CHAPTER XI.

THE SENTIMENT OF IMMORTALITY NOT UNIVERSAL. MISS MARTINEAU.- WM. HUMBOLDT.- BRADLAUGH.- STRAUSS. BAXTER. -R. G. INGER

FELIX ADLER. -EMERSON.

SOLL. -DEMONIAC MEN. -W. K. CLIFFORD. THE EMOTIONS VERSUS THE INTELLECT.

Ir we may credit human testimony, the desire for a continuation of life after the dissolution of the earthly body is very different in different minds. To some, and probably to the large majority, the idea of utter extinction is repulsive. To others, and among them are persons of high culture and a pure morality, the desire seems to be feeble or fluctuating.

Acquiescence in a false psychology, with the adoption of the Cartesian notion, extinguishing the old belief in a spiritual organism, has been influential, not only in bringing about the prevalent skepticism in regard to immortality, but in engendering the indifference which is sometimes felt. That this often springs from mere temperament is also true. But erroneous conceptions in regard to man's psychical nature must unquestionably lead to notions which have their effect in impairing the natural desire for life's continuance. I was well acquainted with the late Harriet Martineau when she was residing in Washington in the winter of 1834. She was then, if we may judge from her writings, a Unitarian. Subsequently she lapsed into atheism; but this seems to have been rather sentimental or temperamental than rational. "How absurd and shocking it is," she writes ir

one of her letters, "to be talking every day about our own passing moods and paltry interests to a supposed author and guide of the universe." But if that author is at the

same time believed to be the source of our own life and nature, where is the logical absurdity? Here, instead of a reason or an argument, she simply expresses the state of her own feelings, or her own unreasoned conclusions, as if those were authoritative in the case.

But the judgment of one without an ear for music in regard to the productions of Mozart or Beethoven is about as valuable as Miss Martineau's opinion on a question involving the exercise of the devotional, or even the poetical faculty. She could believe in clairvoyance in the power of a mortal in the flesh to read the thoughts of another person at a distance; but the conception of a clairvoyant, omniscient God was to her mind "so irreverent" as to make her “blush, so misleading" as to make her "mourn." I fear there was something morbid in that "blush" something that confounded moral or spiritual nudity with physical. To the philosophic mind meditation on the proofs of a clairvoyant faculty in finite man renders more easy the conception of an infinitely clairvoyant intelligence. To Miss Martineau it was suggestive of no grand possibility, not even of a supersensual faculty in her own constitution, pointing to uses beyond the tomb. The obvious significance in the great facts adverse to her Sadducean theory she either blindly ignored or set aside as cancelled by her own individual feelings on the subject. She had passion and earnestness; she could hate better than she could love; but she had no grand enthusiasm. From music she was excluded by her deafness. In the poetical faculty, so nearly allied to the devotional, she was deficient. Not one of her attempts at versification is now remembered by the many. Of philosophy she knew little; plainly her gifts did not lie. in that direction. Yet with all these defects and perver.

sions, with an utter absence of that insight which penetrates beneath the surface of things to the latent beauty or significance, there were few subjects in regard to which she did not have full confidence that Harriet Martineau could speedily qualify herself to become a teacher. In this selfconfidence lay the secret of much of her power and success. She was a ready, industrious writer, commanding a style clear, animated, and incisive; but as an original thinker she has left no memorable work.

William Humboldt, brother of Alexander, offers another instance of one in whom the desire for immortality seems to have lacked the force of a motive. "I must avow it frankly," he says, “that, right or wrong, I do not hold much to the hope of another life. I could not make for myself another existence out of my human ideas, and yet it is impossible for me to make it out of any other. I regard death with absolute calmness, but without desire or enthusiasm." If William Humboldt could have acquainted himself with our phenomena, he would have learned, perhaps, that his "human ideas" in regard to a future life were more in harmony with the actual facts than he had ever dared to hope.

Charles Bradlaugh, the English secular leader and member of Parliament, seems to have been made somewhat uneasy by the spread of Spiritualism. He tells us he has cast off all belief in a future life, and that he feels remarkably well after it. He is above the miserable weakness of ever wishing to see again the parents, children, brothers, sisters, or friends, who he believes have passed on to blank anni! ilation. Some years ago there was a public discussion on the subject of a future life between him and James Burns, the well-known publisher of Spiritual books and periodicals. It ended, like all such discussions, in an acknowledgment of defeat by neither party.

But one fact was made evident. The only way in which Bradlaugh could make a show of maintaining his Sudducean

doctrine was by ignoring our facts. Tell him of clairvoy ance, direct writing, or spirit-hands, and all he could say in reply was, Not proven. He claimed to pursue the deductive, à priori method (like Dr. Beard), and his facile logic lay in discrediting well-known phenomena. Mr. Burns pursued the inductive method, presenting an impregnable array of facts. Mr. Bradlaugh opposed to these facts his own "true inwardness," his deductive reasoning, and his purely individual convictions. His excuse for this course was that it was not his business to explain certain psychological phenomena, or to bring forward any scientific facts in opposition. My reason against your facts!" seemed to be the sum and substance of his arguments.

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Now it plainly was Mr. Bradlaugh's business to show, either that psychological phenomena do not occur, or that there are no grounds for the induction that they are solved by the spiritual theory. This he failed to do, and this he did not even attempt to do; and it was well remarked that there was more logic in the lucid presentation of facts by Mr. Burns than in all the artificial mechanism of abstruse propositions by which Mr. Bradlaugh assumed to evade the force of those facts.

He exhibits the bigotry of the extreme Churchman in the following remark, from which it would seem that there is an orthodoxy in secularism as well as in sectarian religion :

"Although at present it may be perfectly true that all men who are secularists are not yet atheists, I put it to you as perfectly true that in my opinion the logical consequence of secularism must be, that the man gets to atheism if he has brains enough to comprehend. . . . The whole basis of our secular cause is in direct ignoring and denial of the possibility of any such state of existence (i. e. of any future state).

So it would seem that in order to satisfy the orthodoxy of this secular Pope, a man must "ignore and deny the

very possibility of a future state of existence."

"There le

no God and Charles Bradlaugh is his prophet!" Such would seem to be the temper of his fulminations against those "brainless" persons entertaining the theistic belief, and against the possibility of an hereafter for man.

The wonder is, if he is sincere, that he should give himself the slightest concern as to what other persons may think in regard to Spiritualism, Republicanism, or anything else. If thought springs from a mere accidental disposition of certain molecules of matter, how can there be any absolute standard of truth? If people will not think as he wants them to, why not blame the molecules, and there let the matter rest? If matter and chance are kings, what logic is there in his taking the trouble he does?

Belief in spirit, in God, or in gods, comes to the race, civilized or uncivilized, through evidences of certain supersensual phenomena, as manifested by men in the flesh and by spirits out of the flesh. And this belief is what Mr. Bradlaugh is trying to extirpate. He does not experience such things. Why should he believe that any one else ever did? But he is no more an infallible representative of the human race than the horse who used to eat beefsteaks was a representative of the equine race. The genus horse is graminivorous notwithstanding. Bradlaugh's mistake is in making his own idiosyncrasies and his own limited faculties the measure of the universe. He knows nothing about spirits, therefore there can be no spirit-world, and seership is all a delusion! He has no longing for immortality, therefore nobody else ought to have!

There was not long ago an illiterate mental calculator in Scotland who was asked how many letters there would be in a year's file of a daily newspaper of eight pages, each page having seven columns, each column one hundred and ninety lines, and each line thirty-two letters. The true answer, 139,873,440, was given in ten seconds. Shall we deny