The So-Called Scientific Immortality.
The Smithsonian Institution at Washington was founded for the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Guided by the contracted notions prevalent among scientists, it has not accomplished much for either object. The theory of Lester F. Ward of this institution was paraphrased as follows in the last Journal:
As for immortal life I must confess,
Science has never, never answered “yes.”
Indeed all psycho-physiological sciences show,
If we’d be loyal, we must answer “no!”
Man cannot recollect before being born,
And hence his future life must be “in a horn.”
There must be a parte ante if there’s a parte post,
And logic thus demolishes every future ghost.
Upon this subject the voice of science
Has ne’er been aught but stern defiance.
Mythology and magic belong to “limbus fatuorum;”
If fools believe them, we scientists deplore ’em.
But, nevertheless, the immortal can’t be lost,
For every atom has its bright, eternal ghost!
Mr. Ward appears to enjoy greatly this theory of his own final extinction, and he exclaims with infinite self-satisfaction, “this pure and ennobling sense of truth he would scorn to barter for the selfish and illusory hope of an eternity of personal existence.” This is quite a jolly funeral indeed!
It is true Mr. Ward’s very profound theories contradict an immense number of facts observed by wiser men than himself, but so much the worse for the facts,—they must not embarrass a Smithsonian philosopher when he solves to his own satisfaction the vast problem of the universe. This Mr. Ward thinks he has done. It is quite an ingenious and laboriously constructed hypothesis, but like all other attempts to construct a grand philosophy without a basis of fact, it is hard to manufacture the theory and hard to comprehend it. Mr. Ward says himself in the Open Court that even to comprehend his doctrine would require the “careful reading of nearly 200 pages,” while “to see the matter in precisely the same light as I see it would require the reading of the entire work of some 1400 pages!” Really, Mr. Ward, the writer who cannot sufficiently befuddle himself and his readers in fifty pages is not very skilful.
Nevertheless the Ward theory is one of the best that has ever been gotten up by the champions of nescience, and is worthy of a statement in the Journal as quite an improvement on the common expression of materialistic stolidity. He claims that he does not deny immortality, but he recognizes no immortality of man—no human soul. He recognizes only the immortality of the world, such as it is, which nobody denies. The future life of man he considers nothing but an illusion, though there is an immortality of intelligence here in successive forms.
The doctrine, is that spirit, intelligence, or consciousness is a part of matter—that every atom has its own little share, which practically amounts to nothing in its infinite subdivision, but when matter comes into organized forms the spiritual powers thus aggregated and organized become an efficient spiritual energy; and the higher the organism the grander the power that is developed, man being the most perfect organization evolves the grandest spiritual power, as a superior violin evolves finer music than a tambourine. But the intelligence and will of man are only phenomena, like the music, and have no existence beyond that of the organism that produces them. This is substantially the theory of materialists generally, and of the old school medical colleges which consider human life a mere product of human tissues in combination—a doctrine conclusively refuted in “Therapeutic Sarcognomy.”
The special merit of the Ward theory lies in the supposition that mind and matter are elements everywhere inseparably united, and that human intelligence is developed by the aggregation and organization of the mind powers that reside in the atoms of matter,—an explanation which does not often occur to the exponents of materialism,—and has the merit of ingenuity. The theory would do very well if it were not demonstrable that life exists only from influx, and that human life and personality survive the body, and become known to every highly organized sensitive, who knows how to investigate such matters.
The Ward theory demolishes the Deity with the greatest ease, and places man, fleeting or evanescent as he is, at the summit of the universe! As he expresses it, “The only intelligence in the universe worthy of the name is the intelligence of the organized beings which have been evolved; and the highest manifestations of the psychic power known to the occupants of this planet is that which emanates from the human brain. Thus does science invert the pantheistic pyramid.”
Such is the fog that emanates from the institution that should help the advance and diffusion of knowledge. No God! no soul! not even the awful power that Spencer blindly acknowledges—nothing but matter bubbling up and organizing itself into temporary forms that decay and are gone forever. We may well reciprocate his suggestion, and say that such doctrines belong to the limbus fatuorum, and, if enjoyed as Mr. Ward enjoys them, they may well be called the “fool’s paradise.” I think Hegel has some similar notion—that God becomes conscious only in man, unconscious everywhere else! And even so brilliant a writer as M. Renan says, “For myself I think that there is not in the universe any intelligence superior to that of man.” In reading such expressions we are strongly reminded of the poem on the “rationalistic chicken,” which would not admit that it ever came out of an egg. When the wisdom shown in the universe is so immensely beyond the comprehension of man, how can he assume his own to be the highest wisdom?
To such dreary absurdities as this the Open Court newspaper at Chicago is devoted, and it has a bevy of well-educated friends and supporters—well-educated as the world goes,—and graced with literary capacity and culture, but educated into blindness and ignorance of the scientific phenomena of psychic science,—unwilling to investigate or incapable of candid investigation. The coterie sustaining such a newspaper are precisely in the position of the contemporaries of Galileo, who refused to look through his telescope or study his demonstrations.
It is not from any scientific spirit or scientific acumen that this materialistic coterie avoid psychometric and spiritual facts. The newspapers which ignore or sneer at such knowledge are easily gulled in matters of science. A writer in the Open Court upon the possibilities of the future, which he presents as being confined “strictly to legitimate deductions from present knowledge,” exhibits an amount and variety of ignorant credulity which ought not to have gained admission to an intelligent journal. He speaks of an unlimited freedom of submarine navigation and navigation of the air which would not have appeared possible to any but the most superficial sciolist. He also speaks of an electroscope that will telegraph rays of light (!) and enable us thereby to see our most distant friends, and of stowing in a small compass electricity enough to exterminate an army. This imaginative ignoramus adds, “Give to our present biped acquaintance the ability to exterminate armies with a lightning flash, added to the power of sailing at will through the air or of passing at will and in safety beneath the ocean waves, and he would depopulate the earth.” The writer gives much more of this Munchausen stuff which is not worthy of notice except as an illustration of the feeble scientific intelligence with which many newspapers are edited. The editor of a really scientific journal referred to this article in the Open Court “as a proof of the danger of a little knowledge.”[1]
Review of the New Education.
BY SAMUEL EADON, M.A., M.D., PH.D., F.S.A., ETC.
I have read very carefully the third edition of the “New Education,” and feel impelled, in order to satisfy my conscientiousness, to write a short article relative to the impressions which the reading of the book produced in my mind.
It is a work of extraordinary merit. Like George Combe’s “Constitution of Man,” it is highly suggestive; the fascination of the author was such that I could not help but write. To know its value and appreciate its lofty moral outpourings, people must buy the book and read for themselves. The first thought would be that it is the production of an original thinker who had the courage to utter opinions fearless of results, however antagonistic to the common-herd notions.
In all ages, the human understanding, the reasoning faculties, have ever been considered to hold the supremacy in the scale of development, of culture, and of advance toward a higher form of civilization; the moral faculties were thought next in order, and then the propensities common to all animal natures held the third or inferior position. This view of human nature has been handed down from an elder antiquity and still retains its hold largely in the universities and great public schools of the present day.
If this view of the nature of man be a correct one, there ought to be a vast intellectual brotherhood of mankind; but it is not so. From the days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, this culture of the intellectual power has been continuously pursued, but with very slender results; for were this kind of education pursued for 100,000 years, the morale of society would be little better than it is at the present time.
Dr. Buchanan takes quite a different view and makes the moral or ethical faculties supreme, in development and culture, the intellect being the instruments for acquiring facts and the propensities the steam to bring about the desired results. According to his views of man, our emotional faculties are of a higher or more God-like order than our intellectual powers. The intellect being the hand-maid to the emotions, to feel the force of truth is higher in mental excellence than to perceive it. Depth of emotions is the climax of spiritual power.
The ethical and æsthetic being the foundation of the New Education, Dr. Buchanan, in a series of beautifully written chapters, enters into details in reference to what teachers should be, what the subjects taught ought to be, and what are the shells and what the kernels of knowledge. He shows clearly that woman will ultimately be the regenerator of humanity, that education so far has been merely fractional and one-sided—that true development consists in the co-education of soul and body, the co-education of man and woman, the co-education of the material and spiritual worlds.
There are a million of teachers, and every one should have a copy of this work. No man is fit to teach in the high sense advocated by this author unless he has thoroughly mastered this work. It is easy to pull down a system, but not so easy to build it up; but in the New Education the follies of the old educational systems are not only levelled to the dust, but a higher and more practical, industrious, and crime-preventing system of training and teaching takes its place. This book will become the grand educational Bible for teachers in all countries where the English language is spoken.
Nor should it be in the hands of teachers only. Every intelligent father and mother, anxious for the development of their sons and daughters should study this book night and day. It should be translated into every European language, and also into Chinese and other Eastern tongues; the refined, æsthetic, and knowledge-loving people of Japan, were the work translated into their language, would enjoy it intensely.
Hambrook Court, near Bristol, England.
A Japanese scholar has already undertaken the translation of the “New Education” in Japan. The Journal has not room at present for the essays of correspondents, and I have only given a small portion of the essay of the learned Dr. Eadon, who is the most progressive member of the medical profession in England.