THE SOUL AND IMMORTALITY
The hope of immortality is an essential feature of practically all
modern religions. Even those oriental religions which lack its clear
presence postulate a dim kind of personal continuity. Buddhism has
always been a puzzle to the optimistic Westerner who is in love with
himself and does all his thinking in terms of personality and personal
relations. The idea of re-birth in accordance with a rigid moral law
is alien to his traditions; while the impersonalism of the whole
process leaves him cold. It is not untrue to the facts to call
Buddhism an atheistic religion. Yet it is a religion because it
postulates the objective efficacy of moral categories. Freedom from
the wheel of re-birth is gained by the Eightfold Path of right beliefs
and right acts. Enough of the idea of a soul and enough of the idea of
immortality exists even in this religion to make these assumptions
important. But what have modern science and philosophy to say about
these age-old ideas? Is the soul any longer in favor?
Here, again, an historical approach is worth while, because it gives
the proper perspective. If we can understand why people in the past
developed and fostered these ideas, we can judge their reasons pretty
objectively, even though we realize that we have been strongly affected
by the beliefs erected upon them. {139} Destroy the roots of a tree
and the foliage will wither before long. Has science dug so sharply
around the roots of these old beliefs that they are bound to decay?
The subject is an extremely interesting one.
A belief in some sort of an after-life is wide-spread. It is common
knowledge that the American Indians spoke of a happy hunting-ground in
the West, in which the soul of the warrior would rejoice in abundance
of game. Other peoples thought of the abode of the dead as in the East
where the sun arises. Still others taught that it was in the sun or
the other heavenly bodies, or underneath the earth in a subterranean
region. We are seldom able to determine the motives which led to these
varying locations.
All sorts of beliefs flourished in the Mediterranean basin a few
centuries before our era; but the drift of religious thought was moving
rapidly toward a passionate acceptance of another life somewhere in the
heavens. Immortality was taking on a more vivid coloring and was being
transformed from a passive survival to an event of marked religious
significance. New ethical motives were attaching themselves to an old
tendency and modifying it almost beyond recognition. The sentiments
and rituals built up around the ideas of sin and salvation were
reflected into the next world and created the vision of a heaven and
hell. What a rich field this was for the mythopeic imagination to
exploit! And what an interesting sociological fact is it that the
human imagination has always been more fertile in its descriptions of
hell than in its descriptions of paradise!
But a few words ought to be said about the earlier conceptions of an
after-life. Both the Greeks and the {140} Hebrews thought of the
other-world as a joyless reflection of the present. Death was, to all
intents, the end of what really counted. Those who deny that men can
live nobly without the hope of immortality forget that men like
Pericles were unaffected by that phantom dream. Even the great Hebrew
prophets extolled righteousness without the promise of a reward in the
next world. What men have done, we can surely do again. The Greek
father felt himself a member of a family whose traditions and loyalties
he wished to hand on intact. For himself, he desired only the
customary funeral rites so that his shade might rest in peace. In the
house of Hades dwell the senseless dead, the phantoms of men outworn.
The answer of Achilles to Ulysses, when that wanderer visits him in the
underworld, expresses this shadowy after-life admirably: "Nay, speak
not comfortably to me of death, oh great Ulysses. Rather would I live
on ground as the hireling of another, with a landless man who had no
great livelihood, then bear sway among all the dead that be departed."
The Homeric Greeks rejoiced in life like youths whom everything
pleases. The shadowy realm of Hades was felt to be a mockery of the
sunlit world. The history of the belief in an after-life among the
Hebrews is very similar. Yet it is surprising to notice how few remark
the paucity of reference to this idea in the Old Testament. In the
book of Isaiah occurs that account of Sheol to which attention was
called in an earlier chapter: "Sheol from beneath is moved for thee to
meet thee at this coming.... All they shall answer and say unto thee,
Art thou become weak as we?" The passage is a tremendous one, full of
the most biting irony and vindictive hatred. This {141} conception of
Sheol evidently scarcely differs from the corresponding one of the
Homeric Greek. Toward the Christian era, as a result of the
infiltration of the beliefs current among surrounding peoples, the idea
of a future life took hold of the Jews. The Pharisees, the popular
party of the day, stressed the dogma, while the Sadducees, the
Aristocratic party, denied it.
Early religion was largely a state affair, for it concerned itself with
the safety of the social group; but it was rapidly becoming an
engrossing concern for the individual. The religious imagination was
busily painting another world and connecting it with the relations of
the individual to divine powers. Given the religious view of the
world, what an instrument of appeal and of dread this conception of
immortality was! The shadow and sunshine of another world lay athwart
this one. Endless vistas of pain and pleasure stretched into the
future. No wonder that the true means of salvation became the burning
question! From the beginning, Christianity emphasized the fact of
another world and its terrific meaning for the soul of man, adopting as
an inheritance the current views with regard to a Messianic kingdom and
a place of torment. Paul even goes so far as to proclaim the cynical
alternative: "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die."
The ideas of immortality and salvation were the central features of the
great religious revival which swept over the Roman Empire about the
time of the rise of Christianity. The desire for personal safety in
this world and the next moved men. Fear and hope worked together; fear
of the terrors awaiting the soul after death, hope of a happy existence
in some paradise. {142} That early Christianity owed much of its
success to its doctrines of final things cannot be denied. It was a
period of astrology, theosophy, mysticism, cults of saviors,
eschatologies. Few were able to keep their heads above this tide of
oracular mythology and superstition. What moorings did they have?
None of that tested knowledge of the physical world which we possess,
and which keeps numbers of people fairly sane to-day in spite of
themselves. When we recall the terror at Salem a few centuries ago, we
must admit that these Greeks, and Romans, and Jews, and Syrians did not
conduct themselves so badly in the demon-ridden world in which they
lived. Yet, while it would be unfair to blame those who embraced the
various cults, it would be equally unfair not to give praise to those
few enlightened souls who would approve none of these things.
Up to the present, the doctrine of immortality has been an essential
part of Christianity. The creeds which have come down to us proclaim
the faith that Christ Jesus will appear again to judge the quick and
the dead. To the average man, religion is absolutely committed to such
a belief. It has gone hand in hand with the idea of retribution and
reward until the two have grown together. It is not strange, then,
that the suspicion that immortality is not justified by physiological
and psychological facts is felt to have a grave bearing upon religion.
To the vast majority, religion without immortality is like _Hamlet_
with Hamlet left out. Remove the faith in a special providence,
likewise, and the edifice around which many religious emotions and
values have entwined themselves is no more than a ruin.
But the idea of a soul always accompanies the belief {143} in
immortality. The experiences which led to the one notion naturally
encouraged the other. If the soul can leave the body, it is obviously
independent, in large measure, of the latter's fate. Let us glance at
some of the experiences whose false interpretation is at the foundation
of a belief in an immortal soul inhabiting the body for a little space.
It is surprising what an influence was exercised by dreams. We have so
completely outgrown this uncritical attitude toward them that it takes
some effort to realize how natural it was. For the educated man of
to-day, dreams are subjective experiences, that is, experiences which
do not contain information about what is happening in the external
world. In the jargon of psychology, they are centrally aroused ideas
playing about some organic stimulus or some repressed wish. But the
savage knew nothing about such distinctions. The dead appeared to the
living and talked with them. Patroclus stands before Achilles and
chides him. Do not the dead, then, have some sort of life? Many
psychological motives combined to convince primitive man of at least a
shadowy existence after death. But there was another side to the
dream-life. The living went on long journeys, doing strange things,
while their bodies rested in the tent. Added to these suggestions, so
naturally lending themselves to a spiritistic interpretation, were
still others. Certain kinds of sickness are explained by means of the
idea of possession. Invisible agents are at work in the world. What
can a trance be if not the temporary absence of just such an agent?
"Among the Kayans of Borneo, for example, it is the custom for an
elderly person learned in such matters to sit beside the corpse, where
the soul is {144} supposed to hover for some days after death, and to
impart to the latter minute directions for its journey to the land of
the dead." We are in the presence, here, of natural illusions, of
hypotheses which inevitably arose. Man's first guesses were mistakes.
The whole history of science drives this fact home.
The various opinions men have built up around the idea of a soul are
instructive. How gravely men have written about such hidden things!
Only very slowly have they learned to separate an experience from its
interpretation, and to seek a wide range of facts before erecting even
an hypothesis. To explain by means of _agents_, visible and invisible,
is the plausible method to which man always resorts first. It is only
when he becomes more sophisticated that he thinks in terms of
_processes_. The following examples of divergent opinion upon the
soul, gathered by an able French author, show the vagueness of the idea:
Origen, the Alexandrian theologian: "The soul is material and has a
definite shape."
St. Augustine: "The soul is incorporeal and immortal."
A Polynesian: "The soul is a breath, and when I saw that I was on the
point of expiring, I pinched my nose in order to retain my soul in my
body. But I did not grasp it tightly enough--and I am dead."
Albertus Magnus: "There are thirty arguments against the immortality of
the soul and thirty-six for, which is a majority of six arguments in
favor of the affirmative."
Rabbi Maimonides: "It is written: 'The wicked will be destroyed and
there will not rest anything of him.'"
{145}
Ecclesiastes: "Men die as the beasts and their fate is the same. They
have all one breath."
The soul was at first conceived in very material ways. The idealistic
movement in Greek philosophy is responsible for the concept of an
_immaterial substance_. "Under the influence of mystical, religious
motives the soul becomes more and more non-spatial and intangible. The
words used are negative and abstract. It is generally supposed that
Plotinus was the first to describe the soul as an immaterial substance.
But this immaterial substance must somehow be brought into relation
with the physical body." It was this situation which gave rise to the
soul-body problem in philosophy, a problem which has gradually changed
into the mind-body problem. This transformation of the puzzle is
significant. The very terms have changed and have become more concrete
and empirical. A quotation from William James--a man who had no bias
against theology--will bring out the essential reasons for this
significant change of terms: "Yet it is not for idle or fantastical
reasons that the notion of the substantial soul, so freely used by
common men and the more popular philosophies, has fallen upon such evil
days, and has no prestige in the eyes of critical thinkers. It only
shares the fate of other unrepresentable substances and principles.
They are without exception all so barren that to sincere inquirers they
appear as little more than names masquerading."
I am inclined to believe that, to most people, to-day, the soul means
no more than the personality, and the conviction that this cannot be
reduced to the body. It stands for consciousness and character as
somehow rooted in something permanent. Plato's idea of the {146} soul
as a simple, indestructible substance awakens hardly an echo in their
minds--and why should it? Something which guarantees and makes
possible the continued existence of their conscious self after the
death of the body is the association which is uppermost. Educated
people, at least, have outgrown the ghost-soul of primitive times and
have put their hope in the inability of the philosophic scientist to
explain life and consciousness without appeal to agencies which are
inexplicable on naturalistic terms. But it is obvious that such a
basis is overhung by an ever-threatening danger. If the mind-body
problem were solved in a concrete, empirical way, what then?
It has been customary to examine the question of immortality from three
angles which may be called, respectively, the empirical, the ethical
and the philosophical. The more recent drift of philosophy toward
realism has tended to bring the first and the third methods of approach
closer together. It has increasingly been felt that philosophy
cooperates with the special sciences and is inseparable from them. The
ethical argument in favor of immortality is oftener found in poetry
than in serious books on ethics. It cannot be said to have sufficient
force to swing the balance established by science and a realistic
philosophy in touch with science.
The empirical status of immortality can best be brought out by a glance
at the facts of abnormal psychology. In olden days, as we have seen,
insanity was explained as the disturbing effect of a demon. To-day,
experiment and careful observation have proven that it is due to a
functional disorder of the brain. That, whenever there is a disorder
of the mind, there {147} is some corresponding anatomical or
physiological flaw in the brain has become a commonplace of modern
medicine and psychology. In fact, insanity is defined as a "symptom of
disease of the brain inducing disordered mental symptoms." A multitude
of experiences point to the very intimate connection between the brain
and consciousness. Careful observation of clinical cases has, for
example, shown that a lesion in the visual center of the brain, that
is, the part of the brain to which the fibers of the optic nerve run,
induces the disappearance of both sight and visual imagery. Psychology
and physiology have been busily engaged in discovering these
correlations. So extended are they that the suggestion that
consciousness is inseparable from the brain forces itself home ever
more obstinately. Mental capacity runs parallel with the finer
development of the brain. Is not, therefore, the very meaning of
mental capacity connected with the needs and activities of the
organism? But the case is still stronger when we note what happens to
an individual when something goes wrong with the brain. Can this poor
lunatic, who has dropped from the high level of educated manhood to a
condition more helpless than that of an animal, just because of a
relatively slight disintegration of the cortex, be expected to recover
his intellect by means of its total disintegration? Can it be denied
that the burden of proof rests on those who assert immortality?
The so-called ethical argument for immortality is associated with the
name of Immanuel Kant. Kant's philosophy was agnostic, and it was this
agnosticism which made his use of the ethical argument possible. If
you can't make any assured theoretical statement {148} about the nature
of the self, you can allow demands, which you regard as ethical and
primary, to dictate your ultimate beliefs. It cannot be denied that
Kant's argument savors of the popular notion that the virtuous must be
rewarded. At its highest, the ethical argument signifies a demand for
a future life in order to carry out that development of character which
the brief span of earthly life is not equal to. It is this argument
which runs through Browning. What shall we say of it?
There are both factual and theoretical objections to the ethical
argument for immortality. The more we know about habit, the more we
realize that character is pretty well "set" by middle life. The
creative period of human life ends all too soon. Character is not an
abstract possession separable from human tasks and needs. It is not
like a work of art which can be polished and re-polished. But, when
all is said and done, ethics must abide by the facts of the case. Take
character abstractly enough and apart from its human and organic
setting, and the dream of continuous perfecting may have meaning; but
so would the dream of continuous intellectual advance. Yet the scholar
knows all too well the judgment passed by the coming generation upon
the older one: "They can't adjust themselves to this new point of
view." Would progress come if the generations did not pass?
The philosophical aspect of the question can be touched upon only
briefly and in an untechnical way. The basic problem may be put in
this way: Can human personality be included in nature in a
theoretically satisfactory way? It has been customary to stress the
difficulties which confront such an attempt {149} and to be silent in
regard to the problems which the separation of body and personality has
always found facing it. Yet I think that few philosophers would deny
that it is the very irrationality of the traditional dualism which
makes a living monism of mind and body so desirable and so urgently
sought after.
There is good reason to believe that the persistence of the mind-body
puzzle has been due to two conditions, the lack of an adequate theory
of knowledge, and an ultra-mechanical, or non-evolutionary, view of the
physical world. Scientists and philosophers, alike, were possessed by
an inertia which prevented them from taking the principle of evolution
seriously. They refused to readjust their ideas so as to admit that
organization of a high grade, such as characterizes the nervous system,
has a synthetic way of acting of its own, not reducible to the mere
chain-like action of externally related units. There are many signs
pointing to the conclusion that a broader and more flexible naturalism
is forming which will sweep away the artificial problems and
stereotyped contrasts which have stood in the way of a candid inclusion
of human thought and activity within nature. When that day comes, the
hesitations which have encouraged the faith in immortality in the face
of empirical difficulties of an ever-increasing weight will pass away.
I am inclined to prophesy that psychology and physiology will reach an
adjustment of their principles before many years have passed, and that
consciousness and mind will take their places along with mass and
energy in the scientific view of nature. The old dualism of soul and
body will pass away and give place to a flexible naturalism.
The belief in immortality and the wish for it will die {150} out very
slowly. The vague appetite for another life will persist as an
undercurrent of half-understood desire for a good whose nature has not
been clearly thought out. What men really want is an eternal youth in
an environment which gives opportunity for self-expression and pleasant
companionship. It means rest to the weary, new horizons to those who
wish to achieve, a release from fetters to those who have felt
themselves oppressed. What a quiet charm there is in such an
uncritical play of the fancy! But is it anything more than
daydreaming? Can our musings become definite without revealing
themselves as fancies? Alas! our souls are old and written upon, and
we would no longer be the same were these marks removed. They have a
meaning for us and we cannot wish them away. If, for a forgetful
moment, we envy the smooth cheeks of a youth, the envy is but
momentary. What we desire is his abundant energy and hopefulness with
our own humorous and wiser self in command. How completely we are
parts of life as it is lived upon this planet! Desires, affections,
passions, ideas, habits, all, when analyzed, point to the human
organism and its environment. Our personality is like a plant which
draws its nourishment from what surrounds it. Remove the old peasant
from his fields and plow-fellows, and he will lose interest in life.
Remove the business man from the mart and counter, and he will become
restless. How can we expect to revive a zest in life by cutting the
grown personality loose from what it has fed upon? It is
psychologically absurd and betrays that tendency to abstract thinking
which is so widespread. The human personality is a function of this
sub-lunar life, of this organism, of this sky, of this {151} soil, of
this restless struggle with nature. Immortality is an impossible
surgery.
At certain stages of social development, false beliefs are simply
inevitable. For example, the Ptolemaic view of the solar system was
bound to precede the Copernican. And false beliefs do both good and
harm before they are outgrown. How many of the down-trodden have
looked to another world to right their wrongs! It gave them hope: but
it made them passive and all too meek. Has not the idea of another
life encouraged a false perspective in regard to this one? I cannot
feel that the belief was ever a very healthy one for the human race.
Yet, during the coming period of transition, many who have been trained
to hold false expectations will experience grievous pain. People who
become used to a narcotic recoil from the idea of giving it up. Their
nervous system has been taught to depend upon it. Is there not
something parallel to this in ethics? Religious romanticism is a
spiritual narcotic which substitutes a dream world for the more humdrum
world of every-day existence. It develops a taste for the meretricious
and sentimental. In revenge, the enthusiast fails to achieve insight
into the significance of common things. Life's real tragedies and
triumphs are veiled from his untrained eye. Only a whole-hearted, even
joyous, immersion in the sea of struggling human life gives the
imagination that iron vigor it needs. The greatest saints have talked
the least of heaven.
"Born into life!--who lists
May what is false hold dear,
And for himself make mists
Through which to see less clear;
The world is what it is, for all our dust and din.
{152}
"Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes--"
Let those who can meet life bravely and joyously. The stage has been
planned by no master artist, and the actors are only amateurs compelled
to improvise their parts; but the sunlight is sometimes golden and the
spoken lines often surprise us with their beauty. What critic can pass
assured judgment upon this continuous play?
{153}