dis- play of mental power is of the most rudimental character. In connection with the first appearance of the psychical power, there are no indications of the beginning of a new agent. The vital and mental are blended so far as observation, both within and without, can reach. If the soul is a ■distinct principle, when does it begin? If it begins ^ith life, it is very strange that it should remain so long dormant.
SOUL AND LIFE. 217
In reply to this argument it may be said that it does not prove that the two phenomena come from the same agent, but only a close relationship be- tween their sources. All the facts adduced are equally accordant with the theory of two prmciples in mutual dependence. It is a well-known fact that mind is dependent upon life as developed in the nervous system, and the same agent and a different agent must alike wait for its development. Both theories have the same explanation of the rudi- mental character of the first mental actions. In either case the condition of the nervous system de- termines them. There are the same difficulties to both. Neither can explain the fact that the soul is so long without a consciousness of itself. If the soul is the vital agent, why is it so long dormant as soul? This first reason, therefore, does not prove
the identity.
2. When life and soul are fully developed, the general intensity or energy of the powers of each vary with one another. As is the tone of the bodily life, so is the general energy of the soul's capacities. When the tone of life is lowered, as in sleep, faintness and disease, there is a general tendency to depression of the psychical activities. When the tone of life is strong, there is correspond-
10
2l8 EVIDENCE OP A EUTURE LIFE.
ing keenness of perception, power of reasoning, energy of feeling, and strength of will. This is the general rule. It is true of general states and would indicate a common essence.
This reason, as the first, shows nothing more than that the mind is dependent upon the life. It does not prove a common agent. The author of the reason admits this, for he adds, *' provided this can be reconciled with other facts."
3. The community of essence is indicated by special activities. The unusual or extraordinary energy of the one diminishes that of the other. Special exertions of the nutritive life draw upon the mental, and high emotional or intellectual activity retards the nutritive. If physical growth be abnormal, the mental is dwarfed; or the mind may dwarf the body. In disease the physical power is husbanded and the mental is enfeebled.
But this proves nothing more than the other two. If the mental principle is in organic union with the vital, the one supplying power to the other, we would have the same facts as if there was a common essence.
4. The conscious depend upon unconscious ac- tivities. Some of these are material and some are immaterial. The act of sense-perception requires
SOUI. AND LIFE. 219
as its condition a material object, a nervous appa- ratus, the excitement of the sensorium, and the transmission of this excitement by a continuous nervous organism. All these are processes of the unconscious in man, and prove that the soul in its nature is complex and extends its activities beyond the sphere of consciousness.
It is difficult to hold consciousness above a special faculty if we once admit subconscious activities; and if we reduce consciousness to a special faculty, as Ried did, we abandon the philosophy of Natural Realism. The material activities only bring sen- sible objects in contact with the sensorium. The activities of the nervous system bring these move- ments of matter to the cognizance of the mind. In sight there is the vibration of ether, and that excites certain movements in the optic nerve; but the motion is not sight. While the mind is entirely engaged with other subjects, the light falls upon the nerve and produces excitement, but there is no mental response. It is true of all the senses that there may be stimulation of the vital organ without mental reaction. This is best explained on the theory of two agents. All that is said about the dependence of the conscious upon the unconscious proves only that mind, whatever it may be, de- pends upon a vitalized organ.
220 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
5. The soul acts on matter. The soul holds those relations to extension and matter which are implied in the unconscious processes or acts which fulfil its conscious determinations. The fact can- not be overlooked that it is capable of being affected by and of acting upon unextended matter.
The vitalized body is the organ of the mind. There are many facts which show that life is the medium of its communication with matter. If the soul is the living principle, it must first exert its lower activity before it can bring into play the mental function; and if not, the organ must be vitalized before it can be used by the mind. The influence which mind has over matter through a living organism brings out clearly a relation of in- timacy, but not identity, between the two princi- ples. The soul as a distinct agent may exert that influence as well as one identical with life.
6. The body is in general and particular adapted to the habits and uses of the species, and of the individual soul with which it is connected. The adaptation is so manifold and complete as to indi- cate that the agent that forms and moulds the bodily members is the same that uses and applies them. The hand, for example, is specially fitted to be used by the inventive and skillful mind.
SOUL AND LIFE. 221
There is in the individual also a special harmony between the body and the soul. Quickness of in- tellect is attended by organs that are mobile and acute, and a temperament that is harmonious with both intellect and organism. This adjustment may be accounted for by a general law of pre-established harmony, or by the individual direction of Provi- dence, but is more rationally explained by sup- posing an identity of agent. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that after the body is formed and developed it is changed in many re- spects by the influence of conscious activities. Habitual thoughts, feelings and purposes mould the body so as to make it a readier instrument and more fit manifestation of the spiritual activities and states.
This reason, so far from proving an identity of agency, is one of the strongest proofs against it. It proves too much. It would prove that there is a soul principle not only in animals, but also in plants. The plant is built up from the first cell, according to a definite plan and for a specific end. Its life works after a pattern. It shows clearly an intelligence somewhere, but it certainly is not in itself. If a vital principle, without any mental capability, can construct the higher plants, with
222 KVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
their adjustments of root, stem, leaves and flowers, why can not a vital principle only construct the human body? If the vital can, without being in- telligent, reveal such powers in the lower, why should we identify it with the soul in man? If the vital principle constructs the body and adjusts it to individual characteristics of the mind, reveal- ing the most wonderful wisdom, it is very strange that it should so long be unconscious of itself. It is also exceedingly strange that the soul should so long be unacquainted with its own works. It built the heart, and valves, and arteries, veins and capillaries as channels, and formed the blood, and provided a perfect apparatus for circulation, but only in Harvey, in recent times, it began to under- stand what it had done. We know that all this anatomical and physiological structure was formed under law, and that the vital agent was carrying out a plan of which it had no conception. If the vital and mental have a common essence, one part of that essence is the instrument of law, blind force, and the other is free and intelligent. There seems to be little choice between two theories, the one dividing into diametrically opposite parts the same agent, and the other postulating two princi- ples.
SOUL AND LIFE. 223
These reasons fail then to establish an identity. Every one is reconcilable with the supposition of two agents. The last reason seems to prove that there are two principles.
The two classes of phenomena are entirely dis- tinct. The vital reveals itself in the material, by changing and arranging the positions and relations of matter. The mental reveals itself in thoughts. On account of the union of mind and body, the arrangements of parts of matter become signs of thought; but these material movements are not thoughts. The countenance changes with differ- ent feelings — relative positions of the parts of the face are changed, and by continuance tend to be- come fixed; the mind, through the power which vitality gives it, moulds the body; but the settled feature and the moulded frame are in themselves as widely separated from the thoughts and feelings of which they are symbols, as thought and motion. The wide difference in the effects indicates two dis- tinct principles. This conclusion is confirmed by the fact that the two have in many other respects widely separated fields. The higher functions of mind may be carried on without any physical change, except in the slightest movements among the particles of the brain. The vital operations go on without the knowledge of the mind.
224 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
The identity of the vital and psychical might be conceded to the materialist without yielding the fact of our immortality. He would still have the immense task of showing that life is a function of matter. But we note here, in the conclusion of this chapter, that it has not been proved that life and mind are different activities of the same agent. Whatever he may make out of the nature of life, as long as this stronghold remains in his rear, he has not shown that man is wholly from the dust and must wholly return to it.
CHAPTER XII.
BIOLOGY. npHB materialist assumes the identity both of the -*- vital and mental principle and of the vital and physical force. Materialism is not an established doctrine and the belief in a future life overthrown before both assumptions are fully proven. The defense of the faith in our personal immortality is made good if the argument by which either is supported is shown to be inconclusive. The pur- pose of this chapter is to show that the facts of biology do not prove that our existence after death is either impossible or improbable.
The sciences may be divided into biological and abiological. Under the biological would fall botany, zoology, physiology, psychology, ethics, politics, etc. Biology, in a technical sense, is that special branch of science devoted to the investiga- tion of the facts and laws of the elementary forms of life. It is an inquiry into the nature of life from its general characteristics. Biological specu- lations are as old as philosophy, but the science has been so materially assisted by the revelations lO* ( 225 )
226 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
of the microscope and the achievements of chem- istry, ihat it quite deserves a distinctive name and rank among the natural sciences. It has brought out many new facts, corrected many old errors, and confirmed many former conclusions. It gives promise of still richer results. But it has not ac- complished all that it is often believed to have done. The hopes of its students are too frequently taken for realized facts. Valid conclusions do not rest upon expectations, but established truths.
All sensible objects are divided into two great classes variously called animate and inanimate, organic and inorganic, living and not living. Some scientists through fear of associated ideas have hesitated about the names of the classes, but none as to the classification itself of the phenomena. The animate is distinguished from the inanimate by certain prominent and important marks.
Iviving beings pass through cyclical changes. Every individual, starting in a germ, advances to maturity, then decays and dies. Bach generation, having given existence to successors, is followed by them in the same course. Germination, growth, death, is the history of every living thing. The inanimate are formed, but are not born; they decay and disintegrate, but do not die.
BIOLOGY. 227
Living beings are distinguished also by constant changes through waste and repair. The molecules by oxidation decay and are carried off, but new material takes their places by a process called by physiologists intussusception. Growth in living beings is altogether different from the mere increase in size in the inanimate. The inorganic grows by accretion — the addition of material from without under mechanical and chemical laws. The ani- mate grows by assimilation, involving not only mechanical and chemical principles but also a factor not reducible to either.
Life cognizable by the senses is always connected with a peculiar chemical compound known as pro- toplasm. The chemical constituents in their defin- ite proportions are known: carbon, hydrogen, oxy- gen and nitrogen. But there is a principle aside from and above these, because dead as well as living protoplasm is known. Living beings are distinguished from the inanimate by the peculiar condition of protoplasm.
The difference in the phenomena implies a differ- ence in the causes. A peculiar phenomenon must have a peculiar source. Some modern scientists, afraid of admitting a distinct entity, have been perplexed about the name by which their cause
228 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
shall be known. Candolle calls it vital move- ment; Prout, organic force; Sclimid, transmuting cell power; Blumenbach, nisus formativus; Miiller, vital principle; while many others, vital force. Prof. Huxley thinks it convenient to use the words vitality and vital force, as we do electricity and electrical force, but pronounces the assumption of an entity absurd. ''To speak of vitality as any- thing but the name of a series of operations, is as absurd as if one should speak of the horology of a clock." * He regards living beings as machines of great complexity, with energy supplied to them. The existence of a peculiar force, or a force work- ing under peculiar conditions, must be admitted, and the whole controversy between materialists and others turns upon the nature of that force.
Biologists have studied the phenomena in four main directions, giving rise to the four great divis- ions of the science: morphology, the study of the forms of life; distribution, the existence of the var- ious forms in different ages and countries; physi- olog}^, the functions of the organs in the organism; aetiology, the causes of life and its forms. Prof. Huxley in the Bncyclopcedia Britannica has given the most important facts having bearings upon
*Enc. Brit, Ninth Ed., Art. Biology.
BIOLOGY. 229
philosophical questions which have been yet at- tained in each department.
Morphologists by means of the microscope have made very great advances in the knowledge of living tissues. The old aphorism, "every cell is from a cell," has been reaffirmed. All the tissues in plants and animals are made up of cells variously modified, and no cell arises but by separation from a pre-existing cell. A cell generally is a spheroidal mass of protoplasm surrounded by a cellulose wall. It was formerly supposed to consist always of a nucleus and wall, and was thought to be, in this definite form, the morphological unit. Some affirmed that this organism was the cause of life. But the microscope has revealed the working of the bio|Jast and the formation of the cell. The nucleus is first, and afterwards the wall is built up. I^ife, instead of being the result of organism, is found to be the organizing agent. Both nucleus and cell-wall are wanting in some cells. "For the whole living world," says Prof. Huxley, "it re- sults that the morphological unit — the primary and fundamental form of life — is merely an individual mass of protoplasm in which no further structure is discernible; that independent living forms may present but little advance upon this structure, and
230 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
that all the higher forms of life are aggregates of such morphological units under diverse modifica- tions." The cells from an original likeness pass through stages of divergence until they take the features of the special tissue. By a process of dif- ferentiation the cells are changed so as to form the great variety of structures in the living world.
Biology in the departments of distribution and physiology has very little that is important to our inquiry. Latitude and climate are known to be causes of differences in living beings, but they are not the sole causes. Places differing in longitude, but not in latitude and climate, have greatly differ- ent plants and animals. ^'In reference to existing conditions, nothing can appear to be more arbitrary and capricious than the distribution of living be- ings..''
Studies in physiology have brought out more clearly the great difference between the animate and inanimate. They have revealed the fact that a morphological unit is also a physiological unit, and the complex whole is but a number of physio- logically independent cells. The life of any being is the resultant of the activities of the units. The threefold functions of the higher forms of being — sustentation, generation, and correlation — are not
BIOLOGY. 231
found in all beings or in all cells. Some of the lower forms of life show no sympathy of part with part. Some metamorphosed cells indicate no gen- erative power. In some of the lowest forms of animal life generation is by fission — a separation of the parts, and each arising in distinct individ- uals— and by gemmation, a throwing off of a small part as a bud, which becomes a being like the parent. Some plants and animals multiply both' sexually and asexually.
Our greatest interest is in the setiological inves- tigations. It is in its facts that we expect to find the greatest light upon the nature of life. It is still the doctrine of biology that life comes only from life. As late as the seventeenth century it was believed that life in its lowest forms might originate spontaneously; but one investigator after another reduced the number of supposed cases, until the doctrine became almost universal that all life is from life. Occasionally it has been an- anounced that life has originated from inorganic matter, but the experiments proved on examina- tion to be unsatisfactory. Prof. Huxley, in differ- ent places, has said: "The fact is that at the present moment there is not a shadow of trust- worthy evidence that abiogenesis does take place,
232 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
or has taken place within the period during which life on the globe is recorded." "Of the causes which led to the origination of living matter it maybe said we know absolutely nothing." He thinks, however, that it may have originated spon- taneously, and if evolution be true it must have done so. We are not now concerned with his be- liefs as to possibilities, but with his knowledge of facts.
The biologist, then, finds life in his protoplasm that came from life, that builds wonderful struc- tures, but escapes all his analytical processes. What it is, and whence it came, he does not know. He is not authorized to say that it is not an entity, and his sneer does not make the belief in it as such absurd.
The effort has been made to reduce the vital force to the plane of the physical forces by means of the doctrines of the conservation of energy and of the correlation of forces. One'^ of the interpre- ters of modern science has said: "Vital force is derived from the lower forces of nature; it is re- lated to other forces much as they are related to each other — it is correlated with chemical and physical forces." If this be accepted as a correct
* Prof. Le Conte.
BIOI.OGY. 233
statement, we must see how it is to be under- stood.
The inorganic world is divided into two great classes: elements and chemical compounds. The organic is divided also into two: plants and ani- mals. These classes rise one above the other: I. Elements, the lowest; 2. Chemical compounds; 3. Plants; 4. Animals. They are planes of being, each higher resting upon those below. There are four classes of forces corresponding to the classes of beings. Among the elements we have gravita- tion, giving rise to weight and the mechanical forces. Among chemical compounds we have the physico-chemical forces: heat, light, electricity and chemical affinity. Heat, light and electricity were once thought to be distinct forces, but have been reduced by modern science to one. They are vi- brations of ether. After that discovery, it was not surprising to have the announcement made that they were transmutable. But the correlation is made to include also the mechanical forces. Prof. Le Conte says,* "Heat, light, electricity, magnet- ism', and mechanical force, are transmutable into each other, back and forth." But this is not ac- cepted as a clearly established fact by all scientists.
* Conservation of Energy. Appleton Sc. Series, p. 172.
234 ' EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Quatrefages points out strong objections. He says,* "Man has always been able to exercise a certain amount of control over the former (the physico-chemical); he can produce heat and light at will; but modern science cannot act upon the second (gravitation). We can neither augment nor diminish, reflect, nor refract, nor polarize weight. Here there is no transmutation of force similar to that in a machine worked by electricity or heat."
It is important for us to observe that in what- ever way scientists settle the dispute, they recog- nize distinct planes of force, and that the lower forces are carried up to the higher plane. The law of gravitation is as fully in force among chem- ical compounds as among elements, and it modifies chemical affinities, as well as it is modified by them. Gravitation and chemical force are only names of unknown causes.
Among plants we find a new force. Gravitation and chemical affinities are present, but there is a new order of phenomena that must be attributed to another cause, and it has been called by a large majority of scientists, vital force. lyC Conte says that any object falling by decomposition from a
* Human Species, p. 9.
BIOLOGY. 235
higher to a lower plane generates force by which matter is lifted into a higher. Matter falling from chemical compounds generates force by which ele- ments are lifted to the mineral world. He asserts ''that in all cases, vital force is produced by de- composition." He adduces a number of facts to illustrate and sustain his assertion. Among them, one of the most striking is that of fermentation. Alcoholic fermentation is decomposition. "Fer- mentation never takes place without the presence of the yeast plant; this plant never grows without producing fermentation, and the rapidity of the fermentation is in exact proporion to the rapidity of the growth of the plant. The decomposition of the sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid fur- nishes the force by which the plant grows and multiplies. The yeast plant not only assimilates matter, but also force." But the conclusion does not follow from these facts, that the vital force is only transmuted chemical force. The vital force in higher forms of life certainly allies itself with the lower forces, and augments its own force with- out becoming identified with them. The yeast plant did not originate in the decomposition which it caused, but the decomposed elements furnished materials for its structure, and with increased structure its power was increased.
236 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE UFE.
In the animal we find a still higher form of force called will, and in man that will takes a still higher character. In the animal we have all the laws of the lower carried up. We have gravitation and chemical affinities and vital force in co-operation with the higher power. The animal feeds upon the vegetable, and the vegetable feeds upon the chemical compounds. There is dependence, but at the same time a sphere of independence. The falling of vegetable or animal tissues furnishes material for the vital force. The forces sent up may be incorporated with the new animal tissues, and these become new instruments for the vital force, without the lower forces becoming vital force itself The eye is a living organ, but it may be greatly aided by the lens. The living force avails itself of the mechanical powers of the eye as it does of the lens, but it is itself not transmutable into either. The lower forces are lifted up to be- come instrumentalities of the vital force without being changed into it. Prof Balfour Stewart, in the concluding chapter of his ''Conservation of Energy,'' discusses the position of life among the forces of the world. He says: ^ ''That mysterious thing called life, about the nature of which we
* Conservation of Energy. Appleton, p. 161.
BIOLOGY. 237
know so little, is probably not unlike the com- mander of an army in a well-guarded room, from which telegraphic wires lead to the various divi- sions. Life is not a bully, who swaggers out into the open universe, upsetting the laws of energy in all directions, but rather a consummate strategist, who, sitting in his secrect chamber before his wires, directs the movements of his great army."
Prof. Le Conte admits that the change from one grade of force to another is, so far as we can see, not gradual but sudden. "The groups of phenom- ena which we call physical, chemical, vital, animal, rational, and moral, do not merge into each other by insensible degrees. In the ascensive scale of forces, in the evolution of the higher forces from the lower, there are places of rapid paroxysmal change. ' ' * There is a greater gap between the vegetable and those below and also between the animal and the vegetable, than between the me- chanical and chemical. If the mechanical and chemical are transmutable, it does not follow even by analogy that they are transmutable with the vital.
If life is derived from the lower plane, and is correlated with the physical and chemical forces,
* Conservation of Energy, p. 195.
238 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
they ought to be transmutable into each other back and forth. If this can be done at all, it is under the most peculiar conditions. Life comes only from life. Physical and chemical forces are never transmuted into the vital ''unless living matter is then and there present." The correlation is cer- tainly not the same as in other cases. That con- dition leaves a grave doubt as to the fact of cor- relation. When matter is decomposed there is nothing lost to the sum of matter — it only appears in other forms. When chemical compounds are broken up, there is no loss of force. But when living matter dies, all the physical and chemical elements remain embodied in the dead frame, until little by little it is decomposed. What is gone? Prof Le Conte confesses that there is something here which science does not understand. Life does not appear to be transmuted back to the forces of nature. Prof. Balfour Stewart wrote these significant words:* "We do not pretend to have discovered the true nature of life itself, or even the true nature of its relation to the material universe." "We have not succeeded in solving the problem as, to the true nature of life, but have only driven the difficulty into a borderland of thick darkness, into
* Conservation of Energy, p. 163.
BIOI^OGY. 239
which the light of knowledge has not been able to penetrate."
Materialism, therefore, fails to show that life is material, and that the soul must perish with the physical organism.
CHAPTER XIII. RELATION OF MIND AND BODY.
THERE are two series of phenomena in life, dis- tinguished by two distinct names. The differ- ence is so great that it has attracted the notice of men from the earliest ages. We unify the one under the name mind, and the other under that of body. Dualist and monist, materialist and idealist, dogmatist and agnostic, all agree in using these terms. It is one of the great problems of philos- ophy to determine the relation between the two.
The positivist denies the possibility of the solu- tion. He limits knowledge to the relations be- tween phenomena under necessary laws. We learn laws and forecast the future of the individual in his freest actions, but of being in itself we can- not know anything. As long as the positivist is true to his principles, he cannot determine whether the mind and body are distinct entities or not. Knowing nothing of their nature, he is incompetent to decide upon their relations to each other.
We do not know substance aside from qualities. There may be a "thing in itself," a thing without
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RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 24 1
qualities, but we know absolutely nothing about it, and so far as our conscious life extends it is non- existent. But we do know being through its qualities. We know the being in the qualities. We know each thing so far as we know its qualities. Qualities without being are pure abstractions. They have no objective existence whatever. The only logical result from the Kantian doctrine of phenomena is Fichtean idealism. We are con- stantly dealing with being, not with abstraction, lyife is a reality, not a dream. Positivism, con- tradicting our commonest experience, cannot give a satisfactory philosophy of life.
The Monist denies a direct relation between mind and body, but finds a relation in some ulter- ior substance which is neither matter nor spirit. The two sets of properties are the two sides of that substance. It is a double-faced unity. Mind can- not influence body, nor.body mind, except through the relation which each sustains to that one sub- stance.
We know nothing confessedly about that sub- stance. We may call it God or Nature, but it is an unknown factor. It is a mere postulate to satisfy the intellectual craving for unity, and to relieve from some metaphysical difiSculties. For example,
243 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
we cannot explain fully the nature of the causal relation. We cannot understand how power may pass from one thing to another. We postulate this substance, and through it bring cause and effect together. But the necessity is not great enough to warrant so great an assumption. We do not be- lieve in it, because the reasons do not command our assent. Unless the Monist becomes dogmatic and falls into materialism or idealism, he holds to two separate entities in the sphere of our experience.
The Dualist of the Descartian school denies any direct relation. The mind and body are associated, but exert no influence upon each other. There is a correspondence, but the cause must be sought in God. Matter is inert, and when we have a volition, God by direct agency moves the muscles. The senses are affected, and God awakens in the mind the idea. This was the doctrine of Occasional Causes. This made God a»mere agent, and life a perpetual miracle. To get rid of thoughts so un- worthy of God, Leibnitz proposed another theory: God knew from eternity all the actions of all minds and all the modes of action of all bodies. He brought those minds and bodies together whose activities corresponded, and the two run together in perfect harmony. Leibnitz agreed with Descar-
RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 243
tians in the doctrine of incommunicability between matter and spirit, but dissented in regard to the inertia of matter. A physical organization might carry on its processes independently of mind. Body and mind are like two clocks which run per- fectly together, but each with its own springs. This is known as the Preestablished Harmony theory.
The Descartian Dualism noted the great differ- ence between the two kinds of phenomena, and taking one great quality in each, as widely apart as possible, drew the definitions of the two substances. These qualities were sometimes sublimated into substances. Extension itself was supposed to be matter, and thought mind. The difference between the qualities was very great, and the substances must be separated by the whole diameter of being. It was assumed that they could not act upon each other. But the assumption was unproved, except by their definitions, and was contrary to the facts of every-day experience. If so plain and patent a truth needs, or could have proof, the experiments made in recent years have placed a causal relation between the two above doubt. In some forms of perception we can determine not only what mental impressions will be made from stimuli, but how long before the impressions will arise.
244 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Another form of Dualism regards matter and spirit as different substances, and soul and body as distinct entities, but in reciprocal influence. The Dualist of this class recognizes a causal relation between them as long as they remain in personal union. He believes that molecular changes in the brain cause mental action, and that thoughts and feelings and volitions cause corresponding changes in the brain, and through it changes in the muscles and fibres of the body.
The Materialist denies any relation between them, other than that of different phases of activ- ity of the same material substance. "Matter is already in the field as an acknowledged entity. Mind considered as an independent entity is not so unmistakably in the field. Therefore, as entities are not to be multiplied without necessity, we are not entitled to postulate a new cause so long as it is possible to account for the phenomena by a cause already in existence."* If the Materialist can account for all the facts of life by material agency, according to the acknowledged law of scientific experiment, we have no right to suppose any other cause.
Prof. Bainf cites the canon, ''The presence of
* Prof. Ferrier. f Mind and Body, Chap. III.
REI.ATION OF MIND AND BODY. 245
the cause must be followed by the presence of the effect, and the absence of the cause must be fol- lowed by the absence of the effect." The latter he acknowledges, though more decisive, to be in- applicable in the case of mind and body. There is a third expedient: "If the agency in question, although irremovable, passes through gradations whose amount can be measured, we are able to observe whether the effect has corresponding changes of degree; and if a strict concomitance is observable between the intensity of the cause and the intensity of the effect, we have a presump- tion that may rise to positive proof of the con- nection."
De la Mettrie stated the argument in one terse expression: ''The soul increases and decreases with the body, therefore, it is destroyed with the body." His own and the efforts of all materialists are directed in large part to the proof of the premises, that the state of the mind and that of the body are absolutely concomitant. A number of facts, both those open to the observation of the masses and those known only to the scientist, are adduced.
Among the more important are these: The feelings possess a natural language of expression. *'Most of our emotions," says Darwin, **are so
246 EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE LIEE.
closely connected with their expression, that they can hardly exist if the body remains passive." Dr. Maudsley is more positive: "The special muscular action is not merely the exponent of the passion, but truly ^n essential part of it." All the abuses and casualties which impair the nervous system impair the mental faculties. A blow on the head suspends consciousness, and of greater severity produces permanent injury, occa- sioning some permanent derangement. "The more careful and studied observations ol physiolo- gists have shown beyond question that the brain as a whole is indispensable to thought, to feeling and to volition, while they have further discriminated the functions of the different parts." * The body and mind are both immature in infancy, both rapidly develop in childhood, both grow more slowly in the later years of youth, both remain nearly stationary in middle life, and both rapidly decline in old age. When the development of the brain is arrested, there is a corresponding arrest of the mind. Idiots are nearly always small-brained. There is a minimum limit to the brain for sound minds. The rise and fall in mental states corres- pond to the tides in molecular movements in the
* Prof. Bain, Miud and Body.
RELATION OF MIXD AND BODY. 247
nerve. Stimulants accelerate mental activity. Terror produces delirium. In sleep the nervous system is in repose, and there is. suspended con- sciousness or the irregular mental activities, as dreams. When the normal supply of blood to the brain is changed, there are changes in regular pro- portion in the state of the mind. Hallucinations have been removed by the application of leeches to the head. Insanity is almost always accompanied by some disease of the brain. There is a corres- pondence between the size of the brain and mental capacity — great thinkers usually have great brains. The temperature of the head rises with the in- tensity of thought. Severe thought exhausts phys- ical energy, indicating a correlation of the mental and physical forces. We have no direct evidence of the existence of mind apart from body. Mind and body appear and depart together. The pres- ence of the cause is followed by the presence of the effect, every change in one is attended by a corre- sponding change in the other, and the body, there- fore, is the cause of mental phenomena.
But these are not all of the facts. There is a whole set of facts which have persistently refused to be brought under the materialistic theory. The sneer of the Materialist does not get rid of them.
24B EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE UFE.
*'In vain does the spiritualist," sa3'S Prof. Ferrier, *' found an argument for the existence of a separate immaterial substance on the alleged incompatibil- ity of the intellectual and physical phenomena to co-inhere in the same substratum. Materialism may very well stand the brunt of that unshotted broadside. This mild artifice can scarcely expect to be treated as a serious observation. Such an hypothesis cannot be meant to be in earnest." But materialists have taken it in earrlest, and have struggled so far in vain to explain the incompati- bility; and the disdainful air with which the prob- lem is dismissed, does not solve it. Spiritualists may very well stand the brunt of this unshotted broadside. Prof. Bain acknowledged the diffi- culty.* "There is an alliance with matter, with object, or extended world; but the thing allied, the mind proper, has itself no extension and cannot be joined in local union. This is the only real diffi- culty of the physical and mental relationship." He thinks he has found a solution in the idea of a change of state from extended cognition to unex- tended cognition. But that leaves unexplained still how the same substratum has qualities so diverse as extension in place and thoughts of in-
* Mind and Body, p. 136.
RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 249
finite space. Until all the facts are accounted for, the materalistic hypothesis is unproved.
Of two theories, that is always the better which explains most of the facts. The Dualist proposes two substances in causal relation to each other: the body as the substratum of all material phenom- ena, and the mind, spirit or immaterial substance as the substratum for unextended thought, feeling and will. These two substances are sufficient to account for the two series of phenomena that re- fuse to be brought down to one substratum. The reciprocal causal relation accounts for the depend- ence of the one upon the other. All the facts are explained. This theory alone accepts and accounts for all the facts, and according to scientific canons must be received until some simpler one will bring all these facts into harmony.
The facts adduced by materialists to prove an absolute dependence of the mind upon the body are not always clearly and fairly stated. A more pre- cise statement frequently changes the whole bear- ing of a fact.
That part of the body in closest relation to the mind is the brain. This was recognized by Des- cartes, notwithstanding his radical conception of their independence. He supposed that the mind
250 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
was connected in some way with the pineal gland. The double system of afferent and effervent nerves centering in the brain, the want of conscious sen- sation when the communication with the brain is broken, and a number of facts, show that the brain is in some sense the seat of the mind. The cor- respondence is found, therefore, chiefly, or it may be said exclusively, between the mind and the brain. If thought is a function of matter, it is that matter in the cerebral cortex.
It i's not true that the correspondence is such as to prove that the mind is a product, or result, or function of the brain. The facts show rather the reverse. The brain and mind are not developed simultaneously. There is no proof whatever of any kind of thought in the foetus. The infant is several weeks old before there is any manifestation of mental phenomena, and the earliest are of the most rudimentary kind. Compared with the young of many animals, it seems very stupid. But before birth it has a fully formed brain and a highly developed nervous mechanism. As com- pared with that of any animal, they are far more per- fect. The mind and brain have by no means been proportionately developed up to the time of birth. The mind once awakened develops with great
RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 25 1
rapidity. The brain also grows, but not at all pro- portionately, and the relative disproportion grows greater all through childhood and the first years of youth. In middle life the brain remains largely in size and condition the same. No difference can be detected by any human tests in the nervous matter. But the mind of a large part of men makes great progress in development during this period. The world's best thinking is done by men of middle age. In the old there is generally a decline; but not unfrequently, while there is great feebleness of body, the intellect in all the higher faculties continues with unabated vigor.
The development of the mind is said to be due not so much to the increased mass of the brain as to dynamical associations. Prof. I^add asserts that this is no adequate explanation. "This develop- ment is not in the direction simply of associating together states of feeling, each one of which has an exact physical correlate in a physical association among the molecules of nervous substance. It is a development which for its very existence requires something different from such associations. The child might go on forever, merely associating to- gether affections of its own mind in correspondence to dynamical associations among the nervous mole-
253 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
cules, and yet have no growth of experience, such as it actually attains. To account for the bound- less expansion of the activities of consciousness, with its surprising new factors and mysterious grounds of synthesis and assumption, by proposing an hypothesis of 'dynamical associations' among the particles of nervous substance in the brain, is a deification of impotency. So far as we really know anything about the development of both brain and mind, we are compelled to say that the latter, when once started by sensations furnished through ex- citations of the former, proceeds to unfold its activ- ities with a rapidity and in an order for which no adequate physical cause can be assigned. ' ' *
Dynamical association fails equally to account for the disproportion between the relative sizes of brains and powers of mind among individuals. Prof. Bain admits the disproportion: "An ordi- nary male human brain is 48 oz. ; the brains of ex- traordinary men seldom reach Cuvier's figure, 64 oz. Now the intellectual force of the ordinary man is surpassed by Cuvier in a far higher ratio than this.'' Broca made a table of three hundred and forty-seven cases of brains. Cuvier's brain was heaviest. Byron's was next. The third was a mad-
* Physiological Psychology, p. 621.
RKIvATION OF MIND AND BODY. 253
man. Haussmann was the one hundred and fifty- eighth, whose brain fell to 43 oz., several ounces below the average of his ordinary countrymen. "With his small brain he surpassed in intelligence almost all his large-headed contemporaries." Quatrefages concludes a study of this table with these words : "Thus irrespective of all dogmatic or philosophic ideas we are led to the conclusion that there is a certain relation between the development of the intelligence and the volume and weight of the brain. But at the same time we must allow that the material element, that which is appreciable to our senses, is not the only one which we must take into account, for behind it lies hidden a7t tinknozun qitantity^ an x^ at present undetermined and only recognized by its effects."* This con- clusion of the great savant is strengthened when w^e extend the range of observation beyond the table of M. Broca. The brains of four men of no repute whatever ranged from 62.75 to 61 oz. ; that of another weighed 60 oz. ; and that of a boy 60 oz. also. In an Insane Asylum more than thirty weighed 55 oz. and upward, f In the relative
*Humau Species, p. 413.
f Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed.
254 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
weight of brain and body the elephant stands below the sheep; and in the dolphin, the baboon and man, the relative weight is not greatly different. Cerebral convolutions are thought to constitute the characteristic difference. They do furnish a general rule, but do not measure accurately the degree of intelligence. Ruminants have convolu- tiojis that would indicate a much higher degree of intelligence than they really possess.
Cerebral lesions have occurred without mental impairment. A number of such cases have been recorded. Several authors have collected these records. Prof. Ladd has given several. * Berenger de Carpi tells of a young man into whose brain a foreign body, the breadth of four fingers, was driven. Much of the substance of the brain was lost, both at the time of the accident and some days after; but the patient, in the full posssession of his mental powers, lived for a long time. Tonget tells of an Italian whose skull was crushed, and so much of the cerebral substance was lost that the attendant physician calculated that the lesion reached down nearly to the corpus callosum. But the man lived without any injury to his intellectual faculties. Lallemand tells of a person whose right
* Physiological Psychology, p. 265.
RELATION OF MIND AND BODY. 255
cerebral hemisphere was found to be filled with a fluid, but had lived in a normal mental state. The case of the man through whose brain a crowbar was driven by a blast of powder, but who lived twelve and half years, is well known. To these instances it would be easy to add a number of others.
When the facts are fully stated, they prove that there is a general dependence of mind upon the body, but they do not warrant the conclusion of materialism. Even in those upon wdiich most stress is laid, we detect a diSerence between the condition of the body and that of the mind, which indicates that there are two substances instead of one.
Closely connected with the line of argument of the Materialist is another: The soul now lives in a body; we never know it apart from body; it must have a body in order to be related to space; and, therefore, it is incapable of existing apart from body.
This is an argument based on our ignorance. That we have no sensible experience of a separate existence of the soul, is hot a proof that it does not so exist. Prof. Fiske* has justly observed: "The
* Destiny of Man, p. no.
256 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
materialistic assumption that there is no such state of things as thought and feeling without a cere- brum, and the life of the soul accordingly ends with the life of the body, is, perhaps, the most co- lossal instance of baseless assumption in the his- tory of philosophy. No evidence of it can be alleged beyond the familiar fact that during the present life we know soul only in its association with the body, and, therefore, can not discover disembodied soul without dying ourselves. This fact must always prevent us from obtaining direct evidence for the belief of the soul's survival. But a negative presumption is not created by the ab- sence of proof in cases where in the nature of things proof is inaccessible." To those who believe in a spiritual Creator, there is no difficulty in believing in a soul capable of living and of communicating with things in space, even though it has no body.
CHAPTER XIV. NATURE OF THE MIND.
THE two great series of phenomena have never been called in question by the most radical skeptics. They are separated by the most marked characteristics. They have nothing in common. The Idealist is compelled to admit that some of his ideas appear to have an objective source and that they are wholly unlike other ideas. The Materialist is also compelled to recognize the fact that in all his thinkinor }iq distino^uishes between the sensations and ideas and the external causes of these impres- sions. For the sake of convenience, all the various schools have agreed to call the one mental and the. other material. From these two series we must learn all that is possible for us to know about, either matter or mind.
The mental phenomena consist of thoughts, . feelings and volitions. They are matters of the most certain knowledge. They are the conditions of knowing anything else. We are sometimes de- ceived by the senses, but we are always certain that:
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258 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
we had such impressions. We may suppose that we have seen a ghost when we saw only a shadow, but we are certain as to the mental fact. The man with delirium tremens believes that he sees demons and serpents while he really sees nothing, but he is certain that he thinks he sees them. Whatever a man doubts, he is always, while doubt- ing, certain of the fact that he is doubting. Men have denied all objective reality and shut them- selves up in extremest subjectivity, but no man has denied the facts of the mind as phenomena. We know positively that we think, have pleasures and pains, form purposes, but we are sometimes at a loss to determine whether these things have cor- responding objects. Thought "is certainly in the field." It is not so certain that matter is.
The material phenomena consist of groupings in extension and movement. All matter has ex- tension, inertia and gravity. Other qualities of matter are color, form, position in space, hardness, electricity, cohesion, crystallization, heat, light, electricity, etc. Every form of activity is move- ment in space.
None of these material qualities belong to the mental. Some terms are applied to both series, as 'intensity,* 'quality,' ' degree, ' but they have very
^ NATURE OF THE MIND. 259
different meanings. An intense thought and an intense heat are quite different things. In the two connections intense is a different word. The facts of the one cannot be expressed in the terms of the other. "The fundamental modes of mental mani- festation and the laws which govern their activities are perfectly distinct from the phenomena and laws of the material world." *
In the material there is the law of necessity. In the mental there is the consciousness of freedom. In matter there is general, if not universal, inertia. In mind there is self-activity. These character- istics may not be absolute. Cause may exist to some extent in mind, and matter may have some elements of spontaneous activity, for both have been asserted, but still there are broad character- istics upon which our natural and metaphysical sciences have been built.
Phenomena imply a subject. J. S. Mill's defi- nitions of matter and of mind are well known. The one "is the permanent possibility of sensa- tion;" the other, "a series of feelings with a back- ground of possibilities of feelings." Bain says, "The collective I or self can be nothing different from the feelings, actions and intelligence of the
* Sully's Psychology, p. 690.
26o EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE LIEE.
individual." * These definitions do not go beyond abstractions. A series, a collection, unless a series of things, is nothing. A series of feelings with nothing that feels is as abstract as a series of colors when nothing is colored. Mr. Lewes does not hesitate to call matter and mind abstractions. ''Body is a persistent aggregate of objective phe- nomena; soul is a persistent aggregate of subjective phenomena." "All existence as known to us is the felt." "I know the soul in knowing its feel- ings (concretes) and in knowing it as an abstraction which connects those concretes in a symbol. The secondary question is, whether this abstraction represents one existent and the abstraction body another and wholly different existent, or the two abstractions represent one in two different as- pects, "f Activities imply something that acts. Extension implies something extended. Thinking implies something that thinks. We cannot think of phenomena without thinking at the same time of the thing which appears. "Mind as known to the possessor of it," says Herbert Spencer, "is a circumscribed aggregate of activities ; and the co- hesion of these activities one with another through-
*Ueberweg's History of Philosphy, vol.11, p. 431. t Physical Basis of Mind, p. 376.
NATURE OF THE :MIXD. 261
out the aggregate compels the postulate of a some- thing of which they are the activities.'"^ This necessity of "postulating" a substance for the phenomena belongs to the very nature of thought. Lewes calls it a law of our organism. Mind there- fore is not a mere abstraction.
If we grant that the nature of mind and the nature of matter are unknowable, we do know the qualities of each, and by the law of discrimination we are prevented from believing that they are identical. We distinguish any two objects by their qualities. Though both are fruits, we distinguish in this way an apple from an orange. So we distin- guish a plant from an animal. In the same way we distinguish oxygen from carbon. We find the qualities of the mental series wholly unlike those of the physical series, and under that law by a spontaneous act of thought postulate different sub- stances. The one the world has called material, and the other spiritual. The problem of material- ism is to correct that spontaneous judgment and reduce the mental phenomena to the activity of matter. Until this is done we are compelled to believe in two entities.
The Materialist reduces mind to a mere function,
^Psychology, Vol. I, p. 159.
262 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE EIFE.
or product, or result of matter. In a general sort of wa^ this is thought to be done by showing that "the mental life is a chain of events running par- allel to a chain of physical results." But Mr. Sully warns us against supposing that because we have found the concomitance we have explained the nature of mind. "There is a great deal of loose psychological thinking abroad just now under the guise of physiological psychology. It is sup- posed that to name the nervous accompaniments or conditions of mental phenomena is to explain them. But this is not so. No sound psychology is possible which does not keep in view the fundamental dis- parity of the physical and the psychical, and the consequent limits of the physiological explanation of mental facts." * The changes which take place in the brain are movements in space, and they give us no light at all on the mental changes. The great chasm between mind and matter remains. The shifting of the molecules in relation to each other is not thought.
The grossest attempt to reduce mental phenom- ena to the material was to make them a function of the brain. As the function of the stomach is to digest, and the glands to secrete, and the heart to
* Psychology, p. 4. See also Appendix C.
NATURE OF THE MIND. 263
propel the circulation, so the function of the brain is to -think. The brain was said by Buchner to secrete thought as the liver secretes bile. But the product of the gland is material. The bile his ex- tension, color, taste, weight. Thought has no material quality. This theory has been denounced hy Materialists themselves as the philosophy of savages. *
Every theory that would make thought a pro- duct of matter labors under precisely the same difficulty. Every product of matter is a grouping of material things ; but no new grouping of ex- tended objects is a thought.
Another theory is- that thought is a movement. It is supposed that movements may cause some- thing apart from the moving objects. Motion is sometimes regarded as immaterial. But motion without some object moving in space is a mere abstraction — it has no existence. Light, sound, heat, are in this general way believed to have ex- istence independent of their causes. Sound is a vibration of ether set in motion by the vibrations of some object. These waves of ether strike the chords of the auditory nerve, and from them there arises in the mind the sensation of sound. The
^ Bowue's Metaphysics,
264 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
action of the mind in hearing is not the same as the vibrations of the air. Heat, electricity, light, are molecular movements of greater or less rapidity and peculiar combinations. They have the charac- teristics of the bodies to which they belong. They are movements in space. But no movement in space is a thought or feeling.
When explanation fails, recourse is had to the mystical. We are told that we have thought too meanly of matter, that there is mind-stuff in mat- ter, that materialism does not degrade mind but exalts matter. But that assumes the very point in dispute, and leaves the subject just where it was. Men with decided tendencies to materialism, like Mr. Sully, admit that the question has not been settled in favor of materialism by accepted scientific methods. Mr. Spencer says that if we must choose between the alternatives of translating the mental into the physical or the physical into the mental, he would take the latter.* If the mental has the stronger ground for recognition, materialism has not succeeded very well in making the mind a result of physical organization.
The effort to translate the terms of the nervous system into those of the mental is absurd. The
* Psychology, p. 156.
NATURE OF THE MIND. 265
nerves are phospliorized and non-phosphorized. They are eflferent and afiferent, reflex and inhibi- tory. But we have no classes of phosphorized and non-phosphorized thoughts, no afferent and eflferent memories, no reflex and inhibitory imaginations. So the attempt to classify the movements of the molecules in the terms of the mind is equally ab- surd. We must already know the laws of the mind before we can detect the concomitance. The closest study of the movements of the brain would never suggest the idea of the mental correspond- ence.
The mind is not only a subject, but it is a unit. We refer all its actions to one source, the ego. I suffer pain, I f^el a pleasure, I see a picture, I will to write. Whatever is done or felt is referred to myself. The mental phenomena are very com- plex, but they are united in one whole. The color of an object comes through the eye, its fragrance through the smelling, its flavor through the taste, its smoothness through the touch, its temperature through another sense, its resonance through the ear. Dififerent parts of the brain are affected. An object is perceived to-day, and will be remembered to-morrow. It is described by words expressive of all its dififerent qualities. It suggests ideals. All
266 EVIDENCE OE A FUTURE LIFE.
these acts involve different nerve fibres and different faculties of the mind. But I take these different sensations, and unite them in one act of percep- tion. I remember it after all the sensations are gone. I voluntarily make it the basis of new cre- ations. There is one subject for all these intellect- ual acts. Without the unit being there had been no perception, no subsequent memory, no imagina- tion. The series has a bond of union, a unifying principle in the thinking subject.
Materialism not only fails to account for that unity, but is inconsistent with it. Account for its origin as we may,* or fail to account for it, that unity is a fact assumed in all our thought, and is always a factor in our consciousness. It is a fact which must be brought into harmony with our theory. Materialism fails to do it. The molecules are continually changing, the old ones passing off and new ones taking their places. But the thinking subject is abiding. The molecules are indefinite in number. That unity cannot exist in all together, for nothing can be found in the aggregate which is not in the parts. There can be no public sentiment
* The old psychology supposed we had an immediate con- sciousness of that unity. Latterly it has been called a neces- sary assumption and a necessary inference.
NATURE OF THE MIND. 267
when every man has no opinion whatever. There can be no common consciousness when the sepa- rate molecules have none ; and if each one has a consciousness, then there would be an indefinite number of egos instead of one. There is no one which has the consciousness for all, for there is no common centre known, nor can there be such a centre; for then it would be out of relation to the others except in space, and an unrelated unit re- peated is not consciousness. Materialism provides for nothing but a succession which it calls a series; but succession is not a series without a unifying subject. The series consists of individuals united in thought, and that thought must belong to £)ne conscious subject. • Consciousness in its very nature cannot be composite, and it is not strange that Materialists, seeing the straits into which they are driven, have tried to impeach the veracity of con- sciousness and prove it delusive.
Memory, one of the higher faculties, reveals the distinctive nature of the mind. The memory takes the facts of the past, and by renewed images brings them into a present experience. An image formed by the mind's own powers is the recognized repre- sentative of a former experience. There is a dis- tinguishing activity. It is not merely a recurring
268 EVIDKNCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
image, but a recurring image recognized as such and distinguished from the first or original one. The mind distinguishes also between ftself and its thoughts. It distinguishes between its present and past experience. This involves an abiding self. If there had been nothing more than succes- sion there might be repetition, but no recognition of it. Former experiences are collected into a connected whole, and a permanent self alone is competent to do it. '' Memory can exist only where there is a permanent self amid changing ex- periences."*
Memory is a fact that must be explained. The Materialist says the brain remembers. Physiologists assure us that the atoms of which the brain is com- posed are continually changing. " Here is the pass- ing stream of atoms, but here is the abiding person. The atoms which had my former experience are gone, and we should have supposed that they car- ried the experience with them. But strangely enough the experience remains, and these new atoms know all about it. Did the passing atoms whisper it to the new-comers as they slipped away? Were they able to give a kind of pass- word or countersign as they went out ? And were
* Dewey's Psychology, p. i86.
NATURE OF THE MIND. 269.
the incoming atoms able to so improve the hint given that we sliould never dream of the change ? But this would be to turn science into sheer fetish- ism and to invoke magic as an explanation."* The memory is certainly not in the elements. It is certain also that it is not the product of nervous action. The action of any fibre tends to repeat itself. The muscles though constantly changing in the particles retain their acquired facility of move- ments and automatically repeat them. So in nerve fibres. But the changed position in space of the molecules of a nerve is not memory. There is no place in this theory of nervous action for voluntary memory, when the mind addresses itself to recall- ing a past experience and only succeeds after long efibrt. It fails also to explain the acts of memory suggested by contrast. It fails equally to account for the different things suggested by the same ob- ject in the different mental states — sad things when we are sad, and amusing things when we are jovial. The added theory of nerve cells in which the ideas and images are deposited and which respond in the various moods, does not relieve the difiiculties. Even though there be hundreds of millions of these cells, psychology and physiology
*Bowne's Metaphysics, p. 369.
270 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
show no connection between their action and that of the memory. Prof. Ladd concludes his patient examination of the physical basis of memory with these words: "None of the relations conjectured as probably existing between the molecular consti- tution and dynamical associations of the cerebrum on the one hand and the facts of conscious experi- ence on the other, even on the supposition that these conjectured relations were all demonstrated facts of psycho-physical science, would amount to anything approaching the character of an ex- planation. For none of these physical conditions immediately concern the very mental activity which constitutes the essence of memory. What is explained, if anything, is simply why I remem- ber one thing rather than another — granted the miiKT s power to reiiiember anything at all. This power is a spiritual activity wholly sin generis^ and incapable of being conceived of as flowing out of any physical condition or mode of energy what- ever. ' ' *
Among the faculties denominated higher is the will. It constitutes character, and is often said to be the essential element in personality. It is, in the universal spontaneous belief, held to be free,
* Physiological Psychology, p. 556.
NATURE OF THE MIND. 27I
and stands, therefore, at the furthest remove from physical forces. It is conditioned in some degree by physical states, but it also conditions them.
Will is not automatic activity. It cannot be re- duced to reflex action. An impulse sent along an efferent nerve to a nerve center and carried back to the muscle is not an act of will. Whatever re- lation the will may have to the nerve centers, no one will call such muscle movements voluntary.
Will is not spontaneous impulse. There are impulses which involve the mind. Sensuous im- pulses of the general sense, as that for food or air, impulses of the special senses, as of the eye for light and the ear for sound, impulses toward per- ception, impulses to imitation and impulses from ideas, as that of a hypnotized person, are mental. They fall under consciousness, and are thus dis- criminated from reflex action, but they do not involve conscious purpose. There is no end toward which the energy is purposely directed. These impulses are not purely or solely mechanical, but they are blind, and are properly called instinctive.
Will is not desire. There is no will without desire, for without feeling the will has nothing to arouse it to action; but desire is not will. There may be strong desire when we will the contrary.
272 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
The will holds in abeyance or guides the in- stinctive impulses. It selects between the objects of desire. As it is ruled by, or rules the lower principles of action, it is degraded or ennobled. It is in this power over the physical that the soul comes to its clearest consciousness of being a dis- tinct entity, a person, and not a brute, or a mere thing. It censures or approves itself, and con- demns and praises others, because it feels that soul or spirit can and ought to control to its own inter- ests the actions of the body.
In the face of the facts which lie at the bottom of the universal moral judgments, and of all the governments of the world, materialism regards the will a mere function of the organism. It regards it as only a more complex form of reflex action. "When the automatic actions become so involved, so varied in kind, and severally so infrequent as no longer to be performed with unhesitating precision — when after the reception of one or more complex impressions the appropriate motor changes become nascent, but are prevented from passing into im- mediate action by the antagonism of certain other nascent motor changes appropriate to some nearly allied impression — there is constituted a state of consciousness which, when it finally issues in ac-
NATURE OF THE MIND. 273
tion, displays what we term volition."* "That will comes into existence through the increasing complexity and imperfect coherence of automatic actions is clearly implied by the converse fact that when actions which were once incoherent and vol- untary are frequently repeated, they become cohe- rent and voluntary, "t Mr. Spencer speaks of "the illusion in which the idea of free will com- monly originates." The same doctrine is taught by Mr. G. H. Lewes. "There is no real and es- sential distinction between voluntary and involun- tary actions." "All actions are reflex, all are the operations of a mechanism, all are because the mechanism has sensibility as its vital property." "By the will we must understand the abstract generalized expression of all impulses which de- termine when those impulses have an ideal origin; by volition the still more generalized expression of all impulses which determine actions. "J The ani- mals are mere automata. The somnambulist is an automaton. Sensation, consciousness and will are physiological functions of the nervous system. But there is after all a factor not accounted for.
* Spencer's Psychology, p. 496. tDo., p. 499-
i Physical Basis of Mind, pp. 422, 427. 12*
274 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Mr. spencer concludes his discussion of the will by saying: "The aggregates of feelings and ideas con- stituting the mental I, have not in themselves the principle of cohesion holding them together, as a whole; but the I which continuously survives as the subject of these changing states is that portion of the unknowable power which is statically con- ditioned in special nervous structures pervaded by a dynamically conditioned portion of the unknow- able power called energy."* There is the subject of volitions which controls to its own ends the en- ergy belonging to the organism. The profound thinker is brought at last to recognize it.
Materialists confound the mechanism and the conscious subject controlling it. They try to show causes by indicating instruments. To point out the keys and chords of the piano is not to account for the grand anthem. But cerebral psychologists have failed to explain voluntary motion upon their own principles. The cerebral spinal system is composed of a great number of nerve cords and nerve centres. Each centre may be the source of reflex action. All are under the control of one power. Every one of them is an instrument of the will. The theory of the Materialist to be complete
* Psychology, p. 504.
NATURE OF THE MIND. 275
must find some one physical centre which has command of all the others, but there is no such special centre. The physical basis of the will, contrary to the materialistic mechanism, is the centres of the central hemispheres.
Materialism fails to account for voluntary atten- tion. There are responses to stimuli that are invol- untary. A sudden flash of light arrests involuntary attention. But the mind may select the very weakest of the stimuli and give it the most patient attention. It may pour over a faded manuscript, written in a strange language, oblivious of great noises, or a burning fever or craving hunger, trying to decipher the characters for the benefit of science. It may in patriotic devotion hold the automatic movements in check until the life is worn away by torture. All the interest of the organism in such a case is against it. The will destroys the organ- ism. In the materialistic hypothesis, the function consumes itself. Materialism has brought us under obligations by exposing to us more of the physical agencies of the soul, but has not made us better ac- quainted with the mysterious being we call self.
The words of Gatien-Arnoult, quoted by Hamil- ton, have lost none of their force: ''I turn my attention on my being and find I have organs, and
276 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
that I have thoughts. My body is the complement of my organs: am I then my body or any part of my body? This I cannot be. The matter of my body in all its points is in a perpetual flux, in a perpetual process of renewal. I — I do not pass away, I am not renewed. None probably of the molecules which constituted my organs some years ago form any part of the material system which I now call mine. It has been made up anew, but I am still what I was of old. These organs may be mutilated; one, two, or any number of them may be removed; but not the less do I con- tinue to be what I was, one and entire. It is even not impossible to conceive me existing deprived of every organ; I, therefore, who have these organs, or this body, I am neither an organ nor a body. But if I try to conceive of myself without a thought, without some form of consciousness, I am unable. A suspension of thought is thus a suspension of my intellectual existence; I am, therefore, essentially a thinking, a conscious being; and my true character is that of intelligence — an intelligence served by organs. ' '
CHAPTER XV.
SENSATION.
THOROUGH-GOING Materialism only can con- dition the existence of the soul upon that of the body. " Transfigured Realism," which re- gards the substance of the mind unknowable, can- not legitimately deny a future life. It must leave its principles to become dogmatic. If it says that science cannot prove a future life, the Christian is willing to accept its statement as to its own impo- tence and furnish upon other grounds the proof. But thorough Materialism makes mind a function of the nervous system, a product of vitalized matter, a result of organism, and when the organism is broken up the soul must perish. This form of materialism identifies the mind with life, and life with the physical forces. It makes the mind de- pendent upon the brain, and the faculties of mind upon nerve centres. It makes sensation the mental unit, of which mind is the outgrowth. It then identifies sensation with the movement of the nerves. The vibration of the nerve is feeling, these
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278 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
feelings are registered in the organism, these through the nervous system are related and com- pounded, and thus we have mind with all its thoughts, feelings, and will. All are reducible to vibrations of matter. Peculiar vibrations of matter are thoughts; thoughts are peculiar vibrations of matter. The movements among the molecules of the nerve and the sensation are two sides of the same force.
Mr. G. H. Lewes, in regard to the relation of life to mind, says: ''The analogy of life and mind is the closest of all analogies, if, indeed, the latter is anything more than a special form of the other. Both are processes, or under another aspect func- tional products. Neither is a substance, neither is a force.''* There is an analogy between life and mind. "The Bioplasm is characterized by a contin- uous composition and decomposition," and these represent the neural tremors in the nervous system. These tremors are "the neural units, the raw ma- terial of consciousness." Corresponding to the laws of life, called Biostatical laws, are laws of mind which are named Psychostatical laws. "Both sets may be reduced to one primary law in each. Every vital phenomenon is the product of two fac-
* Problems of Life and Miud, Vol. I., p. 102.
SENSATION. 279
tors, the organism and its medium in Biology ; and every psychical phenomenon is the product of two factors, the subject and object in Psychology." *'But subject and object are not two independent and unallied existences, as held by Dualism; they are different forms of only one existence, as held by Monism. " * ' ' The great problem of Psychology as a section of Biology is to develop all psychical phenomena from one fundamental process in one vital tissue. The tissue is nervous; the process is a grouping of neural units. A neural unit is a tre- mor. Several units are grouped into a higher unity or neural process which is a fusion of tre- mors, and each process may in turn be grouped with others, and thus from this grouping of groups all the varieties emerge. What on the physiologi- cal side is simply a neural process, is on the psy- chological side a sentient process. We may liken sentience to combustion, and then the neiu-al units will stand for the oscilating molecules, "f The action of mind is determined by stimuli, both in- ternal and external, and, therefore, called reflex action. "This reflex is a process of grouping un- derlying all psychological phenomena. Its anima genera are feeling and action." "Intelligence in
*Pp. 109, 112. fp. 125.
28o KVIDKNCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
its rudementary form is simply discrimination in feeling."* ''Every psychical fact is a product of sense-work, brain-work, and muscle-work. Each mental state is a fiuiction of three variables. ^^'\ "The subject and object are inseparable in any real sense ; are separable only ideally. ' ' % 'I'he principle upon which his book. Physical Basis of the Mind, is based, is that sensation, consciousness, sensibility, belong to the physiological properties of the nerv- ous system in a vital organism, and the physiolo- gical properties are inseparable from every segment of that system.
In this system there are some radical points which are only assumed or very unsatisfactorily proved. It overlooks the fact, i. A nerve tremor is not a sensation. There are nerve movements which are not felt. This is true of the sympathetic system as long as the action is healthy. It may be replied |fhat sensation is limited to the cerebro- spinal system. But we can discover no difference in the constituents of the two systems either by the microscope or by chemical tests, and we may ask why nerve matter in the one system is sensation, and not in the other. Diseased action of a sympa- thetic nerve falls under consciousness, and the sys-
*p. 127. fP- 136. JP. 174.
SENSATION. 281
tern therefore is not so far removed from conscious- ness that if the movements of the fibres were sen- sations they would not be known. The mere vibration of a nerve is not sensation.
There are movements of nerves in the cerebro- spinal system which are not attended by sensations. Under the influence of morphiates there are often violent actions of the fibres, but no known sensa- tion. The patient often writhes under the surgical knife, but does not remember any suffering. If the anaesthetics only destroyed memory, their dis- covery was not such an unquestionable benefit as the w^orld believes. In cases of injuries of the spinal cord there are reflex actions of the legs, w^hile the subject declares that he has no sensation whatever. When the mind is intently engaged upon any subject or occupied by any great feeling, there are not only no responses to the stimuli which usually arrest the attention, but none also to violent blows which leave the nerves seriously affected for some days. Men have been sorely blistered wnthout a consciousness of heat, and bruised without being aware of any stroke. There were movements of the nerves, vibrations, without sensation. Mr. Lewes makes a distinction between sensations. He repeats the story of Dr. Hunter's
282 EVIDENCE OK A FUTURE LIFE.
patient whose leg was pricked, and to the in- quiry whether he felt it replied, " No, but you see my leg does." To most minds this is nonsense, but Lewes calls it physiological truth. A sensa- tion which the man does not feel is as absurd as a motion when nothing moves.
Vibrations of the nerves and sensations, if two sides of the same force, are as unlike as if from two forces. They are as different as two facts can be. The most perfect acquaintance with the nervous mechanism would not make one acquainted with a sensation he had never felt. No extent of study of the nerves creates a sensation, nor study of sensa- tion moves the nerves. The connection between the nerve and the sensation is a mystery. No one can tell how nerve tremor becomes sensation. To account for it sub-conscious activities, and an un- known subject of which both are phenomena, have been hypothecated ; but neither is proved, or if proved would explain it. The very attempt to explain is an acknowledgment that they are not identical.
Weber's law has been thought to show that both are from the same physical cause. That law pro- poses to give the ratio between the increase in in- tensity of stimuli and the discriminative sensibility.
SENSATION. 283
A slight increase of stimulus just above the "threshhold" is discovered, but can not be de- tected when the stimulus is greater. In order that the intensity of a sensation should increase in arithmetical progression, the stimulus must in- crease in geometrical progression. Sully says : "Observation does not fully support the generali- zation ; that it holds good only with stimuli of medium strength, and as we approach the thresh- hold there are considerable deviations from it."* But it applies to a sufficient number of cases to show that the physical and mental are not two sides of the same force, for then with every increase of the one there must be an equivalent increase of the other. The movement on the physical side by a universal law of physics must be increased by every increment of the stimulus. The deviations show that cerebral psychology has failed to find any definite relations between the two. Eminent physiological psychologists, among them Wundt, have acknowledged that the connection between them remains a mystery.
A sensation can be discriminated from nerve movements in the effects of electrical currents. Dead dogs by these currents have been made to
* Psychology, p. 115.
284 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
move and even bark. Amputated limbs have been moved by contractions of the muscles. So marked were these effects, that hopes were once excited of being able to find a relation between the electrical and vital forces, and of being able by means of elec- tricity to raise the dead. The nerves of the dead carcass vibrated, but there was no sensation.
2. Another assumption of the theory is that sen- sation and thought in the elementary forms are identical. There are confessedly feelings which are not thoughts, as mere "sense feelings." There are general states of the human organism which may give tone to the activities of the mind, but the nervous state and the mental activity can be dis- tinguished.
A sensation is in its most general definition sim- ply a mental state. It is the condition of mental activity. In this sense it is true that "all know- ledge takes its rise in the senses." In the same sense it may be said that sensations are ' ' the raw materials of consciousness." But sensations are not knowledge. We know only when we refer the sensation to some external source or to some con- dition in ourselves. There must be discrimination before there is thought. Before the act of discrim- ination there is nothing but the possibility of
SENSATION. 285
thought. Groups of sensations do not bring us nearer to intelligence, for no number of bare possi- bilities constitute a reality. Psychical discrimina- tion must not be confounded with physical dis- crimination. Molecules by chemical affinities are drawn together, each discriminating between those for which it has affinities and those for which it does not; but sensations which are abstractions, if they do not have a subject, or are mere states of feelings in nerve centres, have no such affinities. Groupings under physical law cannot be metamor- phosed into mental facts. Thoughts as transformed sensations imply a subject to transform them. IvCwes saw this defect in the old sensational philos- ophy, and tried to supply it from the social relation, from inherited powers. That carries the diffi- culty further back, but does not relieve it. The first thought — how did it arise? Without a thinking subject sensation can never be related to thought. Knowledge rises from the senses, and the senses are the organs of perception. Sensation is the condition of perception, but sensation and percep- tion are distinct psychical facts. There must be a certain intensity of sensation before there is per- ception, but beyond that degree they are in inverse ratio. There must be a certain degree of light
286 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
before there is sight, but the light may be increased until there is nothing but sensation. Those senses which are richest in sensation are poorest in per- ception. So the nervous impulses may be so vio- lent as not to be the cause of sensations. Sense is overwhelmed by the violence of impulses. Pain may grow in intensity until consciousness is lost. It is impossible to see the identity of nerve move- ments and sensations, and sensations and thought, when by increasing the one factor in either group, the other factor is destroyed.
Sensation, so far as it emerges in consciousness, is the reaction of a conscious subject upon a nerv- ous impulse. The sensation is not in the nerve, but in the mind. Until the soul reacts there can be no known sensation, and it is unphilosophic to reason about that of which we have no possibility of knowing anything. The mind cannot grow up out of sensation. The effect cannot be its own cause. If we start with nothing but neural units, we cannot, by any sort of complex compounding, arrive at an ego. This summation of his doctrine by Mr. Lewes is, when put in the clear light of consciousness, incomprehensible: "Every act of consciousness is one; every ego is a unity. But analysis which resolves a sensation into its constit-
SENSATION. 287
uent neural elements, resolves consciousness into its constituent processes and the ego into a con- sensus of psychical activities."* That we have not misinterpreted consciousness is evident from the fact that men everywhere distinguish be- tween themselves and their sensations, between their sensations and their thoughts, and between their psychical activities and themselves.
3. Materialism assumes that all ideas come through the senses. It is true that all knowledge has its beginning in the senses. Kant commences his Critique of Pure Reason with the remark, "That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt." But that does not mean that every idea is furnished by the senses. "The primitive source of all knowledge," says Hamilton, "is in the mind." The senses call out those ideas which condition all experience, ideas without which experience would be impossible. Material- ism has struggled with this problem. Sometimes it tries to compound them from the sense impres- sion by the principle of association. Sometimes it denies them altogether. But they are great facts of our mental life, and refuse to be ignored. They cannot be resolved into sensations, or re-
* Problems of lyife and Mind, p. 133.
2S8 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
manded to the sphere of mere subjectivity. We know causes, space, time, identity, beauty, right, the axioms of mathematics, the laws of logic. We know that they are universal; but our experience can never reach beyond a very limited sphere. Since the days of Hume all who have not a theory to support have seen that the idea of cause cannot come through the sense, for sense gives us only succession. If we know it at all, it is by an origi- nal power of the mind. The idea of space, of time, of beauty, etc., can all be shown to be intuitions of the reason, and not of the sense. These ideas do not exist in the mind as maxims, but powers which are awakened by the first experiences, and must be present in the very first sensation that is related to knowledge. *
4. Materialism assumes that the physical forces can be converted into sensations. As "light is converted into heat, and heat into chemical changes, and chemical changes into electricity, and electric- ity back to light, thus completing the circuit," so b}' another circuit physical powers may be changed into sensations. Sensations are, therefore, the pro- ducts of mechanical and chemical laws, to be in- cluded under them and explained by them. But
*See McCosh's Intuitions for a more thorough discussion.
SENSATION. 2S9
we have already seen that this assumption is wholly unproved. It ignores the great difference in kind. The mechanical and chemical laws pro- duce motion cognizable by the senses, but sensa- tions are cognizable only by consciousness. It unites phenomena between which there is a great chasm across which no bridge has been found.
Materialism, if these points are made out, fails, therefore, to explain the phenomena of sensation. It does not account either for the details or general fact. This failure has been admitted by eminent authorities. Mr. Tyndall said in his address before the British Association:* "The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one phenomenon to the other. Were our mind and sense so expanded, strengthened and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain, were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such
*Aug., 1868. 13
290 evidence: of a future life.
there be, and were we intimately connected with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should probably be as far as ever from the solu- tion of the problem. The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellecu- ally impassable." DuBois-Reymond, whose name has been associated with some important discover- ies in the modes of action of the nerves, says: "If we possessed an absolutely perfect knowledge of the body, including the brain and all changes in it, the psychical states known as sensations would be as incomprehensible as now. For the very highest knowledge we could get would reveal to us only matter in motion, and the connection between any motions of any atoms in my brain, and such unique undeniable facts as that I feel pain, smell a rose, see red, is thoroughly iitcomprehensible.^^ *
Materialism is left with the difficulty of ascrib- ing incompatible phenomena to the same substance.
* Quoted by Dewey.
CHAPTER XVI. THE IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL.
BY the immateriality of the soul we mean that it is a substance which is not matter. Material substances are made up of parts into which they can be resolved. Only atoms, the ultimate units,, are indecomposable. When we say that the mind is immaterial, we deny that it has parts or is com- posed of atoms into which it can be dissolved. Simplicity is used in the same sense. The judg- ment is negative. The word spirituality expresses more. It not only denies that the soul is material, but affirms that it has intelligence and free will. It defines by involving two of the characteristics of the substance.
The proof of the immateriality of the soul is not essential to the argument for its immortality. Tertullian held that the mind is corporeal. "All things which exist have body. There is nothing incorporeal except the non-existent." He sup- posed that the soul could not be acted upon by bodies unless it was itself a body. He thought the
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292 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
soul substance was like air, and was luminous and delicate, in form like the body. Arnobius also believed that the soul was material, and denied, therefore, its natural immortality. He taught that immortality was conferred by the grace of God. Augustine, Nemesius, Mamertius and Clau- dianus emphasized its immateriality, and had much to do with shaping the opinion of the subse- quent ages upon this subject.
But the immateriality of the soul does not nec- essarily involve its immortality. It is a depend- ent being. It does not have the grounds of exist- ence in itself. As it began to be, so it can also cease to exist. It will continue only so long as the force persists which brought it into being. Its im- mortality depends upon the purpose of God. If He so wills. He can destroy it. Unless He up- holds it, though it is a simple substance, it must sink back into annihilation.
If it were material, it might be immortal. Ter- tullian had a false philosophy, but it was not ab- surd. God can give immortality to a material being as well as to immaterial ones. He who has held the world together through all the geologic ages, can hold it forever if He so desires. Knapp says, "From the argument of the simplicity of the
THE IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. 293
soul, nothing more than the bare possibility of its immortality can be shown. But this possibility, if it depends merely upon the will of God, is quite as obvious, even if the soul has not that absolutely simple nature which is ascribed to it.^'*
All that is important to our purpose is to show that the soul is a real being, distinct from the body, and is not necessarily involved in the fate of the body. This has been done in the preceding chapters. We have seen that nothing is known to science that makes the Christian hope a delusion. We have seen also that according to the expressed judgment of some of the greatest savants, science will never on its present lines make such dis- coveries.
But it is not doubtful that the soul is immaterial. Materiality is a complex term, comprehending a number of qualities which belong to the subjects of external experience. The mind knows certain objects as extended, impenetrable, rough or smooth, cold or hot, figured, colored, elastic, etc. We call all these extra-mental objects material. Further than these qualities we do not know the essence of matter. We do not ascribe these qualities to mind. Not one is applicable to mind
* Theology, p. 522.
294 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
as it reveals itself iu consciousness. Its qualities are to feel, think, remember, imagine, love, fear, hope, rejoice, will. We cannot know anything of the essence of mind beyond the facts thus mani- fested, but we must regard the substance as different and to express the distinction we call it immaterial, spiritual being.
This immateriality alone is consistent with the great utterances of consciousness as to its indivis- ible unity, its self-activity, its identity, and its personality. To deny these utterances is to over- turn all certainty and end with intellectual suicide.
CHAPTER XVII. IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES.
THE objection oflfered against the argument of Bishop Butler for a future life was that it proved too much, and therefore proved nothing. It was said that it would prove the immortality of brutes as well as of man, but as they were certainly not immortal, it did not prove a future life for man. The same objection is brought against any metaphysical argument. In making good the de- fense of our faith, it is necessary to consider it.
It is commonly taken for granted that the brute perishes altogether at death. Men believe it with- out any other reason than common opinion. In the time of Butler the reason assigned was the brute's want of a moral nature, to which he offered two replies: (i) That a moral nature is not essen- tial to immortality. (2) That for aught we know they may have an undeveloped moral nature. The infant gives no more evidence of such nature than the brute, and if we had known mankind only in childhood, we would have as good ground
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296 EVIDKNCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
for denying in them a moral faculty as we now have for denying it in the brute.
But the question cannot be settled solely upon the fact of a moral nature. Has the animal intel- ligence? If so, is it a function of the animal or- ganism, or is it the function of a distinct im- material principle? In what respect is its mind like man's? Does the mere fact of intelligence warrant a belief in another life?
It was quite customary for a long time to call all mental activities in the brute mere instinct, but the study of comparative psychology has collected a mass of evidence which compels us to make a distinction between instinct and animal intelli- gence. Few who have kept pace with the investi- gations stimulated by the theory of evolution will deny the fact of intelligence in the higher order of brutes.
Instinct is defined by Dr. Valentine to be "an eflfective blind tendency in animals towards specific kinds of action for self-preservation and the con- tinuance of the species, regulative of the appetites and of various functional capacities."* It has been called a law of action, directed by an innate im- pulse to some end which the animal does not un-
* Natural Theology, p. 116.
IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 297
derstand. It is a law, because it works uniformly. It is distinguished from mechanical laws by the fact that there is consciousness of the action. It is distinguished from intelligence by its want of a conception of the end of the action. There is no free choice, but a blind impulse. *'It works out," as Dr. Carpenter says, ^'a design formed y^r, not by it, and the tendency to which is embodied, as it were, in its organization." With instinct there is almost always found, as Huber has said, an ele- ment of reason and judgment. Even the amoeba has a supposed trace of consciousness. The ele- ment of judgment is the basis of modified instincts w^hich Romanes and others have clearly marked out. The bee, which exhibits instinct so strik- ingly as to be taken usually as an illustration, also furnishes evidence of activities implying judg- ment. The bird builds its nest according to in- stinct, but there is something more when it sees the failing limb and supports it by cords. So the spider by something more than law observes its falling net and strengthens it. Instinct runs up through the whole order of animals. We see it clearly in the dog and "the half reasoning ele- phant." We find it still in man, but overshadowed after the earlier days of infancy by his higher faculties.
298 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
The animals of the orders above the lowest have a nervous mechanism on the same general plan with the human. They have efferent and afferent nerves, spinal cord and cerebrum and cerebellum. The two brains are in proportions different from man's, but both exist. The spinal cord in the ani- mal, especially in the lower, has more important functions than in man. Brainless frogs are said to be able to discriminate between their male and female fellows. But there is the same general use of the cord in both. Animals have the five special senses. They have eyes, ears, touch, smelling, and taste, formed as ours are and performing the same functions. By these organs they discriminate between the objects of sense. They do perceive ; though perception has been denied them, because in perception we distinguish between self and the object, the ego and the non-ego, and they have no self. The animal probably does not say to itself, "this is I," but it does distinguish between itself as an object and other objects. It has some sort of self-consciousness. Perception in the high degree in which w^e have it, they do not have, because they do not possess some of our higher faculties; but there is no reason for denying them perception altogether. Perception is an act of intellect.
IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 299
The animals have memory. Within certain limits they can be taught, and that implies memory. The dog recognizes his master after weeks of absence — he remembers him. The frightened horse shies when he returns to the place where he was frightened, because he remem- bers the fright and looks out for the danger. This has been called association; but the great law of memory is association, and the brute remembers, as we do, from associated objects. The animal memory is perhaps always spontaneous and differs from ours in having no power of voluntarily recalling an absent object.
The animal has some power of imagination. This is seen in the dreams of dogs.
They have the faculty of comparison and draw- ing conclusions. They have manifested no power of abstract notions. Their knowledge seems to be limited to individuals. They do not speak, not so much because they do not have the physical organs as because they have no general ideas. The parrot pronounces words, yet never talks.
The animal has appetites. Its desires growing out of its physical organization are like those which belong to man. It has fears, at least in the presence of immediate danger. It has affections
300 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
and sympathies. Many of them are gregarious because drawn by sympathy. A horse will leave a better pasture simply to be with another horse. Domestic animals respond to human kindness and return marks of affection. *
All these things are mental. They have none of the characteristics of matter. There is no more length, breadth, and thickness to the memory or affection of an animal than there is to correspond- ing acts in man; and if these things imply an immaterial substance in man, they must also in the brute. If these acts be set down to the animal organism as mere functions of it, we can not save
* Among a great number of instances we may take the following as illustrating several points in animal intelligence: "The anthropoid ape, Mafuka, kept lately in the Zoological Gardens at Dresden, saw how the door of her cage was un- locked, and not only did it herself, but even stole the key and hid it under her arm for future use; after watching the carpenter she seized his brad-awl and bored holes with it through the little table she had her meals on; at her meals she not only filled her own cup from the jug, but what is more remarkable, she carefully stopped pouring before it ran over. The death of this ape had an almost human pathos; when her friend, the director of the gardens, came to her, she put her arms around his neck, kissed him three times, and then lay down on her bed, and giving him her hand, fell into her last sleep." Tylor's Anthropology, p. 51.
IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 3OI
a distinct entity in man. Within a certain sphere there is a likeness too marked to be ignored, and if these are the products of matter the higher faculties of man, which grow out of and depend upon the lower, are also.
This has led some to believe in the immortality of brutes. Agassiz said, "Most of the arguments of philosophy in favor of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of the immaterial principle in other living things. May I not add that a future life, in which man should be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement which result from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world, would involve a lamentable loss? And may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in the presence of their Creator as the highest conception of para- dise?"* If the argument for the immortality of man rested exclusively or chiefly upon the fact that the soul is an immaterial principle, it would include the brutes, but the argument proves only the possibility. We are not authorized to go further than to say that the animal may survive th^ death of the body.
* Essay on Classification, quoted by Cook, Biology, p. 209.
302 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
The question lias been discussed by philosophers whether the mind of the animal differs from man in kind or in degree. They have not always fully understood each other, and have disputed often when they were substantially agreed. The old philosophers, from Aristotle to Descartes, held that the difference was only in degree. Descartes taught that the brutes were automata. Locke and his school ascribed their actions to association and the power of habit. Reid and Stewart returned more to the theory of Descartes. Huxley revives the mechanical view of Descartes and extends it to human actions. Bowen opposes the doctrine of difference of degree and regards it as of kind. If by kind is meant an entire difference in all fac- ulties, there is only a difference in degree; but if only a wider range of powers, it is a difference in kind. The somnambulist does not perceive pre- cisely as a man awake, but it is not an absolutely different kind. But man perceives more, remem- bers better, reasons more correctly than the brute in things common to both, and has faculties of which the brute gives no intimation. There is no evidence of their having reason or the faculty of knowing the supersensible. They have some kind of sense of the beautiful, as the bird of its own
IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 303
song and of the music of an instrument, or as the peacock of its own gaudy colors; but it may be only the beauty of sense, the pleasurable emotions from harmonious physical sensations. There are some things pleasant to our feelings, as soft light or soft sounds, and other things disagreeable, awak- ening a feeling known as "creeping of the flesh," and that sense in the brute which appears to be that of the beautiful may be of no higher order than this. They do not appreciate the beauty of art. They know nothing of the principles of philosophy. It is very questionable whether any animal has been able really to count at all. It is certain that they know nothing of abstract rela- tions of time and space. They have never indi- cated anything of a moral nature. The dog of Sir Walter Scott is said to have manifested shame after actions for which he had before been rebuked, but even if it were not a fear of being again scolded, it was a long remove from a moral feeling. When we compare the intelligence of animals among themselves, we are often very much sur- prised at the brightness of a few; but if we com- pare these same animals with man, the highest intelligence does not rise above the low order of idiocy.
304 EVIDENCE OK A FUTURE LIFE.
This vast difference in degree has its bearing upon the argument for a future life. So far as the evidence rests upon the higher powers of man, it does not apply to the brutes. The animal shows an instinctive dread of death, — it is Nature's mode of enforcing self-preservation, — but the animal evinces no idea or hope of immortality. This pledge of a future life has not been given it. It knows nothing of God, and has no longings for fellowship with Him. It has no aspirations above mere sensual enjoyment. It has no conception of a moral law. Justice is entirely beyond the range of its mental horizon. It has therefore no hope or fear of future rewards and punishments. While therefore it may possibly, because of its immaterial principle, live after death, it has no promise writ- ten in its nature such as man possesses.
The reason against believing in their immortality has been forcibly put by Julius Muller: "What is there to make these lower individual existences in nature immortal? They are only exemplars or samples of their species, kind, and so forth, but they possess no individuality of any significance in itself, or worth preserving; they simply serve as instruments whereby the species manifests itself and secures its continuance by the production of
IMMORTALITY OK BRUTES. 305
others like them. They are insusceptible of any real individuality for this very reason — because there is no personal centre, no ego in them, self- conscious, distinguishing itself from others, and assuming certain relations by voluntary self-deter- mination. It is only around such a centre as this, that any dejfinite individuality can be formed; suchi a centre alone has the power of attracting and com- bining into a harmonious whole the manifold ele- ments, without which it would merely coexist and: then be dispersed again in the general tide of things. While the lower existences in nature are merely passive instruments in relation to their species, personal beings can distinguish themselves, not only theoretically by making their species the object of their consciousness, but practically by a free resolve either to a loving surrender to their species or a selfish abandonment of it." * The brute is bound up with nature. It may have will, but it is not free. It has affections, but they are linked with their sensuous desires. They have sympathies, but they are not altruistic. These and similar facts indicate that with them death ends all.
The Bible makes no positive declarations upon
^Doctriue of Sin, vol. ii, p. 288.
306 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
this subject. We ought not to be surprised at this silence, for the Bible was not intended to gratify curiosity, but to teach us our relation to God and our duty to Him. The destiny of brutes does not concern our salvation, and it did not fall within the purpose of God's revelation. Solomon inti- mated that they perish. " Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward and the spirit of a beast that goeth downward to the earth ? " * Paul is thought by some to teach the contrary in that difficult passage in Romans: "The creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God." f Wesley t interprets this as a declaration concerning brutes. He argues their immortality upon the ground of their undeserved sufferings. But the great body of commentators take a different view, some understanding it to apply exclusively to man, and others to the system to which man belongs.
When we sum up the evidence, we dare not say that the brutes are not immortal, but we are forced to admit that the weight of the proof is against their immortality. And this review shows that if we were certain that they are annihilated at death, we may still believe on both rational and Scrip- tural grounds in our own immortality.
* Ecc. iii. 21. t Rom. viii. 19-22. J Sermon lyXV.
CHAPTER XVIIL
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF.
n^HE history of a doctrine or belief gives us an ^ important view of it. We can not fully under- stand it until we know the stages through which it has passed, the grounds upon which it was held, and the errors from which it has been discriminated. No question of truth can be settled by vote, yet there is might in a majority. When we find that a majority of those who have given careful stu(?y to a subject are of the same opinion with ourselves we feel strengthened in it, but when they hold the contrary we go back and re-examine our premises and processes. In a former chapter we reviewed the evidence of the universal belief in a future life. In this we will give a brief sketch of the opinions of philosophers as to the nature and evidence of the immortality of the soul. It may be necessary in a few instances to repeat facts given in the study of special subjects.
The oldest of the Greek schools of philosophy was the Ionic. The cast was naturally material-
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308 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
istic. The great world with its mysterious origin and laws first invited study. Starting with ma- terial principles, the school became partly panthe- istic and partly atheistic. Thales (640 B. C.) re- garded water as the original principle of all things, and the world as a great organism. Life was sup- posed to be the sole power. We have no reliable information in regard to his doctrine of God and of the soul, except that he called the soul '*a self-mov- ing power.'' Anaximander thought that matter is infinite, and is governed solely by mechanical laws. He is said to have believed that the soul is aeriform. Anaximines took air as the original principle. He identified the soul with the vital force. Hera- clitus posited fire, and held all things to be in a perpetual flow. The soul is an emanation from the universal mind.* Diogenes of Apollonia re- vived the doctrine of Anaximines, but refined it. He posited ether. He opposed the doctrine of dualism which began to be taught. Pheracydes, who is sometimes classed with this school, taught that the soul is immortal.
The Italic school started with an intellectual principle, and became idealistic. Pythagoras (580
*"If he materialized mind he also spiritualized matter." Butler's An. Philos., vol. i, p. 297. •
SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 309
B. C.) took numbers as the original source, and defined the soul to be the harmony of the body. He believed that it is an emanation from the cen- tral fire, capable of combining with any body and destined to a union in succession with several. None of the doctrines of his school are more cer- tainly traced back to him than that of metempsy- chosis. Philolaus first published the doctrines of the school. The names of more than twenty of his disciples have come down to us as eminent teachers. Alcmseon taught that the soul is seated in the brain, up to which all sensation is conducted. The Eleatics were idealistic pantheists. They speculated upon the nature of being. They be- came skeptical upon all phenomena, denying the credibility of the senses. Xenophanes (570 B. C.) found the highest being in God, one and unchange- able. Parmenides abstracted that being still more, and denied all motion. Zeno in defending the doctrines of the school became the first of logicians. Melissus concluded the system by denying space. Parmenides regarded the reasonable mind the same as the soul, which he supposed to be located in the abdomen. The soul which has been driven into the world returns to the bosom of the One. Empe- docles is often classed with the Eleatics. His phi-
310 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
losophy was a compound of the then existing schools. He thought that the soul of man is the correlative of the soul of the world, and modified the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration to suit his system.
The Atomists were gross materialists. Leu- cippus (about 450 -B. C.) posited atoms with two principles — space and vacuum; therefore all things were governed by necessity. Democritus carried out still further the theory. He said that the atoms were distinguished from each other only geometrically. The soul is composed of rounded atoms. The body is the tent of the soul. The soul is the noblest part of man. The names of a few of the adherents of the school have been pre- served. Diagoras was banished from Athens on the charge of Atheism.
The Sophists were not serious philosophers. They were brilliant rhetoricians, with some philos- ophic acuteness. They were skeptics. They at- tempted to demonstrate the impossibility of knowl- edge. Protagoras (480 B. C.) was the first. ^ He located the soul in the senses. He was followed by Gorgias, Hippias, Prodicus, and Buthydemus. Critias, infamous from the part he took in the trial of Socrates, belonged to this school, and lo- cated the soul in the blood.
SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BKUEF. 311
Anaxagoras is usually classed with the Tonic school, but he is distinguished from them in im- portant particulars. He was born about 500 B. C. He saw that the Ionic and Eleatic schools had not recognized sufficiently clearly the difference be- tween matter and mind, and brought out the over- looked element. He separated God from the world, and announced principles of theism. He taught that mind is distinguished from matter by its simplicity, independence, knowledge, and su- perior power over matter. He is supposed to have borrowed his ideas from Hermotimus, who, accord- ing to Pliny, believed that the soul often wanders to a great distance from the body, in order to ob- tain the knowledge denied it whilst residing in its tenement. Archelaus, trying to conciliate the new with the old, fell back towards materialism.
With Socrates (369 B. C.) philosophy entered upon a new career. Cicero said that he called it from the clouds to dwell in the houses of men. He believed that God is a rational being, and is the source of moral law. He taught the distinction between mind and body, and that personality was in the mind; that the soul is like God, and there- fore immortal. He did not attain to absolute cer- tainty of a future life, but to such a strong faith
312 EVIDKNCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
that he could talk as composedly to his friends in the presence of death about his departure, as if he were only leaving for a short visit to one of the neighboring islands. Xenophon, among those who followed closely their master, is best known to us. The names of ^schines, Crito, and a few others, are found in history.
There were three schools formed by "partial disciples." The founder of each took some part of the teaching of Socrates and developed an in- dependent system. Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, re- garded pleasure as the end of life, and became one of the forerunners of Epicurus. His aim was moral rather than metaphysical. Antisthenes was the founder of the Cynics. He taught that virtue is the only good, and the essence of virtue is self- control, and was a forerunner of the Stoics. Euclid ■was the founder of the Megaric school, far more profound than either of the other two, but panthe- istic. Ritter says that the Megarians acknowledged a supreme universal rationality, but were unable to combine with it personal consciousness, and thus became involved in inexplicable opposition to all human notions.*
Plato, one of the pupils and interpreters of Soc-
* History, vol. iii, p. 639.
SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 313
rates, by his own profound thought became the head of a school, and remains a master in the phil- osophic world. He distinguishes between the mind and all corporeal things. Fire and earth with air and water are the fundamental elements of matter. The soul is eternal, and is a self-acting energy. The divine idea is manifested in the soul. He taught that the mortal animal must consist of soul and body. He distinguishes two component parts of the soul — the mortal and immortal parts — with an intermediate link. The first is the ani- mating principle ; the intermediate, the active faculties or impulses ; and the third, the rational soul, generated by the Supreme Being. The ra- tional soul had a pre-existence, and is brought to occupy a body because of sin. It retains the ideas of its former existence, and by these it is able to return to its happy condition. He argues its im- mortality from (a) its nature as self-moving ; (d) the life of the soul which is not destroyed by moral evil ; {c) the goodness of God, who cannot will that so beautiful an object should be destroyed ; (d) the desire of knowledge ; (e) contrarieties in the world — the living die, so the dead must return to life ; (g-) innate knowledge, which is a kind of reminiscence ; (/^) and from the indivisibility of 14
314 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
the soul, as seen from the fact of its knowing simple and indestructible objects. A dead soul is a contradiction. He recognized the influence of the body upon the soul, and thus accounted for the ignorance of childhood ; but the dependence is not essential, but relative.
Aristotle, the pupil of Plato, was perhaps the greatest of all the ancient philosophers. He was a natural philosopher as well as metaphysician. He was the critic of the preceding schools, and his criticism became one of the very best sources of the history of that period. He examines the doc- trines of his predecessors in regard to the soul, and is not satisfied with any. The principle of soul diffused through the world, as taught by Thales, would imply either that all things are animated, or that soul was superadded to some matter; but either is contrary to facts, for all admit the dis- tinction between animate and inanimate, and also between the soul of fire and soul as the principle of life and thought. The doctrine of the Atomists lost sight of the distinction between the mere mov- ing principle and the mind in its higher faculties. He ridicules the doctrine of Aristoxenes, that the soul is the harmony of the body. The health of the body is its harmony. He refutes the doctrine
SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 315
of the self-moving nature of the soul. Motion ihiplies place. Self-motion would include the possibility of violent impulse to motion and rest. The soul moves the body, but its own motion is that in which it participates with the body which moves. If the soul be essentially self-moving, it can not be moved by other objects; but this is con- tradictory of the facts of sensation. For these and other reasons he rejects the doctrine of a self- moving number as taught by Pythagoras.
He distinguishes between the body and soul, and between the nutritive, sensitive and rational soul. To understand his doctrine, it is necessary to refer to his classification of causes. He recog- nized four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. The material is that of wdiich a thing is formed, as gold. The formal is the figure or form given, according to a plan, as the ring. The efficient is the energy that gives the form. The body is the matter given a definite form. The matter of the body is mere capacity, and the form is act. Body considered separately is materially and potentially a living substance. The soul is that which gives form, and is the first energy, "the first entelechy of a natural organic body, which body itself has life potentially." "The
3i6 evidence: of a future life.
soul is not without the body, nor the body without the soul." This is said of the nutritive and sensi- tive soul. The soul and body are correlates. The plant has only a nutritive soul. The animal has both nutritive and sentient soul. Man has in addition a noetic soul. While Aristotle did not draw a sharp line between life with and without consciousness, he did between the principle which feels and the principle which knows. The nutri- tive and sensitive souls are inseparable from the body and perish with it, but the noetic is divine and immortal.
For two or three centuries the followers of Aris- totle applied themselves more directly to the study of nature, modified in many ways the teaching of Aristotle, and took a strong naturalistic turn. Theophrastus leaned to the idea of immanence, but admitted a substantial existence to the nous and regarded it the divine part of man. Strabo denied any soul separable from the body, and lo- cated the soul in the head between the eyebrows. Dicsearch supposed only one universal vital and sensitive force, which is temporarily individualized in different bodies. Later Peripatetics returned more closely to the doctrines of Aristotle, among whom Andronicus, Boethus of Sidon, and Alex- ander Aphrodisias, became noted.
SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 317
There was a strong tendency in the Greek mind, during the political decline, towards skepticism. Pyrrho (340 B. C.) taught that real knowledge is impossible because real things are inaccessible to human faculties, and that a wise man must remain always tranquil. Timon was his most famous dis- ciple in that century. The school repeatedly ap- peared in subsequent ages.
Epicurus at the same time (341 B. C.) became the founder of a school called, from himself, Epi- cureans. He was a decided materialist. He took the doctrine of Democritus as the basis of his physics, and of Aristippus as that of his ethics. Epicurus held that the soul is corporeal, else it could not influence the body. Its elementary principles are heat, ether, spirit, and a peculiar matter which is the ground of sensibility. The rational soul is in the heart; the parts of the soul are scattered through the body. The soul is not immortal, because it depends upon a physical en- velope, and because it is composed of atoms. It is born with the body and perishes with it. The low moral tone of this philosophy suited the degenerate age, and it had numerous adherents in that and several successive centuries. Many of his princi- ples in physics are regarded to-day as sound doc- trine by the materialists.
3l8 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Zeno (362 B. C.) was the founder of the contem- porary and rival school. The physics were founded upon the Heraclitian philosophy, and the ethics were taken from the Cynics. He held in regard to the soul that it is an emanation from the Deity, a part severed from Him. The soul and God react upon each other. While the soul is dis- tinguishable from the body and outlives its organ, it is not necessarily immortal, and can live at longest only to the end of the world period. The later Stoics were more positive in their belief in immortality.
To earnest minds there was something very attractive in the Stoic philosophy, and there is a long list of eminent names among its adherents. Cleanthes and Chrysippus, teachers in the original school, Diogenes the Babylonian, Panaetius of Rhodes, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, were among the noteworthy Stoics.
In the interval between the deaths of the great masters and the establishment of Christianity there were a number of new schools formed by the revival of the older ones and by new combinations of them. There were the Neo-Pythagoreans, the Pythagorizing Platonists, the Neo-Platonists, the Jewish Alexandrian, the Skeptics and the Eclectics,
JSKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 319
besides tlie three schools into which the disciples of Plato divided. Some of these extended several centuries into the Christian period. We will commence with the older.
The followers of Plato are arranged in three schools, called the Old, the Middle and the New Academy. The Old Academy lost the spirit and power of Plato. Speusippus was at the head. The soul was defined by him as extension shaped by numbers. Xenocrates identified ideas with num- bers, and taught that the soul is a self-moving num- ber. This school remained spiritualistic. The Mid- dle Academy was skeptical. Carneades is best known from his visit to Rome, during which he disgusted Cato by his contradictory discourses on justice. The New Academy returned to dogma- tism. These three chief schools were divided into four or five tendencies, in which dogmatism and skepticism struggled for the ascendency, with the ultimate triumph of the former.
The Jewish Alexandrian school was a sort of eclecticism, but with Platonic elements predomina- ting along with Judaism. Philo (25 B. C.) was the most distinguished representative. He held that there are tw^o souls in man — a reasonable and an animal soul. The reasonable has three facul-
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ties: sensation, understanding, and language. The reasonable soul is a portion of the divine essence. The soul preexisted in bodies. It is immortal.
About the same time there sprang up another eclectic school, formed of Platonic and Pythagorean elements. Budorus and Arius Didymus (25 B. C.) were eminent among the teachers. Later, Plu- tarch, both as historian and philosopher, became renowned. Plis essays have made his belief in a future life well known. Maximus of Tyre taught that the soul is composed of both mortal and im- mortal elements. Instinct belongs to the mortal: intelligence to the immortal. Galen, the physi- cian, taught, but not without a feeling of doubt, the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the soul. He emphasized the importance of a religious conviction of the existence of God and providence. Apuleius taught that the soul has three faculties, and is immutable and immortal. Numenius agrees with Philo in much part as to the preexistent state of the soul.
While these Platonic schools were developing, there was a revival of the school of Pythagoras by Figulus (50 B. C). Apollonius of Tyana, a re- puted worker of miracles, is best known among the teachers. He believed that there is an affinity
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between men and animals, and thus explained metempsychosis. The school became extinct after Secundus, about the middle of the second Chris- tian century.
Skepticism had an able advocate during this period in Sextus Kmpiricus (70 B. C). He in- clined somewhat to materialism^ but thought we can know very little about the soul.
Lucretius (52 B. C), taught Epicureanism in: Rome. He personified Nature, and was grossly materialistic. He taught that atoms were self- moving. He had considerable influence upon the masses, but left no decided impression upon the philosophic world.
Cicero (43 B. C), eminent as orator, statesman and philosopher, was an eclectic in philosophy. He discussed in different connections the nature of the soul, and its immortality. Among other arguments for a future life, he presented the fol- lowing: (a) The authority of all antiquity; {b) The universal concern about futurity revealed in the care for fame, for posterity, for the disposition of property, and for the establishment of laws for succeeding generations; {c) The self-motion of the soul; {d) The marks of divinity in the soul. ** Whatever thinks and understands and wills, and I *
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has a principle of life, is heavenly and divine, and on that account must necessarily be eternal." Man only has a knowledge of God, and this proves his divine origin and destiny. His prudential argument is often quoted: "If he is correct in his faith, he will be greatly the gainer; but if mis- taken, the Epicurean philosophers will not be able to laugh at him for his mistake."
After the introduction of Christianity, the Platonic philosophy appeared under a new form known as the Neo-Platonic school. It shows the influence of Christianity, though its most eminent teachers remained heathen, and some of them were decided opponents of the new religion. The originator of the school was Ammonius Saccas (157 A. D.), who is commonly believed to have been born a Christian, but who returned to heathenism. Nemesius of Emessa has preserved some fragments* in which Ammonius advocates the spirituality and immortality of the soul. There are two natures, one corporeal and the other spir- itual, influencing each other, but in real essence the opposites of each other. The soul has life, and must be different from that which is dead.
Plotinus (206 A. D.), belongs to this school.
* Ueberweg doubts the genuineness of these fragments.
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He was not only by far the ablest and most pro- found among the members of it, but also the most original thinker since Aristotle. He taught an ideal pantheism to which the philosophy of Schel- ling bears a marked resemblance. The One sends forth an image of itself The image turns to its source and becomes nous. The nous produces soul. The soul being only an image, it is neces- sarily inferior to the nous. The soul turns towards the nous, as the nous turned toward the One, and it also turns to matter, which it produces. The soul has a divisible and also an indivisible element. It is not corporeal; nor is it the harmony or entel- echy of the body, because the nous, memory, per- ception and mental force, are all separable from the body. The soul is immaterial, but permeates the body as fire does the air. It may be said that the body is the soul, rather than that the soul is the body. There are activities of the soul to which the body is not necessary. The soul is entirely in the whole body and entirely in every part of it. There are two kinds of faculties in the soul ; reason and sensibility. The former is allied to the nous, the latter to the body.
Porphyry doubted apparitions, but believed in the separate existence of the soul. The mind has
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within itself the reasons for all things, and for this reason can operate on the senses even without the exciting external causes. The end of philosophy is the salvation of the soul.
Proclus distinguished five orders of faculties in the mind. The second order manifests the soul's connection with the body, but reveals also its own individuality. The fifth relates to the highest truths, and gradually assimilates our nature to the Divine Being. By nature the soul is divine. Midway between the sensuous and the divine order of faculties there is freedom, and the soul is responsible for its actions.
lamblichus departed so far from the principles of his school as to be set down as the founder of another. He fell into superstition, and defined with considerable minuteness the various classes of angels and demons. There is an intellectual and sensible world, but the sensible is the shadow of the intellectual.
Boethius, in the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, wrote a treatise on Consolation. With him the school ends.
Early in the Christian era there was a class of philosophers known as Gnostics. In religion they were eclectics, but they incorporated enough of
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Christianity into their system to be regarded by the Church as heretical Christians. Many of them were esteemed in their own day as men of great ability and learning. Gnosticism was an earnest effort to solve the problems of the w^orld. It was imaginative at the expense of the philosophic. The greatest names among them were Valentinian, Basilides, Bardasanus, and Marcion. There were a number of sects, but they were agreed as to the two-fold element in the soul, and the importance of the intellectual over the sensitive soul. • The Christian Fathers are usually regarded as mere theologians, but most of them had philo- sophic training, and some of them were eminent as philosophers. Every history of philosophy gives them prominent places. Some of them ob- tained recognition from the most distinguished philosophers of their own times.
Justin Martyr studied the doctrines of the lead- ing philosophical schools before he became a Chris- tian. He wrote a book on the nature of the soul. He had a materialistic view of its nature and de- nied its natural immortality, but believed that God had conferred endless life upon it as a gift, and that future rewards and punishments are to be eternal. Tatian, the disciple of Justin, but influenced by
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Gnosticism, thought that there are two souls, the one subject to matter and the other an emanation from God. The inferior is full of darkness, the superior is the image of God. Irenseus denied the preexistence and transmigration of souls. Ter- tullian taught traducianism, and regarded every soul as a branch of Adam's soul. He supposed the soul to be material, but of the most refined nature. If it were not material it would not be capable of suffering, nor its activity be dependent upon the condition of the body. Origen taught the pre- existence of souls and the freedom of the will. Arnobius denied the natural immortality of the soul, but held that the Epicurean notion of the future life is also false. The soul is neither ma- terial nor divine. lyactantius agreed with him in denying the conclusiveness of the arguments of Plato for immortality, and based a proof upon the idea of justice. Without immortality virtue would not be adequately rewarded.
Augustine is not only the greatest theologain, but also the greatest philosopher of his age. He taught that the soul is not an attribute of the body, but a separate substance. It is not material, for it has thought, remembrance and will, and is without any material quality. It feels sensations in every
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part of the body, and therefore is in every part, and in this is unlike corporeal substances, which are only in one place at one time. The faculties are not like qualities of matter, for they are not confined in extent to the mental substratum. It is immortal, because it knows eternal truth. It is placed in a body for discipline. Its superiority to the body is seen in the life, movement and sensa- tion which the body obtains from it. It is invisi- ble, incorporeal, spiritual. He further argued this from the nature of memory. Its life is an essential part of its nature. Its future existence is attested by its longing after immortal happiness.
Claudius Mamertus replied to Faustus, a Bishop in Gaul, who taught that the soul is a thin air. Mamertus argued the immateriality of the soul from the image of God, from the illocality of it, from the want of quantity, from the fact that it is not contained in the body and from its faculty of rea- soning. Gregory of Nyssa taught that the soul originated simultaneously with the body, is present in every part of it, but survives it, and after death is an existence independent of space. He believed that there are three parts : sensitive, vegetable and intellectual life.
While these Church Fathers differed somewhat
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as to the nature of the soul, a few holding that it is a material substance, yet there is perfect unani- mity in believing that it is an existence distinct from the body and exists in another state. During all that period there is not one voice of any im- portance whatever against its immortality.
In the ninth century Scholasticism arose, ruled for a number of centuries, and continued until after the Reformation. It was a peculiar form of philosophizing, but it rendered the philosophic world eminent service. During the earlier period Plato's influence preponderated, but subsequently gave way to that of Aristotle. The authority of the Roman Church set limits to their speculations, and these great and acute minds were kept at the analysis of admitted principles until they descended often to puerilities, John Scotus Krigena was the first of the schoolmen. He was a pantheist. His philosophy led to a denial of the personal im- mortality of man, yet he did not announce that .conclusion.
There was a large number of eminent men among the schoolmen : Roscellinus, William of Champeaux, Gerbert, Lanfranc, Anselm, Abelard, Bernard, Walter of Montaigne, Peter Lombard, John of Salisbury, Alanus, Amalrich, William of
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Aiivergne, Robert Greatliead, John Fidanza, Al- bert Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, William Occam, Peter D'Ailly, John Gerson, Eckhart, Groot, John Wessel, and others. During this same period were the Arabian philosophers, Alfarabi, Avicenna, Averroes and Algazel. Only a few of these were pantheistic. All the others were agreed as to the immaterial nature of the soul and its future existence. The opinions of only a few can be quoted.
William of Auvergne said that the soul exists independently of the body. It needs the body as the instrument of sensual functions. It is related to the body as the cithern player is to his cithern.
Albert Magnus held that the active intellect is part of the soul, and is that principle in each man which gives form and individuality. The think- ing and form-giving principle has vegetative, sen- sitive, appetitive and motive faculties, and these are separable from the body. It is heir to immor- tality because of its affinity with God.
Aquinas maintained that the soul is not material, because it is the source of life in living beings, and because it knows the nature of all kinds of matter. It is an independent existence, because the intellec- tual principle works by itself without connection
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with the body. He asserted its immortality from its immateriality, and also from its longing after immortality — a longing arising from the power of abstracting from every limitation of the present. Immortality is common to all the mental powers, because they belong to the same substance. The lower powers depend upon the sense for activity, but not for existence. The souls of animals, which are forms inhering in matter, perish with their bodies. He rejected the doctrine of the preexist- ence of souls. The soul as the form-giving prin- ciple makes a new body after death similar to the one now possessed.
Occam's argument for the separate existence of the mind was based on the antagonism between science and reason, which could not exist in the same substance.
Scholasticism at length began to decline. The disputes between Nominalists and Realists, kept up for so many years, had weakened confidence in it. The expansion of mind resulting from the Crusades, the fall of Constantinople, the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World, the revival of letters, and the development of natural science, made thinking men dissatisfied with the methods so long employed. The trammels became
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Oppressive, and the rising spirit of freedom re- belled. Attacks were made upon the Scholastics both in the interest of religion and of philosophy. Bessarion, Pletho, Hermolaus Barbaras, Angelas Politianus, Mirandola, Valla, Agricola, Erasmus, Vives, and Hutten, were direct or indirect assail- ants. The old schools under various modifications were revived. Cusanus, a Cardinal, was an eclec- tic, combining Platonic, Pythagorean, skeptical and mystical principles. Ficinus and Mirandola were Platonists. Reuchlin was a Cabbalist. Agrippa combined Cabbalism with skepticism. Pomponatius was an Aristotelian. He asserted that there is no certain natural proof of immortality, but believed it on the ground of religion. Vernias, his predecessor at Padua, had taught Averroistic pantheism, but in his old age was converted to the belief in personal immortality. J. C. Scaliger, Vanini, a martyr, and Niphus, were also Peripa- tetics. Stoicism was advocated by Lipsius and Thomas Gataker. Bpicurean physics was taught by Gassendi, who has been called the renewer of systematic materialism. Telesius and Galileo studied natural philosophy. Telesius drew a broad distinction between the immortal soul of man and the souls of other animals, and held that immor-
2)^2 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
tality was a gift at conception. Theosophy was taught by Paracelsus. Robert Fludd, J. Boehm, F. M. Helmont, and others, belonged to the same school. Skepticism was almost inevitable. Mon- taigne and Charron were the more noted skeptics. During these times of philosophic turmoil there were a number of independent thinkers. Among them, Bruno became eminent by his martyrdom. He held a kind of pantheism. God is the imma- nent cause of the universe. The stars are moved by their souls. The elementary parts of all things are monads. The soul is a monad, and is never without a body. He believed that man is immortal, and based upon this fact the proof of the eternity of the world. Campanella held that there is a world of incorporeal beings, but believed that human souls are corporeal spirits which are warm, subtile and light. He proved the immortality of the soul from its desire for happiness. Bacon did not believe that natural science is able to make any positive affirmation as to the nature of the soul and of God, but believed that it is sufficient for the refutation of atheism. He said that slight tastes of philosophy lead to atheism, but fuller draughts lead back to religion. He distinguished between the spirit, or intellectual soul, and the soul or
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animal part, and pronounced the first scientifically unknowable, but the other may be known to science as a thin material substance.
During this breaking up of old opinions, we would not be surprised to find doubts as to a future life, but there were none. The skeptics did not deny the possibility of it, and some affirmed it is a fact. A few were pantheists, but even they did not deny future personal immortality. Gassendi, the materialist, "decidedly affirms that the evi- dences of the soul's immortality are so full, explicit and overwhelming that no person can reasonably have the smallest doubt upon the point, who will set about the investigation in a candid and con- siderate spirit."* Hobbes, another materialist, held that the soul, though material, was of extreme tenuity. The only person of any prominence in the literary world who cast doubt upon a future life was Bembo, the dissolute Cardinal of Leo X. Sixteen hundred years pass without a single phil- osopher of any importance avowing the belief that there is no existence after death.
After several centuries from the beginning of the reaction against scholasticism, modern philosophy emerges. The French claim that Descartes was
* Blakey.
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the first of modern philosophers. It must be ad- mitted that he exerted a deep influence on the continent of Europe, and added much to that of Bacon in shaping thought in Great Britain.
Descartes was an extreme Dualist, and he could not conceive of any influence of mind upon mat- ter. Geulinx tried to develop the theory of com- plete independence through *' occasionalism," and Malebranche by *'the vision of God." Spinoza came from this school, and propounded a system of pantheism that still exerts a deep influence in philosophy. Though a pantheist, Spinoza taught that the soul as an individual survives the body.
lycibnitz also belonged, in some measure, to the Descartians, but so modified the philosophy of Descartes that he started a new movement and remained the philosopher of Germany until the rise of Kant. The characterizing feature of his system was the idea of the monad. God is the first monad. Every soul is a monad, and the power of acting on itself proves its substantiality. The souls of animals are monads having sensation and memory. Human souls can have clear, dis- tinct, and single adequate ideas. The soul is the centre or governing monad of the body, control- ling the changes in the monads making up our
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physical nature. Every soul monad is enveloped in a body which it never wholly loses, but it may partially lose it. The spiritual nature of the soul shows its immortality. Wolf was the great ex- pounder of the doctrine of Leibnitz, and his name was attached to the system. While some few emi- nent men, as Rudiger and Crusius, criticised cer- tain features in the system, the list of the followers of Leibnitz embraces an immense majority of noted professors in Germany for more than a cen- tury.
The eighteenth century carried the reaction against ecclesiastical authority over into radical- ism. It reached its furthest extreme in France, where the Reformation of the Church had been least. The French philosophy of that century was devoted to political and social questions and gen- eral culture, and it gave little attention to the pro- founder problems of thought. The philosophic principles were naturalistic, with a strong ten- dency to materialism. Voltaire, a controlling spirit during his life, did not commit himself fully either to atheism or materialism. He thought that mat- ter might think, that our ideas generally come through the senses, but moral ideas spring from our nature, and that the belief in a rewarding and pun-
2,2,6 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
ishing God is necessary to moral order. La Mettrie avowed gross materialism, and said the soul per- ishes with the body. Rousseau, the most brilliant writer of his day, and also an acute thinker, was a decided opponent of materialism and pantheism, and zealously attested his faith both in a personal God and personal immortality. Condillac, who introduced Locke's philosophy into France, was not a materialist. Extended and divisible matter, he thought, cannot be the substratum of thought and feeling, which are unextended and indivisible. Bonnet derived all our representations from sensa- tion, but distinguished the mind from the body. The mind could do nothing without the body — thus approaching in his doctrine a positive materialism. De Alembert said we did not have a clear idea of the nature of either mind or matter: the relation be- tween matter and mind was inscrutable, but that matter is intelligent is inconceivable. Diderot, after much wavering, reached pantheism. De Hol- bach professed atheism. Cabanis, a little later, denies the existence of the soul as a being — it is only a faculty of the body. The brain secretes thought. But he lived to modify very greatly his views, and admit an intelligent cause of the world.
SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 2)2>7
After Bacon there were in England some philo- sophical writers of prominence and importance before the time of Locke. Hooker, his cotempor- ary, was a theologian, but he is regarded by Hal- lam as the most philosophical writer of his period. Davies discussed the nature of the soul and its im- mortality. Herbert, of Cherburg, the first of the Deists, laid down as one of the five common no- tions of natural religion this principle: "There is; another life with rewards and punishments." Culverwell, Cudworth, More, Whichcote, Chilling- worth, and Gale, were men of superior ability.
Locke is the greatest metaphysician of England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries^ He was respected by Leibnitz, with whom he cor- responded. He was the ruling spirit in his own country for a great many years, and his influence was very great in France. He taught sensational- ism, but not materialism. He regarded the soul as immaterial, but thought that God can endow mat- ter with the power of thinking. Berkeley was an idealist, and believed in a future life of the indi- vidual. Hartley carried out the sensationalism of Locke, and brought against himself the charge of materialism; but he earnestly denied the charge, and contested the materalistic conclusions which 15
338 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
were drawn from his philosophy. Priestley held that the soul is material, but gave a new definition of matter. He held that there is a future existence. Darwin, who belongs to the same associational school with the last two, held that there are two substances in nature: spirit producing motion, and matter receiving motion. Newton, the great natu- ral philosopher, was the friend of Locke, and gave some attention to psychology. He thought the soul is a distinct substance, and is situated in the brain where it perceives the images of things as they are introduced. The Deists were free-thinkers, but they held to the idea of a future life. Toland, Collins, Cooper, Tindal and Morgan assailed reve- lation at different points, but admitted a natural religion. Here, as in many other cases, the popu- lace rushed to conclusions that the teachers never admitted. Hume, a profound metaphysician, was a philosophic skeptic. He did not commit himself to any positive view in religion, though privately he said, on one or two occasions, that he did not think differently from other men about another life. During this century Scotland produced some eminent writers besides those already mentioned in other connections. There was a school, which still exists, called the Scottish. Carmichael was
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perhaps the first. He was succeeded by Hutche- son, who is best known from his theory in ethics. Oswald, Beattie, Price, Harris and Burnet were prominent. Adam Smith, the friend of Hume, is well known as a writer on political science, but he was also the author of a system of morals. Fer- guson was also eminent as an ethical writer. Thomas Reid was the greatest metaphysician belonging to the school, with the single exception of Hamilton. Reid gave it a new departure and placed it upon a better philosophic basis. All of them with the possible exception of Smith were decided spiritualists or anti-materialists, and he with all the others believed in a future life.
With Kant's Critique of Pure Reason there commenced a new era in modern philosophy. For a long time a disciple of the Wolfian Leibnitz- ian school, he was aroused by the skepticism of Hume to seek a surer foundation for philosophy. He started the Germans upon a new career, and his influence went into France, crossed over the English Channel, and came even into America. He was a natural realist, but awakened tendencies both to skepticism and idealism. He admits that the ego must regard itself as a simple immaterial substance, but denies that we are able to pass to
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the synthetic judgment that it is simple and im- material. He proves that the soul is immortal from the practical necessity of an existence suffi- cient for the complete fulfilment of the moral law. We cannot attain to perfect holiness, and the con- flict can be brought to an end only through an eternal progression.
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were Absolute Idealists. They ran the idealistic element in Kant into pantheism or the doctrine of Absolute Identity. Fichte held to a future life. Schelling and Hegel were less pronounced. Hegel's follow- ers divided into two schools. Fichte and Goschel maintained a personal immortality. Conradi, Michelet and others maintained the extinction of the individual. Ruge's Journal became so radical that it was suppressed by the government.
Kant's philosophy for various reasons awakened opposition. Some from the Leibnitzian school, as Eberhard, Schwab, and Mendelssohn, opposed it be- cause of its radical departure. Herder opposed its dualism. G. B. Schulze, somewhat skeptical, at first opposed but afterwards approached it. Some others criticised the idealistic elements in it. But it gathered around it a host of friends, some of whom were faithful interpreters, and others while
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retaining its fundamental principles modified it. Schiller is the most widely known, but Reinhold, J. Schultz, Schmid, Krug, Fries, Bouterweg, Abicht, and Bardilli, were all able men. Some of these maintained clearly and distinctly the doctrine of the separate nature of the mind, but others, as Fries and Beck and Bardilli, approximated absolutism.
Schelling also had a large number of able dis- ciples. A few, like Klein and Wagner, were pantheists. Some like Oken and Essenbeck made his philosophy the basis of natural science. Oken said that mind is the polarity of the immaterial, and that the antagonism in the animal life re- appears as attributes of man. Others devoted themselves to speculative philosophy. Krause held that the ego is an organized and independent being, and is a spiritual organized whole. He re- garded Christianity as the end of philosophical opinions. Berger thought that mind is the organ- izing and vitalizing principle. StefFens said that humanity conceals in itself a presentiment of an infinite future. Baader opposed pantheism. He believed in a personal future life. If we accept salvation in Christ, we have immortality. Souls in Hades may still be saved, but those in hell are forever lost.
342 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Jacobi, a younger contemporary of Kant, and one of his critics, taught doctrines that exerted a strong influence upon many subsequent philosophers. He doubted the ability of reason to solve the great problems of the world, and sought to raise himself above the understanding through faith in God. The spirit, the innermost essence in us, comes from God. He acknowledges a Christianity whose essential element is faith in a personal God and the eternity of human personality.
Schleiermacher, whose life ended in 1834, was not onl}^ a great theologian but also a distinguished philosopher. He has been charged with panthe- istic tendencies. He said that the time will come when the Father will be all in all, but that time is out of all time. His influence has been deeply felt in theological circles.
Schopenhauer is known widely from his pessi- mism. He pronounced the world the worst of all possible worlds. His study of the power of the will prevented him from falling into the belief in annihilation, but he shows great sympathy with the early Christian ascetics, and with Hindu peni- tents seeking relief from life in the unconsciousness of Nirvana.
Herbart opposes absolutism, and has had a larger
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number of disciples than any philosopher of the century except Hegel. He taught that the soul is a simple and real essence. If it were not simple its ideas would lie outside of each other, and unity of thought would be impossible. It is located at a single point in the brain.
Beneke closely resembles the Scotch realists. He developed a philosophy based on internal ex- perience. We know ourselves through self-con- sciousness and the world through the senses. The soul is a perfectly immaterial being. The soul of man differs from the soul of the brute by its spir- itual character. The difference in the elementary forces, the possession of hands, language and edu- cation, are causes of the spiritual superiority of men over the lower animals.
Trendelenburg taught that the essence of things came from the creative thought. There is con- structive motion directed by final causes. When force and end coincide in the same subject, there is personality. The soul is a self-realizing final idea. It is not a result of natural forces, but a principle. In man it thinks the eternal, and thus is elevated above the brutes.
Ulrici, of Halle, has become distinguished by his anti-materialistic discussions. He is recognized as a master both in philosophy and natural science.
344 EVIDKNCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Lotze, of Gottingeii, ranks among the great philosophers of our century. He was claimed at first by the Materialists, but he is rather an Idealist. He declared himself a believer in a personal God. ** Perfect personality is reconcilable only with the conception of an Infinite Being, for in finite beings only an approximation to this is attainable." He held that the origin of the body and of the soul were simultaneous, and that souls are immortal, not because of the nature of the substance, but because they realize such a degree of goodness that they cannot be lost.
Materialism has had a prominent place in the discussions in Germany. The Materialists have been conspicuous in part for their ability, and more from the boldness of the utterance of a few of the most radical. Feuerbach, Moleschott, Buch- ner, Vogt, Czolbe, are gross materialists. Feuer- bach, first a Hegelian, then an atheist, said "the ego is the only absolute," and that sensuous enjoy- ment is the highest good of man. He denied the immortality of men. Vogt said that "physi- ology pronounces definitely against the idea of in- dividual immortality, and indeed against all notions founded upon that of an independent existence of the soul." "Psychical activities are only func-
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tions of the brain." Buchner took the same ground. Czolbe was content with the natural world, in which all that is true and good and beautiful is found. He ascribes eternity to astro- nomical bodies, but not to men. Moleschott said *'a man is what he eats," but did not positively deny all spiritual elements in us.
Among the more conservative materialists are Liebig, Du Bois Reymond, Muller, Wagner, and Virchow. The utterances of these men sometimes appear grossly materialistic, but each of them in other connections sets limits to the inferences to be drawn from their statements of facts. Virchow, who seems generally to be among the extremists, announces the principle that science can testify only to that which comes within its comprehension, and leaves to faith all other matters. Liebig, after saying "this mysterious vital principle can be replaced by the chemical forces," and that "the true cause of death is the respiratory process," says "the higher mental phenomena in the present state of science cannot be referred to their prox- imate cause, and still less to their ultimate. We know only that they exist." "Everything in the organism goes on under the influence of a vital force, an immaterial agent, which the chemist can- 15*
346 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
not employ at will." " Muller said much to re- habilitate matter," says Prof. Bain. But Muller bore this testimony: ''There is nothing in the facts of natural science which argues against the possibility of the existence of an immaterial prin- ciple independent of matter, though its powers be manifested in organic bodies." Wagner supposed that the soul is a sort of ether in the brain, but he assails the doctrine of Vogt, and asserts that science is not sufficiently advanced to decide the question in regard to the soul, and that the gap should be filled up by the belief in a permanent mental indi- vidual substance. He avows his belief in a local existence after death and the possible return to the earth in another body. Du Bois Reymond re- garded the problem of sense-perception insoluble. "What imaginable connection between distinct movements of distinct atoms in my brain and facts primitive for me, incapable of further definition, beyond all possible denial — facts like these : I feel pain, I hear the tones of an organ, I see something red ; and the assurance just as directly flowing from them: therefore, I am."
Efforts have been made to reconcile materialism with the doctrine of immortality. Drossbach wrote several works with this aim. Flugel supposed that
SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 347
the mental functions are centered in a single atom. Spiess thought it probable that a germ of higher order is developed which will render possible indi- vidual immortality. New systems have been pro- posed by which the interests of science and relig- ion might be conserved. A host of able men from scientific ranks as well as from speculative philoso- phy have appeared as champions of the old faiths. When we review the period and sum up results, we are surprised at the very small number who have avowed the belief that there is nothing be- yond the grave.
In France the sensational philosophy had in the beginning of the present century a few representa- tives. Cabanis soon died. Destutt de Tracy re- cedes from the teaching of Condillac in his idea of externality, which sensation alone cannot give. De Gerando develops the sensational theory of langtiage, but in the latter part of his life he abandoned many of his former principles. The reaction took two directions : the one from the side of the Church, and is called the Theological school ; the other from the side of philosophy, and is known as the Spiritualistic or Eclectic school. Keratry and Laromiquiere were forerun- ners of these schools. Of the Spiritualistic, Royer-
348 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Collard was the founder. He was succeeded by M. de Biran. Cousin gave it the name of Eclec- tic. He was the most profound as well as the most eloquent expounder of its principles. His philosophy has been charged with pantheistic ten- dencies, but he disclaimed pantheism. Among his pupils, Bouillier, Damairon, Jouffroy, Saisset and Janet, have become eminent. The influence of the school has been strong in England, America, Switzerland, Holland, and been felt also in Ger- many.
Comte, the founder of the Positive Philosophy, was very pretentious, and has had some following in France and England. Ivcwes closes his history with him. He professed to be neither an atheist nor a theist. He discarded all metaphysics, and knew nothing but phenomena and the causes im- manent in the universe. He knew no greater being than humanity. He had a religion, but its worship was rendered to women representing the best of humanity. If any place was left for a future life, it is of very doubtful tenure.
Among the metaphysical writers now living, Ribot is decidedly materializing. He predicts that a day will come when we shall have a psychology without a soul.
SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 349
Scientific men, as Ciivier and Quatrefages, in the name and interest of science alone, have re- jected materialistic conclusions. The memory of the results of the cry, "Death is an eternal sleep,'' is too fresh in the French mind to allow any hasty return to it.
In Scotland the Common Sense Philosophy was carried over from the last to the present century by Dugald Stewart. He stoutly opposes material- ism, but expresses himself cautiously in regard to the philosophic evidence of another life. "Al- though we have the strongest evidence that there is a thinking and sentient principle within us essentially distinct from matter, yet we have no direct evidence of the possibility of this principle exercising its various powers in a separate state from the body. On the contrary, the union of the two while it lasts is of the most intimate nature."* He was succeeded by Dr. Brown, a decided spirit- ualist, who taught Cosmothetic Idealism. After Mackintosh, Sir William Hamilton was elected to the chair of Philosophy in Edinburgh University, and soon proved himself one of the greatest meta- physicians of the age. He put Natural Realism upon a firmer basis, and lifted into respectability
* Quoted bv Bain.
350 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
and power a school hitherto decried. He taught theism and a future life. His most eminent dis- ciple was Mansel. Calderwood, while dissenting from Hamilton's Philosophy of the Conditioned, teaches the Scotch philosophy. His short argu- ment for a future existence is good.*
James Ferrier, Professor in St. Andrews, criti- cised the philosophy of Reid, but was idealistic. Prof. Bain, of Aberdeen, belongs to the Associa- tional school of England. He emphasizes the in- fluence of the body upon the mind, and strengthens the materialistic tendency, but neither affirms nor denies the distinct substance of the mind.
The Associational school started by Hartley con-
* After he concludes the argument he makes a distinction be- tween the idea of a future life and immortality. He sa5^s that "Immortality can not be proven from the immateriality of the soul, nor its ceaseless activity, nor the ideas of abstract beauty and goodness, nor its simplicity of being. The finite is not self- sufiicient. Dependent it must be, dependent for its continu- ance. Futurity of existence is clearl}^ involved in the facts of the present; eternity of existence must depend upon the divine will, and can be known only as a matter of distinct revelation, not as a matter of metaphysical speculation. All that is great- est in us points to an immeasurable future. Thither we look for the solution of many of our dark problems. But immor- tality, if it be ours, must be the gift of God." — See Handbook Moral Philosophy^ p. 259.
SKETCH OF PHII.OSOPHIC BELIEF. 35 1
tinues to live. James Mill brought it over into the present century. Bentham expounded the morai principles involved. Grote and other philosophic writers in history accepted its philosophy. Lewes combined with it the spirit of Comte. J. Stuart Mill ranks among its greatest advocates. He thought that the hope of a future life was phil- osophically defensible. Herbert Spencer is now recognized as the chief metaphysician of the school. He carried its principles into the support of Evolution.
Huxley, Tyndal, and Darwin, so far as they accept metaphysical principles, are Association- alists. The common name applied to them all, and accepted at least by Huxley, is Agnostics. They have taken from Hamilton the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, and they deny that we can know anything of the nature of being which lies back of phenomena. As expressed by J. S. Mill, we know only series of phenomena. We do not know what mind is in itself. They claim to be incompetent to determine anything in regard to the destiny of the soul. They have accordingly avoided in general any expression of opinion upon the subject.
Among writers of materialistic influence are the
352 KVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
younger Ferrier, Maudsley and Carpenter. Ferrier is the more pronounced. Maudsley, true to the principle of the Agnostic philosophy, says *'the nature of mind is a question which science can not touch," but he proceeds to give an ac- count of the faculties, including conscience, which the grossest materialist might accept.
The Evolution theory has its bearing upon the doctrine of another life. Tylor has attempted in its interest to account for the belief among savages. The ablest exponents do not find in the theory anything necessarily opposed to the hope of immortality. Darwin is reported to have written in a private letter near the close of his life that he did not believe in Theism, but in the early part of his work said repeatedly that there is no good reason why his theory should shock the religious feelings of any one. Mivart very decidedly asserts that the theory is reconcilable with the contents of Christianity. Richard Owen agrees with him. Wallace in a recent work, while bringing out new facts and principles in support of the laws of which he was contemporaneously a discoverer with Darwin, re-affirms the fact that the human mind does not fall within the theory.
In America, we have some philosophic men
SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHIC BELIEF. 353
whose names have gone into history: Jonathan Edwards, Upham, Wayland, Hickok, Mark Hop- kins, Mahan, Chadbourne, Agassiz, Asa Gray, Payne, Channing, Bowen and Emerson. Among those now living, McCosh and Porter are most widely known. There are a large number of younger men of great ability, who are studying the problems of the age. Every one whose name is here given, except perhaps Emerson, who was a pantheistic philosophic essayist, was a firm be- liever in a personal immortality. Not a single man whose ability as a philosopher has com- manded recognition, has avowed a contrary faith. Recently, Dr. McCosh asserted that every professor of physical science under thirty years of age, in our respectable colleges, accepts the doctrine of evolution. If it be true, it is not evolution of the atheistic type. Prof Fiske, himself a zealous ad- vocate of the Darwinian theory, finds in it a proof of immortality. It "shows us distinctly for the first time how the creation and perfecting of man is the goal towards which nature's work has all the while been tending. It develops tenfold the sig- nificance of human life, places it upon a loftier eminence than poets or prophets have imagined, and makes it seem more than ever the chief object
354 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
of that creative activity which is manifested in the physical universe."
From the nature of the proof, it is among phil- osophers that we expect most doubt in regard to another life. This review shows us how very few comparatively of those who have attained distinc- tion have not regarded it as most probable, if not certain. Some of those who have denied it have attracted attention simply by the boldness and rashness of their utterances. The voice of philos- ophy as given by her greatest interpreters is very emphatically for our future existence. We have- no fears that when the facts being gathered by natural science shall be summed up, and the legitimate inference drawn, the result will be dif- ferent from the intuitive hope of mankind.
CHAPTER XIX.
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE.
'T^HE Pyrrhonist is wrong. There is at least ^ some truth accessible to human minds. We are sure that we know some things. Life is not a complete delusion. If we know nothing more, we are certain, even upon the supposition of skepti- cism, that it is best to adjust ourselves to circum- stances and make the most of them. Manifestly the world is not a haphazard aflfair. There are some laws, some principles, bringing uniformities upon which we may form opinions and determine our conduct. If philosophic theories are all wrong, and speculative philosophy impossible, there are some great practical truths which we can never disregard with safety. The man of aflfairs must obey the laws of economy, or fail in business. The court must observe the rules of evidence determin- ing innocency and guilt, or it inflicts the greatest wrongs. The student must regard the laws of mental acquisition, or he remains in ignorance. Disregard of the laws of hygiene brings disease and early death. No one really doubts the facts of (355)
356 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
experience. Practical result is a test of truth. Nothing is false which brings always good results, and nothing is true which always bears bad fruits. The test is not directly applicable to a large part of speculative philosophy; but so far as it can be applied, the world has no hesitation in forming its opinion, and no doubt as to the correctness of its judgment. Experience and reason unite to con- demn as false a principle whose consequences are always hurtful. The decision rendered in the light of practical influences is final. We will try the doctrine of another life by this criterion.
The disbelief in a future life is injurious to moral character. In a perfect state, men may do right because it is right. Persons trained in a moral atmosphere, with ideas of right and wrong formed tinder the influence of the doctrine of the immor- tality of man, may find a beauty and good in virtue that sustain a beautiful character without any re- spect to ends beyond the present life. But that is not the character of men as they appear in history. They "see and approve the better, but follow the worse." The insubordinate passions need to be restrained by law; but there can be no law, at least for disordered nature, without penalty. The de- sign of penalty is to secure obedience; and the
PRACTICAI. RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 357
greater and more certain the punishment, the more uniform the obedience. Great penalties are neces- sary to hold in check the inordinate desires of our corrupt nature. But if this life is all, every punish- ment is temporary, every reward transient, and death swallows up guilt and innocence, pain and pleasure, in utter annihilation. Retribution may often be escaped in this world, and even if the worst comes it is soon over; but if there is another life, escape is no longer possible, and the punish- ment is forever prolonged. How much the world needs this restraint is seen from the corruptions in society in spite of the belief of everlasting penalty. The lovely character of a few who have abandoned the belief in a future life, offers no serious difficulty to this conclusion; for both their character and idea of virtue have been formed under other influences, and remain in defiance of the natural consequences of their new faith. The philosophy which per- suades men that they die like beasts, cannot long sustain them in a life above that of the beast.
If morality is anything more than a wider pru- dence it is founded upon eternal truth, and the obligation is eternal. But if this life is all, our relations are limited and temporal, and for us there can be no true morality. We are only more saga-
358 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
cioiis animals, and moral character is a delusion. Right and wrong are priestcraft and statecraft, and we may rid ourselves of the shackles, and disregard these laws, when we can do so without serious per- sonal injury. If a man believes in a life hereafter he will be more correct in his character, both be- cause of the penalty and the higher conception of moral obligation, than he will be if he does not. An infidel may, from the force of early training, be a better man than another who believes; but the same man will have a better character because of his faith in a future life than he will without it. As this is true of individuals, it must be true of society. The loss of faith in a future life must therefore degrade society.
Philosophic men have frequently noted the rela- tion of the belief in another life to moral character. Polybius said that there is a need of the dread of the invisible to keep in subordination the insubordi- nate passions. He praised the ancients who intro- duced among the people the belief of the gods and the things of a future world. He pronounced the superstition with which the Roman people had been reproached the firmest pillar of the Roman State.* Strabo, the celebrated geographer, agreed
* Neander.
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 359
with the great historian. He said that the multi- tude of women and the entire mass of common people cannot be led to piety by philosophy. For this purpose superstition is necessary, which must call in the aid of myths and tales of wonder. These things the founders of the States employed as bugbears to awe childish people. * So the states- men of that day, when they had lost faith in the popular religion and pronounced it superstition, upheld the public worship as a necessary means of restraining the masses. Voltaire regarded the be- lief in an avenging and rewarding God as the necessary support to morals, and said: *'If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent one." f Condorcet said that "Voltaire remained in almost absolute uncertainty as to the spirituality of the soul and its permanence after the death of the body; but as he believed the last opinion useful, like the belief in the existence of God, he rarely allowed himself to show his doubts, and almost always insisted more on the proofs than the objec- tions." t Robespierre declared before the French National Convention, that "the idea of a Supreme
* Geography In. Ch. 2, Sec. 8. t Ueberweg, History of Philos. t Cairns, Rationalism of XVIII. Cen.
360 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
Being and of the immortality of the soul is a con- tinual call to justice, and no nation can succeed without the recognition of these truths."* Fred- erick the Great fostered atheism, and lived long enough to observe its fruits upon the morals of his people. When an old man he said he would give his best battle to restore the popular faith as it was at the time of his father's death. Mazzini ob- served that "the doctrine of materialism is the philosophy of all epochs which are withering to the grave, and of all nations sinking to ex- tinction." The causes which make materialism acceptable to a people, find in it when intro- duced a most powerful ally in their destructive work. Huber said, "We dare not allow the spirit of the idealistic philosophy to be lost, if we are to have any guarantee of a great and happy future for our native land." Rudolph Wagner, the eminent German naturalist, in a controversy with Vogt, maintained the belief in a future life as necessary to moral order. He said at the meeting in Gottin- gen, "The morality which flows from scientific materialism may be comprehended within these few words : 'lyCt us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' All noble thoughts are but vain dreams,
* Hurst, History of Rationalism.
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 361
the effusions of automata with two arms, running about on two legs, which, being finally decom- posed into chemical atoms, combine themselves anew, resembling the dance of lunatics in a mad- house." To the address of which this was a part, Vogt replied only with sneers.
Some of the materialistic and skeptical philoso- phers have ventured to give utterance to some of the moral ideas which follow from the denial of a future life, and indicate the character which issues. Hobbes said that the civil law is the only founda- tion of right and wrong, and every man has a right to all things, and may get them if he can with safety to himself. Bolingbroke said that as long as sensuality and avarice can be safely indulged they may be lawfully gratified; that as man lives only in this world, he is only a superior animal, and that the chief end of man is to gratify the inclinations of the flesh. Hume said that adultery must be practiced if men would obtain all the advantages of life ; that if generally practiced it would in time cease to be scandalous, and if practiced secretly and frequently it would by degrees come to be thought no crime at all. Adultery if known is a trifling thing, and if unknown nothing at all.*
* Home's Introduction. 16
362 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
These conclusions would become at length uni- versal, and private virtue and public order would go down into horrible ruin.
The judgment of philosophers as to the effect of the loss of faith in future retributions is verified by experience. Not every individual who abandons hope of another life carries out his principles to their ultimate consequences, because character is largely moulded before these speculations begin ; but in nearly all cases there is a deterioration. Sometimes it happens that one, more reckless than the others, applies his new faith in its fullest extent to his own life, and exhibits in himself all the stages down to complete degradation. We are sometimes shown in one character the various steps through which society will go on its way to destruction. We have such a case in Bahrdt, the German ration- alist. He went, as he himself tells us, to Geissen as yet very orthodox. His belief in the divinity of the Scriptures, in the direct mission of Jesus, in His miraculous history, in the Trinity, in natural corruption, in the justification of the sinner by lay- ing hold of the merits of Christ, and especially in the whole theory of satisfaction, seemed immovable. He had explained to himself a little better the work of the Holy Spirit so as not to exclude man's
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 363
activity. He had limited a little the idea of orig- inal sin, and in the doctrine of atonement he had endeavored to uphold the value of virtue. In the doctrine of the Holy Supper he was more Reformed than Lutheran. But he fell under the influence of rationalism, and dropped point after point of his orthodoxy. His moral character soon began to retrograde. By tricky management he secured his election to a professor's chair. He used his posi- tion for the purpose of sneering at the Church and good men of the past. He criticised the Bible. He spent his evenings in gambling and in houses of prostitution. He devoted his brilliant powers to the purpose only of making money. He lost his position in Leipsic, and after years of wander- ings he settled in Halle, where his scandalous con- duct drew sympathy from the public to his neg- lected and abused wife. He died from the effects of his excesses. In Bahrdt we have a lamentable illustration of the demoralizing and destroying power of a want of faith in immortalit5\
We see the effects best in successive generations. In Rome during the earlier centuries, the civic virtues were marked features of the public char- acter. Lucretia dies rather than seem an adulteress. Regulus goes voluntarily back to Carthage to suffer
364 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
the most refined tortures rather than violate a promise. Fabricius scorned the offer made by the physician of Pyrrhus to destroy the great enemy of Rome. Cato was grave, and by his severe guard- ianship of the public morals lives in history as the Censor. There was decline in public character with the widening conquests and the consequent introduction of wealth and luxury. The moral tone of society was lowered, and Epicurean phil- osophy found an entrance. Lucretius clothed it in the fascinating dress of elegant poetry. The de- cline became rapid, and from the time of Augustus the moral condition of the people was horrible. The historical students of that period all agree as to the extreme degradation. The shamelessness of the prostitutions of the court indicates the public feeling. The palaces of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vitellus, Domitian, Commodus, Heliogabalus, and a number of others, were a disgrace to humanity. Paul has given a picture as it appeared from common fame to a Christian, and one blushes to read it. That account is confirmed by satirists. Juvenal, Lucian and Perseus paint it in as dark lines as Paul. Christianity introduced a new life, and retarded the progress of the festering sore in the heart of the empire, but could not prevent the
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 365
fall. The great statesmen, like Trajan, Aurelius, Diocletian, Constantine, Julian, Justinian, Theo- dosius the Great, struggled ineffectually against the tide. Rome became a prey to the arms of the barbarians. That the want of faith in future retri- butions was the sole cause, or the great proximate cause, no one can maintain; but that a strong sense of that fact would have wrought a great change, if not complete reformation, is evident from the Christians who lived in the midst of the corrupting influences.
For an example in modern times we turn to the French Revolution, where the principles of mate- rialistic philosophy found an opportunity for full play. That Revolution on its political side was the result of the Bourbon despotism, but it was aggravated and maddened by atheism. The change was inevitable, but it might have taken place as quietly as it did in England, but for the ideas scat- tered by the encylopedists. Materialism is respon- sible for the Reign of Terror. The movement com- menced as purely political, but soon manifested an extravagance in passion which revealed a false spirit animating it. As the movement advanced, the hidden cause of excesses became more and more open, until at length it boldly announced itself in
366 KVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
the atheistic festival held at Notre Dame. The leaders were atheists, and they inspired the multi- tude to deeds of madness by the cry, *' Death is an eternal sleep." The foundations of society were torn up. Women vied with men in coarseness and brutality. Suspicion was a sufficient reason for imprisonment. Summary trials, mocking justice, were followed by immediate execution. Plighted faith was empty, and the most sacred ties were ruthlessly broken. Life was cheap. Marat called for five hundred heads, then forty thousand, then two hundred and fifty thousand. Crowds escorted the victims to execution with insults and demoni- acal shouts. The wheels of the guillotine were never still, and the secret dagger was constantly busy. No age nor sex was safe. Old men, women, maidens and babes, were butchered. The river was thick with bodies, and the air was foul from the unburied dead. Suicide and madness were common, and fear hung over all. The story of that day sickens us.
The triumph of materialism would not bring ordinarily such wholesale destruction, but it would feed the passions, and expose us to commotions, and induce maddened ferocity in every extraordi- nary excitement. Reigns of Terror would be com- mon.
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIKF. 367
The loss of faith in another life diminishes the sum of happiness. Without this faith every life, except of a few vicious persons who dread eternal sufferings, must be made poorer, and most lives would be miserable.
That it diminishes happiness follows from the fact that it diminishes morality. Happiness is not the end of morality, but is so closely connected with it that a large school of philosophers, known as utilitarians, have thought of the two- as one. They believe that right is good because it is useful. In the order of nature they are so generally associ- ated that Utilitarianism has many strong facts to support it. Vice may have momentary enjoyment, but not happiness. Immorality must bear its penalty, and it always leaves the heart not only unfilled, but dissatisfied. If the want of faith in a life beyond death undermines moral character, it must to the same extent darken the present life.
It degrades love. If we are to be annihilated at death, we are only animal. We may be somewhat higher than the brutes, but after all our dignity is fictitious. Human nature as it appears in the in- dividual has very little worth. The feelings of either pleasure or pain in a being whose existence is so short, is unimportant to any one but himself.
368 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE I.IFE.
Any one may regard every other person as valuable so far as lie is necessary to his own pleasure, but there is nothing in himself that should make him an object of concern. Personality is without sacredness. Humane feelings are fanaticism. "I may enslave my fellow if I need him. I may leave the fallen in his degradation. I am under no obligation to pity the miserable. I must get through my brief day as comfortably as I can, and if prudence demands I may respect laws; but if I am strong enough to defy all order, I am free to do so. Nature whispers that is all wrong and false, but as she disappoints my instincts in regard to a future life, why should I pay attention to this?'^ Selfishness is enthroned. Ivove is only animal passion and a mask. Society is a herd. In the tomb of love lies happiness also; and love must go when man ceases to appear worthy of rational re- gard.
Faith in a future life, even when it is not strong enough to curb all the vicious passions and save from the sufferings of immoderate and sinful in- dulgences, may still be strong enough to add some- thing to the light of life. An immoral man, or an immoral age, may not be as wretched as they would be without this hope. Rousseau gave a
PRACTICAI. RESULTS OF DISBEI.IEF. 369
shameful picture of himself, but he was borne up from utter despair, as he himself testified, by his belief in a future life. So with Byron. In his darkest pictures there is detected behind them a sus- taining hope. The court of Charles II. of England, led on by the king himself, was gay and dissolute. Reaction from the unnatural restraints of Cromwell brought loose reins to indulgence. Cheerfulness was the law, and when not felt must be assumed. But moral restraint though widened was not utterly abandoned. It was not an infidel circle. In their frivolity they did not seriously consider the full claims of that hope upon moral conduct, yet the hope gave buoyancy to their life. They accepted the view of life formed upon the belief in immor- tality, and it lingered with them as a light for hours of darkness. If the king and his court could have been stripped of that faith, a paralyzing gloom would have settled upon them, or they would have sought to drown all sober thought in a wilder indulgence. The imperious Louis XIV. did not care to make his licentiousness respectable by ban- ishing religion and its hopes from his palace.
There is an instinctive love of existence which materialistic philosophy antagonizes, and, there- fore, creates unhappiness. Mere death is regarded 16*
370 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIKE.
as a great evil. While it seems to be distant we are indiflferent; but when sickness comes, or our circle is invaded, we cannot drive away the dark shadow which it throws around us. As age creeps on, the certainty of approaching death increases. Only a very few can think of dying without shud- dering. We all most profoundly pity the con- demned who looks to an early day when he must die. But if death were known to be annihilation, its terrors would be immeasurably increased. Bereft of the hope of awaking beyond death in another world, the miseries of the sick, the aged and the endangered would be inexpressible. Apathy more than stoic would be necessary to meet it with composure.
We cannot get rid of sympathies altogether, no matter how low our philosophical view of our fellow men, and these sympathies must make us sometimes think upon the condition of the world. But if we suppose that this life is all, the evils that everywhere thrust themselves before us must make us miserable. The words put by Mrs. Browning .upon the lips of Romney are not too strong;
** I was heavy then And stupid and distracted with the cries Of tortured prisoners in the polished brass
PRACTICAI. RESULTS OF DISBKUEF. 37 1
Of that Phalarian bull, society,
Which seems to bellow bravely like ten bulls,
But if you listen, moans and cries instead
Despairingly, like victims tossed and gored
And trampled by their hoofs. I heard the cries
Too close : I could not hear the angels lift
A fold of rustling air, nor what they said
To help my pity. I beheld the world
As one great famishing, carnivorous mouth, —
A huge, deserted, callow, blind bird-thing
With piteous open beak, that burst my heart
Till down upon the filthy ground I dropped
And tore the violets up to get the worms.
* Worms — worms, ' was all my cry ; an open mouth,
A gross want, bread to fill it to the lips.
No more. That poor men narrowed their demands
To such an end was virtue, I supposed.
Adjudicating that to see it so
Was reason. Oh, I did not push the case
Up higher, and ponder how it answers when
The rich take up the same cry for themselves,
Professing equally, — 'An open mouth,
A gross need, food to fill us, and no more.'
Why, that's so far from virtue, only vice
Can find excuse for it ! that makes libertines
And slurs our cruel streets from end to end
With eighty thousand women in one smile,
Who only smile at night beneath the gas." *
Such thoughts must press themselves upon us * Aurora Leigh.
372 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
and bligHt the "violets" which grow along life's pathway, and mingle gall with every cup. With Schopenhauer we must regard the world as the worst possible, and sympathize with the hermit who fled as far as possible from it.
Voltaire's uncertainty as to a future life made him often turn to the evils of the world. He said, *' Strike out a few sages, and the crowd of human beings are nothing but an assemblage of unfortu- nate animals, and the globe contains nothing but corpses. I tremble to have to contemplate once more the Being of beings in casting an attentive eye over this terrible picture. / wish I had never been born^ The thought of man as only mortal was too painful for him, and he cherished hope. * ' The box of Pandora is the most beautiful picture of antiquity. Hope was at the bottom." Pliny, the elder, was thoroughly imbued with the skepti- cal opinions of his age, and the expression of his feelings for man became deeply pathetic. ''All religion is the offspring of necessity, weakness and fear. What God is — if indeed he be anything dis- tinct from the world — it is beyond the compass of man's understanding to know. But it is a foolish delusion which has sprung from human weakness and human pride to imagine that such an infinite
PRACTICAL RESUI.TS OF DISBKUEF. 373
spirit would concern Himself with the petty affairs of men. It is difficult to say whether it might not be better for men to be wholly without religion than to have one of this kind, which is a reproach to its object. The vanity of man and his insatiable longing after existence have led him also to dream of life after death. A being full of contradictions, he is the most wretched of creatures, since the other creatures have no wants transcending the bounds of their nature. Man is full of desires and wants that reach to infinity and can never be satis- fied. His nature is a lie, uniting the greatest pov- erty with the greatest pride. Among these ^ so great evils^ the best thing God has bestowed 07t man is the power to take his own life. ' ^ It is not much won- der that men have declared a preference for super- stition rather than such enlightenment. ''I would rather," says Richter, "dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in the air rarified to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief, in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath."
Bereavements take rank among the most pain- ful experiences of life. They come to all hearts. Every death brings sorrow to some circle, and every grave is bedewed with tears. Christianity,
374 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
b}^ inspiring hopes of another life and a resurrec- tion of the body, has soothed these sorrows and proved herself the great benefactress of mankind. Materialism, by robbing of this hope, intensifies the pain and immeasurably augments the sum of human suflfering. We may see what the loss would be by taking some historic examples of Christian patience, and then picture to ourselves what the grief must have been without that faith. We will take strong men, whose literary and social resources and wide-extended labors would have enabled them to divert their attention and avoid the blow.
Martin I^uther, in 1642, was called to experience the loss of a dearly loved daughter, who died in the bloom of her youth. While she was sick, he said: "I love her dearly; but, O God, if it is Thy will to take her hence, I shall be content to have her with Thee." ^'Ivcnchen, my daughter," ad- dressing the sick girl, ''you would like to remain with your father here, and still you would like to depart to the Father beyond." She answered, "Yes, my dear father, as God wills." While she was dying he wept bitterly and prayed for her sal- vation. He looked at her as she lay in her coffin, and said, "O, dearest lycnchen, you will arise
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 375
again and shine like a star — yes, like the sun. In my spirit I am joyful, but according to the flesh I am full of grief: the flesh will not be content; the separation pains me exceedingly. It is strange that although she certainly is at rest, we are yet so sorrowful." Turning to those who mourned with him, he said: " I have sent a saint to heaven; O that we could have such a death ! I would wel- come it this very hour." In a letter to a dear friend he expressed himself grateful, amid his tears, for her happy escape from the temptation of life.
Semler, whose influence over the rise of the Ra- tionalistic movement was so great as almost to en- title him to be called the father of it, like lyuther, was bereft of a daughter. It was the more afilict- ive because it followed so soon after the death of his dear wife. He describes it with his own pen. *' About nine o'clock I again pronounced the bene- diction upon my dear daughter. With a breaking heart I lay down to sleep a little. She sent for me, and thus addressed me, ' Pardon me, my dear father, I am so needy, and do help me to die with that faith and determination which your Christian daughter should possess. ' My heart took courage, and I spoke to her of the glories of the heavenly
376 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE UFE.
world which would soon break upon her. She sang snatches of sweet songs. When I addressed her, * My dear daughter, you will soon rejoin your noble mother,' she answered, 'Oh, yes! and what rapture will I enjoy!' I fell down at her bedside, and again committed her soul to the enduring and almighty care of God. I left her, thinking she might last considerably longer, but was suddenly called from my lecture, when I committed her grand spirit to God, who gave it, and closed her eyes myself. My bitter grief now subsided into a calm affliction and a sweet acquiescence with the wise will of God. Now I know the real joy of hav- ing seen a child die so calmly, and of feeling I had some share in the training that could end so tri- umphantly."
Millions have wept and rejoiced as Luther and Semler did, feeling a real joy that the loved ones had gone to await their coming. After the words **Dust to dust," the language of the service, re- peating the assurances of another life, has fallen upon the ear of the mourning world as the sweet- est music. Blot them out, and who can measure the loss to humanity?
Not many cases of bereavement without the hope of another life have been recorded. They
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF DISBELIEF. 377
are so unnatural, so cold and rigid, seemingly so destitute of feeling, or they are so full of despair and anguish, the pen hesitates to describe them. Not many cases occur. Materialistic faith breaks down before the face of a dying friend. It was at his mother's death Hume said he believed like other people. A brilliant lecturer in our own day, who professes atheism and denies a future life, could, at the grave of his father-in-law, talk beautifully but heartlessly of the noble life, gone as the fragrance of a withered flower or as the song of a dying bird, but as he stood by the coffin of a tenderly-loved brother he spoke of the de- parted life as a river with which his own would one day be reunited, and then they would flow on serenely and sweetly together forever. Not until we are animalized and love crushed will the heart cease its instinctive testimony at the side of the grave.
When we apply the test of practical results, the evidence is not doubtful. Even though we were not able to detect the errors in the logic of mate- rialism, yet we know that a doctrine must be false which belies the dignity of man, turns virtue into sagacious prudence, undermines the social order, petrifies the heart, and exhibits the Creator as the
378 EVIDENCE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
creature of caprice and injustice. But a faith that inspires the highest aspirations after worthiness of character, secures the deepest happiness, harmo- nizes man with the order of the world, is conso- nant with the instinctive utterances of his own nature, and gives greatest glory to Him who formed the world, must be trug. This life cannot be all. We are not flashes between two nights of nothingness. The body dies, but we live forever.
THE END.
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