Seven

weeks before his own death, in his poem called “The Declaration of the Free,” the same writer in the last stanza says:— “Ts there beyond the silent night An endle day? {fs death a door that leads to light? We cannot say. The tonguele secret locked in fate We do not know. We hope and wait.” Such are the humble thoughts of Agnostiks, which are now moulding those of this cultured and religious age. No apology is needed for presenting them to thoughtful readers. The Egyptian, perhaps, was the first to crystallise as dogma the vague beliefs of his age (see Egypt), and to conceive of a heaven where the good dwelt with God (see Heaven). Savage races, as well as civilised ones, have however been found to believe at times in immortality; and the cold philosophic metaphysician as well as the perfervid Theist. It was the interest of savage “medicine men ” to point to portals before which they stood as well-paid sentinels. But, in all ages, thoughtful men have stood apart from the multitude, as they still do, in silence, because unable to affirm, and unwilling to deny, an idea that brings comfort to their fellows; yet doubting how the individual soul or life can exist apart from the individual brain and body. They found no parallel in the case of the insect emerging from its chrysalis: no argument in the indestructibility of matter; but recognised that the general longing for immortality has given birth to our various beliefs thereon. Granted that there is “an energy behind the phenomena,” man has neither the power nor the knowledge to say one word more; no inspiration can teach us what we cannot understand; and the wise think of a soul as only a complex group of activities and memories, a product of matter and of sensations imparted by outside forces—not (like Kant) as an unity with an objective and independent existence. The higher and more complex the organism, the more probable appears to be its resolution into its elements, Indestructibility of matter, or of energy, does not imply indestructibility of individuality. But belief in such a “ self” or “ego” is the basis of belief in its immortality, without which, Theism falls back on the Sadducean doctrine of reward and punishment on earth. The teaching of Gotama Buddha, and of the Eleatiks, 2400 years ago (see Skeptiks and Sophists) was purely Agnostik. Gotama shunned discu ion, but apparently had no belief in a soul independent of the body. He regarded animals and vegetables ulike, as mere bubbles in a stream, floating for a short time, and again absorbed or dried up by the sun. Such ideas have contented millious of mankind for you sands of years, when they do not strive against the inevitable; and we cannot, therefore, think of belief in immortality as a nece ary feature of religion or of ethiks. The Buddhist urges us to be practical, and not to waste our time in vain striving after the unattainable, or discu ion of what can never be more than a hope. Buddhist priests, in reply to the author’s anxious arguments on the subject, answered calmly—yet with amazement: “ Why do you Christians agitate yourselves so much about the hidden future, if, indeed, such future there be? Go forth to your duties, a ured that while acting up to the light that your minds can perceive, and while leading the best life that you can, your goodne (karma or deeds) will be diffused in the world, to renovate it, and perchance to secure some happy future for all.” Renan, in 1883, in the fulne of intellectual vigour, wrote: “The infinite goodne I have experienced in this world inspires me with the conviction that eternity is pervaded with a goodne not le infinite.” Like the Agnostik, however, he was content to wait, and more or le to trust, careful only of the higher life on earth. Some are willing to say with Cicero—in opposition to the spiritual teaching of Plato—that: “If my soul existed previously—as to which I know and care nothing—why should I care about its supposed life hereafter, when my individualism is also gone?” Cato, Seneca, Epictétus, Servius Sulpicius, Marcus Aurelius, all, like the Hebrews, spoke of death as the final end, and offered to the bereaved no comfort save the idea of “ eternal rest.” They had no belief in either the Tartar us, or the Elysian fields, of popular religion, any more than the educated of our own day who cast aside the heaven and hell of the Bible. Euripi des denounced the desire of immortality as a “foolish aspira- ‘tion.” Prof. F. 294