Possibility of a still more literal immortality.
It must, of course, be admitted that, if such speculations do not positively stretch away beyond the limits of possibility, they certainly do stretch away beyond the limits of actual science and experience, but precisely what renders all such hypotheses uncertain renders them also forever possible: namely, our irremediable ignorance of the basis of consciousness. Whatever discovery science may make in regard to consciousness and its conditions, it will never ascertain its essence, nor, consequently, the limits of its possible subsistence. Psychologically and metaphysically considered, what are conscious action and volition? Nay, what is unconscious activity, what is force, what is efficient causality? We do not know, we are obliged to define subjective activity and power in terms of objective motion, that is to say, in terms of their effect, and it will always be permissible for a philosopher to deny that motion, as a simple change of relations in space, constitutes the whole of an action, and that there are no uncaused movements, no relations between non-existent terms. And, if so, how are we to know precisely to what extent activity is essentially enduring as the emanation of a subjective power of which motion is, as it were, the visible sign, and of which consciousness is the immediate and intimate “apprehension.” Neither word nor act expresses all of us, something always remains unsaid, and will, perhaps, remain unsaid to the end of our lives—and beyond. It is possible that the foundation of personal consciousness is a power as incapable of being exhausted by any amount of activity as of being confined to any variety of forms.
Can never be disproved.
In any event the matter is, and always will be, a mystery, which arises from the fact that consciousness is sui generis, is absolutely inexplicable, and at bottom forever inaccessible to scientific formulæ and a fit subject, therefore, of metaphysical hypotheses. Just as being is the supreme genus, genus generalissimum, in the objective world, so consciousness is the supreme genus in the subjective world; so that no reply can ever be given to these two questions: What is being, and what is consciousness? Nor, therefore, to this third question, which depends upon the two preceding: Will consciousness continue to exist?
On an old dial, in a town in the south of France, may be read the legend: Sol non occidat! May the light not fail! Such is, indeed, the proper epilogue to fiat lux. Of all things in this world light is the one upon which we are most dependent; it, of all things, should have been created once for all, εἰς ἀεί; should pour down from the heavens through all eternity. And the light of the mind, which is more powerful than the light of the sun, may ultimately succeed in eluding the law of destruction which everywhere in the book of nature immediately follows the law of creation, and then only will the command, fiat lux, have been accomplished. Lux non occidat in æternum!
Stoicism the last resort.
IV. But, it will be asked, what consolation and encouragement is there in all this for those who do not feel the charm of these remote hypotheses concerning the outer limits of existence, for those who see death in all its brutality, and lean, as you yourself probably do, in the present state of the theory of evolution, somewhat toward purely negative conclusions? What can be said to them when they stand, as they believe they do, on the brink of annihilation? Nothing better could be said than the simple and somewhat unfeeling words of the ancient Stoics, who, be it remarked also, were themselves disbelievers in the immortality of the individual: “Be not a coward!” Deeply in the wrong as Stoicism was in the presence of death, in its insensibility to the pain of love which was the condition of its power and of its progress among mankind, when it interdicted attachment and commanded impassibility, it was right when it recommended insensibility to one’s own death. A man needs no other consolation than to feel that he has lived a complete life, that he has done his work, and that mankind is not the worse, nay, is perhaps the better for his having existed; and that whatever he has loved will survive, that the best of his dreams will somewhere be realized, that the impersonal element in his consciousness, the portion of the immortal patrimony of the human race, which has been intrusted to him and constitutes what is best in him, will endure and increase, and be passed on, without loss, to succeeding generations; that his own death is of no more importance, no more breaks the eternal continuity of things, than the shivering of a bit of a hand-glass does. To gain a complete consciousness of the continuity of life is to estimate death at its proper value, which is perhaps that of the disappearance of a kind of living illusion. Once more, in the name of reason, which is capable of understanding death, and of accepting it as it accepts whatsoever else is intelligible—be not a coward!
Dignity of resignation.
More than that, despair is grotesque because it is useless; cries and groans, at least such as are not purely reflex, originally served their purpose in the life of the species of arousing attention or pity, or of summoning aid; it is to the fact that it was once useful that the existence and propagation of the language of pain are due; but as there is no help against the inexorable, and no pity to be asked for in a matter that is in harmony with the interests of the totality of things and conformable to the dictates of our own thought, resignation alone is the proper attitude of mind, or rather a certain inner assent, or still better, a smile of detachment and intelligence and comprehension, and interest even in our own extinction. What is beautiful in the natural order of things cannot definitively excite despair.