THE WISH FOR IMMORTALITY.
MR. F. C. S. SCHILLER publishes in the Fortnightly Review for this month a paper of some intellectual interest. It deals with the issue of a circular or questionnaire, ly distributing which the American members of the Society for Psychical Research are endeavouring to ascertain whether the mass of those who speak English do or do not concern them- selves with the • question of a future state, and whether, if they do, they desire or regret that the existence of such a state should be probable :—
" I. Would you prefer (a) to live after death' or (b) not P
II. (a) If I. (a), do you desire a future life whatever the con- ditions maybe?
(b) If not, what would have to be its character to make the prospect seem tolerable? Would you e.g., be content with a life more or less like your present life (c) Can you say what elements in life (if any) are felt by you to call for its perpetuity ? 111. Can you state why you feel in this way, as regards questions L and II.?
IV, Do you How feel the question of a future life to be of Urgent importance to your mental comfort P V. Rave your feelings on questions I., II. and IV. undergone change ? If so, when and in what ways ?
VI, (a) Would you like to know for certain about the future life, or (b) would you prefer to leave it a matter of faith?" Mr. Schiller, we imagine, though he makes some effort to conceal Ms. opinion, believes that the answer to the main questions will be in the negative ; but the weight of evidence is, in our Judgment, wholly against him, while the reasons he gives are, as regards the first question at all events, singularly uncon- vincing. He seems to think it a proof of his theory that men do not readily discuss death and immortality when they meet
together, say at dinner, that they never mention either in their newspapers, and, above all, that they make no effort whatever to have the probability of a future state carefully
and scientifically investigated. Surely, he argues, if the matter interested their minds as smaller questions do they
would, considering its importance, make it an incessant sub- ject of discussion, whereas it is of all subjects the one most strictly tabooed. It is "bad form" to mention it in society, it is excluded from the newspaper articles, and the most " faddy " Member of Parliament dare not get up and ask for a Committee of investigation into the probability of a future state. He concludes, therefore, that our future existence is not a subject in which the majority are deeply interested, and that the popular notion, or rather assumption, to the contrary is unfounded. He forgets, we think, that there are questions about which men are silent because they are too deeply interested to discuss them, and that rever- ence produces in this respect precisely the same result as indifference. Nobody in Germany, or at least none of the educated class, would publicly discuss the character of the Emperor, much less make it the subject of free news- paper discussion, least of all move for a Committee to investi- gate it by cross-examination or otherwise, yet to every politician it is matter of the deepest. interest, of much thought, and of perpetual inquiry. That an enormous number of men try to avoid thinking of the future life is true, and has been true in all ages, but that is because they are afraid of it as too weighty, too absorbing, too fatal to immersion in the business of daily life, not because they think it of second-rate importance. If it is not so, how does it happen that religion, which is only the study of what is to follow after death, and how to make the state which succeeds death pleasant or unpleasant, is of all subjects that which most deeply divides mankind, and on which opinion is considered most important, not only as regards the future but as regards the present ? What else but interest in the future state, or things directly connected therewith, divides Catholic and Protestant ? We should say, in exact opposition to Mr. Schiller, that an immense majority have the greatest difficulty in tuning their thoughts from it, and that anybody who brought them any fresh and clear light about it, or even professed to bring it, would receive the
most eager attention. The real reason why men do not investigate the question of what follows after death, as they investigate secular rroblems, is that they are convinced' that investigation can have no result, that light can come only from revelation, and that consequently the-
thing to investigate is the truth or falsehood of what- ever professes to contain that revelation. Surely there in interest enough in that; why all society, all the systems of life prevalent throughout the world, are based on that, and the conclusions deduced from that. That men do not inquire • carefully enough into the phenomena of spiritualism may be • true—the present writer thinks it is true—but the reaion is hopelessness of obtaining light by that method, not indiffer- ence to light if obtainable. Let men but see a reasonable hope, and till the hope was dispelled nothing else would attract their attention at all. Politics, business, pleasure, all would be forgotten in the presence of so absorbing an interest. The thing has happened in history several times, and whenever it has occurred the moving force governing the peoples and constantly producing religious wars has been interest in the " Whither."
Whether the mass of men, if they were consulted in the arrangements of the universe, would wish to live again is another matter, which will hardly be proved by the answers to a theological census paper. People are not truthful enough to themselves to make such a return of much value. We think they would wish, and though we can give no positive proof of our opinion, we can suggest some reasons for holding it. One is a very broad fact indeed,—viz., that no creed which positively asserts extinction at death as a. dogma has ever taken hold of the masses of mankind. The Sadducees of the world have never been anything more than a small, .usually well- cultivated sect. The Jews are supposed to have denied the Resurrection, but they hailed as inspired the great men who appeared among • them and who affirmed it, and we suspect that the mysterious charm -of heathenism for the masses of the Chosen People was based upon their hunger to believe in something beyond the grave. Both Egyptians and Baby- lonians were as regards a future . state believers, and so may the Phcenicians have been. It is vain to explain an accept. ance s9 general solely by fear; there must have been wish too, or the brave would have protested with effect At present, when new creeds are manufactured every year, they all profess to affirm a future; and true agnosticism, though it spreads among the educated, takes little hold upon the body of any people. The hope of a better world may be vague, but it is always a hope, and a hope implies a wish. The hope, indeed, seems to increase rather than decrease as belief in dogma dies away, the truth being, we fancy, that as the supreme dogma, the existence of a personal God, becomes more lonely the confidence in God as necessarily good increases, and produces the belief so startlingly strong among the masses that He will grant compensation for the injustices of this world. There must be a wish to live again behind that faith. The writer would be inclined to say, as the result of his personal observation, that the doubt of a future state is strongest among the happy, the unhappy clinging to it as their only consolation. As those who are unhappy, at least at intervals, are infinitely the more numerous, Mr. Schiller's question on his theory answers itself. More- over, human instincts, bad or good, are facts to be always taken account of, and it is difficult to imagine that the uni- versally diffused fear of death can exist without, what is really an extension of it, the fear of extinction. The answer that men do not dread sleep, but rather seek it as a refuge, is no answer at all, for we all instinctively think of sleep as a con- dition sure to have an awakening. It is often assumed that suicides must expect death to be the end, but the evidence is directly to the contrary, for suicides die every day hoping or praying that God will forgive them, though if death is extinction prayer and hope are alike absurd formulas. We cranot but think that the great majority of men expect a future state, and would gladly, if they knew hew, pierce the veil which God fer some purpose we none of us perceive has dropped between our minds and any knowledge of our kind of future condition.
We must add one other word. Mr. Schiller alludes to, though he does not dwell on, the Hindoo and Buddhist belief in the ultimate absorption of all consciousness into the supreme and universal spirit as opposed to the idea that man generally desires a future state, and no doubt that is a strong argument, perhaps the strongest that can be adduced on that side. It is not, however, so strong as it looks. To both Hindoo and Buddhist reincarnation seems very much what a future life seems to the Christian, each new state, which may be repeated fer ages, being emphatically one of reward or punishment, while the ultimate absorption is held to be cer- tainly blissful. Hew bliss is compatible with absence of consciousness no Western mind can explain, but the Hindoo thinks he can, and certainly believes both assertions. The ablest Hindoo who has ever written on Hindooism in English affirms both beliefs, and justifies both with a directness and appearance of genuine faith which to the Englishman is almost appalling, as suggesting• that all minds are not governed by the same laws :—" We have often and often read about this being called the losing of individuality as in becoming a stock or a stone. I tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is happiness to enjoy the consciousness of this small body, it must be more happiness to enjoy the consciousness of two bodies, or three, four, or five— and the ultimate of happiness would be reached when this sense of enjoyment would become a universal consciousness." We should ourselves count the Asiatic mind, with its fixed idea that the present is little and the future much, as weighty evidence on the side of the decision that. an immense majority consciously or unconsciously wish existence to continue.
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