Keciew of Reciews, 117/00. 



The Book of the Month. 



97 



pieached from the pulpit of his cathedral. " Bui 

 why not preach it, since it is the truth?" said the 

 dear old saint, who would not willingly have hurt 

 a fly. To which the only answer possible is, that 

 if it be the truth we should do nothing else. 



THE FAITH OP THE JEWS. 



The answer of the Jews is as vague and indeter- 

 minate as that of the Catholics is clear and precise. 

 Cecil Rhodes, who took a deep interest in those 

 questions, made a point of asking all Jews of his 

 acijuaintance whether they had ever heard in the 

 synagogue any Rabbi or religious teacher affirm the 

 doctrine of immortality, or make any appeal to the 

 heart and conscience of their congregation based 

 upon the hypothesis that death did not end all. He 

 assured me that he had never met a single Jew who 

 had ever heard such an appeal. The future life in 

 the synagogue would therefore appear to be treated 

 as non-existent. Between these two extremes — the 

 Catholic, whose future life is as lurid and vividly 

 outlined as the flames of hell fire, and the Jew, whose 

 outlook has no horizon beyond the grave — will be 

 found the great mass of vaguely conceived and irn- 

 perfectly expressed denominational and undenomi- 

 national beliefs. It may be worth while to make a 

 little inquirv into the question as to what is generally 

 taught and believed amongst us. 



THE SCIENTIST. 

 The Monht for April contains a very thoughtful 

 and suggestive article on " The Soul in Science and 

 Religion," from the pen of its editor, Dr. Paul 

 Carus. It is a statement of the conclusions at which 

 one of the most learned and philosophical of Ameri- 

 can men of science has arrived on the supreme 

 question of immortality. Dr. Carus says in effect 

 that there is no scientific truth in the popular re- 

 ligious notions of the conscious personal immortality 

 of the individual: — 



They are like fairy tales with a wholesome moral; the 

 talo i's fiction, the moral is true. They are helpful in en- 

 forcing right rules of conduct, and so though untrue if 

 taken literally, they are true in tlieir purpose; they can 

 t)e used as .a workins hypothesis, because they are a» if 

 true. 



Sot true, but only " as if true.'' They are poetry 

 but not science, but nevertheless of paramount im- 

 portance to the life of mankind. Dr. Carus insists 

 that if we accept Paul's definition of man as con- 

 sisting of body, soul, and spirit, the body and soul 

 die outriL;ht, the spirit alone survives. 



HOW THE SPIRIT SUEVIVES. 



But the spirit is entirely dissociated from the 

 soul, which is the animal, conscious, sentient life of 

 feeling, desire, memory, and emotion. The only im- 

 mortality he admits is that which George Eliot sang 

 in her " Choir Invisible " : — 



The spirit of Shakespeare, of Goethe, of any poet and 

 also of any statesman who has helped to shape ever so 

 remotely the conditions of our present life, is incorporated 

 in the general spirit of mankind, and has thus acquired 

 an immortality that is not subject to corruption. Th'S 



spiritual condition was spoken of by Christ as the treaaures 

 wliich neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where 

 thieves do not break through or steal. We must notice 

 in this connection that consciousness, sense-activity and 

 the entire realm of sentiment, being the psychical body, 

 will have no part in the immortality of the spirit. Con- 

 sciousness together with all feeling is clearly affiliated with 

 bodily life. 



A SHADOWY ZMMORTALITY. 



The thing which we know as our Ego, that per- 

 sonality which lives and longs to live, dies as a beast 

 dies with the body. Dr. Carus feels that to the 

 ordinary man that is equivalent to a denial of immor- 

 tality. The ordinary man is not much cheered by 

 being told that after his consciousness perishes he 

 will live aga.in in the lives of others whom he indi- 

 rectly or directly influences: — 



Man's personality remains after death a living presence, 

 and tills living presence makes its liitlueiice felt as if he 

 were conscious of it. He draws, as 't were, on the con- 

 sciousness of the living, he utilises their vitality, their 

 sense organs, their sentiments, and so the people who be- 

 lieve in a conscious immortality are after all not far from 

 the truth. 



THE SURVIVAL OF COJTSCIOUSNESS. 



Much more acceptable is the doctrine of Professor 

 Fechner who, in his little book of " Life After 

 Death," adds to the doctrine of Dr. Carus the con- 

 solatory belief that man is actually preparing during 

 his life a new and higher type of existence which 

 will bear the stamp of his personality : — 



Fechner claims that at the moment of death man's con- 

 sciousness is transferred to his spiritual body, and that 

 thus the soul exchanges its present habitat for a more 

 ethereal existence. "In the moment of death, man will at 

 once become conscious of all the ideas and effects of his 

 actions in life." According to Fechner our bodily frame 

 *■ holds us in bonds "' which must be undone in death to 

 give us the higher consciousness of our union with other 

 spirits, and when in death "eternal night sinks down on 

 man's bodiij- eyes, a new day will break upon his spirit." 

 Fechner claims tliat we shall no longer need our eyes 

 because we acquire a new and higher kind of vision, such 

 as only the sun and all the planets possess, when emitting 

 and intercepting rays of light. 



Dr. Carus rejects Fechner's theory as fantastic 

 and unscientific, but admits that although untenable 

 in its literal meaning, it is " as if true,'' and incorpo- 

 rates a truth that is significant and should not be 

 denied. 



HOW TO SETTLE THE QUESTION. 

 ■ Telepathy and messages from the dead would. Dr. 

 Carus admits, lead him to revise his scientific views. 

 But he regards neither of them as proved. iHence 

 those of IIS who know that both telepathy and mes- 

 sages from the dead are true do not pay much heed 

 to a scientific dictum which is admittedly tenable 

 only so long as these truths are ignored. On this 

 point iMr. iHereward Carrington, writing in the 

 Ope» Court, seems to us to hit the nail on the head 

 when he says that — 



I think that the only way this matt«r can ever be settled 

 is by resolutely puttiner aside all philosophic and other 

 preconception.s. and b.v turning to direct investigation of 

 evidence and of facts that may be forthcoming — tending to 

 say that such persistence of consciousness is an actual 

 fact. If these facts are ever established, then all specula- 

 tion is mere child's olay and conclusively disproved by the 

 evidence in the case. 



That these facts are in process of being establish- 

 ed is to me as clear as noonday, and the more I read 



