Death and resurrection from the point of view of the cell-theory

by Gustaf Björklund

But man does not confine himself to questioning, he wants answers, and especially must this be true where the reply is so intimately connected with himself. And these answers have not been lacking; we find them formulated in those opinions and theories respecting a future life which throughout the ages have gradually appeared and prevailed.

The critically thinking public of the present day takes a decidedly skeptical attitude toward all these theories. They assert, and not without strong arguments, that it is impossible to know anything. But, however convinced the public may be of the fruitlessness of discussing the topic, no one will succeed in pushing it entirely aside. Time and again the same questions reappear as dark and threatening clouds on the horizon of our consciousness; they occupy our thoughts, take hold upon our feelings and color our sentiments. It would undoubtedly be sufficient at such moments to have, were it only one fixed point to stand upon; one established fact to start from and which we could trust would lead our thoughts in the right direction. But such a basis to set out from we have not hitherto been able to find. Will this remain the case forever? Will science concerning a future life always fail to attain aught but negative results? Let us say at once that humanity will probably be able to ascertain as much as it may be necessary or useful for us to know in this world. This hope is founded on our firm belief that at this time a basis such as that above mentioned really exists. Natural science has furnished this basis, though nobody as yet has happened to reflect that the facts upon which this basis rests may have any bearing upon our attitude toward a future life, much less give answer to questions such as the following: How, and in what way, is man to pass from this life into another?

It will be the object of the following pages, then, to develop further the view just intimated.

In prehistoric times men believed in a close relationship between the soul of the deceased and his body in the grave, and this purely instinctive faith is the more remarkable, as it prevailed during stages of civilization when differentiation between spiritual qualities and physical matter was almost unknown.

The contradistinction between soul and body is certainly a fact, a general experience. But neither the individual nor the race realizes this fact suddenly or all at once. The knowledge of the distinction between the physical and the spiritual sphere, with their different characteristics and qualities, proceeds step by step, being the result of slowly advancing evolution.

The child and the savage remain unconscious of any discrimination between soul and body, and even for the more cultivated man, the border between the two is vague and undetermined. According to the psychologic order of man’s evolution we might therefore expect that the problem as to this relationship would appear at a comparatively late date, and even then be of importance only to a reduced number of more cultivated individuals. But, on the contrary, experience shows that this question occupies the thoughts of men in very low stages of civilization, and, in fact, that it is of the most general interest.

The reason for this evidently lies in the instinctive belief that the body contains something which is immortal, and which in the life hereafter the soul cannot dispense with.

In its first historic form the question concerning the soul’s relation to the body deals with this relation after, not before, the separation of the soul and body. This latter problem emerges only in very high stages of civilization, and even then is of scientific interest to an insignificant minority only, while the question of our existence after death is religious in its nature and of interest to all.

In olden times men were more fully convinced of a continued personal existence after death than civilized mankind seems to be nowadays. The same vivid conviction we find even in our age among people in the natural state. From the prehistoric peoples we have no written communication, but from their graves they speak to the present day intelligibly and plainly of their belief in a life to come. Behold the monuments defying time and decay, which these people have erected in memory of their deceased. The sepulchres of the Egyptian kings to this very day arouse our amazement and admiration.

What was it, then, that induced these peoples of early times to bestow such extraordinary labor on the places of their last rest? It certainly was their belief that the graves contained not only the lifeless body, but also the living soul. The funeral ceremonies evidently show, as Fustel de Coulanges says, that when the body was laid in the grave it was thought that something yet alive was placed there at the same time. The soul was born simultaneously with the body; death did not separate them; they were both enclosed together in the grave. In olden times people felt so fully assured that a man lived in the tomb, that they never failed to bury with him the things of which he was thought to be in want. They poured wine on the grave in order to quench his thirst; they brought food to his tomb in order to appease his hunger; they killed horses and slaves, believing that, if enclosed with the dead, these would serve him in his grave as they had served him during his life.