Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1871-09-23
A SECULAR VIEW OF THE FUTURE
ATATE
IFrom the london Spectator. /

skepticism fourishes and finds new votaries;
| hut the notion that "dtath il Cts rilal Sleep
! that we perish like the Towers" 50 widely
! diftcsed Oh The Continent 10 be almost con-
! ttrIainous with skepticism, HIS in this country
! very little hoa-ltss, We believe, than il had
/ f.ty thirty years ago. One cause. perha apps
| Sf the difference between Englishmen aud Con
| tinentals in the matter Is. that Englehmen's
| lives are too duh, too fun of exertion and care
| for them not to
WISH TO BELIEVE IN HAPPIER AND BRIGHTER
| STATE
| But another is the visible diminution in the
| hostility once entertained by science to the
| iGIa. Science Is for the moment the solvent
! which is destroying or eating away the old be-
| liefs. ard scicl,c" has become somewhat sudden
ly tolerant Of future life: asks WHY IL sbouId he
| more wonder III for uS 90 1--we again than 70 live
| now; Why II should b. mere impossible for US to
| be The re than 30 he here; wbv we should be so
| emerge tically curious about the whence. and 50
| irritable against cuI iosity as 70 ;ae WHITTIER?
! There is a disposition To speculate on what the
| future state may be- instead of indalcing in ST.
lent contempt at the proI Osition that IL can be
at al; readiness 70 consider whether, the POS
| sibility OF second life being granted, We can
rites by which that life, il logic holds true must
| inevitably he marked. There is 10 reason WHY
such speculation, though offered without refer
ence to revealed truth, should be sterile; or why
| the mind should not on this. as on so many other
topics, satisfy itself that certain conditions are
4 inevitable; and VIC hope yet 90 see many minds.
the scientific well as the theological. earnest
| " thinking out the problem what those con1-
tons may be. Till they are approximately as
| ctTtained.
SPECULATION WILL Re WASTED.
! and they certainly are not clearly asceTtained
| yet
There cannot, we submit be such chasm
| between this life and the next as shall amour
| to a solution of mental continuity. Ii there is
| the next life is not next life, but another and
! separate life, and existence mi ht Just a. well
| begin there. 1t is not that the worm has become
| moth, but that the worm was needless to pro-
duce the moth; that this life is waste, which il
! is useless 10 cultivate, because the crop could
stand that this Ii true about one of the few men
| tai faculties which appear 10 be whollyor almost
wholly material. A good deal of collected evil
| dence about memory suggests that recollection
| is in some way physical: that am impression
| made on the brain stops there ike picture on
the collodium film; that, though blurred and
| obscured, it can never he wholly efaced, and
| may reappear without the consent of the will.
At least that Is what the phenomena of recOv-
| cred recolectiOns-t the recollections. for in
| stance, Of words which have been forgotten, and
the meaning OF which never understood
! would seem 10 suggest, and if that were true,
| INC ory would be
ONE OF THE FACULTIES LEFT BEHIND
| in the present world. And yet if il We're left,
| this life would be but waste, and the new man
| born there as new as if he had never been born
here. That If perhaps the strongest argument
| against the ancient theory-still very firmly
| held by one or two very able men-that another
life may have preceded this, for If it did, the old
| life would afford an instance of waste which
! nothing in the visible laws of the universe in
| duces Observers to think possible. The memory,
| therefore, must continue; that will be admitted;
| so must other things, too which are not quite so
| clear. Among them is the sense of limitation OF
| power. The popular notion that good man at
| death becomes kind of inferior deity, an angel,
notion absolutely without warrant in Scrip
| ture, and imported into Christianity from a
| totally different system of thought, would in
! volve solution of continuity almost as COM
| rlete as the extinction of memory. The man
| would rise, not himself, developed but a new
being, with brain for example 30 enlarged that
| nothing done in the original life could seem of
importance, so free from the limitations of hui
| man nature as to be
| UNABLE TO BENEFIT BY HUMAN EXPERIENCE.
| The link with the past would be broken
completely as by the disappearance of memory,
every act and circumstance shown in light so
| different that their old meaning would disappear,
| would cease to be meaning. The man-angel
would be studying, as he looked back, not him
| self, but an inferior creature between whom and
| himself would be no binding link except COM
! passion. 1t is hard enough to conceive how
identity can continue when the body has disap-
| peared how the mind, when newly embodied,
when freed from those mysterious restraints
| winch the present body imposes on it, from the
colOring with which il invests il, from the limits
| within which it confines it-for instance mental
| fatigue must be an accident of the corporal me-
| duncan remain the same mind at all nav more
| than mans identity could remain the same if ,
being in all circumstancesof ancestry, training,
| &c, English, he became by miracle in all these
circumstances French. 1t is nearly difficult 10
| conceive of the junction point between the
mind as it is, and the mind not only made sim
less but devoid of the possibility of sin; betwee
minds as we know them; and minds TO which
unknown future is never present; but if,
| addition to all these changes, wide-reachin
| in their influence, the powers are not gradual
| developed, but enormously and suddenly expan
ded, the difficulty would be inconceiyabl
| increased. The fish W oud not rise fish, but
bird which is not true continuance of the fish
| bird not being glOrified fish, but a bird
Prof. Grote goes surely too far in that direction
when he suggests that our sympathy with al
BEINGS IN THE NEXT WORLD WILL BE PERFECT
and that undisguisedness will therefore be in
evitable and absolute. Why? Surely, il SYM
pathy with all is perfect, one of the most
effective links of continually, the limitation of
sympathy, will disappear, and the mind
| derstanding all, and sympathiZing with all
equally, all the affections as we would call
| them, would cease, and all the relations of
humanity be meaningless. The ancient and
beautiful thought which has cheered so many
bereaved ones, that separation is only for a
| time, would be without object; for though we
should meet again, it would be in relations to
relation. The love between parent and child
for example, 80 far as it is not the result Of cir
cumstances and physical similarity of consti-
tution-all which circumstances and similarity
must cease at DEATHS the product OF superior
sympathy, which sympathy would be merged,
lost in the universal sympathy Of which Prof.
| Grote has spoken. 1t may be of course that the
earthly affections are earthly, and end with
earth; but there is no proof OF that, and no rea-
son for suggestion which, besides being mel
ancholy one, is an additional difficulty in the
way or continuity. So with that absolutely
immoyabe idea in a mind conscious of wearf-
ness, that the next state will be one of perpet-
ual rest, which would il it were true, require
conditions absolutely fatal to continuous
identity. The mortal mind, and the mind
| which did all without eXertion,
| COULD NOT BE OF THE SAME MIND,
any more than the mind of a plowboy suddenly
raised to the level of Newton would be the same.
| There would be a break in a case like that, a
conscious break swapping the life in two, and
| giving the second half a new beginning. There
must be strain, and effort, and progress there,
as here; and it is wonderfully difficult to con-
ceive that there IL not in that strain and effort a
possibility OF failure, and therefore of unhapp-
| ness. The link between mortal mind and a mind
not only free from unhappiness, but free from
the conception that unhappiness could arrive,
would be very thin one, even if change so in
conceivably vast could be effected at all without
| Swapping 1t. There must be ambition in Heaven,
| If II be only to know mOre-for omniscence is no
quality of created beings-and with it, if not sut-
fering, at least comparative and varying degrees
| of happiness, which would be the same thing
Hope has entered too much into our conception
| OF future state. and both faith and reason too
| little; and We cannot but think that one Object
| Of thinkers who accept eternal life should be to
minify as far as reason and faith viii let us. the
| immediate results the SVmpfQYn called de nth