The Question as to a Future Life.
Upon the question whether Humanity is, after all, to cast in its lot
with the grass that withers and the beasts that perish, the whole
foregoing argument has a bearing that is by no means remote or
far-fetched. It is not likely that we shall ever succeed in making the
immortality of the soul a matter of scientific demonstration, for we
lack the requisite data. It must ever remain an affair of religion
rather than of science. In other words, it must remain one of that class
of questions upon which I may not expect to convince my neighbour, while
at the same time I may entertain a reasonable conviction of my own upon
the subject.[16] In the domain of cerebral physiology the question might
be debated forever without a result. The only thing which cerebral
physiology tells us, when studied with the aid of molecular physics, is
against the materialist, so far as it goes. It tells us that, during the
present life, although thought and feeling are always manifested in
connection with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no possibility can
thought and feeling be in any sense the products of matter. Nothing
could be more grossly unscientific than the famous remark of Cabanis,
that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. It is not
even correct to say that thought goes on in the brain. What goes on in
the brain is an amazingly complex series of molecular movements, with
which thought and feeling are in some unknown way correlated, not as
effects or as causes, but as concomitants. So much is clear, but
cerebral physiology says nothing about another life. Indeed, why should
it? The last place in the world to which I should go for information
about a state of things in which thought and feeling can exist in the
absence of a cerebrum would be cerebral physiology!
The materialistic assumption that there is no such state of things, and
that the life of the soul accordingly ends with the life of the body, is
perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known
to the history of philosophy. No evidence for it can be alleged beyond
the familiar fact that during the present life we know Soul only in its
association with Body, and therefore cannot discover disembodied soul
without dying ourselves. This fact must always prevent us from obtaining
direct evidence for the belief in the soul's survival. But a negative
presumption is not created by the absence of proof in cases where, in
the nature of things, proof is inaccessible.[17] With his illegitimate
hypothesis of annihilation, the materialist transgresses the bounds of
experience quite as widely as the poet who sings of the New Jerusalem
with its river of life and its streets of gold. Scientifically speaking,
there is not a particle of evidence for either view.
But when we desist from the futile attempt to introduce scientific
demonstration into a region which confessedly transcends human
experience, and when we consider the question upon broad grounds of
moral probability, I have no doubt that men will continue in the future,
as in the past, to cherish the faith in a life beyond the grave. In past
times the disbelief in the soul's immortality has always accompanied
that kind of philosophy which, under whatever name, has regarded
Humanity as merely a local incident in an endless and aimless series of
cosmical changes. As a general rule, people who have come to take such a
view of the position of Man in the universe have ceased to believe in a
future life. On the other hand, he who regards Man as the consummate
fruition of creative energy, and the chief object of Divine care, is
almost irresistibly driven to the belief that the soul's career is not
completed with the present life upon the earth. Difficulties on theory
he will naturally expect to meet in many quarters; but these will not
weaken his faith, especially when he remembers that upon the alternative
view the difficulties are at least as great. We live in a world of
mystery, at all events, and there is not a problem in the simplest and
most exact departments of science which does not speedily lead us to a
transcendental problem that we can neither solve nor elude. A broad
common-sense argument has often to be called in, where keen-edged
metaphysical analysis has confessed itself baffled.
Now we have here seen that the doctrine of evolution does not allow us
to take the atheistic view of the position of Man. It is true that
modern astronomy shows us giant balls of vapour condensing into fiery
suns, cooling down into planets fit for the support of life, and at last
growing cold and rigid in death, like the moon. And there are
indications of a time when systems of dead planets shall fall in upon
their central ember that was once a sun, and the whole lifeless mass,
thus regaining heat, shall expand into a nebulous cloud like that with
which we started, that the work of condensation and evolution may begin
over again. These Titanic events must doubtless seem to our limited
vision like an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes. They
disclose no signs of purpose, or even of dramatic tendency;[18] they
seem like the weary work of Sisyphos. But on the face of our own planet,
where alone we are able to survey the process of evolution in its higher
and more complex details, we do find distinct indications of a dramatic
tendency, though doubtless not of purpose in the limited human sense.
The Darwinian theory, properly understood, replaces as much
teleology[19] as it destroys. From the first dawning of life we see all
things working together toward one mighty goal, the evolution of the
most exalted spiritual qualities which characterize Humanity. The body
is cast aside and returns to the dust of which it was made. The earth,
so marvellously wrought to man's uses, will also be cast aside. The day
is to come, no doubt, when the heavens shall vanish as a scroll, and the
elements be melted with fervent heat. So small is the value which Nature
sets upon the perishable forms of matter! The question, then, is reduced
to this: are Man's highest spiritual qualities, into the production of
which all this creative energy has gone, to disappear with the rest? Has
all this work been done for nothing? Is it all ephemeral, all a bubble
that bursts, a vision that fades? Are we to regard the Creator's work as
like that of a child, who builds houses out of blocks, just for the
pleasure of knocking them down? For aught that science can tell us, it
may be so, but I can see no good reason for believing any such thing. On
such a view the riddle of the universe becomes a riddle without a
meaning. Why, then, are we any more called upon to throw away our belief
in the permanence of the spiritual element in Man than we are called
upon to throw away our belief in the constancy of Nature? When
questioned as to the ground of our irresistible belief that like causes
must always be followed by like effects, Mr. Mill's answer was that it
is the result of an induction coextensive with the whole of our
experience; Mr. Spencer's answer was that it is a postulate which we
make in every act of experience;[20] but the authors of the "Unseen
Universe," slightly varying the form of statement, called it a supreme
act of faith,--the expression of a trust in God, that He will not "put
us to permanent intellectual confusion." Now the more thoroughly we
comprehend that process of evolution by which things have come to be
what they are, the more we are likely to feel that to deny the
everlasting persistence of the spiritual element in Man is to rob the
whole process of its meaning. It goes far toward putting us to permanent
intellectual confusion, and I do not see that any one has as yet
alleged, or is ever likely to allege, a sufficient reason for our
accepting so dire an alternative.
For my own part, therefore, I believe in the immortality of the soul,
not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science,
but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work. Such
a belief, relating to regions quite inaccessible to experience, cannot
of course be clothed in terms of definite and tangible meaning. For the
experience which alone can give us such terms we must await that solemn
day which is to overtake us all. The belief can be most quickly defined
by its negation, as the refusal to believe that this world is all. The
materialist holds that when you have described the whole universe of
phenomena of which we can become cognizant under the conditions of the
present life, then the whole story is told. It seems to me, on the
contrary, that the whole story is not thus told. I feel the omnipresence
of mystery in such wise as to make it far easier for me to adopt the
view of Euripides, that what we call death may be but the dawning of
true knowledge and of true life. The greatest philosopher of modern
times, the master and teacher of all who shall study the process of
evolution for many a day to come, holds that the conscious soul is not
the product of a collocation of material particles, but is in the
deepest sense a divine effluence. According to Mr. Spencer, the divine
energy which is manifested throughout the knowable universe is the same
energy that wells up in us as consciousness. Speaking for myself, I can
see no insuperable difficulty in the notion that at some period in the
evolution of Humanity this divine spark may have acquired sufficient
concentration and steadiness to survive the wreck of material forms and
endure forever. Such a crowning wonder seems to me no more than the fit
climax to a creative work that has been ineffably beautiful and
marvellous in all its myriad stages.
Only on some such view can the reasonableness of the universe, which
still remains far above our finite power of comprehension, maintain its
ground. There are some minds inaccessible to the class of considerations
here alleged, and perhaps there always will be. But on such grounds, if
on no other, the faith in immortality is likely to be shared by all who
look upon the genesis of the highest spiritual qualities in Man as the
goal of Nature's creative work. This view has survived the Copernican
revolution in science, and it has survived the Darwinian revolution.
Nay, if the foregoing exposition be sound, it is Darwinism which has
placed Humanity upon a higher pinnacle than ever. The future is lighted
for us with the radiant colours of hope. Strife and sorrow shall
disappear. Peace and love shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the
lesson of priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great musician, is
confirmed in the light of modern knowledge; and as we gird ourselves up
for the work of life, we may look forward to the time when in the truest
sense the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of Christ, and
he shall reign for ever and ever, king of kings and lord of lords.