Reader. You cannot; but we can.
Büchner. Men would not fear death, “if death were not considered as putting an end to all the pleasures of the world” (ibid.)
Reader. I too, doctor, acknowledge that death puts an end to all the pleasures of this world; but this does not show that our soul will not survive in another world. We fear death for many reasons, and especially because we are sinners, and are afraid of the punishment that a just Judge shall inflict on our wickedness. We would scarcely fear death, if we knew that our soul were to be annihilated. And therefore our fear of death is a proof that the belief in the immortality of the soul is more universal than you imagine.
Büchner. “Pomponatius, an Italian philosopher of the XVIth century, says: ‘In assuming the continuance of the individual we must first show how the soul can live without requiring the body as the subject and object of its activity. We are incapable of thought without intuitions; but these depend upon the body and its organs. Thought in itself is eternal and immaterial; but human thought is connected with the senses, and perceptions succeed each other. Our soul is, therefore, mortal, as neither consciousness nor recollection remains’ ” (p. 214). Can you answer this argument?
Reader. Very easily. That the soul can live without the body is proved by all psychologists from its spirituality—that is, from its being a substance performing operations in which the body can have no part whatever. Such operations are those which regard objects ranging above the reach of the senses altogether; which, therefore, cannot proceed from an organic faculty, nor from any combination of organic parts. Now, if the soul performs operations in which the organs have no part, it is evident that the soul has an existence independent of the organs, and can live without them. Accordingly, the body is not the “subject and object” of the activity of the soul.
That “we are incapable of thought without intuitions” is true, in the same sense as it is true that we are incapable of digesting without eating. But would you admit that therefore no digestion is possible when you have ceased eating? Or would you maintain that I cannot think to-day of the object I have seen yesterday? Certainly not. Yet it is evident that I have to-day no sensible intuition of that object. That thought in itself is “eternal” is a phrase without meaning. Thought is never in itself; it is always in the thinking subject. That “human thought is connected with the senses” in the present life is true, not, however, because of any intrinsic dependence of the intellect on the senses, but only because our present mode of thinking implies both the intellectual and the sensible representation. The consequence, “our soul is therefore mortal,” is evidently false, as well as the reason added, that “neither consciousness nor recollection remains.” Pomponatius was a bad philosopher, but still a philosopher. His objection is vain, but still deserves an answer. His reasoning is sophistical, but there is still some meaning in the sophism itself. Not so with you. After three centuries of progress you have not been able to find a single objection really worth answering, either in a scientific or in a philosophical point of view.
Pomponatius brings in another [pg 417] argument against immortality by saying that virtue is much purer when it is “practised for itself without hope of reward.” You quote these words (p. 214), but without gaining much advantage from them. You might have argued that “as the hope of reward makes virtue less pure, it would be against reason to suppose that God can offer us a reward, the hope of which must thus blast our virtue.” In your next edition of Force and Matter you may develop this new argument, if you wish. Your future adversaries, however, will refute it, as I fancy, with the greatest facility, by observing, first, that the hope of a reward may accompany the practice of virtue without interfering with its purity; for we can love virtue for itself without renouncing the reward of virtue. Do you not expect your fees from your patients as a compensation for your services? And yet I presume that you would take it as an insult if any one pretended that you practise medicine for the love of money. It might be observed, secondly, that as sin deserves punishment, so virtue deserves reward; hence a wise and just Providence, which we must recognize as an attribute of Divinity, cannot leave the virtuous without a reward, nor the sinner without a punishment. And, since it is plain that neither the reward nor the punishment is adequately meted out in this world, it remains that it should be given in the next. I shall not enter into any development of this argument, which is the most intelligible among those usually made use of by philosophers to prove the immortality of the human soul. It suffices for me to have shown the utter falsity of your reasons against this philosophical and theological truth.
XIX. Free-Will.
Reader. Do you admit free-will?
Büchner. “A free-will,” says Moleschott, “an act of the will which should be independent of the sum of influences which determine man at every moment and set limits to the most powerful, does not exist” (p. 239).