Part 20

Some people feel sure one cannot know anything about immortality, and that therefore it is not worth thinking of it at all.

Henry said: “Because one does not know a thing now is no reason why one should not try to find out. And I believe we shall know, some time. If people had felt so about other equally difficult things, we would never have got on.”

I said: “What is knowledge? We cannot know immortality as an experience, through our senses; but I believe we can know through our reason, just as so much other scientific knowledge is a matter of reason, of analogy, of deduction. It can’t be proved, as one might prove that two and two are four. But then I once read in a book that nothing could be proved, except the things not worth proving.

“If we saw a red rose, and we all called it a red rose, there would be no doubt of its redness. But if we differed, and some called it red, some pink, some yellow, we should soon be in grave doubt. Our eyes might be wrong. There have been so many opinions regarding immortality, because people had different ‘eyes,’ that now we are full of doubts.”

We spoke of the time when the earth was thought flat because it looked flat.

Alfred said: “Immortality of what, do you mean?”

“Immortality of everything,” I answered. “We might, of course, believe that the universe will die, will be extinct. But it is an unthinkable thought. We all believe in something eternal. We know that force does not die, but is changed and transmitted; we know that no substance is destroyed; we know that every action, every circumstance has endless consequences and endless antecedents. They—and I—are forever a part of the universe. How could we be destroyed? Why should we think that everything is immortal, excepting self, which seems the motive force?”

Alfred said: “I don’t believe it is destroyed; but it goes out of me, and that is the end of me.”

The others asked how Alfred could have agreed with us all so far, and not agree now, since it seemed to them that what we had said before, the idea of progress, implied immortality. How could he believe in the Self as God, the vast Self which comes to complete understanding, and yet believe that he, who was a part of it, that in him, and he in that, could be utterly destroyed?

He said he believed new self was always coming into the universe, and old self going out.

“Where would it come from, where would it go?” asked Virginia.

I said: “There is nothing but the universe. Everything is in it.”

He answered that he believed in progress, progress toward unity and understanding, but it passed from one person to another; it would not be himself.

“How could the whole of Self be complete unless you were there?” I asked.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t see how it could be. It would not be myself.”

“No, not you, in any definite sense, but self, and yourself in that. But it does not matter whether you disagree, if you can really go onward with us, and believe with us, without believing you are immortal. For all that matters is how we live now. It is not necessary to know the future, unless you need it for the present. When I say ‘immortal’ I mean we are immortal, now, because the universe is here.”

Ruth thought that life would be meaningless if we were not immortal; that all progress, all goodness would have no sense. She said: “One might live to do good, just to be kind to others, who were also mortal. But if that were the end, there would be no meaning in it.”

Henry agreed with her, and most of the others expressed similar ideas. I said this did not prove we were immortal. But I, too, felt a limited life to be meaningless. Still, I wanted to know the truth.

Alfred saw he could not consistently believe in race immortality, but he wanted to.

Virginia said: “You know the sun will burn down some time. Every fire burns itself out. Then the world will get cold and dark. And then what becomes of the human race?”

“But,” I said, “the energy that was the sun will be in the universe, and will light other suns.”

“Energy never dies,” said Virginia. “If I put out my arm like this,” and she stretched forth her hand, “the energy that goes out from me never dies. It bounds and rebounds, and in some way goes on forever.”

“As it has been forever until now,” I said.

“No, I think it dies out,” said Alfred. “If you bounce a ball, it bounds and rebounds and then stops.”

I explained to him how energy is not destroyed, but transmitted; how nothing is ever destroyed, but all things are changed.

He believed the physical part changed and was not destroyed. Still, it was not life any more.

He said: “It is not the same thing. I am myself now, but I am not the same person I was as a little child. I am all changed.”

“Yes,” I answered him, “your body is different material, your brain and your thoughts are not the same, your shape is changed, but you are still self, and you were self then.”