IMMORTALITY AND SURVIVAL
Survival. By Various Authors. Edited by Sir James Merchant,
and Sons, Ltd. 6s. net.)
IMMORTALITY and Survival, though the casual thought of the Western mind has often taken them for one and the same thing, are not identical. Immortality is a quality of the soul ; Survival a resultant process of being. The first may be
realized here and now ; the second is necessarily a matter of speculation. It is a curious fact, of course, that ordinary folk concern themselves very little about the inevitable crisis of death, that supreme adventure which awaits us all. Some- thing of the same indifference that men feel towards death's twin-brother, sleep, which yet claims for its mysterious embrace a third of mortal existence, averts our eyes from the last problem which confronts mankind. This, so long as the thing remains a problem, is a merciful provision of Nature. Life would be unendurable and entirely unproductive if people went about shivering under the sentence of doom, painful in its infliction and insoluble in its issue. That they do not go about thus shivering, while yet their ranks are silently and remorselessly thinned on every side, is partly due, no doubt, to the wise old maxim that we should never fear the unavoidable, partly to the inviolable hope of which the poet sings, and partly to the confusion of thought already mentioned. The Western nations have not, generally speak- ing, troubled about Immortality for a long time ; but they have a strong conviction of personality, or rather of individuality, and they have taken Survival to be its perquisite. In saying this, we are leaving the teaching of religion on one- side for the moment ; nevertheless, it is true that the tenets of the Christian Faith, which are strong on the distinction between Immortality and Survival, fall commonly on very insensitive ears. If people arc interested at all, it is Survival for which they are anxious, and of late this has become increasingly evident. The War, naturally, has had its influence.
We have spoken, intentionally, of Western instinct and thought. It affords an instructive and piquant contrast to turn to the Eastern habit of mind. For we experience at once a complete change of atmosphere. If there is indifference in the East, it is born not of indolence or easy optimism, but of absolute certainty. Moreover, the distinction between Immortality and Survival is acutely apprehendei. But- the clinging grasp on personality is either negligible or absent. Immortality is not in the least doubted ; indeed, the scepticism of the West as regards a " future life " is regarded with a wondering and ironicsmile. But Immortality is the impersonal possession of the human race. Survival—the perpetuation of the individual's existence with its clogging trail of evil deeds and evil happenings--is looked upon with something like horror. True, there may be such a thing ; there probably is, but it is to be counteracted and averted by a diligent proeess of purification, often lengthy and painful, in this span of earthly existence.
There is great need that, without losing hold of the true notion of personality, which does not involve that exclusive- ness that has warped and partly falsified the doctrine of the Trinity, and without yielding to the fatalistic zest for absorption into the Whole which infects and stunts the life of the East, the active and practical Western mind should regain the ideal of Immortality. Shorn of this ideal, Survival becomes a childish or sinister dream. Not without reason, and with mordant wit, a writer on occult subjects has said of Spiritualism that it owed part of its initial success to the prospect it opened for our unfortunate race of escape from an excessive and unwelcome greatness thrust upon it. " What could be more natural, more pleasant, more desirable than unostentatious promotion from the taproom to the bar- parlour, with a further suggestion beyond of a smooth sward and a bowling-green ? " Just so ; men want to have the glory, such as it is, " of going on and still to be," and nothing more. And this the séance, rather incoherently, and at times in illiterate style, promised them.
Spiritism is, however, only a symptom of a curiosity which most men do not care to indulge. And anyhow, it his advanced, for thoughtful investigators, far beyond its first tentative and suspect manifestations, though beneath even these the robust intelligence of Robert Browning thought there might be something. Three. books dealing with the problems of the Hereafter lie before us, and of these one, Survival, is a symposium of balanced and expert opinion on the subject of spiritualistic experiments which it is impossible to disregard. The limits of an article do not permit comment on the facts recorded, some of them of a very startling nature, but we are grateful for the reasoned and moderate contri- bution of Sir Oliver Lodge, and we would draw special atten- tion to the article by Mr. David Gow. And this because the distinction between the preparatory and all-important realiza- tion of Immortality and the subsidiary fact of Survival which derives all its value from it is clearly and decisively set forth. Two other books support, each in its own way, this distinction and its validity. Colonel Rowe, in his little volume, Life Here and Hereafter, busies himself chiefly with the implications of Evolution, which he thinks does not end with existence in three dimensions. Dr. Tsanoff's work is on a far larger aqd more important scale, and deserves the attention of the student. He examines all the theories of Immortality in relation to the problem of personality, including the arid denials of Haeckel's confused Monism, the subtle metaphysics of Bradley's Absolute Idealism, and the hopeful, if not always convincing, doctrines of Neo-Hegelianism. Indeed, we only note with regret, as he himself does, his neglect of Plotinus and Spinoza.
But the moral is the same. We look back to the Greeks who linked the thought of East and West, and we find a re- conciliation of contradictions. For with the Greeks Immor- tality was the special attribute of the gods, and if man would attain this god-like quality, he must assume also the godlike character. Hence the Mystery-cults which fringed the first advance of Christianity, and left on it their impress of an initia- tion into a new life. Some of the Epistles and the Fourth Gospel bear eloquent witness to this principle, that Eternal Life is to be achieved here and now, not without' the pains of probation, and that the Christian Faith too is one, though the chiefest, of the Mysteries. Eleusinian, Dionysian, Mith- raic initiations all professed to give this one thing in common, an Experience, and all were.fulfilled and summed up in Chris- tianity. Hence its acceptability in the world at least of the Mediterranean coasts.
But we ourselves can dig again the wells that the Philis- tines have filled. For we can turn with infinite profit to Wordsworth's " serene and blessed mood " in which he felt in time with Nature and its secret and enduring life. Yet that mood was not attained save as the result of years of self- discipline and purgation from lower desires. Or we can pass to Tennyson's trance-experience, during which " death became an almost laughable impossibility," a trance induced indeed by a tremendous inner insistence on the fact of his own personality, but redeemed from taint of self by the almost breathless hold on immortality which the loss of his friend Hallam had bequeathed him- Or, once more, we can study the- indomitable resolve with which a strong nature such as Coventry Patmore's surrendered itself into the absolute love-
control of Another, whose claim had nothing of earth about it. In such minds, to trouble about Survival would have been an insult to their deepest knowledge and that- reasoning of the heart of which Pascal speaks. Following them, at what- ever distance, we too, without waiting for our " mortal passage," may taste the ideal life, and " tread the free and spacious streets of that Jerusalem which is above."
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