MB. GREG ON A FUTURE STATE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPEOTATOR."3
Srn,—The two arguments which appeared in your issue of July 14, on the momentous question "Shall we live again?" I have read repeatedly, and with the deep attention which the subject itself, no less than the singular precision of language with which it is treated, demands and deserves. And the impression left on my mind by the perusal is at once curious and painful,—painful, as showing how inconclusive are the best arguments which can be brought forward by two intellects gifted beyond most men with logical acumen and imaginative vigour ; and curious at the same time, because both writers base their conviction on precisely iden- tical assumptions, and those assumptions seem in both cases to involve a similar and patent fallacy.
I may observe in passing that your title is a misnomer.* The two papers do not maintain the " negative " and " affirmative " sides of the thesis, nor do they give opposite answers to the great question they deal with. They assert with equal confidence the immortality of the soul, or more precisely, the life beyond the grave. The sole difference between the two writers is that the second maintains a future existence to be the birthright and the destiny of all men, while the first regards it as designed for and allotted to those only who in this life display their fitness for an inheritance so immeasurably grand.
Now both positions are arguable as well as conceivable, and if the preponderance lies on the side of the supposition I have placed first in order, this is owing to two considerations, one of which is stated in the argument, while the other is only incident- ally referred to. The first is that "the difference between human beings during the few score years of their trial on earth is far too minute to form a ground for the tremendous discrimina- * This is a mistake, but the fault is clearly ours, for everybody has made It. Our title was 0 Shall we all Live Again? "—ED. Spoclalor. tion between eternal life and extinction," The second is, that the chance of any individual's developing in one short lifetime the 'needed capacity for immortality depends so entirely on his "surroundings "—i.e., upon those incidents of his lot over which lie eiis tinsoffitely rid controlati to realm trle ineory impiieu- terly irrconeilable with any conception we can frame of a just Creator. To render the theory maintainable by Theists would seem to require many opportunities, in many worlds, and in various series of circumstances, as well as such original elements of character, material and moral, as would place the possibility of earning the immortal destiny within the range of every can- didate's volition. If there be not this, then the failure of any man to win the prize would almost seem to imply a failure on the part of the Creator to fit him for it,—a failure either of power or of design.
Both reasoners, however, start from the same position, and that position is a postulate impossible to grant. To begin with, you both accept the " evolution " theory as the foundation of your argument, and to this I make no demur. "If there be a creating mind," one writes, "then, in preparing for the advent of such a being as man through endless cycles of centuries, He must have had a definite purpose." "This, at least, is certain," writes the other, "for whatever destiny man was made, it was prepared for him through long ages of prehistoric, and not only prehistoric, but pre-human existence his nature being so fully evolved by the Cosmic agencies of millions of years. . . . . Evolution may fairly be said to mean the story of the long preparation for the introduction into the world of a being with a sense of personal identity, who can distinguish himself from the universe around him."
I. It appears to me, however, that you are not sufficiently imbued with this theory to remain faithful to it throughout your argu- ment, " Evolution" implies or assumes that each successive being grows out of its immediate and less highly-organised pre- decessor by infinitesimally small gradations ; that the steps by which the more perfect one is developed are so minute as to con- stitute an inclined plane rather than a stair, so gradual that no definite line can be be drawn between the successive forms of life, so as to permit us to say that here one race ends and another begins. But when man appears upon the stage—man, the com- plete creature, the realised ideal to which all previous existences lead up—you, both of you, assume or describe something so new, so immeasurably beyond and distinct from everything that has gone before, so altogether incomparable in its nature and pro- spects, an to constitute, to signify, to postulate a specific and absolute creation. For how can an immortal being be evolved—evolved, too, it would seem, at a single burst-- out of an infinite aeries of mortal and perishable creatures ? Can a. dying creature become undying by degrees? Can the endow- ment or the quality of eternel life be an affair of growth, or be acquired by increments, or be conceivable in fractions ? Where, by possibility or in fancy, can the line be drawn between the most finished perishable being and the next, scarcely distinguish- able from him by the neatest naturalist, yet separated by a gulf like that of immortality ?—in a word, ,between the last anthropoid and the first antivropos (sodei.prt.5)? If, indeed, a being has been called into existence endowed—he alone—with the vast, unpre- cedented, illimitable Heritage of everlasting life, is not this a distinct, undeniable act of creation, at which all nature may well be summoned to assist,--a specific fiat of the Supreme Will, which utterly negatives, when applied to it, the very idea of evolution ? 2. This is the first break-down in your argument. The second appears equally fatal to your fundamental plea. You go on to affirm, as if it were a proposition so self-evident that the con- trary is "incredible, and indeed absurd,"—ono of you, that if all men are not immortal, and the other, that if some at least are not, then the purpose of God, in creating, or preRaring„ or evolving, such a race of beings " has not been fulfilled," and that "man, regarded as a mortal being, is a failure." Now, I am utterly unable to perceive the cogency of this assumption. You both recognise—one asserts, the other admits—that "in every other department of life the practice of the Governing Mind is the profusest waste." Why not in the creation of man ? You are alike shocked at the notion that the human individual, like the individuala of all other countless multitudes of races, euaaes to be when death closes his career on earth
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lough one of you is satisfied—considers the problem solved— provided only an elected few survive ; while the other, rnere exacting, insists on immortality for all. Yet both are equally scandalised and repelled by the notion of a general extinction, not indeed of Humanity, but of the separate person-
alities which make up its aggregate. Neither of you see any thing startling or repugnant in your fundamental creed or sup-
position, that all the numberless preceding, preparatory, approxi- mating forms of animal existence die out without a future, perish -thebimetedry-"Ar aieragegt4ree.-yeadr ter, 111' virving-ine ihry -ror that culminating wonder of Creation. You do not cry out against this astounding waste; it does not seem for a moment to strike you as waste, or as astounding, simply because it is leading up to you. You have no words of reproach against the common Maker of us all, you do not accuse him of having had no pur- pose, or an inadequate purpose, or of having failed in his purpose—of having worked for nothing, or for nothing worth, during the uncounted ages of the peat, though all preliminary types and creatures—as wonderful as ourselves in their graceful and complicated structures, as happy as we, nay, often happier by far, resembling us so strangely in their intelligence, so still more curiously and touchingly in their sensations and emotions, approaching us, too, more and more closely as the ages roll away,— though all these pass across the stage, and fade away into non- entity,--all this seems to you natural, probable, equitable, seemly. Cycles spent in these abortive creations—abortive as far as themselves are concerned—strike you as no failures at all, as no unworthy occupation for the great Producing Spirit of the Universe, the Fountain of exhaustless life! Nay, one of you goes further still, and is willing to give up without perplexity or re- monstrance all the less fit, the less complete, the less successful types and specimens of Humanity itself, to swell the vast holo- caust of failures, of preparatory experimental existences, provided only a few are reserved out of the reckless waste to "contribute to the glory of God," and bear witness to the idee-mere of the Creator But, replies the second interlocutor, those previous forms of life, which you seem inclined to place so nearly on the same platform as ourselves, "had none of them that conscious per- sonality or sense of identity which constitutes the essential characteristic of immortal life." Indeed ! had they not? How do we know this? And again, how can we affirm that this "be- wildering consciousness of the Ego" is really the soul-essence within us, the one credential of eternity on which we can rely? Does a metaphysical proposition of this sort—a mere assumption, as it must appear to most of us—carrying with it such self-evi- dence, such instantaneous and general recognition of its truth, that upon it we, when our hour strikes, can go to sleep in hope, or confidence, or peace ?
ft. Again, let us ask ourselves whether this other assumption, which you both have agreed to make, and to take refuge in as the citadel of your common creed that we site/t live again, has any real solid ground to rest upon ? Is it, indeed, true and certain that—granting the existence of a creating Mind, and that there must be a purpose in the creation of man ; then, if mart dies out with this life, that purpose has failed of its fulfilment ; that he is no fit object of love to a Creator, nor a contributor to his glory ; that he, or rather the separate quality in him, the accumulating mind, is not of any use, since he and it and all its gains, vast as they may be and may become, must, if he is mortal, pass into nothingness the moat absolute? Must we, indeed, acknowledge, as you assert, that "Man, as a mortal being, is a failure ?" Let us, in dealing with a question of such unparalleled magni- tude and earnestness, discard rhetoric, and think out the answers to be given, for the matter assuredly is too grave to use any words save those which have the precisest meaning. Is it in any sense correct, is it not, on the contrary, utterly monstrous, to maintain that life is nothing if it be not eternal in duration? Do we really mean seriously to assert that man, with his wonderful capacities, as yet only in their infancy ; his strange happineas, often already so intense ; with potentialities of joy growing more vivid and more varied as the Ages roll along ; with his accumu- lating stores of knowledge and discovery passed on, whatever we may say, from generation to generation ; aye, and still more, with elements of character growing richer and nobler Century after Century towards the completion of God's perfect work,—that such a being la not a conception worthy of the Creator we imagine ? Take the best specimen of the race we have yet known or read of, picture him with his intellect furnished to the full with the hoarded wisdom of the past, his faculties trained to their ultimate perfection, his instincts and emotions disciplined by the experience of a thousand centuries, and his life lengthened to its natural limit by all that science will have taught him,—and then fancy this being, this man at his culminating zenith, to be not, as the good are now, a mere rare and exceptional instance of what man might be, but a faithful portrait of tho average man, as he will
have become. Consider all this (which is nothing beyond what Positivists and poetic Pagans alike anticipate), and then tell us, if you dare, that the realisation of such a conception may not fitly occupy the creative Spirit during that long fragment of eternity called Time, and that He may not, as he looks upon his finished work, justly pronounce it to be "very good ;"—aye, even though each individual of the race be doomed, after a life of noble energy and stainless joy, to pass into a dreamless and unconscious rest. Is an existence such as this not a gift to demand the boundless gratitude of its receiver, and to show forth the glory and beneficence of the Giver, even though it come to an end at last ? Is a life like this to be depre- ciated and declared "a failure," because endless duration be not superadded? If the Creator has been worthily employed in calling into life millions of beings, comprising every conceivable variety of form and capability, some destined to live a minute, some an hour, some a day, some a year, some ten years, or per- haps twenty,—why should He be said to have had no purpose, or an unsuccessful one, because He has added another and a nobler creature, designed to last seventy years or a hundred, but not more ?
"Passing away" is the destiny written upon every other of the works of God, or the results of evolution—on the tree, the insect, and the megatheriutu, on the earth, the sun, the star, the galaxy—and can man find no better plea why he should be exempted from the universal lot than fancies, how- ever eloquently put forth, of such singular tenuity as those I have been analysing? Alas why is it that each fresh argument for immortality which the ingenuity of desire excogitates should prove, when closely grappled with, just as baseless as its pre- decessors? Why must those who long the most to live for ever, whose hopes are the most aspiring, and whose energies the least worn out, who examine with renewed eagerness each new specu- lation that promises to be a proof, be compelled to fall back upon the old conclusion—that Faith may be undying, but that Proof there can be none ?—I am, Sir, &c., W. R. GREG.
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