To the assumption of an all-pervading ether which is the physical basis of the universe, may we not add the suprasumption** of an all-pervading soul which is the spiritual basis of not only the ether but of life itself? The seeming duality of mind and matter, of the soul and body, must terminate somewhere, must merge in identity. Whether that identity be the Creator of theology or the soul of speculation does not much matter, since the final result is the same, namely, the immortality of that suprasumption, the soul.
But the individual, what becomes of the individual in this assumption of an all-pervading, immortal soul, of which all things animate and inanimate are but so many activities?
The body, which for a time being is a part of the local manifestation of the pervading soul, dies and is resolved into its constituent elements; it is inconceivable that those elements should ever gather themselves together again and appear in visible, tangible form. No one could possibly desire they ever should; those who die maimed, or from sickness and disease, or in the decrepitude and senility of age, could not possibly wish that their disordered bodies should appear again; nor could any person name the exact period of his life when he was so satisfied with his physical condition that he would choose to have his body as it then was. No; the body, like the trunk of a fallen tree, decays and disappears; like ripe fruit, it drops to the earth and enriches the soil, but nevermore resumes its form and semblance.
The pervading soul, of which the body was but the physical manifestation, remains; it does not return to heaven or any hypothetical point in either space or speculation. The dissolution of the body is but the dissolution of a particular manifestation of the all-pervading soul, and the immortality of the so-called individual soul is but the persistence of that, so to speak, local disturbance in the one soul after the body has disappeared. It is quite conceivable, or rather the reverse is inconceivable, that the activity of the pervading soul, which manifests itself for a time in the body, persists indefinitely after the physical manifestation has ceased; that, with the cessation of the physical manifestation, the particular activity which we recognize here as an individuality will so persist that hereafter we may recognize it as a spiritual personality. In other words, assuming the existence of a soul of which the universe and all it contains are but so many manifestations, it is dimly conceivable that with the cessation, or rather the transformation, of any particular manifestation, the effects may so persist as to be forever known and recognizable,—not by parts of the one soul, which has no parts, but by the soul itself.
Therefore all things are immortal. Nothing is so lost to the infinite soul as to be wholly and totally obliterated. The withering of a flower is as much the act of the all-pervading soul as the death of a child; but the life and death of a human being involve activities of the soul so incomparably greater than the blossoming of a plant, that the immortality of the one, while not differing in kind, may be infinitely more important in degree. The manifestation of the soul in the life of the humming-bird is slight in comparison with the manifestation in the life of a man, and the traces which persist forever in the case of the former are probably insignificant compared with the traces which persist in the case of the latter; but traces must persist, else there is no immortality of the individual; at the same time there is not the slightest reason for urging that, whereas traces of the soul's activity in the form of man will persist, traces of the soul's activity in lower forms of life and in things inanimate will not persist. There is no reason why, when the physical barriers which exist between us and the soul that is within and without us are destroyed, we should not desire to know forever all that the universe contains. Why should not the sun and the moon and the stars be immortal,—as immortal in their way as we in ours, both immortal in the one all-pervading soul?
"The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and the magazine of the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not solve," said Emerson in the lecture he called "Over-Soul."
What a pity to use the phrase "Over-Soul," which removes the soul even farther aloof than it is in popular conception, or which fosters the belief of an inner and outer, or an inferior and a superior soul; whereas Emerson meant, as the context shows, the all-pervading soul.
But, then, who knows what any one else thinks or means? At the most we only know what others say, what words they use, but in what sense they use them and the content of thought back of them we do not know. So far as the problems of life go we are all groping in the dark, and words are like fireflies leading us hither and thither with glimpses of light only to go out, leaving us in darkness and despair.
It is the sounding phrase that catches the ear. "For fools admire and like all things the more which they perceive to be concealed under involved language, and determine things to be true which can prettily tickle the ears and are varnished over with finely sounding phrase," says Lucretius. We imagine we understand when we do not; we do not really, truly, and wholly understand Emerson or any other man; we do not understand ourselves.
We speak of the conceivable and of the inconceivable as if the words had any clear and tangible meaning in our minds; whereas they have not; at the best they are of but relative value. What is conceivable to one man is inconceivable to another; what is beyond the perception of one generation is matter of fact to the next.