_DEATH AND RESURRECTION._
[Illustration: GUSTAF JOHAN BJÖRKLUND]
Death and Resurrection
FROM THE POINT OF VIEW
OF THE CELL-THEORY
BY
GUSTAF BJÖRKLUND
Translated from the Swedish by
J. E. FRIES
Chicago
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
LONDON AGENTS
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
1910
Copyright by
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
1910
PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE.
Never in the history of human thought has the interest in the soul
and its immortality been greater and keener than now. The leading
investigators of the Society of Psychical Research have taken up the
problem of enquiring into the facts of spiritual experiences, 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 objectively valid. Moreover, many reports
come from witnesses whose mental constitution is under the suspicion of
being pathological, and so their value is practically null.
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 immortality; 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 erroneous 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 immortality.
Among the men who have done the work of a sympathetic reconstruction
of the idea of immortality on the basis of science, there is to be
mentioned, next to Fechner, Gustave Björklund, a Swedish scientist who is
well known in his own country, but who has been almost entirely ignored
in other lands. The obvious reason of this is the inaccessibility of his
writings, which have not yet been translated into English.
We do not believe Björklund’s solution is the right one, but we do
believe 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
published Fechner’s book _On Life After Death_ and we are glad to present
the views of Björklund on _Death and Resurrection_.
Dr. Carus has sketched his views repeatedly 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 Björklund’s belief is
unacceptable.
Nevertheless we publish Björklund’s book because we heartily sympathize
with his endeavor to justify those sentiments which instinctively point
out that death is not a finality, and that the purpose 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 Björklund’s book will be welcomed as the contribution of an
earnest and prominent scientific thinker on the important question, “If a
man die, shall he live again?”
THE PUBLISHERS.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
Johan Gustaf Björklund 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, became
a real estate owner on a small scale, first in one city and then in
Upsala, the principal university town of Sweden. Poverty was familiar to
Björklund throughout his life. Doubtless 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
obtaining any official position. He studied, however, for several years
at the University of Upsala, but followed no recognized course, and it
was only because of the ardent persuasion of his friends that he took a
degree as B. A.
In 1884, Björklund moved to Stockholm, where he remained until his death,
in 1903. At the University of Stockholm, 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 institution. During this
time he mainly supported himself by teaching philosophy, and among other
pupils, afterward renowned, was Ellen Key, the well-known Swedish writer
on sociology and the woman question. The most absorbing interests during
this period were, however, sociology and the peace movement.
To broaden his views and study social conditions in general, Björklund
undertook several protracted journeys to England, Germany, Belgium, and
France.
From 1887, Björklund began to publish the fruits of his untiring labor.
His first work was, “The Fusion of the Nations.” In that, as in “The
Anarchy of Evolution” and “Peace and Disarmament,” Björklund throws his
overwhelmingly convincing statistical resources and solid scientific
learning in favor of an ultimate universal, but more especially European
union of the nations. Toward this goal it is necessary to steer,
according to Björklund, 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 material culture reached. “Because during the most
profound peace, a nation suffers from its own army the same impeding
influences that in time of war is due to the hostile army.”
The last mentioned book, “Peace and Disarmament,” at once made Björklund
famous. It was translated into French, German, English, Polish, Dutch,
Hungarian and several other languages, and would no doubt have brought
its author a Nobel prize, had it appeared fifteen years later. Björklund
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, German and French, and the Italian Society,
“Unione Operaia Umberto I,” subsequently elected him an honorary member.
In his later years Björklund devoted less time to active work in the
universal peace movement. He became more absorbed in scientific research
and the problems of philosophy. An important impulse to his later
development, he received from a book, “Significance of Segmentation in
the Organic World” (Stockholm, 1890). Here he was brought to serious
consideration of the nature of the cell and of its place in life. In the
organization of the cells in a human body Björklund saw an example of a
universal law, governing all life. With this thought as a starting point,
he undertook 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 former book, and further
added his latest conceptions of the nature and evolution of life.
This work is undoubtedly one of Sweden’s most remarkable and interesting
contributions to contemporary philosophy. It is also the last work from
Gustaf Björklund’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 structure that Björklund so
successfully commenced 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 Björklund’s God or
not.
This foundation is the fact overwhelmingly proved by Björklund, that life
is not a quality in matter or physical force, but must be of immaterial
origin and substance. Granting that time as well as space are forms in
which matter and physical force are comprehended by man on his earthly
stage of consciousness, Björklund has also demonstrated the immortality
of life. For if life be a reality, which is not here denied, with no
roots in matter or physical force, whether these are identical or not,
this reality exists outside of the forms, time and space, in which matter
appears. But whether matter and physical force exist per se, or are
mere transient phenomena or what their origin and purpose is, these are
questions that Björklund never was granted the time to discuss.
Björklund’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 order, 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 constituent members in The Perfect Being, is hardly satisfactorily
answered by Björklund. His ingenious explanation, fully presented toward
the end of this volume, still leaves us in a dilemma. Björklund holds
that Perfect Love has 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 mechanical 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
evolution 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 everlasting, 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 irrationality that is destined to baffle the
space-bound man, whether his microscope 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 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 Björklund has shown us a road to
reconciliation between 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.
For the biographical data of Björklund’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
Congresses in the interest of the History of Religion. (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
Björklund to the reading public.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE.
OLD CONCEPTIONS OF A FUTURE LIFE 1
MAN’S SPIRITUAL BODY 26
SOURCE OF SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE 37
IMPORTANCE OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 51
MATERIALISTIC DEMONSTRATION OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 67
HOW IS ORGANIC MATTER PRODUCED? 87
ORGANIC MATTER AS A PRODUCT OF ART 107
THE SOUL AND THE CELLS 124
FUNDAMENTAL QUALITIES OF AN ORGANISM 138
ORGANIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SOUL AND THE CELLS 147
RESURRECTION 166
MAN AND INFINITY 174
RECAPITULATION 188
_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.
A consciousness of immortality, sometimes dim and vague, sometimes vivid
and clear, seems to be characteristic 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 contrary
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 presentiments, man finds himself amidst
a world where death and dissolution everywhere surround him. He sees
the 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 immortality 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
especially must this be true where the reply is so intimately connected
with himself. And these answers have not been lacking; we find them
formulated in those opinions and theories respecting a future life which
throughout the ages have gradually appeared and prevailed.
The critically thinking public of the present day takes a decidedly
skeptical attitude toward all these theories. They assert, and not
without strong arguments, that it is impossible to know anything. But,
however convinced the public may be of the fruitlessness of discussing
the topic, no one will succeed in pushing it entirely aside. Time and
again the same questions reappear as dark and threatening clouds on the
horizon of our consciousness; they occupy 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
established 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 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 mentioned really exists. Natural science has
furnished this basis, though nobody 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 differentiation 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 different
characteristics and qualities, proceeds step by step, being the result of
slowly advancing evolution.
The child and the savage remain unconscious of any discrimination between
soul and body, and even for the more cultivated man, the border between
the two is vague and undetermined. 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 of men in very low stages of civilization, and, in fact, that
it is of the most general interest.
The reason for this evidently lies in the instinctive belief that
the body contains something which is immortal, and which in the life
hereafter the soul cannot dispense with.
In its first historic form the question 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
existence after death than civilized mankind 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 have no written communication,
but from their graves they speak to the present day intelligibly and
plainly of their belief in a life to come. Behold the monuments 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 something yet alive was placed there at the same time. The
soul was born simultaneously 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 failed
to bury with him the things of which he was thought to be in want. They
poured wine on the grave in order 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 deceased 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 dwelling.
Drifting about, it sought in vain the desired rest after life’s fitful
struggle. Without shelter, without offerings or food, it was condemned
to everlasting wandering. Therefore, because the deceased was unhappy,
he became ill-natured. He tormented the living; sent them diseases;
destroyed their harvests; 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, disciples 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
challenge the tempest for the empty formality of gathering and burying
the fallen. But the masses, even in enlightened Athens, still clung to
the old 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 generations, and have been the source from which the larger
part of ancient domestic and public institutions were derived.”
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 because of the antiquity of
their civilization, but because of their great numbers. 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 continuous communication with its
ancestors, upon whom are bestowed offerings 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 forgotten,
it grows melancholy and ill-natured, it complains in doleful voice and
its moans are ominous. Woe unto him who ignores these obligations. The
offerings 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 sacrifices and memorial observances if the family dies out?
Matrimony, therefore, 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 family. 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 sacrifice 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 faithful 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 steamship 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,
and among the Indian tribes of America. 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 utensils; 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
ornaments, etc. Even rolls of birch bark were found in the coffin, in
all probability to be used for making fire in another world. Beside the
grave a sleigh was placed upside down, evidently in order to provide
a vehicle for the deceased, and we may assume that reindeers were
slaughtered at the funeral.
The essential, fundamental thought in this conception which causes the
uncultivated 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 cannot 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 factors, the soul cannot be wholly satisfied 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 in all
superfluity, so that the soul could not help but suffer a ceaseless
regret whether it moved in the halls of Valhalla or in the Elysian
fields. Glorious 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 continuous longing for the sunny life
on earth made death seem something terrible that fretted and tormented
men. Was it not natural, then, that the mental 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 of the world in connection with
a cosmic catastrophe out of which new heavens and a new earth with an
ennobled 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
conceptions so deeply rooted in human nature? It is the scientific spirit
as acknowledged even by faithful theologians. 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 nature’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 in the old
doctrine of a physical resurrection.
Another question is, whether this ancient belief could disappear without
leaving traces in contemporary consciousness. 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 religious life in our day. The
reaction does not necessarily mean progress at first. Evolution does not
follow a straight line; a step forward is generally immediately followed
by phenomena in the opposite direction.
The religious instincts, underlying the conception of the body’s
importance to the soul in a future life, must create new expressions, and
the logic of the old conceptions themselves indicates 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 almost violently shaken by natural
science, 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
essentiality of our body, were logically driven to a gross materialism.
If science had proved that the belief in a bodily resurrection is
untenable, why should it not be able to demonstrate that all religious
doctrines were delusions? 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,
Granfelt 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 continuous 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 during this
process is the spiritual body, which assimilates, typically forms, and
again secretes the earthly matter. It must be this spiritual body, then,
that constitutes the combining element between man’s earthly body and his
glorified body in the eternal life.”
Christianity speaks not only of a material resurrection on the day of
judgment; it also says that man possesses within him a spiritual body,
which after death immediately arises to everlasting life. This latter
conception is not confined to Christianity. In all religions 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
which cremation was the most common. The place cremation occupied in
ancient thought and the connection fancied by our forefathers between the
elements which make up man’s spiritual 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. According
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_ (_litr_), an inner body
shaped after the gods, and invisible to earthly eyes; fifth, the soul;
sixth, the spirit.”
The earthly and the vegetative elements 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
received _la_, that is the blood, and _laeti_, that is the power of
intentional movement inherent in the blood, which attributes have been
considered by all peoples as the characteristics that distinguish 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
originally belonged to the gods. To the Germanic hierologists and bards
man was formed _in effigiem deorum_ and possessed 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
elements, so that a person may assume the appearance of another without
changing his spiritual identity.
The soul, _odr_, is the gift of Höner, while the spirit, _önd_, is the
contribution of Odin.
Earthly death consists in the separation of the higher elements, spirit,
soul and _liten_, which form a unity for themselves, from the lower
elements and a removal of the former to Hades. The lower elements, the
earthly, the vegetal 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 personality 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
spontaneously 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, according 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-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 combustion, the lower
elements were enabled 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 disturbed either by craving for nourishment
or through the acts of Nirrtis and sorcerers; second, the surviving were
relieved from their dread of evil ghosts.