Substitute Immortalities.
Some of those who bring
forth arguments against immortality of the
soul (or
resurrection of the body) propose other kinds of
“immortality,” thus giving this term a broader and
often misleading meaning. There is, first of all, what
may be called the
doctrine of impersonal immortality:
the spirit, or mind of man, is not
destroyed at death
but returns to and merges with the universal or
divine
Soul, or mind. This is the possible meaning of Aris-
totle's hint about the eternity of the
active intellect.
The main representatives of this view are
Averroës,
Bruno, Spinoza, and the German and English romantic
poets and philosophers of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth
centuries. Of this kind of immortality, Ma-
dame
de Staël remarked somewhat sarcastically that
“if the
individual inner qualities we possess return to
the great Whole, this has a
frightening similarity to
death.”
Another kind of “immortality” which is intended to
console, as well as to justify death, is “biological”
immortality of our germ plasm (genes). The prospect
to live on in one's
children has, however, lost much
of its comforting power since the
realization that man-
kind itself will some day
disappear, and particularly
now that the atomic and hydrogen bombs have made
such an
outcome not infinitely remote but a very real
and even immediate
possibility. It might not neces-
sarily
affect Santayana's “ideal” immortality which is
reminiscent of Goethe's view that the “traces on one's
earthly
days cannot be erased in Aeons.” Nor would
it affect what is
known as “cosmological” immortality,
according to
which our energy-matter does not cease
to exist but is only transformed and
dispersed. But to
both of these “immortalities,”
Madame de Staël's criti-
cism equally
applies. Of course, many people would
be satisfied with mere
“social” or “historical” immor-
tality—to have left traces
of one's passage on earth
in the form of an artistic achievement,
scientific dis-
covery, or other remarkable
accomplishments. “How
can he be dead, who lives immortal in the
hearts of
men?” asks Longfellow in speaking of
Michelangelo.
This was the meaning of immortality for the great men
of
Ancient Rome. In modern times, this kind of
“immortality” was first suggested by M. J. de Con-
dorcet in his
Outline of
the Progress of the Human
Mind, and, with particular force, by
Ludwig
Feuerbach. The least ambitious immortality would be
to live on
for a short time in the memory of one's family
and friends. Very probably
this is the only kind of
“immortality” that the
overwhelming majority of peo-
ple will ever have.
But for many people, this is not
a completely satisfactory thought.
