And, similarly, I doubt not, that, though all hope of material profit or reward be withdrawn from man’s mind, that call of the horn which he has heard of old will still bring his spirit to the resting-place at the appointed time; nor will he wish either to shorten his days or debase his pleasures because the horn has ceased to provide the meal which it once taught him to expect.
Do not let anything I have said be taken as suggesting that the spiritual forces of man’s nature may not be conserved, transmuted, re-assimilated, or re-distributed, as surely and with as little waste as are the material elements of life which pass through disintegration and decay into new forms. The processes by which such changes are wrought may be, and may ever remain, a mystery to human sense. There may be yet in the making a new order or plane of evolution by which the process will be quickened and perfected. Soul of man may be in the making, though it may be very far removed from that aspect of individualism with which the anthropomorphic tendencies of theology have burdened it. But—whether life thus rises by unknown law to further ends, or whether it passes out, like the life of leaves, into the general decay with which autumn each year fertilises the bed of mother earth—of one thing I would ask you to be confident—that the bandying of words and theories, and the discussion, tending this way or that, of man’s destiny after death, are not in any way likely to alter or to undo those forward-driving forces and communal desires with which, from an inheritance of so many millions of years, the life of humanity has become endowed. The will to live will still lift up the race and carry it forward to new ends, whether man thinks he sees in death the end of his personal existence, or only a new and a better beginning. And whether he claims or resigns that prospect of reward he will never be able to rid himself of the sense which revives after all failures and crimes, that man is his brother-man—or be able to refrain at his best from laying down his life, without calculation of personal benefit to himself, so that others may live.
The highest manifestations of human genius, the most perfected forms of self-realisation in art, in literature, and science, have been given to us—and will continue to be given to us—independent of any bargain that name and identity shall for ever remain attached thereto while posterity enjoys the benefit. The artist might foresee that his name would, in a brief time, become dissociated from his work, and his memory blotted out from the book of the living; he would produce it all the same. The reformer might know that his motives would be aspersed, that his name would become after death a spitting and a reproach; but, for the sake of the cause he believed in, he would still be willing to die a dishonoured death and leave a reprobated name, to a world that had failed to understand.
That is human nature at its best; and you will not change it or endanger it through any increased doubt thrown by modern thought or science on the prospect of conscious immortality after death. For whether we recognise it or not, a subconscious spirit, not perhaps of immortality but of unity, permeates us all; and for furtherance and worship of that which his soul desires, the spirit of man will ever be ready to work and strive, and to pass unconditionally into dust—if that indeed be the condition on which he holds his birthright in a life worth living.
W. H. Smith & Son, The Arden Press, Stamford Street, London, S.E.1
Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.