The Grand Symposium of the Wise Men of the Nineteenth Century.

The question of our future destiny is paramount to all others in dignity and importance. Upon this subject all wise men must have clear and positive views. The editor of the Christian Register of Boston, according to the very common idea that men in prominent positions as professors and decorated with college honors must be the wisest, thought it well to ask them if science could take cognizance of the question of immortality, and if its verdict was for or against a future life. Such questions he addressed to twenty-three professors, presidents, doctors of laws, etc. But he did not reflect that there were several hundred gentlemen in Boston who had more knowledge on this subject, and who could give him positive and reliable information, and he entirely forgot that the only scientist who has examined this question from the physiological standpoint resides in Boston.

The editor did not obtain what he was ostensibly seeking, but he did obtain an amount of evidence of ignorance, in high places, which I should be happy to record, but for the fact that it would occupy more than half of one number of the Journal of Man. Nevertheless, I cannot deprive my readers of the pleasure and amusement derived from this correspondence. I have condensed the responses into a readable compass leaving out their useless verbiage, and putting them in a poetic form, as poetry best expresses the essence and spirit of an author’s thought. I think the learned gentlemen, if they could peruse these doggerel rhymes, would acknowledge that their meaning has been expressed even more plainly and forcibly than in their own prose. The reader will observe that of the whole twenty-three only two appear to have any knowledge on the subject, the famous A. R. Wallace and the brilliant Dr. Coues. The following is the essence or rather quintessence of the voluminous responses in the order in which they were published. The learned gentlemen ought to feel grateful for the increased candor, brevity and explicitness of their replies, when boiled down into the rhyming form, bringing out new beauties which were not apparent in the original nebulous condition of vagueness in which some of them disclaim opposition to immortality, while their only immortality is that of atoms and force.

While there is something amusing in these responses (which I shall carefully file away for the future), which may furnish matter for surprise and laughter in a more enlightened age, and which may cause the writers, if they live long enough, to realize a feeling of shame for the wilful ignorance or affectation of ignorance displayed, we cannot overlook the very serious fact that the educational leadership of our country is in the hands of men of whom a large proportion are destitute of the very foundation of the sentiment of religion, while another large portion are so utterly regardless of scientific truth as to ignore the best attested facts, which are continually in progress within their reach—a degree of bigotry which is not surpassed in the history of the “Dark Ages.” Verily the shadow of those ages rests upon the leading institutions of to-day.

Response of Prof. Charles A. Young, LL.D., of Princeton College.
I must confess this creed of Immortality
Hath not in the light of science much reality;
But all such questions are beyond our science,
And revelation is our sole reliance.
Prof. James D. Dana, LL.D., of Yale College.
Though very much hurried—not to say flurried,
I will venture to say, as my answer to-day,
There is nothing in science to prevent our reliance
On the solemn reality of life’s immortality.
Prof. Asa Gray, LL.D., Harvard University.
Were the gospel light out, we should all be in doubt,
For science looks on, astride of the fence,
And never can tell us the whither or whence;
But I shrewdly suspect it is slightly inclined
To harmonize now with the Orthodox mind.
Prof. Joseph Leidy, M.D., LL.D., University of Pennsylvania.
Your doctrine of life eternal
And everything else supernal
Might well he pronounced an infernal;
Delusion!
For Solomon said at an ancient date
That everything dieth early or late,
And man or beast, or small or great,
Hath but one fate.
Your future life is an awful bore;
I’ve tried life once, and I want it no more.
You may guess and imagine o’er and o’er,
But where’s the proof?
Yet nevertheless, I won’t deny
You may live without brains in realms on high,
But as for myself I’d rather not try,
I’d rather die.
Simon Newcomb, LL.D., F.R.A.S., etc.
Science deals only with matters of sense,
It has nothing to do with a mere pretence.
’Tis one thing to say, that the soul survives,
And another to say that a cat has nine lives;
But I do not say the one or the other,
Nor affirm nor deny that the monkey’s my brother.
I’ve nothing to say of angels or sprites,
Or the spooks that appear in the darkest of nights.
For if we can’t see them, nor chase them nor tree them,
They can’t be detected, nor caught and dissected,
So science must be mum—and I, too, am dumb.
J. P. Lesley, State Geologist of Pennsylvania, an ex-Reverend.
Science knows nothing about this matter,
But fancy may come to talk and flatter.
And as all mankind in this agree,
There’s a future life for you and for me.
Let science slide; we’ll go with the tide,
Uplift ourselves above the sod,
And claim to be a part of God;
Though God extends through time and space,
While man, alas! soon ends his race,
And whether he lives his own life again
Or is lost in the infinite, I do not think plain.
Lester F. Ward, A.M., of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
As for immortal life, I must confess,
Science hath never, never answered “yes.”
Indeed all psycho-physical sciences show,
If we’d be logical, we must answer no!
Man cannot recollect before being born,
And hence his future life must be “in a horn.”
There must be 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 ought 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.
Edward Morse, Ph.D., of Salem.
That immortality which Science denies
Cannot be admitted by those who are wise,
For if we give up and concede Immortality,
There’s nothing to check its wide Universality.
The toad-stool and thistle, the donkey and bear
Must live on forever,—the Lord knows where.
I tell you, dear sir, that Science must wake up
And grapple these spooks to crush them, and break up
This world of delusion of Phil. D’s and D.D’s,
Who are all in the dark, as dear Huxley agrees,
Proud Huxley’s “The Prince of Agnostics,” you see,
And Huxley and I do sweetly agree.
Prof. Josiah Parsons Cooke, LL.D. of Harvard University.
I freely confess that the life of the dead
Is a mystery alike to the heart and the head
Of all the mortals that dwell on earth,
Although revealed since our Saviour’s birth,
And I fully believe in the old-fashioned God,
Who, walking in Eden, made man of a clod;
And I fully believe the same Deity still
Controls all things, here by the fiat of will.
Edward D. Cope, A.M., Ph.D., author of “Theology of Evolution.” Dr. Cope answers in a very voluminous and intricate manner, but the following is the essence of his answer.
Of life eternal little can we know,
And yet we hope some glimmerings may grow,
By patient inference as facts appear.
I hope there’s something coming near.
Science but sees extinction in our death,
And life the incident of fleeting breath.
We travel round the ologies to see
Naught but a grand revolving mystery;
But then if we have a controlling mind,
Why should not God have the same kind?
“Kinetogenesis” was ruled by will,
The conscious thought goes with it still,
And as conscious thought erst “ruled the roast,”
Why may it not become a ghost?
But as ghosts are like a vapor mixed,
All speculation is lost betwixt
The possible this, and the possible that,
And so philosophy falls flat.
Sir John William Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., Principal of McGill University, Montreal.
We are bound to believe in eternal life,
’Tis an instinct which in humanity’s rife,
Of savages, some have been found so low,
As neither a God or a heaven to know;
If civilized men sink down to their level,
They are on the highway to the realms of the Devil.
J. Sterry Hunt, LL.D., F.R.S.
In a terrible hurry, I cannot say much,
But Science, I think, opposes all such
Belief in the future. But God is so great,
I accept what he gives as my future state.
William James, M.D., Prof. Philosophy, Harvard University.
I can only say my philosophy floats
In the German life-boat of Prof. Lotze,
At one opinion we both arrive,
That all who ought to will survive.
Benjamin Apthorp Gould, LL.D., Astronomer, Cambridge.
My faith is firm, but I have no time
To explain it all in this tuneful rhyme.
Science cannot say much, I fear,
But must admit that God is here,
And if the priests would let us alone,
Perhaps a little more might be known.
Spirit is fact, and this I assume,
For Matter is nothing but solid Gloom.
Alfred R. Wallace, the compeer of Darwin.
Spiritual science has told the whole story
Of the claims of mankind to realms of glory.
Our facts are abundant, harmonious and true,
They satisfy me and should satisfy you.
No baseless hypothesis shapes our knowledge,
No dogmatic rule derived from a college,
As we fearless explore the worlds unseen,
And learn what all their mysteries mean.
The science we study is truly Divine,
They only reject it who are mentally blind.
Thomas Hill, D.D., LL.D., Ex-President of Harvard.
As for life after death, a life without breath,
Though science says no, I don’t think it’s so,
For ’tis well understood our God is too good
To create us and cherish, and then let us perish.
Prof. Asaph Hall, LL.D., of the National Observatory, Washington.
Metaphysics and science are still our reliance,
Taking them for our guide, we can’t quite decide,
But as we incline, a doctrine we find.
Prof. Elliott Coues, M.D., Ph.D., Scientist and Theosophist.
I think that science is bound to answer
Every question that comes to hand, sir.
Then why do some scientists fail to acknowledge
Discoveries made outside of their college?
There’s a reason for all things that come to pass,
And no man likes to be proved an ass;
And hence they refuse to agree with St. Paul,
The spiritual body is all in all.
Herbert Spencer, British Philosopher, as reported by Rev. M. J. Savage.
’Tis all in a muddle we cannot make out,
Nor does evolution diminish the doubt;
The facts that we get prove very refractory,
And I cannot find anything quite satisfactory.
Prof. Charles S. Pierce, A.M., of Johns Hopkins University, (a voluminous reply).
I’ve looked this question through and through,
But for future life the prospect’s blue.
Psychic Researchers have gathered up much,
But it crumbles to dust beneath my touch.
’Tis nothing but rubbish that Society brings,
For the ghosts they have found are the stupidest things,
Poor “starveling” idiots, all of that ilk,
Who are coming back here to cry over “spilled milk.”
Serenely we smile at “the lamp of Aladdin,”
And stories of ghosts about this world gadding.
Yet after all, I don’t believe in Spencer,
In Kant or in Comte, or in any of them, sir;
Nor in Christendom’s sacred and reverend creed,
Though weaklings adopt it because they have need;
But I believe in this world’s events,
And a life regulated by common sense.
Daniel Coit Gilman, LL.D., President of Johns Hopkins University.
Man hath soul-freedom here on earth,
And from Almighty God hath birth;
Therefore, should stand in faith sublime,
And fear no science of our time.
F. A. P. Barnard, President of Columbia College, New York.
Your question stands outside of science,
Of any science that is mine,
The only doctrine worth reliance,
Comes from the old Bible—Still Divine.
Prof. T. Huxley, British Philosopher, etc.
If a soul works with brains, can it work without?
Would seem to be a matter somewhat in doubt.
If you know that it can, pray tell me why?
If you know that it can’t, you know more than I.
You may answer such questions if you know how,
But I’ll not wait a moment to hear you now!

The Burning Question in Education.

If our left hand had been mangled, and continued to be an inflamed, ulcerating mass, though carried in a sling and treated by all the surgeons of repute around us,—never through a long life giving any promise of restoration or even relief,—would not its restoration be the most prominent question in our minds?

Society has a crushed, ulcerous, and painful hand upon which the doctors of the college and church have expended such skill as they have in their occasional perfunctory visits, and the hand grows no better, but rather worse, during the whole existence of the American Republic.

The existence of an increasing mass of crime, pauperism, and insanity is the crushed and diseased hand of civilized society, to which and to its obvious, natural method of healing I have vainly endeavored, in the “New Education,” to call the attention of our clergy and our teachers. It is true that three editions of that book have been disposed of to the delight of progressive thinkers, but it has made little impression on those who control public institutions and public opinion. Why is this?

There are sounds in nature too finely delicate to be heard by the average ear, and rays beyond the violet too fine for the average human eye, though visible to those of superior nervous endowments. So in the world of thought there are ethical conceptions too high and pure for the multitude,—conceptions so far away from their habitual life that they cannot appreciate or sympathize with them. Such conceptions constitute the ethical system of education, which is competent to banish crime, and to introduce a higher social condition, as has been amply proved by its imperfect introduction in the Lancaster, Ohio, and other reformatory schools.

Why is not this made the prominent theme in every religious society, as prominent as temperance? True, intemperance supplies us the majority of criminals, but when the criminal is prepared in the hot-bed of alcohol, society transplants him into a richer soil, impregnated with a greater amount of filth than the saloon, and cultivates him into the full-blown, hardened villain, for whom there is nothing but a career of crime, very costly indeed to society.

Why is this insane course pursued? Because society has not the Christianity which it professes, and the pulpit has not learned how to instil the Divine law of love, while the college cares nothing about it.

Society itself is criminally indifferent, and barbarously cruel. Its only thought in reference to its debased members is not their lost condition, and how to redeem them, but how to punish them revengefully for their evil deeds, in imitation of the Divine Demon whom orthodox theology recognizes as its model. Until society has enough of benevolence or enough of practical sagacity to get rid of this common impulse of brute life, we shall continue to have an energetic, skilful, and formidable army of criminals, spread all over the land, levying an immense tax upon respectable citizens, and requiring an increasing army of police to restrain them.

The best discourse that has yet been preached in a Boston pulpit was once delivered in Trinity Church by the assistant minister, Mr. Allen, a few weeks since, which was made the basis of an admirable article on “our prisoners” in the Banner of Light of April 2. Mr. Allen treated this subject in the spirit of the “New Education,” showing that our penal system, instead of reforming criminals, educates and perfects them in crime, under which system crime is continually and alarmingly increasing, the statistics which he gives being of the same terrible character as those presented in the “New Education,” showing that our demoralization is progressing beyond that of any other country. His statistics, which I have not examined in detail, show that there were more than eight times as many prisoners in this country in 1880 as there were in 1850. In Massachusetts, and especially in Boston, the proportion of criminal population was still greater.

England, having adopted a reformatory system, has kept the criminal population in check,—brought it down to one in 18,000, while we have one to every 837, because our prisons are colleges of crime instead of houses of reformation. A criminal population of 5,000 in Massachusetts is kept under this debasing system, excepting about 700 in the reformatory at Concord and the women’s prison at Sherburne. Our criminals are held for punishment amid evil influences, and turned out only qualified to prey upon society again, since they have the brand of shame upon them.

The only proper and wholesome view of this subject, the only view compatible with ethical or religious principles, is that our unfortunate criminal brethren need our loving care instead of vindictive hate. They should never be sent to prison for any definite term of confinement, as a punishment, but, like lunatics and pauper patients, should be placed under care and control until they are cured. Every criminal who will not obey the law in freedom should be sent to prison for life, under a kind and humane system, there to earn his own support and in some cases to repay the damage he has done, and in all cases to remain there until he has, beyond all doubt, become so thoroughly reformed that he may be safely entrusted with freedom. To encourage in the work of reformation, he should be from time to time rewarded by enlargement of his privileges and enjoyments, just in proportion as he proves himself worthy; and after enjoying partial freedom for years, with faithful and exemplary deportment, he should be granted full liberty, on the sole condition of reporting himself at certain regular periods, that a supervision may be retained over his conduct, and confinement renewed if ever he should prove unworthy of entire freedom.

This system has been tried with entire success, and travellers speak of seeing prisoners in Ireland half emancipated, working in the fields, whom they should not have distinguished from the common laborers. That courageous philanthropist, the late Burnham Wardwell, adopted a system of moral government in the Virginia penitentiary, under which punishment was almost abolished; and he was able to send out convicts in the city, under paroles, without any doubt that they would faithfully return. Under a similar system at Lancaster, Ohio, walls and locks were made unnecessary, and the youthful convicts went out freely, when permitted to mingle with the neighboring youth. When their reformation was completed, which did not require over three years, they went forth to lead an honest life; and subsequent reports showed that they walked in the path of respectability and honor.

The mother’s love never abandons the idiot and criminal; but, alas! society is neither mother nor father nor brother to its unfortunate members, and hence society suffers, as we ever suffer from violation of the Divine law.