There is still another question. Why should God, a being of infinite
tenderness, leave the question of immortality in doubt? How is it
that there is nothing in the Old Testament on this subject? Why is
it that he who made all the constellations did not put in his heaven
the star of hope? How do you account for the fact that you do not
find in the Old Testament, from the first mistake in Genesis to the
last curse in Malachi, a funeral service? Is it not strange that some
one in the Old Testament did not stand by an open grave of father or
mother and say, "We shall meet again"? Was it because the divinely
inspired men did not know? You taunt me by saying that I know no more
of the immortality of the soul than Cicero knew. I admit it. I know
no more than the lowest savage, no more than a doctor of divinity,
that is to say, nothing.--Ingersoll, Ingersoll-Field Discussion.
Some urge that the soul is life. What is life? Is it not the word
by which we express the aggregate normal functional activity of
vegetable and animal organisms, necessarily differing in degree, if
not in kind, with each different organization? To talk of immortal
life, and yet to admit the decay and destruction of the organization,
is much the same as to talk of a square circle. You link together two
words which contradict each other. The solution of the soul problem
is not so difficult as many imagine. The greatest difficulty is, that
we have been trained to use certain words as "God," "matter," "mind,"
"spirit," "soul," "intelligence," and we have been further trained
to take these words as representatives of realities, which in fact,
they do not represent. We have to unlearn much of our school lore. We
have specially to carefully examine the meaning of each word we use. I
am told that the mind and the body are separate from one another. Are
the brightness and steel of the knife separate? Is not brightness the
quality attaching to a certain modification of existence--steel? Is
not intelligence a quality attaching to a certain modification of
existence--man? The word brightness has no meaning, except as relating
to some bright thing. The word intelligence, no meaning, except as
relating to some intelligent thing. I take some water and drop it
upon the steel, in due course the process of oxidation takes place,
and the brightness is gone. I drop into a man's brain a bullet; the
process of the destruction of life takes place, and his intelligence
is gone. By changing the state of the steel we destroy its brightness,
and by disorganizing the man destroy his intelligence. Is mind an
entity or result? an existence or a condition? Surely it is but the
result of organic activity, a phenomenon of animal life. ("Has Man
a Soul?" Charles Bradlaugh.)
The idea of immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in
the human heart, beating its countless waves of hope and joy against
the shores of time, and was not born of an book, nor of any religion,
nor of any creed; it was born of human affection, and will continue
to ebb and flow beneath the clouds and mists of doubt and darkness
as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow of hope
shining upon the tears of grief. We love, therefore we wish to live,
and the foundation of the idea of immortality is human affection
and human love, and I have a thousand times more confidence in the
affections of the human heart, in the deep and splendid feelings of
the human soul than I have in any book that ever was or ever can be
written by mortal man.--Ingersoll.