IMMORTALITY.
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.
Is This Life the “Be-all and End-all?”
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’?”
The Karen was silent for a while. Then he said—
“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.
1. Where does the soul come from?
2. Is the soul an entity or nonentity?
3. Of what is the soul composed?
4. When does the soul enter the body, before or after birth?
5. In what part of the body is the soul located?
6. If the soul is located in all parts of the body what becomes of that part of the soul contained in an amputated part of a living body?
7. Is the soul an organization independent of the body?
8. Does the soul develop as the body develops?
9. Is the soul of an infant of the same size and weight as the soul of an adult?
10. Is the soul of a negro of the same color as the soul of a caucasian?
11. Is the soul of an idiot as well developed as the soul of an intelligent person?
12. When does the soul leave the body, at death or at the resurrection day?
13. If the soul leaves the body at death, where does it sojourn while waiting for the resurrection morn?
14. If a living person was placed in an air-tight jar, and the jar sealed hermetically, at death how would the soul make its exit?
15. After leaving the body what direction does the soul pursue to reach its final destination?
16. What length of time does it require for the soul to reach its final destination?
17. Where and at what distance from the earth is the soul land located?
18. Has the soul the physical organs indispensible to mental action and consciousness?
19. If not, of what use would the soul be?
20. Is the soul sensible or insensible to pain?
21. Of what shape is the soul?
22. Of what color is the soul?
23. Does the soul retain its sex?
24. When and where are the souls made, or did they always exist?
25. We have five infallible witnesses to prove the existence of matter, namely, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. By these five witnesses we prove the existence and the component parts of matter. Can you by the aid of these five senses prove the existence of souls?—W. C. Clow.