Finally, as if to complete the nullity of the motive of Posthumous Activities, there comes a reflection which must take erelong a prominent place in disquisitions of this kind. Comtists talk of the “immortality,” the “eternity,” of a dead man’s influence. But, if each individual human soul is destined to be extinguished at death, then there is nothing wherewith man is concerned which is immortal or eternal. Our race is destined irretrievably to perish as a race, if it perish piecemeal with every soul which drops into the grave. Miss Martineau’s wild talk about “the special destination of my race” being “infinitely nobler than the highest proposed under a scheme of divine moral government”[7] (an assertion in itself simply absurd, since the believers in a scheme of divine government hold that whatever is noblest is by the hypothesis assuredly our destination), is rendered doubly preposterous when we bear in mind what science teaches regarding the inevitable lapse of this planet within a limited epoch into a condition of uninhabitability. The following observations are made on this subject in a little jeu d’esprit which I may be pardoned for quoting. It assumes to be an extract from a newspaper of the next century, and the men of that period are supposed to look back upon the doctrine of “Posthumous Activities” with very little respect:—
It is needless to repeat that the delusive exhortations of some amiable but short—sighted philosophers of the last century to “labor for the good of Humanity in future generations” (a motive which they supposed would prove a substitute for the old historic religions) have been once and for all answered by the grand discovery of astronomers that our planet cannot long remain the habitation of man (even if it escape any sidereal explosion), since the solar heat is undergoing such rapid exhaustion. When the day comes, as come it must, when the fruits of the earth perish one by one, when the dead and silent woods petrify, and all the races of animals become extinct, when the icy seas flow no longer, and the pallid sun shines dimly over the frozen world, locked, like the moon, in eternal frost and lifelessness,—what in that day, predicted so surely by science, will avail all the works and hopes and martyrdoms of man? All the stores of knowledge which we shall have accumulated will be forever lost. Our discoveries, whereby we have become the lords of creation and wielded the great forces of Nature, will be useless and forgotten. The virtues which have been perfected, the genius which has glorified, the love which has blessed the human race, will all perish along with it. Our libraries of books, our galleries of pictures, our fleets, our railroads, our vast and busy cities, will be desolate and useless forevermore. No intelligent eye will ever behold them, and no eye in the universe will know or remember that there ever existed such a being as man. This is what Science teaches us unerringly to expect, and in view of it who shall talk to us of “laboring for the sake of Humanity”? The enthusiasm which could work disinterestedly for a Progress destined inevitably to end in an eternal Glacial Period must be recognized as a dream, wherein no man in a scientific age can long indulge.[8]
The second counsel of perfection of the Agnostic teachers is, as above said, “to welcome the conclusions of Atheism, and especially the doctrine of annihilation of consciousness at death, not merely as truth, but as the latest gospel of good tidings.”
This lesson, though repeated more or less by nearly all Agnostic and Comtist writers, has been perhaps most prominently brought to the front in the Life of Harriet Martineau. I shall take her observations and example as the text for the remarks I wish to offer upon it, as I have done the papers of Mr. Frederick Harrison for those just made on the doctrine of Posthumous Activities. These are some of her utterances which touch on the matter:—
I soon found myself quite outside of my old world of thought and speculation, under a new heaven and a new earth, disembarrassed of a load of selfish cares and troubles.... Hence it followed that the conceptions of a God with any human attributes whatever, of a principle or practice of design, of an administration of the affairs of the world by the principles of human morals, must be mere visions, necessary and useful in their day, but not philosophically or permanently true.... The reality that philosophy founded upon science is the one thing needful, the source and the vital principle of all morality and all peace to individuals and good-will among men, had become the crown of my experience and the joy of my life.... My comrade (Mr. Atkinson) and I were both pioneers of truth. We both care for our kind, and we could not see them suffering as we had suffered without imparting to them our consolation and our joy. Having found, as my friend said, a spring in the desert, should we see the multitude wandering in desolation, and not show them our refreshment?... Then (in younger days) I believed in a Protector, who ordered my work and would sustain me under it; and, however I may now despise that sort of support, I had it then, and have none of that sort now. I have all that I want, ... and I would not exchange my present views, imperfect and doubtful as they are,—I had better say I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition,—if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of Orthodoxy. Nor would I for my exemption give up the blessing of the power of appeal to thoughtful minds.... When I experienced the still new joy of feeling myself to be a portion of the universe, resting on the security of its everlasting laws, certain that its Cause was wholly out of the sphere of human attributes, and that the special destiny of my race is infinitely nobler than the highest proposed under a scheme of “divine moral government,” how could it matter to me that the adherents of a decaying mythology were still clinging to their Man-God?... Under this close experience (of illness), I find death in prospect the simplest thing in the world,—a thing not to be feared or regretted or to get excited about in any way. I attribute this very much to the nature of my views of death.... Now, the release is an inexpressible comfort. I see that the dying naturally and regularly, unless disturbed, desire and sink into death as into sleep.... I feel no solicitude about a parting which will bring no pain.... Under the eternal laws of the universe I came into being, and under them I have lived a life so full that its fulness is equivalent to length: thus there is much in my life that I am glad to have enjoyed, and much that generates a mood of contentment at its close. Besides that, I never dream of wishing that anything were otherwise than as it is; and I am frankly satisfied to have done with life. I have had a noble share of it, and I desire no more. I neither wish to live longer here nor to find life again elsewhere. It seems to me simply absurd to expect it.[9]
It is no part of the purpose of this article to discuss the truth of the doctrine that there is no God, and that death terminates human consciousness. Nor yet do I question whether a high sense of loyalty to what is understood to be truth may not make it appear to any one holding such doctrines that he is under the obligation to publish them frankly to the world. Many a man who is an Atheist as regards God holds (what many believers in Him lack) a noble faith in Truth as Truth, a firm conviction that nothing can be better than Truth, and that, as Carlyle said, “To nothing but error can any truth be dangerous.” It is not, then, the holding of such views as those above quoted, nor yet their frank publication and defence, wherewith we are now concerned; but with the tone of exultation with which they are announced, the disregard and contempt which are manifested for the dearest hopes, the purest aspirations, of the great mass of mankind.
Magnanimity has two phases. We may be magnanimous on our own account,—brave, calm, and self-reliant in the face of things which appall feebler souls. Of this sort of personal magnanimity, this remarkable woman has given a very fine example. Here are the words she wrote twenty years after the foregoing pages, in her last letter to her friend:
I cannot think of any future as at all probable except the annihilation from which some people recoil with so much horror.... For my part, I have no objection to such an extinction. I well remember the passion wherewith W. E. Forster said to me, “I had rather be damned than annihilated.”... I have no wish for any further experience, nor have I any fear of it.[10]...
These words have in them a calmness, simplicity, and courage which demand our honor, written as they were by an aged woman (as she herself describes them a few lines further) “under the clear knowledge of death being so near at hand.” The old vulgar theory, so frequently harped upon in the last generation, that the right place to judge a man’s religious views is his death-bed, and that, while orthodox believers alone can die bravely, sceptics must needs expire in anguish and alarm, with “a certain fearful looking-for of judgment,” has been thoroughly exploded by the now numberless instances of perfect courage exhibited by dying men and women who had long before abandoned the hopes of a happy futurity which revealed or natural religion has to offer. Harriet Martineau’s serene self-resignation into eternal nothingness ought, if any further evidence were wanting, to suffice to set the matter finally at rest; and it may be cited very properly by disbelievers in immortality, as exhibiting what they deem to be the fitting and dignified tone of a philosophical mind drawing near to the horizon beneath which it will presently disappear forever. No one can help respecting courage, under whatever form or circumstances it is manifested; and, if a man think that he is on the verge of annihilation, it is truly dignified and praiseworthy to approach it with unflinching eye and unblenched cheek. This is so far as the individual is concerned. But is there not another and larger side of the question, which the very noblest man ought to feel as awful and heart-rending,—nay, must feel to be so, in proportion to his nobleness and his power to extend his view beyond his own petty personality?