Suppose it could be proved that this were the true purpose of life—to win benefit and glory for your spirit in the world beyond?
"Well," you might reply, "—if that is the way things stand, it would be putting a big premium on canny foresight. A cold-blooded, utterly selfish individual could make his calculations accordingly and feather his future nest at every opportunity, while the rest of us poor devils who couldn't calculate so well would be piling up future trouble.
"Is that what is meant by soul and conscience and honor? Does the 'spiritual side of man's nature,' when stripped of its camouflage, mean a shrewd calculation which seeks to gain a lasting reward for the spirit, after the body is used up?"
In the face of such a question, of such a line of thought, there is something within us which revolts. If we can find words to express the cause and nature of this revolt, so much the better; but even if we cannot, a vague but unshakable feeling persists within us that any views of this sort are superficial, inadequate and uncomprehending.
Just as we found, in connection with human sympathy and affection, that cold reason might make the mistake of trying to explain them in terms of selfishness, so we find that when reason undertakes to penetrate into the human soul, it is apt to emerge with a distortion which lacks the essence of the whole thing.
In the first place, so far as reason goes, after countless generations of man on earth, what evidence has yet been discovered to prove conclusively that when a man dies, the spirit of him disengages itself from the dead body and goes on to an unknown world to continue life there?
When a dog dies, does the spirit of him do the same thing? A bird? A spider? A germ? A flower? They all have the spirit of life within them—a wonderful complex life—and a struggle for existence on earth—of much the same sort as man's.
I was talking to a charming lady, the other day, who said she firmly believes that the spirits of them all go on to a better world, along with man's.
But whether they do, or whether they don't, what means has any intellect been able to find in all these centuries to settle the question and prove it scientifically, without fear of contradiction?
Even if the intellect were satisfied to take so much for granted, at a guess, for the sake of having something to go by, there still remains the same element of uncertainty surrounding the question: "Why am I here? If my spirit is the only part of me that is destined to live on, what was the need of chaining it for this short space of time to animal instincts and a perishable body?"