Elementary Theosophy

by L. W. Rogers

Materialism fails sadly enough in that direction, but still worse as a satisfactory interpretation of the panorama of the life about us. It is a philosophy of the gloomiest fatalism. It holds that we simply chance to be that which we are; that we are what we are merely because of fortuitous chemical and mechanical combinations. Had the combinations chanced to be something different we should not be in existence. Chance is the king of the materialist's world.

According to this theory all abilities are the gifts of nature and all lack of them is the blind award of chance. No credit whatever is due to anybody for what he is, nor can anybody be logically blamed for his deficiencies. All are like men who, with closed eyes, draw something from a bag under compulsion. It is not to the credit of one that he got a prize nor to the discredit of another that he drew a blank. This hypothesis holds that recently we were not and that presently we shall cease to be; that we appear by chance, live our brief period, suffer or enjoy as it may happen and then pass to the oblivion of eternal silence; that all the thought, all the toil and the striving, all the effort and endurance were for nothing, and accomplished nothing. Such a philosophy will not long survive the progress of our age. It lacks the balance of nature's principle of conservation. It lacks the completeness of universal law. It lacks the element of justice that is enthroned in every human consciousness and without which life would be a meaningless mockery and the world a chaos of despair.

But the materialist's philosophy has no monopoly of bad points or undesirable beliefs. The old popular idea of a mechanical creation is equally at war with both fact and reason. That belief is that God created the world as men build houses, and added the human beings as men furnish their houses when built. It is the belief that He is still making souls as fast as bodies are being born in the world, that these souls begin their existence at birth, live here but one life and then pass on into either endless bliss or eternal pain.

This idea differs from materialism in the matter of a governing intelligence and on immortality but it is remarkably like it in other ways. Like materialism it is fatalistic because it makes man the helpless subject of resistless power. It merely puts an intelligent force as first cause where the materialist postulates blind force.

The materialist says that all human characteristics are the gift of nature while according to the popular belief they are the gifts of God. In either case one class of human beings gets abilities that they have not earned and others get defects that they do not deserve. The intellectual man is favored without reason and the fool is handicapped without mercy. Some come into the world with salvation assured by being well born while others are foredoomed to failure. Predestination goes logically with such ideas.

Happily the world has long been growing away from the once wide-spread belief in predestination because it is too shocking to the modern sense of justice. But is the world at the same time catching the point that if there is but one life on earth and the soul is created at birth, then the very essence of predestination remains, because some are created with the wisdom to attain salvation and others are created without it?

If the soul has no pre-existence it can have no responsibility at the time of birth. Neither can it have any merit. One is born with a sound mind and moral insight. These qualities may lead to salvation but the man has done nothing to earn them. Another is born with cruel and vicious tendencies and poor intellect. He may therefore miss salvation, but if he had no pre-existence he can have done nothing to deserve such a start in life. If we are really here for the first time then justice can be done only by giving us equal equipment at the start and equal opportunities afterward.

Think for a moment of the sweeping difference between human beings at birth. There is every degree of vice and virtue from the savage to the saint and every mental variation from the fool to the philosopher. If God really creates the soul at birth, then one is created wise and kind though he did nothing to earn it. Another is created vicious and depraved. He did nothing to deserve it. One is showered with natural gifts to which he is not justly entitled. Another is blighted with a stupidity he did nothing to incur; and we are asked to believe that God made them thus! Such a belief is contrary to reason and to justice.

It is easy to see why, in this old view of the relationship between God and man, salvation was to be by faith. It was impossible for a person to be saved by his merit because, if his qualities were given to him by God at birth, he had no merit. His very ability to comprehend spiritual truth and his moral strength to resist temptation, were conferred upon him, not earned by him. If this popular view is sound, human beings should be neither praised nor censured. They are simply human automata operated by such degree of mental and moral ability as God chose to assign to them. If this be true, genius should have no credit for its accomplishments, indolence no frown of disapproval, cowardice no lash of condemnation, tolerance no need of praise, cruelty no rebuke, virtue no applause and heroism no fame for its selfless sacrifice. And yet this absurd and illogical belief lingers in the minds of millions of people. It is believed because it always has been believed.

If materialism is an impossible philosophy, then the popular belief that the soul is created at birth is also impossible. It is a theory that encumbers its belief in immortality with conditions that destroy justice and defy logic. That old form of belief has outlived its day. It was possible at any time only because there was too little information and, like the old belief that the world was flat, it must yield place to the newer knowledge. The truth of evolution is the stanchest friend of religion. It is the foundation on which may be built a scientific belief in a Supreme Being, a rational faith in immortality and a brotherhood of man that has a basis in nature itself. The very idea that was hastily thought to be destructive of a belief in God and heaven and immortality is rapidly becoming the most important witness to the truth of them all. While it is true that in the earliest days of evolution the most eminent scientists were agnostic, it is equally true that today the most eminent scientists of the world believe in the existence of the soul, and in its immortality, and base that belief upon scientific grounds.