The ability to adduce evidential testimony in support of a declaration of supposed facts is essentially an artistic faculty, and a necessary part of the equipment of every teacher, whether he draw his accredited inspiration from religious, scientific, or artistic sources, if he desire to perform effectually his educational function. The work of an artist is the evidence of his art, by means of which he may promulgate his convictions and secure converts to his creed.
But while, comparatively speaking, few men set out to preach and teach some special gospel for the purpose of urging it upon their brethren, every man offers in his own person evidence of character which may become an educational factor in the lives of his fellow-men. We know and esteem a man by his works, which are the expression of his convictions and the fruit of his being. Without the evidence of virtue in the lives of those who profess to possess it, we are not justified in believing in its reality.
The artistic power of producing and recognising evidential testimony of supposed truths is part of the divine birthright of all men. The supreme Artist of Life, God, through whose works of art men may perceive the Spirit of Life, through whose creative energy the gospel of Infinite Truth is continuously made manifest, has given to man his body as a temple of truth, whereby the light of the spirit may shine out in evidence of its being. Made in the likeness of God, the handiwork of the Divine Artist, he manifests the glory of his Creator in his own human works of art—his creative powers witnessing to the essential divinity of his being. His senses give him evidence of his physical environment, and his reason, as the summary of sense, rightly seeks for verification of all that is announced to him as fact. But his senses cannot give him adequate evidence of his psychical environment, because its mere apprehension entails a transcending of the spirit over the medium of the flesh, thereby carrying vision beyond the point where verification of what is seen is possible, and where, attempting its expression, the vision becomes a shrunken incoherent thing, utterly inadequate as a likeness of what it is supposed to represent.
The poet, the seer, the musician, the sculptor know something of this inability to reach in their work expression worthy of its conception. And if this is so with the artist, how much more so with the genius, who is compelled by a force he does not wholly understand, and yet is possessed of some executive power of demonstration!
The genius lives in advance of his time, having a flash-like insight into knowledge hidden as mystery from the understandings of his fellow-men. He suffers the loneliness of the pioneer who, treading a path where none has trod before, leaves an open way with marks of guidance and explanation for those who come after him. But such a man has compensation for the lack of human fellowship in his consciousness of achieving work capable of raising the standard of thought in the minds of those who behold it. They may not understand, but they can admire. They acknowledge the work of genius—an attitude which is conducive towards a fuller appreciation of what they admire. They behold, in fact, evidence of something they do not fully understand, but which they apprehend to be true. Thus art fulfils its divinely ordered purpose in the evolution of the human mind, its educational influence being traceable in all records of human progress.
But there are spiritual ideals, visions of beauty, symphonies of harmony, unseen by earthly eyes, unheard by earthly ears, wholly impossible of demonstration, which remain for ever unexpressed and uncomprehended by those who have apprehended them. These seers of visions and dreamers of dreams have not, perhaps, the artistic power by which an attempt could be made to transcribe the vision in a manner legible to the ordinary human understanding. Or there exists, perhaps, no adequate evidence by which even a genius is able to express what he has apprehended in ideal and abstract thought. Yet to the dreamer, the seer, the genius an ideal is none the less true because he cannot certify its truth by evidence that would convey its verity to other persons.
One of the facts that the theory of the evolutionary descent of man and the evolutionary development of his soul has made clear is that there is no limit to his future acquirements of thought and understanding. Mental growth is a continual feeling after knowledge a little in advance of comprehension—of knowledge still hidden as mystery, to be approached only by a consistent application of the intellect towards the discovery of the evidence of truth in all things submitted to consideration. Speculative thought acts as an impetus to the mind to set about the finding of evidence that shall induce a natural growth of knowledge from mystery. Were there no knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, its development could not continue, for stagnation of thought, checking mental activity, must lead subsequently to degeneration. It is the effort to get, rather than the getting, which is the zest of existence. Without the hunger of mind and body, how could the nourishment necessary for the continuity of mental and physical life be obtained?
Truth is infinite, as God is infinite, and apprehension of this divine fact does not rest upon evidential testimony. But comprehension entails the evidence of reason, and is necessary to the evolution of the human understanding. Such evidence forms a link between mystery and knowledge, and offers a means by which the maturing intellect of man may obtain a gradual conversion of mystery into knowledge. Desire must precede fulfilment. May not the longing to penetrate ever further into mysteries not as yet, by reason of our imperfections, demonstrable to our intellects, be the pioneer of the discovery of truths now unknown, but which in the fulness of time will be given as the spiritual inheritance of all those who, being pure in heart, shall see God in a light of revelation that has kept pace through all ages with the evolution of mankind?
In such a manner does it seem that the desire for proof of human immortality should be considered.
It is difficult to conceive how, on the physical plane of existence, evidence of the survival of human individuality after death could be obtained.