To answer that question, or to give my views on the subject as to
whether man lives after death or is extinguished as a living being by
death, would ordinarily involve a long preliminary discourse; but I
think I can give you my views, such as they are, in a few words. Life
is sensation, sensibility, the power of feeling. Without sensation
there is no life. We feel with our nerves; we see with our eyes; we
hear with our ears. Without nerves there would be no feeling, without
eyes no seeing, without ears no hearing. These senses, therefore,
of feeling, seeing, hearing, exist in combination with certain forms
of matter, and cannot exist without such combination. So the mind
exists in combination with the matter, brain. Without the brain there
can be no mental phenomena, no thinking, no perceiving. These things
are palpable; they are truths which may not be disputed. Therefore,
if death destroys our nerves, it destroys our power of feeling;
if it destroys our eyes, it destroys our power of seeing; if it
destroys our ears, it destroys our power of hearing; if it destroys
our brain, it destroys our power of thinking and perceiving. The man
lies down, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing; he is a
corpse. Separated from the brain, the mind cannot act, cannot think,
cannot conceive; therefore, if it exists at all, it is the same as
if it were dead. In that condition, the mind can no more think or
perceive than the dust into which the decomposed nerves have fallen
can feel. What follows then? That the man has come to an end, entirely;
he is extinguished.--Selected.
So you must equally bear with the comparatively small number of
scientists who, within the last three hundred years, have worked out
the hypothesis that the soul is not matter, substance, or entity,
at all, but simply the continuous action or process of the nervous
systems of animals, and especially of the brain of man, in answer to
their environment. In a word, the life, soul, spirit, mind, thought,
feeling, and consciousness are but varying tones of the music which
our nervous systems give out when the world plays upon them--much as
the piano answers to the touch of our hands. The music was not in,
nor the property of the piano, nor of the hand, but it arises and
exists only by reason of the playing-contact of the two. Thus the
life or soul is not a property of brain-matter, or of our nerves,
nor of the world or its impinging force; but when those world forces
by touch, heat, light, electricity and foods do reach so as to act
upon the nerves and brain, then comes their reaction, and we call
that reaction feeling, life, soul, thought, reason, etc., through all
of the varying music of consciousness, whether exhibited by a child,
a savage, a Newton or a Goethe.--Anon.
Materialism--Prof. Tyndall.
If Materialism is confounded, science is rendered dumb.... Materialism,
therefore, is not a thing to be mourned over, but to be honestly
considered; accepted if wholly true, rejected if false. ("Fragments of
Science," p. 221.) It ought to be known and avowed that the physical
philosopher, as such, must be a pure Materialist. His inquiries
deal with matter and force, and with them alone. (Ib., p. 72.) As
regards knowledge, physical science is polar. (Ib., p. 52.) It
is the advance of [this] knowledge that has given a materialistic
color to the philosophy of our age. (Ib., p. 222.) We may fear and
scorn Materialism; but he who knew all about it, and could apply his
knowledge, might become the preacher of a new gospel. (Ib., p. 221.)
Through our neglect of the monitions of a reasonable Materialism,
we sin and suffer daily. (Ib., p. 224.) The practical monitions are
plain enough which declare that on our dealings with matter depend
our weal or woe, physical and moral. (Ib., p. 222.) It is our duty
not to shirk--it ought rather to be our privilege to accept, the
established results of physical inquiries; for here, assuredly, our
ultimate weal depends upon our loyalty to truth. Is mind degraded by
this recognition of its dependence [on matter]? Assuredly not. Matter,
on the contrary, is raised to the level it ought to occupy, and from
which timid ignorance would remove it. (Ib., p. 221.)
Matter is not that empty capacity which philosophers and theologians
have pictured it, but the universal mother, who brings forth
all things as the fruit of her own womb. Nature is seen to do
all things spontaneously, without the meddling of the gods. (Ib.,
p. 193.) Matter I define as that mysterious thing by which all that is,
is accomplished. How it came to have the power which it possesses is a
question on which I never ventured an opinion. (Ib., p. 193.) I discern
in matter the promise and potency of all terrestrial life. (Ib.,
p. 251.)
Does life belong to what we call matter, or is it an independent
principle infused into matter at some suitable epoch? (Ib.,
p. 131.) There does not exist a barrier, possessing the strength
of a cobweb, in opposition to the hypothesis which ascribes the
appearance of life to that "potency of matter" which finds its
expression in natural evolution.... Divorced from matter, where is
life? (Ib., p. 192.) To man, as we know him, matter is necessary to
consciousness. (Ib., p. 192.) Every meal we eat, and every cup we
drink, illustrates the mysterious control of mind by matter. (Ib.,
p. 50.)
If these statements startle, it is because matter has been defined
and maligned by philosophers and theologians, who were ignorant
alike of its mystical and transcendental powers. (Ib., p. 51.) Two
courses, and two only, are possible: either let us open our doors
freely to the conception of creative acts, or, abandoning them let
us radically change our notions of matter. (Ib., p. 191.) Without
this total revolution of the notions now prevalent, the evolution
hypothesis must stand condemned. (Ib., p. 133.)
If we look at matter as defined by our scientific text-books, the
notion of conscious life coming out of it cannot be formed by the
mind. (Ib., p. 191.) Spirit and matter have ever been present to us in
the rudest contrast: the one as all noble, the other as all vile. But
is this correct? Upon the answer to this question, all depends. (Ib.,
p. 133.) #/
Physiology proves Materialism to be true, and the following testimony
to that fact by eminent scientific men is only a small part of what
might be quoted of similar tenor:
Bain tells us: The most careful and studied observations of
physiologists have shown beyond question, that the brain as a whole
is indispensible to thought, feeling, and volition.
Dr. Ferrier says: The brain is the organ of mind, and that mental
operations are possible only in and through it. This fact is so
well established that we may start from it as we should from any
ultimate fact.
Prof. Virchow, of Berlin, says: Every one must admit that without a
brain, nay, more, without a good and well developed brain, the human
mind has no existence.--Man has a mind and rational will only in as
much and in so far as he possesses a brain.
Huxley says: What we call the operations of the mind are functions of
the brain, and the materials of consciousness are products of cerebral
activity. Sensations are products of the inherent properties of the
thinking organ.
Tyndall says: We believe that every thought and every feeling has
its definite mechanical correlative in the nervous system; that it
is accompanied by a certain separation and remarshalling of the atoms
of the brain.
Dr. Maudsley says: I do not go beyond what facts warrant, when I say
that, when a thought occurs in the mind, there necessarily occurs
a correlative change in the gray matter of the brain. Without it,
the thought could not arise; with it, it can not fail to rise.
What is matter! I take a handful of earth in my hands, and
into that dust I put seeds, and arrows from the eternal quiver
of the sun smite it, and the seeds grow and bud and blossom,
and fill the air with perfume in my sight. Do you understand
that? Do you understand how this dust and these seeds and that
light and this moisture produced that bud and that flower and
that perfume? Do you understand that any better than you do the
production of thought? Do you understand that any better than
you do a dream? Do you understand that any better than you do
the thoughts of love that you see in the eyes of the one you
adore? Can you explain it? Can you tell what matter is? Have
you the slightest conception? Yet you talk about matter as
though you were acquainted with its origin; as though you had
compelled, with clenched hands, the very rocks to give up the
secret of existence. Do you know what force is? Can you account
for molecular action? Are you familiar with chemistry? Can you
account for the loves and hatreds of the atoms? Is there not
something in matter that forever eludes you? Can you tell what
matter really is? Before you cry Materialism, you had better
find what matter is. Can you tell of anything without a material
basis? Is it possible to imagine the annihilation of a single
atom? Is it possible for you to conceive of the creation of a
single atom? Can you have a thought that is not suggested to you
by what you call matter? Did any man or woman or child ever have
a solitary thought, dream or conception, that was not suggested
to them by something they had seen in nature?--Ingersoll.
The Origin of Belief in the Soul.
* * * I had waited at some distance, and as the day grew stronger,
saw that this new grave was not the only one upon that lonely height.
On my right was a mound on which lay the betel-box, the pipe, the
haversack, and "dah" (or chopper-knife) that in life had been his
who lay beneath. I turned to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree,
when I heard the sound of footsteps. The childless man and woman were
passing. I knew the man, and I spoke to him. He had often been my guide
in former visits to his village. He stopped. His wife passed on. I
asked, tenderly I hope, as to his child. What was the cause of death?
"Fever." Then he squatted down, drew out his pipe, filled and lit it.
"Whose grave is that?" I asked, pointing to the mound with the
betel-box and "dah."
"One of the men of my village," he replied; "he died some months ago."
"Why do you leave his betel-box, haversack, and 'dah' on the
grave? What use can it be to him?"
"It is our custom."
"But why?"
"His 'lah' (spirit) will require them."
"But you see his 'lah' has not taken them. They are still there,
and they are rotting away."
"Oh, no!" Very promptly. "What you see are only the forms of the
things. Their 'lahs' have gone away and are with the man's 'lah.'"
"Where?"
"In another world below this."
"And so people's 'lahs' after death go to another world and work as
in this?"
"Yes; and if they had no haversack, and no betel-box, and no 'dah'
how would they get on? How could they cut down forest and cultivate
rice for food if they had no 'dah'?"
He added after a pause:
"So our people say, but I don't know. I am ignorant. I am only a poor
jungle fowl."
"But," I persisted, "how do your people know that it is true--that
the betel-box, the haversack, the knife, and other things have 'lahs,'
or even that the man has a 'lah'?"