Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/757

 IMMERSION

687

IMMORTALITY

analysis, apprehending only psychological phenomena, cannot detect it. But the question is still under con- sideration ; it is not for us to solve the mystery of the transcendent in a definitive manner and from the point of view of the method of immanence.

Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (London, 1903); Prince, Dissociation of Personality (New York, 1906) : James, Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1902 ) ; Thamiry, De rationibus seminalibus ct Imtnanentia (Lille. 1905); Sab\tier, Esquisse d'une philosophic (fr la religion . . . (Paris, 1898): BuissoN, La Religion, la Morale et la Science (Paris, 1904); LoiSY, Autcur d'un petit livre (Paris, 1904); Laber- THONNIERE, Bssais de philosophic religieuse (Paris, 1904); Le Roy, Dogme et critique (Paris, 1907) ; Maisonneuve in Vacant, Diet, de theologie catholique, s. v. Apologetique; Berthelot, La science et la morale (Revue de Paris, 1 Februarj-, 1895): Bour- geois, Solidariie (Paris. 1903); Saint AnGi^STlNE, De Genesi ad litteram in P. £,., XLVII; de Trinitate in P. L., XLII; Blondel, Lettre sur les exigences de la pensie contemporaine en matiire d' apologetique (Saint-Dizier, 1896): Dechamps, Entre- tien (Mechlin, 1860); Ligeard, La theologie catholique et la transcendance du sumaturel (Paris, 190S): Thamiry, Les deux aspects de Vimmanence et le problhne religieux (Paris, 190S); Michelet, Dieu et Vagnosticisme contemporain (Paris, 1909); Illinworth, Divine Immanence (London, 1898).

E. Th.vmiry.

Immersion. See Baptism, sub-title VI, Matter and Form of the Sacrament.

Immigration. See Migration.

Immortality (Lat., in, mortalis; Germ., Unster- blichkeil). — By immortality is ordinarily understood the doctrine that the human soul will survive death, continuing in the possession of an endless conscious existence. Together with the question of the exist- ence of God, it forms the most momentous issue with which philosophy has to deal. It belongs primarily to rational or metaphysical psychology and the philoso- phy of religion, though it comes also into contact with other branches of philosophy and some of the natural sciences.

Belief in a future life of some sort seems to have been practically universal at all times. Here and there individuals have rejected this belief, and particu- lar forms of religion or systems of philosophy logically incompatible with it have had adherents; still, how- ever vague and inconsistent may have been the views among different peoples as to the character of the life beyond the grave, it remains true that the persuasion of the reality of a future existence seems to have been hitherto ineradicable throughout the human race as a whole. The doctrine of immortality, strictly or properly understood, means personal immortality, the endless conscious existence of the individual soul. It implies that the being which survives shall preserve its personal identity and be connected by conscious mem- ory with the previous life. Unless the individual's identity be preserved, a future existence has relatively little interest. From the doctrine of immortality thus explained there have been sundry variations. Some have held that after a future life of greater or less duration the soul will ultimately perish. Throughout the East there has been a widespread tendency to be- lieve in metempsychosis or transmigration — that in- dividual souls successively animate different human be- ings, and even the bodies of lower animals. A special form of this \iew is the theory of metamorphosis, that in such a series of reincarnations the soul under- goes or can undergo evolution and improvement of its condition. Pantheism, if logical, can offer only an impersonal immortality, a future condition in which the individual is absorbed into the absolute^the one infinite being, whether conscious or unconscious. Practically, this differs little from annihilation. For the materialist, the soul, or the conscious life, is but a function of the organism, and necessarily perishes at death. Positivists, however, while adopting this con- clusion, would still cheer mankind with the hope of a place in the "choir invisible", that is, a future exist- ence in the minds and on the lips of future generations — a not very substantial form of immortahty, and one

of a very aristocratic character, the franchise being narrowly limited.

History. — Egypt affords at a very early date the most abundant evidence of an extremely vivid and intense belief in a future life. Offerings of provisions of all sorts to the spirits of the departed, elaborate funeral ceremonies, and the wonderfully skilful mum- mification of the bodies of the deceased, all bear wit- ness to the strength of the Egjqjtians' convictions of the reality of the next life. (See Egypt, especially sections on The Future Life and The Book of the Dead.)

India. — The doctrine of personal survival with a future retribution for good and ill conduct is found in the earliest forms of Brahminism. At a later period a school of Brahmin pliilosophers evolved a system of vague Pantheism in which absorption into the Infinite Being is the final goal. Still, the popular belief has in practice always tended towards Polj-theism, whilst the doctrine of successive reincarnations of the soul in dif- ferent human beings or animals remained a constant expression of belief in survival. A special form of this belief is the doctrine of Karma — the persisting existence and transmission through re-incarnations of the sum of the past deeds and merits of the individual (see Brahjiinis.m). Akin to the pantheistic absorption of philosophic Pantheism is the theory of Nirvana, which forms a central feature in strict Buddhism. Whatever Nirvana may mean for the philosophers and saints of Buddhism, for the multitude the ideal liber- ation from labour and pain is restful quiet, not death or extinction (see Brahmfnism and Buddhism).

China. — In China worship of ancestors is evidence of belief in some form of personal survival which carries us back to the earliest ages of that most ancient and conservative nation. The departed spirits are both helped and propitiated to aid their descendants by sacrifices and sundry services of filial piety (see Con- fucianism).

Japan. — Similarly in Japan, whatever may be the genuine logical theory of the soul in the religion of Shintoism, the popular mind finds in the great institu- tion of ancestor worship instinctive satisfaction and expression for the belief in a future life, which seems so deeply and universally rooted in human nature.

Judaism. — That early Jewish historj' shows that the Hebrew nation did not believe in a future life, is sometimes stated. It is true that temporal rewards and punishments from God are much insisted upon throughout the Old Testament, and tliat the doctrine of a future life occupies a less prominent position there than we should perhaps have anticipated. Still, care- ful study of the Old Testament reveals incidental and indirect evidence quite sufficient to establish the ex- istence of this belief among the Israelites at an early date (see Gen. ii, 7; Wis., ii, 22, 23; Eccl., xii, 7; Prov., XV, 24; Is., xxxv, 10; Ii, 6; Dan., xii, 2, etc.). It would, however, on a priori grounds, ha\'e been in- credible that the Hebrew people should not have held this belief, considering their intimate contact with the Egyptians on one side and the Chaldseans on the other (see Atzberger, "Die christliche Eschatologie ", Frei- burg, 1890).

Greece. — The Greeks seem to have been among the first to attempt systematic philosopliical treatment of the question of immortality. Belief in a future life is clear in Homer, though the character of that existence is vague. Pindar's conception of immortality and of its retributive character is more distinct and also more spiritual. The Pythagoreans are vague and tinctured by Oriental Pantheism, though they certainly taught the doctrine of a future life and of metempsychosis. We have not definite texts defining Socrates' view, but it seems clear that he must have been a believer in immortality. It is, however, in the hands of his great pupil Plato that the doctrine attained its most elalj- orate philosophical exposition and defence. Plato's teaching on the subject is given in several of his