Phaedo
cease at death, or is there some 'better thing reserved' also for
them? They may be said to have a shadow or imitation of morality, and
imperfect moral claims upon the benevolence of man and upon the justice
of God. We cannot think of the least or lowest of them, the insect, the
bird, the inhabitants of the sea or the desert, as having any place in
a future world, and if not all, why should those who are specially
attached to man be deemed worthy of any exceptional privilege? When we
reason about such a subject, almost at once we degenerate into nonsense.
It is a passing thought which has no real hold on the mind. We may argue
for the existence of animals in a future state from the attributes of
God, or from texts of Scripture ('Are not two sparrows sold for one
farthing?' etc.), but the truth is that we are only filling up the void
of another world with our own fancies. Again, we often talk about
the origin of evil, that great bugbear of theologians, by which they
frighten us into believing any superstition. What answer can be made
to the old commonplace, 'Is not God the author of evil, if he knowingly
permitted, but could have prevented it?' Even if we assume that the
inequalities of this life are rectified by some transposition of human
beings in another, still the existence of the very least evil if it
could have been avoided, seems to be at variance with the love and
justice of God. And so we arrive at the conclusion that we are carrying
logic too far, and that the attempt to frame the world according to a
rule of divine perfection is opposed to experience and had better be
given up. The case of the animals is our own. We must admit that the
Divine Being, although perfect himself, has placed us in a state of life
in which we may work together with him for good, but we are very far
from having attained to it.
6. Again, ideas must be given through something; and we are always prone
to argue about the soul from analogies of outward things which may serve
to embody our thoughts, but are also partly delusive. For we cannot
reason from the natural to the spiritual, or from the outward to the
inward. The progress of physiological science, without bringing us
nearer to the great secret, has tended to remove some erroneous notions
respecting the relations of body and mind, and in this we have the
advantage of the ancients. But no one imagines that any seed of
immortality is to be discerned in our mortal frames. Most people have
been content to rest their belief in another life on the agreement of
the more enlightened part of mankind, and on the inseparable connection
of such a doctrine with the existence of a God--also in a less degree
on the impossibility of doubting about the continued existence of those
whom we love and reverence in this world. And after all has been
said, the figure, the analogy, the argument, are felt to be only
approximations in different forms to an expression of the common
sentiment of the human heart. That we shall live again is far more
certain than that we shall take any particular form of life.
7. When we speak of the immortality of the soul, we must ask further
what we mean by the word immortality. For of the duration of a living
being in countless ages we can form no conception; far less than a three
years' old child of the whole of life. The naked eye might as well try
to see the furthest star in the infinity of heaven. Whether time and
space really exist when we take away the limits of them may be doubted;
at any rate the thought of them when unlimited us so overwhelming to us
as to lose all distinctness. Philosophers have spoken of them as forms
of the human mind, but what is the mind without them? As then infinite
time, or an existence out of time, which are the only possible
explanations of eternal duration, are equally inconceivable to us, let
us substitute for them a hundred or a thousand years after death, and
ask not what will be our employment in eternity, but what will happen to
us in that definite portion of time; or what is now happening to those
who passed out of life a hundred or a thousand years ago. Do we imagine
that the wicked are suffering torments, or that the good are singing the
praises of God, during a period longer than that of a whole life, or
of ten lives of men? Is the suffering physical or mental? And does the
worship of God consist only of praise, or of many forms of service? Who
are the wicked, and who are the good, whom we venture to divide by a
hard and fast line; and in which of the two classes should we place
ourselves and our friends? May we not suspect that we are making
differences of kind, because we are unable to imagine differences
of degree?--putting the whole human race into heaven or hell for the
greater convenience of logical division? Are we not at the same time
describing them both in superlatives, only that we may satisfy the
demands of rhetoric? What is that pain which does not become deadened
after a thousand years? or what is the nature of that pleasure or
happiness which never wearies by monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains
are short in proportion as they are keen; of any others which are both
intense and lasting we have no experience, and can form no idea.
The words or figures of speech which we use are not consistent with
themselves. For are we not imagining Heaven under the similitude of
a church, and Hell as a prison, or perhaps a madhouse or chamber of
horrors? And yet to beings constituted as we are, the monotony of
singing psalms would be as great an infliction as the pains of hell,
and might be even pleasantly interrupted by them. Where are the actions
worthy of rewards greater than those which are conferred on the greatest
benefactors of mankind? And where are the crimes which according to
Plato's merciful reckoning,--more merciful, at any rate, than the
eternal damnation of so-called Christian teachers,--for every ten years
in this life deserve a hundred of punishment in the life to come?
We should be ready to die of pity if we could see the least of the
sufferings which the writers of Infernos and Purgatorios have attributed
to the damned. Yet these joys and terrors seem hardly to exercise an
appreciable influence over the lives of men. The wicked man when old,
is not, as Plato supposes (Republic), more agitated by the terrors of
another world when he is nearer to them, nor the good in an ecstasy at
the joys of which he is soon to be the partaker. Age numbs the sense of
both worlds; and the habit of life is strongest in death. Even the dying
mother is dreaming of her lost children as they were forty or fifty
years before, 'pattering over the boards,' not of reunion with them
in another state of being. Most persons when the last hour comes are
resigned to the order of nature and the will of God. They are not
thinking of Dante's Inferno or Paradiso, or of the Pilgrim's Progress.
Heaven and hell are not realities to them, but words or ideas; the
outward symbols of some great mystery, they hardly know what. Many
noble poems and pictures have been suggested by the traditional
representations of them, which have been fixed in forms of art and can
no longer be altered. Many sermons have been filled with descriptions
of celestial or infernal mansions. But hardly even in childhood did the
thought of heaven and hell supply the motives of our actions, or at any
time seriously affect the substance of our belief.
8. Another life must be described, if at all, in forms of thought
and not of sense. To draw pictures of heaven and hell, whether in the
language of Scripture or any other, adds nothing to our real knowledge,
but may perhaps disguise our ignorance. The truest conception which
we can form of a future life is a state of progress or education--a
progress from evil to good, from ignorance to knowledge. To this we are
led by the analogy of the present life, in which we see different races
and nations of men, and different men and women of the same nation,
in various states or stages of cultivation; some more and some less
developed, and all of them capable of improvement under favourable
circumstances. There are punishments too of children when they are
growing up inflicted by their parents, of elder offenders which are
imposed by the law of the land, of all men at all times of life,
which are attached by the laws of nature to the performance of certain
actions. All these punishments are really educational; that is to say,
they are not intended to retaliate on the offender, but to teach him
a lesson. Also there is an element of chance in them, which is another
name for our ignorance of the laws of nature. There is evil too
inseparable from good (compare Lysis); not always punished here, as good
is not always rewarded. It is capable of being indefinitely diminished;
and as knowledge increases, the element of chance may more and more
disappear.
For we do not argue merely from the analogy of the present state of this
world to another, but from the analogy of a probable future to which we
are tending. The greatest changes of which we have had experience as yet
are due to our increasing knowledge of history and of nature. They
have been produced by a few minds appearing in three or four favoured
nations, in a comparatively short period of time. May we be allowed to
imagine the minds of men everywhere working together during many ages
for the completion of our knowledge? May not the science of physiology
transform the world? Again, the majority of mankind have really
experienced some moral improvement; almost every one feels that he has
tendencies to good, and is capable of becoming better. And these germs
of good are often found to be developed by new circumstances, like
stunted trees when transplanted to a better soil. The differences
between the savage and the civilized man, or between the civilized
man in old and new countries, may be indefinitely increased. The first
difference is the effect of a few thousand, the second of a few hundred
years. We congratulate ourselves that slavery has become industry;
that law and constitutional government have superseded despotism and
violence; that an ethical religion has taken the place of Fetichism.
There may yet come a time when the many may be as well off as the few;
when no one will be weighed down by excessive toil; when the necessity
of providing for the body will not interfere with mental improvement;
when the physical frame may be strengthened and developed; and the
religion of all men may become a reasonable service.
Nothing therefore, either in the present state of man or in the
tendencies of the future, as far as we can entertain conjecture of them,
would lead us to suppose that God governs us vindictively in this
world, and therefore we have no reason to infer that he will govern us
vindictively in another. The true argument from analogy is not, 'This
life is a mixed state of justice and injustice, of great waste, of
sudden casualties, of disproportionate punishments, and therefore the
like inconsistencies, irregularities, injustices are to be expected
in another;' but 'This life is subject to law, and is in a state of
progress, and therefore law and progress may be believed to be the
governing principles of another.' All the analogies of this world would
be against unmeaning punishments inflicted a hundred or a thousand years
after an offence had been committed. Suffering there might be as a
part of education, but not hopeless or protracted; as there might be
a retrogression of individuals or of bodies of men, yet not such as to
interfere with a plan for the improvement of the whole (compare Laws.)
9. But some one will say: That we cannot reason from the seen to the
unseen, and that we are creating another world after the image of this,