Resurrection.
From the relationship existing between the soul and the cells it appears
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 cells, 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 independent
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 organism is that of the soul, not
that of the cells, of which each possesses its individual organism.
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 nothing and with
feeling senses would feel nothing. To comprehend what there exists and
happens, man’s own organism must have undergone a corresponding 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 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
cannot 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 conditions and this
evolution must be identical 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 evolutionary processes. The
birth and death of the lower individuals in whole generations 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 successively 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
limited part of the organism, and the latter 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 faculties and talents. But in time he cannot utilize them
all. As a member of society he devotes himself to a certain 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 disposal 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 develop all his faculties _evenly_, but so long as he lives
in time this is an impossibility. As a matter of fact man can only live
this life piecemeal, and in this time-existence proper we have the
explanation of the fact that man distributes his body over a series of
cell-generations.
The law of the indestructibility of matter and energy is valid also in
the ideal world and this necessarily since it is a demand of thought
itself.[3] Applied to spiritual substance, which can exist only in
the form of living individuals, 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 nothing, this implies that man has an
individual 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 perhaps 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
fundamental 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 religions 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 _existence 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 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 evolution 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
intimate. 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 Himself?