SURVIVAL AND IMMORTALITY
(1917)
The recrudescence of superstition in England was plain to all observers many years before the war; it was perhaps most noticeable among the half-educated rich. Several causes contributed to this phenomenon. The craving for the supernatural, a very ancient and deeply rooted thought-habit, had been suppressed and driven underground by the arrogant dominance of a materialistic philosophy, and by the absorption of society in the pursuit of gain and pleasure. Modern miracles were laughed out of court. But materialism has supernaturalism for its nemesis. An abstract science, erecting itself into a false philosophy, leaves half our nature unsatisfied, and becomes morally bankrupt before its intellectual errors are exposed. Supernaturalism is the refuge of the materialist who wishes to make room for ideal values without abandoning the presuppositions of materialism. By dovetailing acts of God into the order of nature, he materialises the spiritual, but brings the Divine will into the world of experience, from which it had been expelled, and produces a rough scheme of providential government, by which he can live.
The revolt against scientific materialism was made much easier by the disintegration of the mechanical theory itself. Biology found itself cramped by the categories of inorganic science, and claimed its autonomy. The result was a fatal breach in the defences of materialism, for biology is being driven to accept final causes, and would be glad to adopt some theory of vitalism, if it could do so without falling back into the old error of a mysterious 'vital force.' Biological truth, it is plain, cannot be reduced to the purely quantitative categories of mathematics and physics. Then psychology aspired to be a philosophy of real existence, and attacked both absolutism and materialism. The pretensions of psychology rehabilitated subjectivism and founded pragmatism, till reactionary theology took heart of grace and defended crude supernaturalism, with the whole apparatus of sacerdotal magic, as the 'Gospel for human needs.' All protection against the grossest superstitions was thus swept away. With no fixed standard of reference to distinguish fact from fiction, it was possible to argue that 'whatever suits souls is true.'
In this atmosphere many old habits of thought reasserted themselves. While we enjoyed peace and prosperity, the credulity of the public found its chief outlet in various systems of faith-healing and in the time-honoured pretensions of priest-craft. But the devastation which the war has brought into countless loving families has turned the current of superstition strongly towards necromancy. The 'will to believe,' no longer inhibited and suspected as a reason for doubt, has been allowed to create its own logic. A few highly educated men, who have long been playing with occultism and gratifying their intellectual curiosity by exploring the dark places of perverted mysticism, have been swept off their feet by it, and their authority, as 'men of science,' has dispelled the hesitation of many more to accept what they dearly wished to believe. The longing of the bereaved has created for itself a spurious and dreary satisfaction.
One cause of this strange movement cannot be emphasised too strongly. It proves that the Christian hope of immortality burns very dimly among us. Those who study the utterances of our religious guides must admit that it is so. References to the future life had, before the war, become rare even in the pulpit. The topic was mainly reserved for letters of condolence, and was then handled gingerly, as if it would not bear much pressure. Working-class audiences and congregations listened eagerly to the wildest promises of an earthly utopia the day after tomorrow, but cooled down at once when they were reminded that 'if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.' Accordingly, the clerical demagogue showed more interest in the unemployed than in the unconverted. Christianity, which began as a revolutionary idealism, had sunk into heralding materialistic revolution. Such teachers have no message of hope and comfort for those who have lost their dearest. And they have, in fact, been deserted. Their secularised Christianity was received with half-contemptuous approval by trade unions, but far deeper hopes, fears, and longings have now been stirred, which concern all men and women alike, and on the answers to which the whole value of existence is now seen to depend. Christianity can answer them, but not the Churches through the mouths of their accredited representatives. And so, instead of 'the blessed hope of everlasting life,' the bereaved have been driven to this pathetic and miserable substitute, the barbaric belief in ghosts and dæmons, which was old before Christianity was young. And what a starveling hope it is that necromancy offers us! An existence as poor and unsubstantial as that of Homer's Hades, which the shade of Achilles would have been glad to exchange for serfdom to the poorest farmer, and with no guarantee of permanence, even if the power of comforting or terrifying surviving relations is supposed to persist for a few years. Such a prospect would add a new terror to death; and none would desire it for himself. It is plainly the dream of an aching heart, which cannot bear to be left alone.
But, it will be said, there is scientific evidence for survival. This claim is now made. Cases are reported, with much parade of scientific language and method, and those who reject the stories with contemptuous incredulity are accused of mere prejudice. Nevertheless, I cannot help being convinced that if communications between the dead and the living were part of the nature of things, they would have been established long ago beyond cavil. For there are few things which men have wished more eagerly to believe. It is no doubt just possible that among the vibrations of the fundamental ingredients of our world—those attenuated forms of matter which are said to be not even 'material,' there may be some which act as vehicles for psychical interchange. If such psychic waves exist, the discovery is wholly in favour of materialism. It would tend to rehabilitate those notions of spirit as the most rarefied form of matter—an ultra-gaseous condition of it—which Stoicism and the Christian Stoic Tertullian postulated. The meaning of 'God is Spirit' could not be understood till this insidious residue of materialism had been got rid of. It is a retrograde theory which we are asked to re-examine and perhaps accept. The moment we are asked to accept 'scientific evidence' for spiritual truth, the alleged spiritual truth becomes for us neither spiritual nor true. It is degraded into an event in the phenomenal world, and when so degraded it cannot be substantiated. Psychical research is trying to prove that eternal values are temporal facts, which they can never be.
The case for necromancy is no better if we leave 'scientific proof' alone, and appeal to the relativist metaphysics of the psychological school. Intercourse with the dead is, we are told, a real psychical experience, and we need not worry ourselves with the question whether it has any 'objective truth.' But we cannot allow psychology to have the last word in determining the truth or falsehood of religious or spiritual experience. The extravagant claims of this science to take the place of philosophy must be abated.
Psychology is the science which describes mental states, as physical science describes the behaviour of matter in motion. Both are abstract sciences. Physical science treats nature as the totality of things conceived of as independent of any subject; psychology treats inner experience as independent of any object. Both are outside any idea of value, though it is needless to say that the votaries of both sciences trespass habitually, and often unconsciously. Both are dualisms with one side ignored or suppressed. When psychology meddles with ontological problems—when, for instance it denies the existence of an Absolute, or says that reality cannot be known—it is taking too much upon itself, and has fallen into the same error as the materialism of the last century. On such questions as the immortality of the soul it must remain silent.