"My child is dead--his body is buried there. It can not move and
go about; yet I know that in my sleep he will come to me. He will
speak, and I shall speak to him. It is not his body but his 'lah'
that will come. So also I lost an ax long ago. It fell in the forest
somewhere. I could not find it, but in my sleep I have seen its 'lah'
and have held it in my hand." He paused, and went on: "It must have a
'lah,' for iron and handle have rotted away long ago, yet I held them
last night in my hand."
"Then the 'lah' lives independently of the body?"
"Yes. Our people say so."
I was silent. Here among these savages I saw how the germs of belief
in a future life are laid, from what delusion they spring.
Then looking back to the far-off times, when the ancestors of our own
now civilized race were savages with minds as undeveloped as that of
the savage before me, I saw how from the mystery of dream-appearances
rose the belief in the dual nature of things. I saw how this belief,
extending first to all things animate and inanimate, came in the slow
evolution of man's intellect, by the elimination of the grosser and
cruder portion of his thought to hold at length only of living things.
No profound thought--no deep insight into human nature is needed to
trace along general lines its further development.
Man in his selfish egoism making himself the center of all nature,
has deemed that he alone is thus favored and raised above the rest
of the universe.
Moreover it is a belief that with all its uncertainties has an
intrinsic attractive beauty in the hope it gives to man, that love
and happiness will last beyond the grave.
Above all--fatalest of all, it is a belief that offers to the craft
of the priest, power over his fellow man.
Thus, flattering to man's self-love, useful as an engine of power,
affording an easy explanation of mysteries in life and death, this
belief in a soul really rising in "the mists and shadows of sleep,"
has come down to us as god-revealed from on high.--C. T. Bingham, in
"Progress," London, England.
"When a Man Dies what Becomes of his Soul?"
A friend of mine meeting me in the streets of Chicago one day,
without much ceremony propounded the above question; "Say, Brother
Bell," he began, "I would like to have you tell me what becomes of
a man's soul when he dies?" In reply I said, "Do you see that man
walking on the other side of the street?" "Yes," he said, "that is
old Johnson." I then called his attention to the peculiar movement
of the old gentleman. "See what a peculiar gait he has." He assented
that our friend's gait was peculiar. As we were contemplating him,
he stopped to look in a store window. When he halted I turned to my
questioner and asked, "Where has Mr. Johnson's gait gone since he
stopped walking?" He very candidly acknowledged that a man's gait
was not a thing, not an entity, but a mode of motion, and that when
the body ceased to move, there was no gait. I asked him if thinking
(the soul) was not a motion or activity of the brain, and that when
it ceased to act, if there was any soul or thinking left. I have a
very distinct remembrance that he talked a long time and said nothing.
Some Soul Questions.