Phaedo
just as men in former ages have created gods in their own likeness. And
we, like the companions of Socrates, may feel discouraged at hearing
our favourite 'argument from analogy' thus summarily disposed of. Like
himself, too, we may adduce other arguments in which he seems to have
anticipated us, though he expresses them in different language. For we
feel that the soul partakes of the ideal and invisible; and can never
fall into the error of confusing the external circumstances of man with
his higher self; or his origin with his nature. It is as repugnant to
us as it was to him to imagine that our moral ideas are to be attributed
only to cerebral forces. The value of a human soul, like the value of a
man's life to himself, is inestimable, and cannot be reckoned in earthly
or material things. The human being alone has the consciousness of truth
and justice and love, which is the consciousness of God. And the soul
becoming more conscious of these, becomes more conscious of her own
immortality.
10. The last ground of our belief in immortality, and the strongest, is
the perfection of the divine nature. The mere fact of the existence of
God does not tend to show the continued existence of man. An evil God
or an indifferent God might have had the power, but not the will, to
preserve us. He might have regarded us as fitted to minister to his
service by a succession of existences,--like the animals, without
attributing to each soul an incomparable value. But if he is perfect,
he must will that all rational beings should partake of that perfection
which he himself is. In the words of the Timaeus, he is good, and
therefore he desires that all other things should be as like himself as
possible. And the manner in which he accomplishes this is by permitting
evil, or rather degrees of good, which are otherwise called evil.
For all progress is good relatively to the past, and yet may be
comparatively evil when regarded in the light of the future. Good and
evil are relative terms, and degrees of evil are merely the negative
aspect of degrees of good. Of the absolute goodness of any finite nature
we can form no conception; we are all of us in process of transition
from one degree of good or evil to another. The difficulties which
are urged about the origin or existence of evil are mere dialectical
puzzles, standing in the same relation to Christian philosophy as the
puzzles of the Cynics and Megarians to the philosophy of Plato. They
arise out of the tendency of the human mind to regard good and evil both
as relative and absolute; just as the riddles about motion are to be
explained by the double conception of space or matter, which the human
mind has the power of regarding either as continuous or discrete.
In speaking of divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and
true and loving, the author of order and not of disorder, of good and
not of evil. Or rather, that he is justice, that he is truth, that he
is love, that he is order, that he is the very progress of which we were
speaking; and that wherever these qualities are present, whether in the
human soul or in the order of nature, there is God. We might still see
him everywhere, if we had not been mistakenly seeking for him apart from
us, instead of in us; away from the laws of nature, instead of in
them. And we become united to him not by mystical absorption, but by
partaking, whether consciously or unconsciously, of that truth and
justice and love which he himself is.
Thus the belief in the immortality of the soul rests at last on the
belief in God. If there is a good and wise God, then there is a progress
of mankind towards perfection; and if there is no progress of men
towards perfection, then there is no good and wise God. We cannot
suppose that the moral government of God of which we see the beginnings
in the world and in ourselves will cease when we pass out of life.
11. Considering the 'feebleness of the human faculties and the
uncertainty of the subject,' we are inclined to believe that the fewer
our words the better. At the approach of death there is not much said;
good men are too honest to go out of the world professing more than they
know. There is perhaps no important subject about which, at any time,
even religious people speak so little to one another. In the fulness
of life the thought of death is mostly awakened by the sight or
recollection of the death of others rather than by the prospect of our
own. We must also acknowledge that there are degrees of the belief in
immortality, and many forms in which it presents itself to the mind.
Some persons will say no more than that they trust in God, and that they
leave all to Him. It is a great part of true religion not to pretend
to know more than we do. Others when they quit this world are comforted
with the hope 'That they will see and know their friends in heaven.' But
it is better to leave them in the hands of God and to be assured that
'no evil shall touch them.' There are others again to whom the belief in
a divine personality has ceased to have any longer a meaning; yet they
are satisfied that the end of all is not here, but that something still
remains to us, 'and some better thing for the good than for the evil.'
They are persuaded, in spite of their theological nihilism, that the
ideas of justice and truth and holiness and love are realities. They
cherish an enthusiastic devotion to the first principles of morality.
Through these they see, or seem to see, darkly, and in a figure, that
the soul is immortal.
But besides differences of theological opinion which must ever prevail
about things unseen, the hope of immortality is weaker or stronger in
men at one time of life than at another; it even varies from day to day.
It comes and goes; the mind, like the sky, is apt to be overclouded.
Other generations of men may have sometimes lived under an 'eclipse of
faith,' to us the total disappearance of it might be compared to the
'sun falling from heaven.' And we may sometimes have to begin again and
acquire the belief for ourselves; or to win it back again when it is
lost. It is really weakest in the hour of death. For Nature, like a kind
mother or nurse, lays us to sleep without frightening us; physicians,
who are the witnesses of such scenes, say that under ordinary
circumstances there is no fear of the future. Often, as Plato tells
us, death is accompanied 'with pleasure.' (Tim.) When the end is still
uncertain, the cry of many a one has been, 'Pray, that I may be taken.'
The last thoughts even of the best men depend chiefly on the accidents
of their bodily state. Pain soon overpowers the desire of life; old age,
like the child, is laid to sleep almost in a moment. The long experience
of life will often destroy the interest which mankind have in it. So
various are the feelings with which different persons draw near to
death; and still more various the forms in which imagination clothes it.
For this alternation of feeling compare the Old Testament,--Psalm vi.;
Isaiah; Eccles.
12. When we think of God and of man in his relation to God; of the
imperfection of our present state and yet of the progress which is
observable in the history of the world and of the human mind; of the
depth and power of our moral ideas which seem to partake of the very
nature of God Himself; when we consider the contrast between the
physical laws to which we are subject and the higher law which raises us
above them and is yet a part of them; when we reflect on our capacity of
becoming the 'spectators of all time and all existence,' and of framing
in our own minds the ideal of a perfect Being; when we see how the
human mind in all the higher religions of the world, including Buddhism,
notwithstanding some aberrations, has tended towards such a belief--we
have reason to think that our destiny is different from that of animals;
and though we cannot altogether shut out the childish fear that the soul
upon leaving the body may 'vanish into thin air,' we have still, so far
as the nature of the subject admits, a hope of immortality with which we
comfort ourselves on sufficient grounds. The denial of the belief takes
the heart out of human life; it lowers men to the level of the material.
As Goethe also says, 'He is dead even in this world who has no belief in
another.'
13. It is well also that we should sometimes think of the forms of
thought under which the idea of immortality is most naturally presented
to us. It is clear that to our minds the risen soul can no longer be
described, as in a picture, by the symbol of a creature half-bird,
half-human, nor in any other form of sense. The multitude of angels, as
in Milton, singing the Almighty's praises, are a noble image, and may
furnish a theme for the poet or the painter, but they are no longer an
adequate expression of the kingdom of God which is within us. Neither is
there any mansion, in this world or another, in which the departed can
be imagined to dwell and carry on their occupations. When this earthly
tabernacle is dissolved, no other habitation or building can take them
in: it is in the language of ideas only that we speak of them.
First of all there is the thought of rest and freedom from pain; they
have gone home, as the common saying is, and the cares of this world
touch them no more. Secondly, we may imagine them as they were at
their best and brightest, humbly fulfilling their daily round of
duties--selfless, childlike, unaffected by the world; when the eye was
single and the whole body seemed to be full of light; when the mind was
clear and saw into the purposes of God. Thirdly, we may think of them
as possessed by a great love of God and man, working out His will at a
further stage in the heavenly pilgrimage. And yet we acknowledge that
these are the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard and therefore
it hath not entered into the heart of man in any sensible manner to
conceive them. Fourthly, there may have been some moments in our own
lives when we have risen above ourselves, or been conscious of our truer
selves, in which the will of God has superseded our wills, and we have
entered into communion with Him, and been partakers for a brief season
of the Divine truth and love, in which like Christ we have been inspired
to utter the prayer, 'I in them, and thou in me, that we may be all made
perfect in one.' These precious moments, if we have ever known them, are
the nearest approach which we can make to the idea of immortality.
14. Returning now to the earlier stage of human thought which is
represented by the writings of Plato, we find that many of the
same questions have already arisen: there is the same tendency to
materialism; the same inconsistency in the application of the idea of
mind; the same doubt whether the soul is to be regarded as a cause or as
an effect; the same falling back on moral convictions. In the Phaedo the
soul is conscious of her divine nature, and the separation from the body
which has been commenced in this life is perfected in another. Beginning
in mystery, Socrates, in the intermediate part of the Dialogue, attempts
to bring the doctrine of a future life into connection with his theory
of knowledge. In proportion as he succeeds in this, the individual seems
to disappear in a more general notion of the soul; the contemplation of
ideas 'under the form of eternity' takes the place of past and future
states of existence. His language may be compared to that of some modern
philosophers, who speak of eternity, not in the sense of perpetual
duration of time, but as an ever-present quality of the soul. Yet at
the conclusion of the Dialogue, having 'arrived at the end of the
intellectual world' (Republic), he replaces the veil of mythology,
and describes the soul and her attendant genius in the language of the