The Myth of the Soul
by Clarence Darrow
(A most remarkable lawyer)
1857 - 1938
Is the Belief in Immortality
Necessary or Even Desirable?
There is, perhaps, no more striking example of the
credulity of man than the widespread belief in
immortality. This idea includes not only the belief that
death is not the end of what we call life, but that
personal identity involving memory persists beyond the
grave. So determined is the ordinary individual to hold
fast to this belief that, as a rule, he refuses to read or
think upon the subject lest it cast doubt upon his
cherished dream. Of those who may chance to look at this
contribution, many will do so with the determination not
to be convinced, and will refuse to even consider the
manifold reasons that might weaken their faith. I know
that this is true, for I know the reluctance with which I
long approached the subject and my firm determination not
to give up my hope. Thus the myth will stand in the way of
a sensible adjustment to facts.
Even many of those who claim to believe in immortality
still tell themselves and others that neither side of the
question is susceptible to proof. Just what can these
hopeful ones believe that the word "proof" involves? The
evidence against the persistence of personal consciousness
is as strong as the evidence of gravitation, and much more
obvious. It is as convincing and unassailable as the proof
of the destruction of wood or coal by fire. If it is not
certain that death ends personal identity and memory, then
almost nothing that man accepts as true is susceptible to
proof.
The beliefs of the race and its individuals are relics of
the past. Without careful examination no one can begin to
understand how many of man's cherished opinions have no
foundation in facts. The common experience of all men
should teach them how easy it is to believe, what they
wish to accept. Experienced psychologists know perfectly
well that if they desire to convince a man of some idea,
they must first make him want to believe it. There are so
many hopes, so many strong yearnings and desires attached
to the doctrine of immortality that it is practically
impossible to create in any mind the wish to be mortal.
Still, in spite of strong desires, millions of people are
filled with doubts and fears that will not down. After
all, is it not better to look the question squarely in the
face and find out whether we are harboring a delusion?
It is customary to speak of a "belief in immortality." --
First, then, let us see what is meant by the word
"belief." If I take a train in Chicago at noon, bound for
New York, I believe I will reach that city the next
morning. I believe it because I have been to New York, I
have read about the city, I have known many other people
who have been there, and their stories are not
inconsistent with any known facts in my own experience. I
have even examined the time tables and I know just how I
will go and how long the trip will take. In other words,
when I board the train for New York, I believe I will
reach that city because I have reason to believe it.
If, instead, I wanted to see Timbuktu or some other point
on the globe where I had never been, or of which I had
only heard, I still know something about geography, and if
I did not I could find out about the place I wished to
visit. Through the encyclopedia and other means of
information, I could get a fair idea of the location and
character of the country or city, the kind of people who
lived there and almost anything I wished to know,
including the means of transportation and the time it
would take to go and return. I already am satisfied that
the earth is round, and I know about its size. I know the
extent of its land and water. I know the names of its
countries. I know perfectly well that there are many
places on its surface that I have never seen. I can easily
satisfy myself as to whether there is any such place and
how to get there, and what I shall do when I arrive.
But if I am told that next week I shall start on a trip to
Goofville; that I shall not take my body with me; that I
shall stay for all eternity: can I find a single fact
connected with my journey -- the way I shall go, the time
of the journey, the country I shall reach, its location in
space, the way I shall live there -- or anything that
would lead to a rational belief that I shall really make
the trip? Have I ever known anyone who has made the
journey and returned? If I am really to believe, I must
try to get some information about all these important
facts.
But people hesitate to ask questions about life after
death. They do not ask, for they know that only silence
comes out of the eternal darkness of endless space. If
people really believed in a beautiful, happy, glorious
land waiting to receive them when they died; if they
believed that their friends would be waiting to meet them;
if they believed that all pain and suffering would be left
behind: why should they live through weeks, months, and
even years of pain and torture while a cancer eats its way
to the vital parts of the body? Why should one fight off
death? Because he does not believe in any real sense; he
only hopes. Everyone knows that there is no real evidence
of any such state of bliss; so we are told not to search
for proof. We are to accept through faith alone. But every
thinking person knows that faith can only come through
belief. Belief implies a condition of mind that accepts a
certain idea. This condition can be brought about only by
evidence. True, the evidence may be simply the unsupported
statement of your grandmother; it may be wholly
insufficient for reasoning men; but, good or bad, it must
be enough for the believer or he could not believe.
Upon what evidence, then, are we asked to believe in
immortality? There is no evidence. One is told to rely on
faith, and no doubt this serves the purpose so long as one
can believe blindly whatever he is told. But if there is
no evidence upon which to build a positive belief in
immortality, let us examine the other side of the
question. Perhaps evidence can be found to support a
positive conviction that immortality is a delusion.
The belief in immortality expresses itself in two
different forms. On the one hand, there is a belief in the
immortality of the "soul." This is sometimes interpreted
to mean simply that the identity, the consciousness, the
memory of the individual persists after death. On the
other hand, many religious creeds formulated a belief in
"the resurrection of the body" -- which is something else
again. It will be necessary to examine both forms of this
belief in turn.
The idea of continued life after death is very old. It
doubtless had its roots back in the childhood of the race.
In view of the limited knowledge of primitive man, it was
not unreasonable. His dead friends and relatives visited
him in dreams and visions and were present in his feeling
and imagination until they were forgotten. Therefore, the
lifeless body did not raise the question of dissolution,
but rather of duality. It was thought that man was a dual
being possessing a body and a soul as separate entities,
and that when a man died, his soul was released from his
body to continue its life apart. Consequently, food and
drink were placed upon the graves of the dead to be used
in the long journey into the unknown. In modified forms,
this belief in the duality of man persists to the present
day. But primitive man had no conception of life as having
a beginning and an end. In this he was like the rest of
the animals. Today, everyone of ordinary intelligence
knows how life begins, and to examine the beginnings of
life leads to inevitable conclusions about the way life
ends. If man has a soul, it must creep in somewhere during
the period of gestation and growth.
All the higher forms of animal life grow from a single
cell. Before the individual life can begin its
development, it must be fertilized by union with another
cell; then the cell divides and multiplies until it takes
the form and pattern of its kind. At a certain regular
time the being emerges into the world. During its term of
life millions of cells in its body are born, die, and are
replaced until, through age, disease, or some catastrophe,
the cells fall apart and the individual life is ended.
It is obvious that but for the fertilization of the cell
under right conditions, the being would not have lived. It
is idle to say that the initial cell has a soul. In one
sense it has life; but even that is precarious and depends
for its continued life upon union with another cell of the
proper kind. The human mother is the bearer of probably
ten thousand of one kind of cell, and the human father of
countless billions of the other kind. Only a very small
fraction of these result in human life. If the
unfertilized cells of the female and the unused cells of
the male are human beings possessed of souls, then the
population of the world is infinitely greater than has
ever been dreamed. Of course no such idea as belief in the
immortality of germ cells could satisfy the yearnings of
the individual for a survival of life after death.
If that which is called a "soul" is a separate entity
apart from the body, when, then, and where and how was
this soul placed in the human structure? The individual
began with the union of two cells, neither of which had a
soul. How could these two soulless cells produce a soul? I
must leave this search to the metaphysicians. When they
have found the answer, I hope they will tell me, for I
should really like to know.
We know that a baby may live and fully develop in its
mother's womb and then, through some shock at birth, may
be born without life. In the past, these babies were
promptly buried. But now we know that in many such cases,
where the bodily structure is complete, the machine may be
set to work by artificial respiration or electricity.
Then it will run like any other human body through its
allotted term of years. We also know that in many cases of
drowning, or when some mishap virtually destroys life
without hopelessly impairing the body, artificial means
may set it in motion once more, so that it will complete
its term of existence until the final catastrophe comes.
Are we to believe that somewhere around the stillborn
child and somewhere in the vicinity of the drowned man
there hovers a detached soul waiting to be summoned back
into the body by a pulmotor? This, too, must be left to
the metaphysicians.
The beginnings of life yield no evidence of the beginnings
of a soul. It is idle to say that something in the human
being which we call "life" is the soul itself, for the
soul is generally taken to distinguish human beings from
other forms of life. There is life in all animals and
plants, and at least potential life in inorganic matter.
This potential life is simply unreleased force and matter
-- the greatest storehouse from which all forms of life
emerge and are constantly replenished. It is impossible to
draw the line between inorganic matter and the simpler
forms of plant life, and equally impossible to draw the
line between plant life and animal life, or between other
forms of animal life and what we human beings are pleased
to call the highest form. If the thing which we call
"life" is itself the soul, then cows have souls; and, in
the very nature of things, we must allow souls to all
forms of life and to inorganic matter as well.
Life itself is something very real, as distinguished from
the soul. Every man knows that his life had a beginning.
Can one imagine an organism that has a beginning and no
end? If I did not exist in the infinite past, why should
I, or could I, exist in the infinite future? "But," say
some, "your consciousness, your memory may exist even
after you are dead. This is what we mean by the soul." Let
us examine this point a little.
I have no remembrance of the months I lay in my mother's
womb. I cannot recall the day of my birth nor the time
when I first opened my eyes to the light of the sun. I
cannot remember when I was an infant, or when I began to
creep on the floor, or when I was taught to walk, or
anything before I was five or six years old. Still, all of
these events were important, wonderful, and strange in a
new life. What I call my "consciousness," for lack of a
better word and a better understanding, developed with my
growth and the crowding experiences I met at every turn. I
have a hazy recollection of the burial of a boy soldier
who was shot toward the end of the Civil War. He was
buried near the schoolhouse when I was seven years old.
But I have no remembrance of the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln, although I must then have been eight years old. I
must have known about it at the time, for my family and my
community idolized Lincoln, and all America was in
mourning at his death. Why do I remember the dead boy
soldier who was buried a year before? Perhaps because I
knew him well. Perhaps because his family was close to my
childish life. Possibly because it came to me as my first
knowledge of death. At all events, it made so deep an
impression that I recall it now.
"Ah, yes," say the believers in the soul, "What you say
confirms our own belief. You certainly existed when these
early experiences took place. You were conscious of them
at the time, even though you are not aware of it now.
In the same way, may not your consciousness persist after
you die, even though you are not aware of that fact?"
On the contrary, my fading memory of the events that
filled the early years of my life leads me to the opposite
conclusion. So far as these incidents are concerned, the
mind and consciousness of the boy are already dead. Even
now, am I fully alive? I am seventy-one years old. I often
fail to recollect the names of some of those I knew full
well. Many events do not make the lasting impression that
they once did. I know that it will be only a few years,
even if my body still survives decay, when few important
matters will even register in my mind. I know how it is
with the old. I know that physical life can persist beyond
the time when the mind can fully function. I know that if
I live to an extreme old age, my mind will fail. I shall
eat and drink and go to my bed in an automatic way. Memory
-- which is all that binds me to the past -- will already
be dead. All that will remain will be a vegetative
existence; I shall sit and doze in the chimney corner, and
my body will function in a measure even though the ego
will already be practically dead. I am sure that if I die
of what is called "old age," my consciousness will
gradually slip away with my failing emotions. I shall no
more be aware of the near approach of final dissolution
than is the dying tree.
I am aware that now and then at long intervals there is a
man who preserves his faculties until a late period of his
life. I know that these cases are very, very rare.
No superstition needs to be called into service to account
for the unusual things that are incident to life. There
may be those who retain, in a measurable degree,
consciousness and mental activity beyond the time of the
ordinary mortal. Still, everyone with the least
information knows that it is almost a universal rule that
the body declines with age, and that those who live a long
life gradually yield their intellectual activity until
they reach the period of senility and unconsciousness.
In primitive times, before men knew anything about the
human body or the universe of which it is a part, it was
not unreasonable to believe in spirits, ghosts, and the
duality of man. For one thing, celestial geography was
much simpler then. Just above the earth was a firmament in
which the stars were set, and above the firmament was
heaven. The place was easy of access and in dreams the
angels were seen going up and coming down on a ladder. But
now we have a slightly more adequate conception of space
and the infinite universe of which we are so small a part.
Our great telescopes reveal countless worlds and planetary
systems which make our own sink into utter insignificance
in comparison. We have every reason to think that beyond
our sight there is endless space filled with still more
planets, so infinite in size and number that no brain has
the smallest conception of their extent. Is there any
reason to think that in this universe, with its myriads of
worlds, there is no other life so important as our own? It
is possible that the inhabitants of the earth have been
singled out for special favor and endowed with souls and
immortal life? Is it at all reasonable to suppose that any
special account is taken of the human atoms that forever
come and go upon this planet?
If man has a soul that persists after death, that goes to
a heaven of the blessed or to a hell of the damned, where
are these places? It is not so easily imagined as it once
was. How does the soul make its journey? What does
immortal man find when he gets there, and how will he live
after he reaches the end of endless space? We know that
the atmosphere will be absent; that there will be no
light, no heat -- only the infinite reaches of darkness
and frigidity.
If there is a future place for the abode of the spirits of
the dead, where is this place? Trusting people have made
pictures and mental images of this abode of the dead. The
revelation of St. John treats rather specifically of this
far-off land, but it is evident that St. John was a
psychopath and his case would be plainly recognized today.
True, this picture of St. John's is not very alluring to
intelligent men. Still trusting and confiding mortals have
visioned in words, at least, a land where families would
be reunited and neighbors and friends come together once
more. In this smug little place, fashioned upon
experiences of life upon this mundane sphere, husbands and
wives, long parted, will be united. Parents and children,
and grandparents and grandchildren, too, will assemble in
families in that land of the blessed and the dead.
These conceptions were formed early in the history of man;
in fact, it has only been in recent years that we have had
any knowledge or vision of the immensity of space and the
impossibility of any such place as is visioned by the
credulous and trusting. We know now that the earth
revolves upon its axis at a terrific speed. This motion
makes a complete revolution in twenty-four hours. We know
down to the second of time that no spot bears the same
relation to space as it did before. If no one who dies at
midnight has a soul and starts on his trip to Heaven, he
goes in an opposite direction from one who dies at noon,
and chances to meet under any circumstances which can be
conceived would grow less as they traveled on. Besides
this revolution on its axis, the earth is traveling at an
inconceivable speed around the sun, which, at times, is
about ninety-three million miles away. This complete
journey is made once a year. In its orbit around the sun
it travels more than a thousand miles a minute. This
constant appalling speed would evidently add to the
confusion of two mortals locating themselves in the same
spot in space, even though they had souls. The atmosphere,
even in its most attenuated form, does not reach over five
hundred miles away from the earth, and for only a small
fraction of that space could life as we conceive it exist.
And when the earth leaves a given spot in space the
atmosphere is carried along with it. In addition to the
motion of the earth on its axis and its unthinkable speed
in its circuit around the sun, the whole solar system is
traveling around the pole star, accompanied no doubt by
many other systems like our own; no one can tell how fast
it goes or how far it goes, in what seems endless space.
And these systems travel in turn around some other central
point in the far-off Milky Way, and no one knows how many
other apparently central points somewhere off amongst the
stars and worlds and suns furnish foci around which the
earth and all the systems constantly revolve. What
possible means of locomotion could be furnished for
mortals to find a place of rest, and what possible
unimaginable guide could pilot individuals going in
different directions at all times of the day and night and
all portions of the year and century, and other greater
periods of time, to this haven of the blessed? All of
these conceptions beggar any sort of imagination and make
and substitute the wildest unthinkable dreams in place of
real beliefs.
There are those who base their hope of a future life upon
the resurrection of the body. This is a purely religious
doctrine. It is safe to say that few intelligent men who
are willing to look obvious facts in the face hold any
such belief. Yet we are seriously told that Elijah was
carried bodily to heaven in a chariot of fire, and that
Jesus arose from the dead and ascended into heaven. The
New Testament abounds in passages that support this
doctrine. St. Paul states the tenet over and over again.
In the fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians he says: "If
Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say
some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
... and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching
vain.... For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ
raised." The Apostles' Creed says: "I believe in the
resurrection of the body." This has been carried into
substantially all the orthodox creeds; and while it is
more or less minimized by neglect and omission, it is
still a cardinal doctrine of the orthodox churches.
Two thousand years ago, in Palestine, little was known of
man, of the earth, or of the universe. It was then
currently believed that the earth was only four thousand
years old, that life had begun anew after the deluge about
two thousand years before, and that the entire earth was
soon to be destroyed. Today it is fairly well established
that man has been upon the earth for a million years.
During that long stretch of time the world has changed
many times; it is changing every moment. At least three of
four ice ages have swept across continents, driving death
before them, carrying human beings into the sea or burying
them deep in the earth. Animals have fed on man and on
each other. Every dead body, no matter whether consumed by
fire or buried in the earth, has been resolved into its
elements, so that the matter and energy that once formed
human beings has fed animals and plants and other men. As
the great naturalist, Fabre, has said: "At the banquet of
life each is in turn a guest and a dish." Thus the body of
every man now living is in part made from the bodies of
those who have been dead for ages.
Yet we are still asked to believe in the resurrection of
the body. By what alchemy, then, are the individual bodies
that have successfully fed the generations of men to be
separated and restored to their former identities? And if
I am to be resurrected, what particular I shall be called
from the grave, from the animals and plants and the bodies
of other men who shall inherit this body I now call my
own? My body has been made over and over, piece by piece,
as the days went by, and will continue to be so made until
the end. It has changed so slowly that each new cell is
fitted into the living part, and will go on changing until
the final crisis comes. Is it the child in the mother's
womb or the tottering frame of the old man that shall be
brought back? The mere thought of such a resurrection
beggars reason, ignores facts, and enthrones blind faith,
wild dreams, hopeless hopes, and cowardly fears as
sovereign of the human mind.
Some of those who profess to believe in the immortality of
man -- whether it be of his soul or body -- have drawn
what comfort they could from the modern scientific
doctrine of the indestructibility of matter and force.
This doctrine, they say, only confirms in scientific
language what they have always believed. This, however, is
pure sophistry. It is probably true that no matter or
force has ever been or ever can be destroyed. But it is
likewise true that there is no connection whatever between
the notion that personal consciousness and memory persist
after death and the scientific theory that matter and
force are indestructible. For the scientific theory
carries with it a corollary, that the forms of matter and
energy are constantly changing through an endless cycle of
new combinations. Of what possible use would it be, then,
to have a consciousness that was immortal, but which, from
the moment of death, was dispersed into new combinations,
so that no two parts of the original identity could ever
be reunited again?
These natural processes of change, which in the human
being take the forms of growth, disease, senility, death,
and decay, are essentially the same as the processes by
which a lump of coal is disintegrated in burning. One may
watch the lump of coal burning in the grate until nothing
but ashes remains. Part of the coal goes up the chimney in
the form of smoke; part of it radiates through the house
as heat; the residue lies in the ashes on the hearth. So
it is within human life. In all forms of life nature is
engaged in combining, breaking down, and recombining her
store of energy and matter into hew forms.
The thing we call "life" is nothing other than a state of
equilibrium which endures for a short span of years
between the two opposing tendencies of nature -- the one
that builds up, and the one that tears down. In old age,
the tearing-down process has already gained the
ascendancy, and when death intervenes, the equilibrium is
finally upset by the complete stoppage of the building-up
process, so that nothing remains but complete
disintegration. The energy thus released may be converted
into grass or trees or animal life; or it may lie dormant
until caught up again in the crucible of nature's
laboratory. But whatever happens, the man -- the You and
the I -- like the lump of coal that has been burned, is
gone -- irrevocably dispersed. All the King's horses and
all the King's men cannot restore it to its former unity.
The idea that man is a being set apart, distinct from all
the rest of nature, is born of man's emotions, of his
loves and hates, of his hopes and fears, and of the
primitive conceptions of undeveloped minds. The You and
The I which is known to our friends does not consist of an
immaterial something called a "soul" which cannot be
conceived. We know perfectly well what we mean when we
talk about this You and this Me: and it is equally plain
that the whole fabric that makes up our separate
personalities is destroyed, dispersed, disintegrated
beyond repair by what we call "death."
As a matter of fact, does anyone really believe in a
future life? The faith does not simply involve the
persistence of activity, but it has been stretched and
magnified to mean a future world infinitely better than
the earth. In this far-off land no troubles will harass
the body or the soul. Eternity will be an eternity of
bliss. Heaven, a land made much more delightful because of
the union with which those who have gone before. This
doctrine has been taught so persistently through the years
that men and women of strong faith in their dying moments
have seen relatives and friends, long since dead, who have
come to lead them to their heavenly home.
Does this conduct of the intense disciple show that he
really believes that death is a glad deliverance? Why do
men and women who are suffering torture on earth seek to
prolong their days of agony? Why do victims of cancer
being slowly eaten alive for months and years prefer
enduring such pain rather than going to a land of bliss?
Why will the afflicted travel all over the world and be
cut to pieces by inches that they may stay a few weeks
longer, in agony and torture? The one answer that is made
to this query is that the afflicted struggle to live
because it is their duty to hang fast to mortal life, no
matter what the pain or the expected joy in heaven. The
answer is not true. The afflicted cling to life because
they doubt their faith, and do not wish to let go of what
they have, terrible as it is.
Those who refuse to give up the idea of immortality
declare that their nature never creates a desire without
providing the means for its satisfaction. They likewise
insist that all people, from the rudest to the most
civilized, yearn for another life. As a matter of fact,
nature creates many desires which she does not satisfy;
most of the wishes of men meet no fruition. But nature
does not create any emotion demanding a future life. The
only yearning that the individual has is to keep on living
-- which is a very different thing. This urge is found in
every animal, in every plant. It is simply the momentum of
a living structure: or, as Schopenhauer put it, "the will
to live." What we long for is a continuation of our
present state of existence, not an uncertain reincarnation
in a mysterious world of which we know nothing. The idea
of another life is created after men are convinced that
this life ends.
I am not unmindful of those who base their hope of a
future life on what they claim are the evidences furnished
by the investigation of spiritualism. So far as having any
prejudice against this doctrine, I have no more desire to
disbelieve than I have as to any other theories of a
future life. In fact, for many years, I have searched here
for evidence that man still lives after all our senses
show that he is dead. For more than fifty years until
almost ten years past, I have given some attention to
spiritualism. I have read most of the important books of
scientists: Alfred Russel Wallace, Crooks, Oliver Lodge,
and the books of many other men of ability and integrity
who believed that they had found their dead friends who
had come back to them. Likewise, I have for years
investigated what are called spiritual phenomena. I am
satisfied that if any intelligent man, in possession of
his senses, thoroughly investigates spiritualism, he will
find that there no evidence to support his faith. At least
nine-tenths of the phenomena can be set down as pure fraud
and imposition. The evidence comes in the main from
mediums who are ignorant, and whose tricks are clumsy in
the extreme. Perhaps one-tenth of the manifestations are
not the result of fraud but the evidence is entirely
inadequate to prove the cause of the phenomena. It is
possible that there are phenomena which no one can
explain. I have many times seen what are called
manifestations of spirit-return that I could not explain,
but all of these failed utterly to convince me of the
communication of disembodied spirits. It does not follow
that because the manifestations are strange and weird, and
for the present unexplainable, that those phenomena show
that life persists after death. In the realm of these
manifestations, the evidence of scientists, is worth no
more than the evidence of other men. Most likely it is
worth much less. The truth is that real scientists,
outside of their special field, are more helpless than
other men in detecting frauds and tricks. It is likewise
true that most of the men of science, like Sir Oliver
Lodge, have come to their conviction late in life, and
under some great stress, which is calculated to unsettle
the mind, in the particular field to which they appeal.
Sir Oliver Lodge lost his son in the great war. This was a
sore bereavement to this eminent scientist. When one
considers the greatness of Lodge, the clearness with which
he discusses every scientific theory with which he deals,
and then reads his book called Raymond, in which he tells
of his meetings with his beloved son, it is not difficult
to see that as to this bereavement his mind was unsettled
and he is reaching out in the darkness to find what he so
strongly wants.
Is it possible that any sort of proof could prove the
existence of an individual after his decay? Suppose that
some good fairy, distressed at my unbelief, should come to
me with the offer to produce any evidence that I desired
to satisfy me that I would see my loved ones after death;
suppose I should tell this fairy that my father had been
dead for twenty years; that I followed his lifeless body
to the crematory where he was converted into ashes; that I
desired to have him brought back to me as a living entity,
and to stay in my house for a year, that I might not be
deceived. Assume that when the year had passed I should go
out and tell my neighbors and friends that my father had
been living in my house, although he died two score years
ago; suppose that they believed implicitly in my integrity
and my judgment; even then, could I convince one person
that my statement was true? Would they be right in
doubting my word? After all, which is the more reasonable,
that the dead have come back to life, or that I have
become insane? All of my friends would say: "Poor fellow,
I am sorry he has lost his mind." Against the universal
experience of mankind and nature, the dementia or the
insanity of one man, or a thousand men, could count as
nothing. The insane asylums of the world are filled with
men who have these dreams and visions which are realities
to them, but which no one else believes, because they are
entirely at variance with well-known facts.
All men recognize the hopelessness of finding any evidence
that the individual will persist beyond the grave. As a
last resort, we are told that it is better that the
doctrine be believed even if it is not true. We are
assured that without this faith, life is only desolation
and despair. However that may be, it remains that many of
the conclusions of logic are not pleasant to contemplate;
still, so long as men think and feel, at least some of
them will use their faculties as best they can. For if we
are to believe things that are not true, who is to write
our creed? Is it safe to leave it to any man or
organization to pick out the errors that we must accept?
The whole history of the world has answered this question
in a way that cannot be mistaken.
And after all, is the belief in immortality necessary or
even desirable for man? Millions of men and women have no
such faith; they go on with their daily tasks and feel joy
and sorrow without the lure of immortal life. The things
that really affect the happiness of the individual are the
matters of daily living. They are the companionship of
friends, the games and contemplations. They are
misunderstandings and cruel judgments, false friends and
debts, poverty and disease. They are our joys in our
living companions and our sorrows over those who die.
Whatever our faith, we mainly live in the present -- in
the here and now. Those who hold the view that man is
mortal are never troubled by metaphysical problems. At the
end of the day's labor we are glad to lose our
consciousness in sleep; and intellectually, at least, we
look forward to the long rest from the stresses and storms
that are always incidental to existence.
When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting
joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the fact that
all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the
consciousness of it should make us more kindly and
considerate of each other. This feeling should make men
and women use their best efforts to help their fellow
travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and
easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship,
a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the
wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common
death.
