The great master of rationalist phenomenalism, David Hume, begins his
essay “On the Immortality of the Soul” with these decisive words: “It
appears difficult by the mere light of reason to prove the immortality
of the soul. The arguments in favour of it are commonly derived from
metaphysical, moral, or physical considerations. But it is really
the Gospel, and only the Gospel, that has brought to light life and
immortality.” Which is equivalent to denying the rationality of the
belief that the soul of each one of us is immortal.
Kant, who took Hume as the starting-point for his criticism, attempted
to establish the rationality of this longing for immortality and the
belief that it imports, and that is the real origin, the inward origin,
of his “Critique of Practical Reason” and of his categorical imperative
and of his God. But in spite of all this, the sceptical affirmation
of Hume remains unshaken. There is no way of rationally proving
the immortality of the soul. There are, on the other hand, ways of
rationally proving its mortality.
It would be not merely superfluous but ridiculous to explain here at
length how far the individual human consciousness depends upon the
organization of the body, how it comes gradually to birth according
as the brain receives impressions from without, how it is temporally
interrupted during sleep, swoons, and other accidents, and how
everything leads us to the rational conjecture that death carries with
it loss of consciousness. And just as before our birth we were not, nor
have we any personal pre-natal memory, so after our death we shall no
longer be. This is the rational position.
Rationalism--and by rationalism I mean the doctrine that abides solely
by reason, by objective truth--is necessarily materialist. And let not
idealists be scandalized thereby.
The truth is--it is necessary to state it clearly--that what we call
materialism means for us nothing else but the doctrine which denies
the immortality of the individual soul, the persistence of personal
consciousness after death.
In another sense it may be said that, since we know what spirit is,
and since matter is for us no more than an idea, materialism is
idealism. In fact, and as regards our problem--the most vital, the
only really vital problem--it is all the same to say that everything
is matter as to say that everything is idea, or everything energy,
or what you please. Every monist system will always seem to us
materialist. The immortality of the soul is saved only by the dualist
systems--those which teach that human consciousness is something
substantially distinct and different from other manifestations of
phenomena. And reason is naturally monist. For it is the function
of reason to understand and explain the universe, and in order to
understand and explain it, it is in no way necessary for the soul to
be an imperishable substance. For the purpose of understanding and
explaining our psychic life, for psychology, the hypothesis of the soul
is unnecessary.
All the attempts to substantivate consciousness, making it independent
of extension--it will be remembered that Descartes opposed thought to
extension--are but sophistical subtleties intended to establish the
rationality of faith in the immortality of the soul. It is sought to
give the value of objective reality to that which does not possess
it, to that of which the reality exists only in thought. And the
immortality that we crave is a phenomenal reality, it is a continuation
of this life.
From whatever side we look at it, it is always found that reason
confronts our longing for personal immortality and contradicts it. And
in strict truth, reason is the enemy of life. All that is vital is
anti-rational, and all that is rational is anti-vital, for reason is
essentially sceptical.
Rationalists persist in endeavouring to convince men that there are
motives for living and that there is a consolation for having been
born, even though there must come a time, at the end of some tens or
hundreds or millions of centuries, when all human consciousness shall
have ceased to exist. And these motives for living and working, this
thing which some call humanism, illustrate the amazing affectional and
emotional hollowness of rationalism and of its stupendous hypocrisy--a
hypocrisy that is resolved to sacrifice sincerity to veracity and not
to confess that reason is a dissolvent and disconsolatory power.
Must I repeat again what I have already said about all this idea of
creating culture, of progressing, of realizing good, truth, and
beauty, of establishing justice on earth, of ameliorating life for
those who shall come after us, of subserving I know not what destiny,
divorced from all preoccupation with the ultimate end of each one of
us? Must I again declare to you the supreme vacuity of culture, of art,
of good, of truth, of beauty, of justice ... of all these beautiful
conceptions, if at the last end of everything, in four days or in four
million centuries--it matters not which--no human consciousness shall
exist to appropriate this culture, this science, art, good, truth,
beauty, justice, and all the rest?
Many and various have been the rationalist devices--more or less
rational--from the days of the Epicureans and the Stoics, by means
of which it has been sought to discover rational consolation in
truth and to convince men--though the convincers were themselves
unconvinced--that there are motives for working and lures for living,
even though the human consciousness be destined ultimately to disappear.
The Epicurean attitude, the extreme and grossest expression of which is
“Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” or the Horatian _carpe
diem_, which may be rendered by “Live for the day,” is not radically
different from the Stoic attitude with its “Do what your conscience
tells you, and afterward let it be as it may be.” Both attitudes have a
common base, and pleasure for pleasure’s sake comes to the same thing
as duty for duty’s sake.
It is true that there are people who assert that reason suffices them,
and they counsel us not to seek to penetrate into the impenetrable.
But of those who say that they have no need of any faith in eternal
personal life in order to find incentives to living and motives for
action, I know not well how to think. A man blind from birth may also
assure us that he feels no great desire to enjoy the world of sight
nor suffers any great anguish from not having enjoyed it, and we must
needs believe him, for _nihil volitum quin præcognitum_, nothing can be
willed that is not previously known. But I cannot be persuaded that he
who has once in his life, either in his youth or at some other point
of time, cherished the belief in the immortality of the soul, will
ever find peace without it. And this kind of blindness from birth is
scarcely possible among men, except by a strange aberration. And the
merely and exclusively rational man is an aberration and nothing but an
aberration.
I do not know why so many people were scandalized, or pretended to be
scandalized, when Brunetière proclaimed once again the bankruptcy of
science. For science, in so far as it is a substitute for religion,
and reason, in so far as it is a substitute for faith, have always
foundered. Science will be able to satisfy in an increasing measure,
and in fact does satisfy, our increasing logical and intellectual
needs, our desire to know and understand the truth; but science does
not satisfy the needs of our heart and our will, our hunger for
immortality--far from satisfying it, it contradicts it. Rational life
and truth stand in opposition to one another. And can it be that there
is any other truth than rational truth?
It must remain established, therefore, that reason, human reason,
within its limits not only does not prove rationally that the soul
is immortal and that the human consciousness is through all the ages
indestructible, but that it proves rather--within its limits, I
repeat--that the individual consciousness cannot persist after the
death of the physical organism upon which it depends. And these limits,
within which I say that human reason proves this, are the limits of
rationality, of what we know by demonstration. Beyond these limits
is the irrational, which is all the same whether it be called the
super-rational or the infra-rational or the contra-rational. Beyond
these limits is the absurd of Tertullian, the impossible of the _certum
est, quia impossible est_. And this absurd can only base itself upon
the most absolute incertitude.
* * * * *
The vital longing for human immortality, therefore, finds no rational
confirmation, nor does reason give us any incentive or consolation
for living or give to life itself any real finality. But here, in the
depths of the abyss, the despair of the heart and the will and the
scepticism of reason meet face to face and embrace fraternally. And
it will be from this embrace, a tragic, that is to say a profoundly
loving, embrace, that the fountain of life will flow, a life earnest
and terrible. Scepticism, uncertainty--the ultimate position at which
reason arrives by practising its analysis upon itself, upon its own
validity--is the foundation upon which the despair of the vital sense
must build its hope.
Disillusioned, we have had to abandon the position of those who seek
to convert rational and logical truth into consolation, pretending
to prove the rationality, or at any rate the non-irrationality, of
consolation; and we have had to abandon likewise the position of those
who seek to convert consolation and motives for living into rational
truth. Neither of these positions satisfies us. The one is at variance
with our reason, the other with our feeling. Peace between these two
powers is impossible and we must live by their war. We must make of
this war, of war itself, the condition of our spiritual life.
Faith in immortality is irrational. And nevertheless, faith, life and
reason have mutual need of one another. This vital longing is not
properly a problem, cannot be formulated in propositions capable of
rational discussion; but it announces itself in us as hunger announces
itself. Neither can the wolf that throws itself upon its prey to
devour it or upon the she-wolf to fecundate her, enunciate its impulse
rationally and as a logical problem. Reason and faith are two enemies
neither of which can maintain itself without the other. The irrational
demands to be rationalized and reason alone can operate on the
irrational. They are compelled to seek mutual support and association.
But association in conflict, for conflict is a mode of association.
* * * * *
There is no possible permanent position of agreement and harmony
between reason and life, between philosophy and religion. And the
tragic history of human thought is simply the history of a struggle
between reason and life--reason bent on rationalizing life and making
it resign itself to the inevitable, to mortality; life bent on
vitalizing reason and forcing it to serve as a support for its vital
desires. And this is the history of philosophy, inseparable from the
history of religion.
Our sense of the world, of objective reality, is necessarily
subjective, human, anthropomorphic. And vitalism will always rise up
against rationalism, the will will always stand up against reason.
Hence the rhythm of the history of philosophy and the alternation
of periods in which life imposes itself, giving birth to spiritual
forms, with periods in which reason imposes itself, giving birth to
materialistic forms, although both of these classes of forms of belief
may disguise themselves under other names. Neither reason nor life ever
acknowledges itself vanquished.
No doubt it will be said that life ought to submit to reason and to
this we shall reply that nothing ought to be done that cannot be done,
and life cannot submit to reason. “Ought, therefore can,” some Kantian
will retort. To which we shall demur: “Cannot, therefore ought not.”
And life cannot submit to reason, because the end of life is living and
not understanding.
There is always someone who will tell us of the religious duty of
resigning ourselves to mortality. This is indeed the very summit of
aberration and insincerity. And over against sincerity will be set the
opposing ideal of veracity. Be it so, and yet it is quite possible to
reconcile the two. Veracity, respect for what I believe to be rational,
for what we call truth in the logical sense, moves me to affirm that
the immortality of the individual soul is a logical contradiction,
is something not only irrational but contra-rational; but sincerity
leads me to affirm also that I do not resign myself to this former
affirmation and that I protest against its validity. What I feel is a
truth, as much a truth at any rate as what I see, touch, hear, and what
is demonstrated to me--I believe that it is even more of a truth--and
sincerity obliges me not to hide my feelings.
And in self-defence life searches for the weak point in reason and
finds it in scepticism, which it seizes hold of, endeavouring to save
itself by maintaining its hold. It needs the weakness of its adversary.
In an outburst of passion, Lamennais exclaims: “But what! All hope
lost, shall we plunge blindly into the mute depths of a universal
scepticism? Shall we doubt that we think, that we feel, that we are?
Nature does not allow it; she forces us to believe even when our reason
is not convinced. Absolute certainty and absolute doubt are both alike
forbidden to us. We hover in a vague mean between these two extremes,
as between being and nothingness; for complete scepticism would be
the extinction of the intelligence and the total death of man. But it
is not given to man to annihilate himself; there is in him something
which invincibly resists destruction, I know not what vital faith,
which the will itself cannot master. Whether he like it or not, he must
believe, because he must act, because he must preserve himself. His
reason, if he listened only to that, teaching him to doubt everything,
itself included, would reduce him to a state of absolute inaction; he
would perish before even he had been able to prove to himself that he
existed.”[10]
It is not strictly true that reason leads us to absolute scepticism.
No, reason does not lead me and cannot lead me to doubt that I exist.
Whither reason does lead me is to vital scepticism, or more properly to
vital negation--not merely to doubt but to deny that my consciousness
survives my death. Vital scepticism comes from the clash between reason
and desire. And from this clash, from this embrace between despair
and scepticism is born holy, sweet, saving incertitude, our supreme
consolation.
The absolute and complete certainty, on the one hand, that death is a
complete, definite, irrevocable annihilation of personal consciousness,
a certainty of the same order as the certainty that the three angles
of a triangle are equal to two right angles, or, on the other hand,
the absolute and complete certainty that our personal consciousness
is prolonged beyond death in these or those conditions, including
withal the extraneous and adventitious addition of eternal rewards
and punishments--both of these certainties would equally make life
impossible for us. In the most secret chamber of the spirit of him
who believes himself convinced that death puts an end to his personal
consciousness, his memory, for ever, there lurks a shadow, all unknown
to him perhaps, a vague shadow, a shadow of a shadow of uncertainty,
and while he says within himself: “Well, let us live this passing life,
for there is no other!” the silence of this secret chamber speaks to
him and murmurs: “Who knows!...” He may not think he hears it, but he
hears it. And likewise in some secret place of the soul of the believer
who most firmly holds the faith in future life, there is a muffled
voice, a voice of uncertainty, which whispers in the ear of his spirit:
“Who knows!...” These voices are like the humming of a mosquito when
the gale roars through the trees in the wood; we cannot distinguish
this faint humming, nevertheless, merged in the clamour of the storm,
it reaches the ear. Otherwise, without this uncertainty, how could we
live?
“Is there?” “Is there not?”--these are the bases of our inner life.
There may be a rationalist who has never wavered in his conviction of
the mortality of the soul, and there may be a vitalist who has never
wavered in his faith in immortality; but at the most this would only
prove that just as there are monsters, so there are people who are
affectively and feelingly stupid, however much intelligence they may
have, and people who are intellectually stupid, however great their
virtue may be. But in normal cases I cannot believe those who assure
me that never, not even for a moment, not in the hours of greatest
loneliness and tribulation, has this murmur of uncertainty breathed
upon their consciousness. I do not understand the men who tell me that
the prospect of the yonder side of death has never tormented them, that
the thought of their own annihilation never disquiets them. For my part
I do not wish to make peace between my heart and my head, between my
faith and my reason--I wish rather that there should be war between
them.
* * * * *
“Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief!” This may appear to be a
contradiction, for if the man believes, if he trusts, how is it that he
beseeches the Lord to help his lack of trust? Nevertheless it is this
contradiction that gives all its deepest human value to this cry torn
from the heart of the father of a demoniac. His faith is a faith that
is based upon incertitude. Because he believes, that is to say, because
he wishes to believe, because he has need that his son should be
cured--he beseeches the Lord to help his unbelief, his doubt that such
a cure could be effected. Of such a kind is human faith. Of such a kind
was the heroic faith that Sancho Panza had in his master, the knight
Don Quixote de la Mancha, as I think I have shown in my “Life of Don
Quixote and Sancho”--a faith based upon incertitude, upon doubt. Sancho
Panza was indeed a man, a whole and a real man, and he was not stupid,
for only if he had been stupid would he have believed without a shadow
of doubt in the follies of his master. Neither did his master believe
in them without a shadow of doubt, for neither was Don Quixote, though
mad, stupid. He was fundamentally a man of despair, as I think I have
shown in my book. And because he was a man of an heroic despair, the
hero of that inward and resigned despair, he is the eternal exemplar
of every man whose soul is the battle-ground of reason and immortal
desire. Our Lord Don Quixote is the prototype of the vitalist whose
faith is based upon incertitude, and Sancho is the prototype of the
rationalist who doubts his own reason.