August 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



217 



\^ ILLUSTRATED^MAGAZINE % 

 %IENCE,UTERATURE,& ART 



LONDON: AUGUST I, 1888. 



THE SCIENTIFIC ORIGIN OF EELIGIOUS 



DOCTRINES. 



I.— IMMORTAL LIFE. 



EFORE considering the way ia which the 

 iloctrine of the immortality of the soul 

 resulted from the study of observed facts, 

 aud therefore had a scientific origin, it will 

 lii:' well to touch briefly on certain considera- 

 tions which influence men — with or with- 

 out just reason — in maintaining this par- 

 ticular doctrine. 

 jNIost of us are trained from childhood upwards not only 

 into full faith in a future and immortal life, but into the 

 belief that in this faith there is comfort for all the ills to 

 which mortal flesh is heir. The mere .suggestion of doubt 

 respecting the immortality of ths soul is regarded as tend- 

 ing to deprive the world of hops and comfort. It is in 

 connection with this faith that the dreary question has been 

 asked, Is life worth living] and the answer given by most 

 men to the question has been, Were this life all, it would 

 not be worth while to live. Our English poet laureate has 

 expressed the thought, when he saj-s that if man's fight with 

 Death be vain, and science proves we are but magnetic 

 mockeries, cunning casts in clav, — 



Then 

 What matters science unto men. 

 At least to me ? I would not stay. 



Yet few who thus express and doubtless feel the sense of 

 comfort in the hope of an immortal life ever consciously 

 reflect on what they hope for. Few even have considered 

 whether their faith in a future life is comforting for what it 

 promises themselves or for what it promises in regard to 

 others. 



Many of honest mind, when asked whether there is much 

 of comfort for them in the thought of an everlasting con- 

 sciousness, including the clear recollection of all the events 

 of this life, admit readily that such eternal remembrance 

 would be infinitely painful. Even in this life, after a cer- 

 tain stage has been rearched, most men feel that life would 

 be scarce endurable but for the power we possess of diverting 

 the mind from sorrowful reflections, and especially from 

 brooding on the memory of those dear to us whom we have 

 lost. We would not indeed forget such sorrows if we 

 could: we even feel it to be a sacred duty from time to 

 time to recall them vividly to remembrance : but were we 

 to dwell constantly upon them, were tuey ever present in 

 our minds so that we could not dismiss them, we should go 

 mad. Yet what but ever-present consciousness of our 

 whole earthly lives is promised, or threatened, by the faith 

 in immortality 1 



If we view the immortal life as it relates to others, we 



quickly find reason not only to doubt how fiir fiiith in such 

 life is really comforting, but also to question whether we 

 have really entertained it so confidingly a.s we had imagined. 

 If we cannot well conceive immortal life for ourselves with- 

 out assuming that it includes conscious remembrance of all 

 things that have happened in the earthly life, we are equally 

 unable to imagine the immortal life of those dear to us 

 without conceiving them conscious of all that takes place in 

 our lives here. While ivs yet unwilling to ask our inner 

 selves what we really believe and hope, we may hope that 

 the spirits of departed dear ones will 



lis near us when we fade away. 

 To point the term o£ human s'rife, 

 And on the lov.' dark verge of life 

 Tlie twilight of eternal day. 



But while that human strife goes on, do we really believe 

 that the dead whom we loved are near us, and know al! 

 that passes in our thoughts as well as all the actions of our 

 life? 



Do we indeed desire the dead 



Should still be near us at our side 1 

 Is there no baseness we would hide ? 

 No inner vileness th.it we dread ? 



It has been said that did the Catholic really hold in his 

 heart the faith he accepts with his reason and professes with 

 his lips, his reason would stagger in the actual personal 

 presence — as he believes he believes — of the God of the 

 universe upon the altar before him. It may be said with 

 equal truth (and it is a truth more ea.sily grasped) that if 

 men believed in theii' hearts that but one of those dead 

 whom they loved through life were still, in some changed 

 condition, conscious of their thoughts and actions, none 

 but the innately vile could commit any evil action, however 

 slight, or conceive any thought which a child might not con- 

 fide to his mother, a son to his father, a husband to his 

 wife. Would not the thought of each be that, if indeed 



The dead shall look us thro' and thro' — 



Shall be for whose applause I strove 

 (I had such reverence for his blame) 

 See with clear eye some hidden shame 



An i I be lessened in his love ? 



Truly it would need no perfect faith in the supervision of all 

 things by deity to make the believers in an immortal life 

 refrain from evers' wrongful act, from every evil thought. 

 There is scarce one among us who numbers not one at least 

 among his dead, for whose sake he would be blameless in 

 thought and deed, did he indeed believe, as so many of us 

 suppose we believe, that the death of the body is but the 

 beginning of an eternal spiritual life, in which those loved 

 in the earthly life are loved still, and all that they do is 

 known and cared for. 



If, turning from definite thoughts of an immortal spiritual 

 life, we consider only the vague faith in an unknown and 

 mysterious hereafter, we find reason to fear that this faith, 

 though it has been comforting to many, has been distressing 

 to a much larger number of those who hold it. Do what 

 men will to keep the faith vague, they cannot for the most 

 part refi-ain from trying to picture it to themselves in detail. 

 The natural wish to define a faith which has been made so 

 large a part of most men's lives shows itself most strongly 

 (as a rule) at the time when men first begin to recognise the 

 possibility that death may be near at hand. As the actual 

 moment of death draws near there is little power and little 

 desire for definite thought ; the brain grows weary as the 

 moment for its final sleep draws near, and is content to 

 accept vague comfort from those round the death-bed. But 

 few who have had occasion to follow the thoughts of those 

 dear to them during the jirogress of fatal illness have not 

 been pained by anxious questionings addressed to those who 

 have professed to teach with greatest confidence the doc- 



