Triumph of love.
Nay, one’s secondary and reflected life in the minds of other people might even come to be more important than the original of which it is a copy, insomuch that a gradual process of substitution might take place, a substitution of which death would simply mark the definitive and tranquil accomplishment. We might feel ourselves, even in this life, entering into possession of an immortality in the hearts of those who love us. Such an immortality would be a species of new creation. Morality, and religion even, are in our judgment simply the outcome of moral productivity; such an immortality would be simply an ultimate manifestation of the same thing. And if it were once achieved, the opposition that the man of science to-day perceives between the continuation of the species and the immortality of the individual would have disappeared in a final synthesis. Death closes one’s eyes, but love stands by to open them again.
Complete survival of the individual.
The point of contact might thus be found between life and immortality. At the beginning of evolution, death was the end of the individual and the light of consciousness ended in obscurity. By virtue of moral and social progress, one’s friends tend to remember one after death with increasing intensity and for longer and longer periods; the image that survives the original fades only by degrees, and more and more slowly, as the course of evolution advances. And it may be that, at some time in the future, the memory of beloved beings will so mingle with the life and the blood of each new generation, and will be so passed on from one to the other, that it will become a permanent element in the current of conscious existence. Such a persistent memory of the individual would be a gain in power for the species, for they who remember love more dearly than they who forget, and to love dearly is advantageous to the species. It is not, therefore, unpermissible to conceive a gradual increase in the faculty of memory by natural selection. The day may come when the individual will survive in as detailed and complete a fac-simile of what he was in his lifetime as can well be imagined, and death may become less significant than a period of absence; love will endow the beloved object with the mystery of eternal presence.
Exemplified to-day in isolated cases.
Even at the present day individuals here and there are sometimes so deeply loved that it is doubtful whether or no what is best in them does not survive their death, and their minds, unhappily subject to the weaknesses of humanity and unable as yet to break through the limitations of the physical organism, do not really succeed, by virtue of the love that surrounds them, in achieving an almost complete immortality even before their death. It is in the hearts of those who love them that they really live, and in all the world the corner that it really concerns them to be able to call their own lies in the affections of two or three people.
Destined to become common.
This phenomenon of mental palingenesis, which is at present isolated, may gradually come to be extended to the whole of the human species. Immortality may be an ultimate possession acquired by the species, as a whole, for the benefit of all of its members. Every individual consciousness may come to survive as a constituent part in a more comprehensive consciousness. Fraternity may, at some time in the future, be universal, render soul transparent to soul, and the ideal of morals and of religion be realized. Every soul will be reflected and mirrored in every other; although it will not suffice for that purpose simply to look into each other’s eyes unless one’s heart positively shines through them. One must project one’s own image into the mirror of the sea, if one is to find it there.