University of Virginia Library

THE FASCINATING PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY

(If you read this you will probably feel that you have wasted time.)

IF YOU travel back far enough you can see in your mind's eye a primitive man with long, red hair, shivering in some icy pool. He has taken refuge there from a pursuing bear or other foe. He sees that he must die of cold or of the bear's teeth. His dark mind—product of a brain primitive and poor in convolutions—contemplates vaguely the prospect ahead of him. He hopes that after death he may through some mysterious kindness be permitted to meet again the red-haired women and the wolfish cave children left behind.

There, in the cave man's mind, is the first craving for immortality. Born in that poor brain long centuries ago, it has steadily grown stronger with man's mental development.

—

No man looks at death without looking beyond it. None but has a craving for a future life, with consciousness of his personality and with recollection of friends, faces and deeds here.

Say to a man, "You shall be immortal, but you shall not know that you are you." He will not give you thanks for such immortality.

So strong is man's craving for personal, individual immortality that hell with its fires would be preferred by many to annihilation. The strongest argument against immortality—weak and ignorant at best—is but a frantic attempt of the mind to prove negatively the existence of what it covets.

Fortunately for human happiness in general, faith, covers the requirements of millions. They live and die contented, the instinct within them fortified by the teachings of a faith not to be questioned.

—

But what of the men and women who ask for evidence, or at least for plausible argument, proving the reasonableness of immortality? What can be said to please them?

Not much, alas! Probably because we are still so undeveloped that it would be, for many reasons, unsafe to let us know how great a future is before us. Strongest in hope is the argument of Charles Fourier, based on what he declared to be a natural law.

"Attractions are proportionate to destinies."

By this Fourier meant that a universal longing among human beings was certain proof that their ultimate destiny involved the fulfilment of the longing. The little girl fondling a doll foretells maternity. The hectoring boy foretells the soldier's career. No universal attraction, save with a destiny proportionate.

—

The human race since it began to think and believe has thought of and believed in immortality. The half wise declare that belief in immortality and a spirit world came to savage peoples through dreams, that it has been kept alive through superstition

and the power of religion. Trivial, certainly, is such an explanation of a phenomenon as wide as mankind's existence.

—

A very consoling fact for the doubter is this. The strongest minds born on the earth have almost invariably, at some stage of development, rejected belief in immortality—only to return to the belief, or at least to the hope, with fuller age and riper wisdom. That no great mind has seen any positive argument against the hope of immortality is certainly comforting to all of us. Intelligence can always refute improbability and falsehood.

—

What about the nature of immortality? The Indian hopes for dogs and hunting, the Turk for a life of which the least said the better. The Christian, borrowing his ideas from the writings of the old Hebrews, looks forward to what may be called a solid gold existence—everything made of gold or of something more expensive.

We do not think that religious docility demands implicit belief in any of the published details of our future existence. Gold is not comfortable; jasper would not well replace the green turf.

Is it not more reasonable to assume, since immortality is to be ours, that it is ours now and always has been? We cannot imagine creation of the indestructible. Is it not sensible to take literally that most beautiful invocation: "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven"?

We know that heaven cannot be above us or hell below; because as we whirl round in each twenty-four

hour period those abodes would have to whirl also—quite unreasonable.

—

This earth would make a very good heaven—properly improved and managed. Wipe out human selfishness, and the Sahara and other deserts. Establish universal philanthropy, regulate the climate, confine human manual labor to the pushing of an electric button—all quite possible—and you have the sort of heaven that man would select if left to choose.

Why should we not come back here again and again, taking varying human forms, doing our duty well or badly each time according to our start in life, and finally enjoying perfect terrestrial happiness here as a finished race of immortal beings—immortal in the sense of being indestructible and of possessing the gift of perpetual reincarnation?

—

Now, this earthly reincarnation idea is what we have been driving at since the beginning of this particular article. What is the argument against prior and subsequent existence here? It is this:

"If I am to live here again, I must have lived here before. If I have lived here before I do not know it, and I do not look forward with pleasure to future existence here in which I shall not know myself."

This is a reasonable objection, certainly. Reincarnation without consciousness of former existences would miss half the fun.

—

But it is possible to be in too much of a hurry. Let us suppose that as yet we are not sufficiently developed to carry from one existence to another the memory of former existence. Suppose the time is to come when we shall suddenly advance as far beyond this intellectual stage as this stage of intellect is

beyond that of the Bushman. Is it not conceivable that we may suddenly be enabled to recall all former existences and to remember all the various happenings of our former lives? May we not say, "There is Mrs. Jones. I was married to her six million years ago, and we quarrelled"? It seems quite hopeable.

You cannot deny that it is possible. For instance: You now lead a continuous existence. You know that you were alive three days ago and you remember what you did then. But a baby four weeks old does not know that he was alive three days ago and he does not know what he did then. He has not reached a stage where his mind can grasp even the fact of continuous existence. We may not have reached a stage enabling us to grasp continuous reincarnation.

Think of this, and see if you cannot get some comfort, or at least some amusing speculation out of it.

—

Science admits and thinks it proves that the inorganic atom of matter is indestructible—that it persists forever. Why should we not admit—and ultimately prove—that the atom of organic force called a soul is indestructible and exists forever?

Every atom of matter, every particle of force, existing in the visible universe will continue to exist billions of centuries after the universe shall have melted and lost its present shape. The nail on your finger will exist as separate atoms when the Milky Way shall have faded from the heavens. How does that strike you for immortality?

We predict that the mysterious force-atom called your soul will exist and know itself and its friends ten thousand billions of centuries from now and be as young as ever.