IV
The most positive fact we really know as to an existence after death is the resurrection of Christ. This is evidence not only historically vouched for (better, indeed, than most so-called “historical facts” of equal antiquity), but also a necessary postulate from a philosophical and ethical point of view, unless the whole history of the world for two thousand years past is to rest upon a delusion, or even, one may say, upon an intentional falsehood. The resurrection is, and will remain, therefore, the foundation both of all true Christianity and of all transcendental hope.
Judging by this resurrection of Jesus, the future life would seem to be somewhat similar to our present existence, and death accordingly an event of much less importance and, one might properly say, much more a matter of indifference than we usually assume it to be. At any rate, the future life will be an evolution; neither an everlasting rest in the literal sense, nor everlasting enjoyment. The latter would not be noble enough, and the former appears to us as beautiful only in moments of weariness and not when we are endued with new vigor.
On the contrary, indestructible power of work and joy in work, joined with true depth and clearness of vision as to the ends of life one should pursue, enter, in the case of all divinely guided men, only toward the end of their life, when all seeking for pleasure has ceased; and this is a very safe indication, both as to the continuation of life itself (that it can not suddenly cease at this stage of development), and as to the nature of that continuation (that it can only be a heightening of the best of our present activities). This is often so clear to the reason that the assumption of a sudden extinction of this activity, just when it has become full of vitality, seems thoroughly unmeaning, and unworthy of the order of the universe unless it rests upon mere chance; and a cosmical order resting upon chance alone, yet existing for thousands of years, would be a simple impossibility.
Banish from your life, therefore, the melancholy fancy of a helpless sinking beneath the waters, for that is foolishness; but banish likewise too great a contempt of life. Life is no mere vale of sorrow that must be escaped from as soon as possible, but an important, perhaps the most important, part of our whole existence, in which we make our decision for advancing life, or for a gradual and real death. Even the many weak-hearted men of our day who only want to die quickly and “go to heaven” without a struggle, may well find themselves deceived, and that the struggle will yet meet them, but under less favorable conditions. Nor are we to envy the “innocent” children and young people who, in the view of the Greeks, have died early by a special favor of the gods; for they must none the less begin from the beginning. It is through conflict and many troubles of every sort that we must attain to the perfection which is our present task. This perfecting process alone opens the hard and unreceptive heart sufficiently to receive the noble seed of a higher conception of life, a seed that must be sown in the heart, and first spring up, then grow, then blossom, and at last bear fruit. This life-process may neither be hastened nor avoided, but it must be gone through. It is therefore reasonable that we should not be eager for death, even if we do not fear it, but we may justly rejoice only over what we have already happily gone through and now, for all eternity, no longer need to experience and endure.
When one once believes firmly in a continuation of existence that alone supplies our present life with an intelligible solution of all its questions and riddles, then a bit more or less enjoyment or pain during this short span of imperfect existence becomes more a matter of indifference, and much that was important before falls away from us as a form without meaning; while, if these thoughts are untrue, and if this is the only world, full as it is of injustices, sorrows, and passions, it is a simple impossibility to believe in a just and almighty God. Upon this single point, therefore, hangs our entire philosophy of life.
To me, the continuation of existence is a certainty, but its form inconceivable; only it will be similar to our present life in its purest moments, and will surely be no sudden leap into a quite different spiritual condition, but a continuation, in which each man can receive only that for which he has become ripe here. The difference will therefore, perhaps, be smaller than is commonly thought.
But the scientists are quite right in denying immortality to a soul that is simply a function of physical organs. Whatever in our nature can be comprehended by the methods of natural science can not possibly be immortal, but passes into annihilation, or rather into dissolution and change, just as surely as any other object in the physical world. But there is apparently something else in man besides bones, muscles, sinews, veins, and nerves, and this something else can be embodied again in some other form. And this seems to me relatively more conceivable than a sudden and complete annihilation of the spiritual life.
Death, in itself, is therefore nothing terrible, nor even something undesirable, and whoever still fears it is certainly not yet upon the right path of life. The only fearful thing is the backward glance, when one is old, upon a life quite perverted and useless, or upon a great accumulation of guilt unforgiven.
Not we shall pass away, but the present world shall pass away: this is the one great thought which must lift us above all the terrors of uncertainty. The other bright point in this darkness which the understanding alone can not illumine, is the thought that the Lord of all existence, whom we have already learned to know here as a sure friend, must be quite the same for us there also as he was here, only still nearer joined to us and still clearer known.