Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/234

218 personally advantageous relations to that power. Conscious religious activity is always in obedience to this power. Religion, then, is to be defined as the effective desire to be in right relations to the power manifesting itself in the universe.

The object of the present article is to consider some of the arguments against the immortality of the self,—particularly those expressed in the questions: (1) Is my self an activity of my body? (2) Is my present body an essential condition of my self? (3) Is there any reason to suppose that my self does not share the transitory character which I recognize in all the material objects around me? The first of these questions may be answered in the negative. Although the tendency is to regard the self as reducible to terms of matter, as the independent reality, the fact is that our conception of matter consists of: (1) sensations, which are acts of consciousness, not constituents of matter; (2) ideas (e.g., substantiality, causality), which spring from the mind's activity. Matter, therefore, is meaningless apart from spirit, and by itself has no reality. Spirit, therefore, cannot be interpreted in terms of matter; hence, the self cannot be called an activity of the body. For, if my self is one of the activities of my body, then, since my body exists only in the knowledge of some conscious being, my self must be a product of some piece of knowledge, which is absurd. Our second question generally receives an affirmative answer, based on the argument that, since we know no selves to exist without bodies, the self exists by virtue of sensations. But could not the self exist in some body other than the present? We cannot say that it is impossible for a self to think without sense organs and a brain, and to get its data by means other than sensations. The fact that abnormal conditions of the brain affect thought, does not prove that the normal state of the brain is necessary for thought. Finally, ghost stories give us sufficient evidence to justify belief in apparitions of the dead. Apparitions, though they are no proof of immortality, can remove the presumption that the death of the body destroys the self. To answer our third question, Is the self transitory? we must define transitory. Science teaches, not that the constituents of matter (atoms) change, but that only their combinations are transitory. But the self is not a combination. It is a complex whose parts (thoughts, emotions, volitions) cannot be imagined as existing separately. Its form cannot be changed without its content being changed a conception not analagous to any in science.

There is a certain mystery in the appearance and development of conscience. Evolution may explain the growth of sympathy among members