THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



in practice; we need only recall the Inquisition, the dark 

 history of the Middle Ages, and the political hierarchy 

 which still dominates so much of civilization. 



However, by far the most important clause in the 

 third article is the final expression of belief in "the 

 resurrection of the body and life everlasting." That this 

 greatest "wonder of life" was originally conceived in a 

 purely material form is evident from thousands of 

 pictures in which famous painters have realistically 

 depicted the resurrection of the dead, the aerial flight of 

 the happy souls of the blessed, and the torments of the 

 damned in hell. It is thus conceived still by the majority 

 of believers who take eternal life to be an "enlarged and 

 improved edition" of life here below. This is equally 

 true of Christian and Mohammedan pictures and of the 

 athanatist ideas that prevailed in other religions long 

 before Christ was born, even of the first rudiments of the 

 belief in primitive races. As long as the geocentric 

 theory prevailed, and the heavens were thought to be a 

 sort of blue glass bell, illumined by thousands of little 

 stars and the lamp of the sun, arching like a vault over 

 the flat earth, and the fires of hell burned in the cellars 

 below, this barbaric notion of a resurrection of the body 

 and a last judgment could easily be maintained. But 

 its roots were destroyed when Copernicus refuted the 

 geocentric theory in 1545 ; and athanatism became quite 

 untenable when Darwin shattered the dogmia of an- 

 thropocentricism. Not only the crude older materialistic 

 idea of eternal life, but also the refined new spiritualistic 

 version, has been rendered untenable by the progress of 

 science in the nineteenth century. I have shown this in 

 the eleventh chapter of the Riddle, v/hich closes with the 

 words: "If we take a comprehensive glance at all that 

 modern anthropology, x^s^^chology, and cosmology teach 

 with regard to athanatism, we are forced to this definite 

 conclusion. The belief in the immortality of the human 



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