Man’s Spiritual Body.
If 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 universal
manifestation of religious intuition? On this question we need no longer
remain uncertain, no longer believe; _we know_ that man possesses such
a spiritual body. For many years, even centuries, this has been a fully
demonstrated fact, which may be directly observed, and which also has
been the subject of scientific research.
But what do we mean by spiritual body? The term conveys something of
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 spirituality 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
spiritual 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
confined to such phenomena as could be observed with the naked eye. The
organism from that standpoint was necessarily a unit of members and
organs whose functions, and even coarser anatomic structure, were beyond
any accurate 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 microscope, 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 importance 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 century,
and the small progress cytology made during this whole period.
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, Treviranus,
Moldenhaver and several others. Many different parts began to be
distinguished within the cells, such as membrane, protoplasm,
chlorophyll, etc. These parts were later found to be as many organs in
the cell performing different functions, which are at present 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
elementary organism. Although these beings are so exceedingly minute that
the naked eye can observe them only in combinations of thousands and
millions, yet each and every one of them not only possesses individual
life, but also the organs necessary for sustaining individual existence.
Innumerable quantities 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 individuals 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, is a community, and vice versa, every
community is an organism._ So far as we have knowledge of the organisms
they are all similar 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
communities are of different kinds and degrees of development, but the
composition of the organic edifice is in all essential features exactly
the same. The differences are literally only apparent, being due as they
are to the different aspect they present to our observation.
While we at first apprehend animals and plants as units, not seeing
the individual cells by which they are composed, 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 social side, on the
other, only the organic.
If there are beings observing the human community as we see plants and
animals, they would comprehend society as a unit composed of different
trades and industries, but not as composed of men, who are the building
material in these members. If such postulated observers made an invention
corresponding to our microscope, they would be surprised to find the
social organism composed of human individuals, which fact would seem just
as mystical to them as the cells seemed at first to us. So far as we have
derived from experience a knowledge of organic structure, it reveals
itself to us as _an individual composed of more primitive and elementary
individuals_. These elementary units of lower kind and order might
consequently be called a spiritual body in a literal sense.
From the point of view of the elementary constituent, each organism is
a community, a unit of similar, independently 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 organism in a spiritual body of still higher power, and so
on, in a geometric series. Man enters into the social organism, but is
himself composed of cell-organisms, which in turn consist of more primary
units.
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 potency exactly the same general
forms of organization as its elementary constituents have shown in
their own sphere. Hence the surprising similarity 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 question is of
extraordinary importance because it may entirely change our conception
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 continuous renovation
takes place, a successive replacing of the individuals which belong
to that being’s spiritual body. Human beings constitute, as already
pointed out, the cells or the spiritual body, in an organism of a higher
order, viz., of humanity. In this organism, an incessant renewal takes
place, as we know, inasmuch as new generations continuously succeed each
other. The same is the case with man’s own spiritual body. As the human
generations 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 renewal and everywhere with the same identity of
the complex individual. This latter originates, develops, and passes
away with a lifetime that bears a certain proportion to its complexity.
While man counts his existence and development 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, therefore, is not confined to the material
particles but comprises the spiritual body, the living units, as well.
Now, the question is: What is the relationship 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 future existence as here in time? Then death must evidently be
something else, something infinitely more than we have 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.