NOTE ON HUMAN SENTIMENT AS TO A FUTURE LIFE.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Phelips, Vivian
What is the Rationalistic explanation of that essence of the “religious instinct,” belief in an after life? It may, I think, be summed up briefly in some such words as these: “The conception of non-existence is an effort beyond the power of human intellect. As long as man thinks, his ego is fully conscious of its existence, and not able to grasp the idea of non-existence. Thus religion is a functional weakness.”72 The instinct of self-preservation does the rest; it transforms the speculation into an ardent desire. “The theory of a continued existence after death is nothing more than a certain manifestation of the impulse for self-preservation, as the instinct for self-preservation itself is nothing more than the form under which our vital energies, that have their seat in every cell of our organism, manifest themselves to our consciousness.”73 Is not this a perfectly natural explanation of the craving for immortality?
This craving, as we have seen, is not universal; while, in Buddhism, it is assumed that man ought to strive for extinction. Even among Western nations the craving is not so common as it is generally supposed to be, and as the Church confidently takes for granted. In support of this conclusion, I should mention that my readers will find a startling confirmation in an article on “Human Sentiment with regard to a Future Life,” which appears in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for October, 1904. The article is written by a well-known psychologist, Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, Fellow and tutor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and author of various well-known works on the mind (Riddles of the Sphinx, 1891; Humanism, 1903, etc.). He reviews the results of a laborious inquiry by the American branch of the S. P. R., and comes to the conclusion that “the returns show a hitherto hardly suspected weakness of the desire for knowledge of a future life,”74 and that, “amid all the various phenomena of human psychology, distress due to uncertainty about one’s fate after death seems to be one of the rarest.”75 Mr. Schiller, the apostle of Professor W. James in this country, shows that he himself possesses the craving for an after life in no ordinary degree, and this adds all the more force to his statement that the instinct is in nowise universal. I, too, once had a craving so intense that hell itself seemed less awful than total annihilation.
To those who have built up high hopes their destruction must come as a terrible shock—a shock eventually relieved by a feeling of resignation to the inevitable.
What we, as anxious parents, have to ask ourselves is: Do we not agree with St. Paul when he says, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain”; and are we not aware that, with the advance of knowledge, the present widespread disbelief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ will become more and more general? Even now how many disbelieve or preserve an agnosticism regarding the chief dogmas of the Christian creed? How many are sceptical concerning the continuance of consciousness after death? Does either science or common sense support a belief in the survival of personality? Are we right, then, in permitting our children’s minds to be imbued with a “sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life”? Is it a kind act to expose our children to the pain of a rude awakening by instilling hopes that are destined to be ultimately shattered? Is it a wise act to allow their morality to be based upon foundations that are doomed to destruction? It is not as if we were forced into telling fairy stories because we shrink from negative teaching. It is not as if there were no natural incentives to right conduct, no positive teaching possible, without an admixture of theological speculations. Non-theological moral instruction is not only possible, but is urgently wanted and will be extremely beneficial. This will appear more fully in the following chapter.
Source notes
1 As remarked by the Bishop of London in a sermon at Westminster Abbey. See cover of Mr. Guy Thorne’s book, When it was Dark.
2 Quoted from an address delivered by the Bishop of London at St. Paul’s, as reported in the Church Times of October 7th, 1904.
3 See footnote p. 37 of The Religion of Woman, by Joseph McCabe.
4 Professor Jinzo Naruse. For the quotation see chap. xxi. on “The Position of Women” in Mr. Alfred Stead’s recent publication, Japan by the Japanese.
5 See p. 31 of the Rev. Herbert Moore’s The Christian Faith in Japan.
6Ibid., p. 129.
7 We learn this from reliable sources—for example, from W. M. Flinders Petrie and Gaston Camille Charles Maspéro, the celebrated English and French Egyptologists.
8The Religion of Woman.
9 These remarks are quoted on p. 15 of The Religion of Woman from vol. iii., p. 290, of Mrs. Cady Stanton’s History of Women’s Suffrage.
10The Religion of Woman, pp. 105, 107, 111.
11 Pinchwife, it will be remembered, is the anxious husband (in Wycherley’s comedy, The Country Wife) who held that a woman is innocent in proportion to her lack of knowledge. There are, of course, other reasons why a wife’s ignorance is deemed desirable. Cf. “And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate.”
12 In his sermon at St. Crantock’s on August 27th, 1905.
13The Religion of Woman, p. 78. This work embodies a complete refutation of the assertion which we have cursorily examined. The truth-seeker desirous of studying other aspects of the Christian contention is strongly recommended to peruse also Mr. McCabe’s brilliant essay, The Bible in Europe (Watts, 1907).
14 See his Notes on Popular Rationalism.
15Anti-Theistic Theories, Lecture 5, on Comte’s Positivist Philosophy.
16 Approximately 300,000 copies by the end of January, 1907.
17 In the Nineteenth Century and After, November, 1904.
18 See Gibbon’s Rome, vol. iii., p. 27 (ed. 1809).
19Ibid., vol. iii., p. 27.
20Ibid., vol. iv., p. 21.
21 Among his victims were: his father-in-law (A.D. 310); sister’s husband (314); nephew (319); wife (320); former friend (321); sister’s husband (325); own son (326).
22 Gibbon’s Rome, vol. ii., p. 337 (ed. 1809).
23 The death-bed baptism of Constantine is described by Eusebius, the Bishop of Cæsarea, in his Life of Constantine, bk. iv., chaps. 61, 62, 63, and 64. The Bishop assumes the salvation of Constantine with the utmost confidence, and says: “He was removed about mid-day to the presence of his God, leaving his mortal remains to his fellow-mortals, and carrying into fellowship with God that part of his being which was capable of understanding and loving Him.”
24 It has been urged upon me by my Christian friends that the enormous funds at the disposal of the various Christian propagandist societies testify to the growth, not the decay, of the Christian faith. If these funds were chiefly derived from the small donations of the many, there would be something in this argument. Such, however, is not the case.
25 Ammian. Marcell. 1. xxvii. c. 3.
26Cod. Theodos., Lib. xvi. tit. ii. 1. 20.
27 Lib. xvi. tit. x. 1. 20, and tit. v. legg. 43, 52, 57, 65.
28 See pp. 58–9 of the Beneficial Influence of the Ancient Clergy (the title under which the Hulsean Prize Essay for 1850 was subsequently published in book form), by the late Henry Mackenzie, B.A., scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Other quotations are given in the Appendix.
29The Gods of the Egyptians, Preface, p. xv.
30Ibid.
31 Huxley’s Essays on Controverted Questions, p. 9, Prologue.
32 Gibbon’s Rome, vol. ii., p. 257 (ed. 1809). In 1638, forty thousand Japanese Christians were put to death in the great Castle of Hara, the Dutch traders at Nagasaki supplying cannon and gunpowder to be used against their fellow-Christians. (Mentioned in The Christian Faith in Japan, p. 19, a book published by the S.P.G.) This wholesale butchery, however, marked the destruction, not the introduction, of Christianity.
33 Quoted from page 543 of The Martyrdom of Man, seventeenth edition (1903).
34 Are we not liable to forget that the most brilliant geniuses may make mistakes sometimes, either from want of knowledge of facts, or from a psychological unwillingness to accept them? May not the very subtlety of their intellects aid the work of their own self-deception?
35 Liddon’s Some Elements of Religion, p. 48.
36 Flint’s Anti-Theistic Theories.