Death and resurrection from the point of view of the cell theory

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DEATH AND RESURRECTION,

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2008 with funding from
Microsoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/deathresurrectio0Objoruoft

GUSTAF JOHAN BJORKLUND

Death and Resurrection

FROM THE POINT OF VIEW
OF THE CELL-THEORY

BY

GUSTAF BJORKLUND

Translated from the Swedish by
J. E. FRIES

Chicago
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
LONDON AGENTS
K GAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., LTD.
1910

Copyright by
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
1910

60961'7
47) Se

PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE.

EVER in the history of human

thought has the interest in the
soul and its immortality been greater
and keener than now. The leading in-
vestigators of the Society of Psychical
Research have taken up the problem of
enquiring into the facts of spiritual ex-
periences, telepathy, forebodings and
kindred phenomena. The result has
been rather negative, for, while we have
received innumerable single facts, they
all suffer from the common fault that
they are too subjective in their nature
to furnish a proof that could be object-
ively valid. Moreover, many reports
come from witnesses whose mental con-
stitution is under the suspicion of being
pathological, and so their value is prac-
tically null.

viii PREFACE.

Of much greater importance would
be an investigation as to the possibility
of immortality on the basis of scientific
data, but, strange to say, this method
has been almost entirely lost sight of
by leaders of the S. P. R. If we could
form a definite theory as to the nature
of the soul based on exact observation,
we would be enabled, first, to explain
man’s instinctive yearning for immor-
tality; and, secondly, to form a definite
idea of the condition of the soul after
death. Thus we could exclude all the
many mistakes which are now made,
and which originate through an errone-
ous and partly superstitious notion of
the relation of the dead to the living.
The result is shown in the reports of
the S. P. R., abounding in statements
of ghost stories, which can be regarded
only as a continuation of folk-lore. As
a matter of fact, the work of the S. P.
R. has so far provided very little help
toward a better comprehension of im-
mortality.

Among the men who have done the

PREFACE. ix

work of a sympathetic reconstruction of
the idea of immortality on the basis of
science, there is to be mentioned, next
to Fechner, Gustave Bjorklund, a Swed-
ish scientist who is well known in his
own country, but who has been almost
entirely ignored in other lands. The ob-
vious reason of this is the inaccessibil-
ity of his writings, which have not yet
been translated into English.

We do not believe Bjérklund’s solu-
tion is the right one, but we do be-
lieve that he has made a contribution
to the philosophy of religion which
ought not to be ignored. His case is
similar to Fechner’s. We have _ pub-
lished Fechner’s book On Life After
Death and we are glad to present the
views of Bjérklund on Death and Resur-
rection.

Dr. Carus has sketched his views re-
peatedly in The Soul of Man, in Whence
and Whither, and two articles published
in The Monist, with special reference
to Fechner. They show also why
Bjorklund’s belief is unacceptable.

x PREFACE.

Nevertheless we publish Bjorklund’s
book because we heartily sympathize
with his endeavor to justify those senti-
ments which instinctively point out that
death is not a finality, and that the pur-
pose of life is not limited to the span of
our days between the cradle and the
grave, but that it has a further and
fuller significance.

We hope that Bjorklund’s book will
be welcomed as the contribution of an
earnest and prominent scientific think-
er on the important question, “If a man
die, shall he live again?”

THE PUBLISHERS.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

OHAN GUSTAF BJORKLUND was

born the tenth of November, in the
year 1846. His parents were farmers
in very small circumstances. His father
seems to have been endowed with a
good business head and, ultimately, be-
came a real estate owner on a small
scale, first in one city and then in Up-
sala, the principal university town of
Sweden. Poverty was familiar to
Bjorklund throughout his life. Doubt-

For the biographical data of Bjorklund’s life
I am indebted to S. A. Fries, D. D., well known
in continental theological circles as a scientist
of rank and founder of the international Con-
gresses in the interest of the History of Relig-
ion. (See Theologische Literatur Kalender
1906; Wer ist’s? 1908.) Dr. Fries, who is one
of the leading ministers in Stockholm, has done
more in speech and print than anybody else to
introduce Bjorklund to the reading public.

xii PREFACE.

less one reason for this was that his
consuming interest in sociology and
philosophy prevented him from taking
those higher examinations, which in
Sweden are indispensable for obtain-
ing any official position. He studied,
however, for several years at the Uni-
versity of Upsala, but followed no
recognized course, and it was only be-
cause of the ardent persuasion of his
friends that he took a degree as B. A.

In 1884, Bjérklund moved to Stock-
holm, where he remained until his death,
in 1903. At the University of Stock-
holm, he took the courses in biology and
natural science, and won for himself the
admiration and lasting friendship of
many of the professors of that institu-
tion. During this time he mainly sup-
ported himself by teaching philosophy,
and among other pupils, afterward re-
nowned, was Ellen Key, the well-known
Swedish writer on sociology and the
woman question. The most absorbing
interests during this period were, how-
ever, sociology and the peace movement.

PREFACE. xiii

To broaden his views and study social
conditions in general, Bjérklund under-
took several protracted journeys to Eng-
land, Germany, Belgium, and France.

From 1887, Bjérklund began to pub-
lish the fruits of his untiring labor. His
first work was, “The Fusion of the Na-
tions.” In that, as in “The Anarchy of
Evolution” and “Peace and Disarma-
ment,” Bjorklund throws his. over-
whelmingly convincing statistical re-
sources and solid scientific learning in
favor of an ultimate universal, but more
especially European union of the na-
tions. Toward this goal it is necessary
to steer, according to Bjorklund, if a
general “Anarchy of Evolution” is to be
avoided; for that is the condition that
will prevail, if the state neglects to
carry out an organization of society that
shall keep step with the degree of ma-
terial culture reached. ‘Because dur-
ing the most profound peace, a nation
suffers from its own army the same im-
peding influences that in time of war is
due to the hostile army.”

xIV PREFACE.

The last mentioned book, “Peace and
Disarmament,” at once made Bjorklund
famous. It was translated into French,
German, English, Polish, Dutch, Hun-
garian and several other languages, and
would no doubt have brought its author
a Nobel prize, had it appeared fifteen
years later. Bjérklund was now elected
an honorary member of the Swedish
Peace Society. At the Peace Congress
in Bern (1892) his treatise, “The Armed
Peace,” was distributed in English, Ger-
man and French, and the Italian Soci-
ety, “Unione Operaia Umberto I,” sub-
sequently elected him an honorary mem-
ber.

In his later years Bjérklund devoted
less time to active work in the universal
peace movement. He became more ab-
sorbed in scientific research and the
problems of philosophy. An important
impulse to his later development, he re-
ceived from a book, “Significance of Seg-
mentation in the Organic World” (Stock-
holm, 1890). Here he was brought to
serious consideration of the nature of

PREFACE. xv

the cell and of its place in life. In the
organization of the cells in a human
body Bjorklund saw an example of a
universal law, governing all life. With
this thought as a starting point, he un-
dertook to investigate the problem, all-
important to his philosophy, of the
awakening of self-consciousness in a
cell-organization and the relationship
between this newborn ego and the cells
themselves, each of which, to a certain
degree, leads an independent life.

The result of his studies was first
made known in 1894 in a treatise, “The
Relation Between Soul and Body from
a Cytologic Point of View.” In the year
1900, he published the volume herewith
presented to the American public, in
which he has partly rewritten the for-
mer book, and further added his latest
conceptions of the nature and evolution
of life.

This work is undoubtedly one of Swe-
den’s most remarkable and interesting
contributions to contemporary philoso-
phy. It is also the last work from Gus-

xvi PREFACE.

taf Bjérklund’s hand. In July, 1903, his
earthly existence was brought to an
end, and he was “fully translated” to
that spiritual world, the existence of
which he was so thoroughly convinced

It is true that the philosophical struc-
ture that Bjorklund so successfully com-
menced to upbuild is far from complete.
But the basis he laid is solid and will
serve as a foundation for many temples
of the future, whether they who worship
therein believe in Bjérklund’s God or
not.

This foundation is the fact over-
whelmingly proved by Bjorklund, that
life is not a quality in matter or phys-
ical force, but must be of immaterial or-
igin and substance. Granting that time
as well as space are forms in which mat-
ter and physical force are comprehend-
ed by man on his earthly stage of con-
sciousness, Bjérklund has also demon-
strated the immortality of life. For if
life be a reality, which is not here de-
nied, with no roots in matter or physical

PREFACE. xvii

force, whether these are identical or not,
this reality exists outside of the forms,
time and space, in which matter ap-
pears. But whether matter and phys-
ical force exist per se, or are mere tran-
sient phenomena or what their origin
and purpose is, these are questions that
Bjorklund never was granted the time
to discuss.

Bjorklund’s grand conception of the
relationship between all living beings
and their organic upbuilding of larger
conscious units, where each individual
of higher order is the sum total of all
its constituent members of lower or-
der, is certainly a most helpful and
inspiring addition to our theory of
evolution.

But the question why an evolution is
necessary at all for beings that are con-
stituent members in The Perfect Being,
is hardly satisfactorily answered by
Bjorklund. His ingenious explanation,
fully presented toward the end of this
volume, still leaves us in a dilemma.
Bjorklund holds that Perfect Love has

XViii PREFACE.

left it to time-existent beings to become
of Free Will what they of eternity have
been to the All-Spirit; much as a child,
unless considered merely a mechan-
ical toy, must of free will, grow into
the man that his father preconceived
and all the time sees in it. But
even so we are left between Scylla
and Charybdis, for either this evolu-
tion has a purpose, which must be
reached outside of time—that is, it will
come to a standstill; an ending in
Nirvana—or else evolution is ever-
lasting, without final purpose, and its
proper name—delusion. Again the
time-bound mind meets in this, as
well as in every ethical or metaphysical
problem, if it be pushed to its ultimate
consequences, the same conflict or irra-
tionality that is destined to baffle the
space-bound man, whether his micro-
scope is restlessly at work to solve the
riddle of the divisibility of matter, or
his telescope sweeps the heavens in a
vain search for the utmost star. This
irrationality, that everywhere surrounds

PREFACE. xix

us, is a chasm that only religion can
bridge. From a philosophical point of
view, therefore, we must be satisfied if
our workable hypotheses in philosophy
and in natural science do not contradict
each other; and Gustaf Bjérklund has
shown us a road to reconciliation be-
tween idealism and natural science, that
for a long time seemed entirely lost in
the jungle of the materialism of the last

century. J. E. FRIES.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS,
Paap.

OLD CONCEPTIONS OF A FUTURE LIFR.............-.. 1
MAN’s SPIRITUAL Bopy..... Nataisinsiels HAE tt Staten gialistaveliie
SOURCE OF SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE..............+02+6 37
IMPORTANCE OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION............ 51
MATERIALISTIC DEMONSTRATION OF SPONTANEOUS

GENERATION Menisicelaielecneere cil s bo eda a Gio sDaletalerepeleteleteepeill Ort;
How Is ORGANIC MATTHR PRODUCED?............+.-. 87
ORGANIC MATTER AS A PRODUCT OF ART.............107
DAH SOUL AND THE) | CMEES Asean eelea sean Sadist nile!
FUNDAMENTAL QUALITIES OF AN ORGANISM...........138
ORGANIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SOUL AND THE

@RBES Healy cc's elaliaharesaierapsieta/ersieliet ovaltapatettets Aotblats 4 oie 22+ 147
RESURRECTION ....... “ atelsiele eg A shehiopetstlete lets Abie oandae
VIAN AVANGD OLN MINTED Yoalaletc) ev syerel eee a\ sere soapadcdoospocddaounlTe

DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;

All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;

And spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is is Right.
—Alex. Pope.

Essay on Man, Epistle I.

CHAPTER I.
Old Conceptions of a Future Life.

CONSCIOUSNESS of immortality,

sometimes dim and vague, some-
times vivid and clear, seems to be char-
acteristic of the human race. However
low man may stand he cannot consider
death to be the end of his existence.
The conviction that he is immortal is
innate to him. Annihilation is con-
trary to the nature and demands of
his spirit. It is true that uncertainty
and doubt might arise, but man will
never be able wholly to uproot either
hope or fear as to the possibility of a
future life.

Experiencing such feelings and pre-
sentiments, man finds himself amidst a
world where death and dissolution eyv-
erywhere surround him. He sees the

2 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

objects of his love or fear pass away,
and he knows that sooner or later the
same fate will befall himself. When he
beholds the lifeless body of some near
relative, his presentiment of immortal-
ity tells him that the selfsame soul
that once animated that body is still
alive. In such moments even the man
of low cultivation is forced into more
or less profound contemplation. The
following reflection impresses _ itself
with might and wonder upon him: “I
feel convinced that the dead is living,
but how can he live without his body
and what form does his new life take?”

In all ages and stages, men have
asked the same or similar questions,
and they will go on asking them as
long as belief in a future life obtains.

But man does not confine himself to
questioning, he wants answers, and es-
pecially must this be true where the re-
ply is so intimately connected with
himself. And these answers have not
been lacking; we find them formulated
in those opinions and theories respect-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 3

ing a future life which throughout the
ages have gradually appeared and pre-
vailed.

The critically thinking public of the
present day takes a decidedly skeptical
attitude toward all these theories. They
assert, and not without strong argu-
ments, that it is impossible to know
anything. But, however convinced the
public may be of the fruitlessness of
discussing the topic, no one will suc-
ceed in pushing it entirely aside. Time
and again the same questions reappear
as dark and threatening clouds on the
horizon of our consciousness; they oc-
cupy our thoughts, take hold upon our
feelings and color our sentiments. It
would undoubtedly be sufficient at such
moments to have, were it only one
fixed point to stand upon; one estab-
lished fact to start from and which we
could trust would lead our thoughts
in the right direction. But such a
basis to set out from we have not
hitherto been able to find. Will this
remain the case forever? Will science

4 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

concerning a future life always fail to
attain aught but negative results? Let
us say at once that humanity will
probably be able to ascertain as much
as it may be necessary or useful for us
to know in this world. This hope is
founded on our firm belief that at this
time a basis such as that above men-
tioned really exists. Natural science
has furnished this basis, though no-
body as yet has happened to reflect
that the facts upon which this basis
rests may have any bearing upon our
attitude toward a future life, much less
give answer to questions such as the
following: How, and in what way, is
man to pass from this life into another?

It will be the object of the following
pages, then, to develop further the view
just intimated.

In prehistoric times men believed in
a close relationship between the soul of
the deceased and his body in the grave,
and this purely instinctive faith is the
more remarkable, as it prevailed during
stages of civilization when differentia-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 5

tion between spiritual qualities and
physical matter was almost unknown.

The contradistinction between soul
and body is certainly a fact, a general
experience. But neither the individual
nor the race realizes this fact suddenly
or all at once. The knowledge of the
distinction between the physical and
the spiritual sphere, with their differ-
ent characteristics and qualities, pro-
ceeds step by step, being the result of
slowly advancing evolution.

The child and the savage remain un-
conscious of any discrimination be-
tween soul and body, and even for the
more cultivated man, the border be-
tween the two is vague and undeter-
mined. According to the psychologic
order of man’s evolution we might
therefore expect that the problem as
to this relationship would appear at a
comparatively late date, and even then
be of importance only to a reduced
number of more cultivated individuals.
But, on the contrary, experience shows

that this question occupies the thoughts

6 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

of men in very low stages of civiliza-
tion, and, in fact, that it is of the most
general interest.

The reason for this evidently lies in
the instinctive belief that the body con-
tains something which is immortal, and
which in the life hereafter the soul can-
not dispense with.

In its first historic form the ques-
tion concerning the soul’s relation to
the body deals with this relation after,
not before, the separation of the soul
and body. This latter problem emerges
only in very high stages of civilization,
and even then is of scientific interest
to an insignificant minority only, while
the question of our existence after
death is religious in its nature and of
interest to all.

In olden times men were more fully
convinced of a continued personal ex-
istence after death than civilized man-
kind seems to be nowadays. The same
vivid conviction we find even in our
age among people in the natural state.
From the prehistoric peoples we havg

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 7

no written communication, but from
their graves they speak to the present
day intelligibly and plainly of their be-
lief in a life to come. Behold the mon-
uments defying time and decay, which
these people have erected in memory of
their deceased. The sepulchres of the
Egyptian kings to this very day arouse
our amazement and admiration.

What was it, then, that induced
these peoples of early times to bestow
such extraordinary labor on the places
of their last rest? It certainly was
their belief that the graves contained
not only the lifeless body, but also the
living soul. The funeral ceremonies
evidently show, as Fustel de Coulanges
Says, that when the body was laid in
the grave it was thought that some-
thing yet alive was placed there at the
same time. The soul was born simul-
taneously with the body; death did not
separate them; they were both enclosed
together in the grave. In olden times
people felt so fully assured that a man
lived in the tomb, that they never

8 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

failed to bury with him the things of
which he was thought to be in want.
They poured wine on the grave in or-
der to quench his thirst; they brought,
food to his tomb in order to appease his
hunger; they killed horses and slaves,
believing that, if enclosed with the
dead, these would serve him in his
grave as they had served him during
his life.

It was also in this conviction that
the positive duty of burying the de-
ceased originated. In order to bring
rest to the soul in the subterranean
dwelling that fitted its new existence,
it was necessary that the body, to
which, in some way or another, it still
clung, should be covered with earth.
The soul, denied a grave, had no dwell-
ing. Drifting about, it sought in vain
the desired rest after life’s fitful strug-
gle. Without shelter, without offerings
or food, it was condemned to everlast-
ing wandering. Therefore, because the
deceased was unhappy, he became ill-
natured. He tormented the living; sent

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 9

them diseases; destroyed their har-
vests; haunted them in uncanny visions
in order to remind them of their duty
to bury the body and thereby secure
peace for himself.

The old authors give evidence of the
degree to which people were vexed by
fear that proper ceremonies would not
be observed at their burial. It was a
constant source of grievous irritation.
The fear of death was less prevalent
than the fear of being left unburied.
Naturally so, for it was a question of
eternal happiness. It should therefore
not surprise us so much when we see
the Athenians execute generals, who,
after a naval victory, had neglected to
bury the fallen. These generals, dis-
ciples of the philosophers of their time,
did not believe that the fate of the soul
was dependent on that of the body.
They had therefore decided not to chal-
lenge the tempest for the empty for-
mality of gathering and burying the
fallen. But the masses, even in en-
lightened Athens, still clung to the old

10 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

conceptions, and accused the generals
of godlessness, sentencing them _ to
death. By their victory they had saved
Athens, but by their negligence they
had brought perdition upon thousands
of souls. ‘These conceptions,” says
Fustel de Coulanges, “have governed
man and society through many genera-
tions, and have been the source from
which the larger part of ancient do-
mestic and public institutions were de-
rived.”

But this is not all. The primitive
ideas, referred to above, obtain even
today among various nations and tribes
all over the earth. From the islands
in the Pacific Ocean all the way up to
the Polar regions we meet with the
same creeds among uncivilized peoples,
the same or similar manner of burial
as among the ancients.

If we were going to illustrate this,
the Chinese probably would be the first
to attract our attention, not only be-
cause of the antiquity of their civiliza-
tion, but because of their great num-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 11

bers. As is well known, a third part of
the world’s population is Chinese.
Most of the characteristic peculiarities
of this enormous community must be
attributed to their death-cultus.

Every family in China lives in con-
tinuous communication with its an-
cestors, upon whom are bestowed offer-
ings of fruit, grain, rice or vegetables,
according to the products of the soil
of their home. The soul will lose none
of its qualities through the separation
from the body. In company with other
souls of their kindred it hovers over
the family, partakes of their sufferings,
rejoices in their happiness. If forgot-
ten, it grows melancholy and_ ill-na-
tured, it complains in doleful voice and
its moans are ominous. Woe unto him
who ignores these obligations. The of-
ferings to the souls of his forefathers
must not be neglected. Their memory
must not be allowed to fade away. But
who is going to attend to these sacri-
fices and memorial observances if the
family dies out? Matrimony, therefore,

12 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

becomes a sacred duty, the foremost of
all duties.

To the Chinese mind there is no
grievance greater, no punishment more
terrible, than expulsion from the fam-
ily. What would become of a man’s
soul if his nearest of kin would curse
his memory? To rid himself of such
a sickening dream he is ready to sacri-
fice everything, even life itself. But
only when the body is brought to rest
in the family grave can the soul enjoy
the care of its kindred. It is obvious,
then, that emigration is looked upon
with great apprehension by the faith-
ful Chinaman. He must either return
home during his life or else arrange
that his body be brought back if death
should overtake him while abroad. We
know that the big transoceanic steam-
ship companies faithfully carry out this
part of their contracts with those of
their Chinese passengers who meet
with unexpected death in America.

Similar ideas are to be found among
the negroes of Africa and Australia,

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 13

and among the Indian tribes of Amer-
ica. These also supply their deceased
with such tools and provisions as they
are supposed to need in another world.

Among the Arctic peoples the same
customs and usages prevail. When an
Eskimo is about to die, he is dressed in
his best clothes and his knees are
drawn up under him. The grave is
lined inside with moss and a skin, over
which stones and peat are spread. If
the dead is a man, his boat, weapons
and tools are laid beside the grave;
if a woman, her knife and sewing uten-
sils; if it is a child, the head of a dog
is placed on top of the grave, that the
soul of the dog may show the helpless
child a road to the second life. If a
mother dies while nursing a babe, it
is, as a rule, buried alive with her.

In a Samoyede grave, Nordenskold
found among other things parts of an
iron pot, an ax, a knife, a drill, a bow,
a wooden arrow, some copper orna-
ments, ete. Even rolls of birch bark
were found in the coffin, in all proba-

14 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

bility to be used for making fire in an-
other world. Beside the grave a sleigh
was placed upside down, evidently in
order to provide a vehicle for the de-
ceased, and we may assume that rein-
deers were slaughtered at the funeral.

The essential, fundamental thought
in this conception which causes the un-
cultivated peoples in our days to treat
their deceased in the same way as the
ancients did, is the belief that the body
contains something which the soul can-
not do without in the future life. Soul
and body are and remain a unit even
beyond the grave. As death means a
violent tearing apart of these two fac-
tors, the soul cannot be wholly satis-
fied without its natural relationship to
the body.

It is evident, therefore, that to the
ancient world life in the lower regions
seemed dismal and repulsive. Achilles
would rather be a day-laborer on earth
than king of the hosts in Hades. Life
there passed in a shadowy inactivity
amidst all wealth, a desolate emptiness

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 15

in all superfluity, so that the soul could
not help but suffer a ceaseless regret
whether it moved in the halls of Val-
halla or in the Elysian fields. Glori-
ous meadows, crystal waters, streams
of milk and honey, could not obliterate
the craving of the soul for its corporeal
existence. It returns time and again
to the body in the grave to enjoy the
sacrifices and cares of the surviving.

This mourning for the body and con-
tinuous longing for the sunny life on
earth made death seem something ter-
rible that fretted and tormented men.
Was it not natural, then, that the men-
tal disharmony caused by the thought
of death, should sooner or later bring
about a reaction; give birth to the hope
of a reunion of the soul with the body
on a resurrection day of the dead? At
some such conclusion several religions
have arrived. We need mention only
the Norse sagas, Islam, Parseeism and
Judaism. <A _ resurrection, everywhere
taught in almost identical terms, is
placed at the end of the present system

16 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

of the world in connection with a cos-
mic catastrophe out of which new
heavens and a new earth with an en-
nobled humanity will emerge.

The bodily resurrection on the day of
judgment is a doctrine also in the
Christian faith, as it is interpreted by
the orthodox creeds. But this dogma
has entirely lost its former authority.
It is repeated at each Church burial,
but the reading has now become a
mere formality. We do not believe any
more in a resurrection in the old sense.

What factor in our time has been
sufficiently powerful to overturn con-
ceptions so deeply rooted in human
nature? It is the scientific spirit as
acknowledged even by faithful theo-
logians. Science has shown that man’s
body is renewed several times during
life and that even the bones, placed in
the grave, soon “arise” through na-
ture’s forces themselves and take part
again in the universal circulation of
matter. In face of all the evidence for
this truth, it is impossible to believe

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. Ae

in the old doctrine of a physical resur-
rection.

Another question is, whether this
ancient belief could disappear without
leaving traces in contemporary con-
sciousness. Can man have changed so
radically in a century, or rather in a
few decades, that the conviction of the
body’s importance to the soul after
death will no longer find an echo in
his religious instincts? By no means.
We are the same human beings and
have the same human nature as our
forefathers. Forms of conception may
go, but not the instincts to which they
once gave a satisfactory expression.

We may therefore rest assured that
the important change of attitude in
this question forcefully reacts on re-
ligious life in our day. The reaction
does not necessarily mean progress at
first. Evolution does not follow a
straight line; a step forward is gener-
ally immediately followed by phenom-
ena in the opposite direction.

The religious instincts, underlying

18 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

the conception of the body’s impor-
tance to the soul in a future life, must
create new expressions, and the logic
of the old conceptions themselves in-
dicates what forms they would take.

When the belief in a restoration of
the union between the two factors in
a human being was suddenly and al-
most violently shaken by natural sci-
ence, there seemed at first no other
way out of the difficulty than to choose
between them and declare either the
soul or the body as the essential part.

Those who felt inclined toward the
former alternative evidently found
themselves confined to a_ one-sided
idealism of little vitality, because an
existence without body seems as
shadowy and unsatisfactory to man in
the present as in ancient times. An
increasing weakening of the intensity
of religious life would be the natural
consequence.

Those again who, because of a more
realistic tendency, insisted upon the es-
sentiality of our body, were logically

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 19

driven to a gross materialism. If sci-
ence had proved that the belief in a
bodily resurrection is untenable, why
should it not be able to demonstrate
that all religious doctrines were delu-
sions? This reasoning seemed to many
so natural that many scientific facts
contributed evidence in their favor
even when these facts pointed entirely
in the opposite direction.

There was, however, no necessity to
think and reason as these two main
schools in our age have done. One
might also from the beginning, have
taken the same road and arrived at the
same conclusion as, for instance, Gran-
felt in his “Christian Dogmatic.” “It
has been demonstrated beyond doubt
by natural science,” says this prominent
theologian, “that the matter of a human
body is, even here on earth, in continu-
ous circulation, so that in the course of
a few weeks all atoms of the whole
body are replaced by new atoms. The
only lasting attribute of the soul dur-
ing this process is the spiritual body,

20 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

which assimilates, typically forms, and
again secretes the earthly matter. It
must be this spiritual body, then, that
constitutes the combining element be-
tween man’s earthly body and his glori-
fied body in the eternal life.”

Christianity speaks not only of a ma-
terial resurrection on the day of judg-
ment; it also says that man possesses
within him a spiritual body, which
after death immediately arises to ever-
lasting life. This latter conception is
not confined to Christianity. In all re-
ligions we find two tendencies side by
side, the one idealistic and the other
more realistic, which indeed are not
really opposed to each other, inasmuch
as the belief in a spiritual body may
be said to constitute the basis even for
the realistic conception that places the
spirit in co-relation with the body in
the grave.

The idealistic tendency may be traced
away back even to prehistoric times
and has generally been connected with
some other burial methods, among

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 21

which cremation was the most com-
mon. The place cremation occupied in
ancient thought and the connection
fancied by our forefathers between the
elements which make up man’s spirit-
ual body, may be gathered from Victor
Rydberg’s researches in Germanic
mythology.

“The popular ecclesiastical dualism
of soul and body,” says Rydberg, “was
as foreign to the Veda-Aryans as to
the heathen Germanic race. Accord-
ing to the latter, man consisted of six
different elements: First, the earthly
element of which the visible body is
made; second, a vegetative; third, an
animal; fourth, the so-called liten (Llitr),
an inner body shaped after the gods,
and invisible to earthly eyes; fifth, the
soul; sixth, the spirit.”

The earthly and the vegetative ele-
ments were already joined in the trees,
Ask and Embla, when the gods came
and changed them into the first human
pair. Each of the three gods gave them
separate gifts. From Lodur they re-

22 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

ceived Ja, that is the blood, and laeti,
that is the power of intentional move-
ment inherent in the blood, which at-
tributes have been considered by all
peoples as the characteristics that dis-
tinguish animal from vegetable life.
Lodur gave them further the god-image,
liter goda, by the power of which man’s
earthly substance receives the form in
which it appears to the senses. The
Germanic race, like the Hellenes and
the Romans, believed that the gods had
human form, so that this form origi-
nally belonged to the gods. To the
Germanic hierologists and bards man
was formed in effigiem deorum and pos-
sessed in his nature a liter goda, a god
image in the literal sense of the word.

This image may for a short time be
separated from the other human ele-
ments, so that a person may assume
the appearance of another without
changing his spiritual identity.

The soul, odr, is the gift of Héner,
while the spirit, ond, is the contribu-
tion of Odin.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 23

Earthly death consists in the separa-
tion of the higher elements, spirit, soul
and liten, which form a unity for them-
selves, from the lower elements and a
removal of the former to Hades. The
lower elements, the earthly, the vege-.
tal and the animal, continue in the
grave for a longer or shorter time to
co-operate and form a certain unity,
which, from the higher elements, retain
something of the living man’s personal-
ity and qualities. This lower unity is
the ghost, the wraith, which usually
sleeps during the day in the grave, but
in the night might wake either spon-
taneously or by other people’s prayers
and sorcery. The ghost possesses the
nature of the deceased; it is good and
benevolent, or evil and dangerous, ac-
cording to his disposition. Because
animal and vegetal elements form part
of his nature, he is tormented by a
craving for nourishment if he wakes
from his slumber.

These conceptions of a dualistic life
after death, common among the Veda-

24 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

Aryans, as well as among the heathen
Norsemen, were closely allied with the
idea of cremation. Agni, the god of
fire, removed the dead man to a better
world, while the coarser body, with its
faults and defects, was consumed by
the flames.

It was a matter of doubt, however,
whether liten, the inner body, would
suffer injury in the pyre. But this
doubt was removed partly by certain
formulas, believed to be protective;
partly by burning a buck together with
the body as compensation to the “flesh-
eating fire,” the elementary Agni (the
hymns distinguish between the two),
so that he should not touch the subtler
body of the corpse. Through the com-
bustion, the lower elements were en-
abled to immediately follow the soul of
the deceased, and it was thought that
two advantages were gained thereby:
First, the second ego of the dead was
liberated from its grave-dwelling, which
was monstrous if his sleep were dis-
turbed either by craving for nourish-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 25

ment or through the acts of Nirrtis and
sorcerers; second, the surviving were
relieved from their dread of evil ghosts.

CHAPTER II.
Man’s Spiritual Body.

F WE survey the stages of evolution

through which humanity hitherto has
passed, we find that all peoples, from
prehistoric times up to our own days,
have believed in a spiritual body which
is essential to the soul in a future life.
Is humanity then mistaken in this uni-
versal manifestation of religious intui-
tion? On this question we need no
longer remain uncertain, no longer be-
lieve; we know that man possesses such
a spiritual body. For many years, even
centuries, this has been a fully demon-
strated fact, which may be directly ob-
served, and which also has been the
subject of scientific research.

But what do we mean by spiritual
body? The term conveys something of

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 27

a dim and vague, and at the same
time unmistakable suggestion which
characterizes all we comprehend by our
emotional faculties. Spiritual body
means what the words say, a spiritual-
ity derived from, or belonging to, the
body. But as no spirituality exists
which is not individualized or is not a
quality of a living being, this spiritual
body must be identical with either one
single unit or with a multitude of
living units. One single unit it cannot
be, because this unity would then be
identical with the soul, while on the
contrary, the spiritual body should
be independent, existing per se. It
remains then a multitude of spirit-
ual units, which is precisely what
natural science has proved to be the
case, and these units in man’s spiritual
body are identical with the living cells.
Before the discovery of the cell, our
knowledge of the human body was con-
fined to such phenomena as could be
observed with the naked eye. The or-
ganism from that standpoint was neces-

28 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

sarily a unit of members and organs
whose functions, and even coarser ana-
tomic structure, were beyond any ac-
curate investigation. The elementary
parts of the organic tissues cannot, of
course, be observed in this stage. They
appear first under the microscope and
it is therefore with the discovery of
this epoch-making instrument that the
science of organisms enters into a new
era.

Toward the end of the seventeenth
century, Malpighi and Grew found that
organic tissues, placed under the micro-
scope, did not consist of homogeneous
substance as they appear to the naked
eye, but of small particles separated
from each other, which particles have
been called cells. But although the
cells were discovered, their real impor-
tance was far from being understood,
or even surmised. This was no doubt
the reason for the small interest given
to the cell during the eighteenth cen-
tury, and the small progress cytology
made during this whole period.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 29

From 1670 to 1830, or more than a
century and a half, the cell was known
mainly as a saccate body, resembling a
hollow tube, and became the subject
of more or less wild speculations. <A
wider interest for the substance and
nature of the cell was evoked in the
beginning of the nineteenth century by
the works of Brisseau de Mirbel, Trevir-
anus, Moldenhaver and several others.
Many different parts began to be dis-
tinguished within the cells, such as
membrane, protoplasm, chlorophyll, ete.
These parts were later found to be as
many organs in the cell performing
different functions, which are at pres-
ent to some extent defined. The cell
previously considered as a saccate body
proved to constitute a being endowed
with organs, a living organism.

According to modern cytology, the
cell is a living individual; an elemen-
tary organism. Although these beings
are so exceedingly minute that the
naked eye can observe them only in
combinations of thousands and millions,

30 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

yet each and every one of them not
only possesses individual life, but also
the organs necessary for sustaining in-
dividual existence. Innumerable quan-
tities of such tiny beings build up the
organisms of plants and animals. As
human individuals form the building
material of the body of a community,
so the cells form the building material
of the bodies of plants and animals.
Since the cells bear the same relation
to plants and animals as human in-
dividuals to a community, every plant
and animal then may be considered as
a community, a cell-state, where the
cells are the citizens.

Every organism, therefore, 1s @a@ com-
munity, and vice versa, every community 1s
an organism. So far as we have knowl-
edge of the organisms they are all simi-
lar in this respect. Plants and animals
are communities of individually living
cells in the same sense as nations and
states are communities of human beings.
The individuals in these different com-
munities are of different kinds and

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 31

degrees of development, but the com-
position of the organic edifice is in all
essential features exactly the same.
The differences are literally only ap-
parent, being due as they are to the
different aspect they present to our ob-
servation.

While we at first apprehend animals
and plants as units, not seeing the in-
dividual cells by which they are com-
posed, we, in the national organisms, on
the contrary, first perceive the cells
themselves—the human _ individuals—
but are unable to grasp the nations as
individually living organisms. On the
one hand we see directly only the so-
cial side, on the other, only the organic.
If there are beings observing the hu-
man community as we see plants and
animals, they would comprehend so-
ciety as a unit composed of different
trades and industries, but not as com-
posed of men, who are the building ma-
terial in these members. If such postu-
lated observers made an invention cor-
responding to our microscope, they

32 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

would be surprised to find the social
organism composed of human individ-
uals, which fact would seem just as
mystical to them as the cells seemed
at first to us. So far as we have de-
rived from experience a knowledge of
organic structure, it reveals itself to us
as an individual composed of more primi-
tive and elementary individuals. These
elementary units of lower kind and or-
der might consequently be called a
spiritual body in a literal sense.

From the point of view of the ele-
mentary constituent, each organism is
a community, a unit of similar, inde-
pendently living, individuals; from the
point of view of the organs and of the
whole, this community itself is a living
individual of higher potency and may
in its turn enter as an elementary or-
ganism in a_ spiritual body of. still
higher power, and so on, in a geometric
series. Man enters into the social or-
ganism, but is himself composed of
cell-organisms, which in turn consist of
more primary units.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 33

Organic structure shows everywhere
the same general qualities, the same
fundamental features. Each higher and
more complex organism repeats in a
more perfect way and in a higher po-
tency exactly the same general forms
of organization as its elementary con-
stituents have shown in their own
sphere. Hence the surprising simi-
larity in the structure of the organisms.
When we know one we know all. This
would, of course, be neither possible nor
conceivable if the spiritual bodies,
which form their corporal structure,
did not possess corresponding similar
fundamental qualities.

In what relationship do these cells
stand to man? Do they enter into his
being as essential or only as incidental
constituents? In other words, does man
act as organ for the cells and the cells
as organs for man only here in time; or,
such existence being for the present
postulated, is their union extended
even to a future existence? This ques-
tion is of extraordinary importance be-

34 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

cause it may entirely change our con-
ception of death. With this question
settled, we should be in possession of a
fact from which we could draw reliable
conclusions, and this fact is briefly as
follows: Within each living being a con-
tinuous renovation takes place, a suc-
cessive replacing of the individuals
which belong to that being’s spiritual
body. Human beings constitute, as al-
ready pointed out, the cells or the spir-
itual body, in an organism of a higher
order, viz., of humanity. In this organ-
ism, an incessant renewal takes place,
as we know, inasmuch as new genera-
tions continuously succeed each other.
The same is the case with man’s own
spiritual body. As the human genera-
tions in the social body, so the cell-
generations in man’s body replace each
other while the man, himself, all the
time, remains the identical individual.
The same holds good in regard to the
cytoplasm, or the lower units that
build up the cells. Everywhere we
meet with the same phenomenon of re-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 35

newal and everywhere with the same
identity of the complex individual. This
latter originates, develops, and passes
away with a lifetime that bears a cer-
tain proportion to its complexity. While
man counts his existence and develop-
ment in years, the evolution of society
is reckoned in hundreds and thousands
of years. The cells in their turn have
a lifetime measured in days, and the
units forming the cytoplasm possess
an individual existence perhaps lasting
but a few minutes or seconds.

The circulation in the body, there-
fore, is not confined to the material
particles but comprises the spiritual
body, the living units, as well. Now,
the question is: What is the relation-
ship between man living in time and
these dying and unborn generations of
cells, that form his body? Can we show
that these living units, this spiritual
body, is as necessary for man in a fu-
ture existence as here in time? Then
death must evidently be something else,
something infinitely more than we have

36 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

hitherto imagined or surmised. The
point is to investigate what is mortal
in man and what is immortal, and on
this problem we will now proceed to
concentrate our whole attention.

CHAPTER III.
Source of Spiritual Knowledge.

HE CRITICALLY thinking public
to-day might be said to have long
ago relinquished the hope of obtaining a
sure and decisive answer to the ques-
tion, whether there is an existence be-
yond the grave. Some people confine
themselves to a faith founded on a
smaller or greater probability for either
conception. We want palpable evi-
dence. To many it even appears neces-
sary to have a look behind the veil of
visible matter in order to satisfy them-
selves as to whether anything exists
within the void. “Nobody has returned
to tell us how it is,’ we are often re-
minded, and this expression clearly
means that complete certainty requires
the testimony of eye-witnesses.
Such a procedure would be at least

38 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

radical if it were possible. But even
if it were, should we then be nearer the
goal? The whole mode of thinking is
naive, but merits attention especially
because it demonstrates how uncertain
the information would be that we
would obtain through this channel. If
somebody returned, little or nothing
would, in all probability, be gained.

In the first place how could we know
that it was the same person that re-
turned? It would, perhaps, be best if
the soul took possession of the same
body. The absence would then be com-
parable to, or essentially analogous
with, the condition of the apparently
dead. But to begin with, we could, for
good reasons, only ascribe a_ small
value to experience gained under such
conditions, and, further, such an ab-
sence would evidently mean no real
separation of soul and body, no real
death, and therefore no real experi-
ence of the very thing under considera-
tion.

But how, and under what conditions,

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 39

would an event of this kind be con-
ceivable?

Should the person in question sud-
denly disappear from our sight and
then just as suddenly reappear among
us? Endowed with his present organs
and senses, which are closely adapted
to earthly conditions, such a person
could see and comprehend only such ob-
jects as differed little or non-essentially
from those in the world where we now
live. He would possibly be able to ob-
serve conditions on other planets in the
universe, but he would be utterly un-
able to comprehend the things of a
world abstracted from the limitations
of planetary life. If such a world ex-
ists, and some one of us were suddenly
removed to it, such a one, amidst all
glories with seeing eyes, would yet see
nothing; with hearing ears, hear noth-
ing; and with feeling senses, feel noth-
ing. In order to see and grasp what
may exist and happen, the observer
himself must have gone through a cor-
responding radical change. The con-

40 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

ditions for the functioning of bodily or-
gans do not exist there. He must de-
velop new and more perfect senses;
higher, spiritual and bodily faculties
which differ from his present ones as
much as the objects of this higher
world differ from the things of earth.

A direct transposition would there-
fore be without value. In order to
make investigations, a radical meta-
morphosis is an indispensable condi-
tion. The soul must be separated from
its earthly clothing and pass through
all the transformations which com-
mence with natural death. In order to
return here, this person must again go
through the same processes in reverse
order. At his re-birth upon earth he
would not, in all probability, differ
from other people. He would know as
much or as little as we do.

But even if we assume the improba-
ble and imagine that this person re-
turned to us with the memory of all he
had lived through and that he tried to
relate his impressions and experiences,

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 41

such a report would be of no use be-
cause it would deal with ideas and con-
ceptions entirely incomprehensible to
us. The explanation of this is that man
is unable to comprehend things and
phenomena which have not acted upon
his present organs. If we take pains
to analyze our boldest and most un-
realistic fancies, we will find that their
substance and ingredients are only
greatly enlarged or reduced images of
an already experienced reality. We
have never possessed that man’s higher
senses, never experienced the things
which those higher faculties are able
to grasp, and we are therefore not in a
position to form any idea whatever
about such a world. His speech would
sound like a foreign language that we
could not possibly ever learn to under-
stand.

Only in case the person in question
could adapt himself to our present way
of thinking and understanding, would
such a revelation be of any importance.
But then again the question arises,

42 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

what confidence could we have in this
man who pretended to possess knowl-
edge about things entirely concealed
from us? We have no means of verify-
ing the information thus received. It
must be taken in good faith, and so the
gates to doubt would again be thrown
open. If someone returned, then, little
or nothing would be gained. In this,
as in other cases, there is no royal road
to truth. Only a painstaking research
will lead to the goal, if indeed it can
ever be attained.

The question is, can investigation in
this direction accomplish anything? If
so, we must at least not entertain or
present any unreasonable demands.
Such an unreasonable demand would
be, for instance, to expect science to
explain the concrete forms which life
would take in a transcendental world,
No man ever has or ever will make
such observations. It is even question-
able whether such knowledge would be
useful or beneficial to us if obtained.
We have enough to occupy us in our

DEATH AND RESURRECTION 43

daily cares and earthly tasks. A com-
plete knowledge of life in a future ex-
istence would probably disturb and dis-
tract us to such a degree that we
would lose interest for our present evo-
lution in this existence. It may be suf-
ficient for us to know whether there be
another life, and if so, whether our
dealings and actions in the present life
are of any importance for that life.
It would, no doubt, suffice if we could
acquire a knowledge with regard to
that life corresponding to what we know
about those distant worlds in space
which we discern with our bodily eyes
and which we further investigate with
our astronomical resources. The fol-
lowing conditions must be fulfilled in
order to make the cases similar: First
of all, such a transcendental world
must exist, and emit rays of light.
Further, we must be equipped with
some special organ, a spiritual eye,
which we could direct towards it and
by which we could make our investiga-
tions here on earth. Do we _ possess

44 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

such a spiritual eye? We answer that
our conscience, our religious intuition
and the eternal and invariable laws of
thinking are just such organs. That an
ideal world exists, radiating a light of
its own, we are able to conclude from
perceptions received through our con-
science and our religious intuition.
Our conscience gives us rigorous di-
rections and commandments, which
sometimes seem to counteract our
earthly happiness and show themselves
detrimental to our present success. If
our life were confined to this world, the
demands of our conscience were not
only useless and injurious but also in
themselves inexplicable. That man, in
his religious intuition, also apprehends
a reality of a different kind from the
material one, appears from the fact that
all peoples, in all times and in all
stages of evolution, have possessed a
religion, as we now do, a certain con-
ception of supernatural things. It may
be granted that a great amount of de-
lusion enters into all religions. Never-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 45

theless, religious errors would be in-
conceivable if man did not apprehend
something supernatural which he
wrongly interpreted. Superstition would
not exist at all, because, as we have al-
ready pointed out, nobody can think,
speak or form any idea whatever of
things that are entirely beyond all ex-
perience. To argue with a person about
such never-apprehended realities, would
be like discussing colors with the blind.
But now it is a fact that apprehensions
of immaterial substance are so common
to man’s consciousness that if we could
find somebody who did not understand
what we said and meant in speaking
about these things, we should be safe
in asserting that such a man was not a
normal person.

But if all men have an immaterial
experience, why do ideas and opinions
differ so about the same experience,
and above all why do some people even
deny its existence? The explanation of
this surprising contradiction may be
understood when we consider that man

46 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

ee is

also possesses a special faculty, his rea-
son, which he must likewise employ.
With his reason, man examines and
studies all his experiences and strives
to bring them into agreement with the
laws of thinking. In other words, he
strives to systematize them into a phil-
osophy. But this is a hard and labori-
ous task. It is difficult as it is to ar-
rive at right conclusions in regard to
the material world to which our senses
are responsive. How much more must
this be the case in regard to the im-
material world. The evolution of our
reason, therefore, is a slowly advancing
historical process, presenting a contin-
uous change in opinions, although, at
the same time, an inner continuity may
be traced, an evolution pointing to-
wards a definite goal.

The harmony which man is striving
to establish between his reason and his
other faculties can obtain only during
comparatively short intervals of time.
Our reason grows in power and keen-
ness; new observations and discoveries

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 47

are almost constantly made; old ideas
and opinions do not, upon closer inves-
tigation, satisfy the more developed de-
mands of our thinking; doubts arise,
and this is a necessary condition for all
theoretical progress. Such a doubt, not
of the immaterial experience which we
all have, but of the way in which this
experience is to be explained, has been
expressed in the theory called material-
ism, which is a widely spread doctrine
in our time. Natural science in itself
is never materialistic in the sense in
which this word is here used, because
natural science does not concern itself
with anything immaterial. But if this
be the case, how is it possible that
science can have anything in common
with materialism which, strictly speak-
ing, is a doctrine about spiritual
things? We answer that life in this
world is joined to and revealed through
the material world. A more complete
knowledge of the nature of matter
ought, therefore, to bring about a de-
cision by and by as to whether the soul

48 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

is a bodily function or a substance dif-
fering from matter. In other words,
natural science must sooner or later ar-
rive at a stage when it either verifies
materialism or gives us tangible and
obvious evidence for the truth of ideal-
ism. It was to such a point that science
arrived in the last century when
Biichner presented his well known
“Force and Matter,” in which he en-
deavors to prove that the soul is an
attribute of the body, religion, immor-
tality and so on being only illusions.
Ifad natural science then finally
found materialism to be the highest ex-
pression of truth? In reality this was
so far from being the case, that natural
science, just at that time, had given en-
tirely new impulses to a higher evolu-
tion of religious conceptions. How then
could Biichner, with natural science as
a basis, deny all religion, and how can
materialism, in our days, live with un-
diminished force and _ vitality? No
other explanation is possible than the
one we have already proposed. When

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 49

it remained unnoticed that natural
science had discovered the inner, spir-
itual body, which is the very kernel of
the belief in the body as an eternal
part of man’s nature, then materialism
was the only possible alternative for all
those who were convinced that the body
contained something imperishable. Ma-
terialism, in our days, springs from the
Same instinct as the death-cultus in
ancient times. It has, therefore, in-
tegrally, something correct and true as
a basis, which not only explains the
rapid and wide expansion of this doc-
trine, but also the fact that the ma-
terialists are continually using data
and evidence which clearly and plainly
disprove their own position, although
they do not perceive it themselves. As
probably no one has treated this theme
in a manner more characteristic of ma-
terialism than Biichner, we will, in the
following study, use his work above
mentioned, which may be said to be
typical for the materialist’s mode of
thinking and reasoning. It will here

50 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

be evident, we hope, that the modern
natural science does not limit but, on
the contrary, widens the boundaries of
existence, as we receive from precisely
this science the palpable demonstra-
tion of the thesis that all life on this
earth has its origin in a higher, imma-
terial world.

CHAPTER IV.
Importance of Spontaneous Generation.

HE MANNER in which this prob-

lem, from a materialistic point of
view, can and must be treated, is not
so complicated as we might imagine.
The central thought in all materialistic
discussions and investigations may be
briefly expressed as follows: Life is a
material force and nothing else. If this
be true, then of course materialism is
the only true religion. Whether God
or some other higher being exists, must
then become a question of little or no
consequence. Man knows in any case
his own origin and fate. The funda-
mental religious doctrines will then
read: In matter alone dwell all the
forces of nature and spirit; in matter
alone can these forces appear and re-
veal themselves; nature knows of no

52 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

supernatural beginning or continua-
tion; it produces everything; consumes
everything; is itself beginning and end,
cradle and grave; by its own power
nature produces man, by its own power
it receives him back again.

Against these and similar statements
there would be no objection, if it could
be shown that life really has its source
in the material world. But if it can be
demonstrated that life never does, nor
ever could by any possibility, originate
in lifeless matter, then it is evident
that we must look for some other
source.

Let it be our object, then, fully to in-
vestigate this problem.

If living beings are produced by ma-
terial forces, experience must verify
the fact that matter really creates life
of itself. In other words, the “to be
or not to be” of materialism is identi-
cal with the old question of generatio
aequivoca or spontanea, i. e., Whether
there exists in nature a spontaneous or
parentless generation of living beings.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 53

Generatio aequivoca covers the entire
ground of the materialists. Here the
doctrine has not only its principal roots
but all of them.

If the materialists lose this foothold,
all their natural science resources are
emptied at once, so important is gen-
eratio spontanea for materialism. Only
under this form and with this sub-
stance can natural science have any-
thing in common with materialism,
which latter, strictly speaking, is only
a religious doctrine, although as such
purely negative. But just for this rea-
son science has for centuries labored
to decide whether this doctrine is false
or true.

The question is, does or does not this
spontaneous generation exist? Scien-
tific research has, in all times, occupied
itself with this question in different
forms and modes.

The farther we go back in time the
more general we find the opinion that
life may arise spontaneously from in-
organic matter. That such an idea

54 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

should prevail, is, of course, easy to un-
derstand. Very little was known about
the propagation of the lower animals
and plants. Especially the very pecu-
liar and complicated development of
the parasites and their passive migra-
tions were practically unknown.

It seemed impossible to understand
whence these beings had come, so the
nearest explanation was resorted to,
that is to say, that wherever they were
found, they had come into existence “of
themselves.” Neither was it so clearly
understood then as now that eggs and
seeds are living beings as well as the
fully developed animals and plants. It
was thought that grain must decay in
the earth, yea, that this was the neces-
sary condition for the growth of the
plant.

Thus people had daily before their
eyes cases where living beings were
generated by substances that seemed
inert and dead.

But with a better and more complete
knowledge of organisms and especially

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 55

of the extremely complicated mode of
propagation characteristic of insects,
doubts as to generatio spontanea increas-
ingly arose. It was, however, at a com-
paratively late time, or in the middle
of the seventeenth century, that Harvey
formulated his famous thesis, “omne
virum ex oro,’ or, as it has been later
said, “omne vivum ex vivo,’ which we
may translate thus: “Life implies life;
all living beings descend from previous
eristing parents,” or negatively, “No liv-
img being is generated from lifeless matter.”
Thus, for the first time, the idea was
pronounced by natural science that life
is a specific force; an independent prin-
ciple, that has not its roots in the ma-
terial world.

As generatio aequivoca leads to ma-
terialism, so Harvey’s formula leads to
pure idealism. That these consequences
should have been seen from the begin-
ning, was so much the less to be ex-
pected since even today no such dis-
covery has been made or could have
been made, simply because no atten-

56 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

tion has been given to it. Hitherto the
only question has been: Is Harvey’s
formula a fact verified by natural
science or not? In this form the battle
has raged for over two centuries, often
with great vehemence, and victory has
leaned now to one side, now to the
other. Finally, it was agreed that
parentless generation was not to be
found among the higher forms of ani-
mals and plants which could be ob-
served with the naked eye. Biichner
himself says it has not hitherto been
discovered that any higher or more de-
veloped organism may be created by
inorganic matter and forces alone.
“Today,” he says, “it seems to be a
general law of the inorganic world that
everything living originates from a
parental embryo or else is directly
segregated from the mother-body.”
But although spontaneous generation
of the higher animals and _ plants
seemed doubtful even to Biichner, noth-
ing was at this time settled in regard
to the origin of the lower organisms.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 57

With the discovery of the microscopi-
eal organic world, a new field and one
more difficult of access was opened for
research. It was now the sudden and
unexpected appearance of bacteria, as-
pergillus and infusoria in places where
their previous existence could not be
imagined, that maintained the belief in
generatio spontanea. But by and by we
learned to understand the propaga-
tion and life also of these low
organisms, their ability to withstand
very high or very low temperatures,
and the facility with which they
are spread by the air and, above all,
their rapid propagation. It commenced
to be more and more evident that even
in the micro-organic world no parent-
less generation exists. The investiga-
tions by Spallanzani, and later by
Schultze, Schwann, von Dusch and
Schréder, were epochal for the estab-
lishing of this fact. Their method, how-
ever, left some room for criticism
which was forcefully pointed out by a

58 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

great number of scientists, especially
by the Englishman Needham.

During all these disputes Harvey’s
formula had, however, won such a
stability and approbation that Biichner
himself under its pressure formulated
his position in the following cautious
words: “Even if recent scientific re-
searches have more and more limited
the ground for spontaneous generation,
it is nevertheless not improbable that
it even now takes place among the lowest
and least developed organisms.”

It may willingly be conceded that
this assertion was in its time by no
means without foundation. But
scarcely could Biichner or anybody
else at that moment imagine how soon
the hour of decision would strike.
Shortly after 1860 the many centuries
old question was finally settled almost
simultaneously by Hoffman and Pas-
teur. Through the latter’s masterly in-
vestigations it was fully demonstrated
that parentless generation does not
exist in the micro-organic world either.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 59

Before Pasteur’s simple and clear evi-
dence, opposition was silenced even so
far that the question has almost en-
tirely ceased to occupy our attention.
Qmne vivum ex vivo appears now to be
an unchallenged truth. Life implies
life.

But although science thus rejected
generatio spontanea, the materialists
nevertheless occupy a very strong po-
sition on the selfsame foundation as
formerly, and continue the defense ap-
parently not without some success.

In spite of Biichner’s real, or per-
haps partly pretended, confidence, he
seems to have had a presentiment of
how weak the support of generatio spon-
tanea was, and we find him therefore
suddenly reasoning as if its cause were
already lost. Thus he makes the en-
tirely sound remark that even if at the
present time all animals and plants
must have parents, yet nothing what-
ever is thereby demonstrated in regard
to the very first appearance of life in
the universe. “If all organic beings

60 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

have parents, how, then, did the first
parents come into existence?” he asks.
“When all outer conditions were favor-
able, might they not have appeared
spontaneously, accidentally or neces-
sarily? Or must the first organisms
have been created through the inter-
vention of some higher power?” Biich-
ner concedes that this question is ex-
tremely complicated, and at first glance
may appear unsolvable without the as-
sumption of some such higher being
who of his own will created the first
organisms as it pleased him and en-
dowed them with the faculty of propa-
gation. “Orthodox scientists point with
satisfaction also to this state of af-
fairs,” says Biichner, “and they remind
us at the same time of the artful and
complicated structure of the world,
and warmed by their conviction they
see therein the wise arrangements of
a higher, personal creator, who built
the world according to his personal in-
tentions.”

We might, according to Biichner,

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 61

dismiss these orthodox thinkers with
the assumption “that the first elements
endowed with the idea of the race have
been present in space from all eter-
nity in formless chaos out of which the
universe slowly consolidated, and acci-
dentally developed after the formation
and cooling of the planet wherever con-
ditions were favorable.” But such fic-
titious reasonings or pretexts, Btichner
assures us, are not necessary. Scien-
tific facts, he says, indicate with great
distinctness that the organic beings on
our earth owe their generation and
propagation to the co-operation of
physical substances and forces alone.
After such an introduction we pro-
ceed with interest to learn about these
scientific facts, but how great is our
disappointment when we _ find that
Biichner here takes up an entirely dif-
ferent subject, which, if it has any con-
nection with the question at issue, goes
to prove just the reverse of what he
intended. The whole long series of
facts to which he now points is, in a

62 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

few words, nothing but Darwin’s theory
in a paleontological light. What Biich-
ner shows by numerous examples from
fossil deposits, is that higher forms of
animals and plants have slowly devel-
oped from lower forms. But what has
this fact to do with generatio spontanea?
That higher forms have developed from
lower forms only confirms the dictum
that life implies life; in other words,
supports Harvey’s law. But it is some-
thing else that Biichner should have
demonstrated. He should instead have
shown us that the first organisms owe
their existence to physical forces alone.
But on this subject he uses only vague
expressions, void of any real signifi-
cance, about the slow cooling off of the
earth; about the length of the geologi-
cal periods, and about favorable condi-
tions; but not a line to explain what
this word “favorable” stands for.
Although Biichner here inadvertently
supports something different from what
he intended, his remark nevertheless
remains true that the present mode of

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 63

propagation proves nothing in regard
to the generation of the first organisms.

Other scientists have gone further
than Biichner and believed themselves
justified in extending Harvey’s law to
cover not only the present time, but all
times. And the problem as to the first
organisms has been answered in vari-
ous ways. Sir William Thomson be-
lieves that such might have come tu
the earth with some meteoric stone,
possibly a moss-clad fragment, from an-
other planet in the universe that had
met with a cosmic catastrophe, and,
further, he has even tried to show that
this hypothesis does not involve any
physical impossibility.

Opinions seem to be divided, then,
as to the validity of Harvey’s law. This
again indicates a deficiency in the law
itself, and it is true that such a de-
ficiency really exists. Harvey’s formula
is not a law; it is, as yet, only an empiri-
cal hypothesis.

It is true that life presupposes life
in all the cases we have been able to

64 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

investigate. These cases are exceed-
ingly numerous because on the disbe-
lief in generatio spontanea rests a whole
modern industry, the art of preserving,
which in millions of cases daily verifies
the hypothesis. But our experience, in
spite of this, does not reach far. If we
continue our observations, who can
guarantee that we would not finally
discover that Biichner, after all, was
right, and one single case would suffice.
The utmost we can attain by observa-
tion is a certain degree of probability,
and if we undertook to prove Harvey’s
hypothesis to be a law in this way, our
experiments must be extended in in-
finitum.

In order to reach certainty only
under present conditions, we must
study the generation of every now liv-
ing organism, animals, plants, bacteria
and the like. If it were found then
that all these beings have had parents
it would still be impossible to draw
absolutely sure conclusions in regard
to previous generations. We should be

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 65

obliged to extend our researches
through antiquity and primeval ages.
If then no gap was to be found in the
series and we perhaps finally traced
life back to the “moss-clad fragment”
from another world, we would again
face the question, how the beings on
that planet, once in time, had come
into existence? Perhaps there the ele-
ments and forces of nature were such
as to create life spontaneously. This
question, of course, could not be de-
cided except through continued obser-
vations, which would be obliged to ex-
tend to every point of an infinite uni-
verse and back to the dawn of time.
First, then, we should know that Har-
vey’s hypothesis was a law, valid with-
out limitations in the past—but also
only in the past—and valid with one
single exception, namely, the very first
organism, of which we presently shall
speak. In regard to the law’s validity
in the future, we should no doubt pos-
sess a knowledge that approached cer-
tainty, but it could not be called abso-

66 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

lutely sure. Because, even granted
that no living being hitherto was with-
out parents, it is not logically impossi-
ble that sometime in the future, lifeless
matter might undertake to create or-
ganisms. To obtain certainty we must
continue our observations until the end
of time.

Sa e <r = : pe Pa

¥ os Se

ie

=

CHAPTER V.

The Materialistic Demonstration of
Generatio Spontanea.

HIS whole method is consequently

unsatisfactory. With Harvey’s law
proved in the empirical way, the only
way hitherto tried, we are still unable
to decide how the first organism came
into existence, and this is probably
after all the most important question.
Because, as Biichner rightly points out:
“Tf life has a supernatural beginning, it
has also a supernatural subsequent ex-
istence.” Even if we were observing
with our own eyes the creation of the
first organism we would not be able to
say whether it were the result of nat-
ural or supernatural forces. The mo-
ment our study commenced, the mystic
act of creation would already have
taken place, an act which lies beyond

68 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

the boundaries of research, and which
we never shall be able to penetrate,
however minute or comprehensive our
observations. An _ entirely different
method is here necessary. Our en-
deavor must be to find the innermost
cause of the whole series of generations
evolving throughout the ages. In
other words, we must derive Harvey’s
law from the inner nature of matter
itself, show that this matter has such
qualities that it cannot, never could,
and never will, be able to produce
a single living being. Only then shall
we have demonstrated that Harvey’s
formula is a universal, natural law,
and then it will be not only our right
but our duty to draw its logical con-
sequences.

Is it possible to show that matter
possesses such qualities? In regard to
the matter of which our earth is com-
posed we are at least able to closely in-
vestigate its qualities. But our earth
is only an insignificant point in the
universe and we must search the en-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 69

tire cosmos. Is not this impossible?
We answer that in many ways, espe-
cially through the spectral analysis, we
already know that nature’s elements
everywhere are the same and that they
everywhere have the same qualities.
If Harvey’s law can be deduced from
the matter we are able to investigate,
we have at the same time shown its
validity for the whole of the universe
without limitations as to time and
space; because then we may apply in
regard to organic substance Biichner’s
true remark as to the products of na-
ture in times past. “The natural
forces,” he says, “that governed the
universe formerly are the same as those
whose results we now witness every
day and moment. Earth’s past time is
to our thought nothing but an unroll-
ing of its present. The geologists,
guided by their knowledge of nature
and its present laws, have been able
with increasing accuracy to trace back
evolution to the most distant ages.
Meanwhile it has been established that

70 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

everywhere and during all time only
those elements and forces have been
active which surround us today. No-
where has a point been found where
research had to be thrown overboard
and an interference of unknown forces
substituted; and nowhere and never
will this happen. Everywhere the same
laws were in force and the same matter
was found. Historical research has
demonstrated that past and present are
subject to the same evolution, rest on
the same basis.” And different it could
not be, reasons Biichner, since life
knows no exceptions, does not shirk
any inorganic forces, but is itself only
the result of the activity of these forces.

To obtain a definite understanding
of the origin of life it is therefore suffi-
cient to examine the origin of organic
matter in our days, and for such an
analysis there is at least no lack of
material. Wherever a tree or a grass
blade grows or a seed sprouts there
dead substance is transformed into liv-
ing; wherever an animal or a plant is

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 71

decaying, there organic matter is again
turned into inorganic.

The result obtained through such in-
vestigations already made, stood in di-
rect opposition to the immediate ob-
servations. Although Harvey’s formula
finally was accepted, it was neverthe-
less taught that no specific life-force
exists.

This contradiction was never fully
understood or emphasized during the
last century, and the reason was that
the materialistic tendency was so pre-
dominant that nobody noticed that the
question of life-force is the innermost
main point, around which not only gen-
eratio spontanea and omne vivum er vivo,
but also their consequences, material-
ism and idealism, are centered.

But in order to deny life-force as an
independent principle, some scientific
facts to build upon were necessary and
these were not lacking.

Before we state these facts we will
in a few words describe the historical
situation.

72 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

According to the previously prevail-
ing vitalistic doctrine a specific life-
force existed, present and active in all
organic processes. The conceptions in
regard to these processes were, how-
ever, very dim, and the reason was that
the problem of combustion had not yet
been solved.

This problem may be said to be the
very key to the chemical explanation
of an organism. The ancient mystery
of fire was first solved by Lavoisier
after Scheele and Priestly had discov-
ered oxygen. The solution of this com-
plicated question not only became the
starting point for a new and rapid
evolution of chemistry, it also almost
immediately threw a clear light on the
innermost recesses of the organism.

The elementary constituents of the
organism and their origin were known
before, and it now became also possible
to explain the great store of energy
that the living being possesses. To as-
sume a specific life-force seemed super-
fluous. Life-force, from having been the

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 73

indispensable explanation of organic
phenomena, commenced more and more
to be regarded as a “back-way for
ignorance,” one “of those many side
doors that dull heads employ when
they find it too laborious to think about
something that they do not under-
stand.”

It was natural that the materialists
would eagerly embrace these ideas.
From the few words with which Biich-
ner introduces his chapter about life-
force, we obtain a clear insight into the
opinions that are held on this subject
in the world of natural science. “The
mystic notions,” says Biichner, “that
have confused the philosophy of science
were invented by a time possessing but
a slight knowledge of nature. To these
notions, which have been thrown over-
board by a later exact scientific re-
search, belongs first of all the so-called
life-force. Scarcely has there ever ex-
isted an hypothesis more detrimental
to the cause of science than this singu-
lar organic force presented in contradis-

74 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

tinction to the inorganic forces, gravity,
affinity, light, electricity, magnetism,
etc. If science were forced to ac-
knowledge such an hypothesis, all we
have said about the immutability of
the natural laws and of the mechanical
order of the universe would collapse,
and we would be forced to admit that
a higher hand interferes in the course
of nature, dictating exceptional laws
that defy all calculations. A break
would be found in the natural structure
of the world, science would despair, and
all physical and psychical research
cease. Fortunately science has not been
obliged to yield to the irrational pres-
sure of the dynamists, but, on the con-
trary, has won everywhere a splendid
victory; it has lately gathered such a
mass of self-evident facts to its support
that life-force nowadays wanders an
empty shadow along the boundaries of
natural science. All those who have
made a closer study of any of the
branches of science that deal at all
with the organic world, agree, almost

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 75

to a man, in the condemnation of life-
force, and the very word is so detested
by science that it is always purposely
avoided.”

We may now let Biichner present the
real, scientific evidence why life-force
must be charged to the ignorance of
a time when knowledge of nature was
but slight. In this way the reader will
perhaps obtain a more direct and at
the same time an historic view of the
materialistic mode of thinking.

Above all, says Biichner, it is the
province of chemistry to show that the
elements of matter are everywhere the
same in the inorganic as well as in the
organic world, and that life substance
is unable to present one single atom
not found in inorganic nature and there-
fore not partaking in the general flux
(Stoffwechsel) of matter. Chemistry has
decomposed organic bodies into their
elements exactly as it did before with
the inorganic.

All known inorganic forces act iden-
tically with respect to living as to dead

76 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

nature. We have seen that forces are
nothing but qualities and motions of
the smallest particles of matter, the
atoms, with which these forces are in-
variably and inseparably conjoined. An
atom therefore under all circum-
stances can only perform the same
work, develop the same forces, produce
the same effects, whether it belongs for
the moment to an organic or to an in-
organic composition. Respiration, di-
gestion, the process of growing and
segregation are all chemical reactions.
Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen
are composed and decomposed within
the organic body in accordance with
the same laws that govern them out-
side.

We have also learned more perfectly
how nourishment is transformed into
organic tissues, and we know that
through different channels it leaves the
body in precisely the same quantity as
it entered, partly unmodified and partly
in other forms and compositions. No
one atom has meanwhile been lost or

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 77

become another. Digestion is a purely
chemical process. The stomach of an
animal may well be compared to a
chemical retort, where the substances
there mixed are decomposed and com-
posed exactly according to the general
laws of chemical affinity.

These facts, which may be multiplied
ad infinitum, enable us to understand
that the difference between organic and
inorganic is non-essential, and _ that
therefore every living being may be
considered a chemical laboratory,
whence we arrive at the following re-
sult:

Because daily experience teaches us that
all organisms consist of the same atoms as
does inorganic nature, although in differ-
ent compositions, therefore no specific or-
ganic force, no life-force, can exist. This
latter 1s not a principle, but a result.
When organic substance assimilates in-
organic and brings it into its own char-
acteristic condition, this is not done
through a specific force, but through a
kind of infection, whereby the molec-

78 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

ular conditions in the organic sub-
stance are transferred to the inorganic.

But not only does organic matter
consist of the same elements that are
to be found in inorganic nature, but
the organism as a whole is nothing but
a bodily mechanism not differing from
other machines except in its more com-
plicated construction. Water, says
Biichner, which must be considered as
the foremost and most important part
in all organic beings, and without
which all animal and plant life were
impossible, water penetrates, flows and
sinks according to the laws of gravity,
not differing by the breadth of a hair
in its action within and without the or-
ganism. The circulation of the blood
is as mechanical as we could wish, and
the anatomic contrivance that causes
it bears a surprising likeness to me-
chanical apparatus made by man’s
hand. The heart is provided with
valves just as a steam engine; the valve
movements produce audible sounds.
The rise of the blood from the lower

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 79

parts of the body to the heart against
gravity can only be made possible by a
mechanical arrangement. The bowels
convey their content mechanically; me-
chanically the muscle movements take
place, and mechanical motility charac-
terizes men and animals. The human
eye obeys the same laws as a camera
obscura and the ear catches the sound
Waves in same way as does any other
vault, and so on.

Science, therefore, entertains no
doubt that the living organism is a
machine as well as the steam engine,
i. e., a system where chemical affinity
produces heat, electricity and muscular
energy.

Now, are these facts, pointed out by
Biichner, true and correct? Undoubt-
edly they are in all essential respects
eternal truths, and we may add that
they are just as important foundations
for idealism as the materialists have
claimed them to be for their opinion.
But before we take up this subject let

80 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

us see how the materialists derive their
philosophy from the facts mentioned.

There are many other objects in this
world, of which we might almost ver-
bally repeat what Biichner says about
organic matter; for instance, windows,
doors, locks, bricks, houses, etc. In
these objects also there is not one atom
to be found which was not present in
the raw material of which they were
made. But does the raw material it-
self produce these things? So Biichner
reasons. He says: “Because all organic
matter consists of inorganic raw material,
therefore the raw materia, itself, has made
the organic matter. Because the organism
is essentially like a steam engine, the
building material itself has made the or-
ganism.”

This headlong way of reasoning and
concluding is not characteristic of
Biichner alone, but applies equally to
the whole materialistic school during
the past century.

We have not said that inorganic raw
material is unable to produce organic

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 81

substance spontaneously, which sub-
stance later upbuilds the organism, but
for the present this remains an open
question to which as yet the material-
ists have not given an answer. But
before we enter the discussion of this
extremely important question, we will
in this connection mention another dis-
covery of natural science which seems
exactly to support the materialistic
trend of thought, a fact, therefore, that
crowns, so to speak, their whole philos-
ophy.

Up to the year 1828 it was thought
that organic substance could be created
only by the force of life. But Wo6hler
unexpectedly succeeded in producing or-
ganic compositions from inorganic sub-
stances, a discovery which was _ fol-
lowed by a series of others in the same
direction. It is with evident satisfac-
tion that Biichner calls our attention to
these facts.

In order to show the necessity for
assuming a life-force, he says, people
have reminded the chemists that they

82 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

are unable to produce organic composi-
tions, that is, the peculiar grouping of
the elements into those ternary and
quaternary compounds which owe their
existence to an organic being, en-
dowed with life and life-force, and they
have added the amusing remark that
the chemists must produce living be-
ings in their retorts—make men—if
there be no life-force and if life be only
the result of chemical processes. The
chemists have not been at a loss for
an answer. They have made dextrose,
several organic acids and bases, and
recently they have also succeeded in
producing hydrates of carbon. Evolu-
tion has proceeded rapidly in this di-
rection, and today alcohol and precious
perfumes are made from coal, candles
from slate, Berlin blue, taurin and in-
numerable other bodies—formerly be-
lieved to be exclusively of animal or
plant origin—from the simple material
that inorganic nature offers us.

The materialists have a custom of
not considering themselves under obli-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 83

gation to do more than point to some
scientific facts, without investigating
whether these facts support their spec-
ulations or not. Faithful to this cus-
tom, Biichner stops just where his own
researches should have commenced.
Biichner has not written a textbook on
physics or chemistry. He has under-
taken the extremely serious task of in-
vestigating whether modern natural
science has produced results which
show that nothing but matter and its
forces, and consequently no soul, no
eternal life, etc., exist. Our first de-
mand of such an analysis would be, to
put it moderately, that the facts cited
really prove what they are put forward
to prove. But to this demand neither
Biichner nor his followers pay any at-
tention. Biichner might, for instance,
in regard to the facts last mentioned,
have taken the following questions as
the starting point for his investigations:

It is true that the chemists have pro-
duced artificially certain organic com-
pounds of inorganic elements, and they

84 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

will probably go much further in this
direction. But is this really something
to be wondered at, when all organic
substance is composed of inorganic ele-
ments which, wherever they exist, pos-
sess the same qualities? The question
is how this organic substance is formed.
Does it appear spontaneously in the
chemist’s laboratory while he himself
stands idle, observing the phenomenon,
or must he interfere, guide and plan
the activity of the chemical forces in
order to obtain these artificial com-
pounds? Why should not something
similar take place in the laboratory of
inorganic nature? There is, as far as
our experience goes, no organic sub-
stance to be found due to the spontane-
ous action of known natural laws.
What is the reason of this? How is
organic matter formed in nature? And,
further, is there no difference between
the organic matter produced by the
chemists and that present in living na-
ture? And if this difference proves to
be that the former is not organized

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 85

while the latter always is, why cannot
the chemists produce organized matter?
If Biichner had proposed these or
similar questions and taken time to
think them over, he would have ob-
tained a different result, but instead he
breaks off his argumentation just where
it should have commenced.
Consequently the fault in the ma-
terialists’ process of thinking does not
lie in the facts used as foundation for
their argument. The premises and the
beginning are correct. Just because or-
ganic matter consists of the same ele-
ments as inorganic, just for this reason
natural science can decide whether the
physical laws are able spontaneously
to produce such matter and such ma-
chines. The materialists have stopped
after providing the introduction; the
continuation and the end are lacking.
They have overlooked the whole series
of scientific facts that stand in neces-
sary correlation to the starting point.
We have therefore only to resume the
interrupted demonstration and_ will

86 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

then endeavor to make the latter part

as simple and comprehensible as Biich-
ner made the former.

CHAPTER VI.
How Is Organic Matter Produced?

HE ESSENTIAL in matter is

force. Strictly speaking, we com-
prehend nothing but forces. Every body
manifests itself as resistance necessary
to overcome if we wish to remove it
from its place.

What remains of the body if we
think of it as deprived of this counter
force? At least nothing remains that
we can touch or by which we may ob-
tain palpable evidence of its existence.
Neither does there remain anything
that we can see, as seeing depends upon
resistance to light, reflection of the
ether-waves. If the mountain exerted
no resistance we would pass through
it without feeling or seeing anything
whatever.

True, there is perhaps matter—for in-
stance, the ether—which we neither see

88 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

nor feel, but which still exists. This
matter is then qualified by some other
form of energy by which it manifests
itself. Thus we comprebend ether as
light, heat and colors, all forces, as well
as gravity, electricity, etc.

Already from these suggestions it is
evident that force is the only substan-
tial thing in the material world. With-
out force, matter is nothing that may
be comprehended either by the senses
or by the reason. What we call matter
is nothing but different kinds of en-
ergy.* We have space-occupying en-
ergy, chemical, electrical, mechanical
forms of energy, and so forth.

How are these forms of energy re-
lated to each other? Between forms
so different as tones and light, colors
and mechanical work, there is at least

*The latest researches in regard to the newly dis-
covered corpuscles show that these ‘‘bodies’’ have a
mass proportional to the square of their velocity, thus
forcing us to conclude that they at rest have no mass.
Perhaps, therefore, the ancient dualistic world of mat-
ter and force is merging into a larger unity where
life directs force to serve its specific purposes.—Trans-
lator’s note.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 89

no connection apparent to external ob-
servation.

For a long time it was also believed
that no such relation existed. It was
only after 1840 that several scientists
made the startling discovery almost
simultaneously that physical forces may
be transformed one into another. It
proved possible to transform a certain
quantity of heat into an equal quantity
of mechanical energy, which again
might be turned into equivalent quan-
tities of electricity, light, chemical en-
ergy, etc. It was further found that
these processes might be undertaken in
the reverse order, so that the original
form of energy could be restored in un-
changed quantity and with unmodified
qualities. Nothing was lost and noth-
ing was added.

Recent science is founded entirely on
these facts, which later generations
probably will consider as the greatest
of all the discoveries of the last cen-
tury.

This law of the permanence and the

90 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

mutability of force is of immediate im-
portance to materialism. As long as it
was thought that the forces of nature
were separate and different from each
other, it was easy to imagine that the
more inaccessible or mystic forms stood
nearer life, yea, were life itself. The
absurdity of such an idea is now obvi-
ous, Since it has been shown that the
physical forces may be transformed
into one another and therefore are not
intrinsically separate, but fundamen-
tally the same force, acting differently
under different conditions. Now, if life
were a form of material energy, any
form of physical force might be trans-
formed into life and consciousness, into
spiritual and moral forces. Life and
consciousness might then be artificially
produced, and we would rack our
brains in order to find the mechanical
equivalent of the intellect, try to meas-
ure it in amperes and volts, etc. But
nothing of this kind is done, simply he-
cause it is impossible, as presently we
shall see. Life cannot be transformed

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 91

into any form of material energy, and, vice
versa, no form of material energy can be
transformed into life. Life and physical
force are, as to nature and substance,
essentially different principles.

Although the law just referred to
about the permanence and the muta-
bility of physical forces thus seems
rather to disprove materialism, it was
not for this reason chiefly that we have
related it. Our purpose is to find a
basis in this fact from which the funda.
mental contrariety between organic and
inorganic matter most easily may be
explained, and thereafter to enter into
this differentiation just as far as is nec-
essary to decide the main point as to
whether one form of matter can spon-
taneously produce another.

We recollect that the materialists en-
deavored to make the difference be-
tween organic and inorganic com-
pounds as slight as possible. The for-
mer consisted of exactly the same ele-
ments as the latter and these elements

92 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

had exactly the same qualities in one
compound as in another.

However true this may be, is not
meat nevertheless something different
from limestone, although limestone may
easily be found that contains nearly
all the elements present in the meat?
In starch, sugar, fat, etc., precisely the
same elements enter as in water and
carbonic acid, but no materialist denies
that there are important differences be-
tween these two groups of substances.

What is it, then, that essentially
separates the two classes of matter
(nothing but the most essential fac-
tors concerns us here)? If we ask this
question of chemistry, we are answered
that this quality is combustibility. Or-
ganic matter is combustible; inorganic
is not.

But why should organic matter be
combustible? Because fuel is as neces-
sary to the organism as to the steam
engine. To both their physical source
of power is heat, and even the engine
receives it through the combustion of

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 93

organic substances. All the fuel that
is generally used is of organic origin,
although we seldom think of this fact.

But why can we not fire an engine
with inorganic products? Because these
cannot burn, and the reason again is,
that they are already burned. If this
be true, they must once have been fuel
themselves, must once have been in a
burning state. How do we know this?
Because the inorganic world consists
almost entirely of chemical compounds
that are only formed by combustion,
when this word is used in its widest
sense.

If these suggestions are correct, or-
ganic matter is to inorganic as fuel to
the products of combustion. In the in-
organic world the latter have been
transformed to fuel which in a renewed
combustion reproduces the same prod-
ucts as those of which it once was
formed.

If this be the case our problem may
be thus formulated: Can inorganic
products of combustion again form

94 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

combustibles spontaneously? Can car-
bonic acid or water through the spon-
taneous activity of physical forces be
transformed into sugar, starch, fat,
etc.?

In order to decide if this be possible
we must first know what combustion is,
and we will therefore briefly explain
what this term means.

Combustion is a chemical process, it
is said, and this definition may be true,
although it may also be misleading.
In daily speech combustion is generally
identified with the phenomena of light
and the generation of heat, which we
immediately observe, but chemical proc-
esses can neither be seen nor felt, be-
cause they take place in the inner
world of matter which hitherto has
proved inaccessible to human observa-
tion. Yea, chemical processes are so
foreign to the experiences of our senses
that chemistry, the science of these
processes, is entirely founded on the
deductions of our reason. The prem-
ises that our reason uses for its con-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 95

clusions belong to the physical world
which is the outer side of matter that
faces us. The phenomena that accom-
pany combustion belong to this world
and are, therefore, strictly speaking,
not chemical but physical phenomena.
But even if these phenomena of light
and heat, of which the latter especially
interests us here, belong to the world
comprehensible to our senses, they
must nevertheless be intimately con-
nected with the inner chemical process
because heat is developed in nearly
every chemical reaction. Heat is not
created from nothing; there must be
a cause for this force, and the cause
cannot be anything but the chemical
energy which in the chemical process
is transformed into heat. In few
words: What we generally term com-
bustion cannot be identical with the
actual chemical process. The light and
the heat must, on the contrary, be con-
sidered as the external results of the
chemical process, its physical effect.
By a close study of this physical

96 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

effect we have also been able to explain
what happens within matter itself. As
it is necessary to understand this in
order to comprehend how heat is de-
veloped, we will endeavor shortly to
outline the present scientific conception
of the chemical process called combus-
tion.

From the qualities of matter we have
concluded that the bodies we see are
composed of extremely tiny particles
called molecules, which, however, are
so small that with our optical re-
sources we never shall be able to ob-
serve them. Even the smallest particle
of dust visible to the eye must be con-
sidered as containing an enormous
number of them. With molecules, how-
ever, we have not reached the limit
of the divisibility of matter. They may
themselves be divided by chemical
forces into smaller material units
called atoms, and these latter are
therefore the building stones of which
matter is ultimately composed. Now
neither the atoms within the molecule,

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. oe

nor the molecules within the visible
body, are packed closely together.
They are separated by comparatively
great spaces. But if these building
stones are separated from each other
we might expect that they would be-
have like the grains in a sand heap.

How can material bodies then be
solid, hard, tough, etc.? The reason is
that the spacing in question is regu-
lated by other forces of essentially
different kind. We have attracting as
well as repelling forces, such as tend
to increase as well as to reduce the
distances between the particles.

We shall first consider the attract-
ing forces, and these are called co-
hesion and adhesion when exerted be-
tween molecules. The mutual attrac-
tion between the atoms within the
molecules has been named affinity or
chemical energy.

Turning again to the form of energy
acting in the opposite direction, we
find just the force we are in search

98 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

of—teat, wuich is the physical source
of energy of all living beings.

That heat increases the distances be-
tween molecules is already evident
from the fact that all bodies increase
in volume when heated, a process which
may be continued by further supply of
heat until the solid becomes a fluid,
and the fiuid a gas.

In solid bodies the attracting forces
have predominance. The molecules are
arranged with definite spacing and in
definite positions so that the body as-
sumes a certain external shape. If
such a body is exposed to heat the
molecules are removed from each other
and the cohesion becomes correspond-
ingly feebler. Finally a point is reached
when the molecules are so far unfet-
tered that they are at liberty to move
with respect to each other. The solid
has then become a fluid and may
through continued heating enter the
gaseous state. The cohesion is then
entirely conquered so that the mole-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 99

cules move freely in all directions in-
dependent of each other.

Similarly, heat influences the atoms
of which the molecules are composed.
Even chemical attraction gives way to
heat so that all bodies at sufficient
temperature are decomposed into free
atoms or elementary constituents.

We have seen that heat performs
mechanical work in so far as it sep-
arates masses from each other. But
heat not only performs this work but
is the work itself, or is identical with
the movement of these particles.

Consequently a certain quantity of
mechanical work is equivalent to a
certain quantity of heat and vice versa,
and it is this transformation from one
form of energy into another that takes
place during a chemical reaction. The
mechanical energy of the atoms is here
converted into heat which may again
be used for the other forms of mechan-
ical activity. Through the chemical re-
action that heat is regained which pre-
viously was utilized in separating the

100 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

atoms or sustaining their movement,
and this explains why heat is devel-
oped in chemical processes. If this de-
velopment of heat is increased to a
certain point, or, which is the same, if
the reaction takes place with greater
violence, the common phenomena of
fire and light appear. But even with-
out these, every chemical process may
be called combustion in a wider sense,
that is, if we consider the production
of heat as the characteristic external
effect of the chemical force.

At sufficiently high temperature,
then, all matter must be in an incan-
descent gaseous state, and vice versa at
a low temperature it is a solid mass.

With these short notes we have also
outlined the history of our own earth.
The same gaseous state in which our
sun is at present belonged once to the
earth according to science of today.
During enormous periods of time the
incandescent matter of the earth radi-
ated light and heat into the cold uni-
verse. Finally so much heat was lost

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 101

that chemical attraction could assert
itself. Regarded as a sun, the earth
was then dying and it entered upon the
chemical era. During this state the
elements combined with each other ac-
cording to general chemical laws into
such compounds as were the necessary
outcome of their atomic weights,
valence, and positive or negative quali-
ties. In this connection it is sufficient
to point out that these processes must
go on incessantly until compounds have
been formed in which the chemical
forces have reached equilibrium and
rest. In the case of our planet these
products formed the solid crust of the
earth, the primeval rock, the mineral
world, further water and finally air,
the oxygen and nitrogen of which may
be considered as remains of the ele-
ments. Furthermore, according to a
law known to science as that “of the
least resistance,” chemical reactions
proceed from compounds which have
more energy to such as_ have less,
wherefore it follows that each product

102 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

Was as poor in energy as the conditions
at the time permitted.

If we now especially give our atten-
tion to the combustion taking place in
chemical processes, this era may also
be called the period of combustion or
the general world-fire, names which are
exact even if we use combustion in the
common, limited sense of oxidation.
Oxygen is considered to constitute
about one-half of the solid crust of the
earth, and when to this quantitative
preponderance is added its extraordi-
narily strong affinity to other elements,
these must with necessity burn into
oxides just as has been the case.

It is therefore with the products of
combustion, that is to say, the ashes and
the remains from a general colossal
world-fire, that the earth enters its
planetary state, at which stage it be-
comes suitable for the creation and
evolution of living beings. It is from
burnt substances that the organisms
must form the combustible matter that
constitutes their material clothing.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 108

How can this be done? In the only
possible way; that is, by again decom- .
posing the products of combustion into
their elements and bringing them into
such combinations that a new combus-
tion may take place. Are the products
of combustion able to perform this
transformation spontaneously? They
have just lost the fund of energy that
could have made them combustible and
this lost heat must again be stored up
and therefore taken from some other
source, as no heat can be created from
nothing.

When the chemical forces had once
reached equilibrium and rest, the earth
might then be compared to an immense
corpse thrown into space and which
must remain in the same state eter-
nally, or until it met with a cosmic ca-
tastrophe. Not the slightest movement
or variation could now take place spon-
taneously on its surface. If a change
happened it must have had its cause in
another source of power, and two such
sources existed. One was the earth’s

104 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

own internal heat, and the other the
sun, and we must therefore consider if
either of these, or both together could
produce combustible organic substance.

In regard first to the earth’s internal
heat we might immediately eliminate
this source of energy, as it has no
direct connection whatever with the
origin of organic matter, an assertion
so commonly agreed upon that we need
not dwell further upon it.

Infinitely more important is the sun,
which has been and is the cause of
most of the changes taking place on
the earth’s surface after its cooling off.
The sun causes the circulation of the
air and water and thereby the whole
series of disintegration and decay, the
history of which is written with indeli-
ble letters in our geological sediments
and formations. These formations tell
us that new oceans and continents, new
minerals and rocks have successively
been formed, but nowhere that organic
substances were ever built up spon-
taneously under the sun’s influence.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 105

The processes of decay, on the con-
trary, proceed in the entirely opposite
direction.

Through them nothing is formed but
compounds poorer in energy than be-
fore. In decaying, the products of com-
bustion absorb, if possible, more oxy-
gen, become more burnt or oxidized, so
that this whole process may be called
an after-burning, a more thorough com-
bustion of the remnants from the first
general world-fire.

The spontaneous activity of nature’s
forces, then, go in a direction just op-
posite to the one necessary for the pro-
duction of organic substances. And
anything else was not to be expected.
The products of combustion resemble
fallen weights, slack bow-strings, water
below the fall, etc., whereas combusti-
ble organic matter might be compared
to lifted weights, set bow-strings, water
above the fall, etc. If matter has once
fallen from a higher to a lower level of
energy it can never spontaneously re-
turn, especially as it has just lost the

106 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

necessary store of energy. As impos-
sible as it is for the swift current to
turn its course, or for the fallen weight
to lift itself or for the discharged bow-
string to set itself again, so impossible
is it for the products of combustion
spontaneously to turn into combustible
substances.

—————— eee rman

CHAPTER VII.
Organic Matter as a Product of Art.

ROM the previous chapter we now
draw the extremely important con-
clusion that all organic matter is a
product of art, that is, a product which
the forces of nature cannot produce.
Spontaneously these forces only create
natural products. Products of art be-
long to an entirely different category;
they owe their existence to a foreign
interference in the natural order of the
world and have a cause that does not
fall within the limits of a mere me-
chanical causality. But before we dis-
cuss this subject, let us first thoroughly
understand what we mean by saying
that organic matter is a product of art.
Materialists have shown that the
organism closely resembles a steam en-
gine, but they have neglected to point

108 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

out that the similarity extends also to
the mode in which they are produced.
Everybody is probably convinced that
the forces of nature have never made
and never will make a steam engine.
If the same might be said in regard to
the machines which we call organisms,
then materialism would be disproved.
But why, to begin with, cannot the
forces of nature build steam engines?
We must be able to present the rea-
sons for this statement.

If we first consider the building ma-
terial, we find this in the factories in
the form of plates, bars and ingots of
iron, copper, lead, tin, etc. Where do
these metals come from? Nowhere in
nature is such material found.*

Humanity had inhabited the earth
thousands of years without having an

*Chemists understand that the so-called native iron,
found, for instance, in Greenland, forms no real
exception more than the chemical reactions that ab-
sorb heat form exceptions to the general law that
chemical processes set heat free, because if the
necessary simultaneous reactions are taken into ac-
count, all the reactions as a whole show a surplus of
heat.—Translator’s note,

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 109

idea of the existence of such substances
as iron, copper, lead, etc. The metals
are chemical ingredients in our min-
erals and from these minerals they are
extracted by complicated, artificial proc-
esses. The ore is often lifted out of
the depths of the mountains; it goes
through a series of treatments which
the forces of nature cannot spontane-
ously undertake. We will here give
only a moment’s attention to the proc-
ess of reduction, or the separation of
the metal from its natural compounds.
This, as we know, is done in our blast
furnaces, where the iron is reduced
through the presence of coal and other
suitable substances in certain propor-
tions. If we now remember that the
heat in our furnaces often reaches
about 2000° Centigrade we see at once
that the sun may shine on our moun-
tains throughout eternity without ever
producing the temperature necessary
for the reduction.

But the engine is not yet completed.
The plates must be first rolled and

110 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

shaped, the ingots must be melted and
cast into frames, shafts, bearings, etc.;
in short, the raw material must be
formed into all those numerous parts
of which the machine is composed.
The engine is from beginning to end a
product of art.

There is especially one circumstance
pertaining to all these transformations
that merits a closer attention. If we
remember that all the material used in
a product of art is taken from nature,
and besides that, all the processes in
making and shaping the raw material
are carried out through the employ-
ment of natural laws, we might still
ask the question, why physical forces
should not enter spontaneously into the
necessary artificial combinations for
producing this result. Until we have
pointed out the quality in matter which
prevents this, we have not completely
demonstrated the inability of natural
forces to build an engine spontane-
ously.

This quality has been named vis

i

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 111

mertiae, the inertia of matter, one of
the most important natural laws that
exist. What does this law teach us?
It says that matter cannot itself change
its condition. If a body is in motion it
can never come to rest unless another
force at least equal to the primary op-
poses the motion. If it be at rest, it
cannot impart motion unto itself; en-
ergy, applied from without, is neces-
sary. Inertia keeps the earth moving
around the sun; a stone thrown into
the air would proceed everlastingly
with its initial velocity if the attrac-
tion of the earth did not interfere.

Because of this quality, then, matter
remains in its natural equilibrium. An
engine would never be built because
the ore would stay in the mountains
and the metals forever remain in their
compounds. Every product of art re-
quires a foreign interference in the ma-
terial world; matter, in consequence
of its inertia, presents a determined
and often very energetic resistance to
such an intervention.

112 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

Exactly the same reasons that pre-
vent natural forces from building a
steam engine, cause also their inability
to produce an organism, and this in a
much higher degree because the organ-
ism is in a still fuller sense a product
of art. The organic building material,
instead of being plates and ingots of
iron, copper, lead, etc., consists of car-
bon, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus,
chlorin, potassium, sodium, magnesia,
etc., or both metals and metalloids of
which the former, on account of their
negative, and the latter because of their
positive qualities cannot exist in a free
state. From the minerals found in
nature these substances must be ex-
tracted for organic purposes. The ele-
ments are different, but otherwise we
may verbally repeat in regard to or-
ganic substance what has been previ-
ously said about the steam engine.

It is the creation of organic matter
by art that the materialists have neg-
lected to take into account. Therefore
they look upon the organism just as a

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 113

new race, suddenly succeeding human-
ity, would view our steam engines.
These machines would certainly appear
very mysterious to the earth’s new in-
habitants. But a growing civilization
would undoubtedly discover that all the
material used in the engine is taken
from ores to be found in nature. If now
somebody would draw the conclusion
that these ores themselves had made
the engine he would reason as do the
materialists today in regard to the or-
ganism. The parallel does not halt in
any respect, but it is sufficient in this
connection to call attention only to one
or two of the more important com-
ponents of the organism.

Organic matter, or combustible sub-
stance, consists of carbon and hydro-
gen which in an organism are com-
parable to the iron in a steam engine.
But nowhere in nature is free hydrogen
or free inorganic carbon to be found.
The carbon was burned to carbonic
acid in earth’s first combustion, and
similarly the hydrogen was burned to

114 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

water long before the conditions for
organic life existed on the earth.

From these original products of com-
bustion, burnable organic matter is
formed by decomposition of carbonic
acid and water into their elements, car-
bon and hydrogen, and by their sub-
sequent combination through feebler
chemical forces into sugar, starch, etc.,
which substances through a new com-
bustion are again turned into carbonic
acid and water. The natural forces
cannot spontaneously undertake these
transformations that only take place
because of artificial arrangements. The
processes of nature go in the entirely
opposite direction, as we have seen.

As a matter of fact, the reduction of
carbonic acid and water is done
through the direct assistance of liv-
ing beings. From the sun they take
their power. But how ineffective the
sun would be, left to itself, is seen
already by the fact that carbonic acid
is disintegrated at a temperature of
1300° C. and water only at 1500’.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 115

Products of art must be resorted to,
and we know that by lenses, burning
mirrors, photographic cameras and the
like the sun may be forced to accom-
plish results that otherwise would be
impossible. Such artificial apparatus,
then, must be the chlorophyll granules
in the cells. More strikingly yet, these
organs of the cell may be compared to
our blast-furnaces, as it is just in the
chlorophyll granules that the reduction
of carbonic acid and water, according
to science, takes place. If these artifi-
cial devices, invented and constructed
by the lower living units that consti-
tute the cell, did not exist, the sun
might shine throughout eternity on
water and carbonic acid without pro-
ducing organic building material.
This material is and must be the
product of art. If the forces of in-
organic nature spontaneously produced
Sugar, starch, etc., these substances
must have the same quality as our
rocks, minerals, etc., of being products
of combustion, which in such a sup-

116 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

posed case, perhaps, would be made
burnable if transformed into water and
carbonic acid. We would obtain a cre-
ation turned upside down and analo-
gous to a world where the bodies we
now use as weights would remain un-
supported at certain distances from our
earth. If we were to use such a body
as a weight in a clock, we would have
to wind it down instead of up.
Because organic compounds’ are
products of art, living beings find them-
selves obliged to direct the physical
forces to destroy these compounds or
restore them to their inorganic state
more speedily than these forces would
have done if left unaided. The proc-
esses of decay, performed by micro-
organisms, are as necessary in the
economy of life as the reverse proc-
esses. Otherwise the earth would
soon be so covered by corpses that life
must cease simply for lack of inorganic
raw material. It is true that we might
imagine living beings as adapting their
organization to this condition and for

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 117

some time directly utilizing the ac-
cumulated stores of organic matter;
but such periodical interruptions and
changes would disturb the continuity
of life’s evolution. To avoid this, there
is no way open to restore equilibrium
except the one in which it is now done.

No effect, whatever its nature, can
exist without cause; and further, every
effect must have a sufficient cause. If,
therefore, we have established that
natural forces can no more produce
organisms than steam engines, we have
also proved that these things would
never have come into existence if the
organic forces had been left to them-
selves. Neither organisms nor engines
would exist, because they have no
cause in the material world. The prod-
ucts of art are due not only to other
causes, but the relationship between
cause and effect is also different
with them from what it is with the
products of nature. Every product of
nature has its cause in a previous con-
dition of matter. The cause goes be-

118 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

fore and the effect comes after in time.
The connection between cause and ef-
fect is so intimate and complete with
regard to natural products, that we may
trace the series of occurrences back-
ward and forward in time without
other limitations than those imposed
by a deficient knowledge of the quali-
ties of matter. Such a connection be-
tween cause and effect has been termed
mechanical causality, which reigns
without exception in the material
world.

Of entirely different kind and nature
is the series of causes pertaining to
the production of objects of art. In
their capacity of purpose they are
themselves the physical cause of all
the work that precedes their birth.
When the product of art is finally
ready, the effect has then gone before
the cause. Such a connection is called
teleological causality in contradistinc-
tion to the mechanical one, where the
cause always precedes the effect.

But although the product of art is

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 119

the nearest cause of its own produc-
tion, it is not the primary one; it is
itself the result, not of a cause to be
found in the material world, but of a
foreign interference in the mechanical
causality, and points therefore to a
supernatural ground which, by a closer
investigation, will be found identical
with a living will. The will feels the
want of other things than those which
natural forces can spontaneously pro-
duce. Natural products act as incen-
tives on the will, spur it to break
through mechanical causality so that
physical laws by a judicious guidance
may be forced to produce artificial
products that better satisfy the desires
of the will. If natural laws could com-
prehend and judge these things, they
would consider them all as miracles,
whereas, from the point of view of the
will, they are so much the more natural
as they are exact expressions of the
needs and desires of the will.

But not only the order of cause and
effect, even the tie between the two is

120 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

entirely different in teleological causal-
ity from that in mechanical. While
the natural product is an effect that
cannot fail to appear, the product of
art, on the contrary, is an effect that
primarily never could be expected, be-
cause it has no cause in the material
world; but further, if it is forthcoming,
the tie between cause and effect is so
loose that such a product may be left
and will remain in any stage of its
production. It may be just commenced,
half ready, or nearly completed; be
better or worse, be a failure, and so
on, whereas the natural product springs
forth of physical necessity from its
cause and never can be different from
what it is.

Wills and physical forces then stand
against each other as two fundamen-
tally and radically different causes. A
will may neglect to do what it ought
to, may be idle, industrious, undecided;
a physical force cannot leave undone
what it has to do, can never be called
idle, industrious or undecided.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 121

That man is able to produce objects
of art we have sufficient evidence in
material invention, from the simple
stone-ax up to the most complicated
machines. But if man can create prod-
ucts of art he must himself be a super-
natural cause, as natural products pro-
duce nothing but their own kind. And
not only he but also the beings that
build up his organism must be super-
natural causes, aS we have seen that
all organic matter ipso facto are prod-
ucts of art.

In all these different forms and spe-
cies of products of art we_ possess,
therefore, boundless masses of obvious
and visible evidence that life is not a
quality of matter. In order to break
through the mechanical causality and
introduce into the material world ef-
fects which never could be spontane-
ously forthcoming, life must have a
supernatural origin, must be a prin-
ciple independent of matter.

By resuming the demonstration that
the materialists had broken off, we

122 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

arrive therefore at the same conclu-
sion that natural science had already
drawn before from external observa-
tion, and with which the question of
the nature of life-force is inseparably
connected. The qualities of matter
itself demonstrate clearly that spon-
taneous generation never has been, is
not and never will be possible, and the
tremendous labor spent during cen-
turies to prove this by external ob-
servation seems almost a waste of time.
We might as well pick out a table full
of stones and sit down expecting some
of them to undertake a flight around
the room, as to expect living substance
to come forth spontaneously from dead
matter. The intrinsic qualities of mat-
ter tell us that only hope for the
former occurrence can warrant faith
in the latter.

We thus consider it demonstrated
that Harvey’s formula is a universal
natural law and we may now draw its
logical consequences: Life is not a
material force; no living being can there-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 123

fore arise from dead matter; all life has
a supernatural origin in a higher imma-
terial world.

CHAPTER VIII.
The Soul and the Cells.

IVING beings are alive because the

very substance in them is living.
Life belongs to this substance exactly
as materiality belongs to matter. As
living substance can exist only in the
form of living individuals, all living
beings fall outside the limitations of
time and possess individual immortal-
ity without exception. The cell, there-
fore, 1s as immortal as man. But if this
is the case, the fact that the duration
of the earthly life of man is different
from that of the cell must now at last
appear in its full significance. During
man’s life a series of cell-generations
have lived, acted and disappeared, al-
though the phenomenon here, as in the
body of society, passes comparatively
unnoticed because the cell is invisible
to the naked eye. Of course we ob-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 125

serve a daily growth of nails, hair and
of the whole outer skin. This outer
layer consists exclusively of dead cells,
which daily scale off by the millions
through wear, washing or otherwise,
and are replaced by other dying cells
from the inner living tissues. The same
process of dying and renewal takes
place in the organs of the cell. As
man’s lifetime often depends on the
trade he has chosen, so it is with the
cells in his organism. Those that per-
form heavy work, as for instance
glandular cells, often die in the mo-
ment their mission is filled. This proc-
ess commences even in the individu-
al’s embryonic state. With lower ani-
mals, whose generation takes place
outside the mother-body, we can often
observe with the naked eye how whole
organs normally die and disappear.

If the cells as well as men are im-
mortal beings, the question naturally
arises: what becomes of these inces-
santly dying cell generations? The an-
Swer must necessarily be apparent if

126 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

we can show, First, that the tie between
the soul and the cells is indissoluble so
that man’s organism, 1. e., his spiritual
body, consists of the same cell-individuals
in a future life as here in time; Second,
that the cells at the same time are self-
existent and so independent of the soul,
that in a@ future existence also, as here in
time, they can and must build up man’s
organism independently.

In such case no reason can be ad-
vanced that would prevent the dying
cell-generations from immediately aris-
ing to a new and higher evolution,
which, as we will endeavor to prove,
must be identical with the upbuilding
of the higher, transfigured body which
man shall possess in a future life. This
form of resurrection must be common
to all organisms because they are all
built according to the same general
plan and are consequently subject to
the same general process of evolution.
Men are themselves the cells in another
higher organism, humanity, which en-
tity cannot rise to a richer life in an-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 127

other world otherwise than through its
upbuilding by the dying human gen-
erations under the new conditions that
exist over there.

As a preliminary experiment in order
to find out if the soul is indispensable
to the life of the organism, or if the
cells possibly might do without the
soul, we may appropriately remove the
latter from an organism and thus di-
rectly observe the importance of the
soul for the cells.

But how can this be done, or at least,
how may we deprive the organism of
all influence from the soul? The
physiologists have proved the possibil-
ity of such an experiment. It is fully
established that the soul communicates
with the body through the brain proper,
or the cerebrum, and experience shows
that this important organ may be re-
moved and yet the body continue to
live. We will here give briefly the re-
sults of such experiments made with
animals.

If the brain be removed from a dove

128 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

or a hen, the bird often recovers from
the radical operation and may remain
alive for months and even years. But
the dove has become an entirely differ-
ent being. Immobile she sits on the
same place. If she were not heard to
breathe she might be taken for a
stuffed bird. She lacks ability to judge
her position and resembles a living
machine that breathes, and swallows
the food brought into her bill. The
higher qualities of the dove are entirely
lost. She shows no signs of fear and
is incapable of initiative. She remains
sitting in the same place and will not
even fly down from small heights. If
thrown into the air, she flies until her
wings are tired or until she strikes an
obstacle that she makes no effort to
avoid. From the first day she must be
fed artificially, but she digests her
food as usual. The heart, the circula-
tion of the blood, the respiration, in
short, all the vegetative functions of
life continue regularly. Such a state

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 129

has been characterized by Flourens as
a continuous sleep without dreams.

The same observations have been
made with regard to dogs that have
been deprived of a large part of the
brain.

With lowered head and dead eyes,
such a dog moves about indifferent to
everything taking place around him.
He shows no signs of fear, envy or joy.
Neither threats nor friendly speech im-
press him. He never partakes in the
barking of other dogs and is, as a rule,
mute. Only should he be hungry he
might set up a howl. Although indif-
ferent to the strongest light or sound,
he is not entirely blind or deaf. At
the stronger sounds he might move his
‘head slightly. All higher life is lost,
but he digests his food and all vegeta-
tive functions continue just as regular-
ly as if he were in normal condition.

Observation of the effect of certain ac-
cidents and diseases intimates that man
forms no exception but that the same

130 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

results would probably be obtained
from similar experiments with him.
Though such experiments are out of
the question, we can, however, in many
different ways ascertain that the soul
of man is also inactive in the vegeta-
tive functions of his organism. In
earliest childhood this is perfectly evi-
dent. To possess a soul that has no
functions is, as far as the result is con-
cerned, identical with possessing no
soul.

If we observe a child during the very
earliest period of its life we will find
that it behaves essentially just as the
animals referred to above. Even the
child remains in the position it is given
and is unable to comprehend what
happens around him. The child would
likewise starve to death unless food
were brought to his mouth, but he
swallows and digests the nourishment
normally. The movements of the heart,
the circulation of the blood and respir-
ation all take place as normally as
with the fully developed man during

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 131

sleep when his soul also ceases to func-
tion.

The fact that the vegetative proc-
esses of the organism are not gov-
erned and controlled by the soul may
be observed by anyone also during his
conscious state. In regard to respira-
tion we may repress it only for a few
minutes. A command is soon given by
certain cells in the central nerve-sys-
tem which against the soul’s will brings
the organ in question into action. Ex-
perience tells us that strong agitations
generally disturb the vegetative proc-
esses. Sudden fear, for instance, ac-
celerates the heart’s motion. Therefore
these processes take place more evenly
with animals deprived of their brain
just because disturbing influences from
the soul are then impossible.

Thus it is certain beyond doubt that
the cells not only execute but regulate
and control through the central nerve-
system a multitude of functions in
which the soul does not take part.
But just as certain it is that there are

132 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

many functions which the cells could
not perform without the co-operation
of the soul. Vision, hearing, smelling,
tasting and feeling would be entirely
meaningless to the cells without the
aid of the soul. The same is the case
in a high degree with the motions of
the body which also require such a
higher guidance. The dove could fly,
the dog walk, and so forth, but the
motions were relatively purposeless.
The predetermined plan was lacking.
The cells could assimilate the food,
when brought into the body, but they
could not search it in nature. Such
action requires a power of combination
that exceeds their measure of intelli-
gence.

We see consequently that the cells
may do without the soul in such fune-
tions as are not related to the exterior
world comprehensible through our
senses. Here they need the guidance
of a higher, more developed intelli-
gence. In the outside world with its
more complicated relations, the soul is

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 133

to the cells very nearly what we mean
by the word Providence. The soul per-
forms, in the interest of the cells, such
a higher, regulating and guiding func-
tion.

The organism, then, is divided into
two sections, separated by a sharply
defined boundary. As independent and
autocratic as the cells are in one of
them, is the soul in the other. This
bisection in two widely separated
spheres is in itself remarkable, but may
be explained, if we remember that the
organism is an individual composed of
lower individuals. As different as
these classes of individuals are in their
nature and faculties, equally incongru-
ous are also the realms in which they
dwell. The cells move in the atomic
and molecular world. To them the
molecules and atoms appear with a
clearness comparable to the plainness
with which the exterior world reveals
itself to us. It is natural then that the
cells attend to the vegetative functions
of the organism which just fall within

134 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

their sphere of life, a sphere of which
the soul can obtain knowledge only
indirectly by way of deductions.
Equally obvious it is that only the soul
can employ the organs of the body,
the functions of which fall within the
visible world.

We have now endeavored to obtain
an understanding of the importance of
the soul to the cells by depriving the
latter of the direct influence of the
former. This resulted from the re-
moval of the brain, the organ by which
the soul more directly expresses itself.
But the soul is not actually removed
from the body. It still remains in the
whole cell-mass. The brain itself con-
sists of cells, in which the soul is not
present except as in all the other cells.
The difference is only that the brain-
cells are developed for the functions of
thought, whereas the cells in the other
organs are intended for their specific
purposes. In order to remove the soul
from the body we must remove the life
from every cell. The soul, as we in-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 135

tend to show, is inseparably connected
with every particular cell-individual.
But in order to understand how the
cells may be at once independent of,
and yet intimately united with the
soul, we must first know what an or-
ganism really is. Its nature and funda-
mental idea is the only thing that can
explain this remarkable relationship.
But it is just here as to the essential
qualities of an organism that the con-
ceptions are generally very dim and
vague.

Commonly the organism is thought
of as a very complicated mechanism
whose members and organs mutually
depend upon each other. The organ-
ism is what the word implies, a tool.
But every tool is intended for some-
body’s use. Who this one is, is not
said, simply because it is considered
self-evident. If it be a human organ-
ism, it is obviously the man who uses
it; if it be an animal organism, it is
the animal, and so on. That this is a
truth, cannot be denied; but still it

136 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

expresses only half the truth and
searcely that. Every organic body is
used directly by the individuals that
form its building material. The human
organism is a society of cells, and it is
these latter that first of all use the
body’s organs for their purposes. But
so dominating are the old ideas about
the body, that even the cytologists
themselves have not been able to shake
them off. The cells are continually
studied from man’s point of view, but
what man may be from the cell’s point of
view is never thought of.

We do not hereby deny all justifica-
tion to the old conception. The body
is also an organ for the soul. The lat-
ter, as experience shows, uses the body
for its own specific purposes. But this
takes place only to a somewhat limited
extent. The incomparably larger part
of the soul’s work, cares, and endeav-
ors, is devoted to finding means to
satisfy bodily wants. But so far as the
soul provides for the necessities of the
body, it acts as organ for the cells.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 137

When man believes that he is running
his own errands, he is in reality carry-
ing out the missions of those beings
that compose his body. These latter
demand for their purposes, if not all,
yet at least the largest part of all the
work the soul performs in this world.

CHAPTER IX.

The Fundamental Qualities of an
Organism.

N ORDER to illustrate the funda-

mental characteristics of an organic
structure in general, we will begin with
comparing it with what it most resem-
bles, namely, a complicated mechan-
ism. The likeness is so striking that
the very dissimilarities become in-
structive.

First of all we notice the parts of
which the machine is composed. What
these parts are to the machine the
members and organs are to the organ-
ism. Every part, like every organ, has
a certain duty to perform which it in-
cessantly repeats. The work of the
machine is divided among the parts as
that of the organism among the organs.
As the organ, so the part of the ma-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 139

chine can do its share only when in
right position and in right order.

The most obvious similarities are now
exhausted. The parts of the machine
are actuated by external, but the or-
gans by internal, forces. The organism
is a living machine. No organism,
whether organic or mechanic, labors for
its own sake. Every such apparatus
exists for somebody’s use. But while
those that employ a machine stand in
outer relation to the same, those who
utilize an organism are beings that
themselves constitute the organic ma-
chine-parts. These are not composed
of dead atoms, but of living individu-
als. The organism is a society which
puts the organic machinery into sery-
ice. It is the social tie that connects
the individuals which otherwise would
be a multitude of isolated beings.

In all organisms there are as many
organs as actual wants among the in-
dividuals that compose it. Because
these individuals are kindred, they have
common needs and are therefore able

140 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

to use the same organ. Every partic-
ular individual requires the assistance
of all the organs and must therefore
stand in such relation to them all that
he can utilize the work of any one.
But he himself enters as a working
member only in one organ, whose work
is the only one he can immediately
press into his service, and even this
only in certain cases. All other organs
stand in more or less distant relation
to him. How, then, will he be able to
utilize them? Only so that the organs
make themselves present in his own
organ, and, so to speak, reach him their
different products. Like every citizen
in a community, each organ ought to
have a system of circulation through-
out all the other organs to transfer the
results of its work where it is needed.
If, however, each organ were provided
with such a distribution agency this
would be an extravagance inconsistent
with the concentration of forces that
the very idea of an organism implies.
Instead of many such systems we find

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 141

therefore in every organism but one,
whose sole purpose is to circulate the
products of the various organs, and
thus, so to speak, make each organ
represented in every part of the whole
community. We find that every or-
ganic building is constructed in this
way to suit the individuals that form
its building-material, and so of course
it must be, since it was built for that
purpose by the same individuals.

The consequence is that the degree
of development an organism possesses
is closely related to the state of evolu-
tion reached by the individuals which
constitute it. The more perfected the
organism, the higher and more devel-
oped also are the necessities it is able
to satisfy.

The way in which independent liv-
ing beings build such an organic ma-
chine may be defined as “division of
labor.” Every organism is a union,
founded on the division of labor, be-
tween a multitude of kindred individu-
als which thus combine their isolated

142 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

forces. But a large mass of individuals
cannot merge at once into an all-em-
bracing entity. This result can only be
reached by a series of higher and lower
intermediary units, each defined by its
particular share of the total labor.

A closer study of the organisms will
show that they all without exception
are composed in this way.

The cells in any organism in nature
combine into higher and higher units
as follows:

The primary unions of the cells are
the tissues, where all the cells perform
the same function in the same way.
Of these tissues is formed the nearest
higher unit, the organ. As the tissue
was a union of cells, the organ is a
union of tissues. Then we have a sys-
tem of organs. To each such higher
system a more comprehensive function
is assigned. By distributing the total
labor among the different systems
these merge into the organism which
unites the whole cell-mass into one

————

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 143

well-organized community of working
cell-individuals.

Human society is similarly composed.
The difference is only that in one case
the citizens are cells, and in the other
they are men. Of an organism in na-
ture we only see the members and or-
gans, but not the cells; in human so-
ciety, on the other hand, we only ob-
serve the cells or the human individual,
but not the body of society. The cells
combine into a solid body; humanity
is spread over a surface. Human in-
dividuals, because of their greater per-
fection, move in space more freely and
independently of each other than do
the cells in their realm. These and
other differences do not, however, dis-
turb the general organic structure.
This has everywhere the same funda-
mental qualities. Society is essentially
only a vastly enlarged copy of the same
model that man traces in his own bod-
ily organism.

Through a similar division of labor
the work of the community is split

144 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

into trades, corresponding to the tis-
sues in the natural organism. As the
cells in one tissue, so the men in one
trade are incessantly occupied with the
same work. Out of several trades are
formed the social organs. <A _ social
organ consequently is a certain com-
munity or district performing a certain
part of an industry. This has been
called “territorial division of labor.”
Several such communities make up an
organ-system or an industry. A few
such larger units merge into the single
unit, the entire mass of human indi-
viduals as a whole.

The cells of the individuals in an or-
ganism are consequently at once build-
ing-material and builders, and in their
latter capacity are endowed with wants
and aspirations that with natural ne-
cessity force them to organization with-
out conscious plan or purpose. Neces-
sity is the teacher that tells them how
to organize. Some speak of a social
instinct that man does or should pos-
sess; but its existence has never been

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 145

shown. On the contrary, it is only by
those needs that can only be satisfied
by a community that men are driven
to unite socially. Similarly with the
cells. Only by building up an organ-
ism are they able to satisfy their com-
mon wants. What society is to human
individuals, the natural organism is
to the cells. No trade or industry can
be found in the state that does not
serve to provide for some common want
of the people, and no tissue nor organ
exists in the natural organism but for
satisfying collective needs of the cells.
These collective needs are at the same
time the higher needs of the individu-
als. The organism provides the power
that the isolated individual does not
possess. Organization allows that spe-
cializing of effort which so essentially
contributes to the productivity of la-
bor. The more limited the operations
each individual has to perform, the
more rapidly and perfectly are they
done.

Although the cell lives in a world

146 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

inaccessible to our immediate compre-
hension, we still possess means to as-
certain that it has the same funda-.
mental qualities as man. We observe
manifestations of life in the cell corre.
sponding to those of sensitivity, feeling
and will-power in man. The cell’s com-
prehending faculty has been termed ir-
ritability and its power of action spon-
taneity. From certain physiological
phenomena the conclusion has_ also
been drawn that the cell likewise pos-
sesses memory.

CHAPTER X.

The Organic Relationship Between the
Soul and the Cells.

ITHERTO only little study has

been given to the spiritual quali-
ties of the cells, and such investiga-
tions must always meet with certain
insurmountable difficulties. The reason
is that we only judge others by our-
selves and we are therefore unable to
understand the spiritual life of any be-
ing that is not one of our kin.

If a being stands higher or lower
than ourselves its spiritual experi-
ences, if not entirely different from
ours, are at least limited and modified
by the being’s own power of compre-
hension. If, however, these beings
show manifestations of life that we un-
derstand, we must conclude that their
spiritual or mental life is correspond-
ingly active.

148 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

Such a position we occupy with re-
gard to the beings called cells. From
the result of their activities we con-
clude that they, like men, are en-
dowed with aspirations capable of the
highest conceivable evolution. What
economic necessities are to man, tue
arterial blood is to the cell. The blood
is an artificial product which nature
no more gives to the cell than it gives
clothes, food, houses and the like to
man. Nature provides the raw mate-

rial and cell and man alike must learn

how to adapt it for the necessities of
life. This operation, however, involves
great difficulties. All such artificial
products stand in inverse proportion
to the power of the individual. The
more perfect they are the more impos:
sible it is for the individual to produce
them. Only as citizens in a commu-
nity, that is, through organization, are
the individuals able to produce such
products as exceed their isolated forces.

Although we cannot comprehend the
inner life of the cell, nor the world in

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 149

which it dwells, we are able to judge,
from the wonderful perfectness of the
organisms built by cells, that they have
reached in their world and measured
by their power a higher state of de-
velopment than man. It is not only
possible but highly probable that the
human individuals will sometime build
an organism of the same perfectness,
but as yet they have not done so. The
cells have long ago passed the stage
of organization that characterizes hu-
man society at present.

From the fact that the first purpose
of every organic structure is to serve
_ the individuals of which it is composed,
it follows that nobody, except these
Same individuals, can build the organ-
ism in question. Independently the
cells build the human body here in
time and they must do the same in the
future life. The organism cannot exist
in other surroundings than those for
which its organs are adapted. But this
adaptation can only be effected by the
individuals that form the building ma-

150 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

terial of the organs, because the organs
just express their relations to the world
in which they exist. Thus it follows
of necessity that man’s resurrection or
transition from one world to another
must be identical with the dying cells’
upbuilding of that organism which man
shall possess in a future life. Any
other form of resurrection is neither
possible nor conceivable. It is further
confirmed by the relation that exists
between the soul and the cells. This
relationship, as we intend to show, is
such that the soul receives its entire
individuality, all its forces and facul-
ties, from the cell-organism, the previ-
ous resurrection of which therefore is
an indispensable condition for man’s
own rise to another life.

If the mass of a body is living the
body itself is alive. The whole receives
its qualities from its elementary com-
ponents. The organism itself is a living
being. From the point of view of the
building material the organism is a so-
ciety composed of independently living

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 151

individuals; from the point of view of
the whole again it is a living individual
of higher order than the individuals
that form its social side. Man is a cell
in the social body, but is himself com-
posed of lower individuals, which again
consist of more primary units.

Man, considered as being possessed
of a body, is an individual composed of
lower indwiduals.

We now ask the question: What is
the relation between the higher indi-
vidual and the lower ones? This is
only another and more exact form of
the question: What is the relation be-
tween the soul and the body? Be-
cause, what is the body and what is
the soul? The body is the sum of the
lower individuals, or, in other words,
it is the organized mass of cells. The
soul, as the feeling, thinking and will-
ing principle, is the real spiritual unity
in this mass, or just what we denote
by the word man, or the higher in-
dividual. To ask, what is the relation-
ship between the higher individual and

162 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

its lower constituents is therefore the
same as to ask, what is the relation be-
tween the soul and the cells? Take
away the latter, and there is nothing
left of the body. The cells mean here
everything, and it is to them conse-
quently that the soul can be thought
to stand in relation.

Formerly the problem was to explain
how soul and body as two substan-

tially different entities were related to |
each other. They had then nothing in |

common, nothing to encourage an in-

teraction. If now the relation holds ©
between the soul and the cells we have ©
at least commensurable quantities to |

deal with.

So far all is well. But now other
difficulties arise. We can and must
ask, how an interaction is possible be-

tween the soul and the cells even if |
they are formally, according to their
inner nature, kindred beings? In other |

respects they are not so separated and
different that a spiritual intercourse is

inconceivable. As inaccessible as is the —

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 153

inner life of the cell to man, so incon-
tiguous is the spiritual life of man to
the cell. These beings are so widely
separated that they cannot possibly
communicate directly with each other,
and yet in order to establish a mental
or spiritual interrelationship, such
communication is just what is neces-
sary.

The soul and the cells must have
something in common that is of a
purely spiritual nature. As the spirit-
ual always is a comprehending sub-
stance with nothing but comprehen-
sions as its content, the something com-
mon to both must consequently have
the form of common comprehensions.
Not all comprehensions, however, in-
cite to activity and a smaller number
yet call forth a co-operation of inde-
pendently living individuals. But, ob-
viously, the perceptions that concern
us now must be of the latter kind. The
comprehensions in general that induce
a being to activity we call wants or
appetites. In its desires a being con-

154 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

ceives its own ego in want of one
thing or other. The feeling of discom-
fort, accompanying the want, naturally
causes the endeavor to satisfy the
want through a corresponding effort.
The incitement to activity then is
purely spiritual. Are the soul of man
and the cells subject to such common
needs, requiring their co-operation? If
so, at least their wants or appetites
cannot be wholly congruous. Such are
only to be found in entirely similar
beings. But different wants are satis-
fied in different ways; each requires a
carefully adapted form of activity. All
direct, immediate co-operation of the
soul and the cells is therefore impos-
sible. Only man with man, or cell with
cell, can co-operate in the primary sense
of the word.

But an indirect working alliance is
not yet precluded. Though themselves
different, the two beings may compre-
hend wants identical in substance, but
not in form. The formal discrepancy
would require not only different modes

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 155

of satisfying the need, but also differ-
ent kinds of activity; but the common
substance might yet under certain con-
ditions so unite and interlink the dif-
ferent labors, that the result would
show a mutual co-operation.

We shall presently see that the soul
and the cells are so united with each
other that the connecting link is the or-
gamism per se. From the point of view
of the cells the organism, with its dif-
ferent members and organs, was noth-
ing but the collective expressions of in-
dividual wants. Now man _ compre-
hends as his needs only the wants of
the organs; in other words, the col-
lective wants of the cells are the indi-
vidual wants of the soul. Experience
teaches us that the soul has no direct
comprehension of the cells, but only of
their organic unions. To prove this it
may be sufficient to point out that be-
fore the discovery of the microscope,
man knew absolutely nothing of the
existence of these beings, much less
that they were the all-governing forces

156 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

in his own body. But also in other
ways we may ascertain that the com-
prehending power of the soul does not
reach beyond the organs. This is ap-
parent from the different significance
the physiological processes have for the
soul and for the cells. If we consider
the most important of them all, our
nutrition, and ask ourselves for whom
the nourishment is really intended, we
find that it is for the cells and for the
cells alone.

The food benefits the soul only if it
is utilized by the cells. But the nour-
ishment that the soul craves does not
satisfy the cells. Hunger and satisfac-
tion are not even simultaneous in both,
at least not as regards the same food.
As a rule, the soul comprehends
hunger when the cells are satisfied and
vice versa. The soul’s hunger ceases
the moment suitable food in sufficient
quantity is introduced in the stomach.
But this does not help the cells. Be-
cause, if the food remained in the
stomach, to the satisfaction of the soul,

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 157

the cells would soon die of starvation.
The nourishment in the stomach is of
the same importance to the cells as the
provisions stored in the warehouse of
the community are to the human in-
dividuals. These also would die from
hunger if they let the victuals remain
in the stores. The people must under-
take to distribute, prepare and con-
sume the food. Similarly the cells
would starve to death unless they pre-
pared the food in their common storage
to suit their wants. The nourishment
must be transformed into blood through
the whole complicated process we call
digestion. When this is done, the cells
are able to satisfy their craving, and
simultaneously a new hunger-feeling
arises in the soul. Although it is the
same food that satisfies both parties, it
is the same food administered in differ-
ent forms, at a different time, and in a
different mode. We are concerned with
dissimilar beings possessed of wants at
once different and yet most intimately
associated.

158 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

The connection is not difficult to un-
derstand. When the soul comprehends
the need of the stomach, it is the col-
lective want of the cells that comes
to expression as the individual want of
the soul. The different needs receive in
different form an identical substance
and this fact is obviously the connect:
ing link between the soul and the cells.
We might without difficulty carry out
the same reasoning in regard to res-
piration and all the other physiological
processes of the body.

From what we have said it is evi-
dent that the soul and the cells em-
ploy the body differently; but for the
sake of clearness this ought perhaps
to be further accentuated. The differ-
ence may be thus expressed: The soul
acts with the members and organs of
the body as units, whereas the cells
perform the work of the organs as in-
dividuals. It would be easy to explain
what this implies if we could point to
similar conditions in human society.
But no exactly similar institutions ex-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 159

ist there, at least not to the same ex-
tent. They would exist if the ideal
socialistic state was realized. The cells
in their sphere have carried through a
communism of the most rigid form.
Their social organs then do not work
at the cell-individual’s own initiative,
but only upon the command of the cen-
tral power and under its guidance and
control. But even in the present or-
ganization of mankind, we find a few
organs which offer a suggestive com-
parison. Especially is this the case
with the defensive organ of society,
the standing army, which is entirely
under the control of the central power
and acts only upon its command and
under its control.

As to its composition the army is a
mass of independently living individu-
als, co-operating so as to form an or-
ganic whole. All the work this unit
performs is done by the thousands of
soldiers of which it is composed. If
the government decides to use this
organ, that is if it declares war, we

160 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

know that it leads, arranges and con-
trols the army as one unit. It is not
concerned with the soldiers as individu-
als, but only as organized masses.

Exactly analogous is the relation be-
tween the soul and the organs, com-
posed of cells, in man’s organism. Here
also the cell-individuals perform the
work of the different organs. The soul
is not concerned with the cells as indi-
viduals. It governs, guides and super-
intends the movements of the members
as elements; that is, commands the
cells as organic masses.

We now consider the following facts
established. The soul and the cells are
different beings with different wants.
They do not feel or comprehend in the
Same way and can therefore not have
immediate perceptions of each other.
However true this is on one side it is
on the other just as certain that they
are so intimately connected as to form
the same organism through the medium
of which they feel their mutual wants
and therefore must have some compre-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 161

hension of each other. This strange
and, as it may seem, contradictory re-
lation depends on the fact that the
union between the soul and the cells
does not extend to their whole entity.
We have seen that the soul compre-
hended only the collective not the indi-
vidual wants of the cells. Within cer-
tain defined limits therefore they have
a common substance that causes their
marvelous co-operation through the
body.

To understand and explain this co-
operation we must make clear how the
soul and the cells in their innermost
nature are united. And we shall learn
this by going to the bottom of the
meaning of the expression that a com-
mon substance so governs their rela-
tionship that the collective wants of
the cells become the individual wants
of the soul.

How then are the soul and the cells
intrinsically connected?

The answer may be derived in two
ways. We might take both the sub-

162 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

jective and the objective side of the
wants as our point of view. If we first
consider the subjective side the rela-
tionship between the soul and the cells
may be stated as follows:

We have previously pointed out that
in its wants a living being perceives its
own ego as related to something else.
This is an axiom that needs no demon-
stration. If now the soul comprehends
the collective wants of the cells as its
own, this can only mean that the soul
comprehends that part of the cells’ in-
ner nature which expresses itself as
their collective wants, as a part of its
own ego. Again the cells within the
same limits on their part comprehend
the soul’s inner nature as belonging to
their own individuality. The connec-
tion within these limits is so intimate
that they cannot comprehend them-
selves without at the same time com-
prehending each other. The soul must
consequently perceive the body as its
own body because the same wants that
cause the cells to upbuild the soul also

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 163

belong to the soul’s own entity. On the
other hand the soul in conceiving itself
cannot comprehend the cells as such
because the identity is not extended to
their whole individuality.

When a being conceives the wants of
somebody else as its own wants it is at
the same time directly influenced by
the other. Thus the soul and the cells
act upon each other throughout the
body. A will of the soul takes with
natural necessity the form of a com-
mon impulse upon the cells bringing
them into action in the will’s direction.
If the soul, for instance, wishes to
move an arm or a hand, a collective
want is simultaneously created in the
cells that form the organ in question
to execute that movement.

We arrive at the same result by con-
sidering the fact that the different
wants of the soul and of the cells are
identical in substance. The same sub-
stance cannot enter into and define
different beings unless they themselves
enter in and define each other. As now

164 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

both parties comprehend wants iden-
tical in substance, the soul must neces-
sarily belong to the cells so that it is
the ground for their collective wants.
But these wants were the cell-individu-
al’s higher wants, manifested in the
organization of the body. The soul
therefore is potentially present in the
cells in the form of their higher wants
and is consequently developed along
with the upbuilding of the body. Only
when this is ready is the soul’s entity
developed. The soul must then com-
prehend the organism as its particular
body when conscious of its own ego,
but the cells do not enter into the soul’s
entity as individuals and are therefore
not present as such in man’s conscious-
ness. |

For this organic co-operation the soul
and the cells need no language, no
signs to communicate with each other.
It is not even necessary that they are
aware of each other’s existence. It is
sufficient that each party comprehends
its own wants and acts for their satis-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 165

faction according to its own nature. If
they do this their co-operation through
the body receives a simple and at the
same time complete explanation.

But however natural this interaction
is, it is nevertheless a wonder above all
wonders. The world that exists to the
soul does not exist to the cells, and
vice versa. They have an entirely differ-
ent conception of the realm in which
they live. They have different appre-
hensions, feelings and wants and per-
form accordingly different functions.
But in spite of this they are, as we
have seen, within certain limits so in-
timately connected that these different
comprehensions and labors are inter-
linked with each other, regulating each
other as accurately as the wheels in a
clock.

CHAPTER XI.
Resurrection.

pe the relationship existing be-
tween the soul and the cells it ap-
pears that the former cannot live a
life independent of the latter. The
soul receives its entire individuality,
all its qualities, forces, and faculties,
through the organism built by the celis,
which therefore must exist before the
soul can exist as the real unity in the
organism. This does not mean that the
soul is an empty form void of independ-
ent substance. Even before the cells
have combined into an organic unit the
soul is potentially present in them in
the form of the wants that force them
to upbuild the organism, and this or-
ganism is that of the soul, not that of
the cells, of which each possesses its
individual organism.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 167

But if the soul is potentially present
in the cells it is only through them that
it can arise to a higher life. We have
already shown in another connection
that a direct transposition would be
useless and meaningless. Endowed
with his present organs adapted to
earthly conditions, a man _ suddenly
translated into the glories of a higher
world would with seeing eyes yet see
nothing, with hearing ears hear noth-
ing and with feeling senses would feel
nothing. To comprehend what there
exists and happens, man’s own organ-
ism must have undergone a correspond-
ing radical transformation. He must
have new, more perfect senses, higher
spiritual and bodily faculties, differing
from his present as far as the objects
in this higher world differ from those
on earth. This transfigured body can
only be organized by the same beings
that built it here in time. The soul is
inseparably united with these beings
and is where they are.

Here in time man commences with a

168 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

cell and with a cell he must begin in a
future life. This first cell with which
man enters his next form of existence
cannot logically be any other than the
first dying cell-individual. As no atom,
so no elementary unit of the living
spiritual body is annihilated. Viewed
from our present existence death can-
not mean anything to the departed
cell-generations but the cessation of
life and activity in the world responsive
to our senses. In reality they rise to a
higher evolution under different condi-
tions and this evolution must be iden-
tical with the upbuilding of the glorified
body man shall possess in a future
life.

This form of death and resurrection,
natural because it is founded on the
idea and nature of the organism, is
common to all living beings and must
so be, as they are all built according to
the same general plan and therefore
essentially subject to the same evolu-
tionary processes. The birth and death
of the lower individuals in whole gen-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 169

erations is known to be a universal
phenomenon in every organism and we
will now endeavor shortly to explain
this process.

If the soul enters as a real part in
every individual cell, it does not belong
differently to the first generation than
to the last or to the whole series of
intermediary generations. But here in
time man lives only in the generation
existing at the present moment. The
generations that in the past successive-
ly formed the spiritual substance of his
body have already gone out of time
and those that are coming have not yet
made their entrance. Man’s entity is
thus split or distributed upon a series
of successively existing moments, each
of which contains only a certain lim-
ited part of the organism, and the lat-
ter has therefore in reality a far
broader extent than is seen at present.

But time confines and restricts man
not only in this, but in all respects. To
take another example, we know that
man possesses a multitude of different

170 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

faculties and talents. But in time he
cannot utilize them all. As a member
of society he devotes himself to a cer-
tain trade or profession. Now there
are thousands of different possible
activities and therefore thousands of
different talents that every man might
develop but never can, simply for lack
of time. Time is not even sufficient to
fully develop one human talent in one
definite direction. Man has at his dis-
posal only the present moment, and in
each moment he can only think one
thought, perform one act, satisfy one
need. It is said that man should de-
velop all his faculties evenly, but so long
as he lives in time this is an impossi-
bility. As a matter of fact man can
only live this life piecemeal, and in this
time-existence proper we have the ex-
planation of the fact that man distrib-
utes his body over a series of cell-gen-
erations.

The law of the indestructibility of
matter and energy is valid also in the
ideal world and this necessarily since

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. tga

it is a demand of thought itself.* Ap-
plied to spiritual substance, which can
exist only in the form of living indi-
viduals, the law may be _ expressed,
“All living beings are immortal.” If
therefore the cell-generations that in
the past composed man’s organism can
no more be annihilated than the future
generations can be created from noth-
ing, this implies that man has an indi-
vidual existence not only after but
before his entrance into this world. If
such be the case we must be able to
derive and explain our earthly life from
this pre-existence. Can it now be
shown that man’s conditions in his
pre-existence are such that he needs
and must go through an evolution in
time? In that case history may per-
haps give us a hint how to answer the
question, or would this pre-existence be
an entirely new thought? By no means.
Pre-existence is and must be a funda-

*Bjorklund might here properly have referred to
his previous demonstration of the fact that life has
no roots in time, consequently is independent of this
principle—i. e., immortal.—Translator’s note,

172 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

mental idea in all religions because
they all suppose that man emanated
from God through an original act of
creation. That the Christian religion
especially has this basic idea Victor
Rydberg has fully demonstrated in a
treatise entitled “Man’s Pre-existence.”

But although we may say that all re-
ligions teach a pre-existence we do not
mean that this idea has been or even
could have been rightly understood.
We might expect just the contrary, as
pre-existence is connected with the
common conception that man’s soul as
well as the material world was once
created in time, in which case pre-
existence can only mean an existence
extending very far back in time. There
was a time when God existed but not
man, which latter, as being created,
must have an emistence separate from
God even if he may in other respects be
called His image.

This form of belief in pre-existence
shows the same shortcomings and is
subject to the same objections as the

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. i73

whole orthodox theory of creation. As
we can and must ask how a perfect
God could create an imperfect, that is,
an evolutionary world, we might also
ask, why was man created with the
necessity for an evolution in time when
he never could develop anything but
what God had implanted potentially in
his being? Instead of explaining evo-
lution this theory only makes it so
much the more mysterious.

Besides this conception, however, the
religious intuition has surmised that
the connection between God and man
is profoundly deeper and more inti-
mate. Man does not have an existence
separate from God. This intuitive
thought, intensified in highly religious
souls, has led them to preach, that man
possesses a life in God; is part of His own
being, is a living member in His perfect
organism. If this be true, why, again,
must man go through an evolution?
Is he not as unchangeable as God Him-
self?

CHAPTER XII.
Man and Infinity.

T IS the perennial honor of Sweden’s

greatest philosopher, Christofer Jacob
Bostrom, to have _ satisfactorily ex-
plained the extremely difficult and
complicated question with which our
last chapter concluded. He has shown
that man, exactly on the supposition
that he is an eternal part of God’s be-
ing, requires and must go through an
evolution in time. According to Bos-
trém, religious intuition has found the
truth that man is an eternal idea in
God, a living member in His organism.
But Bostrém has also understood and
considered the difference implied in
thinking of man as a member in God’s
organism and in thinking of this mem-
ber as living its independent life. In
the former case man possesses the same

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 175

qualities as God; in the latter, these
qualities with corresponding limita-
tions.

For an illustration of how all lim-
ited beings are incorporated in an ab-
solute personality, Bostrém likes to
fall back on the numerical system.
Spiritual beings form a series, as it
were, of lower and higher entities,
where the latter contain the former
pretty much as higher numbers contain
the smaller. Bostrém distinguishes be-
tween positive and negative attributes,
and means by the former those attri-
butes without which the being cannot
be thought, and which it therefore in
one sense contains. So for instance in
the number ten, all the previous num-
bers are positive attributes because ten
cannot be thought without them, which,
however, does not imply identity with
either of the lower numbers. On the
other hand all the following numbers
are negative attributes to the number
ten because this may well be thought
without them. It contains them only

176 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

if it is considered as one point in the
numerical system, in which case it has
them all as attributes. Thus, still re-
ferring to the number ten, this may
be considered complete within itself
without considering the higher num-
bers, whereas if we wish to compre-
hend it fully we must see it as a link
in the numerical system. Ten would
not be the half of twenty without the
latter, and so on. The existence of the
higher is after all required for that of
the lower as fully as the existence of
the lower is necessary to that of the
higher.

Because each entity is higher accord-
ing as it has a larger number of the
rest as its positive and a smaller num-
ber as its negative attributes, it fol-
lows that the highest entity, or Deity,
has no negative attributes but only
positive ones, which of course is the
true meaning of the expression that
God is the most perfect being.

As a lower being is more perfectly
defined when considered included in a

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 177

higher, this fact must be the reason
why all finite, rational beings in their
evolution try to assert themselves in
the higher beings, up to the highest,
by whom they finally obtain their full
scope and in whom only they live their
complete life.

But if Bostrém had lived to study the
modern cytology he would have found
a more adequate comparison within
man’s organism, and one that perhaps
in several respects would have modified
his conception of the world of divine
ideas.

God is related to man as man is, not
to the cell, but to the lower units of
which the cell is composed. Between
God and man there is at least one
other organism that we know of, name-
ly humanity. But if we overlook this
and for simplicity’s sake imagine the
relationship as that of man to cell it
should be evident from what has been
previously said that man is and must
be something else to God than he is to
himself.

178 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

To God he is what the cell is to man,
a living part in His organism, and in
this capacity he possesses all the per-
fect qualities of that organism. Living
his independent life, man is in the
Same position as the cell in his own
being, when the cell is thought of as
living the life it is confined to by its
less perfect organism.

Although limited to that life the cell
may literally be said to be man’s
image—but an image of a very singu-
lar kind. The cell does not reproduce
man’s traits as does a photograph or a
statue, but within its lower realm it
mirrors the fundamental qualities of
the original on a very reduced scale.

These limitations can not be con-
ceived by the cell as such because they
are natural to it and belong to its
entity. The cell is and must feel itself
as perfect in its realm as man in his.
Only if the cell could compare its con-
ditions with man’s, these limitations
would be apparent to it, and such a
comparison the cell really undertakes

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 178

within certain limits. Into each feeling
of want enters a comparison between
the possessed and the desired. In the
higher wants, then, that drive the cells
to upbuild man’s organism we have a
manifestation of such a comparing
power of the cell. Experience shows
that the cell may live in a veritable
natural state, but it is also, because of
the presence of the soul in its inner-
most being, capable of a high culture
for the development of which it receives
constant impulses and _ stimulations
from the soul.

In the same sense man may be said
to be the image of God. Living in the
world and the natural state, to which
he is confined by his relatively imper-
fect organism, man has the qualities of
God with corresponding limitations.
But even in this state he feels the spirit
of God present in him because he is an
original part of God’s own organism.
In his conscience and in his religious
feeling man not only comprehends dis-
tinctly the presence of God in his inner

180 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

being but constantly receives also im-
pulses, incitements and inspirations to
develop that perfect life and heavenly
kingdom, of which he is called by his
high origin and divine birth to become
a citizen.

What the conscience and the reli-
gious feelings are to the will, the log-
ical laws of thinking are to the reason,
and in the latter, man finds God as im-
mediately present as in the former.
Indeed, logical laws are the form in
which God himself exists.

Because of God’s presence in the
eternal laws of our thinking, man is
able to appraise himself and his con-
dition with an absolute measure, and
can in this way obtain a certain knowl-
edge of God’s world and of his perfect
qualities. He has only to abstract all
wants and limitations from such quali-
ties as have a positive content, because
lack of want is perfectness. We shall
now undertake such a valuation with
respect to man’s need of evolution here
in time, which quality, as all the oth-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 181

ers, can be explained and understood
only through its connection with the
corresponding quality in the absolute
being.

It is as natural to God to be without
an origin and an evolution as it is to
man to have them, and we might there-
fore ask how man in this respect can
have anything in common with God, a
condition which, as we remember, was
indispensable for any comparison what-
ever. To make this point clear we may
express ourselves in a more familiar
way. We might speak of time and ex-
istence in time, instead of origin and
evolution, as the latter are only forms
of time.

Is there then a moment in time that
has a corresponding meaning for God
and the limitations of which we must
abstract in order to understand God’s
quality of being eternal? It is by an-
alyzing the relation between time and
eternity that we hope to receive an
answer to the question why man must
undergo an evolution in time.

182 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

The most conspicuous want in all
that exists in time is its lack of dura-
tion; everything has a beginning and
an end. With this lack of duration a
corresponding lack of reality follows.
The real is real, only as long as it lasts
or only in the present moment. Every-
thing past has ceased to exist and is
therefore no longer real, and the future
is unreal because it has not entered the
present.

The real in time is identical with
the present, which therefore must be
the moment most like eternity and the
limitations of which we have to re-
move.

First of all, the present in time suf-
fers the want of ceasing and sinking
back into the past, into unreality. We
can overcome this only by raising
everything past from its grave, so to
speak, and drawing it simultaneously
into the present. To the eternally
present, nothing past, ending or ceas-
ing can exist.

On the other hand the present in

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 183

time suffers the same want in the op-
posite direction, inasmuch as everything
future is excluded therefrom and this
future growing reality must therefore
be drawn into the eternal. Neither
past nor future can exist to God; He
lives life undividedly, without limita-
tions, and needs not, as man, plot out
his existence in a series of moments.
Eternity then is not identical with un-
ending time; it is a different form of
existence, related to time as the per-
fect to the imperfect.

Difficult as it is to explain what
eternity implies as the perfect form of
existence, it is no less difficult to com-
prehend the infinite wealth of content
that such a form includes. We will
therefore give a few brief suggestions
in this direction.

How poor in content is everything
present to man, and likewise how de-
fective and unsatisfactory is his whole
life here in time. As a matter of fact
we can in each moment only think one
thought, perform one act, satisfy one

184 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

want. We read a book and we are
only conscious of one line or one sen-
tence ata time. We listen to a musical
creation or admire an exhibition of art,
and we only hear a few harmonies, or
see a few details of one picture, more
distinctly at the time, and so on. How
much richer would not our life be if we
could think the book from beginning to
end at once, hear the harmony of the
entire oratorio, now focus the beauties
in smallest details of the whole picture-
gallery to one point. It even dazzles
our spiritual eye if we enlarge the
range of such a rich intuition to en-
compass not only our nearest environ-
ments but our whole earth or possibly
our entire solar system, and yet we
have only taken one step ona road
that has no end. Our solar system is
only an insignificant point among those
innumerable worlds that form the
Milky Way, beyond which the astrono-
mers surmise the existence of other
hosts of stars without limit. If we
now could share in life at every point

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 185

in this infinity of worlds, would then
our conception of the content of eter-
nity be exact? By no means. We must
include in this present moment every-
thing that has happened on_ these
worlds since the dawn of time and
similarly all that will occur in the mil-
lenniums to come. Is the eternal meas-
ure now full and overflowing? By no
means. Above us and below us there
are beings to whom other universes
exist as infinite in all directions as our
own. All these infinities of infinities
must be drawn into eternity, but then,
surely, the measure must be full. By
no means. We have all this time moved
within the realm of phenomena, that is
to say, in the finite world; all this is
only a faint shadow of the wealth that
eternity contains. God lives in a light
that no man hath seen nor yet can see.

In this light, in this perfectness, man
is a part of the divine entity. This life
in God’s eternal consciousness is man’s
primary and original existence. Only
in a secondary meaning is he a self-

186 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

existent personality and is then no
more identical with God than the cell
is with man.

Man as an entity for himself must
have the natural limitations of the part.
Conceived by God man is eternal in the
divine sense, but conceived by himself
man’s eternal life is clothed in the lim-
itations we call time. The eternal is
a constant present without beginning
or end, without past or future. What
is present to man must suffer these
limitations; in other words, man must
be born, must go through an evolution,
or what is the same, become to himself
what he has been eternally to God. In
this respect man’s relation to God may
be compared to the relation of a new-
born child to its earthly father. To
him the nature and scope of the child
is perfectly clear, but the child is un-
conscious of it and must awaken to an
understanding thereof, that is to say,
must become to itself what it already
is to its father.

Living beings form a continuous

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 187

series in the absolute organism. This
series is such that the higher beings
form the conditions and supports of
the lower. This connection must be
entirely reversed during evolution
itself, which naturally proceeds from
the lower to the higher. In time there-
fore the generation and development
of the lower beings must precede that
of the higher. We have also seen that
the evolution of the former is identical
with the upbuilding of the organisms
of the latter, and we understand now
that the whole process must essentially
follow the course which, as we have
previously shown, it does in fact, actu-
ally take.

It is further the inherent idea of time
that man’s eternal entity cannot ap-
pear whole and undivided. He must
plot it out along a series of successive
moments which make room for only
one cell-generation at a time. As the
cell’s entity again has a less compre-
hensive content than man’s, its lifetime
must be correspondingly shorter.

CHAPTER XIII.
Recapitulation.

aaa theory we have here advanced
may naturally seem startling; for
what could be more foreign to common
conceptions than the assertion that sci-
ence today gives us full evidence of a
death and a resurrection that com-
mence during our life in time? Con-
sidering this, it may be appropriate
to recapitulate the salient points in our
line of thought.

From prehistoric times up to our own
days all people at all stages of evolu-
tion have to a man been convinced that
the body in some way and in some form
contains an imperishable and essential
part which man cannot do without in
a future life. With this intuitive and
purely instinctive faith as a basis, the
steps in the following historical evolu-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 189

tion become fully natural and logical
consequences.

It is not to be wondered at that this
eternal part should at first sight be
considered identical with the material
body. Therefore it was also natural
that a cult of the dead would be the
stage where all people begin. Man
sees however that death as a matter of
fact separates the immortal soul from
that body which the soul cannot dis-
pense with. The separation cannot be
complete because the ties cannot be
severed. The soul then is attached to
the body even after death. Conse-
quently it must be the duty of the sur-
viving to provide the body of the de-
ceased with a dwelling as good and
suitable as possible and also with the
provisions that the body needs.

A man could not, however, find such
a condition satisfactory for any length
of time, and the thought of death
gnaws and torments him. Shall the
soul never regain possession of the
body without which even the glories of

190 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

heaven are pale and shadowy? The
doctrine of the bodily resurrection on
the day of judgment must be the next
great progress in our philosophy of
life.

But unusually gifted persons, bent
towards idealism, had already felt in-
stinctively that it was not the exterior,
material covering that was indispensa-
ble to the soul. Man possessed also
another, a spiritual body which the
soul could immediately transfer to an-
other life. We gain a glimpse of the
vividness of this intuition in large
groups of men, when we remember that
the survivors even sought to annihilate
the material body by the flames of the
pyre in order to liberate the deceased
from his earthly ties. The great masses
of the population could not rise to this
ideal conception, and we therefore find
the two fundamental ideas prevailing
side by side.

Here the two first epochs in man’s
history end. They show us the inti-
mate connection between religious con-

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 191

ceptions and man’s understanding of
the exterior world in which he lives
and acts. The following stage com-
mences logically with the great ad-
vancement of the natural sciences.
Chemistry partly lifts the veil that
hides the innermost nature of matter,
and at the dawn of the new science the
old ideas concerning the nature of the
body disappear like the shadows of
night at the rising of the sun.

A bodily resurrection on doomsday
is impossible because every dead body
sooner or later arises and takes part
in the circulation of matter, so that on
the day of judgment it might be found
that the same materials had entered
over and over again into the composi-
tion of a variety of human bodies. It
is also a fact that man changes his
material clothing several times even
during his earthly life. But the belief
in the essential value of the body is
too deeply rooted to give away entirely
and so we meet it again in the modern
materialism which perhaps may be said

192 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

to emphasize the significance of the
body even more than the cult of the
dead did in ancient time.

But while materialism claims as its
own the consequences of the revolu-
tionary work of chemistry, biology lays
the firm foundation for a new and
higher development of religious con-
ceptions. Biology discovers and proves
the existence of that spiritual body
which humanity has surmised since
prehistoric times. It is to this extraor-
dinarily important fact that we desired
to call attention. We have endeav-
ored to draw its consequences only as
regards the cell-generations which suc-
cessively rise and die in the human
body as in human society. Now when
it can be shown that these dying gen-
erations are eternal and imperishable
parts of man’s own nature, the concep-
tion of death and resurrection we have
here advanced must be the only possi-
ble one. The hitherto common ideas
regarding the translation of man to
another world have upon closer study

seus

=

a ac eee

Ses

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 193

been found as naive as they are un-
natural, because any such direct trans-
position of man’s entity is impossible
and unthinkable.

But however simple and scientifical-
ly natural the theory here proposed, it
could not have appeared at a much
earlier date. It requires not only the
results of modern cytology but also the
widening of the idea of immortality
which natural science suggests and
overwhelmingly proves. It presupposes
also the law of evolution we have en-
deavored to make clear, namely, that
beings endowed with common wants
and existing in similar surroundings
and conditions cannot develop, except
by the upbuilding of an organism, and
thus entering as organic members in
an individual of higher order than
themselves. From these premises we
might have deduced our theory of
death and resurrection and yet the
whole process would still have seemed
mysterious and inexplicable but for
the work of our great predecessor,

194 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

Christofer Jacob Bostrom, that Plato of
the North, so often misunderstood by
his contemporaries, or at least more
known on account of certain possible
deficiencies in his system than because
of its imperishable merits.

Idealism and materialism have hith-
erto stood as two absolutely incom-
patible contrasts and the fierce battle
that continuously rages, even in our
days, between the two world-concep-
tions can, according to common notions,
only be brought to an end through the
complete defeat of one of the parties.
We have endeavored to show that both
these philosophies have common defi-
ciencies, but that each of them pos-
sesses an essential part of truth. We
cannot deny idealism the merit of hav-
ing looked far deeper into the nature
of things and phenomena. While ad-
mitting this we cannot be blind to the
fact that this philosophy has left at
least one fact of nearly overwhelming
importance totally unexplained. If it
be true that the soul is the essential

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 195

part of man and is that to which alone
immortality is granted, how then shall
we account for the fact that the soul’s
evolution, properly the one principal
object of man, must stand aside for the
body to such an extent that the body
utilizes, if not all yet at least the
largest part of man’s time and energy?
To materialism this reply is given, but
then again this philosophy has been
unable to answer all those questions
which idealism alone could satisfactor-
ily explain.

Now at last we understand the rea-
son for these contradictions. The two
world-conceptions suffer the same es-
sential deficiency of having overlooked
the fact that the body contains a spir-
itual organism, of the same importance
to man’s future life as to his present.
In the theory here proposed material-
ism in a purified form melts into ideal-
ism, which latter thus receives the sup-
plement it hitherto has lacked as a
universal, satisfactory world-explana-
tion. We have barely outlined this

196 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

new, organic idealism and have treated
it somewhat more extensively only with
reference to death and resurrection.
But also on this point our work, as all
human effort, is only piecemeal labor.
As soon as we have advanced one step,
other entirely new questions arise. We
already discern boundless expanses of
problems in the same direction and
shall here point out one example. The
organic changes, characterizing old age
and preceding the so-called natural
death, are comparatively well studied
and known. But in spite of this,
natural science is unable to tell us the
underlying cause in the inner nature of
the organism, and it is even admitted
that we know no reason why the
process should not follow an entirely
opposite course. From our point of
view man has an individual content
larger than that included in the suc-
cessive moments of time, and death
should normally enter with the transla-
tion of the last cell-generation. It is
true that as civilization advances man’s

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 197

lifetime is constantly increasing, so
that we may look forward to a time
when most men will die a natural
death. But if we meet a premature
death, as is now generally the case,
can this, and other disturbing inter-
ruptions in the natural process, after-
wards be repaired? Let us hope that
this is possible, but a decisive answer
we cannot give. Our conviction is that
God does not interfere to help man
either in the transition itself or in a
future life in any other way than he
does here in time. Certainly the cler-
ical orthodoxy has rightly understood
the divine guidance in its teaching of
God’s general providence, comprising
the whole creation, His special provi-
dence in regard to mankind, and His
most particular providence, limited to
the faithful; that is, to those that let
themselves be governed by the divine
will. Critical experience has never dis-
covered any exterior, occasional inter-
ference, which moreover is utterly im-
possible. God is present and active in

198 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

the eternal and unchangeable laws of
nature and spirit. Sin and punish-
ment, virtue and reward, are connected
with each other as reason and conclu-
sion, cause and effect. Man is himself
the cause of his acts and they bring
their inevitable consequences. The
man therefore who consciously and
purposely distorts his own natural evo-
lution or that of others stands before
himself and before his fellow men bur-
dened with a terrible responsibility.

INDEX

Absolute organism, the, 187.

Achilles, 14.

Activity, incitement to, 154.
Adaptation, 149.

Affinity, 97.

Agni, the elementary, 24.

Annihilation contrary to nature, 1, 168.
Army organization, 159f.

Art and organic matter, 107, 111, 119f.
Ask and Embla, 21.

Athens, 9.

Bacteria, 57.

Belief in future life, 2.

Biology and the spiritual body, 192.
Bjorklund, Johan Gustaf, VII.
Body, importance of the, 18.
Bostrém, Christofer Jacob, 174, 194.
Burial ceremonies, 9, 20.

Biichner, 48f, 56, 62, 69, 73, 75, 83.

Causality, 118, 119.

Cause, sufficient, 117.

Cells, living units, 27, 29; man, a community of, 30;
a system of, 142.

Chemical reactions, 76, 82.

Chinese civilization, 10; death-cultus, 11.

199

200 INDEX.

Chlorophyll, 115.

Christianity, 16, 20.

Church burial, 16.

Circulation, blood, 78.

Civilization, antiquity of Chinese, 10.
Cohesion, 97.

Conscience, 44.

Consciousness, 45.

Combustion, 92, 94ff.

Communism, cell, 159.

Coéperation, innermost, 161.
Corporeal existence, soul’s craving for, 15.
Cosmic catastrophe, a, 103.

Creation, orthodox theory of, 67, 173.
Cremation, 21, 24.

Customs, grave, 13.

Coulanges, Fustel de, 7, 10.

Cytology, 28, 29, 177, 193.

Darwin’s theory, 62.

Death, and dissolution, 1; in mid-ocean, 12.
Death-cultus, 11, 49, 189, 192.
Decay, 105, 116.

Deity, 176.

Dextrose, 82.

“Division of labor,’ organic, 141.
Dogma, 16, 51.

Doomsday, 191.

Dove, 128.

Dualism, ecclesiastical, 21, 88.
Dusch, von, 57.

Duty of matrimony in China, 12.
Dying and renewal, process of, 125.

Earth, history of our, 100.

Ego, perceived as relation, the, 162f.
Elysian fields, 15.

Energy of a living being, the, 72.

INDEX. 201

EE EEEEEEEIEEInnIEnernennesneenne

Entity, the soul’s, 164; man’s, 169; the divine, 185.
Equivalents of energy, 89.

Eskimo, the, 13.

Eternal, the, 181, 185f.

Eternity, 183.

Ether, 89.

Evolution, 17, 26.

Existence beyond the grave, 37.

Experience, daily, 77.

Faith, founded on probability, 37.

Fear, effect of, 131.

Fechner, Gustav, V.

Flourens, 129.

Folk-lore, IV.

Food, 156.

Forces, inorganic, 74; as qualities, 76; and resist-
ance, 87.

Forms of energy, 88.

Foundation fact, Bjérklund’s, XII.

Fries, S. A. D. D., Vil.

Fuel, organic, 938.

Function, bodily, 48.

Funeral ceremonies, 7.

Furnace heat and the sun, 109.

Future life, modern attitude toward, 4.

Geology, 62, 69.

Ghosts, 25.

God, image of, 22; presence of, in logical laws, 180.
Granfelt, 19.

Grave, communications from the, 7; in China, 12.
Grew, 28.

Harvey’s formula, 55f, 58, 62ff, 67, 122.
Heat, equivalents of, 98f.

Historical process, the, 46, 70, 188f.
Hierologists, Germanic, 22.

202 INDEX.

Hoffman, 58.

Honor, 22.

Humanity, a higher organism, 126; the link between
God and man, 177.

Hunger, 156.

Hydrates of carbon, 82.

[dea, man, God’s eternal, 174.

Idealism, 18, 194.

Image of God, the soul an, 172f, 179.
Immaterial experience, 45, 50.

Immortality, instinctive, 1, 2; of the cell, 124.
Incentives, 119.

Indestructibility of matter and energy, 170.
Indian tribes, 13.

Industry, a common need of, 145.

Inertia, 111.

Instinct, faith and, 4, 6; social, 144.
Intellect, mechanical equivalent of, 90.
Intelligence and the soul, 132.

Intuition, 26, 44, 178f.

Islam, 15.

Judaism, 15.
Jungle of materialism, the, XV.

Key, Ellen, VIII.

Laboratory results, 83, 84.

Language, cell, 164.

Lavoisier, 72.

Life-force, so-called, 71, 73, 121.

Life, supernatural origin of, 123.

Logical laws the form in which God exists, 180.
Limitations, man’s, 178.

Lodur, 21.

Machine, the living, 79, 139.
Malpighi, 28.

INDEX. 203

Man, a social organism of cells, 32; responsibility
of, 198.

Material, organic, 112f.

Materialism, 19, 49, 85.

Matrimony in China, 11.

Matter, 47, 68, 88, 96, 118.

Mechanical toy, man not a, XIV.

Mechanism of the organism, 138.

Memory, 146.

Metamorphosis, 40.

Micro-organic world, the, 58.

Mid-ocean, death in, 12.

Microscope, the, 28, 155.

Mirbel, Brisseau de, 29.

Mind, time-bound and space-bound, XIV.

Moldenhaver, 29.

Molecules, 96.

“Moss-clad fragment,’’ the, 65.

Motility, mechanical, 79.

Mutability, 91.

Mythology, Germanic, 21.

Nations as organisms, 31.

Natural science, 48, 191.

Nirvana, XIV.

Nobel prize, the, X.

Negroes, immortality ideas among, 12.
Nordenskold, 13.

Norse sagas, 15.

Odin, 22.

Omne vivum ex vivo, 59.
Organic structure, 33, 83, 84.
Origin of life, the, 70.
Oxygen, 102.

Facific Ocean, 10.
Parasites, 54.

204 INDEX.

Parseeism, 15.

Pasteur, 58.

Permanence, law of, 89, 91.
Personal existence after death, 6.
Philosophy of science, the, 73.
Polar regions, 10.

Pre-existence, 171.

Prehistoric beliefs, 4, 188.

Present, the eternally, 182.
Presentiment, 2.

Priestley, 72.

Primitive ideas of immortality, 10.
Principles of life and physical force, 90, 91, 121.
Propagation, 54, 55, 61.

Providence, 138, 197.

Psychical Research, society for, III.
Psychologie order of evolution, 5.
Purpose, organic, 149.

Pyre, the funeral, 190.

Reasoning, headlong, 20.
Re-birth, 40.

Recapitulation, 188.

Religious instincts, 17.
Resurrection, 15f, 150, 166, 190.
Rydberg, Victor, 21, 172.

Sagas, 15.

Samoyede grave, a, 13.

Scheele, 72.

Schréder, 57.

Schultze, 57.

Schwann, 57. {

Science and resurrection, 16, 20, 74.
Scylla and Charybdis of science, the, XIV.
Sin, 198.

Skeptical attitude, modern, 38f.
Society, human, 32, 148, 158.

INDEX. 205

Solar system, the, 184.

Sorcerers, 25.

Soul, future life of the, 8, 14; physiologists and the,
127; functions of the, 130, 134; a spiritual princi-
ple, 151.

Spallanzani, 57.

Spiritual body, a, 19f, 22, 26, 34f, 190, 195; vision, 43;
interaction, 152; beings, 175.

Spontaneous generation, 51, 52, 59, 105, 122.

Substance, living, 124; comprehending, 153.

Sun, importance of the, 104.

Supernatural forces, 45, 67.

Steam engine, art and the, 108, 110.

Swedish Peace Society, X.

Teleological casuality, 118.
Telepathy, III.

Thomson, Sir William, 63.
Time, a form of existence, 181.
Tissues, the, 142.

Tomb, life in the, 7.

Tool, the organism a, 1385.
Transcendental world, a, 42.
Treviranus, 29.

Units, organic, 151.
Unity of the organism, 166f.
Upsala, VII.

Veda Aryans, 21, 23f.
Virtue, 198.

Vis inertia, 110f.
Vitalistic doctrine, 72.

VY/ill incentive, 119.
Wohler, 81.

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