The critically thinking public today might be said to have long ago relinquished the hope of obtaining a sure and decisive answer to the question, whether there is an existence beyond the grave. Some people confine themselves to a faith founded on a smaller or greater probability for either conception. We want palpable evidence. To many it even appears necessary to have a look behind the veil of visible matter in order to satisfy themselves as to whether anything exists within the void. “Nobody has returned to tell us how it is,” we are often reminded, and this expression clearly means that complete certainty requires the testimony of eye-witnesses. Such a procedure would be at least[38] radical if it were possible. But even if it were, should we then be nearer the goal? The whole mode of thinking is na?ve, but merits attention especially because it demonstrates how uncertain the information would be that we would obtain through this channel. If somebody returned, little or nothing would, in all probability, be gained.
In the first place how could we know that it was the same person that returned? It would, perhaps, be best if the soul took possession of the same body. The absence would then be comparable to, or essentially analogous with, the condition of the apparently dead. But to begin with, we could, for good reasons, only ascribe a small value to experience gained under such conditions, and, further, such an absence would evidently mean no real separation of soul and body, no real death, and therefore no real experience of the very thing under consideration.
But how, and under what conditions,[39] would an event of this kind be conceivable?
Should the person in question suddenly disappear from our sight and then just as suddenly reappear among us? Endowed with his present organs and senses, which are closely adapted to earthly conditions, such a person could see and comprehend only such objects as differed little or non-essentially from those in the world where we now live. He would possibly be able to observe conditions on other planets in the universe, but he would be utterly unable to comprehend the things of a world abstracted from the limitations of planetary life. If such a world exists, and some one of us were suddenly removed to it, such a one, amidst all glories with seeing eyes, would yet see nothing; with hearing ears, hear nothing; and with feeling senses, feel nothing. In order to see and grasp what may exist and happen, the observer himself must have gone through a corresponding radical change. The conditions[40] for the functioning of bodily organs do not exist there. He must develop new and more perfect senses; higher, spiritual and bodily faculties which differ from his present ones as much as the objects of this higher world differ from the things of earth.
A direct transposition would therefore be without value. In order to make investigations, a radical metamorphosis is an indispensable condition. The soul must be separated from its earthly clothing and pass through all the transformations which commence with natural death. In order to return here, this person must again go through the same processes in reverse order. At his re-birth upon earth he would not, in all probability, differ from other people. He would know as much or as little as we do.
But even if we assume the improbable and imagine that this person returned to us with the memory of all he had lived through and that he tried to relate his impressions and experiences,[41] such a report would be of no use because it would deal with ideas and conceptions entirely incomprehensible to us. The explanation of this is that man is unable to comprehend things and phenomena which have not acted upon his present organs. If we take pains to analyze our boldest and most unrealistic fancies, we will find that their substance and ingredients are only greatly enlarged or reduced images of an already experienced reality. We have never possessed that man’s higher senses, never experienced the things which those higher faculties are able to grasp, and we are therefore not in a position to form any idea whatever about such a world. His speech would sound like a foreign language that we could not possibly ever learn to understand.
Only in case the person in question could adapt himself to our present way of thinking and understanding, would such a revelation be of any importance. But then again the question arises,[42] what confidence could we have in this man who pretended to possess knowledge about things entirely concealed from us? We have no means of verifying the information thus received. It must be taken in good faith, and so the gates to doubt would again be thrown open. If someone returned, then, little or nothing would be gained. In this, as in other cases, there is no royal road to truth. Only a painstaking research will lead to the goal, if indeed it can ever be attained.
The question is, can investigation in this direction accomplish anything? If so, we must at least not entertain or present any unreasonable demands. Such an unreasonable demand would be, for instance, to expect science to explain the concrete forms which life would take in a transcendental world. No man ever has or ever will make such observations. It is even questionable whether such knowledge would be useful or beneficial to us if obtained. We have enough to occupy us in our[43] daily cares and earthly tasks. A complete knowledge of life in a future existence would probably disturb and distract us to such a degree that we would lose interest for our present evolution in this existence. It may be sufficient for us to know whether there be another life, and if so, whether our dealings and actions in the present life are of any importance for that life. It would, no doubt, suffice if we could acquire a knowledge with regard to that life corresponding to what we know about those distant worlds in space which we discern with our bodily eyes and which we further investigate with our astronomical resources. The following conditions must be fulfilled in order to make the cases similar: First of all, such a transcendental world must exist, and emit rays of light. Further, we must be equipped with some special organ, a spiritual eye, which we could direct towards it and by which we could make our investigations here on earth. Do we possess[44] such a spiritual eye? We answer that our conscience, our religious intuition and the eternal and invariable laws of thinking are just such organs. That an ideal world exists, radiating a light of its own, we are able to conclude from perceptions received through our conscience and our religious intuition.
Our conscience gives us rigorous directions and commandments, which sometimes seem to counteract our earthly happiness and show themselves detrimental to our present success. If our life were confined to this world, the demands of our conscience were not only useless and injurious but also in themselves inexplicable. That man, in his religious intuition, also apprehends a reality of a different kind from the material one, appears from the fact that all peoples, in all times and in all stages of evolution, have possessed a religion, as we now do, a certain conception of supernatural things. It may be granted that a great amount of delusion enters into all religions. Nevertheless,[45] religious errors would be inconceivable if man did not apprehend something supernatural which he wrongly interpreted. Superstition would not exist at all, because, as we have already pointed out, nobody can think, speak or form any idea whatever of things that are entirely beyond all experience. To argue with a person about such never-apprehended realities, would be like discussing colors with the blind. But now it is a fact that apprehensions of immaterial substance are so common to man’s consciousness that if we could find somebody who did not understand what we said and meant in speaking about these things, we should be safe in asserting that such a man was not a normal person.
But if all men have an immaterial experience, why do ideas and opinions differ so about the same experience, and above all why do some people even deny its existence? The explanation of this surprising contradiction may be understood when we consider that man[46] also possesses a special faculty, his reason, which he must likewise employ. With his reason, man examines and studies all his experiences and strives to bring them into agreement with the laws of thinking. In other words, he strives to systematize them into a philosophy. But this is a hard and laborious task. It is difficult as it is to arrive at right conclusions in regard to the material world to which our senses are responsive. How much more must this be the case in regard to the immaterial world. The evolution of our reason, therefore, is a slowly advancing historical process, presenting a continuous change in opinions, although, at the same time, an inner continuity may be traced, an evolution pointing towards a definite goal.
The harmony which man is striving to establish between his reason and his other faculties can obtain only during comparatively short intervals of time. Our reason grows in power and keenness; new observations and discoveries[47] are almost constantly made; old ideas and opinions do not, upon closer investigation, satisfy the more developed demands of our thinking; doubts arise, and this is a necessary condition for all theoretical progress. Such a doubt, not of the immaterial experience which we all have, but of the way in which this experience is to be explained, has been expressed in the theory called materialism, which is a widely spread doctrine in our time. Natural science in itself is never materialistic in the sense in which this word is here used, because natural science does not concern itself with anything immaterial. But if this be the case, how is it possible that science can have anything in common with materialism which, strictly speaking, is a doctrine about spiritual things? We answer that life in this world is joined to and revealed through the material world. A more complete knowledge of the nature of matter ought, therefore, to bring about a decision by and by as to whether the soul[48] is a bodily function or a substance differing from matter. In other words, natural science must sooner or later arrive at a stage when it either verifies materialism or gives us tangible and obvious evidence for the truth of idealism. It was to such a point that science arrived in the last century when Büchner presented his well known “Force and Matter,” in which he endeavors to prove that the soul is an attribute of the body, religion, immortality and so on being only illusions.
Had natural science then finally found materialism to be the highest expression of truth? In reality this was so far from being the case, that natural science, just at that time, had given entirely new impulses to a higher evolution of religious conceptions. How then could Büchner, with natural science as a basis, deny all religion, and how can materialism, in our days, live with undiminished force and vitality? No other explanation is possible than the one we have already proposed. When[49] it remained unnoticed that natural science had discovered the inner, spiritual body, which is the very kernel of the belief in the body as an eternal part of man’s nature, then materialism was the only possible alternative for all those who were convinced that the body contained something imperishable. Materialism, in our days, springs from the same instinct as the death-cultus in ancient times. It has, therefore, integrally, something correct and true as a basis, which not only explains the rapid and wide expansion of this doctrine, but also the fact that the materialists are continually using data and evidence which clearly and plainly disprove their own position, although they do not perceive it themselves. As probably no one has treated this theme in a manner more characteristic of materialism than Büchner, we will, in the following study, use his work above mentioned, which may be said to be typical for the materialist’s mode of thinking and reasoning. It will here[50] be evident, we hope, that the modern natural science does not limit but, on the contrary, widens the boundaries of existence, as we receive from precisely this science the palpable demonstration of the thesis that all life on this earth has its origin in a higher, immaterial world.