The desire for life everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be
universal—at least that is the view taken by those unacquainted
with Oriental faiths and with Oriental character. Those of us whose
knowledge is a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the desire is
universal nor even general.
If the devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to “live alway,” he has not
succeeded in very clearly formulating the desire. The sort of thing
that he is pleased to hope for is not what we should call life, and not
what many of us would care for.
When a man says that everybody has “a horror of annihilation,” we may
be very sure that he has not many opportunities for observation, or
that he has not availed himself of all that he has. Most persons go
to sleep rather gladly, yet sleep is virtual annihilation while it
lasts; and if it should last forever the sleeper would be no worse off
after a million years of it than after an hour of it. There are minds
sufficiently logical to think of it that way, and to them annihilation
is not a disagreeable thing to contemplate and expect.
In this matter of immortality, people’s beliefs appear to go along with
their wishes. The man who is content with annihilation thinks he will
get it; those that want immortality are pretty sure they are immortal;
and that is a very comfortable allotment of faiths. The few of us that
are left unprovided for are those who do not bother themselves much
about the matter, one way or another.
The question of human immortality is the most momentous that the mind
is capable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the dead live all other
facts are in comparison trivial and without interest. The prospect of
obtaining certain knowledge with regard to this stupendous matter is
not encouraging. In all countries but those in barbarism the powers
of the profoundest and most penetrating intelligences have been
ceaselessly addressed to the task of glimpsing a life beyond this life;
yet to-day no one can truly say that he knows. It is as much a matter
of faith as ever it was.
Our modern Christian nations profess a passionate hope and belief in
another world, yet the most popular writer and speaker of his time,
the man whose lectures drew the largest audiences, the work of whose
pen brought him the highest rewards, was he who most strenuously strove
to destroy the ground of that hope and unsettle the foundations of that
belief.
The famous and popular Frenchman, Professor of Spectacular Astronomy,
Camille Flammarion, affirms immortality because he has talked with
departed souls who said that it was true. Yes, monsieur, but surely
you know the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are very
particular about that.