Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/759

 IMMORTALITY

689

IMMORTALITY

the future life is to continue for ever. By the human mind, or soul, is meant the ultimate principle within me by which I feel, think, and will, and by which my body is animated. A substance, in contrast with an accident, is a being which subsists in itself, and does not merely inhere in another being as in a subject of inhesion. Now the ultimate subject to which my mental states belong must be a substance — even if that substance be the bodily organism. Further, re- flexion, memory, and my whole conscious experience of my own personal identity assure me of the present abiding character of this substantial principle which is the centre of my mental life. Again, the simplicity and spiritual character of many of my mental acts or states prove the principle to which they belong to be of a simple and spiritual nature. The character of an activity exhibits the nature of the agent. The effect cannot transcend its cause. But careful psychologi- cal observation and analysis of many of my mental operations prove them to be both spiritual and simple in nature. Our universal ideas, intellectual judgments and reasonings, and especially the reflective activity of self -consciousness manifest their simple or indivisible and spiritual character. They cannot be the activities of a corporeal agent or the actions of a faculty exerted by or essentially dependent on a material being.

' Again, psychology shows that our volitions are free, and that the activity of free volition cannot be exerted by a material agent, or be intrinsically dependent on matter. If volition were thus intrinsically dependent on matter, all our acts of choice would be inexorably bound up with and predetermined by the physical changes in the organism. The soul is thus a simple or indivisible, substantial principle, intrinsically inde- pendent of matter. Not being composite, it is not liable to perish by corruption or internal dissolution nor by the destruction of the material principle with which it is united, since it is not intrinsically depend- ent on this latter being. If it perish at all, this must be by simple annihilation. But annihilation, like creation, pertains to God alone, for, as shown in nat- ural theology, it can be effectetl only by the withdrawal of the Divine activity, through which all creatures are immediately conserved in existence. God could of course, by an exercise of His absolute power, reduce the soul to nothingness; but the nature of the soul is such that it cannot be destroyed by a finite being. For positive evidence, however, that the soul will con- tinue after death in the possession of a conscious life, we must appeal to teleology and the consideration of the character of the universe as a whole. All science pro- ceeds on the assumption that the universe is rational, that it is governed by reason, law, and uniformity throughout. Theistic philosophy explains, justifies, and confirms this postulate in establishing the govern- ment of the universe by the providence of an infinitely wise and just Creator. But the consideration of cer- tain characteristics of the human mind reveals a pur- pose which can be realized only by the soul's continuing in the possession of a conscious life after death. Firstly, there is in the mind of man, as distinguishetl from all the lower animals, the capacity to look back to the indefinite past and forward to the distant future, the impulse to project itself in imagination beyond the limits of space and time, to rise to the conception of endless duration. There is an ever-increasing yearn- ing for knowledge, a craving for an ever fuller posses- sion of truth, which expands and grows with every advance of science. There is the character of un- finishedness in our mental life and development — the contrast between the capabilities of the human intel- lect and its present destiny, " between the immensity of man's outlook and the limitations of his actual horizon, between the splendour of his ideals and the insignificance of his attainments" (Marshall), which all demand a future existence unless the human mind is to be a wasteful failure. VII.— 44

Again, there is the craving of the human will, the insatiate desire of happiness, universal throughout the race. This cannot be appeased by any tem- poral joy. Finally, there is the ethical argument. Human reason affirms that the performance of duty is both right and reasonable in the fullest sense, that it cannot be better in the end for the man who violates the moral law than for him who observes it. But were this the only life this would often be the case. It would assuredly not be a rational universe, and it would be in irreconcilable conflict with the notion of the moral government of the world by a Just and In- finite God, if vice were to be rewarded and virtue pun- ished — that the swindler, the murderer, the adulterer, and the persecutor should enjoy the pleasures of this world to the end, whilst the honest man, the innocent victim, the chaste, and the martjT may undergo life- long injustice, privation, and suffering.

Argument from Universal Belief. — We have already traced at such length the history of belief in a future life that it is only necessary here to point out that a universal conviction of this kind, in opposition to all sensible appearances, must have its roots in man's rational nature, and therefore claims to be accepted as valid, unless we are prepared to hold that man's ra- tional nature inevitably leads him into profound error in a matter of fundamental importance to his moral life.

Evidence from Spiritualism. — During the last quar- ter of a century considerable labour has been devoted to investigating what is called "experimental evi- dence " of another life. This, it is supposed, is spe- cially suited to the Zcitgeisl of our day. The Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1SS2, has published a score of volumes of " Proceedings", and a dozen vol- umes of a " Journal ", in which is accumulated a mass of evidence in regard to extraordinary phenomena connected with thought-reading, clairvoj^ance, tele- pathy, mesmeric trance, automatic writing, appari- tions, ghosts, spiritualism, and the like. In the last few years, also, several works by individual investiga- tors, who have selected material from the Society's "Proceedings" or elsewhere, have appeared, urging these phenomena as scientific proof, or r.ather as evi- dence guaranteed by scientific method, in favour of the hj-pothesis of another life.

The main evidence insisted on in most of the recent works is the alleged communications of certain medi- ums with the souls of particular deceased persons. These mediums are, it is supposed, gifted with some supernormal faculty by which they get into relations with departed spirits. They receive at times, it is alleged, information from these discarnate souls which they reveal to the investigator. This knowledge, it is asserted, is frequently of a kind which the medium cannot have attained by any recognized means, and therefore establishes the personal identity of the com- municating spirit. In some cases the spirit furnishes much information about its present condition — which is, however, invariably of a very homely character. Amongst the grounds of objection against this line of argument it may be urged: The total number of medi- ums who give evidence of remarkable experiences is relatively small. Many are shown to be impostors. Those whose testimonies have been tested and authen- ticated are extremely few. The prominence of one or two well-known mediums in all the recent hterature evinces this. The communications from the "de- parted " obtained even by the most successful medi- ums in their most fortunate experiments are very imperfect and disconnected in character, while the quality of the information received is ludicrously trivial, suggestive of the grade of intelligence we are wont to shut up in asylums for idiots (Royce). Fur- ther, the alleged mediumistic communications from the discarnate spirit, of however singular or private a nature, can never prove the personal identity of the