The results of modern psychical research would seem to show that it is possible for the spirit of a dead person to be temporarily reinvested with a physical form other than its own body, and to communicate by this means with living persons. It is suggested that a spirit can so control a living person as to direct itself through him as a medium for some purpose not necessarily known to him. It is further suggested that, presupposing the survival of individual consciousness after death to be a fact, a disembodied spirit might so possess a living person with its influence as to become virtually reincarnate. It is known in ordinary life that the will of one person can so influence the thoughts of another as practically to annihilate his individuality, which, falling more and more completely beneath this dominating mental force, becomes finally a mere passive instrument of another's will. Is it not possible that this same domination of one personality over another, so often noticed in life, may be continued after death in an even more intense degree, and thus provide proof of the survival of individuality?
Unfortunately, although such hypotheses have been supported by psychical evidence and phenomena seemingly confirmative of their truth, there has been as yet no positive assurance that this so-called proof of survival of individual consciousness is not the result of telepathy either deliberately or innocently evoked from an extreme sensitiveness of the medium to the mental suggestions of those who desire to see the particular phenomena that are subsequently produced.
The Catholic Church asserts the possession of incontrovertible proof of the reality of human immortality, teaching that, unless the resurrection from the dead of the body of Christ be accepted as an actual historical fact, the Christian religion must of necessity become a vain and purposeless thing. But the evidence adduced in support of this doctrine is, from a scientific point of view, by no means conclusive. It is not, however, from Christian dogma alone that the hope of immortality has been born in the human breast; and justification for the reasonableness of that hope does not therefore rest solely on evidential testimony of the truth of the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Although it would seem that the survival of individual consciousness after death, whether it be attested by a possible spiritual reincarnation, or whether by the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection, cannot be regarded as assured by any evidence satisfying the requirements of scientific criticism, yet we are not therefore justified in assuming that confirmation of the reality of these spiritual apprehensions of human immortality will be for ever withheld from the human understanding. Man, being capable of foreseeing death as an inevitable termination of his earthly existence, has conceived the idea of spiritual survival as a possible corollary of physical life. But for the justification of this hope there is as yet no conclusive evidence, since demonstration of its truth necessitates a transference of thought from the finite reckoning to that of Infinite Truth veiled as yet in mystery.
A creature which by reason of its organisation lacked the intellectual capacity to imagine its death, could not know the desire for immortality. Before man arrived at that stage in his evolution when he was able to foresee his death as an inevitable occurrence, we may suppose that he knew no craving for life after death. But the instinct of self-preservation, common to all forms of life, becomes in him the natural precursor of the hope of immortality—that spiritual desire which gives a special and divine character to humanity. That intellectual development which gives the capacity to foresee the inevitableness of physical dissolution is thus responsible for the apprehension of a spiritual survival of death. Recognition of the truth that the life of the world continues after the individual has suffered physical death carries with it some consciousness of the circulation of other vital force. Knowledge of death is thus preliminary to man's perception of the continuity of life, and a necessary preparation for his acquisition of such consciousness of impersonal vitality as leads to his apprehension of a Spiritual God, whence he perceives his own vitality to be derived. With recognition of God as the Divine Spirit of Life, his hope of immortality is justified of its conception. For if the life of God be in man, his spirit cannot die. Is not this self-knowledge the spiritual birthright of all men, to which Christ referred in the words, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (St John iii. 3)?
Out of a knowledge of death, consciousness of spiritual life is evolved, from which springs the desire for immortality. "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. xv.).
The evolving intellect of man has given him knowledge of the inevitableness of death as the termination of physical existence, and from this evolution of intellect is born the spiritual apprehension of the resurrection of the dead—of that immortality of the Divine Spirit of Life which is the veritable essence of the teaching of Christ, and which finds endorsement in the modern scientific interpretation of the laws of Nature. Does not the evolutionary theory of the descent of man, by showing his spiritual development to be in accord with the scientific explanation of his origin, endorse the words of Christ relating to his spiritual inheritance of immortality?
Hope, the outcome of the imaginative or creative faculty in man, is the pioneer of knowledge, for it is by that reaching out of the human mind into realms of speculative thought that ideas and apprehensions, if true, become gradually clothed with evidence of their truth, according as the spiritual and physical evolution of man makes him more capable of approaching the illimitable and infinite glory of God.
The self-education of a child is achieved by a continual process of verification of his speculative thought by evidence. His ideas are regulated by the evidence he can deduce capable of realising them, when they are instantly registered as experience, which forms an ever-broadening base for further speculative flights of the imagination. As the mind matures, this faculty of speculative thought becomes, under the name of initiative, the germ of all undertakings calling for personal direction and action. A man undertakes to do certain things because he has confidence in his executive powers. He has experienced the evidence of his capability and verified his powers, and he therefore dares to go boldly forward into wider fields of action. A child still crudely experimenting for evidence of the truth of his own small infantine powers of apprehension, has as yet no conception of yet vaster knowledge awaiting his more matured mind. The knowledge and power possessed by his father are a mystery to him, calling forth his respect and awe, so that he scarcely dares to think he may one day be as wise himself.
The knowledge of God and of Infinite Truth which a man has not in its completeness is a mystery to him, calling forth his respect and awe as his own powers inspire his little son with a like veneration. But nothing forbids a man from changing the mystery of God into a knowledge of God, if he have understanding capable of meeting the revelation, just as there is nothing to forbid a child from making the mystery of his father's knowledge his own possession if he have adequate power of comprehension.