Part 18

Now we spoke of immortality. I asked each to tell me what he or she thought.

Virginia did not want to express her opinion. Ruth and Henry vaguely implied that they believed in immortality. Alfred said:

“I think it is very good for people, if they can believe in it.”

“That is not the question,” said I. “I believe nothing but the truth is truly good for people. What do you believe?”

“I don’t believe I am immortal,” he answered, “because I see no reason to believe it.”

Florence said: “We must be immortal, because nothing dies, but is passed on. And there is something in us—I mean that which loves and knows sympathy—which we do not pass on. So I think it must be immortal.”

Marian said: “I am, so I don’t see how I could not be.”

I answered them: “Marian’s and Florence’s ideas seem to me very good. One cannot prove immortality. I have good reasons to believe it. But my best reason is not a reason at all; and if you don’t understand it, I cannot explain it to you. If I am, I must be forever. ‘I am’ means immortality. That is what Marian said, and what I believe. If I believe in the whole Self of the universe, and that Self is in me, and I am in it, then how can I die unless that Self dies? And if I believe in progress, which is toward complete understanding and wholeness of the Self, how can that progress be without me who am a part of it? Do you know who Robert Ingersoll was? Well, he, who passed for such a scoffer—though in reality he expressed only his own realization of his ignorance and his contempt for dogmatic faiths—once said: ‘I am a part of the world. Without me the world would be incomplete. In this there is hope.’ Hope, he meant, of eternal life with the world.”

The children were much impressed.

Marian said: “How can one face the horrible thought of extinction? It is unimaginable. What answer would you give,” she asked, “to those people who claim that we are immortal only in our children, in the race? I never know what to answer them, and yet I feel sure they are not right.”

“I think there are two good answers,” I said. “First, it is extremely unlikely that the race is immortal. Even if we thought our immortality unlikely, it is far more likely, and much less of an act of faith, to believe in it than to believe in race-immortality. We know that every planet dies and parches. We know that every race, every physical manifestation comes to an end, but we know that the spirit of life lives forever, and forever grows. I have heard people say that when this planet dries and freezes, men will have advanced so far in science that they will find their way in airships to another planet. But to me it seems far more unlikely than that the spirit of life, the self within us, should go on forever. The second answer seems to me to be Florence’s answer, that we are not immortal in the race, that although we give our children much, we give to no one our power of love, of understanding, of sympathy.”

Henry asked: “Don’t we give it through example and teaching?”

“We give much,” I said. “We can teach and train, but we give no one that understanding self, the power for love and sympathy, which is in us, and cannot be made.”

Henry did not see how one could find satisfaction in living for the race, since forever and ever each successive generation would be mortal and would disappear.

I said I did not believe that in a world which to us was all intellect, the intellect could die. Then I read aloud the following passage from “John Percyfield,” by C. Hanford Henderson:

“It is an old mistake, that of calling desires beliefs. But I think I have allowed for this. I have said, if death end all, if that be the truth of it, then that is what I want to believe. For no man in his right senses wishes to be either self-deceived, or other-deceived. I have doubted immortality, even disbelieved it, but now I believe it on as strong warrant as I have for any of my scientific beliefs. In one sense, immortality cannot be experienced; it is not a fact of experience in the same immediate way that certain minor scientific facts are. But neither can the paleozoic age be experienced, nor space, nor time, nor cause and effect. They are inductions from experience. And so to me is immortality. It is an induction from experience. In a world where every reality is essentially spiritual, or intellectual, whichever term you prefer, where even the study of nature, as soon as it passes from mere observation into orderly science, becomes a mental rather than a physical fact, I can only imagine the disappearance of spirit by picturing the annihilation of the universe itself. Without the mental part that we give to all of our so-called facts, they would cease to exist. It is possible that the universe does shrivel up in this way and disappear, but it is less probable, I think, than any one of the great possibilities which science rejects, and feels warranted in accepting their opposite as fact.”

I said that to me as to him it seemed as if, were there not immortality for the self, the world itself might shrivel up and disappear. A world without immortality would be a mad world, without reason; and, as everything else seems reasonable to me, I believe the world to be reasonable. I spoke, too, of the danger of believing things simply because we liked them. I told them how I had disbelieved in immortality at one time, because I suddenly found I had only believed what pleased me.

Virginia said: “I believe things because I like them. But may not that liking, that feeling, in itself be a sign of truth?”

“No,” I answered; “liking is no proof or sign.”

Marian said: “But it is only because we care, because we wish to believe, that we begin to think of these things.”

“Yes,” I replied, “we must care. But then we must bravely face the truth.”

Marian told us she had never been taught anything on this subject, but that gradually her belief had grown, and that her talks with Ruth had helped her from her ideas.

I said many people believed in “personal” immortality; that is, immortality with memory, and the meeting of those we love. I do not pretend to know, or to have a definite opinion. But I think the results of life are eternal, even if not in precise memories. I asked the children for opinions. None of them seemed to believe, or care to believe, in distinct personal immortality.

Ruth said: “We would surely meet those we had loved, in that complete whole self, even though it were not as persons.”

I was surprised and glad to hear her say it. I had said to the children that they probably believed, and might easily believe, much beyond what I told them, but this was all which I believed; I would tell them no theories or surmises of mine, of which I could not feel certain. They were urgent in asking me please to tell them some theories, but I refused.

Virginia said she believed in transmigration. I think it possible, as I told her; it is in every way consistent with progress and all things in life, but I have no reason for feeling sure of it. She said: “It must be true, for if there is just so much spirit in the world, forever and ever, and if it must express itself through matter, how can there be anything but transmigration? Some time we may all live again on some other planet, in some other shape.” I said it might be so.

The children asked me whether I believed animals were immortal. I answered that as much life and self as is in them must be immortal. I observed that this idea of animal-immortality was consistent with Virginia’s belief in transmigration, that so each least creature might rise through successive stages toward its complete self.

Then I said to the children that, of course, if we believed we had been nothing before we were born, we could easily believe in extinction. But I, for one, believed, yes, knew, that I had been forever, that I was not “made” in these few years.