THE desire for life everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be
universal--at least that is the view taken by those unacquainted with
Oriental faiths and with Oriental character. Those of us whose knowledge
is a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the desire is universal
or even general.
If the devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to "live alway," he has not
succeeded in very clearly formulating the desire. The sort of thing that
he is pleased to hope for is not what we should call life, and not what
many of us would care for.
When a man says that everybody has "a horror of annihilation," we may be
very sure that he has not many opportunities for observation, or that
he has not availed himself of all that he has. Most persons go to sleep
rather gladly, yet sleep is virtual annihilation while it lasts; and if
it should last forever the sleeper would be no worse off after a million
years of it than after an hour of it There are minds sufficiently
logical to think of it that way, and to them annihilation is not a
disagreeable thing to contemplate and expect.
In this matter of immortality, people's beliefs appear to go along with
their wishes. The chap who is content with annihilation thinks he will
get it; those that want immortality are pretty sure they are immortal,
and that is a very comfortable allotment of faiths. The few of us that
are left unprovided for are those who don't bother themselves much about
the matter, one way or another.
The question of human immortality is the most momentous that the mind
is capable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the dead live, all other
facts are in comparison trivial and without interest. The prospect of
obtaining certain knowledge with regard to this stupendous matter is not
encouraging. In all countries but those in barbarism the powers of the
profoundest and most penetrating intelligences have been ceaselessly
addressed to the task of glimpsing a life beyond this life; yet today no
one can truly say that he knows. It is still as much a matter of faith
as ever it was.
Our modern Christian nations hold a passionate hope and belief in
another world, yet the most popular writer and speaker of his time, the
man whose lectures drew the largest audiences, the work of whose pen
brought him the highest rewards, was he who most strenuously strove to
destroy the ground of that hope and unsettle the foundations of that
belief.
The famous and popular Frenchman, Professor of Spectacular Astronomy,
Camille Flammarion, affirms immortality because he has talked with
departed souls who said that it was true. Yes, Monsieur, but surely
you know the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are very
particular about that. Your testimony is of that character.
"I don't repudiate the presumptive arguments of school men. I merely
supplement them with something positive. For instance, if you assumed
the existence of God this argument of the scholastics is a good one. God
has implanted in all men the desire of perfect happiness. This desire
can not be satisfied in our lives here. If there were not another life
wherein to satisfy it then God would be a deceiver. _Voila tout_."
There is more: the desire of perfect happiness does not imply
immortality, even if there is a God, for:
( 1 ) God may not have implanted it, but merely suffers it to exist, as
He suffers sin to exist, the desire of wealth, the desire to live longer
than we do in this world. It is not held that God implanted all the
desires of the human heart. Then why hold that He implanted that of
perfect happiness?
(2) Even if He did--even if a divinely implanted desire entail its own
gratification--even if it can not be gratified in this life--that does
not imply immortality. It implies _only_ another life long enough for
its gratification just once. An eternity of gratification is not a
logical inference from it.
(3) Perhaps God _is_ "a deceiver" who knows that He is not? Assumption
of the existence of a God is one thing; assumption of the existence of
a God who is honorable and candid according to our finite conception of
honor and candor is another.
(4) There may be an honorable and candid God. He may have implanted
in us the desire of perfect happiness. It may be--it is--impossible to
gratify that desire in this life. Still, another life is not implied,
for God may not have intended us to draw the inference that He is going
to gratify it. If omniscient and omnipotent, God must be held to have
intended, whatever occurs, but no such God is assumed in M. Flammarion's
illustration, and it may be that God's knowledge and power are limited,
or that one of them is limited.