The hypothesis of conditional immortality can, therefore, be maintained only by eliminating from it the doctrine of a creator of absolute merit, of virtue, and of universal and infinite charity; thus diminished, it becomes a belief in a sort of natural or metaphysical necessity to which beings are subject according to their degree of perfection simply. This hypothesis is essentially anti-providential, and in harmony only with systems more or less analogous to that of Spinoza.
In general the notion of eternal life is altogether transcendent and a fit subject for mystical dreams only. Let us, therefore, abandon this high ground and descend to nature and experience. Instead of talking of eternity, let us speak of life after death and of an immortality not conditional, but conditioned by the laws of matter and of mind and attainable by everyone.
Does personality contain a permanent element?
II. Let us take our stand in the beginning on positive experience, and consider what sort of immortality the philosophy of evolution permits us to hope for. There exists in the sphere of consciousness, so to speak, a series of concentric circles which lie closer and closer about an unfathomable centre, personality. Let us pass in review the diverse manifestations of personality and see if they contain any imperishable element.
One’s works immortal.
The most external, and, in some sort, the most observable aspect of mankind, consists in their works and actions. Where material works alone are concerned, such as a house that one has built, a picture that one has painted, a statue that one has modelled, it may be felt that the distance between the worker and the work is too great, and that immortality in one’s work is too much like a sort of optical illusion. But when intellectual and moral works are concerned, the effect and the cause are more nearly one; therein lies the element of truth contained in the highly impersonal and disinterested doctrine that one lives in one’s works. Intellectual and moral labours are more than their mere material effect. The good man’s highest wish is to live and live again in his good actions; the thinker’s highest wish is to live and live again in the thought that he has contributed to the inheritance of humanity. This doctrine may be found in almost all great religions and is capable of subsistence in the domain of pure science. According to the modern Buddhists of India a man’s actions are his soul, and it is this soul that survives his death, and transmigration of souls is simply the constant transformation of good into better, and evil into worse; the immortality of one’s soul is the immortality of one’s actions, which continue to operate forever in the world according to their original force and direction.
Continuity of human effort.
Generation after generation labours at the task, and passes the token of hope from hand to hand. Heri meum, tuum hodie, yesterday was mine and I spent it in doing good, but not enough good; to-day is thine: employ the whole of it, do not lose an hour of it; if an hour dies sterile, it is a chance lost of realizing the ideal. Thou art master of to-day; do what in thee lies to make to-morrow what thou wouldst have it, let to-morrow be always in advance of to-day, and the horizon that men see each fresh morning be brighter and higher than the one they saw before.
Nothing lost.